may 31: day one

We had a jam-packed agenda on our first day in Gaza, and the other days are sure to be no less busy. At times it seemed like a postwar whistle-stop tour, but Palestinians love visitors, and apparently there were so many people who wanted to meet us, and whom the UNRWA folks wanted us to meet, that they felt bad about denying anyone a visit.

Our first stop in the morning was the destroyed American School in Gaza, which was hit with two rockets on the ninth day of the last war. Months later, the grounds are still littered with scattered papers and children's notebooks, disgorged from the bombed building. The director of the school, a Palestinian-American who returned to Gaza to open the school, was there to greet us, as were some of the students. The director explained that when the war started, students were about to take their end-of-semester exams, and that the parents' biggest concern was that their children not miss the deadline for applying to American and European universities. (Past graduates have attended Yale and many other elite universities abroad.)

After the American School, our group split up into three buses to visit various community centers and women's and children's organizations. We met a women's creative writing group and heard a young woman recite beautiful poetry. At another center, we met a female lawyer who provides free legal advice and counseling for women seeking divorces. And of course, we met just a few of the 800,000 children who call Gaza home.

At the Al Ataa Charitable Society center, some of the delegates taught a classroom full of singing-inclined kids "Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes"--and within minutes, two girls of about eight or so announced they had memorized it and got up fearlessly in front of the whole class to recite it. The class then sang us a song which sounded quite cheerful and beautiful--until the teacher translated it and we learned it was a song from "the Arab world" (the teachers were a bit vague on the exact origin), written for Gaza children explaining that if they were killed by the Israelis, they would surely go to heaven since they are an example of forebearance and courage for the world. No one was quite sure what the correct reaction was to that.

We quickly learned that asking people if they had any questions for us was a cue for stories of war and occupation to come pouring out, particularly from women. Other than the siege and the last war, people were particularly concerned with prisoners, of which there are over 11,000 in Israeli jails (including elected Members of Parliament.) In a group of ten women who get together at a community library to read and socialize, two had family members in prison: one, a son sent to prison at age 21 for 27 years; another with three nephews who were all sentenced on the vague charge of "being in the resistance."

Also at this community center, the topic of women's rights under the Hamas government came up. These women at least were quick to stress that Hamas is their elected government (true, of course) and that they only thing they felt to be oppressing them was the occupation. "Hamas are Palestinian too," one woman said. "They could be my brother."

We were in the north, and as we left the Al Ataa center, we could look down the road and just make out the Erez crossing on the northern border with Israel, which has been sealed tight for quite some time. Once again the wall was visible, and thanks to the awesome zoom on my camera, I have some footage of it.

The last community center we visited was Sharek, a children's service center in the Izbat Beit Hanoun neighborhood. This was by far the poorest area we had been to so far, mostly dirt roads and single-story cinderblock houses. The center itself was pretty much just a one-room brick building and a tent, but it was filled to the brim with kids who'd all had their faces painted and were clamoring to meet us. A picture taken with my digital camera, which could be looked at on the screen right there, was the greatest thing in the world. The problem was that once one kid was onto it, they all wanted a picture...or twelve...and there were one or two boys who decided their mission was to jump in front of every picture possible.

One interesting side note about Izbat Beit Hanoun: the flags. Everyone in Gaza uses flags to mark their territory, from Israel and the UN to the various political parties and militias. In the more developed areas we drove through, mixed in with the green Hamas flags were the red flags of the PFLP (a Marxist party) and even the occasional black flag of the PRC, a Fatah-affiliated militia. [Note: After writing this, I was told Islamic Jihad also flies a black flag. I feel like I saw at least two distinct black flags, but I can't be 100% certain about this PRC claim anymore.] But in Izbat Beit Hanoun, a very poor area, I saw only Hamas flags.

After extricating ourselves from the trailing pack of kids (and plenty of adults) from the Sharek center, we took a short bus ride to Izbat Abd Rabbo, an area east of Jabalia that was one of the hardest hit during the last war.

Yesterday one of our UNRWA guides told us that if we saw a single destroyed house on a block that was otherwise fine, it was the result of a missile strike, where as when a whole neighborhood was smashed up, it was the result of the Israeli ground invasion. "You'll see what I mean later," he said.

Izbat Abd Rabbo is in the "whole neighborhood smashed up" category. Whole blocks of houses were simply flattened by the Israeli troops who came down the same road we drove on. The weird, modern-art pancake shapes of many of the houses, we are told, are not the result of air strikes, but of mines placed in the ground floors of the houses to collapse them.

The people of Izbat Abd Rabbo are some of the many Gazans who have been living in tents for the four months since the war. We saw the tents and let me just say, they're not something anyone would want to live in for four months, from the bitter cold that still gripped Gaza when the war ended to the sweltering heat we found ourselves in today. We are told that many people actually sleep in town, with friends or relatives, but return to their homes (now just piles of rubble) during the day because they want to be around to tell their story to anyone like us who comes through.

The residents of Izbat Abd Rabbo, we also learn, are not refugees from '48--they are some of the original inhabitants of Gaza from before Israel's existence. This is also the case with the Samouni family, who got a decent amount of press for their almost unimaginably horrific story--press that has not translated into a single brick of their extended family's homes being rebuilt. These people weren't refugees before the last war, but they are now. One can't help wondering, did Israel consciously set out to create more refugees, as if 1.1 million in Gaza and more than 4 million worldwide weren't enough?

By the time we were finished in Izbat Abd Rabbo, we were pretty tired, hungry and thirsty. So it was a relief to find delicious food at the handicrafts market UNRWA had arranged specially for us to buy crafts from a collective of women's organizations. As these crafts are some people's only source of income, we were encouraged to spend money liberally.

Many things are more expensive than you'd expect in Gaza (seven shekels--almost two dollars--for a can of Coke!) because of the difficulty and expense of bringing them in. The tunnels, Gaza's main import strategy, are both a lifeline and also a serious profit-making enterprise for the families who control them. And of course, everything must be purchased with the occupier's currency.

There was most dabke dancing (some by professionals, a lot more by amateurs) at the craft market. I guess when you live in a world of shell-holes and the constant shadow of sudden violent death, you never miss an opportunity to party.

As with yesterday, the best was saved for last. We got a surprise announcement that we had been invited to meet with Members of Parliament at the Palestinian Legislative Council building. This brought up two immediate questions: (1) were we meeting with Hamas? and (2) wasn't the PLC building shelled pretty badly during the last war?

The answer turned out to be yes on both counts. We pulled up at the PLC building, once an impressive structure in downtown Gaza City, which now looks like it's been smashed repeatedly by a huge fist. We were ushered into a big white UNICEF tent that had been set up in the PLC courtyard, where we were greeted by Ahmed Bahar, the acting Speaker of the Legislative Council. (The elected speaker is currently in an Israeli jail.) MP Bahar gave a very warm and welcoming speech, and every member of the delegation was presented with a beautiful PLC scarf (and copious amounts of orange soda.) I think it was a shocker even to many members of our own delegation that a guy who is supposedly a representative of a "terrorist organization" was...pretty much a normal dude no different than any other politician. We even posed as a delegation for a photo op on the steps of the PLC building.

After the photo op, someone asked simply, "Would you like to go inside?" And the next thing you know we were walking into the PLC building to view the damage, which is really quite extensive, from inside the council meeting chamber.

Let me reiterate: this is the Palestinian parliament building. So just imagine the Capitol Building being shelled and you'll have an idea of what we're talking about. (I know, that probably wouldn't make some of you that sad, but it would still be pretty significant.) They also have a whole wall of portraits of current MPs who are in jail and those who have been martyred. Yeah, so I guess it's not really like the US Congress at all.