December 6, 2009
"There is always the light at the end of the tunnel. And we have many tunnels."
Iman Omar, 21. year-old.
The Gaza Strip is a land of deep sadness, great sacrifices, ancient sufferings, big tragedies and many uprisings.
When you walk in the night on the Gaza seashore, Emad Al-Ghoul or Mussa Salem would indicate a myriad of lights at a distance, towards the north, and would tell you: "This is Erbia... this is my village... now in Israel..." And from the roof of an almost completely destroyed building in Beit Lahia, Ahmad Al-Madhoun would tell you: "You see these lights... this is my hometown, Al-Majdal-Askalan. My ancestors used to live there and then, in 1948, my grand-parents were expelled and they became refugees in Gaza. We have still land and property there. Now it's called Israel. All my relatives are scattered all over the globe. Moreover, at the beginning of this year, the Israeli army has destroyed my 5-storey building, as you can see..."
In the Gaza Strip, on 365 km2, reside 1.5 million people. The 1948 refugees number more than 1 million. They are parked in eight crowded refugee camps and the most fortunate live beyond their boundaries. Among them, one can come across 1948 refugees who are survivors of Tal Al-Zaatar and Sabra and Shatila RC in Lebanon, or someone born there in Nahr Al-Bared. Others have fled Iraq after the 2003 US-led invasion. All of them are punished and suffocated by a total siege, an embargo, international sanctions, and confined in a stump of their ancestral homeland.
The first closure of Gaza was imposed at the end of March 1993 by the then Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin - who became shortly afterwards Nobel Prize laureate. With the passing of time the blockade has become more and more sophisticated to the point that since June 2007 the siege is total.
The Gaza Strip is a place without railway, seaport, airport, without open entry and exit, with no exports and very few imports, but with many tunnels in order to bring in food, beverages, cigarettes, fuel, cement, sheets of glass, copybooks, sheep and all sorts of items. The Gaza Strip is not a place that belongs to the civilized world and neither to the Stone Age. The today's situation is the brain-child of the devil. The aim is the total collapse of Gaza, its isolation from the rest of the universe, a Gaza miserable and desperate. In fact it is in grand part happening.
However, what is astonishing here is the vitality of the people, their admirable patience and for most of them their extreme generosity. It is true life is very harsh and many wish to leave the Gaza Strip. A huge number of people have already left. They want to live, they want to breath - as they repeat. But there is nothing new. I first heard them complaining in 1996, under the Fatah regime. Added to Gaza's problems is the deep divide between the people: who is Hamas and who is Fatah, and who says no-Hamas-and-no-Fatah.
Nevertheless, we can learn a good lesson from the Gazans. Last year the situation was dramatic and tragic due to the effects of the closure: shortages of food, medicines, fuel, electricity, cooking gas, basic necessities, no raw construction materials, no spare parts, increase of poverty and unemployment... but the Gazans were busy like ants in an anthill.
This year the situation is worse, but it is a replica of last year. Gaza - one of the oldest cities in the world - is built on the coastline and on the sand, among flower and fruit trees, gardens, plants and plenty of flowers that offer a little joy during all the year. One walks between unfinished buildings and destroyed buildings, between ugly post-Oslo towers and wonderful recent buildings. The people are busy opening new boutiques and cafeterias, restaurants and commercial centers, renovating old shops, transforming stores in offices, and giving a fresh coat of paint to their iron doorsteps and to the external walls of their shops or property - often with colors of Italian cities, a recent style in Gaza. Families prepare at home for the local market shampoo, hair gel, vaseline, washing liquid and more.
In between the two years was launched the 23-day Israeli aggression that ended on Sunday 18 January 2009 and devastated the Gaza Strip. Cemeteries were expanded; wheelchairs were authorized to enter the Strip through the Rafah crossing, but small ones for the children were forgotten; the homeless lived for a while in tents and then rapidly most of them found an accommodation. The streets were cleared from the rubbles and everybody returned to his normal activity.
In Gaza, there has always been an impressive production of posters, brochures, magazines, pamphlets, flyers and events such as conferences, workshops, meetings, marches, exhibitions, festivals, film screenings, theater, were held daily. After the parenthesis of the war and a short recovery everything returned like before. Moreover, new educational institutions have been established, including colleges and two universities.
The municipality of Gaza City has continued to beautify the city planting more trees and flowers and has given in August fresh colors to the charming enclosure of the municipal park established in 1936. The Yarmouk Football Stadium has been entirely renovated, officially reopened on Friday 7 August and is now visible from the street through new green gates. The municipality is, since the end of July, paving with lovely small blocks Al-Nasser Street, one of the main commercial arteries that died towards September 2007 after a contractor started and abandoned the project of repaving it due to the lack of materials. The small blocks are made in Gaza with Egyptian cement and put directly on the sand.
The external walls of the Al-Nasser Pediatric Hospital have been repaired in July and covered with white and light pink colors. At the entrance, a big Mickey Mouse has been painted on the left and a bear playing with a kite, on the right, for a warm welcome to the small patients. At the entrance of the ministry of Health, in the same period, a very elegant sign has been put in place weeks ago for the first time ever and written with the national Palestinian colors.
Al-Abbas police station in Al-Rimal - hit the very first morning of the war - continues to work as usual in less than half of the original building. From outside it looks like everything possible, but a police station. Nevertheless, big efforts are made by the police to make it pleasant and comfortable for their staff and for the people, with a lot of ingenuity and very meager resources, like car tires to mark the pathway.
In November the dirty walls of the ministry of Labor became light apricot, but only a coat of paint was available. These are only a handful of examples. If an alien would come to Gaza today he would never believed that here, nine months ago, took place the Israeli military aggression "Cast Lead", under an international conspiracy of silence. It will take volumes to write the chronicle of all these years and to tell how the Gazans are surviving under the most inhuman, arrogant, cruel siege in modern history, imposed on a people who in 1948 was robbed from grand part of its ancestral land, and in 1967 lost the rest under occupation.
On Sunday 6 December five cases of swine flu were confirmed in Gaza. The week before the people were speaking about the transfer of Gilad Shalit, the captive Israeli soldier, to Egypt, and three weeks ago about an imminent new Israeli war.
Since months several festivals, cultural events and other initiatives are taking place daily organized by Palestinian NGOs, despite the black cloud surrounding the Gaza Strip.
At the end of August I came across a young man in the street who was wearing a black t-shirt. On it was written in English: No Money No Home. The same day children and teenagers were painting in the Unknown Soldier square, in the center of the city, doves, flowers, Al-Aqsa Mosque, the key of return, Jerusalem... It was a two-day festival organized by the ministry of Culture for the celebrations of Jerusalem capital of the Arab culture 2009. I asked to one of the organizers how they could have paint if there isn't paint in Gaza. He replied: "There isn't paint in Gaza... but we accomplish miracles..."
In Tal Al-Hawa, where the compound of ministries has been destroyed during the war, on one of the remaining walls someone has written: "Why??!!..."
- Flora Nicoletta is a French independent journalist who lives in Gaza. She is currently working on her fourth book on the Palestinian question.
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