The first checkpoint waved me by after a cursory look at my passport – he was pre-occupied with a delegation from, and I can’t explain why, Madagascar. Next I visited the office, where my passport was registered and my tourist card stamped ‘Gaza.’ I explained my purpose in visiting and was free to proceed to the final checkpoint. On my way, I heard voices to my left. As I walked in splendid isolation towards Gaza, I peeped though a hole in the wall and caught sight of hundreds of Palestinians moving in the same direction.
Taxi combined with tour guide
It was oppressively hot. The Eres checkpoint was deserted and I walked more than a kilometre from one end to the other, this next to one of the most densely populated areas in the world. There were a few yellow cabs in front of me, but the Palestinian drivers did not hurry in my direction – I would need a cab and they were all brothers, so negotiations could wait until I reached them. A friend had recommended a quaint (whatever quaint might mean in the Gaza context) hotel by the beach. “Al Deira?” I enquired.
“Fifty shekels.” Perhaps a reasonable price in Israel, but clearly a rip-off in Gaza, where people could not afford taxis. I didn’t argue – who was I to haggle over ten dollars with someone who probably had a wife and eight children to feed? His English was broken and, as we drove, he offered me a tour of Gaza, for which I could pay what I liked. Which meant whatever you offer will not be enough and I will give you the real price later.
Perfect Israeli roads gave way to potholes, flash cars to mangy donkeys pulling women in chadors in carts. There were some fields, but not many. The concrete jungle was soon upon us. Hot, dusty, busy, goat-infested, bustling, chadors, shops peddling anything, people, so many people.
The rubbish dump of the Middle East
We parked next to a rubbish tip – it would have been difficult not to in Gaza. Children, barefoot, were scavenging, as though there might have been something worthwhile discarded by the other refugees. Disease was rife among them, but they smiled and waved. We passed a boy of three - thin, frail, gaunt, frightened – wearing dark red ‘Snoopy’ pyjamas. He too was barefoot and looked as though he had not eaten for a week. In my childhood, Snoopy had been a figure of warmth, of comfort – his appearance on that child’s pyjamas was grotesque.
We entered Jabalya refugee camp, a warren of streets, with families in such close proximity that one snoring man could have kept hundreds awake. Rubbish everywhere, children barefoot, yet smiling. “Salam Aleykum” I said in bad Arabic, offering my hand. Lots of giggling as they took the hand of the fat foreigner. Kids. Rwanda, Somalia, Gaza – life might deal them a pile of crap, but it only takes a warm word to bring out their best smile.
“This way.” I was ushered into a house at the heart of a camp, to be greeted by an old man with a crooked toothy grin. I removed my shoes and was shown into the main room, a pleasant whitewashed affair, blue cushions lining its walls, a simple rug in the middle. As we waited for the tea to arrive, there was an awkward silence.
“I love these cushions, they are really pretty.”
Dutiful daughters in chadors
“Do you? Israeli rubbish. Israeli not want. Good for Palestinians only.” How to kill a conversation in three seconds. I was saved by the tea and, as always in the Arab world, hospitality was the priority. Tea was followed by coffee and spicy vegetables wrapped in cabbage. And with refreshments came conversation, animated conversation. Mohamed’s English improved as his anger intensified, much to the amusement of his three dutiful daughters, dressed in black chadors.
The girls intrigued me. Muna was the eldest, twenty-two, extremely bright and with a good command of English. She was a fourth-year chemistry student (thirteen girls in a class of thirty-three, which surprised me in this conservative society) and was concerned about finding a job upon graduation – nobody else in the family worked, because there was no work as they were not allowed to look for work outside Gaza. I smiled, internally, at the irony of it – here in Gaza, international capital of bomb-making and here is a sweet Muslim girl with a chemistry degree fretting about job prospects.
Conversation for children - mortars and helicopter gunships
When I was in Croatia, I had met a builder who had worked in Germany for eight years and his building site German had been perfect – cement mixer, screed, tea-break – but he could not answer simple questions about the weather. Here too in Gaza, the specialist English knowledge was astounding – mortar attack, suicide bombing, repression, rocket attack, curfew, imprisonment, helicopter gun-ship, occupation. From girls of twelve years old. What had happened to their carefree childhood? The same childhood that included them being awoken in the middle of the night to the sound of helicopter gun-ships circling above and destroying the houses of neighbours and family. Childhood does not exist in Gaza.
I asked about water. Water? Well, it came every day, for an hour. They queued with their buckets with all the other families to collect as much of this increasingly salinated and hazardous drinking water, before the supply was turned off for twenty-three hours.
It was my turn to face the questioning. I was British. What was Blair doing? Have people forgotten the people of Gaza, kept in this prison? Should Mohamed have hope for outside intervention? Do people in England care what is happening in Gaza? He told me of the time that the soldiers came into his house, shot dead his cousin in front of them all, then left. What was eerie about the tale was that his three daughters giggled through the story, laughing as their father struggled for the English for ‘cousin.’ Death and suffering were so common to them that it did not touch them. Twelve years old.
He told me of his eldest son, who was chased down the street by Israeli soldiers as he went to the mosque to pray. He was so frightened by the incident that all his hair fell out and now, fourteen years later, he is unmarried. There is no work. There is no hope in Gaza. Just the humiliation. Just the hopelessness. Just the knowledge that the occupiers can, and do, do whatever they choose, safe in the knowledge that nobody in the wider world cares.
The conclusion to Travel to the West Bank and Gaza on the Eve of Second Gulf War
Paul Bradbury - Author of Hvar: An Insider's Guide to Croatia's Premier Island, and Lebanese Nuns Don't Ski
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