Walking and Real Sardines

While I was crossing the border from Jordan I got a call from my friend Naser in Bethlehem. He had wonderful news for me, his oldest boy was going to have surgery to try and fix his walking disability that he has had since birth. The only bad news was that Naser was not yet able to collect the percentage of the surgery costs ($2,750) that he needed to cover. Mu'ad is one of the most expressive and happiest boys I have ever met. His difficulty in walking has not stopped him in the least from being an active and excited kid who mainly just wants to have fun and play with his father's friends.

On the road to Gaza Abu Alaa, my driver today translated the Hebrew news for me. Ismail Haniyeh the Palestinian prime minister threatened to kill Israeli captured soldier Gilad Shalit if Israel were to begin an incursion into Gaza. If this act were to be carried out Israel promised to kill Ismail Haniyeh and every other Hamas cabinet official.

After a 10 day trip to Cairo I am back in Gaza, home, sweat home. After walking through the corridors of the daunting Erez checkpoint I arrived at the last turnstile at which point I found Abu Amjad sitting on the floor waiting for the sliding gate to open which releases every traveler into the open-air prison of Gaza. Abu Amjad owns a factory in Gaza, he has been selling his goods to Israel for the past 22 years and today, without explanation, he was rejected entry there for the first time. Just another usual day for another Palestinian lacking the right of most any other human being traveling in a seemingly dignified country.

Jamal picked me up at the Gaza border and invited me to his house for lunch. We had sardines, I had never had the pleasure of eating anything but sardines from a can until I moved to Gaza. These fish are so small that you can actually just eat the whole thing, save the tail. Of course we also had mulukheya, and a nice little tomato/ onion dip and humos. Daher was sleeping when we arrived around 2pm and was rudely woken and dragged out of the room so we could sit there. Abdallah, the youngest met us at the door and spread the rumor that I was there for a visit.

Arriving at my house I found Ayman and Mohamed watching a movie there. I filled them in on my travels. Mohamed is just recovering from a fever. Tonight I ate two cookies I got at a goodbye party in Jerusalem yesterday. On the balcony I had a glass of wine that I bought at a monastery on my way to Gaza and smoked a cigarette. The fishing boats were out and their little lights filled the horizon, surrounded by the darkness, down below the presidential guard were making their rounds, chanting unintelligible chants, sirens filled the night from time to time, far away gunshots were heard at times.

PHOTO STORY: Dr Attallah's Farm: Something Beautiful

In December 2006 I visited what was once Dr Attalah’s farm for the first time. It had been destroyed by Israeli army bulldozers during an incursion in November of 2001. Just months after my visit Dr Attalah decided to take out loans and replant the land, and there, out of the destruction, to create something beautiful.

The land had lain barren for six years, bulldozed so severely that the two asphalt roads that once ran alongside the land had disappeared beneath the piles of sand. For three days two bulldozers leveled the land. It was almost impossible to determine the old boundaries of the land.

Dr Attalah is now in debt to the company that leveled the land, to the shop he purchased the used motor from and to the contractor that laid the foundation for the engine room. Until that last debt is paid the contractor will not build the actual building that ought to be there to protect the motor and provide a shelter for the workers.

Dr Attalah sits with nearby farmers to determine an agreement for the renting of his land. The farmer pays for renting the land and covers the costs of planting the crops and does all the farming. He will then pocket all the income of the crops.

This is Abu Rushdie, the man who will rent and farm Dr Attalah's land.


Dr Attalah and Abu Rushdie discuss plans for the barren land.

It was only by chance, or providence that Dr Attalah's old well was found at all.

Abu Mahmoud, the mechanic and Dr Attalah are childhood friends. Abu Mahmoud came out to the land to make some repairs on the engine that is pumping water from the well.

The fields have turned a beautiful green.


Abu Rushdie's kids do a lot of the work here.


Yesterday homemade projectiles were launched into Israel and the Israeli army responded by firing missiles at a car in Northern Gaza, killing one. It was reportedly carrying the perpetrators. Disturbing the peace of others of both Israelis and Palestinians needs to be punished. Extrajudiciary assassinations are illegal under international law and must be condemned.

Such actions disturb the peace of the area that Dr Attalah and Abu Rushdie are farming their land.

In spite of death and the economic depression in Gaza, this green land is something beautiful.


If you feel like helping Dr Attalah pay back his debts,

email me.




I saw

Walking through the long passage that takes you into Gaza, I saw a man on a walker. Next to him walked another, completely helpless as his companion moved forward at a snails pace.

Driving into Gaza I saw garbage piled up by the sides of the streets, often spilling over into it. The municipality’s garbage collectors have been on strike for nearly a week now. I don’t know for how long they have not been paid again. One large pile Jamal and I drove by was lit on fire and clouds of choking smoke filled the air there. We closed the windows and opened them again once we had passed.

We drove to the Al-Ahli hospital, downtown Gaza City, where the administration was tense and scared about the situation in Gaza. A few days ago a bookstore across the street and two internet cafes elsewhere were bombed. The blast blew out all the windows in one of the hospital buildings. I crossed the street to see the bombed shop, which the staff was repairing yet once again. The bookshop experienced a similar blast less than a year ago. I saw a friend of mine, a painter, with a smile, painting the metal door, inside a burnt smell filled the air and sadness filled the eyes of those within.

Back on the street I saw a boy searching through garbage on the side of the street. Jamal got a flat tire and we stopped by a mechanic. The only person inside was a boy, I thought he was 8, Jamal thought 13. He put a jack under the car and took some time to fix the punctured tire. As we drove off Jamal pointed out the obvious, “it is wrong for a boy at this age to be working like that.”

By chance, over lunch, I met the brother of the man who was leaving Gaza with the walker. He had been caught in inter-factional fighting and shot seven times all along one leg.

How one endures this, I don’t know.

Like 1948

The girl pointed to her throat and made a mark where the water had reached answering a question that was never posed. Two weeks after a flood of sewage wiped away parts of the Bedouin village in Northern Gaza the three little girls I encountered, along with 250 other displaced families are living in tents, like 1948.

I was there to distribute parcels to 20 families containing just a few of the vital needs, clothes, shoes and baby’s milk. One woman exclaimed, “the world has forgotten us,” she lost everything in the flood, her home, her kitchen, the children’s clothes. They were left with the clothes on their back. She was, like her ancestors, living on the floor, in a tent, with “UN” stamped in blue letters, with a small gas stove and a few mattresses, her kids roaming the desert hills all around, like 1948.

Wasfi Al-Abraq’s home was one of the first to go. He was tending his field when the floods came. He wasn’t able to reach his children and wife. They managed to escape through the back of the house, but not much was left of it. The walls have crumbled, electricity sockets and light switches remain at knee level because of the swamp of sewage and sand that entered and remained in Wasfi’s home. The small tent provided by the UN didn’t provide enough shelter for Wasfi, his wife and eight children. So they built a shack adjacent to the tent, like 1948.

Dozens of homes collapsed, cars were crushed, fields gone, cupboards, kitchens, bedrooms, furniture, all beyond use. Graffiti on the walls of a shell of a house said “in the past we had a home,” another wall read, “here drowned the child, Jamal.”

The existence of elderly women living on the hot dessert ground, children brushing their teeth at public faucets, roaming spaces of donkeys and goats doubling as a neighborhood playground and shacks and tents void of food, clothes and really much of anything, all posed the question, what lead to this?

The place felt like a camp created for famine victims escaping a drought and yet this calamity was man-made. What are the 5000 inhabitants of the Bedouin village actually doing next to massive pools of sewage that like this last one could break because they are overused? These families who once roamed the Negev dessert to practice their trade raising livestock were one day herded into the tiny space of Um Nasser, the Bedouin village. Their rights robbed on behalf of the rights of others, in 1948.
The tents on those hills and the displaced people within them are a hollow echo of those fateful days of 1948.

They are a stark reminder to the world of a past that is easier forgotten.

Hamas vs. Fatah

Game 4 ended with a score of 25-17 for the Jam’eya Al-Islamiya. This was the final game of the season between the Hamas affiliated team and its archrival Nadi Khadamat Jabalya, a team that is considered a Fatah club. The game was held at the Yousef A-Najjar Stadium in Khan Younis. For a long time the Jabalya team was the unrivaled victor, but lately the team had been plagued with problems between its players and the club’s owners and managers. The aged captain who was also their trainer should have been retired by now, but was not willing to hand over the helm of the team.

The first game was an easy win for the Fatah team and passed without incident. The stadium was guarded by eight or nine policemen in riot gear who seemed to be enjoying their easier than usual posting. The Jabalya club had a loud and rowdy bunch of fans who spurred the team on early in the game. The second game was much more intense and ended in a 29-27 surprise victory for Hamas.

Yaser, one of the Jabalya fans started talking to me. He told me his uncle was the head of the Presidential Guard, a Fatah security apparatus. Yaser is 19 and doesn’t want to go to university, he is already a soldier. “Your party will provide everything you need,” Yaser explained to me. What could a university education give him? In exchange for his services a political party will promise him security, an income and support in times of emergency.

The game went on.

Suddenly the score was 2-1 with Jama’eya Al-Islamiya in the lead. In the fourth and final game the Jabalya captain was knocked in the knee. He claimed he had been purposefully targeted. An argument broke out between him and the referees. The police got into their riot gear and called reinforcements, the fans tried to storm the field and were held back by the suddenly alert officers. The Fatah captain and his assistant coaches were yelling and arguing, a fight between two players almost broke out and the fans were ready for a battle. Somehow, the game went on in the background; focus had been lost.

No one seemed to notice the players anymore.


With the game barely the focus of the day’s event, Hamas walked away with the victory. The Jabalya team was shattered and still bitter over their injured captain; the players managed to greet one another without further incident. The Hamas team, the referees and some of the others gathered on the court for evening prayers.

Another victory for Hamas.

Bedouin Village: 21st Century Ghetto.

At 9am on Tuesday morning sewage flooded a section of the Bedouin village North of the Gaza Strip.

The village is surrounded in the North by a border with Israel and large pools of sewage in the South. The pools take up 350.000m2.

The pools were built in 1976 under Israeli military order. They were constructed over the purest water aquifer in the Gaza Strip and have begun to seep into the aquifer, creating huge risk of polluting water in Gaza.

Four people were killed on Tuesday, including two young children and an older woman who were swept away in the sewage.

The pools were built to serve 50,000 people, by 2003 they were being used by over 200,000. In 2006 a separate pool was built on a hill over the village to which overflowing sewage was pumped.

On Tuesday morning the pool broke, causing the sewage to flood into the village in the valley below. According to a villager the water reached 3 meters in some places.

The Palestinian Authority has long been warned that this environmental crisis needs to be addressed. This situation was not made a priority.

Israel on the other hand continues to prevent building materials from entering the Gaza Strip.

Such a catastrophe brings to light Israel’s unwillingness to take the responsibilities it is required to as an occupying nation.

The Bedouin Village is the 21st Century ghetto.

the sewage pools

The sewage ran down this hill and flooded the valley below
Homes and shops are flooded

destroyed shacks

A collective funeral tent
Sand is pilled in front of homes to prevent further flooding

returning to 1948: refugees yet again

Smuggling crocodiles, kidnapping Alan Johnston.

I never met Alan Johnston but everyone I have talked to who knows him has spoken very highly of him. He was humble, he was quiet and serious and he was determined to communicate the reality of life in Gaza to the world. Not a single person I have asked about his kidnapping has anything but condemnation for the perpetrators.

Yesterday marked two weeks since his kidnapping and no one has either made demands for his release, or taken responsibility for the crime. There was no local news to be heard all day as all local radio stations were on strike to call for Alan’s release. A large sign looms near the Palestinian parliament building in central Gaza City calling for his release.

This morning I had breakfast in my favorite breakfast joint. There too hung a sign, “free Alan Johnston”.

Few are surprised at the incident, since crime in Gaza has reached unprecedented levels. Cars are stolen, homes broken into, young and old alike are mugged in broad daylight.

A woman tried to smuggle three small crocodiles into Gaza, strapped to her body as she entered the border from Egypt. She was going to sell them to the local Zoo. The contraband was confiscated, for in Gaza this too, is considered a crime.

The financial embargo on the PA means that besides the 40% of Gazans that are unemployed another 30% who are government employees are not being paid. Aid agencies are keeping the Palestinian people alive. This society will soon collapse, it is beginning to already.

Smuggling crocodiles and kidnapping foreign journalists is scarce potential income.

Things you don't see every day

Karen Koning AbuZayd head of the U.N. Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) was recently reported saying this:

"Everybody is just in bad shape now with the whole economy going down so badly. They just don't have any opportunities," citing high unemployment and shortfalls in wage payments over the past year.

Donors have poured in more money last year than ever before "but that's because we've made everybody aid-dependant."

What does this mean:

The Twalbe family live in the Beach Refugee camp just North of Gaza City. Of the seven school aged children two don't go to school. The oldest, 13-year old Yousef has asthma and has been made fun of at school since he was young. He quit school a long time ago and stays home to help his father at the market. Abd Karim, the third oldest was recently kicked out of his school for getting in too many fights with his fellow students. Even the teachers are scared of him. The school's headmaster said if Abd Karim comes back he would give up his job.

When I asked Abd Karim to describe his surroundings he listed one incident after another of inter-clan fighting and internal political clashes in the refugee camp he lives in.

In 1948 70,000 Palestinians lived in the Gaza District, after the ‘48 war 200,000 refugees were added to the area and the regional classification “Gaza Strip” was created. The root of Abd Karim’s mental instability is a society that was never meant to take the shape it has today. The “Gaza Strip” has never been a sustainable society. When you add 200,000 farmers with their families to an urban prison you create chaos. Anarchy isn't created out of thin air.

Abu Yousef, Abd Karim’s father, sells humanitarian aid that is distributed to his family by organizations like UNRWA. This is his only form of income. At least two of his sons participate in the daily activity of selling plastic bags of flour, rice and bottles of oil at the local market just five minutes away. A shopping cart is filled with the goods in order to transport them to the market. Over five years ago Abu Yousef used to work in Israel as a laborer, like thousands of other refugees like him. Prior to the last Intifada there were 150,000 such daily laborers from Gaza. Being a refugee means, once you had land, now you no longer have land and thus must work on other’s land. In Gaza employment opportunities are extremely scarce.

I have not traveled the world, but I am certain there are other areas on this planet that suffer even more hardship, with higher unemployment, with even more human cruelty and consequently even more human suffering. But here, in this conflict, what grips me, is the fact that it is man-made, in this case there is no need to be gender neutral, because it is largely men that were the instigators, the leaders, the protagonists of this sad chapter of human history. Building one human calamity on another. I can weep over the past, but I am responsible for my activity or inactivity, my words of praise, or condemnation for the injustice of the present.

Abd Karim has epilepsy and is mentally unstable, I believe he is schizophrenic, but Gaza has no psychiatric facilities for children under the age of 15. In the evening when I return to the family’s home the boy has disappeared. Sometimes he returns at 1 or 2am. Abu Yousef worries about him and can’t get to sleep until his son is home.

Getting around Gaza

Signpost in former colonies: Firing weapons not allowed

Flowers growing in a former Israeli army guard tower

These are My Neighbors

Ayman is the head architect at one of the universities in Gaza, he is married and has a daughter called shams, sun. Mohamed is a law student and the head of security at the same university Al-Aqsa. He grew up in Alexandria and the West Bank and then moved to Gaza five years ago. Mohamed hopes to leave Gaza one day. He is very critical of both of Gaza's main parties Fatah and Hamas. He is engaged and longs for the day he can raise a family in a peaceful nation.


Alaa lives in Beit Hanoun. He grew up in Jordan. His family moved to Gaza in the early 90s when there was much hope for a peaceful future for the Strip. Alaa is one of about 60,000 Palestinians in Gaza that have no national ID or passport. Jordan did not recognized his family as full citizens and when they left the country the lost the IDs they did own. Alaa studied computer science but due to the lack of jobs he works as the guard and caretaker of the building I live in, the Mecca Tower. As a natural comedian he is a constant source of joy and laughter, making the lobby of the Tower a welcome place to come to. I am saddened to hear that he will be leaving his current job soon in order to open a computer store in Beit Hanoun.

Sameer is my tailor down the street. He is actually a sheikh as well as a tailor, but he is the only fatah sheikh I have met in the Gaza Strip. He speaks highly of the days he spent working n Tel Aviv in the 90s where I believe he gained some of his sowing skills. With the poor state of the economy in Gaza Sameer recently moved his shop to his home, a small shack by the side of the road, and rented out the space previously used for his tailor shop for the opening of a falafil restaurant.

I am a regular at Mohamed's family's vegetable and fruit shop just around the corner of my house. I have the tendency to fill a bag with all sorts of vegetables and fruit, onions, potatoes, avocado, apples, pears, tomatoes and then Mohamed will give me a rough estimate of the price. This is my favorite shopping experience in life. I have taught Mohamed and his brother to juggle with oranges. Mohamed is in his last year of high school and hopes to study English at university. They also make fruit juice. My favorite is carrot and orange.

I don't remember the name of this little boy. He is from the Abu Amra family which reside in shacks on the road near my building. They are beounis that once roamed the Negev desert but since the closure of Gaza and the forced migration of Palestinians in the region to the Gaza Strip they are out of work and have lost their living space. He too is my neighbor.

"Humans are dysfunctional”

Ghazi was sitting on the ground eating lettuce, next to his wife who was washing vegetables in a large metal vat. When he heard my voice at the gate, he got up with excitement and slowly walked over on his wooden cane, a large smile on his face, offering me the last leaf of lettuce. He was wearing a brown wool outfit and looking much stronger than the past many times that I had seen him. He was still going to the hospital three times a week for kidney dialysis, but he had also begun teaching Arabic literature and linguistics again three times a week at the Azhar University in Gaza City. While I had been away the infighting in Gaza had deteriorated significantly. One battle occurred at the hospital while Ghazi was hooked up to the dialysis machine. There was shooting in and around the hospital and he was forced to get on the ground and hide. Gaza had never seen what it witnessed in December and January. With a look of horror on his face Ghazi explained, it reached a stage where brother was killing brother.

Ghazi’s son Ihab joined us and for a long time I quizzed him on the process of exporting strawberries from Gaza. Ihab was a salesman of fruit and vegetables, who would buy second grade goods from local growers that couldn’t be exported to Europe and would sell them in Israel and the West Bank. This would require him to spend hours at the Karni crossing between Gaza and Israel, which was the only channel for goods entering or exiting Gaza. Ihab explained to me the methods that the strawberry growers used to sneak their lower quality goods into the container of the high grade ones. Agrexco, the largest Israeli exporter that held a monopoly on the market on the other hand, abused its power by paying the Palestinians much lower prices for their produce than they did growers in Israel that Ihab knew. “Humans are dysfunctional” Ghazi pointed out, every one working only for his own benefit, looking out for their own needs. Ihab, having ended his account of the corrupt strawberry market added, “there isn’t anyone that does any good.”

From other friends of mine in the area I had learned that Ghazi had quite a reputation as a “communist”, in this community this referred more to one’s religious beliefs than to the political ones. Ghazi was certain that it was personal possessions that corrupted. I pointed out that attempts of communist systems failed because the few in power ruled with corruption, he added in defeat that people also stopped being motivated to work. The state of humankind tormented Ghazi.

Rita, Ghazi’s seven year old niece had appeared and was throwing shoes at us from behind a bush, when she was told off she started running after her younger brother Eouda with a broken off stick she found. Just minutes prior Eouda himself had used it to chase after the chicken that was lounging around the garden where we sat.