[lbo-talk] The Nation: Gaza seen through a short biography

Michael Pollak mpollak at panix.com
Fri Jan 9 19:34:45 PST 2009


[Graceful and concise]

http://www.thenation.com/doc/20090112/al_arian

January 2, 2009 The Nation

To Live and Die in Gaza By Laila Al-Arian

On Sunday morning, I found out through a note my friend wrote on

Facebook, that the Israeli Air Force was attacking my grandfather's

neighborhood in Gaza. Safa, who lives near my grandfather in the

densely-populated "Asqoola" in Gaza City, recounted the harrowing

hours she spent terrorized by what she called "the constant,

ominous, maddening, droning sound" of Apache helicopters flying

above. "Outside my home, which is close to the two largest

universities in Gaza, a missile fell on a large group of young men,

university students," Safa wrote over the weekend. "They'd been

warned not to stand in groups--it makes them an easy target--but

they were waiting for buses to take them home. Seven were killed."

My family had been trying to speak with my grandfather since

Saturday, after Israel began its onslaught on Gaza. But we haven't

managed to reach him, perhaps not surprising since so many phone

lines are down. "Hold one moment," is all we hear. A computerized

directive from the phone company, one that sounds increasingly

strident the more it's repeated. "Hold one moment." My mother hangs

up in frustration, unable to ease her anxiety or clear her mind from

worst-case scenario thoughts.

My grandfather moved to Gaza five years ago after living all over

the Middle East for almost fifty years. As far as he was concerned,

it was always a matter of time before he'd find his way back to his

birthplace. He was born in Gaza City in 1933. Both of his parents

died of cancer by his fifth birthday, so he was raised by four older

sisters. The Gaza he knew during his childhood was transformed by

the establishment of Israel in 1948. Following their forced

expulsion from villages and cities across the country, hundreds of

thousands of Palestinians streamed into the tiny coastal strip. Most

of the refugees relied on assistance from the newly-created United

Nations Relief and Works Agency to survive, and jobs were hard to

come by. My grandfather was thus forced to move to other Arab

countries so he could provide for his young family. By 1958, he had

married my grandmother, a refugee from Jaffa whose father, a

policeman, had been killed by Zionist paramilitaries ten years

earlier. My grandfather took her and their 1-year-old son to Saudi

Arabia, where he taught Arabic to schoolchildren.

Leaving his beloved Gaza was painful for my grandfather, but he was

left with no other choice. Because he was never allowed to become a

citizen of any of the four Arab countries in which he worked and

lived, my grandfather never felt at home. In his mind, they were

transitory stops, temporary resting places on the way to Return. He

would save as much as he could from his meager salary so he'd have

enough money to take his family to Gaza for summer visits. After

years of living modestly, he was able to buy a quarter of an acre of

land on Gaza's coast near the Mediterranean Sea.

My grandfather was sitting in a cafe with a group of friends in the

coastal city of Jeddah in Saudi Arabia when he heard that Israel

captured Gaza in the June 1967 war. His face went pale and he

fainted from the shock. The Israeli Army's occupation meant Gaza was

lost. But in practical terms the news had another catastrophic

effect: the Israeli military authorities decreed that any

Palestinian who was not in Gaza before the war was not recognized as

a resident of the strip.

My grandfather became a US citizen in 1999. By the time he passed

his citizenship exam, his knowledge of American history and

governance rivaled my own. Three of his children had moved here

years earlier, and started their own families. Though my mother

begged him to live here with her, my grandfather's dream of

returning to Gaza never left him - and it was his American

citizenship that helped him do just that.

When he finally moved back to Gaza, my grandfather changed. He

stopped a lifelong habit of chain smoking and embraced the outdoors,

faithfully tending the garden in his courtyard. He drank mint tea in

his nephews' vineyard and ate from the fig trees he could only dream

about years before. But he was also dismayed by the changes he

observed. His hometown had become so overcrowded that trees were cut

down to make room for more buildings. With more than 10,000 people

per square mile, it has the highest population density in the world.

(Considering Gaza's overcrowded environment, it is hard to fathom

how anyone can argue that Israeli's aerial bombardment is focused

exclusively on "Hamas targets.")

My grandfather, throughout his life, never belonged to any political

factions, but like many Gazans he hoped that Hamas' election would

bring back a semblance of law and order. Palestinian Authority

officials had been dogged by allegations of corruption since they

began administering Gaza and the West Bank under the 1993 Oslo

accords. To many Gazans, the PA and its minions were no better than

gangsters.

With Israel's draconian blockade of Gaza, imposed as punishment for

the election of Hamas and backed by the US and Europe, my

grandfather's life was transformed yet again. Medication to treat

his diabetes was in short supply and because of a shortage of gas

and electricity, his family was forced to use primitive kerosene

burners for cooking. Bakeries now had to resort to baking bread with

animal feed and sewage treatment plants were crippled as fuel ran

out, forcing the water authority to dump millions of liters of waste

into the Mediterranean Sea. Electricity was scarce, with homes

receiving an average of only six hours a day. Unemployment shot up

to 49 percent. Because of the border closures, my grandfather's

nephews, who used to work in construction in Israel, now had no

source of income. Israel's blockade caused a slow starvation of the

entire population, as malnutrition rates spiked upwards of 75

percent among the strip's 1.5 million residents. As in most siege

situations, children suffered the most from hunger and disease.

As missiles rain over Gaza, I can only imagine what my grandfather

is thinking. Much of the territory's civilian infrastructure,

including police stations, universities, mosques and homes, has been

decimated. In the Jabalya refugee camp, five sisters, the eldest

aged seventeen and the youngest only four, were killed on Monday as

they slept in their beds when an Israeli air strike hit a mosque by

their home. Their parents told reporters they assumed they were

safe, since houses of worship typically are not military targets.

The cemetery where the girls were buried was filled to capacity, so

they were placed in three graves. A United Nations spokesperson said

the killing is a "tragic illustration that this bombardment is

exacting a terrible price on innocent civilians." The bereaved

father expressed the sentiments of so many in Gaza in an interview

with the Washington Post. "I don't have anything to do with any

Palestinian faction. I have nothing to do with Hamas or anyone. I am

just an ordinary person." A few days after the attack, I found out

that the girls were relatives of our family friends in Florida.

I asked my mother why my grandfather did not leave Gaza while its

gates were still open. Why he didn't leave before the siege, before

life became unbearable, and before this latest bombardment. "Because

that's where he feels he belongs," she said. "He was always homesick

before. Gaza is where his parents were buried. It's where he wants

to die."

About Laila Al-Arian

Laila Al-Arian is a freelance journalist and co-author, with Chris

Hedges, of Collateral Damage: America's War Against Iraqi Civilians

(Nation Books), based on their 2007 Nation article "The Other War."



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