Life Under Lockdown

    Residents of the Gaza Strip are restricted in their
    movements, in what they can bring into and send out of
    their land, even how far off their shores they can
    fish. Words, though, know no borders.

by Jamal Mahjoub

Guernica - a magazine of art & politics
August 15, 2012

http://www.guernicamag.com/features/life-under-lockdown/

As we pass under the "Welcome to Gaza" sign, a ripple of
excitement goes through the bus and everyone grabs their
telephones to record the moment. After three hours spent
killing time at the Rafah Border Crossing while the Egyptian
officials decided whether they would allow us through (the
Egyptian Ministry of Interior didn't grant us permission to
travel to Gaza until the day before our scheduled departure)
and eight hours of driving from Cairo, it feels like a victory
to have made it through at all. Two writers from our group
were refused entry and have had to drive back to Cairo to find
the necessary papers. All of us were aware when we agreed to
come that there was a strong possibility that we might not be
allowed into Gaza at all. This was my third trip with PalFest,
the literary roadshow that began in 2008 with a journey to the
West Bank. The aim of the Palestine Literary Festival is to
break the isolation of ordinary Palestinians, to make contact
through cultural events, readings, recitals, and workshops.

On each occasion when I have travelled to Palestine, an
element of uncertainty has hung over the whole venture. As we
travel on towards Gaza City, night falls over a landscape that
appears eerily normal. And why shouldn't it? We had crossed a
line in the sand. The scruffy mix of fields and gray block
houses could be located anywhere in Egypt. The occasional row
of date palms or narrow grove of olive trees hint at the rural
idyll that foundered in the not-too-distant past. The first
reminder that we are not in Egypt comes with the gas stations
that are flagged early by queues of vehicles tailing back
along the road, three cars wide. Since 2008 there has been an
almost complete ban on fuel imports. Sporadic and
unpredictable supplies explain the queues and the power cuts,
some of which last up to twelve hours.

What is striking about the Gaza Strip is the lack of a visible
military presence. In the West Bank at checkpoints and
crossings, Israeli Defense Force soldiers in green fatigues
strut about with their automatic rifles at the ready. They are
young, some of them in their teens, and they sling their
weapons over their shoulders like guitars as they demand
papers and issue orders. At the Kalandia Crossing between
Jerusalem and Ramallah in 2008, I was caught in the labyrinth
of bars and turnstiles, trying to get through the metal
detectors and x-ray machines. As I shuffled forward, voices
yelled in Hebrew over loudspeakers. What they were yelling and
to whom was unclear. I watched a middle-aged man, clearly in
pain, being turned back; his wife and young daughter, who were
trying to get him to a hospital for treatment, were weeping.
In Hebron, the army patrols the streets in full combat gear,
weighed down by helmets, body armour and radio sets, while
kids on bicycles circle round them in the manner of children
everywhere.

In Gaza, a narrow strip of land forty kilometers long and on
average less than a quarter of that in width, the military
presence is not visible but it is there all the same. From the
rooftop terrace of our hotel in Gaza City I stare at a row of
harsh white spotlights far out at sea. It takes me a while to
work out that these banks of lights are marker buoys. Over the
years the distance a Palestinian fisherman can go in search of
a decent catch has been whittled down from the twenty-
nautical-mile limit established in the Oslo Accords to the
three-mile limit imposed by the Israelis as of January 2009.
This makes 85 percent of Gaza's waters inaccessible to local
fishermen. Of the ten thousand local fishermen in 2000, there
are only around 3,500 today. The lights have the effect of
drawing the fish to the surface, which means that the best
fishing is as close to the line as possible. It's a dangerous
task. Israeli patrol ships run circles around the smaller
fishing boats so as to tip them over. They regularly fire upon
fishing boats with live ammunition.

The historian Ilan Pappe described what is happening in Gaza
as "slow-motion genocide." In theory, the occupation ended in
2005 when twenty-one settlements were dismantled and the
Israelis withdrew from the strip. Most of the buildings were
demolished during the withdrawal, though some settler houses
and even part of a university remain. The blockade of the Gaza
Strip, though, is in its fifth year. The import and export of
goods, the movement of people by air, land or sea, fuel,
medicine, and water, are all severely restricted in reaction
to Hamas's gaining control of the Palestine Legislative
Council. Israel has been aided in this by the Egyptians who
are still reluctant to be seen supporting Hamas, although this
may change under the newly elected Muslim Brotherhood
president.

The New York Times has described the blockade as amounting to
"collective punishment." Certainly it has made life difficult
for the 1.5 million people living in Gaza, 49 percent of whom
are officially unemployed. According to the United Nations,
living standards have dropped to 1967 levels. The irony is
that the blockade has strengthened Hamas. The near complete
ban on exports and the fuel shortages have led to a shrinking
economy, and in turn to more revenue from clandestine trade
done through tunnels running under the Egyptian border, all of
which are controlled by Hamas.

I had followed the news, read about the political infighting,
the consequences of the blockade, the futility of the Qassam
rocket attacks, the devastating impact of Operation Cast Lead,
and the assault on the Freedom Flotilla. Gaza had become
synonymous with the blockade. It embodied, more than the West
Bank, the idea of the world's largest open air prison. Of the
lives of the people who lived there, of course, I knew very
little.

The Islamic University is the best funded of the four
universities in Gaza. It is also the only one that is not
secular. Our first day, we are given a tour of the segregated
campus, our male guides giggling as we cross into the women's
section. The grounds are neatly tended and decorated with
trees that stand between big, modern buildings, including a
three-story library. Two of the buildings were bombed in 2009
but have been fully rebuilt. There are no signs of destruction
or shortage. When I ask our guides about this I am told that
they have "their own ways" of bringing in materials.

In a cramped lecture hall two other writers and I find
ourselves facing a full house of mostly young women, nearly
all of them wearing colorful headscarves and austere grey or
black jilbabs. The fluency of English varies, and although
they all display a great deal of enthusiasm about our visit it
is unclear what is expected of us. This session was originally
billed as a workshop, but after a round of introductions, I
see that what the students really want to do is talk.

Many of the questions directed at us convey a concern about
our motives. Why have we come here? What did we expect to
find? I sense some degree of distrust, even resentment. The
jilbabs and the headscarves give the impression that these
women live sheltered lives. In contrast, though, they speak
with a frankness I admire. Many of them already write. A
couple of girls come forward to read out their poems. They do
not wait for permission to speak. Like students in classrooms
everywhere, they want to hear how we managed to get published
and how they should go about getting their stories out into
the world. They are witnesses to a unique situation which
lends urgency. At the end, as we are about to leave, more of
them crowd around still pressing for an answer to the
question, "What do I have to do to write?" I repeat the same
advice I have always given in similar situations: To write,
all you have to do is write and keep writing.

During the day, when the lights are gone the sea appears empty
and serene. Up on the hotel terrace they are playing Vivian
Beshara's Arabic version of the title song from the film
Titanic. Over the syrupy tune a series of cracks echo in the
distance - sonic booms made by Israeli fighter jets flying
overhead. In quiet moments I imagine I can hear the faint
zenana or buzz of a drone high above. On a tour of the town we
stop by the Al Andalus tower, a local landmark, which was hit
in 2009 during Operation Cast Lead, an Israeli attack. The
apartment building, one of the tallest in Gaza, was shelled
from the sea by an Israeli warship. It is one of the more
spectacular examples of the devastation caused during the
twenty-two-day assault. Concrete floors hang on twisted iron
rods strung like a collapsing tower of cards suspended in mid-
air. When I am told they are planning to restore it, I can
hardly believe it.

There are other relics, flattened buildings, scattered here
and there, but considering the scale of the damage (the U.N.
estimates seventeen thousand buildings were partially
destroyed; four thousand completely; around six hundred
thousand tons of concrete rubble were removed), it is
remarkable how much has been rebuilt. In Sarajevo, bullet
holes and shrapnel scars were still visible on apartment
buildings ten years after the end of the war, almost as if
they were afraid that what they had suffered would be
forgotten. Here, in Gaza, despite the lack of resources
Palestinians build and rebuild, as if their existence as a
people depends on the physical manifestation of their
presence. To an outsider like myself they appear trapped in a
hopeless cycle of repair and destruction.

The coast road to Rafah runs alongside a thin strip of sand
fencing off the sea. The water, our guide tells us, is not
clean enough to bathe in. The reason becomes clear at Museirat
where the overpowering stench of raw sewage hits me as we
drive by. Water is a serious issue in Gaza. The Coastal
Aquifer is oversubscribed and not replenished sufficiently to
provide clean water. The destruction of water treatment plants
and the ban on the import of spare parts means that large
quantities of untreated sewage are regularly released into the
water system, polluting the aquifer which in turn brings
health problems.

This is valuable land, rich and fertile. Gazans grow guavas,
oranges, and grapes. We pass groves of palm trees, which give
the name to the Deir al-Balah refugee camp. We pass a school
built by the U.N. and painted in its colors, blue and white,
in an effort to protect it from air attack. There are no buses
and some of the kids have to walk for thirty minutes to get to
school. From time to time the Israelis open the river's
floodgates to cut off the road. The same policy applies to
stop Gazans visiting the West Bank and vice-versa. Within the
West Bank Palestinians registered in Bethlehem, for example,
are not allowed to visit Jerusalem, a distance of six miles
(nine kilometers).

In Rafah we visit the Rachel Corrie Center, where activities
are coordinated and medical help is provided for children.
Corrie was an International Solidarity Movement activist who
died in Gaza in 2003 while using her body to protect
Palestinian homes from being demolished by Israeli bulldozers;
she was crushed. Many kids have nowhere to go outside school.
Here they have the chance to act in plays, to draw and to
paint. Children with behavioral problems are identified and
counseled by child psychologists.

From the Center we walk to the edge of town to see the
frontier zone, marked by a tattered tent and a scruffily
dressed man holding a battered Nokia and an AK47. Many of the
houses along the border were destroyed by the Israelis in
2009. Some kids trail alongside us and cheerfully point out
which houses have been rebuilt. To them, everything happened
zamaan, as in a long time ago. Such is the memory of a young
child. One day they will learn the details, but for the moment
it is all just a game.

The street ends abruptly in a storm of fine sand whipped up by
heavy lorries that grumble out of the dust clouds and
disappear down into the streets beyond. The guard post is a
shelled ruin occupied by a handful of police officers whose
meal we have just disturbed. A tin bowl of beans and a handful
of round loaves lie on a bare table. There are no walls, no
doors, nothing to stop the harsh wind. Some fuss is made over
our cameras, which we duly put away as they speculate what to
do with a group of tourists. The ground beneath our feet is
honeycombed with tunnels. There are rumored to be a thousand
of them, varying from 200 meters to almost a kilometer, used
to bring all manner of goods in illegally from Egypt. The
sheer scale is staggering.

Through the swirling dust I can make out a cluster of
shelters, some the shattered ruins of bombed buildings,
flattened like sandwiches. Others are flimsy constructions of
iron bars and flapping canvas. A group of men go by on the
trailer of an empty lorry. They wave cheerfully as they bump
past then get swallowed up by the billowing sand. We have
become the spectacle. Grinning phantoms emerge from the
shadows. These are tunnel diggers. There is something medieval
about these men, coated from head to foot in white powder that
paints every eyelash and wrinkle, earlobe and hair. They stare
at us as we go by.

The sand feels soft underfoot as we traipse over to a shelter
where we are invited to peer down into a well of darkness. It
is about four meters in diameter and twenty-four meters deep.
The only way down is a seat improvised from two planks of wood
looped together and winched up and down with an electric
motor. It sways in the air motionless. "The power has gone,"
one of the men explains, without saying if there is anyone
down there in the dark waiting to come up.

Some tunnels are only a meter square, while others are tall
enough for people to walk in. Cars are brought through in
sections, although there is one tunnel rumored to be big
enough to drive straight through at twenty thousand dollars a
go. The tunnels collapse on a regular basis, which is not
surprising considering the softness of the sand. According to
a leaked U.S. embassy cable, the Egyptians completed a steel
wall to stop the tunneling two years ago, but it seems to have
had little effect. Occasionally the Egyptians are said to use
poison gas to clear the tunnels. Smuggling is a risky
enterprise but it is well compensated. The boys working the
smaller tunnels earn a hundred dollars a day. The men
operating the winches earn half of that. They bring in
everything from medicine to sacks of cement. Fuel is pumped
through a rubber hose.

Enormous articulated lorries lumber by, piled up high with
soft drinks and snacks. Hamas earns a tax on everything that
comes through. Opinion is divided about the tunnels. Many
Gazans are against them because they earn money only for a
small group of people on both sides of the border. And,
because they can be used to smuggle weapons, the tunnels
provide Israel with a perfect alibi to maintain the blockade
as well as an excuse to attack at any moment.

On the way back to the hotel we stop at a square in town where
a mass hunger strike is taking place in protest of the
thousands of Palestinians being held without trial in Israeli
jails. The square is filled with flags and banners. Voices
screech from loudspeakers. Later there is a meeting about the
Boycott and Divestment Society, which seeks to put pressure on
Israel through an international campaign to boycott Israeli
products, academic institutions and participation in sporting
events. Inspired by the movement that helped end apartheid in
South Africa, the BDS campaign aims to connect with ordinary
people, cutting out the politicians in between.

On our last evening the closing PalFest event is shut down by
security forces. It's not clear who we have offended, but
everything points to an accumulation of distrust. Gatherings
in which men and women congregate in the same public space are
frowned upon by Hamas. Two nights before, in what was the
highlight of our roadtrip, the hugely popular and highly
talented Egyptian group Eskenderella, who are traveling with
us, gave a concert that was rapturously received.
Eskenderella's songs of revolution have been a fixture in
Cairo over the last year, providing a soundtrack to the events
in Tahrir Square. The local PalFest organizers were asked to
split the concert hall, men on one side, women on the other,
but they refused. Many of our authors are Egyptian, and the
anti-authoritarian spirit has been running high at reading
events and in interviews. It is perhaps not surprising that
Hamas was made uncomfortable. In any case, on that last
evening on the little stage at the Qasr al-Basha cultural
center, the power is suddenly cut and the mic dies. A moment
later a plainclothes officer runs across to snatch a camera
from a young woman. What follows is a charged confrontation
with an absurdly large crowd of armed police and plain-clothed
security officers. In the end we are escorted back to our bus
and allowed to return to the hotel. We take as many of the
audience as we can manage. Many of them are nervous about
possible repercussions, especially after we depart. Security
men photographed much of the audience. Back at the hotel the
terrace is converted into an impromptu venue and the concert
continues long into the night with poetry readings and songs.

The following day, on the road back towards the Rafah
Crossing, I find myself noting down everything I can see
through the windows of the bus: sheep grazing within the walls
of a house; faded murals of militants clutching guns and olive
branches; plastic balls decorated like watermelons; old
Turkish headstones; Barca shirts; camels; the rebuilding of
bombed out bridges, broken pottery. It is an effort to
understand what I have seen over the last four days, to try
and hold on to it for just a little longer. When I glance at
my notebook later, the letters shaky from trying to write
inside a moving vehicle, it looks like the trembling ravings
of a madman.

[Jamal Mahjoub's stories and essays have appeared in the
Guardian, The Times Literary Supplement, Le Monde, Die Zeit
and other publications around the world. His novels have been
widely translated and won a number of awards. He is a
contributing editor at Guernica magazine and has recently
begun a new life in crime fiction as Parker Bilal. The Golden
Scales was published by Bloomsbury USA in 2012.]

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