The Ugliest Faces of Humanity

Goodbye Gaza

I apologize for not posting anything for the last month and a half. I was working in Gaza up until the beginning of May, and was extremely busy wrapping up all of my work and distributing more funds that I received. I then left and have been on the road for the last month with minimal computer access.

The situation in Gaza has not improved at all, in fact it has taken a turn for the worse. From afar I continue to fundraise and support families that are struggling to survive. Many people ask me what will happen, what is the future of Gaza and the West Bank? I do not have a good answer, just some theories. But the response that I get from most Gazans is that the moment Egypt opens up the border, over 40% of the population will leave, and only Hamas members will remain. Then Israel will launch another more aggressive attack and wipe out the Gaza Strip. Let us hope that this is not the destiny of Gaza.

My experience in Gaza was incredible and taught me so much personally and professionally. I met people that are living in the most dire of circumstances and yet they showed me more hospitality and warmth than I have seen elsewhere. These people are the victims of international interests and politics and continue to suffer because of our governments, and yet somehow they manage to stay positive.

I want to thank everyone who has supported my efforts in Gaza and hope that you realize the good that you have done. I will be working at the UN in Beirut as of July and will hopefully start blogging again at that time.

Hamas.

I want to preface this post by saying how much it bothers me that people think that if they are anti-Israel they must be pro-Hamas. In addition I cannot stand the misconception that by being critical of Hamas; one is automatically condoning the international rejection of its legitimacy, and Israel’s desire to remove it from power. There are many governments that one can accept as legitimate and any international move to reject them would be outrageous, and yet one can also be critical of the way they are governing. Too many pro-Palestinian foreigners who come here are too scared to be openly critical of Hamas because they are scared to ‘hurt the cause.’ Others simply swallow the message Hamas feeds them, however one visit to a hospital to see the torture victims at the hands of the government must make one become a little more critical.

Though I think that Hamas should have been accepted as the democratically elected party, I am extremely critical of its practices, this is also how every Gazan friend of mine feels. Of course because I am working in the field of human rights, I am dealing with a specific sector of the population, much more liberal and left-wing. However, I have also heard criticisms being leveled at Hamas’s regime from every taxi driver, shop keeper, and waiter that I have discussed politics with. Again, I live in Gaza City, and if I were in Khan Younis or Rafah I would probably meet many more Hamas supporters.

The two largest local NGOs, Al Mezan and PCHR have boycotted the courts since 2008, when Hamas illegitimately installed Hamas judges, not something that the party was allowed to do. In addition it does not allow NGOs to visit prisoners to monitor their conditions, for the most part. However I have seen countless pictures of victims tortured for being members of opposition parties, art schools ransacked and closed for teaching inappropriate subjects, and heard the stories of wives whose husbands were kidnapped and murdered by the secret police. Hamas’ trademark is ‘shooting your kneecap to the ceiling’; this is reserved for those that criticize the government’s practices too openly: a gun is fired from under the knee upwards and blows one’s kneecap out of one’s leg.

I have seen criticisms of many Hamas policies, for example I was at a workshop of Hamas and Fatah officials a few days ago where the majority of the audience (non-Hamas) was begging for Shalit to be given back, with one Hamas official flatly refusing.

It is totally understandable that a regime like this has taken power, given the circumstances that the Palestinians have been living under. No one can criticize the Palestinians for Hamas winning the elections by a landslide. However, refusing to criticize Hamas is not helping the Gazans. The situation here is bad enough due to the siege, but the refusal to acknowledge the repressive regime’s conduct makes it worse.

Unfortunately the international community exacerbated the situation. It was almost inevitable that this kind of party would take power (supported, I might add, a few times by Israel to counter the PLO) and the only way to let the situation correct itself is to let Hamas rule. The Gazans keep confirming what had always seemed to me to be the case- because Hamas has a extremely weak foreign policy, and only knows how to deal with internal issues, and even internally makes mistakes, it would have failed on its own. The people in the next elections would see that a change was needed, and they would vote in a change (they proved that they were capable of using the elections for change before). The international community needed to let Hamas do its job, and let the Palestinians decide for themselves. But instead by ignoring Hamas, they galvanized the Gazan community and made those that supported other parties flock to Hamas just because of what it represented, and because this was a form of rebellion against the West.

Unfortunately Fatah was not perfect either, and corruption was rampant. And Fatah’s willingness to follow the international community in delegitimizing Hamas was completely unacceptable and it holds responsibility for worsening the situation as well. People here were sick of the failings of the previous government and wanted a change; however the situation changed for the worse. Now many people live in fear; I cannot tell you how many friends of mine are too scared to leave their homes because they are Fatah, and they have been sitting at home jobless for 3 years. At this point most people say to me that though they are not pro-Fatah, it is the lesser of the two evils and that they would rather return to a Fatah government then keep the existing regime. But because Gaza has been cut off by the siege, there is no way for them to implement a change. I always am astounded when I hear Israel calling for the Gazans to get rid of Hamas, how on earth can they if they have been locked up, the key has been thrown away, and Hamas is in power? Where is the room to initiate change?

The Batran Family

In the last major attack in Al Boreij refugee camp, on January 16th, six members of the Batran family were killed. The father is a Hamas official, and happened to be in the living room while his wife and five of his children were in the dining room and this is where the bomb hit. The youngest son (1.5 yrs) survived, as did his father, who ran with one daughter to the hospital, though she died soon afterwards. The other 4 children and his wife were immediately killed. I met their aunt, who is now taking care of the youngest son. He is not speaking yet, but when he sees the pictures of his mother, he keeps grabbing at the image of her. The aunt described to me how they had to search for the body parts of each child so that the hospital could sew them together so the bodies could be presentable for the funeral. They were finding hands, legs, feet, not knowing which child they had belonged to. The oldest son’s head was found on a tree outside the house. The doctors needed to use wooden sticks to hold the parts together. The aunt was hugging her daughter, and kept repeating how her daughter had wanted to have dinner at their house that night, and she had said no. This was the only reason that she could be holding her daughter right now. “You can only go through so much as a human being, I feel as though I have fallen apart and can never recover from this.”

The Writing on the Wall

I visited one home were a battalion of the Israeli army had lived for two weeks. They trashed the kitchen and bathroom, and knocked holes through the walls in each room to make snipper portals. And they also decided to decorate the walls of their new home; there were little drawings of faces, Jewish symbols, phrases in Hebrew which I cannot read unfortunately. But they were kind enough to leave some messages in English expressing their love of blood and their enthusiasm to kill. The family who lives in the home and has moved back into the rooms downstairs asked me to translate what is written because none of them can read English.

Gazans are very proud people. The families that I gave money to were appreciative but also mortified. The idea of charity and begging does not come easily to this culture, in that way the society is very different to other countries where people do not feel ashamed to ask for help. Here the thought of living off the kindness of others is horrific. One man who I met in the remains of an area where there had been 35 houses said to me “I don’t want money, I just want to live. Let me buy bricks to rebuilt my house, and let me buy equipment to rebuild my factory, I don’t need handouts.” Among the rumble I saw many families trying to salvage the few bricks that could be reused, and with homemade cement they were building little huts, using a combination of the bricks and tents provided by the UN. Israel still is not allowing any building material in.

40 years of work…gone

At the remains of one house there was a man just pacing around the heap of rubble, he looked completely lost. He has no idea what to do now with his life. He spent 20 years saving up money to by the machinery for a wood chopping factory. He eventually set it up in his basement and over the next two decades was able to support his extended family and make sure that his children lived comfortably. As I saw the remains of his car, which had been in the garage when the house was bombed and got crushed as the house collapsed, he kept shaking his head. “40 years of work…gone. I worked my whole life so that my family would be taken care of… and now we have to live off other people’s kindness. The thought that my own sons have to ask people for food…” As we said goodbye I noticed that there were dark red stains all across the side of his jacket, and when he saw my stare he explained that this was the one jacket he had, and so far he could not get out the bloodstains that were the remains of his son and daughter who had died in the attack on his house.

Aid Distribution

To give an idea of the families that I have distributed aid to:

A father who is blind in his left eye, he and his wife have eight children, the youngest of which was born on the first day of the Israeli Offensive. His eldest son is blind, deaf and mentally handicapped. When his father or mother leaves his side he starts screaming and crying. As we sat together he stayed crouched between his father’s legs rocking back and forth. I kept wondering what will happen to this boy as he grows older; the family is completely poverty-stricken and cannot afford any medical aid for him. The family’s house was partially destroyed by bombs and parts of the ceiling are continuing to crumble. The wife kept insisting that she wanted to offer me tea, but then I heard her tell her daughter to go and ask the neighbors if any of them could give her some tea to use. This family really has nothing and it was heartbreaking to watch them trying to find a little bit of sugar to offer me with the tea. Their third daughter has the brightest and most beautiful smile I have seen in Gaza.

I was so embarrassed that I could not do more for them.

I spent this weekend distributing aid and clothing to families in the middle area of the Gaza Strip, between Gaza City and Khan Younis. During the Israeli Offensive the attacks carried out in Gaza City were for the most part at specific targets. For example, a friend of mine lives in an apartment where above him a Hamas official was living. The official’s apartment was hit with a missile and was completely destroyed and yet my friend’s apt is unharmed. However in the North, which I wrote about 2 weeks ago, there was the massive destruction of civilian houses so as to remove any obstacles in the line of view of the Israeli security towers. In the middle area as well hundreds of civilian homes were destroyed, not because of any Hamas targets in the area, but because the Israeli military aimed to surround Gaza City, coming from the North downwards, and the middle upwards and these houses happened to be in the way. I went to areas were 35 houses were destroyed within a 10 meter radius within an hour, another area where 140 houses were destroyed, and many where there had been fields and orchards with hundreds of olive trees. There is absolutely nothing left.

Trauma

Most children are suffering from traumas of different kinds. My friend, who lives next to the central police station, which is now gone. During the war the whole family stayed in one room in the house which they thought was the safest, because it was the furthest away from any windows. Now the daughters refuse to go back into that room. I have heard other children refuse to go to bed because they think that when they fall asleep there will be more bomb attacks and their parents might die while they are asleep.

Only two years and nine months.

My boss received an invitation today postmarked 18 November 2008 to take part in a conference in December 2008. This is proof that mail does eventually make it to Gaza, even if it does takean average of 4-5 months. Because Israel limits the amount of money coming into Gaza, Hamas smuggles money in through the tunnels to pay the government civil servants. Last month everyone in Gaza was running around with Euros because this was the only currency Hamas was only able to bring in from Egypt, and as a result Gaza was flooded with E 10 million. Today a coworker came around the office with a tray offering people baklava. This is a custom done whenever there is an engagement announcement or the birth of a child. So I asked what the occasion was. I was informed that it was because my coworker’s brother was sentenced today in Israel to two years and nine months, this was considered the most wonderful news to his family and the entire office was celebrating. His brother was sentenced because he had friends in Fatah, some of whom had connections to its military wing.

Raising hope: A funding drive for families in Gaza

I did a fundraising drive before coming to Gaza and made over $7000, and when I arrived I worked with local organizations to identify the families that lost the most during the war, and have given a stipend of around $200 to each family. Since they lost their homes, this money is helping them buy new clothing, furniture, food, mediine, and other necessities.

I would like to continue raising money so that I can help more families. If you would like to donate, please email me and I can send you the banking details.

Thank you so much for your support

queensofsheebablog@gmail.com