fear

For the first time yesterday, I got scared about the Gaza trip. This was a new thing for me; I hadn't really felt any fear up until now. But perhaps, with less than two weeks to go before I leave for Egypt, the reality of the enterprise is starting to sink in, and my ability to imagine the worst case scenario is coming to the fore.

Right before I left the house to go meet a friend for dinner, I read that Amira Hass, the intrepid Ha'aretz reporter whose book about Gaza I absolutely loved, was arrested while crossing the border and banned from returning to Gaza for 30 days. (Gee, perhaps it's things like this that led the non-profit watchdog group Freedom House to recently downgrade Israel's press status to "partly free.") This seemed like a bad omen to me. And then, on the subway, I had a little too much time to think about things like being turned back at the border, being detained by IOF [Israeli occupation forces], being detained by the Egyptians (not sure which of those two would be worse, but both would probably suck) and all the other things that could go wrong on our way into Gaza.

I realized that none of these fears involved actually being in Gaza. They were all about that wretched border. Gaza is already surrounded by a wall, and that wall is made a little taller every day by the fear that crossing it instills. If you're Palestinian, those fears include the fear of getting detained (possibly for years for some bullshit reason), being unable to re-enter once you leave, or leave once you enter, being trapped on opposite sides of the border from friends, family and loved ones, having to choose what to do if some of your party are permitted to cross and others are not, having to face interrogation by Shabak, the Israeli secret police, and just plain getting turned away--even if, say, you need medical treatment that's not available in Gaza.

In any case, after a 45-minute subway ride of worst-case scenarios, I had to take a deep breath and remind myself that (1) our delegation, which is large, led by experienced activists who have made this trip before, and has the official invitation of UNRWA, has an excellent chance of getting through the border without incident; (2) it's okay be scared about going to a scary place; and (3) that doesn't mean I don't still want to go.

One of the goals of any occupying force is to induce fear, to paralyze people in order to keep them from resisting, even if that resistance consists merely of trying to go about their everyday lives. It just so happened that this morning I read Eva Bartlett's post about how F-16s and drones continue to fly over Gaza, deliberately breaking the sound barrier in populated areas in what she perceptively calls "simulated bombing." What is the point of something like this, other than to terrorize? In a place in which everyone, every single resident, has fresh in their mind the sights and sounds of war, of flattened buildings, dead and wounded loved ones--in a place in which, Gazan mental health professionals will tell you, pretty much everyone is walking around with some level of post-traumatic stress, what is the point of F-16 flyovers other than to give a population of 1.5 million people recurring combat flashbacks?

Does the idea that in a little more than two weeks, I'll be under those same drones and fighter planes scare me? Yup. Does that mean I'm having second thoughts about going? Not for an instant.

The end result of this fear encounter was a sort of "check yourself" moment, which I'm sure internationals working in Palestine have all the time, and which goes something like this: (1) recognize what you're feeling, (2) imagine feeling like that all day, every day, with no possibility of escape, (3) now you're beginning to understand what it's like to live under occupation. I think, once you put your own fears in context like that, it just makes you more determined to do what you're doing.