20: "Gaza: worse than a prison, it is a graveyard"
By Skip Schiel

Photos: injured girl in Khan Yunis hospital, the Mediterranean Sea thru the window of the American Friends Service Committee, Gaza City, January 2005

(Note: this is probably my last Paired Photos while I’m in Palestine and Israel. Maybe one more, from Cairo. And maybe this or that will be the end of this series. Please watch for further developments.)

Seventy six years ago: A Statement to the 1919 Peace Conference by prominent U.S. Jews (including one Congressman):

We raise our voices in warning and protest against the demand of the Zionists for the reorganization of the Jews as a national unit, to whom, now or in the future, territorial sovereignty in Palestine shall be committed. This demand not only misrepresents the trend of the history of the Jews, who ceased to be a nation 2000 years ago, but involves the limitation and possible annulment of the larger claims of Jews for full citizenship and human rights in all lands in which those rights are not yet secure. For the very reason that the new era upon which the world is entering aims to establish government everywhere on principles of true democracy, we reject the Zionistic project of a ‘national home for the Jewish people in Palestine.’

 ...As to the future of Palestine, it is our fervent hope that what was once a "promised land" for the Jews may become a "land of promise" for all races and creeds, safeguarded by the League of Nations which, it is expected, will be one of the fruits of the Peace Conference to whose deliberations the world now looks forward so anxiously and so full of hope. We ask that Palestine be constituted as a free and independent state, to be governed under a democratic form of government recognizing no distinctions of creed or race or ethnic descent, and with adequate power to protect the country against oppression of any kind. We do not wish to see Palestine, either now or at any time in the future, organized as a Jewish State.

-- Anti-Zionism: Analytical Reflections, Roselle Tekiner, Samir Abed-Rabbo and Norton Mezvinsky, eds., www.codoh.com/zionweb/ziondark/zionopp01.html

Like the Slaughter of the Innocents, Herod driven merciless and brutal from fear, executing all male children under the age of two because of the possibility that new leadership might emerge, the children of Gaza suffer. Mostly innocent, most no conceivable threat to any Israeli, they are shot down.

Last week during my three day visit to the Gaza Strip, I met two, a boy of 8 years, girl of 10. The boy was riding his bike, took a bullet in his back shot from the Israeli army exhibiting "purity of arms." Far from any possible military action, any Israeli settlement, he was shot. He is in deep trauma. The girl was playing with her friends on her roof. Again, no military activity, no threats to settlers or the army, the Israelis hit her with a 50 mm projectile, tearing thru her right arm. Doctors might save it. I had the extreme privilege of meeting these two children in the Khan Yunis hospital thru the good offices of the Gaza Community Mental Health Program (GCMHP), invited to photograph the therapy--really an initial interview to assess the children’s psychological needs. Later in the taxi, thinking about what I’d just witnessed, I wanted to scream and weep. Until now I’ve held those tears back, felt in the taxi only a slight tearing, the water pulsing behind my eyes, ready to stream out. Eventually, eventually.

The context is strangulation, Israel strangling Palestinians thru the Occupation generally but most harshly in the Gaza Strip. Currently [January 19, 2005], due to a Palestinian attack on a commercial entry point, Karni, the Strip is totally sealed. In addition, Israel’s Prime Minister Ariel Sharon has declared a blanket halt to all contact with the Palestinian leadership, including the newly elected president, Mahmoud Abbas. Even in the best of times, Gaza is dangerous. While I was there—aside from the problems of entrance and exit—in the southern section of Gaza City, the Israeli army attacked alleged militants, shelling, bombing, and firing missiles. Friends in that section of the city were terrified; I slept blissfully thru it all.

Another aspect of the effect of strangulation is the purported increase in the crime rate. Although Palestine generally has a low rate (living in Ramallah and traveling fairly widely in the West Bank, I can attest to at least the perception of safety from crime), a Gazan told me Gaza City has had 50 murders (Palestinian against Palestinian) in the past two months.

I asked, why is Gaza targeted for such severe pain? Various answers, among them: the strength of the armed resistance (which is related to the oppression, which preceded the other? if that is a valid question); the geographical separation from most of the rest of the world and the consequent absence of the media; the nearness to Egypt, factions of which provide support including arms; and one not so widely held view that the Strip has resources such as water desired by Israel. Puzzling to me is the presence of Israeli Jewish settlers. There is little historic Jewish activity in this area, so what is the justification?

How is this oppression resisted?

Public Achievement is a program sponsored but the American Friends Service Committee which hopes to teach youth leadership and survival skills. Those completing the program are the coaches. Their imperative is to then train more (and slightly younger) youth. This second high school age group chooses a community service project that implicitly enlists the support of national and local administrations and other organizations. 

In Gaza City there are two projects. One group of girls chose to construct a library in a local community organization (the Palestinian Committee for Inter Communication). They then practiced their newly learned skills. They solicited book donations, found space for the library, established a way to supervise lending, and when I met them were finishing the installation and rehearsing a program to formally open the library the following day. 

The second group of boys and girls (two separate mixed gender groups joining for the final phase) were landscaping a barren traffic circle near the sea. They had planted trees and shrubs and were about to maintain them when I met them. But first, a group session consisting of discussion about democracy, games that built community (like having one leave the room, the others choosing a leader, the absent one returning and guessing who was leading the group in gestures), and a game that might be titled, “Bang, bang, boom,” very close to the violence of their culture, but turning it to play.

The first group was exuberant, hard working, seemingly committed, and had prepared talks and skits for the opening celebration. The second group was moving against a strong cultural wind of separating the genders, but despite that seemed to work together well.

I don’t know the outcome of these two projects, nor of the Public Achievement projects in other parts of Palestine such as Ramallah. I don’t know how effective the GCMHP is in relieving trauma and anxiety. Nor do I fully understand how any of these programs bring about the end of Occupation, if indeed that is a cardinal principle. I do know that many of the youth I observed were surviving, aiyish, and more than surviving, thriving, happily, mubsut.

Trying to leave Gaza thru the Arez checkpoint into Israel, a long labyrinthine gated funnel system, with soldiers barely visible, shouting orders thru loudspeakers-- remove your coat, lift your sweater, turn around--standing to be x-rayed by some hi tech distant camera, after driving to near the checkpoint, stopping, another loudpseakered voice shouting, stop or I shoot, go back, you are forbidden to drive thru (we walked), rifles pointed at us, striding past an armored personnel carrier (just like the ones in Iraq), one hour later, we emerged and drove off.

One final impression: Gaza Strip is on the Mediterranean Sea. So Gazans looking west see an expanse, a vista, limitless vision, freedom, but looking in any other direction (except up, and then there are the tethered balloons carrying remotely controlled cameras), they are imprisoned. Worse: consigned to a graveyard, as one Gazan put it.

I’ve expanded this photo selection on my website, here and here

Karni

Prime Minister halts all ties with Abbas over terror, by Amos Harel and Nir Hasson, Haaretz, January 16, 2005

Gaza generally, via the Central Intelligence Agency of the United States

Crime in Gaza

Public Achievement

American Friends Service Committee in Palestine (needs updating)

Historic Jewish communities in Gaza

Maps of gaza—One and two

Text from former US President Jimmy Carter during the Palestinian elections on January 9, 2005--

I’ve archived all previous Paired Photo sets--