by Dennis James
At the first checkpoint, we wait in the bus. Officers of various rank board and glower at us. They tell us to get off the bus. We get off. Then they tell us to get back on the bus. We get on. Suddenly, they wave us through, truck and all, to the second checkpoint, for baggage and passport check. We cheer and sing. The speculation is that the Egyptians are being nice because Obama is in Cairo and they don’t want any embarrassing incidents.
At the second checkpoint, there is a four-hour wait while the Egyptians go through luggage and examine passports. Barbara overhears the passport checkers exclaiming, “Iran, Iran.” This could only refer to stamps in our passports, souvenirs of our trip to Iran in 2008. However, nothing comes of it.
Approval is granted by early afternoon. The Egyptians collect our exit fee. We retrieve our passports and luggage, reload the buses, and climb aboard for the final joyful leg of this odyssey—a hundred meters to Gaza. As our buses and truck cross into Rafah, Gaza, dozens of people greet us, cheering, waving, and taking pictures. We cheer and wave back. They usher us into a reception hall where we are warmly welcomed by the Minister of Education. Many security guards are present, this time not watching us but watching out for us. The Minister expresses his concern for our safety from interference by Palestinian extremists and Israeli agents. He urges us to move freely and to talk to anyone, but to stay in groups.
One of the Canadian delegates, who has corresponded via the Internet for eight years with a Palestinian who lives in Gaza, meets him in person for the first time. They announce they are going to be married. Naturally, we cheer and sing.
The United Nations Relief and Works Agency training facility at Khan Yunis is built on the site of a former Israeli settlement. When they left, the Israeli settlers and the IDF destroyed everything—crops, buildings, and all other structures. The land surrounding the UN facility is barren, reclaimed by the desert. A housing project stands half-completed and silent, abandoned for lack of building material.
Much of our time will be spent visiting service facilities funded by the UN and staffed by Gazans. The Agency, though technically restricted to assisting refugees or their descendants (approximately two-thirds of the people living in the Strip), employs or provides some support to 90 percent of the population. Without UNRWA, the economy would collapse.
John Ging, the UNRWA Director, delivers an impassioned plea for help to lift the blockade. He describes it as “arbitrary and deliberately cruel.” Only items deemed “essential” by the Israelis are allowed through, and, even those, sparingly. He says that Gazans are unfairly maligned as bloodthirsty terrorists. In fact, they are educated, peace-loving, industrious people who just want to live normal lives like everyone else. Ging fears that Gazans, in particular the young, will lose hope and be recruited by extremists who use illegal violence.
Outside, we mill around buffet tables under an awning shielding us from the sun. The food is good. Of course, there is no alcohol, but the Gazans don’t need it to have a good time. Arabic music plays on the PA system, and soon everybody is dancing for the next hour, including the UN support staff, the security guards, the delegates, and the administrators. And me.
Tired and happy about our success at the border, we drive to our hotel in Gaza City, passing several buildings destroyed by IDF planes and gunboats.
Northern Gaza
May 31
The area north of Gaza City, bordering Israel, is dominated by the Jabaliya Refugee Camp. One hundred and fifty thousand Palestinian refugees live in this overcrowded camp. They are among the thousands driven from their homes in Israel and the West Bank in 1948, a mass expulsion known as the Nakba.
Remains of a mosque, Northern Gaza
Family’s tent in front of wreckage of their house, Beit Hanoun
In a macabre twist, Operation Cast Lead targeted and completely destroyed the American International School, one of the most respected secondary schools in Gaza. The school was a multistory, modern, reinforced concrete structure paid for with US dollars. It now looks like someone stepped on it. Ceilings and floors are pancaked into each other. It was hit by three missiles at night. There was one fatality—a watchman. The night before, he had asked an assistant director whether he could bring his family to stay overnight in the school as they had been terrified by the bombing in their neighborhood. The assistant director declined, saying he could not reach the director to get permission. That night, the watchman died alone while his family stayed home, safe.
The IDF claims the school was used to store munitions. This is vehemently denied by the directors and the staff, and no evidence has been produced to support the claim. Ironically, Palestinian extremists distrusted the school’s staff because of its American connection and frequently harassed them. The school lost all of its equipment and books but has since reopened in rented quarters in Gaza City. Only 18 of its 230 students dropped out.
Several hospitals and clinics suffered a similar fate. At the Kamal Edwan Hospital, a new wing had just been built with foreign contributions and was about to open when Operation Cast Lead began. New diagnostic and treatment equipment had been installed and was ready for use. Israeli tanks approached within twenty meters of the hospital and opened fire on the new wing. Shell holes, a meter wide, and shrapnel gouges pockmark the exterior. Every window is blown out. Inside, a doctor takes us on a floor-by-floor tour. Broken glass crunches underfoot. I’m glad I wore heavy shoes. We clamber over twisted metal and slabs of fallen plaster and concrete. Depleted uranium shrapnel litters the floors. Yet doctors continue to treat patients despite the wreckage and a shortage of medicine and supplies.
Kamal Edwan Hospital, Northern Gaza
A collateral benefit to our mission is the chance to meet serious political activists, each with unique stories to tell about their struggles, defeats, and victories. At the hotel that evening, we have a long talk with Rich, a civil engineer with the Coast Guard in Juneau, Alaska, who writes a monthly column for the Juneau Empire. He is a quiet, thoughtful guy who seeks the common thread of humanity in everyone. I can imagine the grief he must get on the job for his activism. He is a veteran and has a son with the US Army in Iraq, but he is totally dedicated to the cause of justice for the Palestinians. He is already at his computer sending dispatches when Barbara and I get up for our early morning walk.
Beach Refugee Camp, Gaza
June 1–2
There is not much left of the Government Ministry buildings in Gaza City. They are gutted, hit by land, sea, and air shelling. Tent communities have sprouted where there were once residential blocks. Destroyed mosques and the rubble of entire neighborhoods are everywhere. But there are enough boulevards, beaches, and intact apartment buildings to remind us of what a lovely seaside city this was and could be.
The two major universities in Gaza illustrate the thousand ways the Israeli bombing and blockade make life desperate. Two of the largest buildings at the Islamic University were totally destroyed, and exchange programs with schools in Europe and Egypt have been suspended.
The dean at al-Aqsa University recites a litany of hardships. They cannot obtain books. Faculty cannot go to conferences. They cannot finish construction projects. They cannot visit the West Bank. The dean has a sister in Bethlehem he has not seen in twenty years. He reminds us of Desmond Tutu’s admonition: “In situations of oppression one cannot remain neutral. To do so is to side with the oppressor.”
Despite all of this, classes go on. Students are educated. People search for some semblance of normality. We talk to several female students who are sitting around the tree-shaded quadrangle of the Islamic University campus. They are giggly and shy but enjoy practicing their English. Although classes were not in session at the time of the attack, two of them were in the university library when they heard the explosions, which, they say, were enormous. They thought they were going to die. Now, we watch them laugh and poke one another.
The modern, well-endowed Qattan Centre for the Child is a model facility, architecturally and fu
nctionally. It is funded by an NGO created by a wealthy Palestinian from London. It provides after-school educational services for hundreds of children under age ten and is equipped with a well-stocked and well-used library. The Centre offers computer and art classes, using the latter to treat children with PTSD residual to the Israeli attacks. The government building next door was also attacked, and chunks of shrapnel from the explosions landed on the Centre’s roof. Despite the danger, the Centre’s guards refused to leave the premises. We look at the beautiful structure and wonder whether its turn will come next time. Because there always has been a next time.
The director, a woman named Reem Abu Jaber, takes us into a conference room. We drink tea and soda while she speaks of the siege and her own history. The blockade affects every aspect of daily life. It wears people down. It wears her down. “I just want a normal summer,” she says. A few years ago, she went on sabbatical, studying the teaching of languages at Wales University but was not happy living in the consumer culture of England. She realized her true happiness lay in helping others. So, she returned to Gaza.
Reem shows us some of the children’s paintings. They depict helicopters, bombs, tanks, dead bodies, and bursting white phosphorus shells, with homes and schools in flames. She appears discouraged and tearful, but pulls it together and proudly takes us on a spirited tour of the facility.
The most seriously injured are sent to Al-Shifa Hospital. The director shows us around, his white shirt stained with perspiration. The Israelis allocate only enough electricity to air-condition the operating rooms. It is early June, but the heat in the emergency and waiting rooms is stifling. The power is arbitrarily turned off by the Israelis for periods of four to twenty-four hours, during which time the hospital must depend on diesel-run generators meant to operate for much shorter intervals. Furthermore, fresh fuel for the generators is banned by the blockade, forcing them to use old fuel and endangering the generators, which cannot be replaced.
Patients whose cases cannot be treated at Al-Shifa are taken to the border crossings in hopes of receiving medical attention in Israel or Egypt. According to an Israeli Human Rights group, some patients are told that to be allowed to cross they must collaborate with the IDF or Mossad and name names of militants or political activists. Some who have refused have been denied transfer and have died, and all who have been granted permission to cross are suspected by their neighbors.
Gaza is a traditional male-dominated society, and the high unemployment resulting from the attacks and blockade has caused marital disruption and family stress. A women’s center in the Deir al-Balah Refugee Camp provides sanctuary, counseling women regarding issues of spousal abuse, post-traumatic stress disorder, and birth control and abortion. It offers craft and job training and English classes, and there is a flourishing poetry circle where women meet to read and exchange their poems. There is also a computer lab with no power and a gym with no equipment.
We ride the buses to the village of Johr al-Deek, in mid-Gaza on the Eastern border. The village was used as an IDF base. When the IDF pulled out, they dynamited and bulldozed almost all the homes, shelled the school and community center, and destroyed crops, wells, and trees. Two residents were killed, one thousand displaced. The homes were not mud huts, but reinforced concrete structures, some two and three stories, that housed extended families. The larger houses were dynamited and the smaller ones bulldozed. All were demolished except for five houses where the IDF lived during the demolition.
The people of Johr al-Deek are not refugees. They are Bedouin, the original inhabitants of Gaza. The Bedouin are not officially eligible for UN aid, but a few surplus tents are provided. Otherwise, they improvise dwellings with sheets of corrugated metal, carpets, and blankets. Essentially, they live in the rubble of their former homes. Hamas provides food and a few necessities. The mayor conducts the tour. He asks rhetorically, “Why? Why destroy our homes, our livelihood, our wells, our beloved trees?” However, he adds, “We will never leave this place. We will never give up.”
Johr al-Deek
People are incredibly happy to see us. They feel alone in a world where no one cares and where they are disposable. UNRWA does all it can, but it’s not enough.
More than eleven thousand Palestinian political prisoners are being held in Israel. We meet with some of their families. They hold pictures of fathers, brothers, sons, husbands, wives, sisters, and daughters and tell stories of torture, withheld medical treatment, and denied visitation. One elderly woman, bent over and walking with a cane, has not been allowed to see her son for seven years because the Israelis claim she is a dangerous terrorist. Barbara goes to each of them, takes their hands, and tries to offer words of comfort. Though they thank and bless her, she’s frustrated by our inability to help.
That evening, members of International Solidarity Movement (ISM) show us videos they’ve taken of the harassment of fishermen and farmers. The IDF attacks fishing boats everywhere, even those close to shore. Some of our group who were housed near the beach heard gunfire near dawn on several occasions. It has become impossible for Palestine fishermen to earn a living.
Women’s poetry circle at a women’s center, Deir al-Balah Refugee Camp
Farmers tending their crops on their land near the border are also regularly fired upon by Israeli border guards. ISM members, with clearly marked orange vests, accompany the farmers in their fields. They carry video cameras and megaphones, announcing their presence. The IDF opens fire anyway. In one recorded episode, a farmer is shot in the leg.
Around ten p.m., a group of us meet with Omar, a Palestinian businessman and intellectual. He was once active in Fatah, the political party that controls the West Bank, but is now disillusioned and speaks at length of the “breakdown of civil society” and how the corrupt bribe-and-kickback-based Fatah/PLO eroded the community service system of Palestinian culture.
Hamas, in contrast, has gained credibility because it provides community services and fights the IDF. Though the leaders remain very local and parochial in their outlook, they are learning. “The leadership could use six weeks in New York,” Omar says. “They need to learn more about the outside world.”
Back at the hotel, we hear a commotion in the lobby and go to investigate. To the sound of drums and musical pipes, a wedding party enters. The men dance in circles around the groom, singing and jumping. The bride follows on her father’s arm. She is wearing a long white gown and veil and carrying a huge bunch of white flowers. The joyous scene provides a stark contrast to what we have otherwise witnessed on this long day.
Khan Younis City
June 3
We’re up for a speed walk at seven a.m., much to the alarm of the UN and Hamas security guards. They are concerned about our possible abduction by “extremists” or Mossad agents. A guard with an AK-47 tries to keep up but can’t. We tell him not to worry and finish our walk. The streets are clean but there are few cars. Many donkey carts are driven by middle-class people. A water truck goes by, and the driver waves.
Extensive bombing eliminated many factories in Khan Younis City. Those spared are nevertheless nonfunctional for lack of materials and parts.
At the Khan Younis Club, boys and girls under the age of twelve learn dance, gymnastics, and music. We sit outside under a shade tree in a circle to talk with the director. She can barely contain her anger. “Other delegations have come and gone but nothing is done,” she says. “The children have nightmares. They paint pictures of war, they become violent. The Israelis should be tried as war criminals. Palestinians have the right to resist. The Israelis destroy life in many ways. Khan Younis was an IDF military base, and, for fifteen years, Gazans could not go to their own beach.”
Her brother, an ambulance driver, was killed in the Israeli raids. We tell her that Medea and Tighe are going to Cairo to try to persuade Obama to come to Gaza or to send a representative. She nods without expression, looking down at the ground.
A few meters away, a dozen young boys are doin
g somersaults under the supervision of a bearded coach. They run, flip, and land on their feet, over and over, until the youngest can do it.
A group of about twelve students at the Khan Younis Training Center have built an automobile from scratch in hopes of entering an international competition somewhere in Europe. They have used parts cannibalized from junked Fiats. However, their dream has little chance of fulfillment. They will not be allowed to leave Gaza. And even here, their chances of employment are slim. Still, they pose by the welded skeleton, smiling. They’ve done this to show they can.
Sinai, Cairo
June 4
It is my birthday. We drive back to the Rafah crossing.
There is a farewell demonstration. We unfurl banners calling on Obama to visit Gaza. The Mayor of Rafah, Gaza, thanks us profusely, and a few of us give speeches.
The most touching remarks come from the family that housed Rachel Corrie, a college student from Washington State who had come to Gaza in 2003 and worked with the ISM. She was killed when she stood in front of an Israeli bulldozer as it demolished the homes of Gazans suspected of having a family member sympathetic to Hamas. “She died defending our home,” says the father. “I saw them take her tiny body out of the rubble. We will never forget her.”
Their home was demolished despite Rachel’s sacrifice.
The buses are delayed at the border again. We figure the Egyptians want to make sure that Obama and his entourage are safely out of Cairo before they send two busloads of pro-Palestinian activists there. Finally, in the late afternoon, the Egyptians get the word. In a big hurry now, they distribute our passports, load our luggage, collect another entrance fee, and practically push us through the gates. Again, we are escorted by security vehicles with teenage soldiers sitting in the back of pickups, holding the ever-present AK-47s. Every now and then, a black Mercedes pulls alongside the bus, and a security honcho admonishes the bus driver to go faster. People smile and wave and give us the “V” sign. In the bus, we sing.
