Alice Rothchild 3/27/15 post #9

This Could Be My Reality.

The day started with a shock, it seems that today is day light savings time in Gaza (who knew?) and I have already lost an hour. This doesn’t seem quite fair, but the delegates hustle into the van in a befuddled sort-of-ready for the day. Marwan Diab, our guide and organizer extraordinaire from Gaza Community Mental Health Program, is wearing a running suit (it is Friday which is actually like Sunday in the US) and we are going on a tour of the Strip with Hamada Al Bayar, a wonderfully warm, sensitive, intelligent man from OCHA (UN Office for Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs) on their day “off”.

Hamada explains that OCHA focuses on the humanitarian impact of the occupation, siege, and military operations with an emphasis on civilians.  They just released a report yesterday:

 http://www.ochaopt.org/documents/annual_humanitarian_overview_2014_english_final.pdf.

Basically, last year was the worst year on every measure of humanitarian impact on the population of the Gaza Strip ever.  We are heading north toward Beit Lahiya as he explains that there are so many sad numbers from the assault in 2014 (2,220 Palestinians, dead including 1,492 civilians, of which over 500 were children, etc, etc), but echoing the young writers I met yesterday, “We are not numbers, behind each number is a big sad story.” We drive through Beach Camp where Ismail Haniyeh, the senior political leader of Hamas, lives and has been spotted jogging, which he does regularly.  Apparently Beach Camp started as a refugee camp in 1948 where refugees were pushed towards the sea as they fled the Jewish forces, the UN set up tents, and the rest, as they say, is history. (Ironic, given Israel’s fear of Arabs “pushing them into the sea” when you think about this.)

As we drive along the Mediterranean I see occasional fisherman in tiny boats with nets piled high, clusters of shacks on the beach, children draped over the metal fencing along the road competing with laundry and mattresses. Young men play in the water with their horses, some riding them into the water, some splashing them or just having a good time. Even horses need a break around here.

Across the street many buildings are splattered with bullet holes or crumpled under the impact of heavy bombing.  Hamada reports that at this time, 80% of Gazans are aid dependent in some way, the Israelis have succeeded in destroying the economy, industry, farming, fishing, exports, and the list goes on. If there were no UN agencies, the wellbeing of the population would be even more catastrophic with starvation, no education or health care. “We should be on a sustainable not emergency schedule.” Up ahead a mosque proudly dominates the view, two tall minarets pierce the sky.   This was reportedly financed by a Gazan economist who built his fortune on the tunnel economy; some wonder if the mosque is part devotion and part money laundering.

Hamada explains that the six billion dollars of international aid pledged to Gaza has not been delivered for a host of factors:
1. Gaza is too unstable for many host countries

2. Host countries feel that anything that gets rebuilt will just be destroyed by Israeli military actions, check out history 101

3. Donor fatigue, (big problem)

4. Israel controls the entry of all construction materials as well as everything else and they are very restrictive

5. Hamas and Fatah are in conflict and are not able to function as a unified government; in fact they sometimes undercut each other (big problem #2)

We ask what has happened to the hundreds of tunnels between Gaza and Egypt, and Gaza and Israel? In 2013, there were 5,000 truckloads of merchandise from Egypt monthly and now there are none, destroyed by Israeli military actions and Egyptian flooding, gas and bombing.  The tunnels to Israel were all military and are now gone as well. While the tunnel system created a huge corruptive black market, it was also critical to the Gaza economy and for the fuel to run the now crippled power plant.

Post war, 100,000 Gazans remain homeless or in shelters or with (stressed out) host families. 30% live in their damaged homes with makeshift arrangements using plastic, wood, and cloth often in very risky arrangements. (That is quite obvious just gazing out the window of the van.) Since the war, housing needs have doubled with 130,000 homes either partially or completely destroyed. The Gaza Reconstruction Mechanism was brokered by the UN and has given support for families with minimal damage to their homes.  Hamada reflects on the difficulties of surviving the war with an intact home versus a pile of rubble.  It was all so arbitrary. The lucky ones find it difficult to have something when their neighbors do not, yet it is also not possible for the intact home owner to offer space and support to all the family and friends in need.  It is a strange dynamic, a unique kind of Palestinian survivor’s guilt.

bombed out apartment complex in Beit Lahiya where people are still living

We arrive in Beit Lahiya, three kilometers from the Israeli border.  We can see three smokestacks from the Israeli coal burning power plant and the wall that snakes along the border.  Beit Lahiya was once a rich agricultural area that has become too dangerous to farm due to its proximity to Israel and vulnerability to repeated incursions. In 2000, Jewish settlers and Israeli forces uprooted extensive citrus, guava, and mango groves for their “security needs,” so farmers at this point plant low crops that require minimal care and risk their lives to harvest the bounty.  Israeli forces have repeatedly bulldozed crops shortly before harvest in one of those over the top acts of cruelty. “Life has come to death.” Three kids sit blankly in a large tire in a field, families sit and smoke on the ground in front of their corrugated metal shacks; the area is largely abandoned because it is too dangerous to stay. The Israelis have extended the no go zone along the border from 300 meters to 1.5 kilometers from the fence and they shoot to kill, farmers often come to work their fields with their wives and children hoping to decrease their risk of dying while harvesting their string beans, strawberries, and potatoes.  That does not always work. Even if successful, there is minimal to no export business once again thanks to Israeli restrictions. We hear repeated bursts of gunfire, Israeli soldiers are making their presence known and some unfortunate farmer or young man is getting the message. The farmers rely on a water aquifer that has been seriously depleted and unless changes are made, Hamada states matter-of-factly, by 2016 there will be no water. (Should I put that more strongly: NO WATER.)

He also explains why there is little to no garbage collection in these areas.  Municipalities are poor and rely on fees, collection rates are down.  The price of fuel to run the vehicles has gone up. Often the staff goes months without their salaries.  I watch a donkey root around in a mound of garbage, children picking through trash, a little boy clambering up a pile of rubble to play and hang off the second floor of a partially crumpled building.

Back to the critical topic of water, Hamada reviews the stark reality.  95% of Gaza water is not drinkable.  90 million liters of sewerage pours into the sea daily, not only polluting the sea (which by the way folks, on your beautiful beaches in Ashkelon and Ashdod, water knows no boundaries, just a thought) but wasting vast quantities of grey water that could be used for irrigation. There are desalination plants but the water infrastructure has largely been destroyed by Israeli military action and the water filters are reportedly less than optimal, resulting in water with high levels of chloride, which then combines with calcium and leaches the calcium out of the bones of young children who are now at risk for osteoporosis (along with everything else). (Ca +2 + 2Cl= CaCl 2)

The US has worked to remove the unexploded ordinance (with their made in the USA labels), working through a word salad of organizations: the UN, UNDP, USAID, and PA.  No one gives directly to Hamas except Arab countries like Qatar since the blockade in 2007. This leads us into a conversation about Hamas which catches me by surprise.  Hamada says that Hamas has made it clear in diplomatic speak that it would accept a long term hudna with Israel and recognize Israel’s existence with a return to the borders of 1967 which is the basis for all the “peace talks” that have dribbled along since 1993. This has fallen on deaf ears since Israeli leaders have no intention of returning to ’67 borders, so who is obstructing who? But more importantly, what if Hamas came out and recognized Israel (forget the right to exist as a Jewish state stuff), denounced violence (which they have done in their actions/ceasefires in the past with minimal international acknowledgement), and recognized other agreements, ie.,what if they behaved like Fatah?  Really folks, what has that gotten Fatah: a massive and growing settler movement, a heavily occupied and militarized West Bank, minimal access to Jerusalem. So this is actually not about Palestinian recognition of Israeli rights, but rather Israeli recognition of Palestinian rights. Think about it.

We wander, sweating in the hot and muggy sunshine, through fields of string beans, potatoes, corn, strawberries; there is evidence of the war everywhere. Hamada tells a story of a family he knew who gathered all their sons and daughters who were living in Jabalia and Rafah, the “high risk areas” in the north and south of Gaza.  They went to live in Gaza City where it was supposedly “safer” and then almost everyone was killed in a massive bomb explosion huddled in their safety zone. We hear these kinds of stories over and over again.

One delegate asks why are there so many beautiful reconstructed mosques, (along with all the ones bombed to smithereens) when that money could have been used for the poor nearby.  (The Catholic Church in Latin American comes to my mind: think Mexico, Ecuador….) Hamada explains that building and now restoring mosques is an important Hamas program, magnificent architectural buildings often with air conditioning.  “The mosque a place of heaven, the surrounding areas a place of hell.” These mosques are funded by mostly Sunnis from places like Saudi Arabia and the Emirates.  He states, “In my life, the human is more important than anything, there are many Hadith that say this.”

       

We continue our tour and stop by a massive apartment complex along the sea.  How can I possibly describe this?  The buildings are five to six stories high, partly skeletal walls and floors, partly heavily damaged apartments, vast segments collapsed at odd angles, a wheel chair is visible from one of the floors (how did that person get out?) and people are living in whatever they can salvage, laundry hangs from fragmented windows, there is a cluster of shacks in the storage facilities at the base of the building, donkeys and goats wander in and out of the rubble. It is an unspeakable monument to human suffering. Four young men come to talk with us and they are smiling, warm, arms draped across each other’s shoulders, one speaks English.  One has seven children and they are living in a storage area, they want us to know what happened to them and to tell the world their story. And then one of them says he has a joke: “We want to forget our pain.  If we had alcohol we could forget.” This seems uproariously funny and they all crack up… apparently living through an unimaginable war and surviving in something close to hell seems more likely than a bottle of forbidden booze.

Donkeys laboriously pulling carts piled high with chucks of concrete pass us over and over again.  Hamada explains that it takes 10 hours to crack up enough of the larger fragments of cement walls and rubble to fill a donkey cart. The men get 15 shekels for their efforts (divide by 4 for dollars) and these are taken to a facility where the smaller chunks are crushed and used to create (poor quality) bricks, filling the air with a fine dust that penetrates your lungs and turns the bushes grey.  This is called making a living and reconstruction in Gaza. There has been no research on the possibility of war toxics in the rubble, but one can only speculate. I suspect the Israelis used the same weaponry we used in Iraq and we have worrisome data on that.

We pass the massively leveled mosque in Beit Hanoun as Hamada explains that during the war, he moved his family to his office at OCHA, “I made my office my home.” Later he reveals that every time he comes back to these areas “I feel like it’s the first time.  My body reacts the same, the same stress, the same pain. It takes me four to five hours to get over it.  It is really hard to be a humanitarian worker and having family and seeing this… that could be my reality, when will it be my turn? It is really hard.” He was having dinner with his younger son who questioned, “What do you think of buying a new apartment? What if another war comes and our apartment is destroyed? So we should have a new place.” What can a father say? “He is still traumatized.  If I buy a new place it means I cannot protect him, but I am the same as him.” We drive slowly by the el-Wafa Rehabilitation Hospital. It has literally been completely leveled to the ground. I cannot help but wonder, so when is a rehab hospital, we are talking wheelchairs and crutches and damaged bodies, a legitimate military target?

News flash: It is not Daylight Savings Time until tomorrow. The gift of an extra hour today. It does not take much to please me, but there is some metaphorical message here, even in Gaza life is so upside down that there is a debate as to the actual time of day.

We are back in Shejaia and Banksy’s kitten, I am getting to the point that I can recognize one tragic bombed out site from another.  The challenge is of course to not lose that primary sense of horror. As barefoot wide eyed children start gathering around our Martian lunar landing, we are surrounded by total havoc. Neighborhoods with no infrastructure and no services, a largely invisible crisis of epidemic proportions. In the winter the rains came and what passes for homes were deluged, there were problems with flooding, rats, stray dogs, and the smells of unwashed humanity and unprocessed sewerage.  We learn there were five major foci of destruction in Shejaia during the war. This looks more like Dresden style carpet bombing to me. 

Hamada explains that there is no functional Hamas government. I think of the bombed out Ministry of Finance for starters, the year of no Hamas salaries, the three months of no PA salaries. It is hard to get anything done if no one is paid and there is no concrete, yes?  Officially there is a government of national consensus in Ramallah but no working system here. The Hamas social movement provides substantial social services and systems, medical, educational, and humanitarian in nature and that actually is part of the shredded safety net around these parts.

We drive through a busy market in Shejaia filled with the pungent smells of fried food, red-yellow-blue-green umbrellas like circus tops over rows of fruit stalls.  At the barber shop, the barber is applying his straight edge razor to a customer.  The souq is bursting with cheap clothes and products probably from China and there is a background cacophony of loud honking from the kamikaze drivers and motor cyclists. 

To head south, we change to a greyhound style bus, Abu Olba for Tours and Travel, an ironic name for a place where you really cannot go anywhere.  There is a feeble air conditioner which is so appreciated; we head off to Rafah.  The bus is filled with staff from GCMHP, some of their families, and us, Marwan is playing MC.  We all introduce ourselves, sing songs from our respective traditions, (blues, protest, Farouz), munch on hummus sandwiches and Thai spiced nuts, relax and have a good time, which is welcome after such unrelenting sorrow.

river of sewage flows into the sea

But we cannot exactly leave the reality. Driving along the coast, we pass by Wadi Gaza where the river of sewerage flows into the sea and the stench is unbearable, the crowded Nuseirat Camp on the left, and into Khan Yunis.  We pass through the site of the former Jewish settlement, Gush Katif, which occupied 1/3 of the Gaza water front until 2005 and see the remaining rows of orchards and palm trees.

Our driver explains that during the war, 14 buses were destroyed, seven of his family members were injured and eight of their houses were destroyed during an attack on a Gazan militant that has never been confirmed as successful in hitting the target.

We tour through Rafah close to the Egyptian border where over 500 tunnels were destroyed in 2014 reportedly by Israeli F16s bunker buster bombs and Egyptian gas, water, and explosions; we can see Egyptian military towers and a mosque.  Rachel Corrie was crushed by a bulldozer in the area in 2003 trying to protect the Nasrallah home from demolition.  As I have mentioned, prior to the closure of the tunnels, this area had a huge infrastructure, industrial areas, and a spirited tunnel trade ranging from cars and cows to weapons.  A young man states: “We are not terrorists, we are ordinary people.” 126 people were killed in the Rafah Market on a single day during the bombing of the market in 2014.   (This is not a competition, but just for some perspective: 35 Israelis have been killed by Qassam rockets in the past 15 years). I am beginning to understand the flags waving here and there: Yellow: Fatah (many more than expected), Green: Hamas, Black: Islamic Jihad or Salafist (rare).

We stop by an area in eastern Khan Yunis with a local crisis team and like the day I toured the area with PMRS, are confronted with just extraordinary destruction, poverty, and despair, rows of caravan houses, an older woman gesturing: “We do not want food or houses, we want our rights!” and another very wrinkled elderly women following us to the bus, begging and begging, clearly beyond desperate. We are all shaken from this confrontation and emotionally weary.  As we have nothing to offer, this is feeling like occupation tourism and a number of us are very uncomfortable.  The challenge of course is not to glaze over but to learn to sit with that immense discomfort and then do something about it.

Our final stop is the beach, a lovely area next to a beach restaurant type place, clusters of plastic chairs and tables on the sand, families enjoying their Friday off, soccer games, laughter.  There is something so calming about the smooth sand between my toes and walking along the water, (I can almost feel the e coli migrating up to my knees) as I try to keep my long skirt from getting soaked (it did) without breaking the modesty expected of me.  Only young men are swimming. I talk to a young Gazan woman who says she comes to swim at 5 am because she does not like to swim with her hijab on.  I walk back and forth, enjoy some actual physical movement, climb up some concrete blocks to check out a small port area, rows of small blue, yellow, and red motor boats, nets piled high or drying in the sun. 

There are a couple of supercilious camels on the beach, available for photos and rides.  I love how they fold their legs under their bodies, totally awkward and graceful at the same time. 

The male species here is unclear how to relate to a cluster of uncovered western women mingling with really gorgeous Palestinians who have mastered that subtle technique of looking extremely modest and extremely alluring all at once.  They do take off their heels to walk in the sand, subhanallah. But soon they are too uncomfortable with all the stares and camel ride offers and it is really time to go home

A. Rothchild 3/24 p3 - 3/26 p1 & 2 post #8

Passport toilet paper   

 Blog post: 3/24/15 part three

There is a photo hanging in my home of a juicy looking orange hanging from a tree; the fruit is pierced by a large screw, a brutal metaphor for the reality that is Gaza and one of many powerful photos and paintings by Mohammed Musallam, a 41year old artist born in Gaza. 

We are driving north, past Jabalia to his home in Beit Lahiya, 15 kilometers from Israel. He and his brothers have rented an apartment distant from the border where the family flees in times of war; last year there were 50 people crammed into the one apartment.  We turn down a dirt road, his home faces a large empty lot, homes destroyed in the 2012 war.  In 2014 his next door neighbor was bombed and killed, another lost his legs. In 2008 IDF came into Mohammed’s house for 10 days, destroying things, cutting up his paintings; he shows us a canvas that still has the foot print of an Israeli boot, “the most moral army in the world.” You must understand how dangerous art can really be.

   

We enter the high walled gate into a Garden of Eden filled with irony and political satire, a meat grinder is part of a planter with a row of cactus and succulents, a mishmash of found objects, mostly dolls and children’s toys creates a collage that is at once a tribute to childhood and to its destruction.  The air is filled with the perfume of jasmine, grapes and figs are growing magically in the midst of desolation, and a collection of lively chickens cluck in a large coop.  Mohammed is both passionate and impish, outraged at the world around him, filled with social and political commentary.  He has made a candle holder out of a teargas canister, a chandelier where the bulbs are replaced by candles.  In 2008 the Israelis cut all the electrical cables and things have been pretty dicey since, the local electrical station was bombed in 2014. He has electricity three to six hours per day and has gone for 30 days without electricity.  All the food in the refrigerator rotted, needless to say. He could use a generator but fuel is too expensive. He photographed a toilet, the toilet paper is made of a roll of Palestinian passports, the passport covers are used as armrests on a chair, birds’ nests nestle in bullet holes.

His children range in age from three to twelve, the five year old insists on sleeping with her parents and the kids have had issues with bedwetting, a classic PTSD symptom. He remarks, “War is terrible when you have children.” He studied in Nablus and Cairo and is three months from his PhD, but unable to get the critical permit to Egypt. He paints and teaches fine arts at Al Aqsa University. He struggles to get permits to do exhibits in Europe.

Mohammed’s mother lives on the second floor, his family on the third, and he has a studio on the ground floor where we sit. His wife has an Algerian passport but chooses to stay.  “It has become normal.  I find beauty, happiness, family, there is no choice, this is not courage.” We nibble a sweet fruit combo and enjoy his lively children, the youngest has a devilish personality and keeps her parents busy. As we explore the wild jumble of found objects and striking paintings, Mohammed says, “We are normal, we are people… we are a small country, we have to live together, there is no choice.  He has a gallows sense of humor: “six hours of gas, six hours of electricity, 60% of our salaries, six days every two months the border is open.”  Six is their lucky number. He worries, “Israel feeds hate, creating militants.  I am an artist.  I don’t want to fight.” He finds in his art both the intense paradoxes and the beauty around him. It is a terrible shame that he has to struggle to share his talent, his humor, and his passion with a world that desperately needs more men like Mohammed.

For more info: http://alhoush.com/mohammed-musallam

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Sunshine, sand, and post assault dysphoria

Blog post 3/26/15

In another universe, driving along the coast of the Mediterranean would be one of those vacation dreams filled with fresh fish and relaxing moments baking in the sun, but we are driving to Khan Yunis, a city in the south of Gaza, and in particular to the eastern villages of Serij and Abueteama which bear the unique tragedy of leaning up against the Israeli border. Nahed, a high energy well-spoken administrator from Palestinian Medical Relief Society, the largest medical NGO in Palestine, is taking us on a tour of their facilities and the realities in the post war south.

First we pass the “harbor” where rows of colorful boats are docked, victims of the crippling siege and the shrinking safety zone for fisherman. The Sea Road takes us from the middle area to the south, past the glorious blue water beckoning deceptively to our right. The Mediterranean is at once a liberating vision of life beyond Gaza, of potential escape and freedom, and at the same time, an impenetrable wall of the prison.

The road is intermittently paved and dirt, we see the now familiar houses turned to rubble, massive bomb craters, the empty aspirational “4 Seasons Resort.” A river of raw sewerage drains into the sea just adjacent to a solitary swimmer. The smell is sickening. We speed past empty farmland, a colorful resort designed for the staff of The Open University where classes are offered online for Gazans that want a degree but must continue to work. Young boys are running around in the front of the UNRWA Al Balah Elementary School, we pass shacks of corrugated metal, plastic, hanging rugs, ?favelas anyone. Boat skeletons, wandering sheep, scattered silent “resorts,” post assault dysphoria.

Nahed is narrating and answering our questions and I ask her something I have asked over and over again here.  I cannot find anyone who admits to supporting Hamas, in fact most Gazans I talk to are disgusted with Fatah as well as Hamas (not to mention Netanyahu, Obama, the list is long). I rarely see green flags or the occasional political poster. What is going on? Her response is brilliant in its simplicity and honesty.  Many Gazans, particularly post the 2014 assault, do not support Hamas leadership and are deeply unhappy with the current disastrous state of affairs in terms of the basic functioning of society. But if someone were a Hamas supporter, they would not tell me for the following obvious reasons.  I am already aware that the Gaza strip is crawling with collaborators, vulnerable young men recruited during stints in Israeli jails or in exchange for permits for medical care in Israel.  But more importantly, if someone’s opinion or photo inadvertently ended up on facebook or a blog post or some mainstream or social media, they would be vulnerable to a targeted assassination by Israeli forces, so this silence is a matter of survival. (Big ah ha moment).

The driver turns away from the sea into the Israeli Beach Camp, site of a former Jewish settlement evacuated with an implosion of national handwringing by the Israelis in 2005.  A cluster of modern apartment buildings comes into view, a gift from the Arab Emirates to Palestinians from border areas who lost their homes in 2008. They moved in last year, that would be six years of homelessness. The ride is becoming more of a jolting chiropractic experience, past rows of plastic greenhouses, olive groves.  It is starting to get really Mediterranean hot as we arrive at the PMRS mobile clinic, a small three room wooden house adjacent to a similar structure for social support sessions. Funded by Oxfam and Belgium, one general practitioner, two nurses, one lab tech, and a social worker come twice a month, seeing a collection of patients, doing very basic primary care (like there is no exam room), acute mostly non-serious illnesses, (lots of skin disease and scabies, hypertension), education (evacuation in case of attack, basic first aid). The services are all free, mostly women with resigned looks on their faces wait with their children.  We can see the no go “buffer zone” and nearby Israeli border.  A spy balloon hangs over us and in the moon scape of houses toppled over, shattered into massive fragments, the detritus of life’s minutia emerges from the rubble: pink snow suit, comb, electrical socket.  The birds are singing their little hearts out and thistle and a cheerful yellow flower spread over the landscape, the life force in action.

The rutted roads take us to Alzana, the sight of even more destruction, which at this point is a really challenging concept. There are families living in tents, people who were once farmers and fisherman and businessman. A sea of white hijabs emerges as high school girls in dark blue uniforms and backpacks walk home, faces smiling, laughing, just kids doing their thing. PMRS has a much more comprehensive clinic here and provides the only health care for the area. I have seen these clean, competent clinics before, staffed with dedicated doctors, nurses, and health workers, making a lot out of much-less-than-adequate.  The most striking observation for me is the wall in the hallway and the exam room riddled with bullet holes.  Israeli soldiers shot through the front door and through a window, it seems they were trying to take out a dangerous otoscope and the nearby scale. Attacking a medical facility generally falls under the category of war crime.

We talk with a warm ob-gyn, she is seeing more anemia, malnutrition, miscarriages and premature labor.  There is a problem with early marriage of the 15 year old variety and not much contracepting. Women prefer birth control pills, but that does require a functioning pharmacy supply system and the ability to get to said functioning pharmacy. The clinic offers rehabilitation and has seen a marked increase in cases since the war, compounded by the consequences of the siege such as late care and lack of follow up due to financial and physical barriers. PMRS is taking care of 250 patients in the eastern village of Khan Yunis.  Most of the victims are women and children and most of the disabilities are amputations of arms or legs due to war trauma. In past years, Palestinian society looked upon disabled people as shameful and hid them from sight, but PMRS has done a powerful campaign to integrate people with disabilities into normal society and to provide physical therapy and occupational therapy. Little cups of bitter Arabic coffee appear.  

The challenges are immense: electricity is erratic and only available for a few hours per day.  What happens to people who depend on electrical beds, electric wheelchairs, elevators, medications that require refrigeration? Some folks are so poor they cannot afford transportation to the clinic, or so uneducated and overstretched by large families that PMRS makes many home visits, bringing the care to them. PMRS is committed to honoring the rights of all people to health care access. This program started in 1994 with Medicin San Frontier and focuses on direct care as well as advocacy for disability rights. The other compounding issue is that in the past, international donors were much more interested in funding war injuries than congenital disability; care and attitudes followed the financing.

Speaking of international donors, we are back wandering in the rubble and ruins of this neighborhood and Nahed takes us to a community of donated caravans from Australia. There are rows of numbered trailers, a la Katrina, and we are invited to tour the “homes.” Each trailer seems to have three “rooms” and a bathroom, we see piles of mattress, tiny neat kitchens, and evidence that families are crowded together in small spaces.  One frustrated man gestures to his “house.”  As we enter, the stench of sewerage is overpowering.  The toilet has overflowed, and a thin layer of dirty water coats the bathroom and has spread into the kitchen.  (Did I mention that people eat and sleep on the floor?) It seems that when the caravans were built there was no real sewer system put in place, and whatever hole in the ground the sewerage drains into is now full and backing up into the home. This seems like some kind of monumental error of judgement.  Suddenly a man, perhaps in his 30s, starts yelling at us; he is angry that another group of (white) international humanitarian types is touring this encampment and we have not brought any solutions, money, plans to fix the disaster.  Nahed apologizes to us as we rapidly retreat, but it is clear to me that he should be angry, that I am from the country that funded and supported this catastrophe, that perhaps I should be ashamed that I come and stare and take photographs, and I can offer him nothing but my voice which is far from useful when your kitchen smells like a cesspool.

We head off to the PMRS clinic in Jabalia Camp, much better equipped, multiple programs and specialties, where we interview a dedicated physician, trained in Russia and Belgium and committed to providing care to a desperately poor population battered by Israeli assaults, poverty, chronic disease and the internal dysfunctions of Palestinian (non)governance. The health care (non)system is a disconnected patchwork of institutions and providers from the Ministry of Health, NGOs, UNRWA, and private clinics. They do not communicate with each other and patients often bounce between systems. He notes that the situation “is not too bad.  If there were no external players we would be okay.”  He also adds that under the current “situation” he cannot ask his patients to stop smoking, “It is better to smoke than to hit your child.”

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We Are Not Numbers

Blog post 3/26 part two

Because Gaza is so isolated with the long standing blockade and constricting siege, visitors are often asked to multitask as sherpas, bringing suitcases filled with needed medicines, children’s books, toys, gifts from relatives living in the US (connected by SKYPE but without the human opportunity for physical contact), chocolate in utterly inadequate quantities, and other assorted gifts as acts of solidarity and support.

So I find myself stuffing 20 copies of Gaza Writes Back into my bulging suitcase and an envelope from the publisher, Just World Books, to the editor of this remarkable collection of short stories by young Gazans who write about their experiences during Operation Cast Lead. Refaat Alareer joins me the first night in the Marna House restaurant, a lovely place to meet, talk, and inhale the sweet perfumes of hooka.

 

I am well rewarded for my efforts. He refers me to Maisam Abumorr, the Gaza coordinator of We Are Not Numbers, a project established by a US freelance writer, Pam Bailey, to develop young Gazans who aspire to be writers in English.  Maisam invites me to a discussion with a group of college students at the WANN office which is provided by an NGO, Euro-Mid Observor of Human Rights.  I learn that this NGO has just published a report on the use of Palestinian civilians as human shields by Israelis during the 2014 invasion entitled Israeli Matrix of Control. 

Maison emails me “a few topics that you might want to discuss with our group” and I am totally intrigued at the level of sophistication and their interest in my Jewish and medical background.  (How are your stereotypes about Gaza doing?)

1.  In the preface of your book, Broken Promises, you acknowledge how hard it is to reach beyond "the choir" when writing about Palestine. What advice would you give us, Palestinians in Gaza, about how to best tell our stories so that people beyond the sympathetic activist community will read and absorb?
2.  What kind of messages and stories were most effective in opening your own eyes, as a Jew, to the perspective of the "other"? We'd love to hear some examples.
3.  You are trained as a physician. When, how and why did you become a writer as well?
4.  You also are a filmmaker. Many people think video is much more powerful than the written word. How you view the advantages of both, and the continuing role of written stories?
5.  Now that you are in Gaza, after the war, what do you think are the most common myths about Gaza that we need to help dispel through our stories?

The room is crowded with over 30 students, men and women, and I decide I will just launch into my personal journey, invite questions and see what happens.  The hour and a half is an extraordinary sharing of information, attitudes, and controversies that range from how to write well, what is inspiration and how to hone your craft, to issues of publishing, social media, and  websites. We debate the history of the region, the use of language to shape ideas, the role of writers in society; the students are thoughtful, passionate, and eager.  The most interesting moment for me comes when we discuss what does it mean to resist oppression, how to honor the right of all oppressed peoples to resist, is violent resistance ever effective, what is the cost, and how the voices of powerful writers are important components to a resistance movement.  We ended with the potent understanding that in the age of the internet and social media, writing is a formidable method of not only informing the international community and changing the political conversation, but also actually breaking the siege of Gaza. 

The good news is that this program is looking for writers to mentor students and review their work and I leaped at the opportunity to join the mentorship program and perhaps contribute in some small way to the personal growth of a young Gazan writer and to the political challenges that we face now together.   

Alice Rothchild 3/24 p 2 - 3/25/15 post #7

Happy (late) Mother’s Day Pink Bunny                                  

When the taxi stops in front of a large institutional looking building, the Palestine Avenir (is that Avenue lost in translation or what?) for Childhood Foundation, Cerebral Palsy Center, I should have suspected this would be an extraordinary experience from the start. Outside in the sandy park fronting the building, three children in wheelchairs are strapped into a playground spinner/merry-go-round/round-about thing (you know the one that abled children run around and then leap onto for a ride, hopefully not splitting open their chins like my daughter at that age). These children are screaming and laughing like ordinary children and that is indeed just the point.  Besides this there is a brightly colored swing/contraption modified to hold a wheelchair with a heavy rope suspended from above such that the differently abled child can thrill to the joy of rocking up and down with the wind in her hair.

We are greeted by Ahmed Alkashi, the Director, who our delegation organizer Gerry refers to as an angel.  He is the kind of man with a twinkle in his eye, radiating a combo of competence, love and energy, or in my world, a real mensch. The USAID funded school is focused on getting ready for Mother’s Day which they have delayed for several days to coincide with our visit!  No problem!  This is Gaza after all and not much runs on time.

Ahmed explains that the children are separated by IQ, 70-80, 80-95, etc., and if less than 70 they are given extra support so that they can qualify for the school. Ultimately some of them are able to be mainstreamed into the Ministry of Education schools. The facility is clean and thoughtfully wheelchair accessible, two elevators transport students up and down.  We pass the outreach and portage program (ie they get the kids to and fro), and a number of small classes that have two to three dedicated and specially trained teachers.  The students have a variety of levels of disability and mobility issues.  One class is making gifts for their mothers, they are wearing stars with the words, “My mother is my source of happiness.”  There are a total of 150 students and 43 teachers.  It turns out that in Palestine, there is no Father’s Day.  Every day is Father’s Day I am told, and I am not sure if that is primarily honorific or just plain patriarchal.   

We pass a staff meeting where parents are working to integrate their child into regular school and establish a good follow up plan.  We poke our heads into an office with a social worker, a dabke class, speech therapy, a library, a gym with weight training to build muscle strength, physical and occupational therapy, with students from Al Azhar and Islamic University.  The facility appears very well run and there is an unusual warmth, respect, and kindness that is palpable in the relationships we observe.

But the big surprise has yet to start.  We are ushered into a large hall with several hundred students, mothers, a few fathers, teachers, and several DJs.  Loud rhythmic Arabic music is booming as we are seated in a separate long table as the honored guests. The mistress of ceremonies speaks passionately about Mothers with poetry and Quranic verses.  “Heaven is under the feet of the mother.” “The mother is not small, she is the whole world.” A child in a wheelchair recites a Quranic verse about mothers and another relates a Hadith from the Prophet Mohammad (peace be upon him) about how the most important person is your mother, the second most important.. your mother, the third…your mother, and the fourth..(finally)… your father. 

“Mother always looks after the children, we should be in gratitude.” The flowery tributes continue as mothers beam in the audience, the music blasts on, the director gives a speech, (“There is no handicap, there is only a society that is handicapping them.”) An entertainer plays goofy games (this is reminding me of an over the top Bar Mitzvah), the children get up and do synchronized dances and singing which reveal an incredible amount of practice, coordination, and enthusiasm. People are really having fun and soon I am in a circle dance, pushing a young boy in a wheelchair with a large pink bunny wiggling ahead of us.  Oh and I forgot to mention the two clowns, one sporting a truly bizarre orange Mohawk spiked hairdo. I am beginning to feel that we can really learn a lot from this school and the loving acceptance of all the differently abled children.  This is also a dramatic contrast from ten years ago when I first learned that children with war related disabilities were celebrated, but congenital problems were considered shameful and those children were often hidden from society. The educational system here has certainly made an enormous amount of progress in this regard. I think of all the ridiculous racist comments I have heard about how Palestinians don’t love their children or don’t treat their women respectfully. A day in this school for children with cerebral palsy should put the final kabash on that ugly bit of propaganda.

The celebration ends with an impassioned, tearful speech by the woman MC’ing, condemning Israeli attacks and reading a poem to all the mothers who lost their children in the latest war.  The music turns mournful and many eyes are starting to tear up. At some point as a profound mix of rage and sadness fills the room, she calls up a young woman, early teens, who also lost her own mother in the war.  At this point the child is sobbing as well as many in the audience. I do not know if this is a form of community tribute and support or an incredibly re-traumatizing moment.  Ultimately she is embraced, we hear “God will provide,” and the anguish that underlies this remarkable tribute to love and resilience, embraces the room. I learn later that the school has stepped in to support this young woman along with her immediate and extended family. Mother’s Day, once an international feminist call for peace, celebrated here in a time of war after war.

---

 What do you say to a mother who has lost everything? Jump into the sky.

 Today I return to the Aisha Association for Woman and Child Protection to learn more about the impact of war on women and their families. I am joined by a social worker, a translator, and six women who are engaged in a group therapy/sharing session that is the beginning of their work with this extraordinary center.

Afaf Abu Ajwa is from Shejaia and “before the aggression I was very happy.”  She has seven sons, three at university, one working as a teacher, one an engineer, and one in high school  Her close family and relatives all live nearby and once the war started, she was afraid her sons could die “at any time…all suffering from the bombs.”  It was hard for her to leave her house but because her house was half concrete and half aluminum, people repeatedly advised that she leave for safety. “I faced death every day but where I go? Every place I will go suffers from the same problem I suffer from.” Her two sisters sitting next to her at the conference table both agree and argue with her as she speaks; these are three tough, outspoken, defeated women.

“On the black Sunday, [July 2014] it was not a night, it was a suffering from Israeli occupation when they hit our houses, kill our children.” She uses the word Yehud and Israeli interchangeably; I do not blame her.  In her world they are synonymous. “At about 7:00 pm, Yehud bombs hit the house continuously like the rain, and they start light bombs, burn the house, and light up the street. It was Ramadan and she put iftar on the table but they were not able to eat.  Although she has diabetes, (spending about 400 shekels a month for medications), she still could not eat. Today she starts crying as she recalls her husband urging her to eat so she will not lose consciousness, but she was “just looking at my child as if it is the last time I will see them…one second to lose one relative of yours.”  Bombs hit her house, but she didn’t know what to do.  She went to the bedroom; her husband shouted to come back to join her sons. The room was immediately totally damaged. Ultimately the family asked the Red Crescent to come and rescue them, but the Red Crescent refused because the Israelis would not permit the ambulance passage.

“If we stay in our house we will die and if we leave our house we will also die.” Her neighbor opened the door for her and her young sons and as they fled the Israelis immediately bombed the street. Her husband and other sons were in their own house, two sons came over to the neighbor’s and the Israelis bombed her home again. Her husband “he start shouting and tell me not to be afraid.   I thanks God that my sons are still alive” and from the neighbor’s house they can see the damaged second floor of her home; there is no safe place, there are 30 people in one room, houses are crashing down on other inhabitants, “Yehud becomes crazy,” When glass falls on a newborn, the grandfather grabbed the baby and started to run in the street.  He was killed and the baby injured.  80 people in her neighborhood died.  She used to save money for her son, but now when she wants to save anything she asks, why save, another war is coming.

As the memories of that time explode into the room, Afaf is getting more angry and outraged, her voice rising with a fierce sense of fury and hopelessness. With bombs all around, her husband was ready to leave, but there were no ambulances, no Red Crescent, “there was no hope to live; the streets were crowded with women and children.” Her husband asked her to shout for people to go out with them, “it was like ’48 nakba.” Women fled without their hijabs, many were in pajamas, blood was everywhere.  She injured her foot running towards an UNRWA school for shelter, but once she arrived she realized she had lost one of her sons.  She ran back to Shejaia but this time the place was totally different.  “There were no humanity, people dead in the streets, like Sabra and Shatila, (two refugee camps in Lebanon that were the sites of horrific massacres in the 1980s).  She saw disembodied hands, bodies without heads, a dead woman clutching her dead child, eight women crushed under a house, their faces frozen in fright. The bombs were dropping, she found her son dead.  One neighbor had a long haired son who was lost during the escape, people assumed he was a girl and it took over 2 weeks to match his severed head with his damaged body. Afaf suffered from extreme shock, “I start to ask God to take revenge of who is the reason for what happened, no humanity, in five years, three aggressions. Where are men’s and women’s rights, Palestinian rights?”

“If there is woman’s rights, how can they leave us in the shelters in this bad situation, it is impossible for a five year old child to live through three aggressions. Israel didn’t fight just one people, they fight humanity.  It is our right to struggle for our land, I ask the world to stand with us because Palestine is for us. And the right of return is our right, and we have to achieve it soon.  We don’t have a house, and mice walk on our bodies, in our clothes, we have no work, no life. Our children were totally frightened, they stopped playing, they just play Israeli occupation and Arab.  What can we say? How do you think if we do not have job or house, or water, from where can we get money for rent, clothes or to eat.  I am still living in the [UNRWA] shelter which isn’t suitable for a viable life… We want to leave now, give us our rights. We don’t want food or clothes, we just want our rights.”

Afaf’s sister, Samar Abu Ajwa says that everyone has a different story. She and her husband (who I think is the brother of Afaf’s husband) and their children, lived in a single room for 15 years, saving money and borrowing 15,000 dinars to finally build their own house.  “Thanks God we can build a house...I just live in my house for one year, and then the aggression came.  Around my house there were no houses, after my house there were farms.  Six bombs hit the farms around me.” She is now weeping uncontrollably, describing her enormous level of fear, her sisters hold their heads in their hands. “My brothers ask me to go to live with them but I told them, no, it is my right and it is my right to live in my house.  My house is near the border with Yehud, I can see Israeli jeeps.  I went to live in my brother’s house on July 20th, I left the house, my brother coordinate with the ambulance to come and take us and the neighbors and to leave with us.  My neighbor was in a car with his family and the bomb hit them, the car totally burned with the people inside it.

“I went to my family [parent’s] house and with the first cease fire, I go to Shejaia, I used to go with one taxi but this time I used three taxis.  When I arrived at Shejaia, there was no Shejaia. There were no people, no houses, no trees, nothing but blood all around. I just want to see my house, my sister asked me to go back, but I refused.  I didn’t know where it is, I start walking over damaged housing looking for my house, my dream house. I just live in it for just one year; can you imagine, fifteen years in one room and when I have my house, it is damaged, it is suffering.   My little child asked me about his toys, I don’t know what to tell him. He said that he  want to die, he is three years old. He asked me when I die, don’t cry please.  What Israel did in this war, they turned a child into a soldier and women became unafraid of anything.  Where can I go, now I am living in a nylon place, they are living in a plastic house, [ie a tent]…Do Americans [not] prefer Arab people, because American control the world?

The third sister, Etaf Farahat is also from Shejaia; she left the house when it was too difficult to stay.  There were 30 people in her home, they wanted to leave; it was Ramadan and everyone was fasting.  “The houses around were totally empty, but we don’t know where to go, we stick together to the last moment at 8 am July 20, Sunday. We were at home, bombs were exploding all around us, in the streets and houses.  The bombs hit our house, a huge part of the [building was] damaged…One room is okay, there were 13 persons in one room like the one we are in, they don’t know how to go, how to drink water, how to eat, how to do anything. They were too much children, (15 children), four families, four sick people, one suffered from diabetes and she lost consciousness.  The entrance of my house was totally damaged, my husband doesn’t know what to do.  There is a huge number of people in the house, death all around.” 

“At 4 am July 21, my husband Zohair Farahat start to say allah akbar, so people can hear him so people can leave the house.  At this moment his mother was with them, she is 80 years old and it was hard for her to run and leave the house.  Etaf’s sons refused to leave the grandmother alone, so they carried her and started to run in the road while the bombs were falling.” Her hand gestures are becoming more expressive and dramatic and I can hear the fear and rage in her voice. They saw bombs all over, people lying in the street, limbs missing.  They walked over bodies and blood. They couldn’t see each other, “can’t see, just hear bombs and shouting of people.”  They found the ambulance and Red Crescent cars at the beginning of Shejaia but cannot reach them; the ambulance carried the injured people but the bombs also hit the ambulance so the driver and the injured were dead.  They continued to run and shout their names, they couldn’t see anything until they reached a taxi area. 

By the time they arrived at the school/shelter they were wearing bed clothes, pajamas, and some women had improvised hijabs and skirts.  “We do not have money. We have no food. We didn’t eat for Ramadan.  We found thousands in the UNRWA shelters, injured and dead. Some people looking for their children; they were dead. They went to the hospital and stay around the hospital in the garden, about 50 days in the garden, Shifa Hospital. They sleep in the hospital.  Her daughter was in the university, her sons were shocked because of the blood.  They stay in the entrance of the hospital and just look for relatives dead or injured.” Her voice has an insistent, steady rhythm recounting the mounting disasters; her sisters look increasingly saddened and weary. “When aggression ends, they count 47 of her families and relatives houses totally damaged with no place to build.  We still live in the UNRWA shelters, Tal Al Hawa.  We do not have money, house, anything, about 15 relatives in one room in shelter. The food is canned food, I have two sons in university and four in schools, husband not working, I lose everything.  I don’t know how to live and now everyday we just eat rice for past three weeks.  [I see all the women nodding in agreement.] “We bored with rice, we didn’t take money for rent, and we lost the house.  We want to leave shelter but we don’t know where to go, and people who leave the shelter they give them rent for one month. I just want for you to look after the money for rent, how to get child to school.  We just want to live, no more wars. We just want to live like countries around the world. Why we are living just like this, different from people around the world?” 

Zahra Ereif’s husband Mohammed who is the son of Fatma, the older woman at the table, died in the war.  Her child sleeps in her arms as she begins to speak. “I was living in Shejaia, I had very happy life, five children, the oldest in 3^rd grade, the little one is four months. I graduated from journalist department [at university]; I would love to watch the news. At the beginning of the aggressions,…husband also watching news, she felt something different will happen today.  What? My husband wanted to see his father in his farm, the brother-in-law was also in the farm. My husband want to buy something for the child, I was still pregnant, I told him that it’s aggression do not go out.  He said it is safe, my father just came, bringing figs. He told me that he will come in five minutes.

He went to the farm and found a friend dead.” The tears come flooding and at this point everyone is reaching for tissues.  “The bomb hit his father, his father dead and he want to help him but the bomb hit his knee.  People come to tell me what happened.  They said that my husband has gone, but people tell me that that the grandfather died.” The grandmother is now crying. “My husband was injured, I has full of hope that my husband was just injured,” Tears are streaming down her face.  As people became aware of the deaths, they came to tell her.  “They took me to the hospital and I went to the fridge to take his body.  I was shocked.  My children start to ask where my father? Where my grandfather? After July 12, bombs hit around them, my child ask why? Why the aggression happened? What we did? Why they took our father and grandfather?  My little child thought father traveled and will come back.”

“On July 20 the aggression become harder and ambulance came to take them.  We didn’t take anything with us, we just left our house. People said what are you doing in the house, leave Shejaia.” During a ceasefire, “I went back to the house, half of our house was damaged. My  child used to say where is our dad. When we went back to our home, they ask about their toys and about their rooms, if their father will come to take them, when will we see grandfather, alhamdulillah,.  They were totally frightened by what happened to them. Ever since we tell our child what happened, my little daughter didn’t understand father had died, until now, she think that he is traveling. My son, thinks his father is in paradise with grandfather, he is in heaven and they are just suffering from their loss.  My little daughter four months, when she grown the first word she will speak is where is baba?” Zahra has repaired her house and is living with children.  “Who will look after my child? Many questions, no answers…I lost everything in my life.  God give me patience”

Shadia Al Sabagh was living in a rental apartment at the beginning of the war; the owner of the house was wanted by the Israeli Defense Forces. At the first day of Ramadan, a rocket landed nearby and her husband asked her to take her child and go to her family. “I was living in Salateen in Beit Lahiya and while they were breaking the Ramadan fast, “Israel bombed a garden around my family house, my brothers took their wives and leave the house.  I went to live with my sister’s house. Once I was walking with my child, no one in the street, bombs were all around. I didn’t feel comfortable in this house, [interpreter explains there were interpersonal stresses and conflict within the family including physical violence]. I become nervous and start to hate my  child.  I asked my husband to take me from this house to a shelter, Al Set Soura Shelter.  After two weeks my father-in-law came to the shelter, hit me and I leave the shelter with my child.  My husband hit me and broke my arm; he treat me badly. My mother asked me to go back to my husband.” [The social worker interjects a comment here, not sure what.]

Shadia is now in a UNRWA shelter, “the bathrooms are dirty, food came to the school at 11 am and they ate in the afternoon, canned food. The shelter used to buy it but now they bring rice. [It seems that everyone is mostly living on rice and they are so done with rice.] The shelter wants her child to attend a different school than she is used to. “I don’t where to go, I buy poisons to kill myself many times, my child become bad in school, no longer get high marks.  My husband takes drugs [tramadol] and beats me always. My furniture burned and the owner of the house gave me no money.”

Fatma Erief lost her son and husband in the war. Her face is lined and weary and she weeps in great waves of pain.  She was living in Shejaria, “bombs all around, we were afraid to go to the bathroom.  We were living in one room. We were totally frightened, [this is the same house as the earlier interviewees] On July 12 bombs falling, we feel that this will hit us, bombs from sky and from the ground. Many people died around my house. When my husband and my son want to pray in the mosque, I told them not to pray due to bombs.  He said, no I want to go.  In the morning when he want to go to mosque, he was wearing a white galabeya.  “I told him he looked like a white flag and planes will see him.  I ask are there many in the mosque, he said says yes. He left my life to his God.  I was preparing for the dinner [after fasting all day for Ramadan]. A bomb hit my husband in the farm, my son was just looking for his father.  I go in the streets, didn’t know what to do. People brought my husband and son, people making ululations. People take me in the ambulance. During the ceasefire, we went to our house, it was partly damaged.”

The three sisters are resting their heads on the table, heavy weariness pervades the room. Fatma talks about being alone, how the people she depends on have passed away, how she didn’t take anything from anyone. “Who will take care of all the children? Now they don’t have anyone to take care of the family.”  She has 20 grandchildren, a son with metal in his arm from an accident who is unable to work.  She suffers from hypertension.  In the winter “we suffer from nylon over the roof, cold in the winter, rain in the house.  I ask God to let Arab countries help us.”  She wants her grandchildren to go to university. “Who will take care of them? God give me life, our lives are totally damaged and meaningless.” Three of her neighbors, older women, drank gas and committed suicide.  She shares a joke, “Gaza is like heaven, there are no jobs,” but adds, “Death is better than this life.”

There is quiet and as I absorb these stories, I worry that I have intruded into these incredible women’s deepest traumas and I have nothing to offer.  In fact, it is my tax dollars and a country that claims to speak in my name that has destroyed their families and their lives.  My sense of utter inadequacy clings to my tongue as I look at their tear stained faces, but I manage to offer my deepest sympathies and promise to tell their stories (at this point shout is probably more where my heart is) and bring Gaza home. I brace myself for some angry comments, demands for aid, anything, but suddenly the mood changes and the women are smiling, thanking me for coming, listening, embracing me as one of their own.  It is almost more than I can bear. They will be back next week for more speaking bitterness, maybe some individual counseling, job training, and they thank Aisha for standing with them in their time of unbearable need.

Feeling pretty depleted, I return to Marna House and join some of the delegates for a drive to Beit Hanoun, the northern most city tucked into the eastern shoulder of Gaza, just adjacent to the Israeli border, ie., not a good place to be these days.  We drive through death defying traffic, a constant game of playing chicken with folks who already feel they have nothing to lose. There is pavement and rocky dirt roads, donkeys trotting along with massive piles of grasses, flowers, and produce, multiple rotaries, mountains of rubbish.  We pass Salahadine Street, a route thousands of years old from Morocco to Turkey, industrial areas, a huge building with bags of cement (Gaza gold), sheep trundle across the road, there is a bombed out juice factory, (juice? really?) massive bomb craters and piles of harvested rebar that is painstakingly straightened and reused. Everywhere Palestinians are living their normal lives, going to school, in the markets, walking the streets, sweeping the dust, mundane life goes on despite the post-apocalyptic surroundings. We pass one of the UNRWA schools being used as a shelter, clothes and rugs, hanging from the balconies, the smell of unwashed bodies. There are 29 of 89 UNRWA schools still be used as emergency housing.

We pull up to a massive scramble of crushed concrete jutting out at all angles, house after house crushed into deformed  skeletons of a former life, hills of dirt and sand and toxic military waste, garbage, “You’re very welcome to Beit Hanoun.”  We park in front of Banksy’s famous cat; a British graffiti artist who is rumored to have arrived via the tunnels and painted an enormous kitten on a slab of vertical concrete, a wall to somewhere, a bullet hole in the cat’s neck.  He knew that people would repost a photo of a cute kitten a million more times than a hungry displaced Gazan child.  We are soon surrounded by those very children, barefoot, dirty, ragged clothes, beautiful open faces, blank stares, borderline terrible teeth, sullen teenage boys flirting with us uncovered wild Western women. An Arabian horse gallops across the horizon, donkeys graze in open fields, a truck with a familiar jingle, oh my God it’s Fur Elise! Ice cream? No this is the water tanker making the rounds.  There is no running water here. A horse trots by with a cart piled with fragments of concrete to recycle. Someone asks if I am Israeli. An older man, face dark and creased with some kind of leg deformities sits cross legged on a mattress surrounded by some of his family.  He is mostly toothless but has a warm smile and a twinkle in his eye.  He has two wives and 42 children and grandchildren.  A UN prefab “house” is tucked in the concrete rubble, what kind of bombs create such massive destruction?

But we are actually here to see an amazing group of young men doing a form of acrobatic gravity defying skydiving called Parkour.  They mostly wear black sweatshirts with PK GAZA: Gaza Parkour and Free Running. They dream of starting a school to teach their skills, of buying a video camera to record their feats, of entering Parkour contests all over Europe. They understand that jumping off of buildings, flipping backwards, forwards, twisting their supple bodies in various gravity defying acts is actually a positive channeling of their enormous energy and macho aggression.  When too much of a crowd interferes with the show, not much entertainment actually happens here, they insist we drive to Shejaria, the devastated city that was described to me by the six women this morning.

I will not attempt to put into words the experience of walking into a nightmare, massive amounts of concrete rubble, floors collapsed onto each other, bomb craters many stories deep, in every direction. Young children clamber over this military jungle gym, living on the edge of serious injury and death. The eleven young men seem unfazed and soon, totally against my better judgement, I am holding on to the powerful hands of various young men, hosting my aching back and tired knees onto a ragged pile of rubble so that we all can have an excellent view of incredibly brave, athletic, crazy Gazans leaping across shattered roofs, tumbling and twisting  through the air to precarious landings covered with rock fragments and jutting rebar.  Their skill and energy is captivating, their hands are soon oozing blood. They explain that when they jump, they feel like birds, forgetting the war, exercising their powerful male power, connecting with Parkour groups all over the world.  Just watch: (photos and youtube thanks to Seema Jilani)

http://www.theguardian.com/cities/video/2015/mar/10/banksy-parkour-gaza-shadia-mansour-video

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QaFessBfCw4

Alice Rothchild: 3/23/15 part 1 / post #6

Running On Empty

I first met Dr. Mona El-Farra several years ago in Washington DC and I have followed her work and reports primarily through the Middle East Children’s Alliance. The taxi takes me to the Red Crescent Society main hospital through grid locked streets, aggressive nail biting moments that remind me once again that in this part of the world, there is very little personal space, especially when it comes to cars. Mona and I find a book lined office to talk: she has a head of thick black hair, a white and red patterned scarf, pearl earrings, and a turquoise bracelet. There is a fierce look of determination about her, but I sense an immense fatigue in her eyes. She lost nine relatives in the recent war.

Dr Mona el-Farra and me at Red Crescent Hospital in Gaza 

 She explains that during the Israeli attack, the hospital was bombed. “I have been negatively affected by the bombing. I am fine but it was a very hard time, but there is a feeling of uncertainty, it may happen again.  Besides that I am trying to travel to see my children in the UK, I have been invited to three conferences, but no permits, so I am stuck, maybe a trip to Seattle in May.” She will miss an upcoming conference in Ireland; there is a totally understandable stress and tension in her voice and I am trying to imagine the reality of a physician’s life trapped in Gaza and assaulted by repeated military attacks and human tragedy.

Mona takes phone calls while we talk, the man who is sharing this office with us is smoking. He is in charge of fighting illiteracy, a daunting concept when so many schools have been damaged or destroyed.

poster of literacy campaign at Red Crescent Hospital in Gaza

 Mona explains that she is the deputy chair of the Palestinian Red Crescent Society of the Gaza Strip and the director of Gaza projects for the Middle East Children’s Alliance. She is also a prominent human rights and women’s rights activist born in Khan Yunis, Gaza.

“The current situation is miserable, on the edge of collapse, there is no reconstruction, thousands of families need homes, water is difficult and salinated and of poor quality, next year there will be no water in the aquifer, so the problem is building. 96% of the water is currently unacceptable for drinking this year, there is no regular electricity, only 2-4 hours per day.  After the war, the hospital got donations for a generator, but there is not enough fuel.” They need the generator to work the MRI machine 24 hours per day and this is very expensive.

She continues, “400,000 children are traumatized after the attack due to eye witness experiences according to the UN and UNICEF.  I see that those kids, age five to 16, who are suffering this trauma, were eye witnesses of the attack, are the future youth, those kids will be the future negotiators.  When Israel hits Gaza, it hits the psychological well-being of those kids. They will either be very, very radical, filled with hatred…so hatred and lack of peace.” [Netanyahu, are you listening?] She describes the terrors that these children have seen: “war, killing of parent, home bombing, running in the streets, killing of civilians.  They currently need programs like MECA, Play and Heal Program of MECA, clinics for kids and families for psycho-social support, so this is the extra burden.”  She admits to feeling strained with a lack of resources, “Nobody takes care of me, I suffer extra systoles, high blood pressure, no one cares for me. I need a break, needs rest for one month. It was not good before the attacks, so now there is more work.  To help people, lots of pressure.” Her supports are her friends but they need support too.  “For example, I am trying to leave.”  Amazingly, she had the chance to leave during the war on her British passport, “but it was my duty, but after attack I couldn’t leave.” She tried to get a permit via Erez checkpoint but was refused for “security reasons.” “This is the case for 95% who try.”

Mona remarks that she is managerial, “but during the war I saw patients, the bombing was heavy across the road from the hospital, it was affected, I came daily to emergency, all kinds of staff who could get here,”  Some worked 24 hours, some did a tele medicine service for patients who couldn’t reach the hospital. “They talk directly to the doctor for advice and this worked, we had many calls, then we received injured patients.” They worked in cooperation with Shifa Hospital which was overloaded, equipment was not working, issues around MRIs, CTs, xrays. Patients who were injured were discharged from Shifa, and came for follow-up care of their injuries to Red Crescent.  The team as well went to chronically ill patients who lacked medications, who needed help at home.  They made field visits under fire, in ambulances went to see diabetics and cardiac patients. Some areas had two to four hours of electricity, some mobile phones were functional and in other areas there was no telecommunication.  

The second week, Israel started a ground attack in Shuja’ieh (or Shejaia depending on the map) in the northeast.  “75,000 people left their homes under intense attack, like a flooding of people.  It reminded people of 1948, early in the morning, people killed in streets, rubble, they went to schools for safety, came to the hospitals for medical help.” She coordinated with the UNRWA schools, started doing clinical medicine, there were 700 cases per day. “I worked as GP, gynecologist, dermatologist, asked other centers for volunteers, but we were well organized.’

The trauma and bitterness poured from her troubled memories.  “A child age seven on the second day of [the attack on] Shejaia came with blisters on his foot, walked a long way, hungry and thirsty.  He came to the clinic with his parents, a nurse accompanied his mother to the MRI machine, his mother was watering plants and was hit.”

“A child age five came to the clinic, with a head injury, we asked his name, ‘unknown.’ He was  comatose, whole family died.  Anything about him? We don’t now, the whole house destroyed, even which house he came from, he did not survive.”

“There are1800 orphans just from the last war.”

Dr. Mona’s face deepens with sadness. Her cousin in Khan Yunis, Abed Melek, a 65 year old farmer, ran into the street with his grandchildren when his house was hit. “He was killed, four children killed in their pajamas, five adults were killed, another ten were injured in his family…. I have story of myself which reflects the situation of Gaza, no place was safe. When shelling was heavy in my neighborhood, I went to stay with friends.  Then there was shelling in their area, people were running from place to place, but I went to the hospital daily, running with clothes on your back.  Diabetics did not take their meds.” I feel like I am sinking under her grief and her stress. “People had no IDs, there were unbelievable bombs, shaking, maybe sound bombs, no white phosphorus.  This time there was a warning rocket on the roof, [but] this can kill people. Another Khan Yunis cousin was given 15 min notice and then the house was demolished.  A nurse here from Red Crescent Society Gaza hospital, her daughter, son-in-law and two grand-children died, she still suffers.  Two of the staff lost homes completely, a nurse and an administrator.  All of them ran from place to place, so not enough food, suddenly you have 40 people in your house.  MECA responded directly. I bought food and clothes and was later repaid by MECA.”  Mona got food, milk, biscuits, blankets, and water tanks and coordinated with MECA volunteers.  She found that the markets trusted her even without paying.  During the cease fire, she went to schools for school activities with children, music, but she also distributed while there was shelling in Gaza, Beit Hanoun, etc, using the Red Crescent car.  When medications ran out, MECA said, “Buy what you can from pharmacies.”

Mona finds “Netanyahu no worse, they are one politics, very bad to look at Israeli society…I don’t like to call it war, humanity failed, civilians were attacked, there was slaughter, thousands were injured, handicapped, women and children killed, all of these are people.  It was crazy, no outcome, during the attack people supportive of Hamas, defending them, so Israel is stupid.  At the moment, people are unhappy with domestic issues due to lack of reconciliation with Fatah. [Any way out?] But not for the time being, this land should be for all, this is not easy and it needs a lot of work and lots of organizing for unity to Palestinian people and for Israel to admit what happened in ‘48, with racist and colonialist state like Israel it will be very difficult. We need one state, one vote, the middle east is chaotic but things change, like the collapse of the Soviet Union, [but] the children now will not be good negotiators [later].

As if that were not enough, Mona states, “19 health workers were killed in the Gaza Strip, clinics, ambulances were destroyed.  If you want to talk about international law, even if there was one militant in a school, you must respect international law.  Schools with displaced families (like Jabalia) where attacked, [displaced people] fled only to die inside the school, now 10,000 people are living in schools. MECA supports kindergartens.” After the big massacres, Mona “went to Shejaia during a cease fire, I could smell death everywhere, destruction, [she sighs deeply].  Our role is to continue to support people, I am MECA director, but I need someone to support me, we all need a break, a break from thinking it may happen again, it will be the end of Gaza.”

And then there is the environmental catastrophe. “Water reservoirs were hit in the north and this affected water in Gaza, electric plants, schools for disabled, streets, and there is no reconstruction.  Because of the instability re: the next Israeli attack, international donors will not give.  My home, shattered windows, I didn’t live there for one month.  I moved to another area also dangerous and the nearby buildings were hit.  I couldn’t sleep, worked twelve hours, stayed with friends, communicating with MECA with thanks for their generosity, it was lifesaving.  The schools used the MECA water unit, the MAYA project, a desalination project, supervised by engineers. All Gaza drinks desalinated water.”

“This is not about people who were killed, it is about us who were waiting for death every minute. I do not pray, I used to walk, (had pneumonia), I feel low.  I usually fight depression with walking, but my toe hurts, I had bronchitis, there is a lack of electricity, with no lights at night I do not feel safe.”

Somehow, Mona finds the strength to continue to worry about all the needy people around her.  It seems that women jailed in Hamas prisons, have no access to medication. She hands me two scripts, I can decipher two meds for yeast and BV. Could I possibly see if we brought in any of these medications? The women are in jail as thieves collaborators, whatever, “but they have their rights, men have no medicine either.”

I free associate to that bizarre and frightening comment made by Dov Weisglass, advisor to then prime minister Ehud Olmert, back in 2006 about putting Palestinians on a diet , but not letting them actually die of hunger. Well folks, Palestinians are now facing starvation, not only economically but also emotionally and spiritually, and the compounding tragedy is that their dedicated, exhausted health care providers are starving with them as well.