Jennifer Loewenstein, The Electronic Intifada, 17 February 2004

The border between Gaza and Egypt passes through a city called Rafah. Israeli tanks regularly drive along the border in the middle of the night and shoot randomly at the surrounding houses. Sometimes it is just shooting, sometimes without warning bulldozers come to destroy some houses ‘for security reasons’. The fathers in the area near the border stay up every night until 4:30 AM, in case the tanks come to their street and they have to quickly evacuate their family. The children mostly don’t sleep well because of the shooting. Many children have symptoms of stress.

Said Zoroub drives a white pick-up truck with the words “Rafah Municipality” painted on the driver’s side in Arabic and English, a gift from the Norwegians.[1] Less than an hour after my arrival in Rafah, Zoroub, the mayor, receives an urgent call on his cell phone. An Israeli bulldozer has struck a water main eight feet under the earth in the process of demolishing homes along the border between Rafah and Egypt. This has cut off the water supply to the western half of the city. From the passenger side of the municipality truck I get to survey the latest damage.

Outwardly Zoroub looks unperturbed, but his words belie the appearance. “We live each day here in a state of emergency.” On either side of the road the homes and buildings on the streets of Rafah are dotted with bullet holes as if suffering from a contagious disease. The nearer we get, the more ravaged are the buildings —crumbling from disrepair, caved in where tank shells and mortar fire have hit them during the night, their inhabitants make-shifting roofs, walls and doorways as needed. Lines of drying laundry hang outside the windows and political graffiti and posters of martyrs decorate the walls. Poverty and ruin define the city landscape. The edge of town is a no-man’s-land of rubble torn up and rolled over by the heavy tracks and claws of the armored vehicles that rule this terrain.

Puddles, stones and broken glass adorn the path alongside the homes on the city’s perimeter that the Israeli army has blasted into gaping gray caverns too treacherous to stray into for long. More and more children appear from the alleyways of the neighborhood to our left following us curiously toward the end of the street. Men and women come out to greet the mayor as we pursue the sound of the tank in the distance that is flattening the earth beneath it, its guns pointed toward us. A bulldozer is pushing up mounds of dirt and rubble behind it with a steady roar: more homes gone and no water in western Rafah until the Israeli authorities give clearance for the municipality to send out a repair crew that won’t be shot on sight. A boy points to a hole in a wall from where I can snap pictures without being easily detected. From the same vantage point, children can watch the progress of the demolition. I have only taken two photos when the mayor tells me to “get away now, it’s dangerous.” It is Thursday afternoon the 15th of January 2004.

There are tall IDF watchtowers everywhere along the Egyptian and Israeli borders with Rafah as well as between Rafah and the Gush Katif settlement bloc on the southeastern bend of the Mediterranean Sea. The beaches of Rafah, a short walk away for most of the city’s residents, have been off limits to Rafah residents since the beginning of the second Intifada denying them the only relief they have from the unbearable squalor of the Strip. Driving past the edge of the Tel as-Sultan district, the area exposed to the settlement watchtowers, the mayor picks up speed sensing our vulnerability. Many people have died along this stretch of road hit by bullets fired randomly by soldiers in the towers. The local boys nevertheless still attempt to use open spaces like this one as a soccer field on ‘quiet’ days.

Further on Zoroub points out an orphanage and new, prefabricated homes put up by UNRWA after the IDF incursions of October 2003 that left 1,780 people homeless, 15 civilians dead and dozens wounded.[2] There are people still camped out in tents, and public buildings still converted into emergency shelters.

Northwest of the town are the two fresh water wells rebuilt with emergency funds from Norway after the IDF destroyed them in January 2003.[3] A caretaker shows us fresh bullet holes in the walls of his trailer-like quarters and in the big blue sign along the fence outside announcing the gift of the new wells. He recounts how bullets have of late been ricocheting off the sides of the wells themselves advising us against standing there outside for long.

The day before, in East Jerusalem, a man named Roger from Save the Children told me not to go to Rafah, that it wasn’t safe. “I was there just two weeks ago working on a water project. I was talking to a guy manning a water pump. He was wearing a helmet and a jacket identifying himself as a city worker but he was so exposed, you know —in full view of a watchtower. Two days later he was shot dead.”

On the way back to the mayor’s house we pass fields of multicolored carnations and stop at a primitive flower factory. The flowers are cut and bound together for export to Holland —if the Israeli port authorities allow them to pass. If they dont get out within a few days they wilt and die even in the cold trucks. A man in the factory offers me a bouquet of red carnations. Driving back, Zoroub waves his hands in the direction of the field, “I wanted you to see something romantic in Rafah.”

Confronting the Wall

I left for Rafah on 11 January 2004 as part of a three-person pilot delegation to the city. We represented the Madison-Rafah Sister City Project, an organization founded in February 2003 to establish people-to-people ties between our two communities. Sistering projects are well known in Madison, Wisconsin — a Midwestern University town north of Chicago. Madison has official, City Council-approved sister cities with El Salvador, Nicaragua, East Timor, Cuba, Vietnam, and Lithuania among others. It seemed time, some of us thought, to build ties with a city in Palestine though a vote making this official has not yet been taken. Although in our first year we had had a number of highly successful local events and were welcomed by many in the community here, we were unprepared for the obstacles we encountered trying to get into the Gaza Strip.

Since the deaths of Rachel Corrie, Thomas Hurndall, and James Miller at the hands of the Israeli military in Rafah last spring, entrance into the Gaza Strip has been increasingly difficult.[4] What became clearer than ever to me as I struggled to get permission to enter the Strip this January was that internationals are being kept out for two key reasons: to hide as much as possible what is taking place daily and to avoid any further “mishaps” —i.e., the killing or wounding of internationals that might draw unwanted publicity to the area again.

The Israeli military forces kill Palestinians nearly every day in cruel and horrible circumstances. Most of the reports about these deaths and the unending atrocities against both the people and the land never make it into our media. When they do, they are packaged as justifiable violence against “terrorists” and “militants”, as “retaliatory strikes”or as actions of “self-defense”. With the US and Israeli media and foreign policy establishments spotlighting the “War on Terror” few stop to question the reduction of entire groups of people into often grotesquely caricatured national foes bent on destroying “freedom” and “democracy”. One result has been that nearly 3000 Palestinian deaths have had no effect on the majority of Americans —most of whom have no idea what is happening in the Occupied Palestinian Territories or elsewhere in the Middle East— even though their government is directly responsible for them. When an international dies, however, especially a young American girl like Rachel Corrie whose purpose for being in Rafah was to engage in non-violent resistance, damage control becomes necessary —despite concerted attempts by some to portray Corrie as a “terrorist sympathizer”.

On 4 January 2004 Israel issued a new series of restrictions designed to further isolate the Palestinian people and to prevent the situation in the territories from as much formal or informal international monitoring as possible. The restrictions require prior written authorization for all citizens attempting to enter areas technically under the control of the Palestinian Authority (those known as “Area A” under the 1993 Oslo Agreement). Persons wishing to enter Gaza “are required to fill out a form requesting entry and to submit it to the Foreign Relations Office in the Coordination & Liaison Administration in the Gaza Strip, situated at Erez crossing.[5] These requests take a minimum of 5 business days to process, can be rejected at will, and often require repeated and frustrating attempts, as people we spoke to affirmed[6]. Attempting to get into Area A without permission can result in legal action, deportation, and the prevention of future entry into the state of Israel.

The excuse for these restrictions, which have been more or less in place since the spring of 2003 but codified only recently, is to ensure the safety of foreigners entering the Palestinian territories, routinely described as “dangerous”. The real reason, however, is not only to keep out activists such as those belonging to the ISM (International Solidarity Movement) but to keep people in general away from the Gaza Strip. These restrictions follow other, equally unsettling policies such as the requirement issued last spring that all visitors to Gaza sign a waiver absolving Israel of all responsibility for death or injury caused by the Israeli military.[7] International humanitarian aid organizations and foreign journalists have sometimes, but not always been, exempted. Nevertheless, the short-term effect of such policies has been to discourage all but the most determined from going to the Gaza Strip, and sometimes the West Bank. Their long-term effect could be far more devastating.

Internal Checkpoints

We arrived in Tel Aviv on Sunday the 11th of January and, after security personnel interrogated two of the three of us, headed for the Jerusalem Hotel in East Jerusalem[8]. We understood that saying we were on our way to Rafah in the Gaza Strip would draw unwanted attention. Nonetheless, we felt reasonably confident we would arrive at our destination if we made it past Tel Aviv because we had a letter of support from US Congresswoman Tammy Baldwin (D-Wisconsin), a long-time supporter of Israel but also of Madison’s sister cities.

Before we left, Baldwin’s State Department aide, Andrea Bagley, requested —and received — comprehensive information on the purpose of our visit, our meeting agenda during the week, the names and contact information of the Rafah municipal authorities hosting us, a clear and detailed description of our organization and its goals, and our full names and passport numbers. Her letter requested that the appropriate authorities in Israel honor our desire to visit Rafah and facilitate our entry into the Gaza Strip.[9] In addition to this letter, two of us had valid press cards from local media outlets desiring reports on our experiences in Rafah.

Journalists visiting Israel must have their press cards validated at the Beit Agron [press house] in West Jerusalem especially if they want to enter the Gaza Strip, as I made clear I did. I therefore went to the Beit Agron first thing in the morning only to be told my card was inadequate without 1) a letter of assignment from the organization that had issued it and 2) a fax from the Israeli Consulate in Chicago acknowledging that the media organization for which I was working was legitimate. I followed this up immediately, phoning Norman Stockwell at WORT radio in Madison asking him to fax a letter to Richard Pater at the Beit Agron. Stockwell also agreed to phone the Israeli Consulate to register WORT as a legitimate media source. Because there is an 8-hour time difference between Madison and Jerusalem I knew the process would take another day.

In the meantime, we decided to visit the American Consulate in Jerusalem to move ahead with our letter expecting this would prove more fruitful. As Americans, we got into the consulate relatively easily and were directed into a waiting room. Minutes later we were called up to one of the service windows where I presented our letter — on official Congressional stationery — to the American attendant saying that we hoped to get to Rafah to fulfill the obligations of our delegation asking that he help facilitate this.

The words barely made it out of my mouth before I was cut off by the curt reply, “we have nothing to do with Rafah and nothing to do with Gaza. Gaza is a dangerous place and you shouldn’t be going there. If you want to talk to the relevant personnel at the [US] Embassy in Tel Aviv, go ahead but I’m sure they will tell you the same thing.” He shoved the letter back at us over our naive protestations that this was from a US Congressperson. We were dismissed and went back outside where it was raining. This was our first direct experience with the extent of the collusion between United States and Israel.

I went back to the hotel to e-mail Andrea in Tammy Baldwin’s office. By the next day she had faxed another letter to both the US Consulate in Jerusalem and the US Embassy in Tel Aviv appealing to them yet again to assist us in our project.[10] Meanwhile, I telephoned Richard Pater repeatedly at the Beit Agron to follow up on my press card: the letter of assignment had arrived but not the telex from the Israeli Consulate in Chicago despite Stockwell’s repeated phone calls. Exasperated, I phoned the press division of the US Embassy in Tel Aviv and spoke to division Chief Paul Patin who was both sympathetic and helpful. He phoned Pater to vouch for WORT radio (it turned out Patin’s neighbors in Israel were from Madison, Wisconsin) and he promised to fax a letter on my behalf, which Pater received the next morning. I phoned Pater six times between 8:30 and 11:00am on Wednesday 14 January to inquire about the status of my press card. He kept putting me off saying there were still some “matters” he needed to look into. He refused to elaborate.

For reasons that are unclear to me, I was finally — around 2pm on Wednesday — issued an Israeli press card (valid for one week). Interestingly, this was just hours after a female suicide bomber, Reem Riyashi, blew herself up at the Erez crossing’s Industrial Zone killing three Israeli soldiers and an Israeli border policeman.[11] Word had it that Erez would be closed indefinitely. Hamas took credit for the attack.

On a hunch, I phoned an IDF spokesperson who, contrary to the rumors, said that with my press card I should have no trouble getting into Gaza. I put my suitcase in a cab and we drove off, arriving at the Erez crossing just before dark. There were 5 armored personnel carriers parked outside the visitor’s station but otherwise the crossing was empty. Three young soldiers in the visitor’s station sat huddled together with long faces. I handed them my passport and press card expressing my sadness over the deaths caused by that morning’s suicide bombing. “My friend is dead,” said the young female soldier who handed back my ID with the gate pass that finally allowed me to proceed.

That night the streets of Gaza City were flooded from torrential rains and waters gushing up from the useless, decaying gutters. Cars were stopped in the streets standing in half a foot of water and men were laying wooden planks from the curbs to help them cross shallower areas. The power had gone out in a good part of the city making it look more rundown than ever in the darkness. My taxi driver took a circuitous route around the worst areas and dropped me off at the Deira hotel hoping I would find a vacant room. In fact, the hotel was empty.

The desk clerk explained that all the journalists planning to stay there that night had cancelled their reservations because Erez was closed. To his surprise I explained that I had just come through Erez. Now I had the beautiful villa-style hotel to myself. I phoned my companions in East Jerusalem urging them to follow up with our Congressional letter at the US Embassy and then, at 8pm, gave a half-hour live interview to WORT radio in Madison as agreed. The next morning I left for Rafah passing the north-south checkpoint at Deir al-Balah with relative ease: we waited only 45 minutes before being allowed to proceed —unusual for a place where delays anywhere between 2 hours and four days are common.

The Terrorist Infrastructure

Bullets flew at us like hailstones when we left Naila’s home that first evening in Rafah. For two hours I’d sat together with Sumaiya, the mayor’s wife, and her sisters and their children watching their wide eyes and smiles as, one by one, they stood before me to attempt a sentence in English looking to me for approval and then running away in gleeful embarrassment. The older girls passed around dinner, pastries and coffee and Noof, Said Zoroub’s beautiful 17-year-old daughter, asked me what I thought of Islam and if I would tell her what the bad things were that people in America said about it.

Some of the kids were roughhousing in the background when the power went out leaving us in darkness. The littlest boy, Karim, let out a shriek calling, “mama!” and someone went to look for a battery-operated lamp. Electricity, like water and phone lines, is never taken for granted.

We decided to leave when the lights came back on and Talal, the mayor’s friend, came to pick us up, but we had to cram ourselves back into the doorway when bullets flew at us from the watchtower in the distance hitting the side of the building or shooting past us into the night. I would never have left that doorway had I been alone, but for the others the routine for these episodes of indiscriminate firing was to pause for a moment to wait for quiet, then dart into the car and duck down below the windows while the driver sped away. Up the road two cars had collided racing away from the same scene, their drivers looking dejected standing there in the middle of the dark street surveying the damage.

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