Serveece taxis don’t casually enter Tunnelopolis and from Yibna camp Shujaeya, my FO minder, led me across a grim wasteland levelled by Cast Lead. We paused to climb a hillock of rubble giving a view of the Sinai’s edge; a long stone’s throw away, just beyond the border wall, stood a neat little whitewashed mosque. Ahead we could see, amidst high mounds of excavated sand and rock, a colony of large ragged tents and crude corrugated iron shelters, marking the tunnels’ entrances/exits. Several horse-and donkey-carts awaited loads, the unharnessed animals nosing though the detritus, finding occasional weeds or blades of grass. Every hundred yards or so huts like portable loos served as offices for long-bearded, black-uniformed customs inspectors and tax collectors. (If criminal gangs once smuggled drugs, alcohol and cigarettes into Gaza, they don’t any more. Allah is watching …) These toughies, all tall and lean, glowered at the foreigner but were reassured by Shu.
In the first tent we visited, crates and cartons of tinned foods were piled high and a wiry little man with a grizzled beard and a poverty-worn face was about to descend, sitting on a plank like a playground swing seat. He was lowered quite quickly into a wood-lined shaft, 30 metres deep with a two-square-metre entrance. Peering down, we could see him using one foot as a buffer. His grandson assistant, a gaunt poorly clad youth, was hoping to move to the other side of Tunnelopolis – if the new people in Cairo stopped supporting Israel. Ten minutes later the plank was being winched up, laden with crates of fruit juice.
In the three-sided iron shed next door, two men handled each gas cylinder as it appeared from the tunnel and a pair of weedy adolescents were loading a donkey-cart. There had been an acute cooking gas shortage since November 2010 – a crisis that began, Shu said, in January 2010. Then Israel closed the Nahal Oz crossing, where all fuel and cooking gas supplies used to enter, and decreed that in future they must come through Kerem Shalom where, for security/technological reasons, only a fraction of Gaza’s daily needs could be handled. Said Shu, ‘We know some special Israelis are paid to sit at a desk looking for new ways to make us more stressed.’ A ridiculous notion – until you stop to consider the multiple constraints of daily life on the Strip.
The shaft in the next tent was wider, to accommodate big sacks of a building material resembling fine gravel. Two muscular dust-coated men together heaved these sacks over the parapet, then lugged them outside to empty onto a pile; such sacks were precious and had to be returned to Egypt for refilling. All these workers, I sensed, found my presence discombobulating. The Tunnelopolis vibes are an odd mix of the eerie, the mundane, the excited and the watchful.
In a tattered tent of big-top dimensions, four men, including a customs officer, had gathered anxiously around a shaft and from its depths came the pathetic sound of a motherless, terrified calf being trussed and loaded upside down on the plank. When I saw how young it was I wondered who could afford to feed it and one of the men explained – it was a replacement, his cow had lost her calf. Then I wondered why it hadn’t come through a pedestrian tunnel and Shu hinted that Tunnelopolis was a very complicated place: certain tunnels were controlled by certain people …
The customs officer looked rather amiable so I sought a personal ‘tunnel experience’. Shu tried to dissuade me but permission was readily given. ‘Then you go alone!’ said my minder – being unduly influenced by the 59 tunnel deaths and 115 injuries since January 2010. At that the amiable officer – by name Latif – offered to escort me. We left Shu looking agitated, not realising that no Hamas official would lead an International into a dangerous tunnel.
Beyond the cave-like entrance came a brief gradual slope, then level going for 1,400 metres. Two people could have walked abreast but Latif led by ten yards, carrying a torch not needed; at regular intervals wall bulbs glowed brightly. Underfoot was a little uneven and occasionally damp; throughout, the air felt fresh. To one side ran thin metal rails for the easy transport of goods in what resembled a 25-foot currach made of hide. This tunnel’s central stretch goes through solid rock, before and after through soft sand – contained by wood panelling, the roof beautifully barrel-vaulted. I had to walk only slightly more stooped than I am anyway (by virtue of the passing years). A very tall person might find this distance tiresome but only claustrophobics would regard it as an endurance test.
Where the ground began to slope up, Latif turned and made a ‘Stop!’ sign. Then, obviously pleased by my unfeigned admiration for the tunnellers’ skills, he allowed me to go all the way – so that I could boast childishly of having dropped in on Egypt for thirty seconds. I glimpsed a big indoor space, quite crowded. After a thirty-second visit, I can say no more.
On the way back we met two women and three small boys, all carrying large shopping-bags stuffed with clothes. The women’s mother, resident in Egyptian Rafah, was dying of cancer and when told they couldn’t get an exit permit before 23 August they chose to go underground. Their husbands dared not accompany them; if detected by the Egyptians they might be jailed for years. This cruelty cannot be put on Israel’s charge sheet. Some Gazan Interior Ministry clerk would have refused to move these women up the queue, possibly because their families were Fatah supporters. That’s the dark side of the Hamas moon. As we Irish well know, a civil war’s residual bitterness is peculiarly corrosive.
That evening, my friend Adnan had a very different suspicion: those unfortunate sisters might have been casualties of the next civil war. He said, ‘Without an end to the blockade, we’ll have bloodshed again. This time between Fathi Hamad (the Interior Minister) and the Qassam Brigades. An informal economy gives no one legal control and Hamas will split over who gets what and who decides what. The Brigades resent Hamad’s officials swaggering around like the tunnels are all theirs when Qassam units organised most of the construction.’
Shu, a resident of Yibna camp, estimated that so far some 70,000 Gazans had got tunnel-related jobs and hundreds had been killed, including two of her uncles. On my praising the diggers’ bravery she smiled wryly and said, ‘They’re not brave, they’re hungry. They risk their lives for 50 shekels [10 euros] a day – a 12-hour day.’ I wondered about her estimate but had no way of checking it. Without a doubt, maintaining and replacing tunnels, and operating Tunnelopolis’s bureaucracy, is south Gaza’s main source of employment. Shu believed that this informal economy generates fat private fortunes, especially for Egyptians.
On our way back to Yibna we passed three new cars (unregistered) being checked by a customs officer. They had come through a tunnel I was not allowed to see; exotic gifts from Iran may also use it. (Cattle certainly do, though not often; they tend to panic.) A car costing US$10,000 in Egypt is worth US$30,000 after its tunnel experience. In August 2010 the IDF publicised an end to their three-year ban on motor imports; 60 cars a week were to be allowed through. Ten months later, complained Shu, not one vehicle had been admitted – nor any urgently needed spare parts. Simple parts could be made locally – that’s how her father earned half a living – but modern cars often need micro-surgery and stood idle all over the Strip for lack of it.
That misleading IDF statement had been part of a wider scheme. In May 2010, when a ‘Free Gaza’ flotilla tried to break the blockade, the IDF provoked global outrage by killing nine campaigners in international waters. On 20 June Israel’s Security Cabinet met to recalibrate its Gaza policy. In future, we were told, only items not allowed into Gaza would be listed – ‘weapons and war materials, including problematic dual-use items’. A year later, the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights reported:
Israel’s declaration of allowing new goods to enter the Gaza Strip constitutes an attempt to delude the international community, as such goods do not meet the minimal needs of the Strip. Measures declared to ease the blockade are vague, purely cosmetic and fail to deal with the root causes of the crisis, which can only be addressed by an immediate and complete lifting of the closure, including lifting the travel ban into and out of the strip. PCHR is concerned that the new policy is simply shifting
Gaza to another form of illegal blockade, one that may become internationally accepted and institutionalised. Gazans may no longer suffer the same shortage of goods, but they will remain economically dependent and unable to care for themselves, and socially, culturally and academically isolated from the rest of the world. The IDF have continued to ban the entry of raw construction materials and have continued to ban all exports.
No wonder Gazans resent Tunnelopolis workers being described as ‘black market operators’. There is no other market to operate.
Six
Mrs Halaweh had introduced me by mobile to her nephew, Anwar, a retired professor of Political Science who, having spent most of his working life abroad, was now back in the Khan Younis family home. Prompted by his aunt, he invited me to breakfast.
On the Strip, places tend to merge into one another and it can be hard to see where a town or camp begins or ends. But Khan Younis’s city centre is unmistakable, distinguished by the noble remains of a khan wall – 60 metres long and ten metres high, including a tower and gateway – built in 1387 by the Emir Younis Ibn Ala’en-Nawruzi to shelter merchants and their goods in the heavy two-way flow of Cairo–Damascus trade.
Anwar’s ancestral home, within sight of the khan, took a battering in 1956 when Israel occupied the southern Strip during the Suez crisis. No family member was seriously hurt but Anwar, aged ten, permanently lost his hearing in one ear. The shooting of hundreds of civilians in the nearby al-Amal camp enraged him. The Israeli government told a subsequent UN inquiry that those killed were resistance fighters, misinformation eventually corrected by the publication of General Moshe Dayan’s diary. Two generations later, at the start of the Second Intifada, further structural damage was done to a gable end as giant bulldozers rumbled past to raze scores of homes on the edge of the camp and destroy all crops in fields separating it from a settlement.
Anwar was tubby and short-bearded and almost bald with a soft slow voice, grey-green eyes and the sort of nose that used to be described as ‘Jewish’. His English had a pronounced Indian lilt, a souvenir of eight years lecturing in New Delhi – his first venture out of Palestine. We sat in the restored wing, in a sparsely furnished room with a wide window overlooking a barren garden where two massive palm stumps made Anwar sad. ‘I feel they knocked those deliberately,’ he said. ‘They enjoy knocking Palestinians’ trees.’
Most of Anwar’s very extended family (he was one of twelve) still lived in Gaza; several others were also returnees. It surprised me to meet so many Gazans who had voluntarily incarcerated themselves in this open-air prison. The Palestinians’ attachment to their birthplaces sharpens the Nakba’s poignancy. However, as a widower with four married children settled in the US and Europe, Anwar would not have returned in 2004 had he foreseen how total the blockade would soon become.
Having spent most of his adult life abroad, this returnee viewed the Gazan scene with some detachment and an unexpected optimism. He intrigued me by defining, as one of Hamas’ main strengths, an essential incompatibility with ‘fundamentalism’.
‘You look surprised,’ he said, ‘but our tradition is not fanatical, we don’t have that temperament. So Hamas fanatics are easily diluted! For that much we can give thanks to Allah. Sure, the Mujamma seed took root when sown – but why? Because Zionism had changed the dynamics, distorted our social and political framework. The seed only flourished after the Occupation introduced “Judaism versus Islam”. Our conflict is about land and justice. The Zionists didn’t get rid of us because they were bigoted Jews who hated Muslims. They were secular Jews who had to drive us off land they wanted to settle.’
For a time Anwar had worked behind the political scenes, as an advisor to major decision-makers. ‘I warned them against outlawing Hamas, then imprisoning Gazans on the Strip. A territory sealed off from outside influences is a hot-house for extremism. Now more and more of Gaza’s resentful young jobless go regularly to the mosque. They’ve nothing else to do. A world of packed homes and empty pockets offers no hope and the most popular preachers describe the martyrs’ other-worldly rewards.’
Anwar’s cautious optimism sprang from a conviction that Hamas’ present heterogeneous support has the potential to cohere into something stable and constructive. He pointed out that it encompassed the impoverished masses in the camps and elsewhere who feel a certain loyalty because for generations they have been helped, free of charge, by Hamas-supported ISIs staffed by professionals. Then there are the disillusioned former Fatah followers (no longer deceived by posturing peace-seekers), many of whom are among the embittered victims of Fatah/PA corruption, a scandal unconcealed for years in the certainty that as long as officials toed the Israel/US line the donors of abused funds would choose not to notice. Very important, too, are the devout moderate Muslims, longing for peace and normality, by temperament apolitical yet valuing Hamas’ refusal to compromise on justice. And around the edges, menacing the rest, are those incurably belligerent rocketeers who despise the Hamas leadership’s conciliatory tendencies and shrug off the deaths and injuries suffered by their own communities when Israel retaliates. I said nothing to dim Anwar’s optimism but as he listed those disparate elements I did wonder – how to cohere them all?
Anwar brought up a subject rarely discussed, the ambiguity enveloping UNRWA’s role. On the West Bank a few mavericks had spoken to me, sotto voce, about that agency as Zionism’s partner in crime. What if there had been no post-Nakba humanitarian intervention? If Gaza’s Egyptian rulers, and the West Bank’s Jordanian rulers, had been left to cope with hundreds of thousands of Displaced Persons – starving, homeless, ill and in rags …
Benny Morris has written:
Economically the war (1948–49) had done a limited amount of harm to Israel … This was largely offset by the massive financial contributions sent in by world Jewry and by the grants and loans that soon began to arrive from various Western countries … The Arab states had notched up only losses … and all, to one degree or another … were forced to cope with the burden of the Palestinian refugees … However, this by and large did not harm them economically, as the 1950 advent of the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) … and a steady flow of Western relief capital more than compensated for any losses they may initially have incurred. The major economic harm was to the Palestinians, who lost much of their property to the victors.
I told Anwar about Noha, my octogenarian but keen-witted Balata friend, who remembered her unusually prescient father objecting to the camps’ establishment. Looking beyond the immediate alleviation of misery, he saw the dispossessed Palestinians becoming institutionalised, being regarded as an acceptable though regrettable entity, their minimum basic needs regularly fulfilled. Minimum, yet enabling the world to forget about them. Noha wondered – without aid from the UN and Zionism’s international allies, wouldn’t the Nakba have been seen in perspective? Wouldn’t Israel have been held responsible for the alleviation of the uprooted population’s misery? Surely so many suffering so much would have made it impossible for the world to ignore the Nakba injustice?
To Noha I had replied, ‘But the UN, having put a match to the Nakba by voting for 181, had to become the fire brigade. Otherwise the vote might have been condemned as a criminal error.’
Anwar concurred with this and added, ‘At the time most refugees trusted they’d be rescued eventually by Arab armies taking back their land. Camp life seemed temporary – until 1967, when they realised their children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren were doomed to a landless, stateless eternity.’
On 7 June ’67, as thousands fled across the Jordan from the Tulkarm region, Moshe Dayan, then defence minister, ordered his troops to leave the roads open. ‘In this way,’ records Brigadier-General Braun, ‘the population of the West Bank would be reduced and Israel freed of severe problems.’
In September ’67 Dayan urged senior IDF staff to promote emigration ‘because after all, we want to create a new map’. Two mont
hs later, General Narkiss didn’t disguise the Zionist project. ‘We are talking about emigration of the Arabs. Everything must be done – even paying them money – to get them to leave.’ On 14 July 1968, addressing a meeting in his ministerial office, Dayan said, ‘Anyone who has practical ideas or proposals to encourage emigration, let him speak up. No idea or proposal is to be dismissed out of hand.’
A mild version of the two-state solution was mooted in 1967 immediately after the Six Day War, when certain West Bank notables suggested autonomy for the newly Occupied Territories. Predictably, as Benny Morris explains, ‘Dayan rejected the idea, fearing it would evolve into Palestinian statehood. He, like the rest of the Labour Party leadership, firmly opposed such statehood, deeming it a mortal threat to Israel’s existence.’
Anwar said, ‘When you see the IDF graffiti, and the shocking results of their retaliations, remember there’s a 45-year build-up of frustration! Always the Zionists have desperately wanted us out – but we’re not going!’
Throughout those 45 years a reprehensible pattern has been repeated: Israel destroys, her foreign friends restore – usually with their taxpayers’ money. Anwar mentioned an example of which Shu had spoken: in May 2004 she witnessed some of the demolitions when Operation Rainbow was launched in retaliation for the killing of two Israeli soldiers. Within 24 days, bulldozers flattened 277 Rafah camp homes, leaving 3,451 Gazans without shelter or possessions. Anwar had just returned to Khan Younis and was among the many notables who appealed to the Quartet to intervene; clearly the IDF’s murders of dozens of civilians and their destruction of civilian property were war crimes. Yet the Quartet did and said nothing, the killings and demolitions continued. Then, on 25 June, at a press conference at UN Headquarters in New York, Kofi Annan was pinned down and had to make a statement which Anwar showed me – sellotaped into his old-fashioned newspaper cuttings album. The UN Secretary-General, speaking as the UN Quarter of the Quartet, said:
A Month by the Sea Page 13
