The situation is back to as it was at the height of fighting a few weeks ago. I was caught in the Erez terminal for some time while it came under attack by Qassam fire from Gaza. Leaving Gaza last week I was holed up for almost two hours as a Qassam hit the army compound just inside the Erez checkpoint. It seems these projectiles are becoming more accurate.
As Jamal and I drove away from Erez he stopped a vehicle coming from Gaza City to ask about the conditions of the road. The driver told us there were Hamas checkpoints all along Salahadin Street, the most direct route to our destination so we took a smaller road that runs through the industrial area. For me there is no fear with such checkpoints and yet Jamal was a bit concerned as he is affiliated with Fatah although not a high ranked or active member. In the car’s rearview mirror I watched the fear in Jamal’s eyes as he attempted to remove a sticker of Yasir Arafat that his son Daher had stuck on the inside of the windshield of his car. The image of the deceased leader was a clear indication of Jamal’s party affiliation. Bit by bit, for the next ten minutes Jamal managed to peel off parts of the image.
We drove on as Jamal received calls reporting about the situation near his home. A Fatah leader on his same street was under attack and masked Hamas’ men were at the door of his home; his oldest son Daher had called to inform him. Jamal warned Daher not to leave the house. Four people had died in Beit Hanoun, a town in the Northern Gaza Strip, basically as I was crossing the border into Gaza, a matter of kilometers away. We reached my home without further incident. I tried to pressure Jamal to stay but he wanted to try and reach home before nightfall.
15 minutes later I called Jamal a number of times without answer and got extremely worried. Before we reached my home a civilian from Beit Lahya, where Jamal was heading, reported on the radio that a taxi driver had been kidnapped. The scene kept going through my mind, as Jamal didn’t answer my calls. Eventually he picked up, in a bit of a panic. He had suddenly come across a Hamas checkpoint; he crossed it after they searched his car. With many more checkpoints ahead he decided to turn back and will stay at my place for the night.
Before the news broke, Jamal received the call, his 55 year old neighbor who was being sought had been killed. Jamal’s nephew was shot in the legs; he had to tell his brother to go look for him at the hospital.
This will mean an escalation over the next days. The hopelessness in Gaza has reached a pinnacle. The economic siege is again bringing some people in Gaza to a breaking point and the factions have reverted to a demonizing tribalism, each pouring the blame on the other. The inhumane conditions everyone is living are finally taking their toll, sadly the consequences are taking this desperate, revolting form.
Another dark day in Gaza.
Recently I have realized that I take my childhood for granted.
These days children in Gaza are finishing their final exams. The summer has finally arrived, but I wonder what tidings it will bring for most children? Few news outlets have reported statements made by the Israeli deputy prime minister calling for Israel to shut off water and electricity to the Gaza Strip. In Gaza everyone is mentioning it, for the rest of the world this is not news.
Last Wednesday two boys were in the North of the Gaza Strip hunting birds with nets. They were shot and killed by Israeli army snipers at the border. The boys were no older than 12. My friend Wessam who is a photographer was called to the scene by one of the ambulance drivers that tried to come to their rescue, but it was already too late.
Abu Salim, a friend of mine recently told me that his children have learned to hit the floor once they hear any form of gunfire or explosions. With Israeli tanks near by and planes flying overhead they have spent many nights recently sleeping on the ground. It’s safer there.
My friend Mohamed from Biddo, a village near Ramallah says he has not seen the sea for 15 years. When his son asks him why they can’t go, he doesn’t know what to say. Jamal in Gaza is afraid of taking his kids to the beach near his house because last summer a whole family was murdered there by shells from an Israeli navy ship.
Children in Gaza are sort of like animals in a zoo. They eat and drink what they are given, their cage is always closed and there is only so much they can do and only so far they can go inside this little space.
It doesn’t really matter if its winter or summer.
Two days ago Dr Attalah brought me a big bag of potatoes. At long last the risk he took early this year to restore and cultivate his land in the Northern Gaza Strip which included re-digging his old well and buying a new motor have paid off… and yet not without cost. Dr Attalah is still $5000 in debt, which he cannot pay off. And then, two weeks ago when the Israeli forces again occupied an area in the Northern Gaza Strip they tore up a quarter of his land, but thankfully no harm was done to the motor and well this time.
While there the Israeli forces were stationed in a house that lies on the boundaries of Dr Attalah’s land. The owner of the home knew the risk of it being occupied was great during incursions because of its location, so he built a roof that the army could use to be stationed on (I have never built a house or had one built for me, but I don’t think it’s the norm in housing construction to make plans for an army to occupy part of a home). The soldiers had other ideas though and tore down all the walls in the top floor in order to turn that into their headquarters instead of the roof. The family was detained in the bottom floor for the week, their movement severely restricted.
Dr Attalah finally visited his land yesterday after many weeks of the danger being too great. Sa’id Alattar, a farmer was killed on his bike on the path near the land. An Israeli sniper shot him in the back; he was dead on the spot.
Abu Rushdie, the farmer who is renting Dr Attalah’s land did not stop tending to it throughout the past weeks. He cannot afford the losses of skipping a days work, especially at such a critical stage of harvest. He could not afford to hide in fear. Abu Rushdie and his boys, who help him with the work had to get permission daily in order to reach the land. Some days they were held from doing so, for five days they were given from 7am to noon to tend to what remained of their crops, while the Israeli tanks and snipers looked on nearby.
Jamal’s car was sounding more and more rickety I noticed as we drove to his house for lunch. He was late since he had spent the entire day at the Rafah border with some neighbors who were trying to cross to Egypt for medical care. They had gotten there at the crack of dawn only to turn back in the late afternoon without success. Of the thousands gathered a select few had made it across, but they were not among the lucky few. I have to be honest, I have no idea what the hell must be like crossing that border because I have never had the privilege or bad fortune to attempt to do so. When it is actually open, only Palestinians are permitted to cross.
The Rafah border is operated by Palestinians on one side, by Egyptians on the other and has a European mission monitoring the process on the Palestinian side. One of the more positive things to come of the Israeli disengagement is that they no longer man this border between the Gaza Strip and Egypt and yet Israel still controls it from a distance. On a daily basis the European mission is prepared to travel from their headquarters in the Israeli city of Ashqalon 45 minutes away to the Southern most tip of the Gaza Strip to allow passage for Gaza’s inhabitants to the rest of the world. All it takes for the trip and thus the operation of the border to be canceled is Israel’s discouragement from doing so… like the rest of Israeli decision making, for reasons of security precautions of course. Yesterday the border was open after almost two weeks of closure, whereas the agreement that was established between Israel, Palestine and the Egyptians was for its daily opening. In a report written one year after the signing of the agreement, the border had been closed during the final six months phase for 86% of the time. Jamal was exhausted and after a short lunch took a nap in the corner of one of the two rooms in his house.
Jamal’s oldest daughter had just finished her final exams, Hamza, Jamal’s favorite had completed kindergarten and was about to tear up his graduation certificate when I got hold of it. The others had just a few more days to go before the summer break. I asked them what they would do during the summer, “stay home” Maysa told me, “and visit my grandmother,” Om Daher’s mother lived a few houses away. Jamal had drawn a tarp across the open air sitting space in his courtyard to spare us a little from the sun. The boys were running around and his wife Om Daher would order them out of the room every time they got too rowdy. I couldn’t imagine the entire summer going by like this with none of them involved in any activity but being home.
Meanwhile the Israeli surveillance balloon was not far away and the rockets flew overhead at night. I wondered what effect this was having on these kids. Jamal explained that during the past week Daher, his oldest son and him had been standing at the door of their house when they saw a guided missile heading into their neighborhood, “Daher was scared,” he laughed. He described the missile as weaving around homes until reaching its destination, a Hamas facility not too far from their home. Jamal said he had not slept much the night before because of the sound of the missiles overhead and Om Daher complained they could not watch TV, one of the rare distractions and forms of entertainment here, because of the static caused by the movement in the air. I learned that the large picture hanging on the wall was of Jamal’s recently deceased mother. For the past year he had not been to visit her because the cemetery she was buried in was located too close to the border with Israel. I knew Israel controlled water, airspace and borders, but in Gaza, even the dead were off-limits to visit.
*first photo is by my friend Wessam Nassar
Yesterday a headline on the Palestinian-Israeli conflict went rather unnoticed: the Gaza Strip is up for sale.
In its latest move of genius Israel is contemplating dealing away its responsibility for Gaza after having sown the seed of Gaza's death over the past 59 years. Israel is considering a plan that would ask the Arab League to take responsibility for the Gaza Strip in exchange for "a package deal" in which “negotiations between Arab and Israeli representatives on the Arab Peace Initiative" would begin. The Arab league, a body that is often made powerless by its internal differences and external limitations, is in no place to take on such massive task. After the unilateral Israeli disengagement from the Gaza Strip in September 2005 former prime minister Ariel Sharon claimed Israel had ceased any control over the strip and its future was now in the Palestinians hands. Yet, the facts on the ground reveal another reality. All economic borders continue to be controlled by Israel, the only outlet for civilians travelers is opened and closed at Israel’s whim, airspace is off limits to Palestinians, while limits are constantly set on fishermen off of Gaza’s coast, while laborers that for years found work only in Israel have been rejected access to Israel since disengagement with no where else to go.
Israel is taking another step in trying to disinherit itself of the responsibility for her past actions.
Deputy Prime Minister Avigdor Lieberman goes a step further... words are hard to come by for such disproportionate, one-sided and historically egocentric statements.
...Fatima was in her teens and on her way back from the new school for girls that had opened the previous year. Tired from a long day of parroting what the teachers asked her to memorize, she was heading home when she met her elder brother who hurried her along, yelling at the womenfolk in the house to hide wherever they could, because "the Jews are coming."
Fatima knew in a timeless way, in those days of May 1948, that the Jews were coming. For the last six months shreds from the daily news -- traditionally the domain of the men in the village -- had reached her. She was aware that the British were leaving and that the Jews were occupying nearby villages at a frightening rate. She also heard the men complaining about the Arab world's betrayal: its leaders made inflammatory speeches, promising to send soldiers to save Palestine, but not matching their rhetoric by any real action. Yet the daily routine of those days was not interrupted even once, so that the threatened arrival of the Jews was like an evil spell, against which the blue-painted door and ornate ceramic Hamsa -- the amulet hand hanging on one side of it -- should be sufficient protection.
But on that fateful day the evil spirits were stronger than any talisman or benevolent djinns hovering over the village to safeguard it, as they had in the past, from Crusaders, Napoleon and other would-be invaders who frequented the Palestine coast on the way to another conquest, or seeking a Christian redemption of the Holy Land...
read on
The catastrophe of the Bedouin village, Um Nasser, is long past its short moment in the world’s spotlight. Yet, here nothing has changed since that dreadful day just over two months ago. The people are living in tents along the side of a hill at the top of which rests a tank. During my visit there planes flew overhead and a surveillance balloon hung in the air filming our every move there. For Salim Abu Eteq every step is recorded, every motion noticed. At night when homemade projectiles are launched into Israel from Gaza just west of the village, the tank on the hill constantly fires its shells over the heads of the villagers below.
Salim’s home was destroyed in Beit Hanoun when he lived there a few years ago, so he moved to Um Nasser. Here his home was hit by an Israeli missile that was meant for his neighbor’s home. So he moved his family into a shack. This shack is what was wiped out when the sewage flood came on March 27th. His mother and 1 year old boy were killed that day. When I met Salim just days later, he was taking refuge in a UN tent with the survivors of his family. Today, he is afraid to reach even that tent with the tank located just hundreds of meters away.
But the world has forgotten.
He kept insisting to visit me in my home, inside I cringed. How can I host this man in my home with walls, a full fridge, comfortable bed, a guest room and couches, with a door that locks at night? How can I?
I diverted the course of the conversation. The stench of sewage filled the air and I longed for the comfort of the van I would be driving home in.
Driving through Jerusalem I saw tourists taking pictures of the sites of what is considered this holy city. The past hours I had spent in the village of Artas surrounded also by cameras and foreign visitors, these were not documenting the stones of the past, but the injustice of the present.
The village of Artas lies in a valley, the settlement of Efrat has been built on the village’s land along with land from neighboring Al-Khadr. Last week the villagers had received word that the Israeli army had its eye on some of the land close to the settlement-colony. Together with Israeli and International activists a constant presence was maintained on the land until last Sunday at 5am the army came to clear the land of its trees. The plan seems to be for sewage pipes to be placed in the Palestinian valley to dispose of the Israeli colony’s waste. If this plan is carried out the entire valley will be polluted and the trees and crops that grow there will die.
I don’t understand what could be going through the mind of the soldiers we met on that dusty path in Artas. After Friday prayers the villagers joined the Internationals and Israelis to try and reach the newly cleared land in solidarity with its owner. The army was prepared, they blocked the path and would not let anyone through. What does one such soldier think he is achieving by stopping Palestinians from reaching the land they own? Whom is he serving? How does he believe to be protecting his countrymen and women by covering up, by protecting the stealing, stealing, stealing of other’s land? Where does she believe the rich Jewish heritage of Justice is in such acts of land theft? The group of us chanted for a while and there was some moments of push and shove which did not lead far.
In some ways such an event seems weak and pointless to me. On the upside with the presence of the crowd and the media, the villagers were able to express their opposition to the army’s illegal activities, and yet we were not able to achieve anything substantial. Pictures were taken of a stronger army standing in the way of peaceful and unarmed farmers and supporters from around the world. But then what are they to do as their land is taken from them before their very eyes? Today, we stood powerless before an army, armed to the teeth, only to communicate a message, that this is injustice.
The illegal Israeli colony looms over the demonstratoin in the background.
In what has been lablled an "amazing turnaround" Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has upturned Ariel Sharon's policy of not trading with the Palestinian Authority. Gaza's only natural resource, natural gas located in the Mediteranean was discovered by British Gas Group 7 years ago. Israel's Jerusalem Post reported, "The change of heart, government officials said, was simply the product of economics, since buying the gas from Egypt, another option, would cost twice as much."The Times quoted Nigel Shaw, the BG Group vice-president in the region saying, "this is a chance for greater economic prosperity in Palestine and that is only good for peace." Such a statement loses its validity asIsrael reportedly plans to pay the PA with "goods and services." This would continue Gaza's status as a massive prison where goods are going in and few are coming out. If this deal goes forward as planned, it would play no role in boosting the Palestinian economy, the most vital of needs for Palestinians today, and rather furthers its status as a detention center with no hope of economic progress. Israel's sudden change of heart, is another form of hyopcritical exploitation of Palestinians, receiving rare Gazan resources in exchange for humanitarian services that further bind Palestinians in external reliance. This is one more undone opportunity for the building of Gaza's future.Since the forming of the new Hamas government in May 2006, Israel continues to withhold monthly tax payments of $600 million that it is required to pay the PA. At the end of the day, Israel continues to do what it wants and gets what it wants at the cost of the Palestinians.
Yesterday eight members of one family were murdered on the spot in Israel’s latest military strike on Gaza. The target, doctor Khaleel Al-Haya, a Hamas member remained unharmed. Later in the day Islamic Jihad responded by firing two home made rockets into Gaza. One Israeli citizen was killed, another wounded.
This sounds like a horrible, but straightforward series of events. The only aspect that calls for attention is that one of these attacks is considered terrorism, while the other is mentioned in most media outlets only in passing, and referred to as a legitimate attempt on a bad man’s life. As Israel’s extra-judicial assassinations in Gaza once again become the norm, Gaza is being cast into deeper and deeper despair.
A month ago I visited Sderot and met with Dvora Babyan, an Israeli citizen of Iranian and Libyan descent. A homemade Qassam rocket hit her house on April 21 causing damage to the building but causing no fatalities. Having come from Gaza that morning, I had the sense I was overhearing Dvora’s words as if spoken to a Palestinian living in Gaza.
“We have sense, we are not barbarians. They are barbarians, we want peace but they are not interested… When we strike we have to take into consideration the civilians, they don’t do this,” she said.
Dvora’s mindset entails a particular logic that Israel’s aggression, because a familiar military apparatus is carrying it out, necessarily verifies its legitimacy. It barely matters who is killed or how many bystanders are dead if the intentions are those of a recognized military body. Why? Because behind the decision to carry out one such execution is expected to be a well-thought out and legal procedure, unknown to all and yet accepted by the general public. The targeting of a certain Hamas actor is a foreign scene; a rocket hitting a villa in a nice neighborhood of Sderot on the other hand is too close to home not to become a successful headline that grips reader’s attention.
In her thought process Dvora simply avoids the fact that in this rocket attack on the Gaza Strip eight civilians were killed, including a 16 year old boy and two men over 60; for since these civilians were killed by the army, they must be legitimate targets. At the least their deaths must have been a worthwhile sacrifice in light of the threat posed by the assassination’s intended target.
Going one level deeper and trying to assess the moral dimension of such a perspective, it seems that by placing on a scale the death of a Palestinian family on one side and the security of an Israeli community on the other, the balance is retained. The only matter here being that such an imagined weighing is itself a logical fallacy, because the targeted deaths of innocents will never provide security, it will only harbor further revenge. The myth of violence comes into play here, which believes that the assassinations of a few will create security for many. In reality, this myth provides cover up for Israel’s actions of the past. Dvora went on in desperation,
“Where will I go? This is my country, this is my home, there is no other place.”
Sadly, Dvora would be surprised to know that these questions are not foreign to the Palestinians living only kilometers from her home.
Israeli historian Benny Morris writes this, "the Jewish state would not have come into existence without the uprooting of 700,000 Palestinians. Therefore it was necessary to uproot them… There are circumstances in history that justify ethnic cleansing." Today Gaza is reaping the consequences of this “necessary” ethnic cleansing. Refugees arriving in Gaza in 1948 must have asked themselves, “Where will I go? This is my country, that was my home, there is no other place.” The home they were referring to lay in the uprooted villages most of which were destroyed shortly after their Palestinian inhabitants were driven from them. No insurance agents came to assess the damages in Palestinian homes that day. No journalists came to write reports. They must have been haunted by that same question, “what barbarian would do this to me?”
The difference between these two cases of questioning is the fact that the coming into existence of Sderot created the hell that the Gaza Strip is today. A little town by the name of Sderot become home to poor immigrants in the early 50s, only years after it had been cleared of Palestinians living in what was the village of Najd. Another resident of Sderot told me that when he got there in 1989 he thought he was in “the safest place in the world, in the middle of nowhere.” And yet, it was not the middle of nowhere, he had moved onto what was once someone else’s land and adjacent to where that displaced person and their displaced descendents were held imprisoned. There, his displaced neighbors daily faces the consequences of the past. This past is what is allowing for the hell of that very town, Sderot.
“Fear is the hardest thing …People rather go shopping in [the near by town of] Ashqelon than in Sderot because it is safer,” Dvora said.
Gazans have nowhere to escape to.
Today fear fills the hearts of Gaza’s people. A fear that they may one day return from their perpetual search for charity and donation empty handed (80% of Gazans are receiving international food aid); a fear of waking to another day of hopelessness (70% of Gazans are either unemployed or largely unpaid government employees); a fear that the economic disaster they are experiencing today may overcome their lives (60% of the population live under the poverty level of $2 per day); a fear is that this economic crisis will divide the entire population in inter-factional feuding and result in a lawless chaos as factions and political parties vie for the little power that does exist in Gaza.
Over the course of the past week Israel has begun to evacuate Israeli citizens from Sderot and has moved them into a camp in Tel Aviv. Gaza’s only outlet to the world via Egypt has been closed for the past ten days as Gaza’s citizens remains locked in Gaza, like a detention center. When the border opens it is only the lucky few who can “go shopping in Ashqelon.”
The situation is back to as it was at the height of fighting a few weeks ago. I was caught in the Erez terminal for some time while it came under attack by Qassam fire from Gaza. Leaving Gaza last week I was holed up for almost two hours as a Qassam hit the army compound just inside the Erez checkpoint. It seems these projectiles are becoming more accurate.
