A Month by the Sea (2 page)

For years it seemed that I would never get into Gaza. I made my first approach to the Israeli press office in Jerusalem in November 2008, bearing a letter from the editor of the
Irish Times
and requesting a one-month residence permit. Such a request, from a freelance non-journalist, provoked only scorn. Subsequently I made other less direct attempts to gain access, but without a sponsor (i.e. some insurance cover lest I might be killed by the Israel Defence Forces (IDF)) no one would help me.

Since September 2005, when Israel had finally withdrawn the last of its settlers and soldiers from Gaza after a 38-year occupation, the Rafah Gate into Egypt had been the Strip’s only exit to the outside world. The IDF had bombed and bulldozed Gaza’s new airport in 2000 when the Second Intifada began, and the rest of the 70-mile perimeter was tightly sealed by Israeli land and sea forces. The European Union Border Assistance Mission (EUBAM) had remained on duty at the Gate, sharing control with Egyptian officials. But the 2005 US-brokered Access and Movement
Arrangement
(AMA) had restricted crossings to a few diplomats, foreign investors, international NGO employees – and a very few Gazans, holding Israel-issued ID cards (an awkward anomaly, inconsistent with Israel’s ‘withdrawal’). By the end of 2006 events had rendered the AMA obsolete and the Gate was rarely unlocked after June 2007.

However hopes rose among Palestinians and their friends when Mubarak was deposed in February 2011 and Egypt’s Foreign Minister announced that the Rafah Gate was soon to open. Immediately I swung into action and with the help of a Gazan friend living in Ireland, and the Irish Embassy in Cairo, it took
only a fortnight to obtain an Egyptian permit to enter the Strip through Rafah.

I rarely travel anywhere by taxi – never mind from Cairo to Gaza – but a friend familiar with the post-Mubarak Sinai had advised me that finding a bus could take at least a day, perhaps two days. And my Rafah entry permit stipulated that I must cross between 9.00 am and 5.30 pm on Saturday 4 June. Moreover,
Gaza-bound
buses – assumed to be laden with valuable cargo – were often robbed by Bedouin highwaymen. These have been busy over the last few millennia on all desert trade routes; they may have served as role models for our most successful twenty-
first-century
financiers. My friend therefore gave me the name of his trusty Cairo taxi-driver.

So it came about that on 2 June, in a sunny, flowerful north Oxford garden, an eminent historian was telephoning Abdallah on my behalf. Avi hadn’t spoken Arabic for years and Abdallah seemed to find him hard to understand, especially when it came to my name. I recommended an accurate description: old
white-haired
woman, semi-toothless, slightly stooped, wearing black slacks and T-shirt, with hand-luggage only. In response Abdallah described himself: small, elderly, grey-haired, clean-shaven with a big stomach, wearing brown trousers and a blue shirt – which description must fit several hundred Cairo taxi-drivers. We arranged that as I emerged from ‘Arrivals’, we would each be holding aloft a placard. Abdallah planned to drive me to a hotel on the appropriate side of Cairo and at dawn we would set off on our 250-mile journey.

It’s my habit to arrive at airports too early, so it didn’t matter that British Midland had transferred me to an Air Egypt flight with a check-in desk at the far end of Terminal 3, twenty minutes’ walk away. The travelling public’s twitchiness meant a tourist-free
boarding queue and an 80 per cent empty Jumbo. Its centre aisles were given over to gleeful Arab children, their play admirably civilised – shoes off, decibels under control.

That evening I noted in my diary:

Smog blurred the rising sun as we left Cairo’s rush hour behind. Abdallah’s informal taxi was small and old with one broken door handle and no air-conditioning. It did however have a radio and beyond the industrial zone Abdallah fumbled experimentally with various buttons, then beamed in triumph – we were hearing an English language news bulletin, including obits of regional interest. Sami Ofer had died the day before, in Tel Aviv, aged eighty-nine, leaving 14 billion euros to prove that he was Israel’s richest citizen, which sufficiently explains why he was an honorary KBE. The Mossad agents who assassinated Mahmoud al-Mabhuh, a Hamas leader, in his Dubai hotel room are said to have left Dubai on an Ofer ship. Recently the US had punished the Ofer Brothers
conglomerate
for selling an oil tanker to Iran. In the past they had naughtily leased many tankers to that putative nuke-hatchery, just as Israel was loudly demanding increased international sanctions.

Of more relevance was the next item. Under US pressure, the Lebanese government had dissuaded a group named ‘The Third Intifada’ from leading a march on Israel’s borders to mark 5 June 1967, Naksa Day – when Palestinians remember Israel’s seizure of the West Bank from Jordan, the Golan Heights from Syria, and
the Sinai Peninsula from Egypt. A month earlier, inspired by events in Egypt, thousands of refugees had marked Nakba Day, which commemorates the earlier dispossession of the Palestinians, by marching on Israel’s borders from Syria and Lebanon – and the IDF had killed 13 unarmed men. Then we heard Netanyahu warning that new mines had been laid along Gaza’s fence and the IDF had been ordered to use live fire if anyone attempted border crossing.

After the bulletin, as Abdallah put on a rollicking Arab tape, I wished we could converse. (Later I learned that that tape was an anti-Mubarak ballad.) We were now surrounded by wide mango orchards, vivid fields of leafy vegetables, colonies of plastic tunnels, wayside spurts of bougainvillaea and groves of date palms. Momentarily I was puzzled by an optical illusion: motor vehicles seemed to be flying through the air. In fact they were crossing a very long bridge spanning a delta on high stilts. Beyond that flourish of hi-tech engineering we escaped from the Port Said traffic and were down on the desert where Bedouin homes – windowless concrete cubes no bigger than bus shelters – huddle amidst untidy vegetable patches. Most men were wearing
galabiyas
, all women were enshrouded and many carried head loads. For the rest of the way donkey-carts far outnumbered motor vehicles; the donkey was first domesticated hereabouts, some 3,000 years ago. Thrice we passed mothers with small children, trudging through heat and dust to distant towns, but Abdallah wouldn’t stop. (Insurance? Or contempt for Bedouin? Or both?) When all cultivated areas had been left behind we were on the coast road along which General Moshe Dayan’s victorious troops advanced into Egypt on 7 June 1967.

That chanced to be the date of my return from Ethiopia and I remembered staring down at the Sinai desert as our pilot reassured us that the war was confined to ground level, that the Egyptian airforce had been destroyed by the Israelis. Beside me sat a young
Englishman who had been tutoring two of the Emperor Haile Selassie’s grandchildren. Excitedly he suggested that the third world war might soon begin – if Israel invaded Syria and the USSR decided to protect its precious protégé. Everyone then believed that Israel had attacked Egypt only because Egypt was about to attack Israel. In fact Zionist expansionism prompted the Six Day War, which owed its brevity to some fifteen years of meticulous preparation.

Along the roadside, among many rusting relics of past conflicts, there loomed ambiguous tanks which might or might not be usable. Army checkpoints were numerous but uninterested in an aged foreign taxi passenger. As we passed, Abdallah waved cheerfully at the young soldiers who grinned
cheerfully
in response. Thinking back to the West Bank’s checkpoints, I couldn’t recall even one exchange of smiles.

Nothing was stirring in el-Arish, the Sinai’s tourist capital – an agreeable enough place, as mass developments go. In the old, paint-thirsty town Abdallah pointed to traces of the British army’s occupation in December 1916 when Sir Archibald Murray’s troops were preparing for their attack on Gaza three months later. Twice they failed to take the Strip from Turkish troops under German commanders, then General Allenby assumed command. Those three battles devastated many of Gaza’s ancient monuments and in 1926 an earthquake destroyed most of what remained.

Half an hour after el-Arish, Rafah Gate’s formidable
superstructure
rose above the desert’s bleached flatness. Having been thwarted for so long, it suddenly seemed incredible that I was about to enter Gaza. Our journey time pleased Abdallah: four and a half hours including a twenty-minute P&T stop.

I had expected a crowded scene but at 11.45 no vehicles were queuing. A pole-barrier stopped us some 150 yards from the Gate; only VIPs could drive through, we must park behind the three empty buses. My documents were merely glanced at before a policeman waved us on saying laconically, ‘Today is problems.’

As we followed the wide unpaved road, its verges merging into the rock-strewn Sinai, an excited young man rushed towards us. He was small, slim and designer-dressed with a gold Rolex and an engaging smile. Seizing my hand he said, ‘Welcome to Gaza! You are from where? From
Ireland
– then more welcomes to Gaza! In Ireland is Gerry Adams and many, many good friends for Palestine! I want to show you my country. After nine years in Cairo today I go home – now a doctor! You have paper for my name and number? Atef the name. Give me a number and tomorrow we make plans, I want to talk English to go to America for work.’ As he scribbled his details, and mine, I noted Abdallah’s disapproval.

Atef raced ahead of us to overtake his luggage, loaded on a donkey-cart. For him a side-gate was opened at once and he had vanished by the time we joined an angry crowd of 100 or so, all shouting and jostling around the iron double gate – high, wide and heavy, embedded in concrete fortifications. Everyone knew there was a problem, most likely Egypt-generated and evidently complicated but never to be clearly defined. The benign afterglow of Egypt’s revolution had, one sensed, faded in relation to the Palestinians. Who and where were the decision-makers? There was no obvious individual in charge. Many rough young men in civvies were on power trips, seeming to make decisions and ordering people around in a frenetic way – until uniformed characters appeared briefly, to worsen the tension and distress by cancelling their orders. I was clutching my essential documents (passport, letter of invitation from a Gazan resident, exit chit from an Egyptian government department) but could see no office or kiosk at which to present them. Occasionally the
side-gate
opened – just wide enough to admit one person. Why was there no crowd within agitating to get out? (I had a lot to learn about Rafah and one day I’d learn it all the hard way.)

When I turned to Abdallah and urged him not to wait, to get home before dark, he refused to move until I was safely through.
At that point the Gate was opened to admit twenty, summoned by an obese bureaucrat reading names from a long list. Hastily Abdallah took my passport, grabbed a passing policeman and thrust it into his hand with an impassioned plea. The policeman looked bemused, then gave it to the bureaucrat who scowled at me and snapped in English, ‘Two hours’ wait.’ Uneasily I watched him sauntering away, shoving my passport into his shirt pocket.

While Abdallah was seeking sustenance in a lean-to café (Rafah’s only ‘facility’) I sat on my luggage and counted my blessings – all two of them. Were I required to produce a different sort of permit, Abdallah’s touching loyalty would help. And the weather was tolerable, a strong breeze coming off the invisible Mediterranean to temper the midday sun. Distant dust clouds indicated the arrival of two more buses. The passengers’ heavy luggage was immediately heaved onto home-made carts drawn by dainty white donkeys driven by fully veiled women, only their eyes visible. They unloaded beside me, seeming young and strong, able to lift heavy trunks, crates, sacks and unwieldy cardboard cartons. None of the luggage owners, or the many youths idling nearby, thought it necessary to help them. Returning to the barrier, those well-fed donkeys trotted faster, on their spindly legs, than I’ve ever before seen donkeys moving.

The newcomers were Gulf State workers; some had not seen their families since the Second Intifada (2000–5) and they thanked Allah for Rafah’s reopening. (Did they blame Allah a month later when many found it impossible to get exit chits in time to return to precious jobs?) At Cairo airport, police had conducted them to ‘prison buses’ (their phrase) which they were forbidden to leave, without a police escort, until arriving at Rafah. Now they pressed against the Gate, some silently tense, some angrily shouting at the Egyptians strolling from office to office on the far side. Mourid Barghouti was not exaggerating when he wrote: ‘The Rafah crossing point on the Gaza–Egypt border is the ugliest embodiment of the
ruthlessness of Egyptian official policy and the cruelty with which the regime treats the ordinary Palestinian citizen.’

I withdrew from this unhappy throng to sit with Abdallah under the café’s awning, assembled from shreds of UN-blue tenting. Two other foreigners, hitherto unobserved, were slumped in a far corner. The lanky blond American, severely sunburnt, wanted to settle in Gaza for a year while learning Arabic and was being querulous in an old-mannish way because no one had told him he needed an Egyptian chit. Hearing of the Gate’s reopening, he had assumed anyone could walk through unhindered. His companion in distress was an ersatz foreigner, a Canadian passport-holder born in Gaza whose grandmother was dying. He had been told he must show a permit from the Hamas representative in Cairo – a document furiously spurned by Rafah’s Egyptians. According to the Canadian Consul in Cairo, it would take at least a month to obtain the acceptable permit, and granny was dying fast. He rang his uncle in Toronto, the sponsor for his Canadian citizenship, and was advised to tunnel in. But he couldn’t afford to; no one would take him through for less than US$800. He didn’t know any Hamas operators – ‘My family is Fatah by orientation.’