I’ve been trying to put into words how I felt visiting Gaza. For the most part, I feel that I’ve failed. Hebron, clashes, everyday life, those I can express with the written word. Gaza defies that. The contrasts are too stark. The brutal poverty is too painful. The arrogance of the wealthy too pronounced.
And frankly, I’m a little too lazy after putting up all my earlier entries.
How can you describe the pride a Gazan doctor employed by the United Nations displays when he shows you the X-Ray room at his clinic? How can you write the smell of open sewers in refugee camps when you barely know how to answer nature’s call without a bathroom? And if you can, then how do compare those things to the gravity of arrogance inherent in the high-rise apartment buildings and mansions built for Palestinian Authority ministers and officials? How do you express the magnitude of a few thousand Israeli settlers consuming 80% of Gaza’s water resources? How do you explain that just paying for water is a heavy financial burden to the million Palestinians who live in Gaza?
Only images can capture Gaza, and in that, I have also failed. My trip to Gaza lasted only a few hours, and my skills at capturing emotion in photos is negligible. But my language has failed me again and again over the last week as I tried to write about Gaza. So I’ll just use a few photos, and because of the paucity of decent shots, my subjects will be few.
Housing Construction
These makeshift, corrugated metal shacks are the homes of Bedouin. I’m not entirely sure how the Bedouin got to Gaza. Some were probably trapped in 1967 when Israel conquered Gaza and the Sinai. Perhaps some were trapped earlier and/or later by the simple difficulty of not having a passport.
The photo below is of a street in Jabaliyya refugee camp (est. 1948), home to 80,000 people and merely one of eight camps in the Gaza strip. The street here is new, created by order of Ariel Sharon in the 1980s. Sharon ordered bulldozers in and demolished an entire row of homes so that Israeli army jeeps could have quicker access. You can see the open sewers just up the street from the man on the left.
Compare this to the home of a certain Palestinian who is not a minister with the Palestinian Authority, and who definitely does NOT go by the name of Abu Mazen (Arafat’s successor designate). Of course, taking photos of Abu Mazen’s house is against the rules in Gaza (just like you can’t take photos of any Gaza police station or of Gaza security chief Dahlan’s new mansion currently under construction, or of Yasser Arafat’s guest house, or the beach nearby the guesthouse, or anything within three blocks of it), so I must point out again that, to the best of my knowledge, the house pictured here does not belong to Abu Mazen. I mean, I would never knowingly take a photo when it was prohibited. I just thought it was an attractive house.
And a bloody arrogant, conspicuous way to waste your money, especially when people are living without running water a few blocks away. Especially when you consider that Arab governments and Palestinian leaders have at times forced people to continue living in these squalid camps for selfish political reasons. Compassion does not seem to be a strong trait of politicians in this region, Arab, Israeli, Turkish, Iranian, or otherwise.
Lifting the Closure
A week or two ago, my sister asked me if the closure on the West Bank effected me. I think I detected a hint of astonishment when I admitted that I didn’t even realize there was a closure. With a foreign passport, I can go into Jerusalem all the time, to get money, to see movies, and most importantly, to get a pint of draft Guinness at Champs bar on Jaffa Street (conveniently located just a few blocks up from the Old City’s Jaffa Gate. Happy Hour lasts from 4-7 p.m., and Ari, the bartender and former tank-driver, will dish out all the Guinness you can drink for 9 NIS/pint. I highly recommend it. P.S.–Guinness and green olives is a stunning mix. A delicious if slightly unorthodox Israeli addition to Ireland’s finest).
When we arrived at the massive Erez checkpoint, there were well over 100 taxis crowded into the five lanes of pavement on the Palestinian side. The Israeli government recently lifted a closure on Gaza, allowing tens of thousands of Gazans to enter Israel to work. When we crossed to the other side of the checkpoint, there was an unending sea of humanity walking along the side of the checkpoint reserved for Palestinians. For an hour, we had watched crowds of Palestinian workers walking rapidly along this covered corridor. When we finally left Erez, there were over ten buses stuffed with Palestinians waiting to get into Erez.
The Young
Everywhere in Gaza were little children. In Ramallah, Tel Aviv, Paris or Princeton,
it’d be considered cute, though one might be slightly concered as to whether there were enough responsible parents around. In Gaza, these children were barefoot and wearing dirty clothes–probably all received via charity, and one of only two or three "fashion options" for the summer. These three and four year-olds were playing around open sewers, in empty lots littered with broken glass and rusty refuse.
The worst is that we have shirked our responsibility to these children because they’re "Palestinians" otherwise known as "terrorists." They grow up without hope because we have refused to recognize our complicity in causing their plight. What is our complicity, our guilt? We stood by, and did little if nothing to help. Fine we have our own problems, but so little can go so far here.