Dispatches from Gaza

Gaza's Joyous Beaches

2010-07-03T12:13:00.000-07:00

This will be my final blog post from Gaza—at least for a while. Next week, I’m headed back to Chicago in my other role as the program director of a dialogue camp for Israeli, Palestinian and American teenagers. After that, I’ll begin my search for a full-time position at a newspaper, magazine, think tank or international non-governmental organization.

Before coming to Gaza five months ago, I chatted with Swedish journalist Catrin Ormestad, who reported from Gaza before and after last year’s war. Ormestad offered some wise advice. “Especially when I write for Israeli audiences,” she said, “I try to write in a way that shows Palestinians’ humanity.”

As I look back at my articles and blog posts, I realize I have focused on the more controversial and “newsworthy” aspects of life in Gaza. I wrote about Gazan families living in half-destroyed homes. I wrote about peaceful protesters getting shot in the no-go zone. I wrote about a women's rights activist who advocates the murder of Israeli civilians. I wrote about desperate Gazans who crawled through the smuggling tunnels for Egyptian medical treatment. I wrote about Hamas’s post-flotilla raids on Gazan charities. I wrote about the connection between electricity shortages and sewage tsunamis. And I wrote about grassroots community leaders— filmmakers, aid workers, psychologists, political analysts and a refugee camp comedian.

However, I didn’t write much about the universal stories of people living their ordinary lives—fretting over school exams, dancing at weddings, joking with friends, empowering children, celebrating birthdays, and mourning the passing of loved ones. Despite the trauma and destruction wrought by war and the daily indignities of the siege, life goes on in Gaza.

I’ve therefore peppered this final blog post with pictures of one beautiful expression of Gaza's enduring humanity: family outings to the beach. Every summer, thousands of people from diverse political factions and socio-economic backgrounds converge on the 25-mile coastline of the Mediterranean Sea. They fly homemade kites. They build sandcastles. They swim. They chitchat. They catch minnows. They play soccer. They watch the sunset. Like families around the world, they seek out simple moments of pure joy and plant special memories in the impressionable minds of their children.

Chocolate and Mayonnaise—But No Cement

2010-07-01T01:21:00.000-07:00

The young boys pictured on the right are holding Israeli chocolate and mayonnaise—items which, until two weeks ago, were banned under the blockade. According to Gazan traders, many new items are now flowing in from Israel, including: assorted foods, shoes, clothing, thin aluminum (used for doors), and miscellaneous kitchen supplies. Israel’s easing of the blockade has been cautiously celebrated by traders, shop keepers and civilians, yet lamented by smuggling tunnel owners whose expensive goods are now in lower demand.

However, many civilians are disappointed that, just as the blockade has eased, the electricity crisis has dramatically deepened—this past week, most Gazans got only eight hours of electricity per day. Previously, Gazans were sometimes getting 16 hours of electricity per day. Gazans are also disappointed by Israel's continued prohibition on the most desperately needed supplies: cement, iron, construction-grade wood, and gravel. Israel argues that these items pose a security threat because they could be used to make weapons or fortify smuggling tunnels.

Yet the tunnel smuggling industry has proliferated under the blockade, despite feeble Israeli and Egyptian efforts to stop it. Most items prohibited by Israel are already widely available in Gaza. Egyptian chocolate and mayonnaise, for example, could be found in shops across Gaza before Israel eased the blockade. The refrigerator and electric generator in my upscale Gaza City apartment came through the tunnels. Brand new 2009 Mercedes cars have come into Gaza through the tunnels. The lion at the Rafah City Zoo (pictured on right) came through the tunnels.

Cement, iron, wood, and gravel likewise come into Gaza through the tunnels. They also get scavenged and recycled from Gaza's destroyed buildings. These supplies are of dangerously low quality and they are expensive—affordable only to the Hamas government, to westerners living in Gaza, and to Gaza’s minority of wealthy elites. Just last week, Hamas used these materials to finish construction of a new jail (pictured above) capable of housing 800 prisoners. Gaza's largest prison was destroyed during last year's war.

Meanwhile, thousands of families remain unable to rebuild their homes. They live in unstable, partially destroyed houses, they rent apartments that they cannot afford, they bunk up with relatives in cramped quarters, or, in rare cases, they live in tents. The United Nations (UN) could help these families, but is prohibited by law from purchasing black market materials.

Earlier this year, the UN launched a small pilot project in the southern district of Khan Younis to construct 150 new homes. (Some of these new homes are pictured on the right.) After months of high-level diplomatic wrangling, Israel permitted the UN to bring in these materials on the condition that Hamas have no involvement. It remains to be seen if Israel will permit a larger-scale home reconstruction program.

More flotillas, including a boat full of leftwing Jewish activists, are planning to challenge the blockade, and building materials will likely constitute some of their cargo. Nujud Hamad (pictured on the right with her children outside their half-destroyed home) is grateful to these flotilla “heroes,” but doesn’t believe her family will be able to access the flotillas' “symbolic” gifts.

“The flotillas can’t possibly bring enough cement for everyone,” she said, shrugging her shoulders and smiling warmly. “Plus, my family doesn’t have connections [with powerful people].”

Women's Rights in Gaza

2010-06-27T08:20:00.000-07:00

I’m working on a long magazine article about women’s rights in Gaza, and I’ll use this blog post to provide a brief overview.

Westerners may be surprised by Gaza's abundance of accomplished female leaders, particularly those working in schools and NGOs. Most Gazan men and women achieve at least an eighth grade education, and the overwhelming majority of Gazans believe that women are entitled to an education. Religiously conservative Gazans emphasize that the Prophet Mohammed proclaimed the rights of women to attend school, to work, and to reject marriage proposals.

Women also assume limited political leadership in Gaza. Under the Fatah government, a quota system was introduced requiring that about ten percent of parliament seats be reserved for women. Hamas has upheld this quota system. The two highest ranking women in Hamas, Jamila Al-Shanti and Huda Naim, told me they participate in sensitive policy-making decisions and take leading roles in governmental committees. One former NGO worker named Itemad Tarshawi ran on the Hamas ticket in a municipal election and won without a quota. “I earned people’s trust and respect by working for many years on the grassroots level in a way that honors our traditions,” she said.

Across the Arab world, cultural traditions typically give women responsibility for the domestic sphere and regard them as requiring special protection from male relatives. However, the women’s rights situation in Gaza differs profoundly from the situation in other Arab countries because Gaza’s history has been colored by so many unusual influences. Decades of war and occupation have forced women to take on new leadership roles as husbands and brothers were killed or jailed. At the same time, war, occupation, and now the siege have ravaged family relationships. Some analysts argue that domestic violence is on the rise in Gaza in part due to exacerbating factors: pervasive psychological trauma, the shame of rampant unemployment, and the daily stresses of poverty and entrapment within the densely populated Gaza Strip.

Most—but not all— Gazan women who wear hijab (the Islamic headscarf) tell me they wear it proudly and do not regard it as a sign of oppression. For them, hijab is a symbol of modesty, religious devotion, and / or cultural heritage. Many also feel that hijab protects them from unwanted male attention. A growing minority of Gazan women wear himar, a scarf which reveals only their eyes. (See picture on right.) While the majority of Palestinian women did not cover their hair in the 1980s and 1990s, uncovered Palestinian women are now a rare sight in Gaza, particularly outside of Gaza City. By contrast, cultural norms in the West Bank are less conservative than Gaza. These days, it’s easy to find uncovered Palestinian women in West Bank cities like Ramallah, Bethlehem or even Nablus.

Under Hamas rule, government policies regarding personal freedoms have tightened. Those most affected are liberals who live outside of Gaza City's more well-to-do neighborhoods. Within these elite enclaves, uncovered women like myself can freely walk the streets. (Outside of these areas, however, I choose to wear hijab to avoid unwanted attention.) Unmarried women and men can also freely fraternize at Gaza City restaurants and coffee shops, although most choose to sit in gender-segregated groups. (See picture above.)

Outside of Gaza City, police often interrogate suspected unmarried couples. Government school principals have pressured, and even required, adolescent girls to wear hijab while in school. However, religious conservatism has been rising in Gaza for decades, and many citizens support Hamas’s restrictions on "religiously inappropriate" behavior.

Three months ago, Hamas policy informed male hairdressers that an unofficial new policy forbade them from accepting female customers. (Nael Al-Raess, the Gaza City salon owner pictured on the right, continues to cut women’s hair, and the government has chosen not to forcibly stop him.) However, Hamas’s unofficial prohibition on mixed gender music concerts is strictly enforced. This year, Hamas police shut down at least two such concerts in Gaza City.

While liberals view these actions as obvious signs of oppression, Hamas leaders and more conservative Gazans view them as attempts to protect women’s safety and honor. They believe that mixed gender music concerts, for example, will quickly give way to a maelstrom of inappropriate male-female interactions that will erode the traditional values of their society.

Jailed for her own protection

2010-06-27T08:19:00.001-07:00

Since my last blog post, I published one piece in The Nation entitled “Rachel Corrie Revisited” and another in Global Post entitled “Dodging bullets in Gaza’s no-go zone.” I also was interviewed in a monthly conference call organized by Jewish Fast for Gaza. I’m currently working on a two magazine feature stories—one about a lady named Ilham who is jailed by Hamas for her own protection and another about women's rights under Hamas rule.

This week, I interviewed women imprisoned for adultery or prostitution. In all of Gaza, there are only 12 such women, and they reside together in an approximately 15-foot by 15-foot cell at Gaza City’s Al-Ansar prison. (The men are housed in a separate area.) The cell is overseen by a female warden and contains foam mattresses, a private bathroom, piles of clothing, multiple copies of the Quran, and materials for making handicrafts. While prostitutes would be stoned to death in some purportedly Islamic countries, in Gaza they are “rehabilitated,” jailed for six months or less, and never beaten by the government, according to Hamas officials.

The subject of one of my articles, 25-year-old Ilham, is pictured above on a rooftop “courtyard” where the female prisoners enjoy fresh air for a few hours per week. Ilham looks much young than her 25 years and speaks with wit and defiance that set her apart from the other female prisoners. Ilham boldly offered to have me photograph her face, but the guards asked that I photograph her from behind.

Ilham's story is among the most unusual that the prison officials say they've ever seen. Ilham told me she was “forced” to marry at age 14 to a “sick man whose back looked like a soccer ball.” At age 23, she divorced with no children. Ilham secretly shared regular coffee dates and phone chats with her friend’s brother, a university student named Shadi, and the two planned to marry. When Shadi’s father refused to accept the marriage, Shadi stole money from him to buy Ilham a wedding ring. In his rage, Shadi’s father went to the police and had his son arrested and jailed for theft.

At that point, Ilham and Shadi say they devised an audacious plan: they lied to a judge that that they’d had sexual relations in order to force their families to accept a marriage out of shame. (By Palestinian law, the fathers or father figures from both families must sanction the marriage. When two unmarried people are suspected of having slept together, marriage is sometimes proposed as a means to “restore” the girl’s honor.) However, Ilham's family did not accept a marriage, and the judge ordered both Shadi and Ilham to stand trial for adultery.

While Ilham is now free to leave the prison, her father has threatened to have her killed, and Hamas authorities are attempting to mediate a solution that saves Ilham’s life. In the meantime, the trial has been delayed for 45 days. Ilham privately asked me to tell Shadi, who I interviewed separately at the same prison, that she was “staying strong” and wouldn’t back down. “I’m not afraid,” she said. “I’m not afraid of my cousins, brothers and relatives. I don’t care what they think. I’m only afraid from my God. I was weak before. I was very weak. I couldn’t control anything in my life. Shadi helped me be strong….I love Shadi more than the whole world.”

Flotilla tragedy boosts Gaza’s peaceful protest movement

2010-06-17T13:04:00.000-07:00

Thank you to everyone who participated in the Jewish Fast for Gaza conference call. My Global Post article about how Gaza’s non-violent protest movement has been boosted by the flotilla tragedy was delayed until next week, when I will observe another demonstration. In the meantime, I’ll use this blog post to tell the story of the demonstration I observed on Tuesday.

First, a bit of background described in previous posts: Palestinian and international activists in the West Bank village of Bil’in regularly dodge tear gas, skunk cannons and rubber bullets as they challenge territory that the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) controls for alleged security reasons. In Gaza, however, a Bil’in-inspired protest movement is immediately met with live gunfire.

Since February of this year, crowds of more than 50 unarmed Gazan activists have marched into the 300 meter “no-go zone,” or “buffer zone,” along the Gaza-Israel border three to five days per week in different locations across Gaza. The demonstrators plant Palestinian flags in protest of Israel’s sweeping destruction of homes and farms in the buffer zones. At least eight protesters, including Maltese activist Bianca Zammit, have been shot in the legs by Israeli troops. In April, a protester was killed.

At Tuesday's demonstration in the northern district of Beit Lahia, participants said they felt newly empowered in the wake of the flotilla tragedy. The demonstration attracted a larger-than-normal group of at least 200 people, an unusually high turnout of about 100 women, and many participants who had come for the first time.

“All of us are going to this demonstration in solidarity with the Freedom Flotilla,” said Maysa Abbas, 37, as she and other new recruits (pictured on right) sat in chartered bus on their way to the demonstration. “We’re trying to break the siege in any way we can. We want the Arab world, and the rest of the world, to pay attention to our suffering.”

The Israeli government has asserted that the no-go zone is a “combat zone” where deadly force can be used against anyone who enters. The no-go zone has been used to launch rockets at Israeli cities, to plant explosives against Israeli soldiers, and to infiltrate Israel. On June 1, the day after the flotilla tragedy, two would-be Palestinian terrorists were killed in the no-go zone after an exchange of fire with Israeli troops, according to the IDF.

As the bus grinded to a halt about a half mile from the border, 22-year-old Hala Salman pointed out the window to a lifeless, sandy strip of earth that once bore watermelons, eggplants, and tomatoes. “That’s where my family used to have our farm,” she said, shaking her head. “That’s our land.”

Salman and the other demonstrators then congregated behind a truck playing patriotic Palestinian music from loud speakers. Most of the men marched in the front of the crowd holding flags and banners, while most women and children marched towards the back.

At the lead was a man with a megaphone, Saber Zaaneen (pictured on right), who recited rhyming chants against the siege that were repeated by the group. Zaaneen conceived and implemented the original idea for these protests five months ago, and his idea subsequently spread to other border communities in Gaza. The movement is now coordinated by an umbrella organization called the Committee for Security in the Buffer Zones, which represents a broad spectrum of Gazan charities and does not accept donations from political parties.

Zaaneen argues that most of those killed by Israeli troops in the buffer zone have been civilians, particularly farmers, fishermen, and desperate men collecting stones and other materials from destroyed buildings near the border. Zaaneen himself is among the thousands of Gazans whose home was destroyed by the IDF and not rebuilt. For him, the dangerous buffer zone demonstrations are not about intentionally putting civilians in harm’s way, but rather about asserting “basic human rights” and drawing media attention to Gazans’ plight.

“We don't resist because we want to die,” Zaaneen said when we spoke before the demonstration in his family's living room, which is adorned with a giant poster of Che Guevara. “We resist because we want freedom, security, opportunities for our children, and an end to the siege. The power of these demonstrations is that they attract international attention to what’s really happening. We want foreigners, especially Americans and Israelis, to tell their governments that we should stop the violence and live together in peace.”

Back at the Tuesday demonstration, Zaaneen stiffened as he spotted two teenagers running away from the group. “Come back! This is for your protection!” he pleaded through the megaphone. To Zaaneen’s relief, the boys (pictured on right) did return. Had they not, Zaaneen feared they could have met the same fate as Ahmed Deeb, a 19-year-old demonstrator who was shot in his femoral artery at a April demonstration in southern Gaza and died of blood loss. Deeb had separated from the crowd to throw stones at Israeli troops.

The demonstrators stopped atop a sandy hilltop within eyesight of three army jeeps approximately 100 meters away. In the 10 minutes that demonstrators stood in this location, Israeli snipers fired about a dozen warning shots that hit the ground more than 10 feet from the crowd. (In past demonstrations I've observed, the warning shots hit the ground less than two feet away.) While atop the hill, Palestinian boys planted flags, women and children ventured to the front of the line, and protest leaders gave fiery speeches blasting the blockade and the siege.

As the protesters retreated, Zaaneen expressed his satisfaction with the size of the crowd and their success in staying together as a cohesive group. He said that he now feels renewed inspiration to launch an English / Arabic / Hebrew website about the anti-buffer zone movement and to network with more foreign activist groups.

One such foreign activist group, the International Solidarity Movement (ISM), has received “loads more” communication from people outside of Gaza, according to Adie Mormech (pictured on right), a British ISM activist who attended Tuesday’s demonstration along with three other foreign activists. Shortly after the flotilla tragedy, ISM launched a Facebook media campaign called “Stop the Bullets” aimed at ending the use of live ammunition against Gazan civilians.

“Rarely in the democratic world are you allowed to just take regular potshots at people and get away with it,” Mormech said, “particularly when they’re just doing a peaceful demonstration or farming their land. It’s a crime. A continuous crime. And we want it stopped.”

While unarmed protesters from all political parties are welcome at the anti-buffer zone demonstrations, the overwhelming majority of participants back Fatah or minority leftwing parties. The defacto Hamas government, which is considered a terrorist organization by the United States and Israel for its support of suicide and rocket attacks against Israeli civilians, celebrates the non-violent foreign aid flotillas seeking to enter Gaza, yet discourages Gaza’s own non-violent protest movement.

Top Hamas leader Salah Bardaweel (pictured on right) told me three days before the flotilla tragedy that Hamas is currently seeking to maintain and enforce an undeclared ceasefire on the borders. He said he was concerned that Israel might portray the non-violent protesters as “aggressors” and use them as an excuse to launch another invasion. Bardaweel also expressed his objection to many of the protesters’ belief in using only non-violent means to oppose Israeli actions.

“There is a feeling within Hamas that the Fatah movement wants to move the struggle between us and Israel to a peaceful struggle,” he said. “This will only give Israel an opportunity to impose its will and become a defacto government in Gaza….Also, Hamas doesn’t want Israel to think there’s only non-violent resistance in Gaza. Non-violence is a tactic. It’s only one form of resistance.”

Conference Call, New Articles, and Upcoming Visit to Israel

2010-06-16T14:09:00.000-07:00

I’ve been invited to speak about my experiences in Gaza for a monthly conference call organized by Jewish Fast for Gaza. Click here for more information about this group and click here to see Rabbi Brant Rosen’s blog post about the conference call.

The call will take place on Thursday, June 17 at 12 noon EST. That’s 8 p.m. in Gaza and Israel. If any of my blog readers would like to tune in, dial the access number (1-800-920-7487). When prompted, enter the participant code (92247763#). The call will include a question and answer period. A recording of the entire call will appear afterwards on the Jewish Fast for Gaza website.

In other news, I wrote an article for TheNation.com that explores the Israeli military’s untransparent and seemingly prejudiced investigation of Rachel Corrie’s death in the context of the recent tragedy aboard the Mavi Marmara. (In March of this year, before coming to Gaza, I attended the Corrie family’s civil court trial in Haifa, Israel.) Another article of mine about how Gaza’s anti-buffer zone protests have gained new momentum following the flotilla tragedy will soon publish in Global Post. I'll update my blog when these articles are available online.

I may not write any new blog posts until next week because I'm soon headed to Israel. In addition to my work as a freelance journalist, I serve as the summer program director at Hands of Peace, a dialogue camp for Israeli, Palestinian and American teenagers. We'll have our participant orientation in Jerusalem on Friday, and the camp will begin next month in Chicago. While I’m in Israel, I’d be thrilled to meet in person with any community groups or non-profits interested in chatting about life in Gaza—just shoot me an email at ashleybates@comcast.net.

Voices from the Rubble of Gaza’s Cinematic Potential

2010-06-14T15:09:00.000-07:00

Today I stumbled upon the skeletal ruins of a Gaza City movie theatre (pictured on right), which was destroyed almost a decade ago during the second intifada. As I took a picture, a donkey cart puttered past and a middle-aged woman who was sharing my taxi voiced her opinion that cinemas were “haram,” or forbidden under Islam. For me, this incident was a solemn reminder both that the Gazan economy had been booming in the years following the 1993 Oslo accords, and that Gazan society was once far more liberal and moderate in interpreting its Islamic religious values.

For example, westerners are often surprised to learn that the proliferation of the Islamic headscarf in Gaza is a relatively new occurrence. One of Gaza’s rare uncovered women, Dr. Mona ElFarra, who works as deputy director of the Red Crescent Society, told me in an interview last month about her recent experience at a workshop in a southern Gaza village. She recalled, “The young children and school girls gathered around me. I felt as if I was an alien spaceship. The kids were saying, ‘Are you sure she’s a woman? Why is her hair short? Look and see!’ When I was a kid, we didn’t have issues like this. The majority of women in Gaza didn’t wear hijab [the Islamic headscarf]. Now, the children find us strange.”

However, it’s still not strange to find Gazan women in positions of leadership, particularly in schools and NGOs. After my sad encounter with the abandoned movie theatre this morning, I enjoyed an inspiring lunch with Nagham Mohanna, a 24-year-old filmmaker (pictured on right) who holds her own in a field dominated by men. Two weeks ago, Nagham was among three Gazans who participated by video conference in a West Bank film pitching event. Each candidate prepared a trailer of his or her proposed film, then answered questions from the dozens of western media network representatives in the audience. Nagham’s proposed film, “Romance in Gaza,” received rave reviews, and she’s currently in discussions with networks interested in funding her project. (Click here to view her trailer, which is the second video from the left.)

Nagham has directed two other short films and was previously among thousands of Gazans accepted to educational programs abroad, only to have their dreams dashed when Israeli and Egyptian border closures and security restrictions prevented them from leaving. As a result of her “Romance in Gaza” proposal, Nagham has earned a scholarship to attend a one-week filmmaking workshop next month at a university in Greece. Egypt has opened the border for travelers with “special” circumstances in the wake of the flotilla tragedy, and Nagham is hopeful that, this time, the travel will be for real.

Since her only experience outside of Gaza was a two-week family trip to Egypt in 2003, Nagham has worked hard to allay her parents' fears about her capacity to travel independently. Her parents support her career ambitions, and Nagham is bubbling with nervous anticipation about her upcoming adventure in Greece. “I want to learn about the culture outside of Gaza—how they think and how they live their lives,” she told me. “I don’t believe you can understand our cultural differences just from movies and the television programs.”

Another filmmaker at the pitching event, 25-year-old Mohamad Abusidu (pictured on right), has also been invited to attend the filmmaking workshop in Greece. However, his excitement is bittersweet, as Mohamad cannot visit his own sister, brother and father in the West Bank. Despite appealing for help from both the Israeli government and the Palestinian Authority, Mohamad and his mother are forbidden from living in the West Bank due to Israel’s draconian residency policies. The family’s separation, which is a common story in Gaza, is the subject of Mohamad’s proposed film, “Waiting for You.” (Click here to view his trailer, which is the first video on the left.)

Both Nagham and Mohamad will talk by phone this week with American filmmaker Ose Oyamendan, who is planning a feature length documentary called “Salaam Shalom: Voices from the Rubble” about residents of Sderot and Gaza who are working for peace. In Israel, Mr. Oyamendan will find a thriving, creative cinema industry, a worldly, well-traveled populace, and many movie theatres. In Gaza, he will find an opportunity-craving subculture of cinematic entrepreneurs, an isolated, imprisoned populace, and the dilapidated remains of four, once-thriving cinemas whose resurrection seems beholden to the political situation.

And the prize for 'worst World Cup kickoff party' goes to…

2010-06-12T08:03:00.000-07:00

Yesterday, in homes, restaurants, pubs, and clubs all around the globe, millions of people watched the opening celebrations and games of the World Cup. Not wanting to be left out of the fun, I went searching for a similar (but obviously non-alcoholic) event in Gaza.

First, a bit of background: Palestinians love soccer. School boys across Gaza play soccer in the streets, on beaches and on makeshift fields. Last month, the UN-funded “Gaza World Cup,” an amateur soccer tournament for both Gazan men and foreigners living in Gaza, generated hundreds of participants and fans. The rivalry between two Spanish soccer clubs, Real Madrid and Barcelona, has playfully divided Gazan families. Jerseys, hats and flags from Barcelona and Real Madrid are smuggled from Egypt and widely sold in clothing stores. In just about any conversation about soccer, someone will invariably ask, “So do you support Real Madrid or Barcelona?”

Friends of mine have theorized about why these two Spanish teams are known to the vast majority of Gazan men and women. The argument that makes the most sense to me is this: Gazans have no world-renowned squad of their own to root for, both Real Madrid and Barcelona are remarkable teams, and it's fun—particularly for people accustomed to loss and tragedy—to support a soccer club that's likely to win. (Barcelona ultimately won this spring.) Maybe this lighthearted rivalry also provides therapeutic comfort to a society healing from the trauma of the 2007 civil war between Hamas and Fatah. Some “rival” Gazans who supported Real Madrid or Barcelona are now coming together to cheer for Spain in the World Cup.

To the public's widespread delight, Hamas is airing the World Cup on their television channel, Al-Aqsa. Al-Jazeera Sports, the only Arabic station with a license to air the World Cup, is available only on satellite television, while Al-Aqsa is available both on satellite and on local broadcasting. It seems unlikely, particularly in the wake of the flotilla tragedy, that anyone will stop Al-Aqsa from pirating this entertainment for thousands of Gazans who’d otherwise be unable to watch.

Based on this background information, I expected that a sizable mass of Gaza City elites would splurge on a celebratory evening at one of the handful of Gaza City restaurants, hotels and coffee shops where the World Cup could be viewed on a big screen. I was determined not to miss this experience, even though I’ve been sick for the past four days. (I contracted some sort of diarrhea-causing pathogen after stupidly attending women’s swim day at a local “pool”— which turned out to be a cement hole in the ground filled with unfiltered salt water from the sewage-invested Mediterranean Sea.)

Around 3:30 p.m. on Friday, shortly before the opening ceremony was slated to begin, I scoped out different venues with a few Gazan friends. To our shock, every venue had almost no patrons. Admittedly, Friday is a day of rest in the Arab world and men go to mosque services on Friday afternoons. But most services end by 2 p.m.—and this was the World Cup!

Worse, most places weren’t even prepared for a potential party. The Roots Club, the same fancy restaurant featured in the Israeli media a few weeks ago, had a broken LCD screen. The Avenue, a lovely beachside restaurant, had a television positioned immovably near glass windows, creating a distracting sun glare. The Al-Deira Hotel, a favorite among western journalists, wasn’t hosting any party, but said they planned to host one during the final games of the tournament. We therefore settled on the Delice Coffee Shop (pictured above), a modern, smoke-filled enclave with a giant television screen.

No more than a dozen, mostly male patrons at this coffee shop sipped Turkish coffee and smoked nargela as they quietly watched the opening ceremonies. South Africans from diverse backgrounds danced across the screen in colorful costumes, seeming to put their nation’s Apartheid history behind them. “Look at what they have in Africa,” mumbled a middle-aged nargela smoker dressed in black slacks and a pale shirt, “And look at what we have.” The rest of the world, it seemed to him, was celebrating and moving forward. And here we were. Existing in Gaza.

As if to reinforce these sentiments, the satellite television disconnected three times in a span of about 20 minutes. My friend Ahmed sought to lighten the patrons’ irritated moods by proposing a conspiracy theory. Perhaps some Israeli spy planes were lurking overhead and interfering with our satellite reception? He put his hands in the air as he playfully addressed the imaginary planes. “Enough!” he said. “We’re just trying to watch a soccer game here!”

In fact, Ahmed (pictured on right) wasn’t too interested in the game anyway. His mind was consumed with worries about his plans to travel to Egypt the following day. Ahmed was accepted to attend a master’s program in the United States, but he has been waiting for three months to get Israeli security clearance to go to Jerusalem for his visa interview at the U.S. consulate. (No U.S. consulate exists in Gaza.) In the aftermath of the flotilla tragedy, the Egyptian border is now open for Gazan travelers with “special” reasons, and Ahmed has decided to try his luck interviewing at a U.S. consulate outside of Israel. He spent most of the World Cup game frantically calling and emailing friends who might be able to help facilitate his travel and visa arrangements.

In a final ironic kicker, BBC video journalists (pictured on right) showed up to film the “excitement.” Instead, the reporters found a few annoyed, unenthusiastic fans. Shortly thereafter—about 30 minutes into the game—I threw in the towel. I went home, swallowed antibiotics, and watched the remainder of the game in bed. I later learned that my friends' families had laughed heartily at the story of our futile, pathetic attempt to find a World Cup party. Hopefully, during the final matches of the tournament, Gaza’s abundant soccer fans will come out in greater numbers!

A Gazan Scholar's Analysis of Post-Flotilla Politics

2010-06-09T13:58:00.000-07:00

I recently interviewed a prominent Gazan professor and political analyst named Dr. Mkhaimar Abusala (pictured above at the Gaza harbor) for a Global Post article about Hamas' raids and closures of six nongovernmental organizations last week.

Dr. Abusala has been busy these days giving interview after interview, in both Arabic and English, with the flocks of reporters who’ve come to Gaza in the wake of the flotilla tragedy. He begins most conversations with foreign journalists by inquiring about their backgrounds and experiences. Where did they grow up? Why did they choose a journalism career? What are their impressions of Gaza? Have they had any troubles with the Hamas authorities? He speaks in a measured, academically curious tone imbued with warm hospitality that is deeply ingrained in Palestinian culture.

Like me, Dr. Abusala lives in Gaza's lovely seaside neighborhood and enjoys privileges not accesible to most Gazan civilians. While most of the 1.5 million people here are trapped inside this tiny strip of land as a result of Israeli and Egyptian travel prohibitions, Dr. Abusala is among an elite few who can go through Israel to attend academic conferences abroad. This year, he presented academic papers in Berlin and Athens.

As often happens in Gaza, the interview with Dr. Abusala was arranged on the fly. I had met him on previous occasions, and called him on the afternoon of Monday, June 7 to see if he’d be available within the next few days. “A few days?” he joked, “How about in 30 minutes!”

We met for about an hour at the quaint Al-Deira Hotel, which overlooks the harbor, and spoke not just about the Hamas raids, but about other aspects of Gazan politics. Below are some excerpts from our conversation.

The flotilla tragedy has brought international attention to the three-year blockade of Gaza. Overall, do you believe the blockade helps or hurts Hamas?

The aim of Israel and the international community was to weaken Hamas, or squeeze Hamas, and put more pressure on Hamas to moderate its views with regard to Israel. Unfortunately, the blockade benefits Hamas in two ways. First, Hamas was able to become much more popular in the Arab and Muslim world as a result of the siege and blockade. Second, Hamas benefitted a lot from turning the Palestinian economy from a formal economy into a black market economy where Hamas is in control of the smuggling tunnel business between Gaza and Egypt.

Pictures and video have been released of the flotilla activists beating Israeli soldiers, presumably before any shots were fired. How do you think people in Gaza view this controversy?

Well, I have to say that these video shots were not seen by most Gazans because most Gazans watch Al-Jazeera and other Arab networks which do not really show this stuff. But even though it’s very obvious that some of the Israeli commandos were grabbed by the Freedom Flotilla participants, or attacked by them, Palestinians believe that Israel has no right to keep its siege and blockade of the Gaza Strip and has no right to obstruct these ships. They view Israel as a country that sees itself as above the law and that takes the law into its own hands.

It seems likely that more flotillas will try to break though the blockade. If Israel let an aid boat pass in exchange for a Red Cross visit to Gilad Shalit, do you think Hamas could be convinced to accept this offer?

Hamas has already said no. They’ll never let the International Red Cross visit Gilad Shalit because they are convinced that Israel will be able to know where Shalit is being hidden. They think Israel may even bomb the place where Shalit is hidden and kill Shalit along with those who kidnapped him. Hamas thinks the Red Cross visit proposal is a trap. It’s not going to happen.

Do you think the flotilla tragedy will make it more difficult for Hamas to maintain the undeclared ceasefire and obstruct violent actions against Israel?

The Freedom Flotilla incident took place against Turkish citizens and the level of international condemnation is satisfying Palestinian public opinion. It seems to me that Israel is in a diplomatic crisis with countries all over the world, so I don’t think that Palestinians are going to retaliate by launching missiles or using violent resistance against Israel. It seems to me that resistance groups in Gaza know what to do—they know that launching missiles would give Israel a pretext to launch new attacks on the Gaza Strip and shift international focus onto Palestinian violence.

But Islamic Jihad and the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade [the armed wing of Fatah] both launched attacks this week. Islamic Jihad launched missiles into Israel and, as I understand, the armed militants shot in the water off the Gaza coast this morning came from Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade….

Islamic Jihad has never stopped firing missiles against Israel. They’ve always vowed to fight against the Israeli occupation. They are not even part of the Palestinian political process. They refuse to even run for elections since the establishment of the Palestinian Authority. There is nothing new about Islamic Jihad continuing to fire missiles.

With regard to the other incident with the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade, they say that they were holding a training course and were not going to fight against Israel. I think the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades are just provoking and annoying Hamas. They are saying, “We are still present in the Gaza Strip and we are still fighting the Israeli occupation while Hamas is not fighting.”

Was Hamas popular in Gaza before the flotilla tragedy and how do you think the flotilla tragedy will impact Hamas’s appeal in Gaza?

Hamas’s popularity was declining in Gaza before the Freedom Flotilla incident for a number of reasons….After the Freedom Flotilla incident, Hamas is in a much better condition. Even if their popularity has not improved in Gaza, they are being portrayed in the Arab and Muslim world as the vanguard of Palestinian resistance. Hamas is using the Freedom Flotilla incident to crack down on its opponents.

How does the average person on the Gaza streets regard the proximity talks led by George Mitchell?

To be honest with you, the Palestinian people lost confidence in the peace negotiation process. It’s been going on since the signing of Oslo in 1993. Instead of ending the occupation, Israel expanded its settlements in the West Bank and tried to change the facts on the ground by confiscating more land and deporting the Palestinians from their own territory. Most Palestinians—in the West Bank and Gaza—don’t think that proximity talks will be any more successful in ending the occupation, especially when we are faced with a rightwing government led by Netanyahu and Lieberman.

The Palestinian community is very polarized. The Palestinians who support Fatah want to give the proximity talks a chance. On the other hand, Hamas and its supporters do not believe at all in these proximity talks. They think it’s a waste of time and that it’s absurd and that nothing good is going to come out of it.

The economy in the West Bank has improved dramatically. There are new high-rise buildings, new coffee shops and restaurants, fewer road blocks and checkpoints. I was there a few weeks ago and was struck by how dramatically it’s changed from even a year ago. How aware are people in Gaza of what’s happening in the West Bank? And how do they view this notion of “economic peace” before “political peace”?

I don’t really know how aware the Palestinian community in Gaza is of what’s happening in the West Bank, but overall the Palestinians know that the West Bank is in much better economic condition that the Gaza Strip. The Palestinians know that Dr. Salaam Fayyad is doing his best to salvage the Palestinian economy and impose law and order in the West Bank.

In one way, Gazans feel sad because they are left out by the Fayyad government, which is not paying attention to the problems of the Gaza Strip. On the other hand, they hope that the model of the West Bank will be transferred to the Gaza Strip when it comes to economic improvement. What we know is that Fayyad has been embarking on almost daily projects in the West Bank that, as you mentioned, has improved the infrastructure, created more employment opportunities and improved the daily life of West Bankers.

You said that people know that Salam Fayyad is “doing his best,” but I’ve heard a lot of people here demonize Salam Fayyad.

Sure, pro-Hamas people demonize him and hate him. As I mentioned earlier, this is a very polarized community. Those who support Hamas think that he is an illegal, illegitimate Prime Minister and that the only legitimate Prime Minister is Ismail Haniyeh. Second, even non-Hamas voters are not happy with Fayyad because they believe he went too far with his normalization steps with the Israelis. And, some of the Palestinian community here is upset that he’s not directing more of his efforts towards the Gaza Strip—they like the model that’s being done in the West Bank but they want Salam Fayyad to deal with Gaza’s internal problems.

May I ask you two personal questions?

Yes. Well— it depends!

It seems that most Palestinians who are able to leave Gaza have already left. You have a wife and five children, and you could live a much easier life someplace else. Why do you choose to live in Gaza?

When I came back to the Gaza Strip from graduate school in 1997, the Gaza Strip was portrayed as the Singapore of the Middle East. The economy was booming. Everything seemed to be going well. Peace negotiations seemed to be progressing. Of course, there was a setback when the Palestinian intifada erupted in September of 2000. But this is my home and the situation was ok.

It has declined badly in the past few years, especially since Hamas took over Gaza. It’s something that I think about a lot—not for me, but for my kids. I want them to live a normal life and to get a good education and live in a politically stable country. Even though the situation is very critical as a result of the siege and the occupation, we are still able to manage our lives here. But, if things get much more complicated and unstable, we will have to look into other choices.

If your children had an opportunity to participate in a dialogue program with Israelis, would you allow this?

I wouldn’t have a problem with my kids having dialogues with Israelis, as long as the Israelis who interact with my kids believe in peace, believe in ending the Israeli occupation, and believe in a two-state solution. If they believe in ending the conflict in a peaceful way and respect Palestinians’ right to freedom and self-determination, I welcome dialogue with them.

The World Outside of Gaza

2010-06-05T06:46:00.000-07:00

Yesterday, I crisscrossed Gaza in a taxi, scrambling to finish interviews I was conducting for a Global Post article that takes readers on a humanitarian tour of Gaza. As the taxi drove up the coastline alongside an impoverished refugee camp, the driver pointed to a distant smoke tower. “There’s Ashdod," he said. "That’s where the Israelis took the flotilla heroes.” “Really? It looks so close!” I replied stupidly, then got out of the car to take a picture (shown above).

The port of Ashdod, where the first six flotilla ships and now the “Rachel Corrie” are docked, was only a long canoe trip away from where I was standing. This was a jarring reminder of the almost complete lack of interaction between Israeli and Gazan societies. Israel seemed worlds away.

I experienced a similar feeling on the day I came back to Israel from Gaza last month. In the morning, I had been sharing breakfast with friends who've never traveled outside Gaza. In the evening, I was playing volleyball on a gorgeous Tel Aviv beach. Gaza seemed worlds away.

Most Gazans feel profound gratefulness that the world is suddenly paying attention to their suffering. Despite disappointment over the IDF's non-violent seizure of the "Rachel Corrie" ship this morning, excitement and hopefulness are growing, and this sentiment pervaded today's press conference in the Gaza City harbor.

The press conference was attended by about two dozen western journalists from countries including the United Kingdom, France, Sweden, and Denmark. Some journalists from major media networks had flown to Israel and entered Gaza specifically to cover the flotilla story. Large, color banners around the harbor honored the flotilla activists. One banner said, in Arabic and English, “The siege will not continue as long as there are people like you.”

Low-level Hamas officials gave fiery speeches expressing solidarity with the activists and referring to Israel as a “fascist state.” They also extended a special thanks to the Arab and western journalists in attendance and asked them to get out "the truth" about the Palestinian cause. Government officials distributed hundreds of Arabic posters titled "The Honored List: The Names of the Journalists Aboard the Freedom Flotilla." (The photo above shows a group of Gaza City schoolgirls holding these posters.)

An English-speaking, western-educated Hamas advisor named Ahmed Yousef gave non-stop interviews with the media. “As you can see, hundreds of journalists are gathering here,” he said. “It’s a real victory for the Palestinian people. It’s a historic moment….The freedom flotillas will keep coming, and then what will Israel do? Does Israel want to challenge the whole world?”

Yousef (pictured on right) dismissed the significance of Hamas’s raids and closures of six non-governmental organizations in Gaza this week. “The government here is trying to put pressure on Fatah to stop them from doing these things [to Hamas] in the West Bank,” he said. “I believe we shouldn’t be doing these sorts of things, but it’s like a policy of tit-for-tat....I hope the flotilla massacre will help [Hamas and Fatah] to bridge the rift and work hand in hand.”

Is Hamas flying under the media radar?

2010-06-04T16:05:00.000-07:00

The “Rachel Corrie” is within 100 miles of Gaza, according to some Twitter reports, and the Gaza Strip seems to be holding its collective breath. Meanwhile, troubling internal events have received little media attention.

On Monday morning, just as Hamas leaders were holding a seaside press conference on the flotilla tragedy, six officials from the Hamas Ministry of the Interior raided the office of Sharek Youth Forum in Rafah, Gaza. Similar raids took place on Monday and Tuesday at five other Gaza NGOs: The Future Builders Society, the South Society for Women’s Health, the Women and Children Society, Palestinian Mini Parliament, and the National Reconciliation Committee.

Sharek volunteer Nida Yasin (pictured on right) was alone in the office and “cooperated silently” as the agents inspected files on the computer, seized a 30-page paper file containing lists of NGOs working in Gaza, and demanded keys to the office. Later that day, Hamas police removed a computer and a printer from the office, replaced the locks, and shut down the office indefinitely.

A Palestinian human rights organization called Al-Mezan issued a statement condemning the raids, “which were carried out without any respect for the law.” Al-Mezan also questioned the curious timing of the raids “amid the outcry against the Israeli crime against the Freedom Flotilla.” Hamas has not yet commented on the matter.

The Hamas raids come in the wake of a May 23 attack on a United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) beachfront summer camp facility. Twenty masked gunmen torched tents, vandalized bathrooms, and tied up the security guard. They then stuffed the guard’s pocket with three bullets and a note threatening to kill the UNRWA operations director and two other employees unless they cancelled the summer games. The summer games (pictured above, courtesy of UNRWA) serve over 250,000 Gazan children.

The gunmen were likely connected to an unknown group called The Freedom of the Homeland, which released fliers deriding UNRWA for "teaching schoolgirls fitness, dancing and immorality." Another unknown group called Refugee Rights released fliers saying that the UNRWA Summer Games cost $20 million dollars, teach impudent practices to Palestinian girls, and waste money that should belong to the Palestinian people.

Sharek Youth Forum organizes the beach activities for the UNRWA summer games and helps to interview potential staff members. The day after the attack on the UNRWA facility, Hamas police forbad NGOs, including Sharek, from organizing a protest demonstration, citing security reasons. Recently, the Hamas Interior Ministry announced arrests in connection to the attack, but has not released any names.

Yousef Abu Amra, Sharek’s Southern Area Coordinator, said he had “no idea” why Hamas shut down their Rafah office. (The organization’s four other offices remain open.) The Rafah municipality is currently negotiating with the Interior Ministry on Sharek’s behalf. Abu Amra has demanded that Hamas provide an explanation for its actions.

Gaza-bound 'Rachel Corrie' stirs renewed hope

2010-06-03T06:28:00.000-07:00

First, a quick roundup of the flotilla-related news from Gaza: Mass political demonstrations, candlelight ceremonies, and mourning tents have proliferated across Gaza over the past three days. At the same time, tensions are mounting on the borders—rockets were fired from Gaza into Israel and retaliatory strikes killed three Islamic Jihad militants. The Israeli military also reported that it killed two would-be terrorists who crossed the border from Gaza. Egypt opened the border for humanitarian aid into Gaza as well as the travel of Palestinian patients, students, and foreign passport holders. Hamas has refused to accept the humanitarian aid from the flotilla ships until all detained activists are released and Israel agrees to deliver the aid in full.

The most hope-inspiring news on the Gazan streets, however, is that another boat (pictured on right) is currently on route to Gaza and may attempt to break through the blockade this weekend despite the recent tragedy. The boat bears the namesake of Rachel Corrie, a 23-year-old American activist killed by a 64-ton Israeli bulldozer in 2003 while attempting to defend a Palestinian home from demolition. Corrie was a member of the International Solidarity Movement (ISM), one of the groups that helped to organize the flotilla. (The video at the start of this blog post shows an interview with Rachel Corrie two days before she died.)

The vast majority of Palestinians and some left-wing westerners regard Rachel Corrie as a heroic activist. Others cast her as a naïve idealist or a reckless zealot. University of Haifa professor Steve Plaut has likened Corrie to a Nazi sympathizer—a view shared by many right-wing Israelis. A play based on Corrie’s vivid diaries has been performed across the world, sparking both acclaim and boycott. The 2009 documentary film “Rachel” was featured at the San Francisco Jewish Film Festival but introduced by a pro-Israel activist who chastised the film’s one-sidedness and “demonization” of Israel.

At the time Corrie lived in Gaza in 2003, neighborhoods along the Egyptian border were often razed by the military on suspicions that they hosted entrances to smuggling tunnels. In the same year, 26 Palestinian suicide bombers murdered Israeli civilians and about 1500 crude, unguided rockets—many of them smuggled through tunnels—were fired into Israel, according to the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF).

Anees Mansour (pictured on the right at the site of Corrie’s death, which is now overrun by smuggling tunnels) is among thousands of Gazans who check the news constantly these days, seeking updates on the progress of the “Rachel Corrie.” Mansour was a friend of Corrie’s and also carried British activist Tom Hurndall to a clinic after he was shot and killed by an Israeli sniper. Mansour says the foreign activists inspired his community work (two months ago he co-organized Gaza's first ever demonstration against child labor in the smuggling tunnels), and he admires their courage for leaving comfortable, privileged lives to help Palestinians living in a constant danger. However, he wonders why the media “only cares when internationals are killed.”

Like the flotilla tragedy, Corrie’s death in March of 2003 was the subject of international media attention and scrutiny. The Israeli military's investigation was closely monitored by an unrelenting American family with strong diplomatic support—yet has been chastised by some American political leaders for its lack of thoroughness and transparency.

On Wednesday, the Corrie family sent an email to supporters asking for help in ensuring the safe passage of the “Rachel Corrie.” They also emphasized their grave concerns over the pending Israeli military investigation of the violence and loss of life aboard the Mavi Marmara. “Our family's own experience has made it all too painfully clear that the Israeli military is unable or unwilling to adequately investigate itself,” the email said.

In March, before coming to Gaza, I attended the Corrie family’s wrongful death trial in an Israeli civil court. The trial is currently in recess until September. The Corrie family has conceded the possibility that their daughter’s death was an accident. However, testimonies given at the trial suggested an Israeli military investigation weighted to clear the army of culpability. (I’ve pitched articles on this topic to various media outlets, and will update my blog soon.)

The Corrie family’s civil court case—and now the flotilla tragedy—come in the wake of fiery debates over the controversial UN Goldstone Report, which accused both Israel and Hamas of war crimes during last year’s Gaza hostilities. The Israeli government has rebuked the report’s call for both Hamas and Israel to form independent investigative bodies. Defense Minister Ehud Barak and IDF Chief of General Staff Lt.-Gen. Gabi Ashkenazi have instead pushed for a judicial panel to evaluate IDF investigations.

Barak told reporters earlier this year, "All of the soldiers and officers whom we sent to battle need to know that the State of Israel stands behind them even on the day after.”

Gazans unite against flotilla 'massacre'

2010-05-31T04:07:00.000-07:00

I woke up this morning to the sound of a blaring loud speaker, presumably from a mosque, alerting people that Israeli troops had “committed a massacre” aboard the flotilla. Various media outlets are reporting that at least nine activists (and possibly more) were killed when Israeli commandos boarded the largest boat and shot them. The Israeli Defense Forces said that the activists seized their guns and wielded clubs, knives, and molotov cocktails (crude grenades).

I hurried down to the harbor, got permission to enter from the police, and attended a Hamas-organized media conference. Many top Hamas leaders, including a female Hamas parliamentarian named Huda Naim, stood on stage alongside Khalid Al-Batsh, a leader of Islamic Jihad in Gaza. In speech after speech, they slammed Israel’s actions as an act of “state terrorism” and called on the international community to defend the activists and stop the siege. Palestinian flags, as well as flags of diverse countries, including Great Britain but not including Israel or the United States, were posted around the harbor. While Gazans commonly refer to Israelis as “the Jews,” none of the speakers at the press conference condemned “Jews” or “Israelis.” Instead, every speaker used the Arabic word “sahyooni,” which means Zionist.

In interviews I conducted earlier this week, leaders from Fatah and PFLP, a leftist minority party, said that they had been excluded from the Hamas-led efforts to organize the flotilla welcoming celebrations. No one from PFLP spoke at the press conference, but Ashraf Juma'a, a Fatah leader, gave a speech condemning Israel and expressing solidarity with the activists after Hamas officials had left the stage.

Following the press conference, a group of at least 400 PFLP demonstrators (pictured above) converged on the harbor carrying pictures of loved ones currently imprisoned by Israel. Shortly thereafter, thousands more demonstrators from diverse community organizations, universities and political factions—including Fatah— arrived. They chanted slogans condemning the “massacre” as well as slogans calling for Palestinian unity against the Israeli occupation and siege.

Many of the International Solidarity Movement activists living in Gaza gave interviews with the press, including Bianca Zimmit, an activist from Malta who was shot in her thigh by Israeli troops during a demonstration against the buffer zone last month. Here’s the link to a previous blog post I wrote about this incident and here’s the link to a blog post I wrote about a Palestinian demonstrator who was killed the week after Zimmit was shot.

“I’m surprised that Israel would go this far with internationals,” Zimmit said (pictured on right). “The reality is that they are doing this sort of thing every day with Palestinians—farmers and fishermen are killed every day....I don’t know why [Israeli citizens] would oppose these ships. Because they don’t understand what’s happening? Because they don’t understand the daily reality of the siege? The siege hurts the people, not the [Hamas] government. The poor people are bearing the brunt and are the hardest hit.”

The activist 'flotilla'...and a reignited debate about Gaza’s humanitarian tragedies

2010-05-27T23:42:00.000-07:00

The Hamas government is carefully preparing for the possible arrival of a flotilla of 700 western activists seeking to break through the Israeli naval blockade, and Fatah leaders say they are being excluded from the organization efforts. Here’s the link to the article I wrote about this topic for the Jerusalem Post. I also wrote an article for the Palestine Note about the reaction of different Gazan political leaders to the possibility that Israeli activists are onboard the boats.

The flotilla story has ignited a fierce debate, particularly within Israel, about the extent to which Gaza is suffering a humanitarian tragedy. Articles about the elaborate menu offerings at a high-end Gaza City restaurant called the Roots Club widely circulated in the Israeli media this week. Today, I visited the Roots Club for the first time. It was nearly empty (except for five patrons, including me) at 7 p.m. on a weekend night and has not turned a profit in four years, according to co-owner Wael Al Shorafa (pictured above). “I believe we have the best food in Gaza—better than Ramallah and Israel—but we don’t have customers,” he said. “You can see that we have no customers. Most of the people who have money aren't [in Gaza] anymore. We pay our workers pocket money.”

Gaza’s economy has been devastated by two intifadas against the Israeli occupation, by the 2007 civil war between Hamas and Fatah, by last year’s war between Israel and Hamas, and by the continued Israeli blockade. I’ve met no one who is starving here (most Gazans receive staple foods from UNRWA) and many items forbidden under the blockade—including cement— come into Gaza through the tunnels.

Most Gazan families cannot afford the smuggled luxury items, nor can they afford a meal at the Roots Club. While the specific numbers are disputed, the unemployment rate is astronomical. Those who do work usually share their income with their extended families. Many, including children, have resorted to dangerous, back-breaking work ferrying goods through the tunnels or collecting rubble from destroyed, unstable buildings. Among the highest paying jobs are those with the alphabet soup of NGOs and development organizations currently operating in Gaza.

There is a housing crisis in Gaza. Everywhere I go, I meet people whose homes have been destroyed by Israel and not rebuilt. Some moved in with relatives and live in cramped quarters. Others rent apartments that they can barely afford. And many, including the three sisters pictured above, live in partially destroyed houses. And it should go without saying that there is a crisis of psychological trauma in Gaza, particularly following last year's war.

However, a minority in Gaza—including me—do live in comfortable apartments and dine in Gaza City's coffee shops. My one-bedroom apartment came with a fully furnished living room and bedroom, a satellite television, wireless internet, electricity, and a hot water tank. It had not been rented in over a year when I moved in, I signed no extended contract, and I pay only $300 per month. Since the power goes out in my building (and across Gaza) for at least eight hours per day, I’ve purchased an electric generator that gives me electricity whenever I need it. Most Gazans cannot afford these generators and have structured their lives around the electricity schedule. Some Gazan children have died when faulty electric generators smuggled from Egypt overheated and exploded.

A white American woman traveling with a Gaza-stamped passport

2010-05-22T06:35:00.000-07:00

Apologies to anyone who checked this blog recently and found no new posts! I’ve been in the U.S. for the past two weeks, I arrived in Israel on Friday, and I’m looking to reenter Gaza on Sunday. An article of mine about humanitarian travel through the Gaza-Egypt smuggling tunnels just published in the Jerusalem Post Magazine. Also, from now on, I'll plug all of my new articles and blog posts on Twitter (username: ashleybates) and on Facebook (email address: ashleybates@comcast.net).

Traveling with a Gaza stamp on my passport has given me a fractional taste of the intense security scrutiny that Palestinians undergo as they travel through Israel. When one Gazan friend of mine crossed the border into Israel last year, he watched an Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) video offering a ransom for Gilad Shalit as well as a video highlighting Hamas’s alleged crimes against its own people. This friend was then interviewed by a high ranking officer who attempted to recruit him as a spy. He endured hours of questioning and was stripped down to his underwear before finally being allowed to pass. The whole process took more than five hours.

My experience coming out of Gaza was a breeze in comparison. I got into a line designated for non-Palestinian foreigners, gave all my bags to security screeners, walked through a full body x-ray scanning machine, then sat in a waiting room where the contents of my bags were delivered in large plastic trays. I reassembled my suitcase, answered a few questions about what I’d been doing in Gaza, and was free to go. The whole process took less than an hour.

Two days later, I underwent a much more strenuous security check at Tel Aviv's Ben Gurion Airport, where my Gaza stamp earned me a “level six” security ranking—the highest possible threat level. For about 30 minutes, three soldiers dissected every item in my bags, using chemical swabs to check for bomb residues. A serious, resolute young lady brought me to a private room where I submitted to a slow, massage-like pat down that took about a minute. This search of my body included a thorough rummaging of my hair, which left me looking like an electrocuted clown. The soldier then matter-of-factly told me to take off my shirt, and I complied. “Where in Israel are you from?” I asked, seeking to lighten the mood. “Why do you want to know that?” she replied nervously.

After this soldier escorted me silently to the gate terminal (a courtesy that prevented me from passing through the standard security checkpoint after I’d already completed a rigorous private screening), I thought that the security questioning was over. However, I had a flight connection in Turkey, where transit passengers apparently undergo additional interviews. The Turkish security guy immediately noticed the “level six” sticker on the outside of my passport, grinned, and raised his eyebrows. “How are you a level six?” he said. “May I ask—Are you Arab American?”

While I was in Chicago, I learned that left-wing author and Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor Noam Chomsky (see video above) had planned to give a speech at a West Bank university, but was turned away when he attempted to cross the border into Israel from Jordan. He was presumably denied entry because the Israeli government objects to his political views. Chomsky’s experience fueled my concerns that I could be denied entry for a myriad of possible reasons, such as overusing my tourist visa status or spending a suspicious amount of time in the Palestinian Territories—and Gaza in particular.

My fears did not come to pass. Yesterday I met for less than five minutes with a courteous security supervisor at Ben Gurion Airport who seemed moved by my work with Hands of Peace, a Chicago-based dialogue camp for Israeli, Palestinian and American teenagers. She almost apologetically explained that she would keep my Gaza-stamped passport while I retrieved my bags. “We will need to search your bags and put them through an x-ray machine,” she said. “But, don’t worry, it won’t take too long.”

An 'anti-siege' protest against Hamas taxation?

2010-05-02T02:21:00.001-07:00

About 2000 people, most of them from three left-wing minority parties, marched on Saturday in what was said to be a ‘May Day’ demonstration promoting workers’ rights and protesting the poverty and rampant unemployment caused by the Israeli-imposed blockade.

However, many demonstrators came for an additional reason: to protest sundried new Hamas taxes and fees. Suppliers of gas and other basic commodities are raising their prices as a result of new taxes. For example, the price of a pack of cigarettes, most of which are smuggled through tunnels from Egypt, was raised by 2 to 3 shekels to cover a 3 shekel (80 cent) tax on suppliers. Small businesses, including falafel stands, are now forced to pay new license fees of varying amounts.

Earlier this week, Hamas security forces detained Palestinian political activists overnight for distributing leaflets urging Hamas to ease up on the people or face a popular revolt. Communist party (PFLP) official Jamil Mezher told Reuters, "People are under huge pressure but they are also afraid to express themselves and we took the responsibility to voice their concerns."

Another leftist political party, the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine (DFLP), urged peaceful protests against Hamas taxes. They said in a statement, "The DFLP condemns the increase of taxes and fees ... which have led to an unprecedented rise in prices amid deteriorating economic and social conditions….We call for popular action and peace protests to stop these measures."

Hamas has not permitted activists to organize a demonstration against the new taxes and fees. DFLP official Talal Abu Zarifa (pictured on right) emphasized in interviews that the Saturday demonstration was directed against Israel. “It’s the time for Israel to stop the siege,” he said. “The continuation of the siege means that the Gaza Strip will turn into a disaster zone, suffering from poverty, hunger and unemployment.”

When I asked Mr. Zarifa if the demonstration was also intended to protest the new taxes, he replied, “The other voice of this demonstration is against the taxes Hamas government is putting on the Palestinian people in the time of a worsening humanitarian situation. This is not acceptable. We ask Hamas to stop this directly—now—so that we can have a suitable life with freedom and dignity for our people.”

The demonstration very nearly turned violent when protesters defied the instructions of Mr. Zarifa and other organizers and broke through a police blockade. The crowd proceeded an additional half-kilometer before organizers finally convinced them to stop at the Hamas border checkpoint. If the massive group of protesters had marched another kilometer to the border, they almost certainly would have been met with live Israeli gunfire.

Demonstration participant Majda Kadeh (pictured on right) was one of many who attempted to proceed to the border. “I am angry because I wasn’t able to finish the demonstration,” she said, her voice vibrating with rage after police blocked her path. “We are sitting without work, without income, without houses….We must go forward so [the Israelis] can hear us! I want all the world to see us! All of the people you’re seeing here are workers without work!”

Two days before the demonstration, I asked Jamila Al Shanti, a parliamentarian and top Hamas leader, about popular criticism that Hamas was imposing taxes on an already desperate and impoverished population. Ms. Shanti said that taxes were “carefully studied” and that taxes are imposed by all governments around the world. She also said that while Hamas is under "brutal siege" by Israel, its financial situation “is not as bad as people think.” Hamas has “other ways” of getting funds, she said. However, Hamas has been unable to pay salaries on time for the past three months, and economic analysts widely claim that Hamas is facing a major financial crisis.

Just as the Saturday demonstration in the north of Gaza nearly got out of control, Egyptian authorities in the south of Gaza declared a state of emergency based on intelligence that a mass of protesters planned to break through the border. Many people in Rafah blame Egypt for the suspicious deaths of four Palestinians in a smuggling tunnel on Thursday. The Hamas government said Egyptian police sprayed poisonous gas into the tunnel. Egypt denies this charge.

Meanwhile, the Free Gaza flotilla of boats filled with hundreds of international activists are slated to set sail at the end of this month. Based on Israel’s violent, lethal suppression of the anti-buffer zone demonstrators and the failure of the Gaza Freedom March to enter Gaza through Egypt this past January, many analysts are doubtful that the boats will make it through the Israeli blockade. This could further fuel desperation, anger and hopelessness among activists and further contribute to rising tensions across Gaza.

‘I'm against September 11th but I support suicide bombings in Israel'

2010-04-30T08:58:00.000-07:00

I recently interviewed Jamila Al-Shanti, a member of the Palestinian parliament and the highest ranking woman in the Hamas government. Women’s rights under Hamas rule was the subject of the interview, and my article about this topic will likely publish in Global Post. After the interview, Ms. Shanti allowed me to ask her some questions about the current political situation and about her views on what constitutes terrorism.

Ms. Shanti has experienced and witnessed unimaginable horrors. Israel attempted to assassinate her in a 2006 bomb strike that instead killed her sister-in-law and two of Ms. Shanti's bodyguards. Her uncle died in an Israeli bombing. And she's lost countless friends in Israeli military actions, including an incident in which she says soldiers opened fire on unarmed women. In a 2006 editorial for the Guardian, Ms. Shanti wrote, "The sight of my close friends Ibtissam Yusuf Abu Nada and Rajaa Ouda taking their last breaths, bathed in blood, will live with me forever."

In the past, Ms. Shanti has met some Israeli activists and journalists who she liked and respected. However, she says these Israelis were not Zionist and “acknowledged that Israel had stolen Palestinian land and massacred Palestinians.”

When I asked if the Gilad Shalit cartoon video was intended as a threat, Ms. Shanti looked as if I'd punched her in the gut. She seemed genuinely perplexed that the video was not well-received in western countries. "The whole world is grieving for Shalit," she said sadly, "But they are not grieving for the thousands of Palestinian prisoners. You can find two or three detainees from every [extended] family in Gaza. We consider Shalit as our chance to make a deal....This cartoon movie is a message to the world to create some momentum, to put pressure on Israel to keep the issue of Shalit negotiations alive."

The interview took place in a sparse parliament office. Ms. Shanti generally spoke in a calm, measured voice and smiled kindly during moments of potential tension. She often motioned for me drink my tea and joked that I was too busy taking notes and needed to relax. She emphasized that she liked American people but condemned the American government “which is controlled by the Zionist lobby.” At one point, Ms. Shanti asked me if I was married. When I told her that I was not, she commented affectionately, “You’re young. There’s still hope.” (Ms. Shanti herself never married, contrary to some false internet reports that she's the wife of an assassinated Hamas leader.)

Even when pressed, Ms. Shanti expressed little sympathy for Israeli suffering and contended that Palestinians have a right to defend themselves by any means. What follows is an excerpt of my sobering exchange with Ms. Shanti on the question of why she supports suicide bombings and rocket attacks against Israeli civilians. The only edits I’ve made are marked with “…” and are for the purpose of eliminating redundant statements.

Did you support the September 11th attacks?

No, we are against the September 11th attacks. These were innocent people practicing their daily work. There were even Palestinians and Arabs killed....Hamas is against this. I’m not interested in going to America and killing people there. Why? These people are practicing their normal lives. It’s none of my business. But if you ask me: what’s your opinion on killing Americans in Iraq, I will say yes. That’s a different story.

Many people in America think that the September 11th attacks are similar to the suicide bombings in Israeli buses and coffee shops. They both kill civilians, like innocent women and children.

It’s different. How is it the same? The suicide bombings kill people who kill me….These women in the coffee shops also came to my land and came to fight me. Women in Israel are soldiers as well. The owners of the cafés built their cafés on my land and the attendants of the cafés come to fight me.

What about the children [who are killed]?

The children are killed by mistake. The children are not targets, but they die in the incidents.

A couple of years ago, there was a shooting inside a school in Jerusalem…

Hamas has never done an attack in a school. This is not allowed. In schools? This is forbidden. It’s not Hamas that did this. If this happened, we are not the ones that did this.

Some people say that the Palestinians might have succeeded if they used only non-violent ways, like Gandhi or Martin Luther King.

We are not the ones who do the violence. [The Israelis] are on my land. They killed us. They killed even the newborn babies in the mother’s hands. They are monsters. They planted fear in the hearts of people and came with the mentality of slaughtering. Don’t think about the innocence of the Israelis—we know them. Under every house inside Palestine, you will find the bones of people who’ve been killed by Israel.

The picture of Israel as a democratic state is not true. We know this. The whole world does not know the crimes of Israel. Or they know it and they try not to focus on it. That’s why I want to say that our rights are not diminished by time. Haifa, Yaffa, Tel Aviv, Ashkelon, all of those must come back to us….[Our land] will not come back by giving flowers to the Israelis, but by jihad.

Do you support a two-state solution?

No. I will never allow two states. No way. This is my land. They should go away. But we have another tactical approach that we would accept a state on 1967 borders with the capital of Jerusalem for a temporary period until the whole issue has been solved. The Israelis should know that I cannot recognize a state for them. The next generations will come to fight and kill them. I, Jamila Al Shanti, I’m not from Gaza. I’m from a village in Majda [Ashkelon]. My land is there. How can I give it to them? I want to return to my village.

Some people say that you should make a two-state solution for the sake of peace, for the sake of the children’s futures. What would you say to these people?

We believe that Israel does not want peace and will not give us a state as we want. We have been in the peace process for 20 years and the settlements increased and the assaults on our land increased. Therefore, peace does not work with them and I will never live with them in peace.

Some people might reply that Israel left Gaza and abandoned the settlements in Gaza.

Israel didn’t leave Gaza. Every day they kill people. Every day their snipers are on the borders and kill people. Their tanks still enter. Their airplanes are still in the sky. Israel didn’t leave Gaza. We are in danger day and night.

You said earlier that you liked and worried about the Israeli journalists who used to work in Gaza. Some people say that the Jewish people would not be safe if they lived in a state of Palestine.

In the history of the Jews, it’s never been reported that something happened to them under an Islamic government.…If there was a state and they were citizens of this state, they would be protected, like Jews living in Egypt, or Yemen, or Algeria.

Some people say that the Arabs are the majority in many countries. But the Jewish people have no country except Israel.

How can I answer that? That’s not my problem. This is not their right. America is a big country. Give them some of your land....If you [the Americans] are so sad about them, you should give them a state. Even if the Jews want to live in Palestine, we will not have a problem with that. If they want to take the Palestinian nationality, we have no problem with that.

Growing Instability in Gaza

2010-04-29T10:14:00.000-07:00

While most civilians I meet in Gaza remain focused on their family lives and daily struggles, tensions are rising between disparate political factions. At the same time, the non-violent protesters in the buffer zones have suffered their first fatality—Israeli troops shot a protester named Ahmad Salem Deeb in his femoral artery on Wednesday and he died of blood loss in the hospital. (See the picture above, from Ma’an News.) Mr. Deeb and a handful of others had reportedly separated from the larger group and thrown stones at Israeli troops.

Despite this tragedy, demonstrators once again marched into the buffer zone on Thursday in Khan Younis; no one was killed, but an ISM activist told me that Israeli troops shot a live bullet through the banner held by the protesters. Based on my observations and conversations, these protests are primarily attracting members of the Communist party (PFLP) and Fateh, the more moderate political party that controls the West Bank.

Meanwhile, internal Palestinian tensions seem to be mounting. On an almost daily basis, random taxi drivers who I meet for the first time volunteer their dislike or disappointment in the Hamas government, which many used to view as a party that represented change and an end to corruption. Many civilians are angry about new taxes, including a 3 shekel (80 cents) tax on cigarettes and new license fees for small businesses such as falafel stands. Others are angry about repressive measures taken against members of Fateh. This includes the seizing of IDs of Fateh leaders seeking to travel through Israel for meetings in the West Bank.

Hamas leaders insist that Fateh members enjoy relative freedom in Gaza and that their allegedly minor actions against Fateh leaders have been in response to Fateh’s allegedly brutal repression of Hamas members in the West Bank. Hamas leaders also say that they are attempting to ensure internal security. Over the past months, Hamas has honored and enforced its ceasefire with Israel and has jailed members of more radical groups like the Salafis and Islamic Jihad.

Some Palestinian analysts suspect that popular demonstrations against Hamas could soon erupt in Gaza. Earlier this week, the minority Communist party (PFLP) distributed leaflets calling for an uprising against the new taxes, which they say impose unfair burdens on an already impoverished population. PFLP leaders say they are attempting to organize a Friday demonstration against the taxes, but Hamas will likely prevent this from happening.

On top of all these problems, the Hamas-Fateh “reconciliation talks” in Egypt aimed at planning a new national election seem to have stalled indefinitely, as have the prisoner swap negotiations between Hamas and Israel. A few months ago, Gilad Shalit, the 23-year-old Israeli soldier held captive by Hamas since 2006, was reportedly set to be exchanged for as many as 1,000 Palestinian prisoners, but the negotiations broke down. Hamas’s military wing released a controversial cartoon video this week (see below) that many westerners interpreted as a direct threat to kill Shalit. However, top Hamas leader Mahmoud Zahar said the video did not reflect the position of the Hamas movement, which would not kill a captive soldier because this is “against Islam.”

Gaza's Jon Stewart

2010-04-27T05:28:00.000-07:00

“You want jokes?” quipped Muhammed Masaod, 49, as I interviewed him about his hobby of making people laugh. “Jokes are forbidden under the Israeli siege, but they still sneak in through the tunnels.”

Over the next two and a half hours, I asked Mr. Masaod general questions about his comedic talents and about the political situation. The dead pan, sarcastic answers from this self-taught Gazan musician and comedian with only an 8th grade education left me convulsing with laughter. Since I’m seeking to publish a profile article about Mr. Masaod, I won’t write all of the details on my blog, but here’s a sparse preview…

Mr. Masaod is a father of 12 who used to play the guitar and violin in a music band for a Palestinian television channel in Ramallah. After the Hamas takeover in 2007, he “gets paid by [the Fateh government in Ramallah] for sleeping in [his] home.” He and his family reside in the refugee camp of Deir Bala in a home with a leaky roof, which doesn’t bother him at all. “It allows me to be a maestro inside my home,” he explained. “When it rains, I gather all the plates in the kitchen. Every raindrop has a tune. I get my violin and my guitar and my whole family plays along. I’m the rain composer.”

To pass the time during his unemployed employment, Mr. Masaod has collected 520 jokes and riddles from across Gaza and transcribed them into a notebook. “Usually, people bring me jokes and I put some decorations on them,” he said. “The most important thing in the art of joking is delivery. The jokes need direction and producing.” Mr. Masoud has only 481 more new jokes to collect before he attempts to publish a book entitled “1001 Jokes.” (This is a reference to the famous Persian fable called 1001 Nights.)

When I asked Mr. Masoud for his general thoughts on the current situation in Gaza, he replied, “I especially love it when people die. It makes me feel very relaxed. I only get sad and angry when the eldest people die. They are the heritage of our community and ought to be preserved.”

Mr. Masaod also brilliantly deflected my questions about hostilities between Fateh and Hamas. “This is political territory,” he replied. “Repeat after me: Hummus! Beans! My answer is that our life is hummus and beans!...I have friends in Hamas and friends in Fateh, so if I go outside my house, I will be a hypocrite. It’s better for me to sit here talking with you.”

In reality, Mr. Masaod often ventures outside his home and invariably attracts a crowd of joking-seeking fans from all political backgrounds, “which unfortunately makes [him] very late to appointments.” His local stardom earned him a role in a few episodes of the French-German television series, “Gaza-Sderot.” The show features stories of daily life and survival in both Gaza and Sderot, an Israeli city regularly hit by rockets from Gaza. In one of a dozen or so rare moments of seriousness, Mr. Masaod told me that the people of Sderot “are suffering like we are suffering.”

Mr. Masaod has long dreamed of studying music and comedy outside of Gaza, but he’s never been able to afford the opportunity, and no music schools or theatres exist in Gaza. However, he says Gaza doesn’t really need a theatre because “our lives are one big comedy play. The only problem is that the director of the play is dragging his feet. Tell me, why won’t this director finish his production?”

In one episode for the “Israel-Sderot” television program, Mr. Masoud made an unflattering joke about Hamas, but the government has respected his right to free speech. He recalled, “Hamas said, ‘We are democratic. You can say whatever you want.’ They might blame me, but I have a good relationship with them. I like to tell political jokes, but in an indirect, twisting way….I won’t be shamed by anyone. Because I’m a joker, everyone knows about me, so they can take it in a comical way.”

Our interview ended on a serious note. “I deal with people as patients—as people who are sick, but are good and kind people,” he said. “They want to laugh. They need to laugh….What the Israeli government doesn’t understand is that this is a country full of psychological problems. The sign at Erez [border crossing] shouldn’t say ‘Welcome to Gaza.’ It should say ‘Mental Health Hospital.’ I think we should all walk around like infirmed people so that Israel will be more sympathetic with us.”

Bitter Post-Civil War Hostilities Between Fateh and Hamas

2010-04-26T05:35:00.000-07:00

Most of the people I've interviewed thus far have been communist party or Fateh party members (although I recently arranged interviews with two high-ranking Hamas officials) and most of my research has focused on humanitarian issues seemingly unrelated to Palestinian internal conflicts. However, the enmity and distrust between some Fateh and Hamas members has frequently colored my interactions and taken my research in surprising directions.

For example, I've been working on an article about Gazans unable to get medical treatment abroad because they are waiting for Israeli security clearance. Ehab Al-Afifi, an employee at the Fateh-controlled Ministry of Health, joined my interview with the health minister and volunteered that it “wasn't just Israel that prevented people from receiving treatment.” Hamas, he said, also barred sick people from leaving Gaza. He claimed that Hamas security recently forbad a nine-year-old relative of his named Maysa Al-Afifi from getting eye surgery in Egypt because her father was a former Fateh intelligence officer.

Believing I’d stumbled upon an explosive and heartbreaking story, I raced down to Rafah to visit this adorable girl (pictured on the right) and discovered that Mr. Al-Afifi had exaggerated. Maysa requires cosmetic eye surgery and could have cleared Hamas security if she crossed the border with her mother, aunt, or grandfather— but not her father, who demanded to travel with her. After mediation from human rights organizations, Hamas recently gave Maryam and her father permission to enter Egypt. The two plan to travel to Egypt as soon as the Gaza-Egypt border reopens.

I encountered another unexpected flashpoint of Hamas-Fateh hostilities as I researched an article about Israel's policy of deporting West Bank residents who hold Gaza-issued IDs. Two days ago, I interviewed Ahmed Sabah (pictured on the right), a former Fateh soldier convicted of throwing grenades and planting bombs against Israeli troops. After serving nine years in an Israeli prison, Mr. Sabah was released last week.

Mr. Sabah's feeling of “happiness like no other happiness” changed to “deep sadness” when he learned that, instead of sending him to reside with his wife and son in the West Bank city of Tulkarem, Israel would send him to Gaza, where he has no immediate relatives. (Mr. Sabah's father is deceased, and his mother, siblings, aunts, uncles and cousins are refugees in Jordan.) While his Palestinian ID was issued when he entered Gaza as a soldier in 1994, his place of residence had always been the West Bank. For the past week, Mr. Sabah has spent the daylight hours under a canopy tent next to the Hamas border checkpoint in an effort to draw media attention to his situation. He and his family in the West Bank have been widely interviewed on Arab television networks.

I expected that the issue of forced deportations would encourage unity between Hamas and Fateh, but disputes had apparently erupted over the location and precise purpose of Mr. Sabah's protest tent. Jamal Abaid, a Fateh leader in northern Gaza who has been repeatedly jailed by Hamas, told me that the Fateh party had originally requested to erect a much larger tent for Mr. Sabah in the Jabalia refugee camp. Mr. Abaid argued that the tent in Jabalia would have made it easy for Palestinians from all political parties to welcome Mr. Sabah to Gaza and protest his deportation. The request was rejected by the Hamas government, which has banned political party demonstrations for alleged security reasons.

Hamas instead allowed Mr. Sabah and his Fateh comrades to pitch their tent next to the Hamas border checkpoint, which is far away from a city center. Some posters beside the tent condemned Israeli deportations, but others contained slogans and pictures promoting Fateh. Still other posters promoted the communist party (the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine). But not a single poster promoted Hamas.

Unarmed Female Protester is Lucky to be Alive

2010-04-24T09:40:00.001-07:00

I’ve already blogged extensively about the proliferating, Bil’in-inspired demonstrations against the expansion of the buffer zone from 300 meters to 800 meters. This expansion has meant the further destruction of homes and farmland in border regions across Gaza. In light of today’s news, I’m writing yet another blog post on this topic, as it seems only a matter of time before one of the protesters gets killed.

This morning, Israeli troops shot a female 22-year-old protester in the lower abdomen. Hind Al-Akra (pictured above with her aunt) was participating in a demonstration near the Maghassi refugee camp that included about 150 people. Saber Zaaneen, the organizer of the Local Initiative Against the Buffer Zone, leads most of the demonstrations, which now occur five days per week in different locations around Gaza. However, Mr. Zaaneen was not present at this particular demonstration. He called me upon hearing the news of the shootings, and I then jumped in a taxi to Al-Aqsa Hospital in Deir Bala.

I visited Hind in a sparse hospital room where almost a dozen female relatives had gathered by her bedside. Luckily, the bullet did not hit any organs or cause any internal bleeding. Her doctors described her condition as “stable.” I didn’t ask Hind any questions, but she volunteered in a dazed state of mind that “Israeli troops just open fired on the crowd.”

Doctor Taysir Mummar said that Hind will undergo surgery to remove a piece of shrapnel from the muscle in her abdomen. (The picture on the right shows Dr. Mummar pointing to the shrapnel in the xray.) He emphasized that Hind was shot by “a type of bullet that explodes on impact” and is therefore “more deadly” than ordinary bullets.

At the same hospital, I briefly met the two other demonstrators who were shot today: a 28-year-old ISM activist from Malta named Bianca Zimmit and an 18-year-old Palestinian boy named Nidal Al Naji (pictured below). Both Bianca and Nidal were shot in the muscles of their thighs, do not have any broken bones, and have been released from the hospital.

An IDF official told Army Radio this afternoon that troops had first fired into the air and then fired toward the lower part of people’s bodies after protesters refused to disperse. The IDF has long contended that allowing Palestinians to enter the buffer zone endangers Israeli soldiers because militants sometimes use the area to plant explosives for ambushes on Israeli troops.

Protest leader Saber Zaaneen has grown increasingly concerned about demonstrators’ safety. Three others were shot in their legs last week. At a Tuesday demonstration that I observed near Beit Lahia, Mr. Zaaneen instructed activists to plant their Palestinian flags about 300 meters from the border instead of proceeding any closer. Israeli troops then fired warning shots that did not hit anyone. The video below, which documentary filmmaker Maurice Jacobsen and I produced for New Matilda, tells the story of this earlier demonstration.

Saber Zaaneen: Leader of Gaza's Non-Violent Protests from Maurice Jacobsen in Gaza on Vimeo.

'The details are usually more important than the general idea'

2010-04-22T10:34:00.000-07:00

It’s been a busy week of networking and chasing after three different stories, which I'll write more about later. I’ve collaborated with a 66-year-old American documentary filmmaker named Maurice Jacobsen on one story about the non-violent protest movement, a subject that I blogged about two weeks ago. The combined video and print piece just published in New Matilda.

I’ve also met with Palestinian reporters who understand the complicated social and political issues in Gaza far better than foreigners like me. One of these journalists, 25-year-old Hamza Buhaisi (pictured on the right), has written about 40 Arabic investigative articles for Elaph and Al-Watan during his three years of work as a freelancer. He’s also co-produced three videos, including a 25-minute English language documentary called “To Be” that chronicles the work of Gaza's foreign activists. The film ends with the dramatic story of an 18-year-old Palestinian who was killed by Israeli border patrol in April of 2009 while trying to escape from Gaza. After the man’s body was left to rot for 54 days and the International Red Cross declined to retrieve it, foreign and Palestinian activists dodged Israeli gunfire to find the corpse.

In addition to his courageous coverage of the Gaza War and his many articles on the devastating ripple effects of the continued Israeli blockade, Hamza has reported on sensitive internal Palestinian issues. In one article, Hamza investigated a vague Hamas press release claiming that a man had been "martyred" in "resistance operations" far away from the Israeli border. Hamza discovered that the man had in fact died while digging a secret tunnel that collapsed on top of him. The tunnel, which was subsequently destroyed, was intended to go from one home to another. Some Fateh members suspected that Hamas planned to use the tunnel for escapes and surprise attacks in the event of another civil war. The Hamas government claimed the tunnel was being dug in preparation for another Israeli invasion.

Hamza’s articles often raise questions about Hamas policies and military actions, and on some occasions the de-facto government has demanded to see the articles before they print. However, Hamas has not censured the content of Hamza's articles or blocked their publication. Hamza insists that he doesn’t practice journalism to propel a political agenda, but rather to "defend and protect people in an indirect way" by exposing the truth. “I started working in investigative journalism after the [2007] civil war, not before,” he said. “So the government I’m investigating is Hamas. How can I do reports about Fateh? They are in the West Bank now. I won’t do articles by phone. I need to see things with my own eyes.”

Two new Arabic articles from Hamza are currently in the works. The first concerns the story of an alleged Palestinian couple currently imprisoned in Gaza. Rumor has it that the man and woman were jailed as punishment for their suspected adulterous relationship and / or to protect the woman from “honor killers” in her own family. The second article explores the backgrounds and ideologies of young men recently recruited by the Salafis, an Al-Qaeda-affiliated militant group whose members have been killed and repressed by Hamas security. The Salafis reject Hamas’s decision to temporarily stop firing crude rockets into Israeli cities and condemn Hamas for not imposing Islamic Sharia law.

At his family home in the city of Deir Bala, Hamza recently hosted me and six Palestinian journalists for a delicious meal and a lively philosophical discussion (see picture). Hamza is spearheading an effort to organize events and raise funds for the new Gaza chapter of a Morocco-based young journalists' association, which he hopes will help empower and train Gazan freelancers. He criticizes major news networks that produce “general stories but don’t focus on the details. And the details are usually more important than the general idea.”

Gaza's Grassroots Human Rights 'Hoots'

2010-04-16T02:54:00.000-07:00

My article about Gaza's first ever demonstration against child labor in the Gaza-Egypt smuggling tunnels published Friday morning. Please follow this link to my article, as I won't re-report the story on my blog.

Youth center volunteer Anees Mansour prepared banners and placards for Thursday's demonstration and helped corral the energetic youngsters. Anees recently taught me a new Arabic expression. A hoot, which literally translates as “whale,” is a person who rises above obstacles to make stuff happen. I’ve met many hoots during my few weeks in Gaza.

One such hoot, demonstration co-organizer Eman Abu Quta, works as a social worker at a health clinic that treats the epidemic of post-traumatic stress among children and adults in Gaza. Two weeks ago, I attended one of the educational workshops that Eman leads for Rafah women (see picture above). “What is the meaning of trauma?” Eman asked at the start of the workshop. The women then shared horrific stories from the war as they brainstormed their surface level symptoms: startling easily, panicking at the sound of an ambulance or airplane, enduring frequent nightmares and flashbacks, and feeling generally empty, depressed and hopeless. “Everyone in Gaza needs trauma therapy, including me,” Eman said afterwards.

Twenty-four-year-old hoot Ahmed Hammad (see picture on right) sparked the ideas for the rubble workers story and the sewage story last week and tirelessly helped me arrange interviews. Ahmed conducts needs assessments for a French NGO that provides food and medical support to dispossessed Palestinian families, some of whom are residing in tents. He lives in Beit Hanoun, a border town of about 33,000 people where Hamas and Islamic Jihad militants have launched thousands of crude, unguided rockets towards the Israeli city of Sderot four miles away. Israeli bulldozers have indiscriminately razed Beit Hanoun’s once-prosperous farms to prevent militants from hiding among tall crops. The Israeli military has killed many innocents in Beit Hanoun; civilians often become collateral damage in bomb strikes or get wrongly targeted on suspicion of being rocket launchers.

Three of these civilian victims were Ahmed’s close friends. On Feb. 28, 2008, Ahmed walked out towards an abandoned farm hut to hang out and smoke water pipes with Muhammad Hassanain, Ibrahim Abu Jarrad, and Muhammad al-Zaniin. Moments later, he watched in horror as an Israeli missile strike tore his friends’ bodies to shreds. Ahmed suffers many of the same symptoms as the women at Eman’s trauma workshops, including a phobia of wide, open places that were once his emotional refuge. “I feel really ashamed sometimes for being sad, for needing help,” he said. “I feel sometimes that I’m really finished, but I still have some power inside me for life. All of my hopes now are about going to the United States to study journalism, and then coming back and helping my people.”

Despite the horrors he’s witnessed, Ahmed remains committed to non-violence and Israeli-Palestinian co-existence. He fondly recalls his experience ten years ago at Seeds of Peace, a dialogue camp based in Maine. In 2005, when his local imam condemned participation in Seeds of Peace as “collaboration and normalization with the enemy,” Ahmed held his ground. He told community members he felt proud to have educated Israelis and Americans about Palestinian suffering and that some Israeli participants had refused to serve in the army. “Everyone in Beit Hanoun knows I did Seeds of Peace,” he said. “I don’t feel in danger [to tell people] because I believe in myself….I will keep saying for my whole life that if I didn’t have this experience at Seeds of Peace, I wouldn’t be the person who you’re seeing now. It was my first window to the outside world and taught me how to listen, talk, be a leader and a representative for my homeland.”

On my way back from the demonstration in Rafah yesterday, I met more hoots when I visited the Al Dameer Center for Human Rights seeking statistics on those killed or injured in tunnel accidents. Inadvertently, my arrival around 3 p.m. interrupted an emergency meeting of five major human rights NGOs in Gaza. Typically, these NGOs document human rights tragedies suffered as a result of the Israeli blockade of Gaza, the Israeli occupation of the West Bank or Israeli military strikes, but Hamas had just carried out its first two formal executions since seizing control of Gaza in 2007. “Hamas is creating much more work for us,” Al Dameer General Director Khaleel Abu Shammala said as he exited the meeting to speak with me.

On the Wednesday night before, Hamas officials had called the families of two suspected Israeli collaborators and ominously advised them to visit their sons in prison. Shortly after 8 a.m. Thursday morning, one of Al Dameer’s field workers, 30-year-old Ali Shaqqura, had received a frantic phone call from one of the family members. Hamas had just informed the family of their son’s pre-dawn execution by firing squad and instructed them to come to a Gaza City hospital at 9 a.m. to view the body. Mr. Shaqqura notified his superiors, then hurried to the hospital. “The police took my bag, pushed me and talked to me in a very harsh and brutal way,” Mr. Shaqqura said, taking deep breaths as he spoke. “But this is my duty and I must do it. I briefly talked with the families, and then the police forced me to leave the hospital.”

The emergency meeting of hoots from five human rights groups Thursday afternoon yielded a carefully worded joint statement condemning the two executions. "It is inhumane and humiliating and cannot achieve any rehabilitation,” the statement said, “and there is no chance for those punished to regain a place in the community.”

Thank You Blogosphere!

2010-04-15T05:38:00.001-07:00

As a graduate student at Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism, my professors often emphasized the power of online social networking. The message didn’t really register until now.

On Tuesday, I sent out an email to friends and family updating them on my experiences in Gaza and expressing frustrations about the difficulties of getting published as a freelancer, particularly when stories are time-sensitive. Twice now, I’ve covered breaking news stories (the journalistic background of the bombed cheese factory owner, the connection between electric blackouts and sewage tsunamis) and not been able to find a publisher before the news got stale. I’ve also needed to connect with a broader network of news agencies, so that I’m not putting all my eggs in a few baskets.

The Ashley fan club received my email, took pity and started promoting my blog on their blogs. An especially generous and helpful endorsement came from Rabbi Brant Rosen. Somehow, word got around to New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof, who plugged me on Twitter and Facebook. On Wednesday morning, I woke up to encouraging emails from random readers and three editors at alternative news sites. I sent a thank you email to Mr. Kristof, who immediately replied, “More power to you!” All day, I couldn’t wipe the goofy grin off my face. I hope that my continued work on this blog will honor Mr. Kristof’s support, and I appreciate the feedback and questions from everyone who’s taken an interest.

One of the emails I received Wednesday morning came from an editor at an Australian news analysis site called New Matilda inviting me to submit articles. Today I attended Rafah’s first ever demonstration against child labor in the Gaza-Egypt smuggling tunnels and wrote an article for New Matilda about the issue. This article will likely publish on Friday or Saturday. Meanwhile, my article about the Hamas fees imposed on the rubble workers has published in Global Post and Huffington Post. So thank you blogosphere, and thank you especially to Mr. Kristof!

A Gazan Economic Analyst Who Openly Criticizes Hamas

2010-04-13T02:42:00.000-07:00

Global Post is considering running an article from me about the new Hamas fees imposed on Gazan rubble workers, a subject that I blogged about last week. To get a deeper understanding of the larger story, I met with leaders at the Hamas Ministry of Economics, who said that the fees were reasonable and consistent with their longstanding policy of charging people for taking stones and metals from destroyed buildings. I also met with Omar Shaban, a prominent Gazan economic analyst who said that Hamas was facing a “financial crisis” and imposing new fees in various sectors of the economy in an effort to support its “bloated bureaucracy.”

When I went searching for a Gazan economic analyst, no less than four journalists had advised me to meet with Mr. Shaban, who holds an encyclopedic knowledge of the issues and speaks in a refreshingly blunt and unguarded manner. As I waited to meet with Mr. Shaban, one of his assistants (a young man in his mid-20s whose name, “Jihad,” does not at all reflect his political views) compared the exodus of well-educated Palestinians out of Gaza to the exodus of Cubans who opposed Fidel Castro. “You can’t even check the internet in Cuba without government censorship,” he said. “That’s where Gaza is headed.” Jihad told me that he desperately wanted to study in the United States, but was recently rejected in his application for a visa. Shortly thereafter, Mr. Shaban arrived. “Jihad is not married,” he joked.

As it happens, Mr. Shaban worked as a teenager in the textile and clothing factories at the Erez Industrial Zone. (The factories were demolished and abandoned as part of Israel’s 2005 unilateral disengagement, and the Hamas fees imposed on the rubble scavenging industry at Erez are the subject of my article.) Shaban shook his head as he recalled how Erez used to be “a vibrant area, with restaurants and cafes. It was a place where Israelis and Palestinians made a partnership.”

After Mr. Shaban shared his views on the new Hamas fees at Erez, he and I spoke informally about his personal background and the general situation in Gaza. Mr. Shaban worked for the United Nations and for international development agencies, then founded PalThink in 2007. His “think and do” tank receives most of its funding from Swiss organizations and produces independent reports on the political and economic situation in Gaza.

When I told Mr. Shaban of my plans to meet with a youth debate group called “Wake Up,” Mr. Shaban smiled sadly. “Gaza underneath is very dynamic,” he said. “There are thousands of these sorts of youth initiatives. The youth of Gaza are very stubborn. They feel that they have to do something, which poses a real threat for Hamas. [The youth] deserve much better than this.” He also commented that he thinks current Israeli and American policy of refusing to negotiate with Hamas “is only fueling the extremists.”

Mr. Shaban and his wife have two sons ages 17 and 12, both of whom have lived all their lives in Gaza. They’ve endured the trauma of the 2007 civil war between Hamas and Fatah and last year’s Gaza War, which claimed the lives of about 1400 Gazans and 13 Israelis. Five years ago, Mr. Shaban brought his son Nour, who was seven at the time, on business trip to Israel. Before this experience, Nour had never seen an Israeli soldier up close. At the Erez border crossing into Israel, the seven-year-old innocently tried to touch a female soldier. When asked why he did this, he replied, “I wanted to see if she was human or not.” Later that day, the boy joined his father for a meeting with an Israeli journalist. “How can he be Israeli?” Nour asked. “Where’s his gun?”

A Growing Risk for a Repeat Sewage Tsunami

2010-04-10T11:17:00.001-07:00

Most of the Gaza Strip went without electricity for 16 hours today as fuel shortages and alleged internal Palestinian political disputes caused Gaza’s only electric company to shut down completely. If the fuel and electric crisis is not resolved soon, it could spark wide-ranging humanitarian problems across Gaza. One site of particular concern is the Al-Masheya village of 10,000 people, located a quarter mile downhill from the Beit Lahiya Waste Water Treatment Plant (pictured above).

Typically, the sewage water at this plant remains in cement-reinforced "lagoons." However, the plant's 18-foot-deep emergency sand pits are now filling with raw sewage for the first time in almost two years as a result of the electric and fuel shortages. They could easily collapse if they reach capacity.

Three years ago, the collapse of a now-abandoned cesspool at this same plant unleashed an 8 million-gallon sewage tsunami that killed three women and two toddlers in the adjacent village of Al-Nasser. Following the tragedy, the Palestinian Water Authority installed new infrastructure that made it possible to quickly pump large quantities of the plant’s treated sewage to filtration facilities in other parts of Gaza. This negated the need for the dangerous cesspools, which were dismantled or reserved for only emergency overflow.

For the past week, an average of 2 million gallons of sewage water per day has poured from the plant’s cement-reinforced sewage treatment lagoons into two of the three overflow cesspools. As a result of yesterday’s electric blackout, 3.5 million gallons of untreated sewage was redirected to the cesspools in a single day, according to plant operators. Water levels appear to be about three feet high in some places. The third and largest cesspool, which contained more than 660 million gallons of treated sewage before it was drained in August of 2009, remains empty.

Farid Ashour, a sewage management executive, seemed thrilled to have a journalist interested in this subject. He met me within an hour of my inquiry and gave me a tour of the facility to make sure I fully understood the situation. (The picture on the right shows Mr. Ashoud standing beside the second cesspool that is beginning to fill with water. Behind him is the village of Al-Masheya.)

As I covered my nose and tried not to inhale too much sewage-filled air, Mr. Ashour pointed to the third cesspool. “In two or three months, I could once again have [14 feet] high of sewage here,” he said. “If we return to this situation, it will be a catastrophe for the Al-Masheya village. This will be worse than the previous situation, because this is raw sewage.”

Multiple related factors have contributed to this looming crisis. First, the machines that treat the sewage cannot operate without electricity. Moreover, the sewage cannot be pumped to final filtration facilities in other parts of Gaza unless it has reached a certain “quality” level—a process that takes many hours. Without electricity, the water treatment lagoons sit idle and fill to capacity, forcing operators to redirect some sewage into the overflow cesspools. Once the sewage water enters these cesspools, it is difficult and costly to remove.

While the plant contains backup electric generators, these often break and require spare parts that are difficult to import under the Israeli blockade. Additionally, the generators cannot operate without fuel. Under their contract with the Palestinian Authority and the World Bank, plant operators are not permitted to purchase widely available black market fuel that is smuggled into Gaza through tunnels from Egypt.

“[Our contract] is to buy the fuel from the Israeli side,” Ashour explained. “For the last two months, the Israeli side did not allow our fuel to enter Gaza. Once they allow the fuel to enter Gaza, the problem immediately will be solved.” Ashour also mentioned an “easily solvable internal Palestinian issue” that has affected fuel contracts between the World Bank and the local Palestinian authorities.

Meanwhile, the putrid odors emitted from the treatment lagoons are a telling sign that sewage water is not being properly cleaned. On April 10, the odors reached the entrance to the Balsam Hospital, located one half mile uphill from the treatment plant in the opposite direction from Al-Masheya village.

A groundskeeper with the unenviable job of monitoring the sewage plant’s operations and watching out for wayward children, explained matter-of-factly, “When there is electricity, the smell is not bad. When there is no electricity, the smell starts spreading.”

The Desperate Option of Tunnel Traveling for Medical Treatment

2010-04-08T11:47:00.001-07:00

I met today with a soft-spoken village man named Abu Ala’a (see picture) who is suffering from a serious but treatable spinal condition which is causing him to slowly loose sensations in his limbs. He walks with a limp and can barely feel his left leg. His condition has reached a critical point, and if does not get emergency surgery within the month, he could suffer permanent paralysis, according to his doctor. The Gazan health ministry has requested permission from the Israeli, Egyptian and Jordanian authorities to have him treated abroad, because doctors in Gaza do not have the skills and equipment necessary for the delicate and dangerous operation.

Abu Ala’a wanted me to print his story in an Israeli newspaper because he hoped Israeli civilians might read my article and press the Israeli government to grant him a medical visa. He’s also considering one final, desperate option. “If there’s no other way, I’ll go through the tunnels,” he said, looking at the ground. “I know it’s dangerous, but not more dangerous than the danger of being disabled for the rest of my life.”

The man’s doctor, a neurosurgeon named Basil Baker, said that while “God only knows when it’ll be too late,” he was hopeful that Abu Ala’a would get permission to have medical treatment in Israel. “Some get medical visas in a month and some take longer,” he said. “Some go to the border and get turned away. If Abu Ala’a’s relatives have been involved in clashes with the Israelis, he might have to pay the bill or not get through at all.”

This story reminded me of a mother and father I met in Rafah ten days ago who had faced a similarly heart-wrenching dilemma. Their seven-year-old son Yousef had burst through the door one day with blood gushing from his left eye. A playmate had lobbed a small rock, which struck Yousef directly in his pupil. A doctor at a local clinic stopped the bleeding, but claimed there was nothing more he could do. Yousef’s father was unconvinced and said he “wanted to give hope to [his] son to [be able] to see. The equipment, doctors and treatments are better in Egypt.”

Only two days after the injury occurred in the fall of 2009, Yousef’s mother carried him under the Egyptian border through a 4-foot-wide tunnel owned by a family friend. Her husband encouraged her to go, figuring that women and children are less likely to be jailed by the Egyptian police. She reasoned that permits to get medical treatment in Israel or Egypt were difficult to obtain and there wasn’t time to try. Yousef’s mother told me she “wasn’t thinking about the fear or the danger” as she crawled through the tunnels because she was “only thinking about [her] son,” who cried the entire 15-minute trek through the tunnel.

While most tunnel owners charge about $2000 to smuggle a person in one direction, Yousef and his mom traveled for free. They managed to evade the Egyptian police, but doctors at the Egyptian hospital could not cure him. The giggly seven-year-old still roughhouses with his friends, but sees only from his right eye.

The Leader of Gaza's New Wave of Bil'in-Inspired Demonstrations

2010-04-06T09:33:00.001-07:00

In August of last year, I observed the weekly protest in Bi’lin, a West Bank village where the security fence under construction by Israel separates farmers from their land. As they had every Friday for more than three years, Palestinians, left-wing Israelis and international activists marched towards the fence. Kids at the front of the group threw stones at the Israeli tanks, who replied with tear gas, skunk canons and rubber bullets. It was a sobering and unpleasant experience, but I never feared for my life.

Bil’in is one of the few places in the Palestinian territories where protesters have won victories in the Israeli courts. In September of 2007, the Israeli Supreme Court decided that the wall created “undue hardship” in Bil’in and must be rerouted. The IDF began carrying out the court’s demands last month, but declared Bil’in a “closed military zone” and forbad internationals from entering Bil’in on Fridays.

Today I observed a Bil’in-inspired demonstration the buffer zone near Beit Lahiya—but instead of skunk canons and tear gas, Israeli troops immediately fired live ammunition to disperse the 100 or so Palestinians and ISM activists. No one was injured and the gunfire was aimed at the ground, but it was a terrifying experience. Protests like this have happened every week for the past two months and are attracting a growing number of participants from across Gaza.

I shared lunch with the organizer of the protests, Saber Al-Zaaneen, his wife and three young children. Mr. Zaaneen, a self-declared “left-winger” chose a gigantic picture of Che Guevara as the central decoration in his living room. (Most Gazans chose a picture of Yasser Arafat or Sheik Ahmed Yassin, the quadriplegic founder of Hamas.) He said he admired Guevara for “starting an international revolution against oppression.”

As we sat down, Mr. Zaaneen extended his hand. “You are Israeli. I am Palestinian,” he began. “No,” I interrupted, a bit startled and confused. “I am not Israeli. I am American.” He smiled kindly. “This is just an example. I want to have you in my house to drink tea. I want us both to say to our governments that we can live together in peace.”

After this awkward introduction, Mr. Zaaneen shared some of his life history. He studied sociology at the Islamic University of Gaza, has never traveled outside Gaza, and was a Fateh police officer before Hamas seized control of Gaza in 2007. He has hosted Israeli journalist Amira Hass in his home and corresponds with left-wing Israeli parliamentarians. Mr. Zaaneen is among about 100,000 former Fateh police officers who still receive their salaries from the Fateh government in Ramallah, even though he cannot work as a police officer under Hamas rule.

In July of 2008, Apache helicopters dropped fliers (see picture) warning Palestinians that they were not permitted to go within 300 meters of the border. Mr. Zaaneen knew that Israeli soldiers had shot at people and destroyed farms and houses within one kilometer of the border. Feeling that Israel would continue encroaching unless Palestinians resisted, he began organizing non-violent direct actions in the buffer zones, such as accompanying farmers as they tended their fields and searching for bodies of Palestinians killed by Israeli troops and left to rot.

During and after the Gaza War, Mr. Zaaneen dropped his plans for larger-scale demonstrations. However, he was inspired by developments in Bil’in. “I wanted to experiment with that strategy in Gaza,” he said. “The strength of these demonstrations is that they attract international activists and journalists to see what’s really happening.”

On January 9 of this year, a new flier arrived from the Apache helicopters telling Palestinians not to go within 800 meters of the border. This reenergized Mr. Zaaneen because he “wanted to send a message to Israel that this is Palestinian land and the farmers are not leaving. They bring money only from working the soil.” He visited universities and community organizations, and ultimately rallied a broad base of support. The transportation expenses and equipment are funded by private individuals; he receives no money from Fateh or Hamas.

People of all political stripes are welcome at his demonstrations, which now occur five days per week at border areas across Gaza. He calls his organization the Local Initiative Against the Buffer Zone. Every demonstrator must not bring weapons and must commit to non-violence. “I don't resist because I want to die,” he said. “I resist because I want freedom, land, education, opportunities, no occupation. This is the message of our movement. We want the whole world to know why the Palestinian people resist.”

A Siege-Driven Scavenging Industry Under Heavy Hamas Taxation

2010-04-04T07:28:00.000-07:00

Yesterday, I visited the ruins of Israeli factories that once comprised the “Erez Industrial Zone.” These factories near the border once employed 4,000 Palestinians but were destroyed and abandoned as part of Israel’s 2005 unilateral disengagement plan. On this sweltering hot afternoon, about 200 Palestinians—many of them school-age boys— collected rocks and metal used in construction projects across Gaza. A month ago, more than a thousand Gazans were scavenging here, but business has declined partially as a result of taxes enforced by Hamas last month.

Fifteen-year-old rubble worker Mokhlis Al-Masri from Ashley Bates on Vimeo.

Here’s how it works: any Gazan willing to do backbreaking work within close range of Israeli snipers is welcome at Erez. Most bring a donkey, a cart, some tools, and plastic buckets. From 6 a.m. until 4 p.m., workers crawls through the underground skeletons of crumbling, unstable buildings seeking certain types of stones. If they get too close to the Israeli border, Israeli snipers fire warning shots in their direction and / or target their animals. During my three hours at Erez, I heard multiple gunshots, I saw a dead goat with a bullet wound, and I met two workers who said their donkeys were recently shot. One of these workers, 15-year-old Mokhlis Al-Masri, was working near the border a few weeks ago when Israeli troops raided the area and captured some of his friends, who are now in Israeli prisons.

In the late afternoon, Mokhlis and hundreds of others bring their buckets of rocks to an open area where middlemen and traders, including representatives from Gazan construction companies, come to purchases the rocks by the ton. The traders then transport the rocks in gigantic trucks to various locations across Gaza. Families and small businesses that can afford the expense use the rocks to make walls, roofs, patios, bricks and tiles.

While cement and other construction supplies banned under the Israeli blockade are smuggled into Gaza through tunnels (which, like Erez, have attracted desperate workers from across Gaza), rocks are generally too heavy and cumbersome to bring through the tunnels. Since the end of last year’s war, Gazans denied the supplies they need have scavenged metal and stone from destroyed buildings and used them to construct new homes. However, the Erez site is unusual in that, over a period of only six months since construction companies began seeking its rocks, it has quickly attracted thousands of workers.

In response, cash-strapped Hamas sealed off the area last month and declared it a “closed economic zone” subject to government taxation. The only way to enter is by foot or via dirt roads controlled by Hamas, although some have used donkey paths to evade taxation of 30 shekels (about $8) per ton of rocks. Most workers collect about one ton per day and are paid 70-90 shekels per ton. One trader told me, “The government is living off the blood of the people. This area had a good income for a huge number of workers who did not have jobs. Now we have almost no profits.”

Business has also declined recently on rumors that the United Nations might begin constructing homes across Gaza. These rumors started two weeks ago after UNRWA received permission from the Israeli government to build 150 new homes in Khan Younis. This pilot project relies on construction materials from outside Gaza, and is contingent on Hamas not receiving any supplies or financial benefit. However, UNRWA has declared no plans for widespread home constructions. Middlemen believe the rumor was most likely started by major construction companies seeking to drive down the price of stones at Erez.

If rocks and metals are ever allowed into Gaza, it would mean a loss of income for the workers at Erez, but it would be great news for the wider population. Gazan construction companies are buying second-rate stones and metals from Erez and from destroyed buildings across Gaza because they can’t get anything else. The same supplies from abroad would be cheaper and better quality, would not risk the lives of Gazan children, and would facilitate Gaza’s desperately needed reconstruction.

An uncanny role reversal for the owner of the bombed cheese factory

2010-04-02T13:07:00.000-07:00

Last night, Israeli bombs struck 13 sites across Gaza. One of the sites, a cheese factory in Gaza City, was already swarming with reporters by the time I arrived around 10am. It was impossible to imagine what this factory looked like yesterday—only contorted metal, heaps of rubble and buckets of rotting cheese remained.

Most people I talked to in Gaza were surprised that the bombings had not come sooner. The bombings were in retaliation for recent Qassam rockets attacks and for the killing of two Israeli soldiers in Khan Younis last Friday. Israel alleges that the factory stored or manufactured weapons, while the factory owner claims it was used only to make cheese and yoghurt. I saw no signs of any weapons, but there's no way to know. The same factory had been rebuilt after Israel destroyed it during last year’s Gaza War.

Most of the journalists at the scene were video journalists from Arab news networks, and we all wanted to interview factory owner Motasem Dalloul. When it was my turn, Mr. Dalloul and I sat down in the shade away from the crowd. I was struck by his calm, almost jovial, demeanor as he described his "very nightmarish" experience. Neighbors and relatives approached frequently to say “thank God for your safety.” He looked at me intently and said “this is our life” many times during our 30 minute conversation.

Mr. Dalloul’s family was sleeping in their home adjacent to the factory and awoke to the boom of the explosion. Shards of rock and metal broke through his windows, but did not injure his wife or seven screaming children. Mr. Dalloul shared the whole story in English. As I asked him more about his background, I was surprised to learn that he is a widely-published freelance journalist for Al-Jazeera English, Ramattan News Agency and Islam Online. In an uncanny role reversal, his personal story was now making headlines.

Mr. Dalloul started making cheese by hand at age 17 in one of many stores owned by his father. At the same time, he earned a degree in English Literature from the Islamic University of Gaza. As his small business flourished, he hired 12 full-time employees and purchased automatic equipment. In 2006, his brothers took over supervision of the factory’s daily operations as he pursued a journalism career. “I felt that journalism can help the Palestinian cause,” he said, “but our cause has been taken by foreign journalists who are biased because their governments support the Israeli occupation.”

Over the last four years, Mr. Dalloul has published more than fifty English-language news articles on diverse topics, including: Gaza’s electric shortage, war trauma suffered by children, the plight of Palestinians seeking medical treatment abroad and the effects of raw sewage dumped into the Mediterranean Sea. Recently, he began teaching an Advanced Media Writing course at the Islamic University of Gaza.

Last fall, Mr. Dalloul received a student visa from the British government to complete an international journalism master’s degree at Westminster University. However, because the Gaza-Egypt border was closed, he couldn’t leave until January—more than three months after the program had started. On January 3 of this year, he flew from Cairo to London, where he was detained by immigration authorities at Heathrow Airport.

This first experience outside Gaza ended in disaster. “[The immigration authorities] told me that I won’t be able to enter the U.K. because I was too late,” he said. “I told them that I wasn’t the reason for being late. I was surprised that they didn’t know anything about the siege and about Gaza. The feeling that made me decide to study journalism was supported when I realized that these highly educated people don’t know anything about our cause.”

British authorities did not permit Mr. Dalloul to contact people he knew in the U.K., including the university admissions director who later “expressed his sad feelings about what happened.” Upon his return to Egypt, he was imprisoned for one week by the Egyptian police before the Gaza-Egypt border finally opened. He was accepted for this year’s journalism program at Westminster and is beginning the visa application process once again.

Mr. Dalloul insists that he has no allegiance to Fatah or Hamas, does not provide support to any armed groups and has never been arrested or charged with any crime. “My view about this conflict is that the Israelis must leave Palestine but I haven’t decided what means should be used to make them leave—peaceful ways or military resistance or going to the international community,” he said.

The Work of Western Activists in Gaza

2010-03-30T04:09:00.000-07:00

On March 30, western activists took part in a non-violent Palestinian demonstration against the buffer zone, the “no man’s land” between Gaza and Israel that Palestinians are forbidden to enter. They marched towards the border fence in the same area near Khan Younis where two Israeli soldiers had been shot and killed last Friday. Israeli troops then fired “warning shots,” according to the Israeli military.

While the situation was particularly unstable this week due to the recent deaths of the Israeli soldiers, incidents like these happen regularly, particularly in places where the buffer zones cut off Palestinian livelihoods. Fishermen, for example, are only allowed to fish within three nautical miles of the coast, where the catches are much smaller and often contaminated by sewage. The AP reported last month that despite its once-thriving fishing industry, Gaza has become “a net fish importer” as a result of the blockade. The same is true of Palestinian farmers, whose businesses have been devastated by the blockade.

One of the western activists at the March 30 demonstration was Vittorio Arrigoni, knicknamed "Vic", who visited my apartment for a three-hour coffee chat last Friday. Vic is a 35-year-old Italian activist from the International Solidarity Movement (ISM) who has lived in Gaza on and off over the last six years. He has twice been jailed and then deported by the Israeli Defense Forces; in 2008, Israeli soldiers put him on an El Al flight back to Italy wearing “smelly clothes and no shoes.” During Israel’s Operation Cast Lead last year, which Vic calls “the massacre,” he rode with ambulances to document horrific civilian injuries and deaths (see picture, taken by Vic). He reports that sixteen Gaza paramedics were killed in 22 days.

Vic has since published an Italian book about the war and is now working on a new book about the siege. He doesn’t speak much Arabic, but peppers his English with Arabic expressions; he taught me new words like taburah (Israeli gunboat) and muqawima (Palestinian fighters). During our conversation, Vic got a call from friends telling him that two Israeli soldiers had just been killed. The friend encouraged Vic to come to Khan Younis, but Vic declined because there were muqawima in the area. As a non-violent movement, ISM does not defend armed Palestinians—only civilians.

ISM is the same group to which 23-year-old American activist Rachel Corrie belonged when she was killed in 2003 by an Israeli bulldozer while seeking to stop a bulldozer from destroying a Palestinian home in Rafah. British activist Tom Hurndall, who was shot and killed by an Israeli sniper a couple of months after Rachel’s death, was also an ISM member. The soldier who shot Hurndall was convicted of manslaughter and sentenced to eight years in prison. This was the only time since 2000 that an Israeli soldier was convicted of any offence greater than negligence for the death of a civilian.

ISM currently has six volunteers in Gaza and most have entered in undisclosed ways. Vic entered with a flotilla organized by the Free Gaza Movement that set sail from Cyprus in August of 2008 and managed to get some its boats through the Israeli blockade. One boat was so severely damaged after it was rammed by a taburah that it was forced to dock in Lebanon and almost sank. Vic is anticipating the next “Free Gaza” flotilla will arrive next month carrying construction materials, medical aid supplies, journalists, more activists and possibly parliamentarians from European countries.

(Courtesy of Vittorio Arrigoni)

When the electricity went out and I placed my headlamp on the table as an improvised candle, Vic shared some videos that he’d personally filmed in the buffer zones. One showed an incident in which Vic dodged live gunfire and was cut by shards of broken glass as an Israeli water cannon broke the windows of a Gazan fishing boat cabin (see video). In another of Vic's videos, a deaf Palestinian farmer is shot in the leg by Israeli soldiers while tending to wheat fields near, but allegedly outside, the buffer zone.

Throughout our conversation, Vic inhaled deep puffs of smoke from his pipe as he recalled especially traumatic incidents, including: a Palestinian friend killed in Jabalia, Vic's near death by hypothermia in the Mediterranean Sea as an Israeli taburah tried to “kidnap” him (and ultimately did pull him from the water and arrest him), a bullet that whizzed by within millimeters of his ear, and the "life-changing trauma" of seeing “Gaza turned into Auschwitz” during Operation Cast Lead.

'I can't believe there are children here'

2010-03-30T01:37:00.000-07:00

In a Rafah English class full of rambunctious young boys, I met a scruffy 12-year-old who carries tiles, chips, soda and other commodities through the smuggling tunnels on most afternoons. (see picture) The boy said he was "a little scared" when he started last year but now he’s “used to it.” He boasted of his $20 per day salary and of the cigarettes he smoked with the Egyptians. He performed a song for the class that tunnel workers apparently sing as they exit in safety at the end of the day. The boy’s family “used to be poor” but “now they are middle class” because of their children’s work in the tunnels. The boy’s uncle was killed when a tunnel collapsed, and he knows of others who have been “martyred” when Israel bombed the tunnels.

Throughout my three days in Rafah, I’ve recalled a line in Rachel Corrie’s journals that she “[couldn’t] believe there are children here.” She was writing in the winter of 2003, when Rafah's children had already endured years of ongoing killings, sniper fire, and home demolitions. This was before Israel’s 2005 "Operation Rainbow" in Rafah and before last year's Gaza War, which claimed the lives of 13 Israelis and 1400 Palestinians, including more than 300 children. Rachel was also writing at a time when tunnels were hidden inside homes and used mainly for weapons smuggling--presumably before smugglers began to widely recruit children, whose nimble bodies could more easily crawl through the narrow passages.

The tunnel industry is now almost completely out in the open and children are sometimes recruited without permission from their parents. New tunnels are under construction as more and more desperate people risk their lives to get in on the profits. White tents covering the tunnel entrances are widely visible to everyone. It’s easy for journalists to interview tunnel owners or take photographs inside the tunnels (see picture). Some smugglers undoubtedly bring deadly weapons (explosives, guns, supplies for unguided Qassam rockets fired into Israel), but the majority bring food and commodities banned under the Israeli blockade of the Gaza Strip. The United Nations has called the tunnels “an economic lifeline.”

Since the child labor tragedy has already been widely reported, I’m attempting to come at the tunnel story from two different angles. For one article, I’ve interviewed women who crawled through the tunnels to seek medical treatment in Egyptian hospitals, to marry, or to go on the Islamic pilgrimage to Saudi Arabia; none of these women were willing to give their full names, fearing trouble with the Egyptian police. I’m also planning on covering an April 15 silent demonstration organized by Gazans against child labor in the tunnels; if possible, I’ll interview Hamas authorities about why they have not stepped in to stop child labor in the tunnels. Many in the tunnel industry admit that it’s wrong to employ children, but argue that the Israeli blockade has forced this tragic situation upon them.

First Day in War-Ravaged Rafah

2010-03-27T23:57:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I finally ventured outside the more privileged confines of Gaza City. For only $13, I took a 45 minute taxi ride down the coast to Rafah, a war-ravaged community where more than 170,000 homes have been demolished by the Israeli military since 2000. The city houses entrances to thousands of smuggling tunnels into Egypt, which mainly bring consumer goods forbidden under the Israeli blockade (food, cement, electric generators, batteries). They also bring weapons.

This was a sensitive time to be traveling to Rafah, since Gazans are expecting Israeli retaliation after militants killed two Israeli soldiers who had crossed the border into Khan Younis on Friday. On Friday night, Israeli tanks and armored bulldozers reentered Khan Younis, fought with militants, and then retreated. Most Palestinians had expected a much harsher Israeli military action, which could be yet to come. Areas along the border—particularly the smuggling tunnels in Rafah—are the most likely to get bombed. (Obviously, I'm not going near the tunnels during this period.)

As the taxi drove down the coast from Gaza City to Rafah, we passed the refugee camp of Deir Al-Balah, the city of Khan Younis, and then the city of Rafah. In all three places, the cartoon decorations outside the UNRWA schools (run by the UN and staffed primarily by Gazan teachers and administrators) were the only signs of color in otherwise gray and destitute landscapes. I saw hundred of destroyed homes and tent-like tin structures serving as temporary houses.

I spent my morning in Rafah observing activities at the Rachel Corrie Center, which was named in honor of the American activist who was killed by an Israeli bulldozer in 2003. An animated, assertive 23-year-old led an English class for 20 adorable little boys and held their attention throughout. A psychiatrist and a team of social workers met with parents of children with behavioral issues and academic difficulties. Every week, these counselors hold group therapy sessions for children suffering from post-traumatic stress. Often, they use art therapy (see picture) to draw out the kids’ emotions and help them try to process the horrors they’ve witnessed—dead bodies, Israeli bombings, gun fighting. Many children in Rafah startle easily and have phobias of airplanes. Bedwetting is common even among teenagers.

In the afternoon, I enjoyed a communal vegetarian lunch with the female family members of the English teacher. At the request of the Rachel Corrie Center managers, the teacher gave me hijab (a headscarf) to wear during my time in Rafah, which is a much more conservative community than Gaza City. Throughout the meal, curious neighbors and children came to visit and I got invited to a one-year-old’s birthday party.

One of the stories I’m considering writing from Rafah is about women who come through the smuggling tunnels to get married in Gaza. While the story of the smuggling tunnels-- particularly the tradegy of child labor in the tunnels-- has been widely covered in the media, the topic of people smuggling has not received as much attention. To my surprise, I was able to arrange an anonymous meeting with a tunnel owner within hours of inquiring about this issue. He met me in a shop filled with electric appliances smuggled from Egypt. It costs about $2000 to smuggle a person through the tunnels (some journalists have entered this way), but Palestinians and Egyptians often enter for free if they have relatives in the smuggling industry.

According to this tunnel owner, there were about 20 tunnels when he started five years ago and workers were paid $5000 to $6000 per day. Now, there are more than 1500 tunnels and workers are paid less than $30 per day. Tunnel workers used to come only from Rafah. Now desperate people (and children) from across Gaza are willing to risk their lives to earn some income. The underground wall being constructed by Egypt is likely to yield even deeper, more dangerous tunnels.

Impromptu Meetings and the Search for Stories

2010-03-26T01:18:00.000-07:00

So far, I've had private meetings with six business professionals—and only two of these meetings were scheduled. In Gaza and across the Arab world, planning tends to be more impromptu. For example, I met with the Gaza general manager of Jawwal (Gaza’s only mobile phone company), who then made a personal call to the general manager of Gaza’s only electric company.

Next thing I knew I was in a private car en route to visit the general manager of the electric company. While meeting with him, the mayor of Khan Younis popped in to discuss electric shortages in his governorate—so I made arrangements to meet with him next week. The electric company general manager also put me in touch with the Palestinian Businessmen’s Association, which by coincidence was holding its first craft exhibition since the blockade. So off I went to visit the exhibition.

The exhibition was funded in part by the World Bank and aimed to draw attention to the work of Palestinian mom and pop shops still practicing their trades despite the blockade. The most interesting handicrafts were those that turned war rubble into art: metal wreckage molded into elaborate house decorations (see picture), broken glass used to make colorful tiles, and uprooted olive trees carved into picture frames and lamps.

Tomorrow, I’m headed to Rafah and Khan Younis. In Rafah, I’ll meet with the friends of Rachel Corrie who I interviewed for my previous article and will see if these conversations yield any new story ideas. The big news in Rafah at the moment is that Israel bombed smuggling tunnels last week in response to a Kassam rocket attack that killed a farm worker in Israel. The rocket was not launched by Hamas, but by a more radical militant group that rivals Hamas. I won’t be covering this story because it’s been widely covered already, and I won’t be meeting with any militant groups.

In Khan Younis, I’m tentatively planning to research an article about the social and economic ripple effects of Gaza’s power shortages. (I was surprised to learn yesterday that, like most of the population, the electric company general manager gets no power in his home for eight hours per day.) I’m looking to meet with a Khan Younis family whose children were killed recently when a faulty electric generator smuggled from Egypt exploded. I’m also hoping to visit a sewage treatment plant that is forced to dump raw sewage into the sea when the electric generators fail.

Over the Great Wall of Israeli Bureaucracy and into Gaza Foreigner Housing

2010-03-24T11:57:00.000-07:00

At present, there are only two ways to enter Gaza: through the Erez checkpoint on the Israeli side, or the Rafah crossing on the Egyptian side. While IDF soldiers initially told me that my application to enter Gaza through Erez would take one week, it ultimately took more than five weeks (and almost daily phone calls) before the approval was finally granted.

While I waited for the Gaza permit, I was covering news stories from Israel and the West Bank. I tried to choose topics that were connected to Gaza in some way. For example, I wrote an article for Columbia Journalism Review about the degree to which journalists in Gaza felt safe and free to report. I also wrote an article for Global Post about Rachel Corrie, the American activist killed in 2003 by an Israeli bulldozer in Rafah, Gaza.

Upon learning that my visa was approved, I bee-lined it to the Erez checkpoint, a massive and virtually empty terminal with a maze of hallways and doors that lock behind you as you pass. No Palestinians and only handful of foreigners—all development workers—entered alongside me. It took less than an hour to get through security. I then walked one mile down a narrow open-air passageway with a cement sidewalk and fencing on either side. Bulldozers and cranes appeared to be leveling land nearby. At the end of this long passageway through the desert, I found five taxis that were waiting to drive people to the Hamas checkpoint a couple of miles away.

The Hamas checkpoint consists of a small office with some meeting rooms and is manned by police officers who check bags and passports. The police told me that foreigners are not permitted to stay in civilian homes without prior approval from the Hamas authorities. This derailed my plans to stay with Palestinian friends of friends in Gaza City. After about an hour of discussions in which I declined to stay at a hotel, my taxi was escorted by security to a row of seaside apartment buildings that house many foreigners, including journalists, development workers and activists. The police told me that I could visit families and travel as I wish, but my primary residence should be in an approved apartment building or hotel.

Luckily, an empty apartment was available, with a furnished living room to boot (see picture). The rent is only $350 per month, including internet, water and backup electric generators, which are a luxury in Gaza. My landlord divides his time between Gaza and Canada, where his children and grandchildren live. While I had hoped to have a more authentic and integrated community experience, I’m going to stay in this posh building and avoid drawing unnecessary attention to myself. I also don’t want to make any problems for this family that had planned on hosting me; I had a lovely visit with them yesterday, and I will continue to visit them.

Today I coffee chatted with Palestinians from various NGOs, went to the market, and visited the Islamic University of Gaza, where I made arrangements to sit in on history and English classes next week. Despite my bumpy landing yesterday, I feel quite safe and free to move about, and I’ve had no further interactions with the police. As I’ve found throughout the Arab world, people are warm, welcoming and eager to talk. However, the conflict with Israel and the ongoing blockade color every conversation— already, I’ve heard dozens of stories about loved ones killed, families separated, and lost dreams of seeking opportunities outside the “prison” of Gaza.