It is two and half years since I was last in Gaza and, returning home to Nazareth after a two day visit, choosing one “subject” for analysis seems like an impossible, even offensive task. So instead, I write to give some kind of overall picture for those who have not visited since the beginning of the Intifada. I write for all of you who, like me, have the fortune not to have to live in Gaza, who sat in horror watching the continuing bloody saga in Gaza from behind the safety of our TV screens.

Erez checkpoint looked exactly the same as when I last passed through, three months before the start of the Intifada. The narrow caged walkway that Palestinians must pass through is still there, but as an international I pass through the sanitized air-conditioned terminal. Of course few Gazans actually still have the permit to work in Israel, even if they are prepared to go through the excessive security checks. I just get a stamp on my visa, not to say I have been in another country, you understand, merely to pass a message to airport officials when I try to leave for England that I have been in a “terrorist zone.”

Over three thousand years ago, Gaza was one of five Philistine city-states, and the largest port in the empire. The junction between Africa and the Middle East, Gaza was for centuries a wealthy trading center on the caravan route between Egypt and Syria. Before the establishment of the Israeli state, a train line ran through Gaza, linking Beirut with Cairo. Today you can see the remains of the railway bridges long since abandoned in the wake of regional conflict.

I have a photo in my album of three young boys from Jabaliya refugee camp, July 2000. But we will not go there tonight, as tensions remain high in the wake of the revenge killing of a PA officer, one year after several Gazans were killed in a civil uprising suppressed by authorities. PA checkpoints dot the area, searching for the wanted man, now in hiding somewhere in Gaza. Later, we try to enter the driveway to view the vast “X-Files”-esque PA security building, but we are stopped at a checkpoint.

An exploration of tensions between the institution of the PA and Gazan society is beyond the scope of this writer, but for those who are interested, a good starting point would be the detailed, empathetic account of Amira Hass. Drinking the Sea at Gaza: Days and Nights in a Land Under Siege (New York, Owl Books, 1999), researched during two years living in pre-Intifada Gaza, details the 1990s rise of the PA and the collapse of Oslo. Israeli media regularly exploit tensions between the PA and society as an example of Palestinian incapability of self-rule. This book exposes the myth that Palestinians were ever given any freedom under Oslo to develop a truly democratic society to begin with. Clashes and unrest today are a direct result of the Israeli manipulation and control of the Palestinian Authority from day one of Oslo.

We were forced to take the coastal road to the town of Dir Al Balah, as the settlement of Netzarim has cut off the central road for Palestinians. “Don’t point,” said my host as we saw Netzarim outside the window. Apparently our internationally marked car was not enough to ensure that soldiers wouldn’t shoot from the settlement across the fields. The Netzarim junction achieved notoriety at the beginning of the Intifada, as it was here that Muhammad Al Durra was killed.

Gazans believe that there are no remaining settlers, and that Netzarim is maintained as a strategic military emplacement to divide the Strip, Khan Younis and Rafah in the south, from Gaza City in the north. It is difficult to obtain any figures, as Israel does not want it widely advertised that they are maintaining and building empty/semi-empty settlements. Statements from Israeli peace groups, who have greater access to such information than Palestinians, support such assumptions. The empty settlement in Netzarim certainly does the job in Gaza. We never made it to Khan Younis that day, fearful that the coastal road would close and we would be stuck on the other side.

Life goes on in Gaza. Waleed was getting married, so his brother came from university in Ramallah. He couldn’t, of course, take the 90-minute drive direct. He went by taxi to Amman, flew to Cairo, and then crossed the Sinai desert to get to Gaza. And at least he was lucky enough to get a permit to leave and reenter the country. Maha even managed to obtain a permit to go direct to Jerusalem for a two-day NGO capacity building training. She wasn’t allowed to stay the night though, and had to be back in Gaza by 7pm and then get up at the crack of dawn to make it for the next day. Usually she can’t even meet with her staff in the West Bank, and her organization, like every Palestinian NGO, has to maintain two management teams who never get to meet for a staff meeting.

City center walls are covered with slogans, images of exploding buses and photos of martyrs. One office sign for a dentist amidst the graffiti catches my eye. It is translated into Hebrew, looking incongruous amongst the slogans of resistance. It is left from the days, long since gone, when the Gazan economy could make money from visiting Israelis. Since Oslo, vast amounts of international development aid had been pumped into Gaza, in an effort to develop infrastructure and governmental capacity. Yet, despite the investment, it is difficult to be anything other than pessimistic about the next decade, even the next month, in a community under military occupation and closure, with an 80% unemployment rate.

When people ask me what I do, for the sake of avoiding long explanations, I usually explain that I work for a human rights organization. The answer is invariably “What human rights?”  In the evening, I drove through the neighborhood where, last July, a one-ton bomb was dropped on the family apartment block of Hamas activist Salah Shehadah, killing 15, including 9 children. An American friend, along with her Palestinian colleagues at a Gazan human rights NGO, went to pay condolences. She described how the idea of trying to pursue justice through international human rights mechanisms seemed to this angry and grieving family like a sick joke. Why seek justice from the international system that allowed such an act to happen in the first place?

There seems no appropriate way to end a description of life in Gaza. It is not a tale that can be neatly finished. I will do so by reflecting on a news story from Gaza some 3000 years ago:

… the temple was crowded with men and women; all the rulers of the Philistines were there, and on the roof were about three thousand men and women watching Samson perform. Then Samson prayed to the Lord, “O Sovereign Lord, remember me. O God, please strengthen me just once more, and let me with one blow get revenge on the Philistines for my two eyes.” Then Samson reached towards the two central pillars on which the temple stood. Bracing himself against them, his right hand on the one and his left hand on the other, Samson said, “Let me die with the Philistines!”  Then he pushed with all his might and down came the temple on the rulers and all the people in it. Thus he killed many more when he died than when he lived.

-  The Book of Judges 16:27-30

Al Jami’ al Omari al Kabir, the Grand Mosque in Gaza, is reputed to be on the site of the ancient Philistine temple of Dagon. Samson, revered by Jews and Christians as a leader of the ancient Israelites, resisted his Philistine captors by destroying their temple around them, knowing that he would kill many Philistines, as surely as he would kill himself. An interesting insight on a nationalist suicide act in the time of the ancient fathers of monotheistic religion. I reflect on this point to provoke thought, rather than in any way to personally use this text to advocate “acts of martyrdom.” Yet I demand that any Jewish and Christian Zionists, who try to argue that the act of suicide killing is alien to their own religious tradition, go back to their scriptures and read this ancient Gazan story.

Isabelle Humphries is a British freelance journalist and Development Director at Sawt Al Amel (Laborer’s Voice), an organization supporting Palestinian workers inside Israel. She has an MA in Middle East Politics and is also a freelance writer for the Cairo Times. You can reach her at innazareth@yahoo.co.uk

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