September 10, 2003
Awakened Woman's Circle is working for peace
Daily Life Under Occupation
By Emma Rose
The Gaza Strip is approximately 360 square kilometers in area and populated by 1.3 million Palestinians, making it one of the most densely packed places on earth. Under the Oslo Accords, Israel retains military control over 42 percent of the Gaza Strip. This includes military bases, settlements, bypass roads, and a buffer zone along the border. Most of this area is reserved for 6,000 Israeli settlers, who make up only 0.5 percent of the population of the Gaza Strip. All Israeli settlements in the occupied Palestinian territories are illegal under the Fourth Geneva Convention, which states "The occupying power shall not deport or transfer parts of its own civilian population into territories it occupies." (Palestinian Centre For Human Rights)
Bodies move energetically through the air. Feet beat out an age old rhythm. I watch several young boys perform Dabke between a circle of people. I clap my hands along with the beat, and admire their grace. Dabke, traditional Palestinian performance, has been carried through generations. The culmination of hundreds of years of this rich culture is actualized in the feet of these boys.
Eighty children attend the summer camp where these boys are dancing. It is named after the late Rachel Corrie. Here they learn traditional songs, practice dance and theater, and make beautiful art. This art is their form of resistance. They express the anger, pain, and frustration of living under a military occupation through the tips of their pens, crayons, and pencils. While their society is stifled by military force, they refuse to forget their culture, and actively carry it on through song and performance.
As I and my colleagues prepare to leave the camp, shouts of "ma-a-salaama" (goodbye), and "ana behebik" (I love you) follow us down the street.
Summer camps are one of the activities internationals have been asked to participate in during the cease fire. Two of us have organized a bookmaking workshop with the children. We will bring many of the books back to the United States to share with children from our own communities. The pages of the children's books alternate between drawings of flowers and hearts and tanks and bulldozers. They also write in their books about living under occupation, their hopes of living without fear, and their friends who have been killed by the Israeli military. I have been living in Rafah, a city of 140,000 people in the southern Gaza Strip, for almost a month. I work with a group called the International Solidarity Movement, and I am also laying the foundations for a sister city relationship between Rafah and Olympia, WA.
The Olympia- Rafah Sister City
Project was first envisioned by Rachel Corrie, 23, of
Olympia. On March 16, 2003 Rachel was crushed to death by an
Israeli military bulldozer, paid for by the United States,
as she blocked a Rafah home from illegal demolition. The
home she was protecting is one of several thousand scheduled
to be demolished along the border that separates Rafah in
Palestine from Rafah in Egypt. This city was cut in half by
the 1978 Camp David agreements between Israel and Egypt.
Palestinian family members who are stuck in Egypt, now stand
on the roofs of their homes to watch as Israeli bulldozer
drivers demolish their families' homes in Palestine to build
a massive wall. In Rafah,932 homes have been destroyed, and
2,000 have been partially demolished.
These homes are not just buildings. They represent the foundations of the strong and loving community that exists in Rafah. They are big and hand built of concrete, metal and wood, and painted with beautiful designs. Inside each of these homes, there are families, large or small. They cook, watch television, laugh, and talk together.
The homes in Rafah bind the community together, and building a wall in place of these homes will serve to create much more than a physical separation between people. Destroying these homes will create mental and emotional barriers which lead to despair. While this steel wall is being built where homes once stood it is creating little walls of isolation between friends, neighbors, and family members. And one of the results of this isolation is factionalism.
The wall is also cutting off any hope that Palestinians and Israelis can live in peaceful coexistence. Because of the constant surveillance by the Israeli military, as well as the intense fear, isolation, and anger caused by the occupation, many people have lost trust in whoever lives beyond the walls. When this wall is finished, Palestinians and Israelis will be permanently separated.
While staying in Rafah, I have been spending the night in the homes of three families who live along the border. During this time, they each have made me feel a part of their family. On my first night of at Abu Hisham's house, I met his 17 year old neighbor Najila. She took next door to her own bedroom where we danced to Arabic music, and she dressed me in a wedding gown that belonged to a relative, despite my laughter and protest.
Before I left that night, she took my hand, and said, "I have no sisters, and you have no sisters, so from now on we can be each other's sisters." I have been greeted with this amount of love and acceptance everywhere that I go in Rafah. Here, when women greet each other, as when men greet each other, there is an exuberant show of kissing cheeks. Unlike the handshakes that I experienced in the United States that are quick and to the point, handshakes in Rafah are long and drawn out, expressing real love and friendship. When I walk down any street in Rafah, people come out of their homes to greet me, and invite me in for tea.
While making my rounds one day I hear the hum of an Israeli spy plane above my head. Meanwhile, on the ground, young children run up to me in asking, "what's your name," and "how are you." Sometimes two will hold on to my hands, walking with me, and whispering in my ear, "shuu ismik," (what's your name). "Ana ismi Emma," I say, and enrapturing smiles light their faces. Despite the clear understanding that they are being watched from the sky, these children have no fear of a strange international walking down their streets.
With their smiles and curious questions, these children are resisting one of the main tactics of the Israeli military here -- to instill a sense of isolation and fear into the Palestinians. The Gaza Strip has been under closure for several months, with almost no one allowed to enter or leave. Even before this, it was extremely difficult for Palestinians to leave. Many people here have never set foot outside Gaza and many others have only left illegally. My new friend Ghadda told me yesterday that her greatest hope is to see Jerusalem one day. "Insha-allah, you will," I replied, which means "God willing."
Because of the strict lock-down imposed on the Gaza Strip -- a piece of land bordered by Israel, Egypt, and the Mediterranean -- it is like an island. Walking down the street, you can feel it in the air. This isolation is not an accident. It serves to keep the Palestinians feeling hopeless and alone. They are like prisoners, separated from their families in the West Bank and Egypt; isolated from Israel, and from other countries. They are kept in Gaza, and forced to stew in their anger and fear, while guarded with tanks, bulldozers, sniper towers, and, now, walls. The one thing the Israeli military cannot keep them from is finding happiness in their daily lives.
One way to resist the threat of death is to live life, which is what the people in Rafah do beautifully. Especially during the recent cease fire, people danced, laughed, and celebrated. Summer is the season for weddings in Palestine, and a Palestinian wedding is a real treat. The celebrations last for two weeks, with separate gatherings for men and women. At an engagement party for my friend Suzanne's wedding, her gown was a long waterfall of lavender satin. She and her fiance sat proudly on overstuffed chairs, while the multitude of women guests danced at their feet. At the parties following weddings, large meals are served, with more dancing as a precursor.
But Palestinians don't need a special occasion to get together. Every day, adults gather for tea in the evenings to discuss politics, their families, and their philosophy of life. In the streets, children make beautiful kites out of trash bags and other debris.
This insistence on maintaining a normal life is a kind of "grace under fire" for the people of Rafah. Even during the recent cease fire between Israel and the Palestinian factions, the Israeli military continued to build a wall around the Gaza Strip. This wall is making Gaza into one of the biggest prisons on earth. At night, even in the midst of the cease fire, tanks and bulldozers drove back and forth along the border, occasionally shooting loud machine gun fire at and around homes.
Just hours after arriving in Rafah, I was introduced to Abu Jameel and his family, who live along the Egyptian border. A tall mountain of concrete and metal where a home once stood blocks the street past Abu Jameel's house. The family welcomed us warmly into their home, and fed us a delicious meal, prepared fresh from Abu Jameel's garden. While drinking tea after our meal, we heard the sound of tanks driving back and forth along the wall just outside. A line of shots was fired from the tank, before it continued aimlessly on. "A child's game," said Abu Jameel.
In Rafah the walls of buildings are lined with shahiid posters, which display pictures of Palestinians and internationals who have been killed by the Israeli military. Yet, many of the Palestinians in Gaza still resist the Israeli Occupation by continuing to live with hope. At an Internet cafe in Rafah I had a brief conversation with the owner. He brought me a cup of tea and asked my name and where I was from. He asked if I spoke Hebrew, and told me that he did. Before Israel shut off access to and from the Gaza Strip, he had worked in Israel. Now, thanks to wall, there is no chance for for him to talk with, or even see Israelis.
"I love Israeli people," he said, "and Americans." "Yes," I said, "but the governments are a different story." He agreed. "All people want to live in peace," he told me.
Emma Rose, 20, is a college student who has just returned
from Gaza.