Israel

Life in Gaza

Last Tuesday night was a pleasant night in the big Midwest city I call home. It was just about a perfect summer night, with pleasant temperatures and a light breeze. You dream of nights like that. On the other side of the world, it was more of a nightmare than anything else. If you dreamed of anything, it was finding peace and perhaps a home somewhere, anywhere else in the world.

“Did you hear that?” he asked me in a quiet tone of voice.

“Yes, I hear it,” I told him. It was the sounds of rockets landing nearby. Gaza City was under siege by rocket attack. It had been going on all night. In the early hours before dawn in the Middle East, we talked by Skype.

I met my Palestinian friend a couple of years ago on a language learning site called Livemocha. He was a student interested in languages and I was there continuing my feeble attempt to learn some French. The site had a social media type component where language students could ask other language students to help with their lessons. Through that method you could earn virtual currency you could then use to have teachers correct your lessons, rather than students. Several asked for my help with English. I would correct their lessons or listen to their voice lessons and comment back on their pronunciation and use of language. It was all well structured then. A couple of the students have kept in touch, one is a teenager in Brazil, the other is a young man in Gaza.

Gaza Strip

On Monday, when things were starting to fall apart in Gaza, I left a text message, “Write, tell me you are safe. The news makes me sad, I want you to be somewhere safe.” Later that morning he responded, “Hello! Thanks. I’m kinda okay. The situation is not good at all but I’m still alive.” By Monday night the tone of his message was a bit more somber: “Today was really terrible here. They rocketed us with more than 200 rockets. I could not sleep all night long.”

On Tuesday night, I left another message at night. I mentioned that we saw rockets landing on both sides. “I wish you could get out of there right away,” I typed. Then a file came across. He sent me an English language article from a Turkish newspaper. It said the three Israeli teenagers whose deaths may have led to this fighting were killed in an accident, and Israelis hid their bodies. Later they claimed Hamas had killed the boys. I told him this is not the story the rest of the world has and I sent him an article from my MSN home page. I did admit Hamas did not take credit for the killing.

“Hamas said that they didn’t kill anyone. And they (Israel) want to start the war as usual. If Hamas rocketed 200, they rocketed more than 500 only for an hour.” I told him I would be upset everyday until he could get away from there. Then he called.

We spoke for 11 minutes and 04 seconds. He explained the dangerous situation his family and friends find themselves in. A few explosions were heard during the course of the call. At the time we were finishing the call it was the early morning hour he might be getting up for prayers. It is the holy month of Ramadan and the day begins early and the fasting lasts all day and well into the night. I suspect there is little prayer and contemplation as homes are being destroyed and women and children killed.

Of course, I know there are rockets landing on the other side, but you will see that the other side has a comparative lack of casualties. That’s because they have warning sirens, bomb shelters, missile defense systems. In comparison, the average person in Gaza is defenseless against the constant bombardment that the other side brings against anything it might think could be Hamas, whether it is home or work, school or mosque, café or restaurant. The proof that war is hell is everywhere in the poverty-stricken patch of the world called Gaza.

Wednesday began with some text messages as before. He sent a video across and asked me to watch. It was an explosion near his house. Another video showed small children, injured and bloody being carried from a site of play by the looks of the background. After a few exchanges about the videos, he called. We talked about the situation in Gaza. Odd to me is that people are not mad at Hamas. He tries his best to explain that to me. We talk of the sad history of Palestine. He shows me a Wikipedia article to help get some time frames correct. He also sends over a book whose merits I have yet to judge. We also talk of other things. In the midst of war, we can still dream of better times ahead for everyone. He wishes to return to his studies and be a student of languages. Now he is a prisoner, so to speak, in an overcrowded piece of land where most people are refugees from their own homes on land nearby.

I did not find him Thursday night online so I left a message. I checked Friday morning before work and found him online. We sent messages back and forth for a few minutes. He told me it was much worse there. I told him I would pray all day for peace, and I had to go so as not to be late for work. “Okay. Have a good day,” he wrote. In the midst of war he wishes me a good day.

That was the last message I had. As I write this for you on Saturday night, I have nothing more. He did like my status on facebook at some point on Friday. I wrote, “Pray for peace.”

Note: I have written many pieces of fiction for this space and another on Word Press. This is the true story of a small part of my week. I can not begin to imagine what it is like for my young friend in Gaza. I can only recount for you some of his words and stories.

Life in Gaza

“Things are very hard here, more than you can imagine.”

The civil unrest in Egypt seems to be getting worse by the day. Hundreds of civilians have been killed on the streets of Cairo and violence has erupted in other places as well. While our country has been careful not to call the situation a military coup, what else would you call it when the military arrests the democratically elected president and takes control of the country? Of course, they have not exactly gotten things under control at present.

In the event known to us as the Arab Spring in 2011, Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak was arrested for crimes against the state. This action in the popular uprising brought the situation to a relatively peaceful end. The recent arrest of president Mohamed Morsi also followed demonstrations against the president, but this time the arrest of the president did not solve the problem . Instead, it has pitted Egyptians against other Egyptians. The military now finds itself doing battle with citizens in the streets of Cairo. Furthermore, violence has broken out between factions of Egyptians elsewhere. The small minority of Christians has been under attack as well as other civilian groups. The stories are terrifying.

In conversations with an Egyptian student living in Cairo that took place prior to Morsi’s arrest, I was assured nothing like this would happen. He told me the discontent was primarily caused by a handful of Mubarak supporters, especially in the area of Port Said and the government would not be overthrown. He claimed that president Morsi would be given the chance to fix the country’s problems. After all, he was really the first Egyptian president that was democratically elected. Sadly I have not seen my Egyptian college friend online since July 3, the day of the military coup. I pray he is alright.

As disturbing as this uprising seems, there is another consequence to this conflict that is little seen or talked about. The quote at top did not come from an Egyptian source, although I am sure things are very hard there right now. It came to me from someone in Gaza City. It is no secret that life in the approximately 141 square miles know as the Gaza Strip is difficult. In constant conflict with their neighbors, they are nonetheless dependent upon them. Most of Gaza is surrounded by Israel, except for approximately seven and a half miles that borders Egypt at the Sinai Peninsula. To the west Gaza borders the Mediterranean Sea, but Israel controls their territorial waters. They also control the air space over Gaza. To the southwest, Egypt has usually maintained a tight control at the borders to Gaza, and have been known to destroy tunnels dug from Gaza to get supplies from Egypt.

“We count on Egypt and Israel to get food, medicine, etc.,” my young friend told me. “The situation is not good with Israel already, and getting worse in Egypt.” This creates an almost crisis situation for the approximately 1.6 million people living in the Gaza strip, as Israel and Egypt are almost the only trading partners Gaza has. They can not even trade with their fellow Palestinians in the West Bank as they would have to go through Israel to get there. Access is tightly controlled. “So the life is so hard and now getting harder.”

With one trading partner dealing with a civil uprising and the other being an adversary, the results are an untold story of the people in between. They are not self sufficient enough to survive in a global commerce when they are allowed little trade with anyone else on the globe. Mostly they have small family businesses. None of the multinational companies that appear all over the world have any presence in Gaza, where 70 per cent of the population lives below the poverty line. Furthermore, the UN considers one million people there as refugees. In an odd twist to a sad situation, many of these refugees are descendents of original refugees there. I will not even try to explain the wars, conflicts and agreements that have led to this long-standing situation over a small strip of land known as Gaza, قطاع غزة‎. (Interestingly enough, Ghazá means “He invaded.”)

There have been a number of attempts to solve the conflicts that plague Gaza and the large population that lives on a strip of land about 25 miles long. Many of the agreements have been well reported in the news. While some brought a temporary cessation of hostilities, obviously none have solved the problem. The day-to-day life of a land so dependent on Egypt is not well-known outside that region. One time my friend in Gaza asked if we get much news of what is going on there. “No,” I confessed. You have to watch the BBC news on PBS or read some foreign news source like France 24 to get any news. I did tell him that we sure hear about it when Hamas fires rockets at the Israelis. Perhaps that was not a good point to bring up.

English: Map of Gaza Strip, Stand December 2008 (SVG version of File:Gaza Strip map.png by Lencer) Français : Carte de la bande de Gaza (décembre 2008) (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

So while they wait for peace in Egypt and a resolution of their disputes with Israel, the people live in poverty and try to survive. “Things are very expensive already,” my friend wrote to me from Gaza, “especially food.” In a land of plenty, we rarely hear about the plight of the poor here. We give little thought to the struggles elsewhere, unless a friend or relative is involved. “We are facing problems since the Egyptians start the fight 3 months ago. As I said, everything is very hard here.” He followed that with the “sad face” emoticon. 😦 Sad indeed.