Further reflections on Gaza
Though one sees bombed buildings on every street, what one sees even more is half built buildings- thousands of them. The result of waves of funding that pour in and then suddenly disappear. Everywhere you look you see big gaping holes between walls, where windows and doors should be. At the moment, with all the money pouring in for the reconstruction of Gaza, Israel is not letting any cement in.
The shops are a sad sight, a single t-shirt is the only inhabitant of a whole rack. An appliance store with one refrigerator in the corner and a lonely washing machine in the display window.
Somehow we forget the natural beauty that perpetually surrounds us; when you think of a war zone, you do not think about the sunny blue skies and the rooster that will crow in the morning regardless of the chaos around him. Today as I heard several rockets in the north, a larger bomb near the border, and saw at a very close distance Israeli boats shooting at Gazan fishing boats to keep them close to the shore, I witnessed one of the most beautiful sunsets I have ever seen. No matter how much damage we cause to each other, nature’s beauty remains, and today as I watched the orange glowing sun dip into the ocean I was filled with such peace and calm and was able for one minute to ignore everything going on around me.
Every country I have been to is different from the last- however there are certain similar features. Today I came across the most universal one- Japanese tourists. granted the people I saw today cannot really be labeled as ’tourists’, since only humanitarian aid organisations can apply to get people into Gaza. But there they were, three Japanese woman in visors and sunglasses snapping photos of the beach. It really gave me a laugh to see such a familiar sight in such an unfamiliar environment.
