“Welcome To Gaza!”
Palestine Chronicle. October 31, 2007.

Khalil laughs and shakes head as we dine along the seaside terrace of Gaza’s luxurious al-Deira Hotel.

“This is not Gaza,” he says, dismissively gesturing towards the hotel’s maroon exterior and the tables of dining European journalists. “The real Gaza is just down the street, where 1,000 people are living on a single street block.” He chuckles ironically and slaps me on the back.

“And here, we can’t even drink a whiskey to drown our sorrows!” (more…)

The Palestine Chronicle published an essay I wrote upon arrival in Gaza. It was syndicated by the International Middle East Media Center here.
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Khalil laughs and shakes head as we dine along the seaside terrace of Gaza’s luxurious al-Deira Hotel.

“This is not Gaza,” he says, dismissively gesturing towards the hotel’s maroon exterior and the tables of dining European journalists. “The real Gaza is just down the street, where 1,000 people are living on a single street block.” He chuckles ironically and slaps me on the back.

“And here, we can’t even drink a whiskey to drown our sorrows!”

I had only been in Gaza for two days, yet I immediately appreciated the locals’ uniquely fatalistic humor. Perhaps it’s almost a reflection on Gaza’s manifest resilience and remarkable ability to shrug off the tragedy of an environment in perpetual crisis. (more…)

Two major developments dominate the news in our region. George Bush has ratcheted up the hysterical anti-Iranian campaign – even going so far as to threaten the world with a  third world war. At the same time, the United States is convening an important “peace meeting” designed, ostensibly, to jump start the Israeli-Palestinian peace process. The preparations themselves seem to be in need of some acceleration.

Ha’aretz diplomatic correspondent, Shmuel Rosner summed up Ms.  Rice’s most recent appearance before the House Foreign Affairs Committee (Ha’aretz, 25.10.07): No date for the meeting has been fixed. Invitations have not been sent out. Preliminary meetings are still going on. We learn that the meeting which was supposed to meet in the fall is now planned for “before the end of the year.” Fortunately for Rice, no one in the House was interested in the details of the substance of the proposed solutions to the conflict. (more…)

Another rejected op-ed. I sent it last week—before Israel cut power.

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In the tragically habitual nature of relations between Israel and the Gaza Strip, tensions have heightened once more, overshadowing U.S. plans for the Annapolis peace summit slated for next month. Several weeks ago, Israel labeled Gaza an “enemy entity”, causing businesses to cease operations in Gaza and (some believe) preparing the political climate for an all-out invasion of the Strip.

Everyone in Gaza is jittery, convinced that Israel is planning something bigger than the air strikes and shallow incursions, which already occur here on a daily basis. Restaurants have been closing early, teenagers stay at home instead of meeting friends—even the usually chaotic jumble of activity on Gaza’s Omar al-Mukhtar St. has calmed, the incessant honks of car horns diminished to a fraction of their former intensity. Indeed, severe retaliation for the fire of rockets by Palestinian militant groups seems imminent; the only question is what kind of retaliation does Israel have in store for the 1.4 million residents here? (more…)

It was shocking for me to discover that there are over 54,000 Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank even more trapped and isolated than most Palestinians. They are the citizens lacking a hawiyye (national identification card), which were issued by Israel under the provisions of the Oslo Accords. When the second Intifada broke out, the cards stopped coming and many people who had come to Gaza visiting friends and family have been trapped here ever since. Most disturbing of all, they do not technically exist.

For the past 15 weeks some of these people in Gaza have been staging sit-ins in front of the Palestinian Legislative Council in an attempt to raise awareness about their plight and demand political action. To their credit, I have noticed an increase in the media coverage of this issue, which is an important step. Here is an article by Laila El-Haddad about the situation and another on Yahoo News. Some of the stories are terribly tragic… I spoke with many of these people people today at the sit-in. Here is just one of the short interviews I took… (more…)

I wrote this last month and submitted it to the New York Times, LA Times and San Francisco Chronicle among others—all without a positive reply.

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Easing into his new position as Special Envoy to the Middle-East, Tony Blair has wasted no time in pursuing a break in the ever-moribund peace process. Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has assured Blair that Israel will provide “all necessary assistance” to facilitate his mission and Blair himself is already busily at work—holding daily meetings with various community leaders in hopes of establishing a foundation for dialog. There is only one problem: Israel is consciously blocking Mr. Blair’s efforts by preventing a senior human rights lawyer in the Gaza Strip from traveling to Jerusalem.

Raji Sourani, the director of the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights (PCHR), a well-respected independent NGO based in Gaza City, was blocked from attending a meeting with Mr. Blair last week. Why? Well no specific reason was actually provided. Such restrictions have become a matter of routine in Gaza, but the political undertones in this case are especially reprehensible. (more…)

Jennifer Loewenstein is a busy woman. On top of her work as associate director of the Middle Eastern studies program at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, Loewenstein is also a prolific freelance journalist and human rights activist. Over the years, she has spent a great deal of time in the Gaza Strip—including a period with the Al-Mezan Center for Human Rights—and has firmly established herself as a major voice in the Jewish-American peace camp.

With Gaza isolated from the West Bank and a half-hearted peace conference looming, this is a significant (albeit bleak) period in the history of the Israel-Palestine conflict. For advocates of Palestine, it is a discouraging period—especially with the humanitarian crisis in Gaza reaching unprecedented levels, shut behind walls, and totally cut off from the world.

Prior to the economic boycott, Gaza was already second only to some African countries in its dependence on international aid… One can only imagine how desperate things have become since the West, in a hypocritical campaign spearheaded by the United States, halted aid to Gaza. I discussed some of these issues with Professor Loewenstein a few days ago in the following short interview. (more…)

I received this message from Professor Noam Chomsky this summer in response to my article Security or Demography: The West Bank Barrier as a Demographic Tool.

From: chomsky[at]MIT.EDU
Subject: Re: West Bank Barrier
Date: June 16, 2007 19:27:29  IDT
To: kris[at]harmonicminor.com

Interesting, and well done, but I’m quite skeptical about the value of such inquiries, for a number of reasons.  Here’s a few.
 
You say it is a “highly contentious point” whether a barrier on the Israeli side of the Green Line would have achieved whatever security effects the Separation Wall does.  I don’t agree with that at all.  It’s an obvious point.  In fact it could have achieved far better results, since it could be impregnable, patrolled heavily on both sides of the fence, etc. Furthermore, even accepting (for argument’s sake)  the idea that for security Israel somehow needs intrusion into the West Bank, then why not just build a wall a fixed distance from the Green line, say 5 km (or whatever number one wants), thereby excluding the Maaleh Adumim salient and the Ariel salient, and the many other illegal communities?  Plainly, that would be at least as effective for self-defense.  The whole discussion seems absurd.  I’ve followed the arguments, and they don’t stand up to a moment’s inspection.  About as clear an evasion of the obvious as can be imagined.  We should also be more than a little disturbed, I think, by the universal acceptance in the West that the question of “security” reduces to the security of Israelis, that is, to the rich and powerful state closely linked to the US and EU, while there is no security problem for those under the jackboot.  The racism is stunning, even given the ineradicable imperial mentality. (more…)

Since the 2005 unilateral disengagement: Dozens of development projects have been quashed by the total closure of Gaza’s borders, Palestinian industries are now unable to access foreign markets, Israeli banks have cut business ties with Gaza’s banks, Palestinian students are unable to continue their studies outside of Gaza, human rights workers are refused permission to leave Gaza for international conferences, medical supplies have been cut off (forcing Gaza’s hospitals to cease surgical operations)… and now Israel is pressuring the World Bank to halt its projects in Gaza.

The Israeli-Palestinian peace process is not a zero-sum game, but it often seems that politicians treat it that way. Increasingly, the discourse in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has revolved around the demands Palestinians should accept to achieve peace and very rarely does Israel discuss concessions at all. Yet this has become entirely acceptable as framed by the efforts to jump-start the moribund peace process in recent years.

Apologists for Israeli policy often hail the Jewish state’s willingness to make this sacrifice and that sacrifice for peace… Recall the popular talking point that Israel made an amazing offer to Arafat during the Camp David talks. Yet presented with this rhetoric, it is seldom analyzed what Israel is actually entitled to concede under international law. The illegal settlements continuing to cantonize and divide the West Bank are just one example of this. Of course, part of the “deal” offered to Arafat indeed included the removal of some settlements, but not all. Given the context, a bank robber may as well offer to return some (but not all) stolen money to the banker. Yet, this scenario is simply absurd. Rather than praising the robber for making a difficult decision and overcoming his attachment to some of the stolen goods, we should (indeed, we are obliged!) to condemn the robber for failing to fully comply with the law. Yet it is precisely the opposite that has been occurring in Israel: limited compliance masquerading as significant sacrifice. (more…)

In 1986, a great deal had already been written about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, though most of this work was primarily concerned with the West Bank… and Gaza was almost an afterthought. As far as I know, Paul Cossali and Clive Robson’s Stateless In Gaza (Zed Books, 1986) was one of the first books to deal with Gaza in an informal, people’s history sort of way. And it remains the only effort… Of course, “first” and “only” do not necessarily imply greatness, but Stateless In Gaza is an interesting (if occasionally scattered) look into the opinions and attitudes of pre-Intifada Gazans.

“Abdel Salam was the first person in our village to build a house out of stone—he had lots of money and contacts with the foreigners.” Thus begins the inauspicious opening of Stateless In Gaza, from there continuing to anecdote after anecdote as a series of seemingly endless tales of hardship and personal sacrifice. In this way, the various Palestinian narrators describe aspects of Gaza’s history beginning with the nakba of 1948 and passing through the Egyptian and Israeli occupations up to (the present day at the time of the book’s publishing) 1986. (more…)

Mona El-Farra is an inspiring individual. This modest and unassuming woman seems to have innumerable projects up her sleeve, ranging from her physician work at the Gazan branch of the Palestine Red Crescent Society to her role as Health Development consultant with the Union of Health Workers Committee.

On her website profile, Ms. El-Farra writes that she is “… a physician by training, a human rights and women’s rights activist by practice.” To her credit, she has the experience to back it up. Not only has Ms. El-Farra directly worked to improve the situation in Gaza through her physician work, she has also toured the United States advocating for human rights in Palestine, appearing at venues as diverse as Amy Goodman’s Democracy Now! and various American university campuses.

I first came across Ms. El-Farra in 2006, when I discovered her blog: From Gaza, With Love. Since then, I have followed her blog journey, though the frustration of military occupation and the devastating realities of everyday life in Gaza… and I was delighted to interview her the other night. (more…)

In Gaza it seems that everyone carries with them a well-honed set of opinions ready to blurt out for international journalists and other interested foreigners. Of course, I don’t doubt their substance but I must confess that, despite the horrors of military occupation and the terrible life in Gaza, many stories begin to sound the same. This may well be another reflection on the tragedy that is Gaza—so many heartwrenching anecdotes of human sacrifice are trivialized by the sheer quantity of victims.

During the first Intifada, the Palestinian cause caught the world’s sympathetic attention as images of children throwing rocks at tanks hit television screens worldwide. For a short time, the Palestinian resistance movement was entirely nonviolent. Citizens staged strikes, held public demonstrations at military checkpoints and for a while it seemed that the brutality of Israeli occupation was finally being exposed to the world. But it was not to be. Israel responded with Yitzhak Rabin’s notorious “break their bones” policy—and Israeli soldiers literally set about breaking the bones of children caught throwing stones.

The crushed hopes of the peace process and the endless Israeli expansion of settlements destroyed any possibility for a Palestinian state. On top of this, Israeli military measures grew ever more draconic. (more…)