June 5, 2007

GAZA : 40 YEARS AFTER OCCUPATION

'This is not a civil war. It is a prison riot'

Like mice in a laboratory, the people of Gaza squabble, looking for ways out

SAMAH SABAWI

Globe and Mail 04/06/07 Page A13

'Don't forget us!" has become a standard way for my uncle in Gaza to end his conversations when we call him from the comfort of our home in Ottawa . So, this week, as we mark the anniversary of 40 years of Israel 's occupation of Gaza and the West Bank , his plea should not go unheard.

Anyone who has family in Gaza understands well what lies behind the headlines. For at least a year, my in-laws urged us to visit them there, hoping that a visit from the outside world would break their isolation, and that the sight of their grandchildren would bring a sense of normality to their lives and lighten up their dreary existence. Even though we had a dismal chance of being allowed to enter through the tightly controlled Gaza gates, we still planned to try this summer.

You can imagine our shock when, two months ago, we heard my in-laws saying: "Don't come; it is no longer safe." My in-laws, like many in Gaza , were not surprised to see the heightened level of violence between Palestinian factions in what is described here as "internal fighting." The conflict in Gaza is not a fight born of sectarian tensions, since the vast majority of the population are Sunni Muslims. In fact, the families in Gaza are connected through an intricate social web, and I grew up with the Gazan joke that all Gazans are blood relatives. The violence is not purely political either - it is not unusual for a family to have members who are affiliated with the religious Hamas movement and others who are affiliated with the secular Fatah. People in Gaza know this is a special kind of war, a war that is funded by outside sources and fuelled by poverty and desperation.

The conflict started as a power struggle between Hamas and Fatah - with Fatah being under immense pressure from the United States and Israel to strip Hamas of its power. But Palestinians also know that now the fighting has gotten out of hand. Neither Hamas nor Fatah has much success maintaining any ceasefire as frustrated youths, born in the Gaza pressure-cooker with no future prospects and no hope in sight, take over the streets. My cousin described it best: "This is not a civil war. It is a prison riot."

This "prison riot" was inevitable. After Hamas's victory in the Palestinian elections early last year, Israel and the international community starved and imprisoned the 1.4 million Palestinians living inside Gaza in hope that they would overthrow an increasingly helpless and besieged Hamas government. It was a cruel act that meant collectively punishing an occupied people by attaching strings to badly needed aid.

In the ensuing months, Palestinians found themselves in a unique situation. They were sealed off from the rest of the world, faced shortages of food, water and medicine, suffered high unemployment rates and lived in conditions not fit for animals. The only form of an income for many of Gaza 's youths was to join one militia or another. The more powerless the government became, the more powerful the militias got. Those who did not join a militia had to be in the protection of one. Many in Gaza began to wonder why at a time when basic painkillers were not getting through the Israeli controlled borders, so many guns became available.

More and more Palestinian intellectuals began to refer to this as the "Gaza Experiment." Like mice in a laboratory, Gazans squabbled, looking for ways out. Every day, the pressure rose, the need to feed the family became more immediate and the sick began to die. While my mother-in-law was forced to endure the horrific pain of arthritis without treatment for many months, she still was thankful that her fate is better than that of others. My sister-in-law, a physician at the Shifa Hospital in Gaza City, told me several months ago that a badly needed shipment of medication for cancer patients was held up for weeks at the Gaza gates. By the time it was finally allowed through, 35 high-risk cancer patients at the hospital had died.

The story of the children in Gaza is even more heartbreaking. Many of them no longer find a reason to attend school and have turned to the streets for money. Some sell cigarettes or gum, and others steal for their daily bread. Israeli sonic booms in Gaza 's sky have always thrown fear into their hearts - a reminder of who has the power and who does not - but, lately, the booms have come from a return of Israeli shelling.

My young cousins in Gaza may not know how to read, but they know the different warplanes and what they are capable of doing. They brag that they are able to recognize a rifle by the sound of its shots.

So while the world looks with indignation at the situation in Gaza , let us not exonerate ourselves from the events that are unfolding. We can't forget there are human beings living in that highly politicized strip of land. We have turned our eyes away from their miserable reality. While boycotting a government because of its political positions is legitimate, it is immoral to put conditions on aid needed to save lives. It is also immoral to deliberately sow the seeds of violence and to interfere with a genuine democratic process.

And it is equally immoral to turn our attention away from the fact that 40 years later, the people of Gaza and the West Bank have still not been freed from their giant prison cell.

Samah Sabawi

Executive director, National Council on Canada Arab Relations

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Originally published in the Globe and Mail 04/06/07

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