A Month by the Sea (24 page)

Two youngish English-speakers approached, offered coffee, asked permission to sit with me. They were an interesting pair though I suspect I wasn’t seeing them at their best – and vice versa. The Rafah Gate generates an unquiet atmosphere. Nawaf was a classical guitarist anxiously awaiting his brother, due home after a chemotherapy course in Cairo. His friend was more talkative.

Murad had returned from Sweden three years previously when his father, a former PA security officer, found it necessary to flee to Egypt and dared not come back. Therefore his mother needed her only son at home. Without hesitation he said
au revoir
to his Swedish wife and two-year-old daughter who could not visit Gaza even if they wished to do so. Ever since the three have been bonded by Skype and Murad said, ‘It makes an ache in my heart’ – he placed a hand on that organ – ‘when Miriam says in Swedish “Daddy come home, come home I want you!”’ However, no
inner conflict bothered this parent; as an only son he had to put his mother first – not his own preference, he explained, but Palestinian women are conditioned not to be able to cope without a man. So a Swedish woman suffers … (Or maybe she doesn’t?) Murad couldn’t guess when next he might see his wife and child, both displayed to me on his phone in scores of poses.

As a highly qualified hydraulic engineer, Murad lived well in Sweden; in Gaza he drove someone else’s taxi while saving up to buy his own. He condemned both Fatah and Hamas as ‘
power-seekers
not caring about ordinary people who only want peace’. (I seemed to be hearing this refrain more and more often.) His wife had introduced him to beer (‘Not much, you couldn’t afford to get drunk!’) but on the Strip he didn’t really miss it. However, he resented the Islamists’ prohibition régime. He himself loved Gaza but even were it possible he wouldn’t want Miriam to grow up on the Strip. At which point Nawaf’s brother emerged from a
serveece
– bald and pale – and in the joyous relief of that reunion I was forgotten.

Around Rafah, and other southern Strip districts, it greatly alarmed me to see quite a few pre-puberty girls in adult garb, securely concealed and
hijab
-ed; and in those same areas the
niqb
incidence was higher. Anwar repeatedly lamented that this tightening stranglehold on women’s freedom is too easy in a Gaza so isolated – not comparatively open, like the West Bank, to the ‘corrupting’ influence of Jews and Internationals. Thus, he argued, the blockade reinforces some of the most undesirable elements in Palestinian society: as undesirable, in their very different way, as the PA’s quisling elements.

This view was apparently validated by the common riposte to my comparison of Gaza’s new hard-linery with the West Bank’s relative moderation – Jewish and International presences have corrupted the West Bank. As one academic put it, ‘You met weak Muslims in other places, here we know how to stay strong,
defending the Holy Koran. You should learn that “Muslim” and “Islamic” are different. Some saying “I’m Muslim” are not Islamic, not respecting our Holy Koran.’

Yet the opposite conclusion to Anwar’s may be drawn from
Fundamentalism: A Very Short Introduction
by Malise Ruthven.

Does this not mean that the isolation of the blockaded Strip should lessen hard-linery?

‘Not really,’ said Anwar. ‘Gaza is a special case. Remember Hamas has been busy physically resisting the Occupation. And maybe will be again, though we hope not. Without the blockade and the Occupation, Hamas’ moderates would now have much greater influence.’

Incidentally, Anwar regarded
Fundamentalism
as the most essential guidebook for all visitors to Gaza.

The academic quoted above baffled me. He was an immensely likeable man, an eminent Gazan who had travelled widely in
pre-blockade
times, being respectfully listened to at international
conferences
. Yet when the conversation turned to Islam he sounded embarrassingly crude as he raked over all the tedious stuff about women being ‘physiologically and emotionally different’, therefore needing to be ‘protected and respected’. I warned him that life among the Palestinians had belatedly aroused within me those anti-male emotions felt two generations ago by Women’s Lib activists. Also I had become a shameless cultural imperialist, no longer willing to tolerate condescending double standards in deference to their being non-European. Example: ‘It’s for women’s
protection’ when the custom in question is blatantly for the preservation of male control. Indignantly my friend protested, ‘
Allah
made the rules, it’s not men being determined to dominate!’ And the rules cannot be modified, must remain as laid down in the seventh century
AD
.

When I asked if any women were involved in interpreting the sacred texts I was told only men could interpret, very highly trained scholars of whom there are but a few in each generation. Aware of sounding truculent, I demanded, ‘Why not allow for the unavoidable, undeniable fact that societies and civilisations evolve, change beyond recognition?’

Again my friend repeated, ‘No modifications allowed! The word of Allah is not changed by fashions, reforms, revolutions or trends. It’s for all time, helping men do what is good and right for society. The Holy Koran protects the family. In the materialistic West, people think themselves separate, not responsible for family and community. The more the West seeks to take over the world, economically and culturally, the more we guard our Holy Koran against those trying to make us imitate others.’

This friend was a keen Hamas supporter, though not a party member. It gave me some satisfaction, when we next met, to show him a 1999 statement from Yahya Musa, speaking as head of a Political Bureau (Hizb al-Khalas) linked to Hamas:

Seen from the coast road, UNRWA’s summer camps for ‘refugee’ children form blue blots on the beach. Each is enclosed by high walls of plastic sheeting, curving down to meet the wavelets, and there’s not a child in sight – but the sounds of hordes having fun are reassuringly loud. Since 2010 these recreation spaces (some hundred yards long by sixty yards wide) have perforce become isolated, with something of a prison ambience as one approaches seeking entrance.

On 23 May 2010 UNRWA’s Director, John Ging, took delivery of a communication containing three bullets (for him not a new experience). In part, the letter said:

This message had been left with an UNRWA guard who was tied up by thirty or so
jihadists
, masked and armed, before they burned down a sports facility being constructed for the summer camps. Who were they? Naturally the answer you got depended on whom you asked. A few weeks later, another camp was comprehensively vandalised.

Anwar suggested as the most obvious suspect one of the Salafists’ armed wings, Jund Ansar Allah (Soldiers of the Supporters of God). Before the attacks, they had been circulating leaflets denouncing the employment of women teachers in boys’ schools
and the sponsoring of North American and European trips for female students.

My Fatah friends had no doubt: ‘Definitely Hamas, they’re so angry about competition with their own brainwashing holiday camps.’

‘Of course it’s Salafists,’ said my Hamas friends, ‘they know Ging wants mixed camps.’ Deeb was slightly on the defensive. ‘Why would Hamas attack? We’re the government, if we want to close a camp we order it to close!’ Which made sense, but that sort of logic doesn’t always operate on the Strip. However, the relevant Ministry was now providing guards for all beach camps. And their purdah plastic walls meant nobody could be scandalised by the sight of bare-headed little girls making sandcastles, and playing such risqué games as leapfrog and blind man’s buff, while ‘malicious’
supervisors
taught females how to swim (fully clothed), and dance and perform acrobatic tricks – and even imitate their brothers by practising breakdancing which in Islamic eyes is a vile perversion.

Because of Gaza’s fast-growing refugee population each batch of schoolchildren (aged six to sixteen) can be happy campers for only two weeks of their three-month summer holiday. The adult/child ratio is 15 to 100 and the campers are so happy that discipline is maintained without any hint of authoritarianism. I’d expected these supervisors to be dutiful rather than enthusiastic yet they, too, were obviously enjoying themselves. To me, coming from a society where rebellious adolescent tendencies are cultivated by The Market, these intergenerational relationships seemed extraordinarily harmonious.

My two happy days as a guest at girls’ camps showed UNRWA at its best. I arrived as the first busloads were scampering down the sand dunes, being monitored from a dormobile-style police post parked by the roadside. Each girl carried her own picnic and, for security reasons, all had to queue at the one narrow opening in the tarpaulin. For us, confinement to these plastic cages would not induce ‘seaside’ elation; knowing from where these children come,
I could empathise with their sense of release. Once beyond
eye-reach
of the male population they discarded their ‘correct’ street attire, as did most of the adults.

Some groups were organised, others formed spontaneously to dance, sing, play a space-limited version of volleyball or attempt gymnastic feats with improvised equipment – the real thing having gone up in flames. Quite often linguistically ambitious seniors gathered around me to improve their English. Others preferred sitting in circles on the sand, chatting and giggling and experimenting with cosmetics; these trickle through the tunnels and are, according to Yara, of dangerously poor quality. One girl, messily applying mascara, informed me with a wide grin, ‘Salafists hate this!’

The adults, as UNRWA staff, were understandably wary of discussing with a stranger anything remotely political. In contrast, several older girls were healthily uninhibited in their criticisms of officialdom. Especially they condemned the strict dress code regulations, announced in July 2009, which allow government schools to expel pupils who refuse to exchange their jeans and shirts/sweaters for IUG-style
jilbabs
. This Salafist-pleasing move was made – Deeb told me – to avoid attacks on the schools or their pupils. Yet to many it looked like another example of the unsettling fuzziness surrounding Hamas
qua
ruling authority. Several girls mocked the Education Ministry for imposing such rules by remote control – countering complaints by blaming individual school heads.

In general these youngsters were an ebullient lot, upholding the Palestinians’ hard-earned reputation for resilience. But I remembered Yara’s comment that those most in need of such breaks don’t get them: can’t afford the picnics – or feel self-conscious about threadbare garments – or have been too traumatised by Cast Lead and other horrors to feel secure away from their home corner (too often literally a corner).

At least one of Gaza’s clouds has a silver lining; the blockade has driven farmers back to organic agriculture. Since 2007 the chemical fertilisers and pesticides once so popular have not been available and the ancients of my generation, who can remember ‘how things were’, find themselves in great demand as agricultural advisors. It helps that the Minister of Agriculture, Dr Mohammed al-Agha, is an IUG professor of environmental science. In 2010 the government launched a ten-year programme designed to restore traditional farming methods. This rewarded the hitherto ignored preaching of Gaza’s Safe Agriculture Producers’ Society whose Director, Abd el-Munem, announced: ‘The siege gives us our first opportunity to persuade cultivators that chemical-free growing can work.’

Bader, another of Anwar’s numerous grand-nephews, had recently upset his parents by dropping out of university and becoming an apprentice with Palestinian Environmental Friends. He was a most engaging young man, full of hope for the Strip’s organic future and choosing not to think about its political future. ‘Allah is planning what to do, we must wait to see that plan.’ He described himself as ‘training to be a dung consultant’ and invited me to admire his workplace.

In a pungent palm grove, near fields of raised strawberry beds, Bader proudly led me between mounds of rotting foliage and mature dung collected from farmers all over the area. These fertilisers are applied in alternate layers, having been chopped up by a neat home-made mill not unlike a concrete mixer and designed locally; nothing of the sort would be allowed past Israel’s border guards. ‘We might develop a nuclear weapon in it!’ chuckled Bader. This enterprise is now producing about 600 tons of fertiliser annually at US$100 per ton – less than half the price of the only available Israeli fertiliser, derived from sewage and distrusted by the Ministry of Health.

A short
serveece
ride took us to the central Strip where I was
suitably impressed by a fish-cum-vegetable farm; fish-enriched water is delivered by drip irrigation to sandy plots of carrots, tomatoes, rocket and spinach. But for the foreseeable future – Bader sadly explained – Gazan produce will be unable to gain organic certification since the relevant inspectors are excluded from the Strip. When next I met Yara she opined that this absence of inspectors had one advantage; they would certainly object to the use of child labour. And at least four families in her neighbourhood were largely dependent on the admittedly meagre wages earned by their pre-puberty children. ‘Poverty isn’t just a statistic in Gaza,’ said Yara. ‘It’s for real.’

I spent memorable evenings in the home of Dr Nasser Abu Shabaan, surgeon in Gaza City’s al-Shifa hospital. I had first heard his name during Cast Lead, in Beit Sahour, where Professor Mazin Qumsiyeh was my host. When the IDF began to fire white phosphorus shells into Gaza, Mazin’s advice was sought. I remember wandering off to the Shepherds’ Field, sick with horror, while he tried to fax al-Shifa. The IDF couldn’t deny that war crime. About 200 155-millimetre shells were fired into the Strip, where people subsequently collected the canisters to present as evidence to Amnesty International investigators.

As my base was close to al-Shifa, Nasser picked me up at 6.30 pm when he usually came off duty. (Usually but not always; in any emergency he remained available.) One evening Nita met him briefly and afterwards remarked that he looked more like a film star than a surgeon and should have operated in another sort of theatre. I saw what she meant; Nasser is very tall and well built with classical Arab features. But his old-fashioned graciousness and compassionate temperament might not have been appreciated in Hollywood.

At our first meeting, as we drove to the Shabaan flat in a luxury
(by Strip standards) apartment block on the edge of Gaza City, Nasser put his background in a nutshell. The patrilineal
great-grandfather
was a wealthy merchant operating on the Yemen– Gaza trade route. Grandfather distinguished himself as an Arabic scholar at Alexandria University, fought with the British army during the First World War and died soon after, leaving his widow to raise a large brood on a small income. When Father found work as a minor civil servant in Jerusalem he resolved to put his eldest son through medical school in Cairo. Nasser graduated with honours, quickly achieved FRCS status and spent most of his working life in Saudi Arabia. In 2003 he decided to return home, as the Second Intifada was taking its toll on the Strip. His Saudi monthly salary was US$10,000 and al-Shifa offered only $1,200 for a much longer working day – and, often, night. ‘But that was no problem,’ said Nasser. ‘We’d saved enough.’ Now he and his multi-talented and very beautiful wife (Nita might say ‘another film star’) work with various voluntary projects including developing courses in Primary Trauma Care, established in Gaza by two English doctors, John Beavis and Terence English.

As Nasser remarked, his family history well illustrates the
reverse-globalisation
of our time. It was easy for great-grandfather to trade personally with the Yemen – sometimes accompanying his camel caravans to and fro, not merely doing financial deals by computer. For his grandfather it was easy to study in Alexandria, and nothing hindered his father from becoming a cog in the Mandatory machine in Jerusalem while maintaining important links with Sa’na, Cairo, Alexandria and Gaza. Now, despite air travel,
middle-eastern
political borders curtail most people’s movements.

In an elegant fifth-floor drawing-room one window’s venetian blind was half-closed to shut out Cast Lead’s nearby devastation. Mrs Shabaan’s English was as fluent as her husband’s and we talked of many things while far in the background two adored grandchildren were being high-spirited in a civilised way and their
willowy mother (inches taller than her husband) was preparing supper. I learned then that among the generality of Muslims the pill and condoms are approved contraceptives and hysterectomies are allowed for medical reasons but the very notion of vasectomy made both my host and hostess flinch. After all, marriage’s main objective is to provide men with children – preferably sons. To voluntarily make oneself sterile – well, that’s a twisted denial of Allah’s plan for humankind. Such aberrations inspire Muslims to try to shield their communities from Western influences.

Not until the younger generations had left for home did Nasser talk about Cast Lead; during those three weeks he rarely got more than one hour’s sleep at a stretch.

When a white phosphorus shell hit the Halima farmhouse, at Siyafa village, the father and four of his nine children were killed, his wife and the other children grievously burned. Their
neighbours
, terrified by this uncontrollable mass incineration of human bodies, fled across the fields. The survivors were brought to
al-Shifa
and Nasser described the bewildered frustration of his team, who at first didn’t know what they were dealing with. ‘We had never before seen anything like these burns. They reached down to bone and muscle and continued to smoke for hours and that smoke had a sickening stench.’ Finally, Nasser and a colleague ‘took out a piece of foreign matter’ and the colleague identified it as white phosphorus. That was the first of dozens of similar cases.

The IDF routinely used these munitions. On contact with air, white phosphorus ignites and continues to burn at 816°C until completely starved of oxygen – hence the smoking wounds, before Nasser and his team learned how to cope. Each air-bursting artillery shell spreads 116 burning wedges over a radius of, on average, 125 metres from blast point. The IDF deliberately fired phosphorus into densely populated areas. Among its public targets were al-Quds hospital, the Red Crescent headquarters, UNRWA’s main Gaza City compound and an UNRWA school in Beit Lahia
where more than 1600 ‘displaced persons’ (bombed out of their homes) were sheltering.

Khoza’a village was declared a ‘closed military zone’ before being attacked. Six people died at once, enveloped in flames; more than a score were deeply burned and permission to evacuate them was refused. A Red Crescent ambulance, defying this ban, attracted more white phosphorus. Gazan paramedics can have no masks effective against this smoke. Its victims may fall unconscious for three or four hours, then seem to recover and be sent home – only to return soon, in agony, their extensively burnt lungs not responsive to treatment. In many cases, as the body gradually absorbs the white phosphorus chemical, potentially fatal damage is caused to all the major organs. Perhaps Ehud Olmert, the then Israeli Prime Minister, had this in mind when he warned: ‘Rockets from Gaza will bring a severe and disproportionate response.’