A Month by the Sea (28 page)

Early one morning Fikr Shaltoot, Director of MAP’s Gaza office, came to collect me – bareheaded and driving her own tiny elderly car. At first I assumed her to be one of the Strip’s few Christians (I saw only one other Gazan woman driver: Mrs Shabaan). But no: Fikr was born in a refugee camp and schooled by UNRWA before graduating from a US university. She then felt a compulsion to be back with her own people – though on her own terms, hence the bare head and self-driving. She is a small, compact woman, radiating energy, competence and compassion. I took to her at once but unluckily we met on the eve of her departure for England (a fundraising trip) so we could talk only briefly in MAP’s simple office which needed no apparent security.

According to Fikr, few Gazans go hungry but most are by now subsisting on a high-carb diet, unable to afford many fruits or vegetables and rarely eating meat. The mothers of young families are notably malnourished: 70 per cent anaemic, says the latest survey. Many share their own rations with growing children and sometimes with working husbands. (As though the mothers of six or nine children are not working!) MAP runs a long-term programme to provide the most needy with vitamin and mineral supplements. As the ‘international community’ collaborates ever more closely with the US to restrict ISI health services, MAP’s input becomes ever more urgently needed. Its teams operate not only throughout the OPT but in the Lebanon’s twelve refugee camps where 280,000 Palestinians have no government support and very few rights – a too-often-forgotten consequence of the Nakba. In all, some 425,000 refugees are registered with UNRWA in Lebanon but no Palestinian is allowed to work as a doctor, dentist, lawyer, engineer or accountant.

Islam is relatively flexible about contraception though there’s always a vocal minority protesting that condoms and the pill are invitations to promiscuity – ‘just look at the West’s filthiness!’ However, leaving sexual morals aside, this is a politically hazardous area at the centre of a demographic battleground. Some discreetly promoted family planning is possible (four or five children instead of ten or twelve) but the ideal twenty-first-century two-child family is unmentionable. On the West Bank one notices considerable hostility to any foreign NGO suspected of colluding with Israel to lower the Palestinian birthrate. On the Strip those suspicions seem even stronger though the NGOs are fewer.

To me this issue looked not entirely political – ‘let’s outbreed the Zionists!’ Palestinians love children. Of course there have always been dysfunctional families and their numbers are increasing under the multiple strains of Occupation, a problem I consider in my account of the West Bank. That said, even under the most trying
conditions, in the grimly congested camps and the semi-destitute villages where farmers can’t safely farm, one sees parents and siblings
enjoying
the largeness of their families. On my melancholy last visit to Anwar we discussed this. As my wise old friend saw it, in a society as disrupted, deprived and insecure as the post-Nakba Palestinians’, children are the main source of comfort, pride, security and independence. He said, ‘People denied all the normal freedoms feel their children protect them against disintegration and guarantee survival – family, clan and communal survival. Within a big household they have a sense of being safe – even though they know they’re not, under the Occupation. Am I explaining well? Can you imagine what I’m saying?’

I assured Anwar that I could well imagine it, despite being myself an only child and the mother of an only child. His words expressed the emotions I had intuited while visiting families all over the Strip.

I met Yara for a farewell coffee at the al fresco beach café and we speculated about Hamas’ attitude to foreign NGOs. They are, after all, introducing their Gazan clients to certain non-Islamic ways of being, however tactfully they may trim their sails to the prevailing wind. Yara argued that Hamas people who seem cynical about the workings of some foreign NGOs are not being irrationally xenophobic. Immediately after Cast Lead one of Gaza’s medical elite was invited to lead a team of expats collecting data on permanently damaged children. Before the survey was emailed to the NGO’s European head office, all references to the maiming caused by the US-manufactured white phosphorus shells had been deleted – behind the Gazan doctor’s back.

Yara was twitchy that afternoon. According to rumour, another attempt had just been made to assassinate Ismail Haniyeh. Although never confirmed, this rumour served to keep people on edge – and, in some circles, mutually suspicious. Not all Gazans appreciated their Prime Minister’s willingness to talk constructively to Fatah
and the Zionists and anyone else who might develop a genuine interest in peace with justice. Yara said she was braced for Ismail Haniyeh to be assassinated in the near future. ‘Netanyahu is eating his nails with the thought Europe will stop calling him a terrorist and come to meet him!’

I remembered then Noam Chomsky’s reference, as Cast Lead was ending, to the Israelis’ ‘desperate fear of diplomacy’. Days before that attack began Ephraim Halevy, Mossad’s Director (rtd.), told the cabinet of Hamas’ willingness to accept a two-state solution within the 1967 borders. This must have confirmed the Zionists’ belief in Cast Lead as the only sensible way forward. As Norman Finkelstein put it, ‘Israel had to fend off the latest threat posed by Palestinian moderation and eliminate Hamas as a legitimate negotiating partner.’ In fact, by then, Hamas had missed the two-state bus. Those ’67 borders are no longer relevant and, as I said to Yara, the next bus leaves for the Land of Canaan.

On my farewell visit to the unusually resilient town of Beit Hanoun I found Ismail and his family in jubilant mood. The day before, building materials for a communal clinic, sponsored by the Palestine Medical Relief Society and the German Medico International, had begun to get through at the Kerem Shalom crossing. Ismail’s three excited little boys invited me onto the donkey-cart and we trotted off to a guarded warehouse gate and there gazed admiringly through the bars at 6 tonnes of iron rods, 40 tons of cement and 117 tonnes of gravel in colossal white plastic containers – as big as some of the rooms in Gaza’s camps. Looking at them, I remembered the expensive sacks of gravel coming up the tunnel shafts. How many sacks in 117 tonnes? During the five years since construction materials were last allowed into the Strip, only the relatively rich have been able to build new houses or restore old ones; which is why so many homeless Gazans venture into the buffer zone, risking their lives to collect rubble.

Back at my friends’ house (sixteen family members, three small
rooms), the boys unharnessed the donkey while Ismail described the ordeals – bureaucratic and security – involved in this
movement
of basic goods. As an ISI volunteer social worker, he took a professional interest in the new clinic. The project was announced in August 2010 when international reactions to the nine Flotilla murders made Israel feel some minor concessions to Gaza might be politic. The Struggle of the Documents took six months, ending in February 2011. Firstly, four affidavits guaranteeing the clinic’s sponsors’ authenticity; secondly, a permit to build, though Hamas forms the elected government of Gaza; thirdly, a permit to purchase materials in Ramallah; fourthly, a permit to transport goods from the West Bank to Gaza via Israel. All this required precise
coordination
between the Ramallah office of the PA’s US-appointed Prime Minister, Salam Fayyad, and the UN office for the
Coordination
of Humanitarian Affairs. And more (
much
more!) coordination is needed between the UN Coordinators and the IDF captains at the Kerem Shalom crossing. Most officers refuse to communicate with the Palestinian representatives of those responsible for taking delivery of the loads and making sure they are used only for the purposes specified. Nor are such representatives allowed into the hyper-secure terminal where loads are transferred from vehicle to vehicle. Here everybody’s papers are checked and double-checked by policemen operating computers and mobiles. Ismail said the mass of documents generated itself needs fork-lifting. Moreover, throughout these super-stressful months merchants’ invoices and Travel Authority faxes and lawyer’s affidavits had a strange way of getting lost so that the process of replacing them had to start again from square one – or even square zero, when there were suggestions that the lost papers had been ‘tampered with’ or submitted to the wrong office in the first place.

The materials were bought in Ramallah, trucked to the West Bank border at Betunia, then transferred to Palestinian-owned vehicles with Israeli number plates for the short journey to Kerem
Shalom’s high-security cargo bay; not until its Israeli gate has been closed does the Gaza gate open. Then the Strip’s fork-lift team enter to transfer the loads to Israeli-approved West Bank Palestinian lorries which drive a few hundred yards to another high-security cargo bay – there to unload and reload again onto Gazan lorries hired by the Ramallah firm which sold the materials.

At that point I asked Ismail to repeat himself; I found it hard to credit what he had been telling me. But it was true, I wasn’t misunderstanding. This crazed procedure is essential, claim the Israelis, to prevent ‘bogus traders selling gravel and cement on the local market’ or ‘terrorists constructing bunkers to fire rockets into Israel’. We debated the real motive. Ismail’s wife (a physics lecturer at IUG) observed that thousands of rockets have been, and may continue to be fired into Israel without bunkers. Very obviously, such a process ensures that an adequate supply of building materials will never get through to the blockaded Strip. So is all this a natural extension of Zionism’s long-term plan to break the Palestinians’ spirit and drive them, en masse, into exile? Or have the Zionists become paranoid enough really to believe such procedures are essential for their own safety? We concluded, ‘It’s probably a bit of everything.’

Ismail was not alone in his conviction that the Zionists’ addiction to collective punishment is a symptom of collective madness. I heard many other Palestinians making the same diagnosis. He looked back over exactly five years, to the killing of two Israeli soldiers and the capture of another at Kerem Shalom army post. In retaliation, Operation Summer Rain was quickly launched to punish all Gazans. When the Strip’s only power plant was attacked, 750,000 people were left without electricity. In two months 240 people were killed, including 48 children. Similarly, the abduction of two Israeli soldiers on the Lebanese border led in 2006 to mass slaughter and the destruction of much of Lebanon’s infrastructure. Even were one thinking exclusively of Israel’s security, these are
totally irrational reactions. They serve only to
inflict suffering
. Ismail said, ‘Israelis are sick people, you can see it in their eyes.’ His wife added, ‘They know their country is not real, can’t go on like now, they’re in permanent hysteria.’ We agreed that the real threat comes from within, from the falsity of the notion of Israel as a ‘Jewish and democratic homeland’. Religion-based states are known as theocracies.

During Summer Rain the IDF advised some 20,000 Beit Hanounians to leave their homes as these were likely to be bombed. Ismail was among those who then stood on the roofs of suspected militants’ homes to deter the F-16s. This town also covered itself in glory on 3 November 2006 when the IDF cornered several militants in a mosque. Hundreds of women, including Ismail’s mother and three sisters, hurried through the streets at sunrise to confront the troops. Two women were killed and dozens injured when the IDF opened fire. In the confusion the militants all escaped, disguised as women. My Fatah friends had told me this story to illustrate how unscrupulously Hamas exploits its faithful followers. Ismail told exactly the same story to illustrate how loyal and courageous are Palestinian militants of both sexes.

As Ismail walked me to the
serveece
route, along narrow alleyways between unstable shacks cobbled together from rubble, he too reflected that the longer the blockade continues, the greater the risk to Israel’s security as militant ‘wings’ grow stronger and angrier and run out of Hamas’ control.

I had come to Gaza with one bag, I was leaving with two; a Gazan friend living in Ireland and unable to return to the Strip needed garments from home. On arrival my bag had been full of gifts for Gazans, now it was full of gifts from Gazans; even the blockade cannot cancel out Palestinian generosity. Saying goodbye was easier here than on the West Bank; if the Gate remains open I can revisit the Strip. But the Israelis have blacklisted those who signed on for Freedom Flotilla II – which means exclusion from the West Bank for at least ten years and by 2021 I’m likely to be either dead or dotty.

Several friends wished to help me through the Gate, then
discovered
that only travellers are allowed into Rafah’s departure zone. This let me off a hook; otherwise, how to choose which friend(s)? And how to prevent a potentially awkward Fatah/Hamas
convergence
?

When I asked kind Deeb to ring Abdallah in Cairo I thought I was countering my overoptimistic nature by giving 11.00 am as our meeting time. I would surely be in Egypt long before then; leaving the Strip, Deeb had assured me, is much simpler than entering.

At the Shifa
serveece
terminal I paused to say goodbye to two of the dozen donkeys who arrive there early every morning, drawing loads of vegetables, fruits, eggs; their flat carts serve as stalls. I pitied them as they stood all day fully exposed to the sun, never unharnessed because where could they be tethered? With two I had a special relationship; their heads rose when I called from a distance and they enjoyed between-the-ear massages. These social occasions greatly entertained the
serveece
drivers.

By 7.50 I was outside Rafah’s Departure Hall. On the way to the Gate everybody must pass through this building which, from outside, rather resembles a cattle-shed on a Soviet collective farm. I dragged my bags up its steep steps, then decided to linger briefly, observing the scene. Most of the 400 or so would-be-travellers seemed to have spent the night
in situ
and there was a querulous undertone to their noisiness. I could see only one free chair, beside an old man wearing the flowing white robes and traditional turban of a pilgrim to Mecca. At the far end of this high, well-lit hall a counter separates officialdom from its prey. Here Gazans who have registered a departure date with the Department of Transport (at least a month before) must present their papers. Behind the counter three doors lead to inner layers of bureaucracy. Proceedings are scheduled to begin at 8.00 am but not until 8.15 did seven men saunter into view, being greeted by angry shouts. Three were neatly uniformed youngsters (their uniforms anonymous), four were slightly older policemen. Despite the restless and increasingly vocal crowd they didn’t at once start work but spent the next twenty minutes chatting, joking, smoking, drinking tea, texting – all the time wandering in and out of those doors. Within this traveller, irritation and impatience were already beginning to accumulate – not yet on my own behalf but because Gazans suffer enough at the hands of the Israelis without also being tormented by their own.

When at last the three youngsters went on duty a crowd surged towards the counter and the police maintained order – more or less – while papers were being sent to an inner office in fat bundles. As these reappeared, a distorting public address system summoned the lucky owners. I couldn’t possibly have heard ‘Dervla Murphy’, as pronounced by a Palestinian, above the din of an excited, frustrated, argumentative crowd – always four or five people standing by the counter, angrily disputing an official verdict. Luckily, as an International, I didn’t have to jump through this hoop; Deeb had
instructed me to deal with the office (a converted container) by Gate 1.

I showed my passport to two policemen, indicating that I must leave the Hall – whereupon they shouted at me truculently, as though I were trying to jump the queue. They and all their colleagues were obviously ignorant of the rules as Deeb had explained them. I must stay in the Hall until my passport had been checked, though no one here was authorised to check it. Our confrontation attracted some attention and now another robed and turbaned pilgrim, an English-speaker, reprimanded the police. They argued on, glaring at me with unearned animosity, until my rescuer shouted at them, his tone contemptuous. He then carried my bags down the steps and pointed across an already hot expanse of desert to the distant Gate.

As I hauled my bags through deep sand, with some difficulty, an agreeable young Egyptian offered assistance and advice. His badge identified him as a Haj guide, free to operate on both sides of the gates. I must sit in the café near the office and be patient. When all the day’s pilgrims had got through, the Egyptian border control would signal their readiness to deal with Internationals. Then
someone
would lead me through the Gate, after my passport had been processed by the office staff. I didn’t like that word ‘processed’; it suggested a procedure much more long-drawn-out than ‘stamped’.

The crowded ‘café’ – a patch of fine, pale gold sand under a canvas awning – was furnished with scores of low plastic tables and chairs and provisioned by two barrows selling chai, coffee,
Nescafé-with
-tinned-milk, juices, water and sundry vile comestibles. Thirty yards away rose Gate 1, wide and high; beyond, visible between its bars, lay that odd no man’s land instituted by EUBAM. Beside the Gate, agitated people clustered around the Office, jostling for a turn on the high step; below it one could not see or have a reasonable exchange with those within.

As I looked around for a seat Dalia caught my eye and beckoned
me to usurp her ten-year-old daughter’s chair. Fairuz sat happily on mamma’s lap and told me she wanted to learn a lot more English. Her twenty-year-old sister held a sleeping baby, the first grandchild. At the next table, talking to male friends, sat father and one of four teenage sons. In public even the most united Gazan families tend to segregate themselves.

The Zeidans were beginning their fourth day of waiting; on the previous Thursday, Wednesday and Tuesday they had sat in this café from 8.00 am to 6.00 pm. They were on their way to Ismailia to spend a month with Dalia’s sister from whom they had been cut off for six years. Fairuz (who had transferred to my lap the better to learn English) now announced that this would be her last waiting day. Noticeably, none of the many children in this misfortunate crowd had the standard (for us) supply of books, games and art materials. Yet most seemed cheerfully resigned to their Rafah experience: evidently they had inner resources
undeveloped
by our over-entertained young.

I then discovered that Gazans, having been processed in the Hall, had to be reprocessesed here. ‘Why?’ I asked. Dalia shrugged and smiled and offered no explanation. But she urged me to present my passport at the Office without delay, not to wait as the young Haj guide had advised. ‘If there’s trouble,’ said she, ‘it’s good to know sooner.’

I looked at my watch: 10.40 – almost time for Abdallah to be parking outside Gate 2. Anxiety set in as I joined the crowd around the small barred window through which documents were pushed to and fro. Only one at a time could stand on the little step and queuing didn’t feature. Briefly I hesitated on the edge of the crowd: someone might take pity on the aged International. Over-optimism in action … Entering the fray, I elbowed my way onto the step with Arabic imprecations assaulting my ears. Momentarily the Office was empty; it contained two easy chairs with torn upholstery, one badly dented metal filing cabinet (
c
.1950),
and one landline phone (
c.
1960) on a small table. Until the power went off a mobile fan whirred in a corner.

The three officials returned together: Ali and his assistants, none uniformed. Ali was small, slight, thirty-ish, with a short beard, heavy brows, thin lips, a narrow face, hard eyes – a man who might not find ‘honour killing’ too difficult. Without greeting me he added my passport to a pile, then took another pile for the consideration of some more important official in a sprawling building overlooking no man’s land. One of his mates barked at me, gesturing eloquently – ‘Off the step!’ I compromised, moving down and to one side while clinging to a window bar. Having handed over my passport, I was reluctant to lose sight of those in charge. Now I was being severely heat-punished; it was near noon in mid-summer at sea level and only the café offered shade.

One man was always on the move, taking papers and passports to and from that distant office. Meanwhile the Gate was being repeatedly opened for departing vehicles, usually Mecca-bound coaches towing enormous UN-blue trailers piled high. Another man made many phone calls, sometimes speaking simultaneously to his mobile and the landline. In between, he filled in countless forms, using a dainty, tiny Arabic script that ill-matched his hairy thick-fingered hands. Only Ali – I noticed later – made entries in a stout leather-bound ledger, perhaps a Mandate left-over.

I was obsessionally watching the time. When Ali returned after 18 minutes I begged him to attend next to my passport. He spoke no English but Dalia had despatched her son, Tarek, to interpret. Ali scrutinised my document closely, scowling while turning the pages as though they were smeared with shit – which to him they were, showing all those Ben-Gurion entry stamps. When challenged, I pointed out that one can’t study the Palestinians’ problems without entering Israel. Peevishly he demanded, ‘Why interested in Palestinians?’ I told him, but afterwards Tarek and I agreed that the idea of ‘writing a book’ was not within his grasp.

Returning my passport, Ali stated flatly that I could not leave on 2 July. Because of those Israeli stamps I must go back to Gaza City and get a special permit for Tuesday 5 July. At first I didn’t take this seriously, merely felt exasperated by his stupidity. I emphasised that two weeks previously a Department of Foreign Affairs VIP (named) had personally registered me for this 2 July crossing. ‘But where is your registration document?’ demanded Ali. ‘This you must have, talk about registration is not enough!’

Mr S— had assured me that I needed no written permit once registered on his computer. Feeling presciently uneasy about this, I had twice repeated my request for ‘a piece of paper’ – only to be told, ‘There’s no need to make a problem, you’re in the computer.’ Slightly irritably I’d replied, ‘I’m not making a problem, I’m trying to avoid one’ – and now I was trapped by officials who did not yet live in cyberspace.

I then played my trump – Mr S—’s card, giving his office and personal mobile numbers. My instruction was to ring him should a problem arise – the problem he had guaranteed I wouldn’t have … ‘Ring Mr S—!’ I said. ‘He’ll confirm that
he
registered my 2 July crossing. You can talk to him personally, then you can listen to me talking to him.’ Not all trumps are winning cards. As Ali rejected this suggestion, Tarek and I could see how much he was enjoying having the bit between his teeth.

It was now 12.25. I asked Tarek to look for the Haj guide, who should be able to get an apologetic message to Abdallah; but he had gone off duty and not yet been replaced. Then I remembered how easily Deeb, working out of Foreign Affairs, had got through to Cairo. Within moments Tarek got through to Deeb who tried hard, but unsuccessfully, to contact Abdallah. Back at the café, Dalia said soothingly, ‘Don’t worry about him, we’re in the Middle East, he’s used to waiting!’ On such occasions my punctuality gene can cause needless tension.

All the Zeidans now rallied around. On cell phone lines most
Palestinians are baffled by my Irish brogue so Mr Zeidan called Mr S—, who was immediately available, to everyone’s surprise. The message for Dervla was, ‘Give me five minutes, then go back to the office.’ I took the ‘five minutes’ to be hyperbolic – a
face-saving
device of sorts – and for half an hour tried to relax. In similar situations elsewhere, a bribe-hunt might be assumed. Not here, I was warned – not in Hamas territory. Certainly at Gate 2, in Egypt, and perhaps in PA-run Ramallah – but never under that little green Hamas flag.

We scoffed at the nonsense of Arab countries rejecting
Israeli-stamped
passports, another example of State hypocrisy since so few Arab governments have ever genuinely tried to help Palestinians. Their cause is used only as a stick to beat Israel when that suits a particular government during a particular crisis.

The Zeidans had reason to hope their time was nigh so we sat close to the Office and swapped Rafah Gate tear-jerkers. At Anwar’s house I had met a man in a despairing rage. His brother was to visit Cairo briefly toward the end of June, coming from Australia. He couldn’t enter Gaza because of the permit time-lag. These brothers hadn’t met for seven years but on 10 June Anwar’s friend was told he couldn’t leave the Strip before 12 August.

With clear-cut ten-year-old logic Fairuz wondered why not employ more officials at both sides of the border? Her brother voiced a majority opinion: the US was leaning on Egypt to keep pressure on the Gazans even while taking credit for opening the Gate. But who, really, was mostly to blame? I couldn’t have a view on this, being ignorant of Gazan domestic politics and how things were being reshaped (or not?) in the new Egypt. Yet I was very aware by then of the huge significance of Rafah in all the games being played by everyone.

Suddenly shouts of ‘Zeidan! Zeidan!’ came from different directions and four adolescent porters converged on my friends as they scrambled hither and thither gathering items of luggage. As
one side of the Gate slid back they shouted over their shoulders, ‘Good luck!’ I rejoiced for them while mourning the loss of my interpreter.

Rumour had it that 503 travellers were on the Egyptians’ 2 July list. Perhaps a number with some arcane Pharaonic significance, an al-Azhar (Gaza) professor facetiously suggested. Seeing me bereft of the Zeidans, he had approached to offer tea and sympathy – and practical support, when it was time to confront Ali again. The crowd around the Office had shrunk but my new friend Walid seemed to find its noisiness and latent aggression rather dismaying. It seemed he didn’t often leave his ivory tower.