Middle East8 May 2016
Letter from Gaza: 'War was never over'
Palestinian doctor and journalist Belal Aldabbour reflects on the
implications of increased tensions in Gaza.
By Belal Aldabbour| |
'All the suffering in Gaza can be lifted with a stroke of an Israeli
commander's pen,' Aldabbour says [Ibraheem Abu Mustafa/Reuters]
Gaza - The piercing voice of Umm Kulthum reverberated over the noise of the
engine. I asked the taxi driver, a bespectacled man in his late 20s, to
change to a news station, as Israel had been pounding Gaza over the past
few days.
"Why bother?" he snapped. "Enjoy the music. When the war breaks out, booms
will tell."
It is much calmer on the ground in the Gaza Strip than on social media
platforms. Over the last few days, personal reflections on the prospects of
an imminent war, analyses of what may or may not happen, and prayers against
the inevitable war have permeated Facebook and Twitter.
One thing is certain: Palestinians in Gaza live in a constant state of
uncertainty, fear and helplessness, brought about by Israel's impunity in
the previous three wars and international silence towards a decade-long
siege and occupation that seems it will never end.
'Remove [Israeli] occupation from the scene, and the root cause of our
misery is abolished forever,' Aldabbour says [Getty Images]
To the majority of Palestinians in Gaza, the question is no longer if, but
rather when the next Israeli onslaught will materialise. Israeli threats
against Gaza have been unabated and, almost two years after the 2014
assault, Palestinians still die and are occupied, besieged and divided .
Over the last year, Israel killed almost 30 Palestinians in Gaza, wounded
over 800 and arrested dozens. Its tanks rolled into Gaza about 50 times.
Meanwhile, the siege is still intact and even worse than before: Medical
patients die waiting for an Israeli permit, Rafah rarely opens, and the Gaza
rebuilding process is proceeding at a snail's pace.
"
Have Palestinians become immune, or, worse, indifferent to death? No one
knows for sure ... [But] people have learned to adapt, and to make the most
of their miserable lives.
Isn't it laughably sad that a Mediterranean city like Gaza imports fish,
mainly from Israel? Limiting the fishing range to within a stone's throw,
Israel has reduced the great Mediterranean Sea into a small pond with very
few fish.
And it is in that Mediterranean that dozens of Palestinians have drowned,
attempting to escape suffocation and death in Gaza.
Sealed border crossings have prevented emigration from becoming a trend, but
for thousands of travellers waiting for the crossings to open, each day
serves as a reminder that Gaza has been rendered inhospitable, uninhabitable
and dream-crushing.
Palestinian farmers have received one of the most devastating blows, as an
arbitrary third of Gaza's agricultural land has been swallowed by the
Israeli-imposed buffer zone. Farmers are exposed to constant machine fire
from automatic towers that - within changeable, undisclosed ranges - target
any moving object. Yet, scores of metres beyond the armistice line, Israeli
farmers are allowed to plough, plant and prosper.
Recently, Israel has been attempting a de facto no-grow zone. Those
Palestinian farmers wallow in doubt because they do not know when Israeli
planes will spray their farms with toxins, set their crops ablaze or invade
and bulldoze.
In a bid to enforce the new reality, the Israelis have over the past few
days invaded the Gaza Strip on five occasions, but they were met by defiant
Palestinians who refused to let them pass.
What was picked up later in the news was not the 15 Israeli air strikes or
the 57-year-old Palestinian woman killed by artillery shelling. As if
parroting memos from the Israeli army's information desk, many mainstream
news agencies highlighted the few mortars fired by Palestinians at these
invading tanks.
Gaza blockade: contravening international law?
Victims are being blamed for their own deaths - for being there, for
bleeding, for breathing.
But what should Palestinians do, then, in a sea of crises: power outages,
fuel shortages, rationed cooking gas, limitations on movement, delayed
salaries, skyrocketing unemployment and constant persecution by Israeli
drones? Should they just keep silent, count their blessings (if any), and
thank the occupier for allowing them to breathe?
"We have few things to lose, and everything to gain," said Refaat Alareer, a
TEDx Shujaiya speaker and English teacher whose house was demolished and
brother killed in 2014. Two years later, Alareer still waits for his turn to
rebuild his house.
Israel is the last colonial enterprise, one that shows the "horrifying
symptoms that took place in Nazi Germany", according to Yair Golan , one of
Israel's generals. It is an occupation that openly calls for adopting
genocidal, racist practices against non-Jews, supported by a society that
has repeatedly accepted the extrajudicial executions of Palestinians.
This is the kind of oppression that Palestinians are struggling against -
now for survival, and in the long run, for freedom, justice and human
rights.
Israel has faced repeated calls to end its siege on Gaza, but the blockade
has endured for a decade [EPA]
Although we have paid a heavy price already and are fed up with the
divisions among Palestinian factions, we can reclaim some dignity by not
standing idly by amid these constant Israeli aggressions.
Still, Palestinians are not looking for another confrontation in Gaza. "We
are not ready for another war," said Alaa Rustom, a fellow doctor who
volunteers at Al Shifa hospital. "I am still recovering from the previous
one. The hospital and this whole city are still recovering."
No matter what the coming days may bring, Palestinians will receive it with
spirits that never falter. Despite my not-so-easy clinical laboratory
science exams, a student of mine, who only two months earlier lost her
younger brother to an Israeli sniper, earned the second-best score.
It is a difficult thing to diagnose. Have Palestinians become immune or,
worse, indifferent to death? No one knows for sure. "We have to adapt, and
to make the most of our miserable lives," opined the wise taxi driver.
Indeed, people have learned to adapt, and to make the most of their
miserable lives.
Palestinians have come to accept that as long as the Israeli occupation
remains, nothing will ever be truly "normal". In my opinion, the worst part
of the Gaza story will always remain man-made: All the suffering can be
lifted with a stroke of an Israeli commander's pen.
George Orwell said in one of his brilliant novels: "Remove man from the
scene, and the root cause of hunger and overwork is abolished forever."
Remove the occupation from the scene, and the root cause of our misery is
abolished forever.
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Middle East8 May 2016
Letter from Gaza: 'War was never over'
Palestinian doctor and journalist Belal Aldabbour reflects on the
implications of increased tensions in Gaza.
By Belal Aldabbour| |
Listen to this page using ReadSpeaker
All Social
'All the suffering in Gaza can be lifted with a stroke of an Israeli
commander's pen,' Aldabbour says [Ibraheem Abu Mustafa/Reuters]
Gaza - The piercing voice of Umm Kulthum reverberated over the noise of the
engine. I asked the taxi driver, a bespectacled man in his late 20s, to
change to a news station, as Israel had been pounding Gaza over the past
few days.
"Why bother?" he snapped. "Enjoy the music. When the war breaks out, booms
will tell."
It is much calmer on the ground in the Gaza Strip than on social media
platforms. Over the last few days, personal reflections on the prospects of
an imminent war, analyses of what may or may not happen, and prayers against
the inevitable war have permeated Facebook and Twitter.
One thing is certain: Palestinians in Gaza live in a constant state of
uncertainty, fear and helplessness, brought about by Israel's impunity in
the previous three wars and international silence towards a decade-long
siege and occupation that seems it will never end.
'Remove [Israeli] occupation from the scene, and the root cause of our
misery is abolished forever,' Aldabbour says [Getty Images]
To the majority of Palestinians in Gaza, the question is no longer if, but
rather when the next Israeli onslaught will materialise. Israeli threats
against Gaza have been unabated and, almost two years after the 2014
assault, Palestinians still die and are occupied, besieged and divided .
Over the last year, Israel killed almost 30 Palestinians in Gaza, wounded
over 800 and arrested dozens. Its tanks rolled into Gaza about 50 times.
Meanwhile, the siege is still intact and even worse than before: Medical
patients die waiting for an Israeli permit, Rafah rarely opens, and the Gaza
rebuilding process is proceeding at a snail's pace.
"
Have Palestinians become immune, or, worse, indifferent to death? No one
knows for sure ... [But] people have learned to adapt, and to make the most
of their miserable lives.
Isn't it laughably sad that a Mediterranean city like Gaza imports fish,
mainly from Israel? Limiting the fishing range to within a stone's throw,
Israel has reduced the great Mediterranean Sea into a small pond with very
few fish.
And it is in that Mediterranean that dozens of Palestinians have drowned,
attempting to escape suffocation and death in Gaza.
Sealed border crossings have prevented emigration from becoming a trend, but
for thousands of travellers waiting for the crossings to open, each day
serves as a reminder that Gaza has been rendered inhospitable, uninhabitable
and dream-crushing.
Palestinian farmers have received one of the most devastating blows, as an
arbitrary third of Gaza's agricultural land has been swallowed by the
Israeli-imposed buffer zone. Farmers are exposed to constant machine fire
from automatic towers that - within changeable, undisclosed ranges - target
any moving object. Yet, scores of metres beyond the armistice line, Israeli
farmers are allowed to plough, plant and prosper.
Recently, Israel has been attempting a de facto no-grow zone. Those
Palestinian farmers wallow in doubt because they do not know when Israeli
planes will spray their farms with toxins, set their crops ablaze or invade
and bulldoze.
In a bid to enforce the new reality, the Israelis have over the past few
days invaded the Gaza Strip on five occasions, but they were met by defiant
Palestinians who refused to let them pass.
What was picked up later in the news was not the 15 Israeli air strikes or
the 57-year-old Palestinian woman killed by artillery shelling. As if
parroting memos from the Israeli army's information desk, many mainstream
news agencies highlighted the few mortars fired by Palestinians at these
invading tanks.
Gaza blockade: contravening international law?
Victims are being blamed for their own deaths - for being there, for
bleeding, for breathing.
But what should Palestinians do, then, in a sea of crises: power outages,
fuel shortages, rationed cooking gas, limitations on movement, delayed
salaries, skyrocketing unemployment and constant persecution by Israeli
drones? Should they just keep silent, count their blessings (if any), and
thank the occupier for allowing them to breathe?
"We have few things to lose, and everything to gain," said Refaat Alareer, a
TEDx Shujaiya speaker and English teacher whose house was demolished and
brother killed in 2014. Two years later, Alareer still waits for his turn to
rebuild his house.
Israel is the last colonial enterprise, one that shows the "horrifying
symptoms that took place in Nazi Germany", according to Yair Golan , one of
Israel's generals. It is an occupation that openly calls for adopting
genocidal, racist practices against non-Jews, supported by a society that
has repeatedly accepted the extrajudicial executions of Palestinians.
This is the kind of oppression that Palestinians are struggling against -
now for survival, and in the long run, for freedom, justice and human
rights.
Israel has faced repeated calls to end its siege on Gaza, but the blockade
has endured for a decade [EPA]
Although we have paid a heavy price already and are fed up with the
divisions among Palestinian factions, we can reclaim some dignity by not
standing idly by amid these constant Israeli aggressions.
Still, Palestinians are not looking for another confrontation in Gaza. "We
are not ready for another war," said Alaa Rustom, a fellow doctor who
volunteers at Al Shifa hospital. "I am still recovering from the previous
one. The hospital and this whole city are still recovering."
No matter what the coming days may bring, Palestinians will receive it with
spirits that never falter. Despite my not-so-easy clinical laboratory
science exams, a student of mine, who only two months earlier lost her
younger brother to an Israeli sniper, earned the second-best score.
It is a difficult thing to diagnose. Have Palestinians become immune or,
worse, indifferent to death? No one knows for sure. "We have to adapt, and
to make the most of our miserable lives," opined the wise taxi driver.
Indeed, people have learned to adapt, and to make the most of their
miserable lives.
Palestinians have come to accept that as long as the Israeli occupation
remains, nothing will ever be truly "normal". In my opinion, the worst part
of the Gaza story will always remain man-made: All the suffering can be
lifted with a stroke of an Israeli commander's pen.
George Orwell said in one of his brilliant novels: "Remove man from the
scene, and the root cause of hunger and overwork is abolished forever."
Remove the occupation from the scene, and the root cause of our misery is
abolished forever.
