A Month by the Sea

by Dervla Murphy

  We were joined by a slim youngish man, an UNRWA teacher who told me in halting yet vivid English how impossible it is to manage fifty 10-year-olds with ‘everything not enough’ – especially when half a class may be traumatised long-term. He taught at his old school in Shatti camp, his birthplace. He himself had had a good education in the ’80s, before UNRWA funding dwindled and pupil numbers soared. In his view, the rich native Gazans think refugees are dirt but don’t dare say so. He showed me pictures of his five children (aged two to nine) and advised me, as I went on my way, to buy a sunhat.

  A half-hour walk took me back to Rimal, to the shoal of seafront hotels spawned by Oslo: the al-Deira, the Grand Palace, the Adam, the Commodore, the Palestine, all equipped with generators to evade the daily Gazan reality of prolonged power cuts. They survive now on expense-account guests such as UN agency and international NGO delegations, and foreign and Palestinian ‘humanitarian’ teams who collect statistics to be carefully collated at considerable expense for sponsors powerless to use them. Those visitors’ favourite restaurant is the Roots Club, where one meal costs more than a Shatti couple’s monthly food supply.

  The beach is Gaza’s main recreation area – its 20-odd miles free for all to enjoy now the settlers have gone. At 9.00 am quite a few were strolling by the wavelets or swimming, the women walking into the water fully clothed, their long black coats buttoned to the neck, their hijabs firmly tied. Some stood up to their armpits, dunking babies and toddlers, and one swam underwater for a remarkable distance despite her handicap. Probably all had learned to swim at an UNRWA summer camp, during their free pre-puberty years. The school holidays had begun and high-spirited teenage boys were wrestling, leap-frogging, constructing elaborate sand castles or hunting pale brown edible crabs – up to six inches wide – by pouring water down their burrows, then gingerly capturing them as they scuttled away. Meanwhile in waist-deep water their teenage sisters (also fully clothed) played ‘Ring-a-ringa-rosy, all fall down!’ squealing in mock alarm as they submerged themselves.

  Near the port a large café had been improvised by placing tables and chairs under palm fronds supported by lengths of old rope. Here a young couple sat on their own, husband talking angrily, wife looking sulky. Behind a one-plank stall stood a wizened, white-bearded man selling packets and bottles of unwholesome things. Reluctantly I bought a litre of water; to pay for water hurts but on the Strip there really is no alternative. Nabil had warned me never ever to drink tap water – or even rinse my mouth, or boil an egg in it. The level of contamination is high enough to penetrate eggshells.

  On my way home I called in to the Spartan office of a ‘legal rights’ Palestinian NGO at the top of a wide shadowy stairway in a dismal semi-ruin – formerly a government department. Two friendly young women offered tea and water and explained that the Director was away at a conference in Rafah but would ring me on his return. They disapproved of my walking around Gaza and gave me the card of a private taxi firm, admonishing me never to stop passing serveece cabs – the Strip’s substitute for public transport and much too risky! All their foreign friends were agreed on that. I didn’t argue; yet I couldn’t bring myself to use that card. Shared taxis are valuable conversational seedbeds. And Vittorio Arrigoni’s was the first abduction of a foreigner since Hamas took control.

  * * *

  Soon I was leading a compartmentalised life, sometimes with my Fatah contacts to whom I had introductions from the West Bank and East Jerusalem, sometimes with my expanding circle of Hamas contacts. There were none of the mixed debates I had often enjoyed in Nablus between Fatah and Hamas supporters and ‘neutrals’. My new friends would talk politics only within the security of their own homes – and then often in elliptical terms that might have bemused a visitor not so soaked in ‘the Problem’.

  All over the Strip small green Hamas flags fluttered high but one saw no signs of macho triumphalism, no heavily armed soldiers patrolling the streets or ostentatiously guarding government offices or banks. Fatah supporters tended to mutter darkly about the entire population being kept under surveillance, day and night, by sinister plainclothes operatives. This may indeed be the case: a foreign visitor wouldn’t notice. I was happy to exchange the West Bank’s omnipresent hard-faced IDF and PA security forces, their weapons always at the ready, for Gaza’s occasional pairs of bearded, vaguely uniformed men who sat chatting and smoking at street corners, their shared weapon on a lap or hanging on the back of a chair.

  In 2007 Hamas’ rapid restoration of public order confounded its critics. Operation Desert Shield – the Israeli response to the Second Intifada – had left the Fatah-controlled security machine in bits and five lawless years later, when Hamas took over, no one expected the miracle that happened. Since 1987 Hamas had been training and arming its military wing, from which special units were now deployed to uphold the law – often using methods of which house-trained democrats might not approve. For Palestinians the tensions on the Strip are certainly no less than on the West Bank though of a different (in some respects) order. The Hamas/Fatah antagonism, of which I was so aware in Nablus and Hebron, has another sort of flavour where Hamas is in control: a flavour of dictatorship. To me this tasted less unsavoury than the PA’s collusion with Israel, which coexists with open IDF support for ever-increasing settler aggression. But then, I was not trapped on the Strip.

  Improbably, one government department became my home-from-home, where I could drop in at any hour between 8 am and 3.30 pm to have a stimulating discussion about ‘the way ahead’, or to refill my water bottle or empty my bladder or seek guidance to some particularly obscure camp address. The Department of Foreign Affairs is housed in an imposing Mandate-era mansion approached through unguarded gates and a well-tended blossom-bright shrubbery. Its large rooms are either empty or staffed by underworked men and a few women – their office of course segregated. The numerous English-speakers were happy to talk with an Irish citizen and my being a compatriot of John Ging, the head of UNRWA during Operation Cast Lead, counted for a lot.

  As on the West Bank, comparisons were often made between Britain’s reaction to the IRA’s illegitimate campaign in Northern Ireland and Israel’s reaction to the Palestinians’ legitimate armed opposition to the IDF as an occupying force. How would the world have reacted had the British armed forces, seeking to eliminate IRA activists, repeatedly bombed houses in Derry and Belfast, murdering whoever happened to be at home, and bulldozed barns and cottages around the countryside, and killed the livestock and vandalised the crops in areas of rural Northern Ireland frequented by ‘terrorists’?

  Deeb, my chief Foreign Affairs mentor, ruefully admitted that Palestinians have always neglected to take PR seriously, and have never put enough resources into explaining their case. His colleagues agreed that when given airtime most of their spokespersons have been incoherent and unconvincing – whereas Israel’s smoothies keep going with such conviction one suspects them of believing what they are saying. Aysha (a forceful young woman who became a good friend) argued that the world media are so Israel-compliant this doesn’t much matter. I saw her point. When Israel sought international sympathy in 2008, as rockets from Gaza began to reach Beersheva, no mainstream commentators pointed out that the IDF regularly attacks Palestinians using US F-16 bombers, Apache attack helicopters, Merkava tanks, naval gunships and made-in-Israel computerised armed drones – these last ranked among the world’s most technologically advanced weapons. Why do media interviewers never ask the obvious questions? For instance: ‘How many have those rockets killed since the first was fired in October 2001? And how many Palestinians have the IDF killed in the same period?’ In December 2008, before Cast Lead, the respective answers were: 14 and more than 4,800. By June 2011 Gazan rockets had killed a total of 23 Israelis and one Thai farm-labourer. In 22 days Cast Lead killed more than 1,400 Gazans.

  As Deeb pointed out, Israeli hasbara (propaganda) relies heavily on the sort of confusing misinformation that makes outsiders feel they can�
��t really understand what’s going on – so they lose interest … Example: Mahmoud Abbas, as an individual, was the Palestinians’ lawfully elected President until 9 January 2009. But his party, Fatah, had no mandate to rule after January 2006. Therefore Hamas’ pre-emptive strike against the CIA-backed Fatah militia, in June 2007, did not ‘oust the rightful government from Gaza’. The CIA had intervened to destroy the National Unity Government set up in February 2007. Another example: in June 2006, five months after Hamas’ election victory, the IDF reduced the new administration’s talent pool by jailing dozens of Hamas ministers and elected representatives described by hasbara as ‘terrorists’. Very confusing for the general public! Why were terrorists allowed to stand as candidates in an EU-funded and supervised election? Hasbara didn’t explain that the ‘terrorist’ designation came after the election victory. Again – hasbara blamed Cast Lead’s high death toll on Hamas’ use of ‘human shields’. The Strip is flat and bare, lacking hills, caves, woods or swamps. Where were 1.6 million Gazans supposed to take shelter?

  Israel produced a new National Information Directorate to coordinate Cast Lead hasbara (lies that cancel each other out are blush-making). This was akin to the US-based Israel Project, responsible for a 100-page advisory document (stamped Not For Publication) which delighted Shimon Peres. He noted, ‘This has given Israel new tools in the battle to win the hearts and minds of the world.’ To complement such tools, all foreign journalists – embedded or freelance – were excluded from Gaza throughout Cast Lead. As an exercise in censorship this backfired badly; millions of viewers and listeners became dependent on al-Jazeera’s show-it-all reporting and in many cases switched their loyalty to that station.

  * * *

  It was a relief to be able to move around unchallenged by the IDF, yet their mechanised nearness soon came to seem far more threatening than those personal encounters unavoidable on the West Bank. Gunboats patrol Gaza’s coast, unmanned drones and F-16s patrol Gaza’s sky, tanks, jeeps and APCs patrol Gaza’s border fence. Nor is there anything ‘symbolic’ about all this weaponry. Gaza, as a ‘hostile entity’, may legitimately (in Israeli eyes) be attacked at any moment from sea, air or land. Attacks are frequent though rarely noted by the international media; each kills or injures no more than a few Gazans. Warplanes also regularly bombard open spaces likely to be used as training grounds by resistance groups. Those massive explosions greatly distress children not yet recovered from the traumas of Cast Lead. Discussing all this with Nita, a Khan Younis cousin of one of my Balata friends, she told me that her youngest sibling, a five-year-old boy, has been permanently deafened by a sonic boom – another IDF terrorist technique. Then Nita offered to be my advisor and, crucially, my interpreter if I wished to visit some of the families bereaved since 1 January 2011. More of that anon.

  Israel’s blockade uniquely handicaps Gaza, yet in one respect the Strip resembles other economically divided societies, its rich class seeming quite detached from the surrounding poverty. When Khalil introduced me to a nearby small supermarket I realised that Gaza’s privileged minority can buy anything transportable through tunnels. The rest of the population depends to some extent on food aid – from UNRWA, or an Islamic charity, or one of the few international NGOs still present. These keep their institutional heads well below the parapet; most offices and vehicles go unmarked, apart from Médecins Sans Frontières whose minivan twice caught my eye. In a month, a four-person International Solidarity Movement (ISM) team were the only foreigners I met; no expat workers were visible.

  It upsets Gazans to hear sympathetic foreigners bewailing their ‘humanitarian crisis’. Everyone with whom I talked emphasised that they do not want to be regarded as people in need of ‘aid’, like earthquake or famine victims. Their crisis is political, not humanitarian. Given justice, they are perfectly capable of running as efficient an economy as anyone else. Their past proves them to be hard-working, ingenious people – and proud, hating their present dependence on hand-outs.

  * * *

  All those dire warnings about Bedouin robbers in the Sinai had prompted a change of routine; instead of cash in a money-belt I carried a Visa, my bank being confident that credit cards work in Gaza. However, Nabil, Khalil and Mehat were not so sure – they had long since exchanged banks for known and trusted money-changers. Gaza has a problem of which my ‘ivory tower’ bank knew nothing – a problem linked to what is politely known as ‘the informalisation of the economy’. In September 2007, when the ‘enemy entity’ label was slapped on the Strip, Israel’s banks ended all direct transactions with Gaza’s banks: future dealings could be done only through the Gaza banks’ head offices in Ramallah. But Israeli regulations prevented large currency transfers from the West Bank to the Strip without IDF permission – not easily obtained. Gazans therefore suffer from a shortage of hard cash. And money-changers, who employ their own subterranean methods of acquiring shekels and dollars, have become more powerful than the spancelled bankers.

  By 2011 local observers – people well placed to judge – reckoned that more than two-thirds of Gaza’s economic activity was tunne-lrelated, centred on goods ‘smuggled’ from Egypt – and points beyond. I object to the term smuggled; its criminal connotation seems unfair since the blockade has left Gazans with no alternative but to transport goods furtively. Predictably this nice distinction irritated my Fatah friends who argued that Hamas runs the tunnel trade to fill their own government coffers. This no doubt is true but how else are they to fill them, given the Israel/US-led blockage of funding?

  Gallantly Mehat volunteered to escort me into Gaza City’s ‘financial centre’ where one of the three banks might be able to cope with a Visa card. This took courage: I could see how tense he became as we entered those enormous, dreary, Mandate-era buildings now associated in his mind with Hamas’ world. The first two were moribund: silent and deserted apart from a few clerks slumped in cubicles, looking bemused and mumbling incoherently when we paused to enquire about the Foreign Exchange department.

  Then – action! A bank with a queue! Just one short queue in a wide vaulted concourse but proof that here transactions could happen. These men were, said Mehat, public sector workers collecting their meagre wages – wages they couldn’t have, I reminded him, without a tunnel economy. We were directed to the fourth floor and saw no signs of life as we ascended an unswept marble stairway.

  The top floor had been partitioned into a network of mini-offices and in the remotest of these two formally dressed gentlemen, with tidily trimmed beards, seemed taken aback by our arrival. There were only two camp chairs in this tiny space (a very hot space, under the roof) so the four of us stood while the bankers conferred at length with Mehat before committing themselves to looking into the matter when the power cut ended. Their generator had broken down two days ago and they didn’t expect the spare part to arrive for a week or more – possibly even a month. But if I left my Visa details and returned next morning for a further consultation, we should be able to sort the matter out (electricity permitting) – though of course it might take some time … I could feel the tentacles of a bureaucratic octopus tightening around me. Yet when I saw an electronic credit card terminal on the little table that served as a desk I knew all would be well – eventually.

  Three rather stressful days later I escaped from the tentacles clutching a fistful of dollars.

  * * *

  On the evening of 11 June I was visiting a Beit Lahia family when news came through of the death of their fifty-year-old friend, Mohammed Sha’ban Mohammed Eslemm, who had been wounded in his own home on 15 January 2009 as Cast Lead was drawing to an end. That 2,000 pound bomb killed twelve people, including six members of the Eslemm family; its target was the Hamas Minister of the Interior, then being sheltered by the Eslemms. I remembered sitting in my Balata room reading the Ha’aretz account of Said Siam’s assassination. A former teacher and founder member of Hamas, he had topped the poll in Gaza in January 2006 and gone on to become an extremely effect
ive Minister of the Interior, largely responsible for the rapid restoration of law and order in 2007. The IDF flaunted him as their second most important Cast Lead ‘trophy’. The first was Sheikh Nizar Rayan, ‘eliminated’ on 1 January 2009, together with his four wives and nine of his children. Mohammed Eslemm had been transferred to an Egyptian hospital on 24 February 2009 – then on 29 May 2011 to an Israeli hospital, where he died.

  My friends were relieved to hear of Mohammed’s death. ‘He had suffered too much,’ Sari said quietly.

  Amira and Sari shared a small top-floor flat with two married sons and their families; both homes (near the buffer zone) had been bombed in 2010. We were sitting on the child-free roof where Amira grew pots of herbs for sale in the street market.

  Sari had been among the 415 Hamas activists deported by Israel to south Lebanon in December 1992. Throughout the OPT this was seen initially as a brutal blow to Palestinians in general and Islamists in particular. The expulsions followed a series of Hamas attacks on Israeli personnel, calculated to secure Sheikh Yassin’s release; he had been jailed in 1991. Hamas’ campaign backfired – but so did the Israeli expulsions. In Palestinian eyes, these came to look like a panic reaction – said Sari – and for the first time made Hamas seem a possible political alternative to Fatah. Also, the Lebanese year drew the exiles close to Hizbollah who gladly provided military training ‘more advanced than anything we had before’. When the Islamists were allowed home, because of international pressure, ‘we had a welcome back like we were a winning army!’