Madison-Rafah Journal

Letters from Gaza

Said Abdelwahed, PhD

For weeks, my colleagues and students as well as myself, have been puffing and puffing on the current miserable situation in the Gaza Strip, and accordingly, on the future of the place and the people alike! Hence, I found myself starting this article normally reflecting on what has been taking place in this part of the world. I thought of where to commence my article. Shall I start with the socio-political situation or with the politico-social one? Nevertheless, I remained undecided as I realized that the situation in Gaza is sometimes a mixture of the two and in other times, the two situations alternate in a dramatic manner!

Words fall short from describing the situation in Gaza. However, I may describe it as truly rebellious, disorderly, uncontrollable, tumultuous, unmanageable, riotous, confused, irrepressible, uncontainable, angry, anxious, incongruous, frantic, absurd, radical and revolutionary all in one. Thus, it is no wonder that Gazans have something and its opposite simultaneously. By all means, lives a situation of bread and blood. It’s a situation of identity and dignity too.

Luckily, this unique tableau enjoys coverage in news bulletins of some of the Arab satellite channels. Sometimes, when Israel feels hurt from Gaza, in one way or another, Western media channels then compete to defend Israel, which leads to the repeated news and screening of pictures! Their news and pictures paint the Palestinians as criminals and the Israelis as victims! Anyways, the case of Gaza keeps the whole situation controversial in the world mass media regardless of their political slants and objectives!

Its is clear to everyone concerned with world politics and economics that Gazans’ daily life needs and services such as health, education, and agriculture to name a few are totally threatened. According to bakers, wheat, and flour merchants, it is believed that Gaza bakeries may not remain open and baking for more than one week. Nothing is being allowed to enter into Gaza, even the mundane such as stationary and paper of all kinds, colors and sizes. Not even shoes! Israel has denied shoes from being shipped to Gaza from anywhere in the world, even from local production facilities in Hebron, West Bank! Shoemakers, who repair old shoes, have been franticly busy with work maintaining shoes and school bags, etc. They attempt to meet the needs of one and a half million with only 15 sewing machines in service. If the situation continues as it is, people will walk barefoot! Can you imagine walking barefoot? Is this what the world is waiting for? I cannot understand!

Daily life needs are further complicated by the limited municipal services provided due to the collective punishment of all Gaza Palestinians by Israel (Approx. 1.5 million people). Municipal services are also weak due to poor facilities and logistics. Pumps and waste water treatment plants have stopped due to the fuel problem. There was no rubbish collection in Gaza city for almost a week because of the fuel situation. Many of the municipality trucks and vehicles need spare parts and maintenance, which results in heaps of solid waste accumulating on streets corners. The scenery is awfully dirty and oozes a dreadful smell. This situation again constitutes other health and psychological considerations. In the health sector, I would like to give one example of Al-Aqsa hospital, which is located in the mid-area of the Gaza Strip. It's a small medical facility with little and poor resources that serves a population of 300,000 people in all medical fields! It possesses one bed for each 3000 people! Inadequate space is further complicated by poor logistics and lack of medicine and requirements for small surgeries, etc. Summer is around the corner and it’s the time for mosquitoes and other harmful insects! All emergency programs have failed so far in overcoming, or even going around this inhumane situation. In the meantime, in Gaza, I cannot see a civil society or an effective role by local civil society organizations, as they have been marginalized in favor of political parties! However, thanks are due to UNRWA and other relief organizations and its various services as without it, Gaza people could have suffered a totally hellish life.

Elsewhere, it is true that life has turned to be really dull with lots and lots of missing things and needs plus other restrictions like no travel and no movement inside the city. Of course, this is due to the current monotonous situation. On the streets you find a great number of people waiting to catch commuter cars but what is available (though in bad condition) is much less than the needs; local passengers over number the capacity of cars available. I was told by some girl students from the border city of Rafah that they found no alternative but to stay in a car's trunk (3 young women), as the Mercedes, which has a capacity of 7 passenger seats, was loaded with 14 people! Can you imagine traveling like this or paying double the fair? Had not the girls accepted the offer to stay in the trunk of the car, they would not have been able to travel home. Mind you that we live in a shame culture, which means that no girl can sleep outside her father's home regardless of the circumstances.

As I mentioned at the start of the article, words cannot truly describe this inhumane and absurd situation in Gaza. The absurdity reminds me of Harold Pinter's The Room and the theater of the absurd, which I read last week to my drama class. Needless to day, it was not hard for them to understand the ideas of the absurd; depression, anxiety, fear, lack of confidence, valueless time and place, and what not. That was simply because they live almost the same situation of the absurd movement. In a reaction to the situation, one of my female students, a young lady from a Russian mother and Palestinian father wrote to me saying: "It's safe to say that no 'artist', however good he was, would ever be able to perform-just simple shots of our daily life- that way, that would break the hearts of the audience, and leave an impression of a life time! … Ahhh … Emotions are most of the time so mixed that you don't know what you really feel. And don't know what to start with …"

Despite all of this, people are still able to find hope and dream. The same student who commented on the absurd situation wrote: "In fact, every time I see sun shines, I feel as if it smiles to me. Every time I see those small yellow flowers, I like to smile and smile. Every time I go to the university, even though sometimes I'm obliged to, but I know that in the end of the day I'll get out with something useful, and most important are the precious moments I spend among friends and colleagues. Every time I get deeply frustrated that much that I suffer a heart ache and sometimes I feel that it is my end! I open the window of my bed room and wonder the sea, the sky; the moon light, and the stars … even darkness has its own beauty! Otherwise, I go for my Holly Book, read some verses of the words of my Lord, come to relax and … I'm alive! With all those frustrations and hopes around it is no wonder that next week I will be reading with my drama students Valley Song by South Africa's anti-apartheid white playwright Athol Fugard.

Those are only observable examples of the sufferings mixed with dreams and hopes. In simple words, when you are inside a comprehensive cordon or siege you become in need of everything in life including your sovereignty and freedom; you enjoy no moment in your life, but you keep hope alive!

This gloomy situation can be seen on the surface level and during the routine daily life, but underneath, the situation seems to be gloomier. One may get shocked if he understands to what extent the deterioration in Gaza aquifers and underground water has reached. There is no talk about it at all! Gaza people drink salty and unclean water to the extent that those who live on life saving machines are on the rise day after day! There are limited resources to enrich aquifers including the little quantities of showers once or twice a year. Meantime, there is always a negative impact of the sea water, and the water traps built by Israel off Gaza Strip region. Anyways, the complications of the water situation are in need of special study and explanation. It’s a long story too.

However, before looking at the position of the people in the current devastated life and dying economic situation, and the short term solutions that keep the whole society living on the margin of life, I believe that one needs first understand something about that dilemma itself. With those documentations of the socio-political or perhaps politico-social sufferings which directly touch the bulk of the population, the peasant-farmers and per diem workers at the bottom of the economic scale and the destroyed health and educational services and its resulting ruthless life without fuel and electricity. Moreover, with the unsympathetic harsh travel restrictions for everyone else, all Gazans became in the same boat except those politicians whom Egypt permits to travel. However, it is unfortunate that the record stops here and we know next to nothing of the off scene policies around us! Thus, urgent and crucial questions jump into mind and keep buzzing without being able to find adequate, reliable and convincing answers for it! Man remains living in a vicious circle!

Among those questions are: Why the Palestinians are no longer the key player in their own matters and the Middle East game? Are the Palestinians going to be two Palestinian entities added to the already neglected entities in Lebanon and elsewhere? Are the Palestinians of Gaza going to be another copy of the Somalia case, or Baqoba, or Tora Bora, or perhaps a unique mixture of those cases? Are the Palestinian people turning to become a nation of beggars at the doors and mercy of the industrial countries and donors! Who is guilty for those crimes against the Palestinian people? Is there a way out of those seemingly never-ending dark corridors? If there is, then where it is? Though Israel is to be strongly blamed in this regard, but it is still unfortunate that no Palestinian whoever is he or she, can give satisfactory answers to any of those questions as far as he or she lives in the West Bank or Gaza Strip!

The writer is a professor of English & Comparative Literature at Al-Azhar University of Gaza.