A Month by the Sea

Home to 1.6 million Palestinians, the Gaza Strip is one of the poorest, most densely populated, isolated and embattled places on earth. Israel’s control of access by land, sea and air, coupled with the illegal blockade it imposed in 2007, have effectively turned this tiny sliver of land, 330 square kilometres, into an open-air prison. As a result of Israel’s restrictions, Gaza receives few foreign visitors and only limited coverage in the Western press.

It is against this background of far from benign neglect that Dervla Murphy’s new book should be evaluated. The book gives a much-needed description of life inside the prison. Based, as are all her books, on first-hand experience, it sheds a great deal of light on all aspects of daily life and on the dire conditions in this dark corner of the Palestinian Occupied Territories.

The title of the book carries more than a modicum of irony.
A Month by the Sea
conjures up images of a relaxing holiday with buckets and spades, ice creams and sun-kissed beaches. This image could not be further removed from reality. Dervla spent only a month in Gaza in June 2011. But what an intense, eventful and eye-opening month that was!

As Dervla explains in the prologue, the section on Gaza was originally intended as only two chapters of a longer account of the life of the Palestinians under Israeli occupation. In 2008–10, she spent three months in Israel and five months on the West Bank. On the West Bank, she lived in the Balata refugee camp near Nablus. On reflection, she decided to write two separate books. The ‘month by the sea’ provided ample material for a separate book on Gaza. Hopefully this will be followed up in due course by another volume on the land-locked West Bank.

The inhabitants of Gaza, like their fellow citizens on the West Bank and in the Diaspora, are victims of the cruel geopolitics of the region. The modern history of this region is punctuated by Arab–Israeli wars, starting with the war for Palestine in 1948 and culminating in the attack on Gaza (known by the Israelis as Operation Cast Lead) in 2008–9. In the course of the first
Arab–Israeli
war, the Egyptian army captured and retained the Gaza Strip. From 1949 until 1967, the strip was under Egyptian military rule. During the Six Day War of June 1967, the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) captured the Gaza Strip and the entire Sinai Peninsula from Egypt, the West Bank from Jordan, and the Golan Heights from Syria. In 1979 Israel relinquished Sinai in return for a peace treaty with Egypt but retained the Gaza area up to the old
international
border. The 1993 Oslo Accord raised the hope of, but failed to deliver, an independent Palestinian state alongside Israel with a capital in East Jerusalem.

The essential framework for understanding the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians is that of colonialism. Although there are cultural, ideological and religious dimensions to the conflict, at its core is the appropriation of land and the domination of a weaker by a stronger power. The Oslo peace process was used by Israel not to end but to repackage the occupation. Under the guise of Oslo, Israel continued to pursue its aggressive agenda in the Palestinian Occupied Territories. The colonial exploitation was especially egregious in Gaza. At the time of Israel’s unilateral disengagement from Gaza in 2005, 1.4 million Palestinians and 8,000 Israeli settlers lived in the Strip. The 8,000 settlers controlled 25 per cent of the territory, 40 per cent of the arable land and the lion’s share of the desperately scarce water resources. Even after Israel’s withdrawal, under international law it remained the occupying power with responsibilities towards the civilian population, responsibilities it has flouted with complete impunity.

Israeli propaganda portrays the people of Gaza as a bunch of
Muslim fanatics, and terrorists to boot, who are implacably opposed to a Jewish state in any part of Palestine. What this book shows is that ordinary people in Gaza crave the same things as ordinary people anywhere: a normal life, freedom, democracy, respect for human rights, economic opportunity, social justice, independence and national dignity. There is certainly widespread hostility and even deep hatred towards Israel, but what Israelis tend to overlook is the part that they themselves have played in planting hatred in the hearts of Palestinians.

Another argument frequently advanced by Israeli spokesmen is that real peace is not possible because of the Palestinians’ alleged addiction to authoritarianism. This too is a gross distortion. With the possible exception of Lebanon, the Palestinians have achieved the only genuine democracy in the Arab world. And they achieved it before the Arab Spring began to sweep through the area from the Atlantic to the Persian Gulf in early 2011. This achievement is all the more remarkable given that they had to operate within the constraints imposed by the Israeli occupation. In January 2006, Hamas, the Islamic resistance movement, won a fair and free election and proceeded to form a government. Israel refused to recognise this democratically elected government and resorted to economic warfare to undermine it. The United States and the twenty-seven members of the European Union followed Israel’s lead by refusing to deal with the Hamas-led government. In March 2007, Hamas and Fatah formed a national unity government with the declared aim of sharing power and negotiating a long-term ceasefire with Israel. Israel refused to negotiate, denouncing Hamas as a terrorist organisation. Behind the scenes, Israel conspired with Fatah, the Americans and the Egyptians to isolate, weaken and topple Hamas.

To preempt a Fatah coup, Hamas violently seized power in Gaza in June 2007. Israel responded by imposing a blockade of Gaza and denying free passage between Gaza and the West Bank.
A blockade is a form of collective punishment which is proscribed by international law. Israel justified the blockade as a measure of self-defence, a means of preventing Hamas from importing arms. The blockade, however, was not limited to arms; it also restricted the flow of food, fuel and medical supplies, inflicting heavy economic losses and serious hardship on the civilian population. Another consequence was to prompt Islamic militants to escalate their rocket attacks on cities in southern Israel.

In June 2008, Egypt brokered a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas. The ceasefire worked reasonably well until 4 November when the IDF launched a raid into Gaza, killing six Hamas fighters. Hamas was willing to renew the ceasefire on a basis of reciprocity. Shunning negotiations, Israel launched a devastating military attack on Gaza, Operation Cast Lead, at the end of December. Dervla recalls Noam Chomsky’s reference, as ‘Cast Lead’ was ending, to the Israelis’ ‘desperate fear of diplomacy’. She also quotes the comment of Norman Finkelstein, another prominent American-Jewish critic of Israel, that ‘Israel had to fend off the latest threat posed by Palestinian moderation and eliminate Hamas as a legitimate negotiating partner’.

The encounters described so vividly in this book took place in the shadow of Cast Lead. They were with people from all walks of life, including moderates and militants from a baffling array of political factions, and senior Hamas officials. Accustomed as they are to being ignored by the outside world, many of Dervla’s
interlocutors
warmed to her and opened their hearts. They spoke with touching frankness about personal as well as political matters to this feisty eighty-year-old woman who cares so passionately about justice. Her official escorts were puzzled by her lack of journalistic equipment: no camera, no tape recorder, not even a notebook and pencil. ‘I don’t like interviewing people,’ she explained, ‘I just like talking with them.’

All the qualities that make Dervla Murphy such an outstanding
travel writer are on display in this wonderful little book: her love of people, her descriptive powers, her honesty, her unswerving dedication to social justice and her dislike of any kind of religious fanaticism, especially when hitched to nationalist bandwagons. One puts the book down with disturbing thoughts about the Israelis and their addiction to violence and collective punishment and with renewed respect for the Palestinians – for their resilience, tenacity and quiet dignity. It is these qualities which shine through Dervla Murphy’s fascinating encounters by the sea. They provide a ray of hope in what is otherwise a thoroughly bleak and shaming story.

Avi Shlaim

Oxford, July 2012

In 1976, during the worst of ‘the Troubles’, I first visited Northern Ireland. Distrusting most media interpretations, I wanted to see for myself how things were, day by day, among the ordinary people on both sides. My book about that experience ended on a pessimistic note; there was no light, then, at the end of Northern Ireland’s tunnel. Yet now the region is at peace, with a
power-sharing
administration. Neither side has ‘won’. Both sides have accepted an honourable compromise.

Also in the 1970s, Nelson Mandela and his comrades were labelled ‘terrorists’ and anyone predicting a black president within a generation would have been derided. Yet by 1993–5 South Africa was inspiring me to write a book about the transition from Apartheid.

In many ways the Israeli/Palestinian problem is utterly unlike the Northern Irish and South African conflicts. But for me the resolutions in those places have sown a tiny, frail seed of hope. When a ‘problem’ reaches a certain stage – seeming insoluble and ever more threatening, inducing despair – something can shift and by default the unthinkable becomes thinkable. Possibly even doable – eventually …

Over the past decade or more realistic observers have come to the conclusion that an independent Palestine is unattainable. Most of those who accept the need for compromise, as an escape from the trap both Palestinians and Israelis presently find themselves in, advocate the one-state solution. I am unlikely to live long enough to see this in place, but my travels have led me to the same conclusion – that only a secular, binational democracy, based on one-
person-one
-vote for all Arabs and Israelis, can bring peace with justice.

Between November 2008 and December 2010 I spent three months in Israel and five months on the West Bank. During Operation Cast Lead, Israel’s 22-day attack on the defenceless Gaza Strip in December 2008–January 2009, I was living in Balata refugee camp near Nablus on the West Bank. It was not until two and a half years later, in June 2011, that I was able to see for myself many of the durable results of that war crime (let’s give up calling spades agricultural implements).

My Gazan month in the summer of 2011 was planned to provide the last two chapters of an account of those eight other months in Israel and on the West Bank. On returning home I decided to write them at once, while the material was fresh in my mind. Then Gaza grew – and grew – and became nine chapters, having taken on a life of its own. So here it is.