Day 9—October 21
Red Crescent Society
We met with Dr. Haider Abdel Shafi, the director of the Red Crescent Society for the Gaza Strip (not affiliated with the ICRC) in Gaza City. He is an 83-year-old retired physician, and spoke at length about his vision for Palestinian society.
Dr Abdel Shafi mentioned that he had lived for a time in the United States, and that Americans always told him they didn’t have time to become informed about world events because they were too busy with their, bill payments, family matters and the like. He thinks Arab-Americans also don’t make much of an effort to inform the American public about issues that are crucial to Palestinians.
He said the Palestinian leadership was not able to get organized and direct the course of the intifada, a genuine expression of the people’s frustration, because its many different factions couldn’t agree on a common strategy. He believes a “national unity leadership” must be created in order to speak with one voice and present a coherent and effective plan of action. There must be some type of consensus among the various Palestinian factions—Islamists, secularists, communists, etc—before the disarray, weakness, and corruption characteristic of the current leadership can be corrected. Once these problems have been overcome, elections can be held to replace the national unity leadership with a truly effective and democratic government. The Islamists are particularly reluctant to join in this effort, but Dr. Abdel Shafi believes they will relent if all the other factions can agree. He thinks the “street” must be mobilized in order to encourage the formation of this nationally unity leadership, and that once the people are organized and unified they will prevail in their struggle with the Israel.
He also thinks any military actions on the part of the Palestinians should be restricted to purely defensive acts, such as fighting home demolitions, because of the overwhelming size, strength, and firepower of the Israeli military. Suicide bombings have only provided Sharon with a pretext for brutality. While the Palestinians are at a disadvantage militarily compared to the Israelis, Dr. Abdel Shafi believes they possess a great capacity for enduring hardship, and that this is the strength that will ultimately allow them to prevail.
Dr. Abdel Shafi lived in Hebron as a boy, and remembers the friendly relations Arabs enjoyed with Hebron’s Jewish community, which had lived in the city for several hundred years and were Arabic speakers. The European Zionists began arriving in Palestine in large numbers, and in 1929 started agitating for Jewish control of the Wailing Wall. Riots followed, and several of the Jews in Hebron were massacred. Dr. Abdel Shafi said that he remembers being very sad on hearing of the death of Hebron's rabbi, someone he had known personally and was very fond of.
He believes that the British Mandate was very bad for the Palestinians, as the Jewish population of Palestine ballooned from 10% to 33% of the population under Mandate policies. He pointed out that Israel has never repudiated the territorial claims of the First Zionist Congress, which includes parts of Jordan and Lebanon as well as all of the currently-occupied Palestinian territories. Related photos
We next drove to the Gaza headquarters of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestinians in the Near East, or UNRWA, to meet with its French director of operations, Lionel Brisson. UNRWA was established in 1950 to deal with the nearly one million Palestinian refugees created as a result of the establishment of the state of Israel. UNRWA provides a variety of services to the refugees, including such things as education, immunization programs and other medical care, food aid, cash assistance to the poorest of the poor, vocational training, and road maintenance.
The director did not spend a lot of time on UNRWA’s role and activities, but instead gave us an earful on Israel’s behavior and US foreign policy. He said at one point that he was speaking “off the record”, as UNRWA likely tries to maintain an official policy of political neutrality.
He started off by stating that Israel is breaking numerous international laws with its behavior, but that the world accepts a double standard when it comes to Israel. As an example, he cited Yugoslavia’s campaigns of ethnic cleansing and shelling of civilians, to which the world quickly reacted by sending troops. However, when Israel commits the very same crimes against the Palestinians, no one lifts a finger.
Further, as a condition of admission to the UN, Israel was required to sign a document stating that it accepted the rights of the Palestinian refugees to return to their homes or receive just compensation. However, to this day Israel has refused to live up to its promises.
Mr. Brisson says the US’s blanket support of Israel is causing widespread anti-Americanism throughout the world, including in Europe, and that this is becoming dangerous for all Americans. While European public attitude is turning more and more against the US, the current European leadership is too passive to challenge the US politically. The EU is actually financially more powerful than the United States, and as such has the ability to become stronger militarily if it chooses, but prefers to spend its money on social programs and health care rather than weapons and military training.
The United States, Mr. Brisson says, had been given a unique opportunity, as the world’s overwhelming superpower, to do some real good in the world, but has decisively squandered this opportunity.
He says the Oslo Accords were fundamentally based on the concept of complete apartheid, which the Palestinians simply could not accept.
He reiterated what Husam had already told us—that the IDF can and does close roads in Gaza at any moment and for any length of time it chooses, and sometimes motorists are forced to spend the night at roadblocks. Every time a settler wants to use the roads, the IDF will deny Palestinian access to the roads and escort the settlers. The Israelis have taken more than 35% of the Gaza Strip for settlements, including most of the land that contains water, which they actually pump from the ground for export to Israel. This has caused a dramatic increase in the salinity of the Gazans’ water supply, as seawater has filled up the parched aquifers (as one member of our group, Susan, readily attested to after accidentally swallowing some of the tap water in the hotel). But the Palestinians in Gaza have little choice but to drink the tap water since they have no other water source.
Mr. Brisson claims that all Israeli media are subject to military censorship, and that newspaper articles must be submitted to the authorities for approval, even for publication in Hebrew within Israel.
In response to a query about anti-Semitism in Palestinian textbooks, Mr. Brisson referred to a study by scholars that revealed Israeli textbooks are as racist as Palestinian ones. He says that the PA is developing new textbooks that remove the worst references to Jews.
Israeli-imposed closures are preventing people from getting to jobs and schools, and international loans to Palestinians have subsequently fallen off sharply because the Palestinians are simply unable to conduct business, and have stopped applying for the loans.
When asked about Kofi Annan’s performance as UN Secretary General, Mr. Brisson said he believes the Annan is in a no-win situation regarding the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, but is doing the best he can. Afterwards, Husam would tell us that many Palestinians believe the UN is of little use to them because of its inability, or unwillingness, to force Israel to obey its own resolutions. Husam and our Gaza trip coordinator, Rana, had not been allowed to join us for the meeting with Mr. Brisson due to some type of UNRWA policy, possibly related to maintaining political neutrality. Related photos
We next visited the offices of the Women’s Empowerment Project, which was founded by the Gaza Community Mental Health Program to help women who are victims of political, social, and domestic violence. We met with Shadia El-Sarraj, coordinator of WEP and sister of the chairman of GCMHP, Dr. Eyad El-Sarraj; and Ruba Akkiln, programs officer of WEP. Ms. El-Sarraj had just arrived home from a trip to Cairo, but since Palestinians are not allowed to use Ben-Gurion Airport, she had to fly to Amman, Jordan, and then drive back to Gaza, all of which takes an additional two days. She says it is easier for her to travel to the United States than to other parts of the Palestinian territories.
Ms. El-Sarraj has worked on women’s issues for years, and said she was shocked at the level of suffering of the women in Gaza. One of the purposes of the WEP is to conduct research, and a study is being done on the high rate of domestic violence against women, including honor killings (where a women is killed by other family members because of some type of sexual indiscretion, or the perception of indiscretion). There has been an increase in the number of honor killings taking place, although WEP believes many are ordinary murders being disguised as honor killings.
Another study being done by WEP is one on the recruitment of martyrs for suicide bombings. The militants purportedly target those who are most vulnerable and feel most hopeless, including prostitutes or people with mental problems. The WEP staff is very worried about all the militant slogans that are daily inundating Palestinian children and capitalizing on their anger and frustration, and the effect this is having on the children and future of Palestinian society. A third WEP study we heard about is one on the changing nature of the idea of “honor” in Palestinian society. Where once Palestinian men would not have allowed female family members to be subjected to harassment or prostitution, many are now so desperate for food and money that they are willing to let the women take previously unacceptable risks.
The WEP provides lectures on legal, social, and health matters to women. WEP feels they should, and must, work within the framework of the patriarchal Gazan society, and because they do not attempt to radically alter the position of women, they have received the strong support of men for their programs. They offer classes in such things as sewing, cosmetics, ceramics, computers, first aid, and legal rights under Sharia (Islamic law). The classes often enable women to earn money to supplement the family’s income, and help to strengthen their participation in public life. The classes on Sharia help to empower women, because many are not aware that Sharia law gives them any rights at all. Ms. El-Sarraj says that when she filed for her divorce years earlier, she presented all the evidence that Sharia law requires for granting of the divorce, but still faced stiff resistance from the authorities.
Many of the women who are treated at the WEP end up becoming volunteers. Most of the funding for WEP comes from European governments ( which is seemingly the case for most of the organizations we visited on our trip).
Ms. El-Sarraj does not have a very high opinion of the Palestinian Authority. She says her clients have told her they would vote for her if she ran for a seat in the government, but says she would turn down the position even if she were to be elected, because she doesn’t want to be associated with the PA.
Ruba Akkiln, the programs director, spoke very fluent and idiomatic English, and when one of us complimented her, she replied that she had learned much of her English from watching American movies. Ever since childhood, she has loved American movies, and she believes this helped improve her English. Related photos
We drove to the Beach Camp, another preposterously densely populated refugee camp of 70,000 inhabitants, to visit the home of a 43-year-old woman whose husband earns only $70 a month. She herself is a volunteer with the Women’s Empowerment Project. She took several of the classes offered by WEP, and now supplements the family income through sewing skills learned in the classes. She helps facilitate some of the classes, and teaches women about their legal rights in matters such as divorce, since so many women in Gaza lack such information. She has also learned to give injections and take blood pressure.
Her two eldest daughters were forced to marry young rather than attend college, as the family had hoped, because the family could not continue to support them.
She said her family has experienced a lot of harassment from the IDF over the years. During the first intifada, one of her daughters had been inadvertently walking near a group of stone-throwing Palestinian children, and was attacked by an Israeli soldier, and then saved when a photographer began taking pictures of the incident, causing the soldier to turn on him instead. Two of her son’s classmates were killed by the IDF and a neighbor was severely beaten by them. Another friend tried to attack an Israeli soldier with a knife, but was shot and paralyzed. Everyone suffers from the IDF policies of collective punishment, even those not participating in the intifada.
She says the reason so many confrontations with the IDF involve Palestinian children is that, because of the overcrowding in the camps, kids have no place to play but the streets. This puts the children on the front lines when the IDF invades the camps. She worries about the safety of her children, but doesn’t think it’s possible to entirely prevent them from joining in activities such as rock throwing. She says Hamas is particularly strong in the southern Gaza Strip, such as in the Khan Younis refugee camp, but has a presence everywhere in Gaza.
Back at Marna House in Gaza City, we heard the terrible news about
the suicide bombing of the bus near Hadera in Israel with fourteen killed. Everyone wonders what the Israeli response
will be. Shelling? Closures?
Curfews? Assassinations? Related
photos