[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."