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In the Gaza Strip, there are a vast number of inspiring individuals prepared to put their personal reputation (and even their own physical well-being) on the line for matters of conviction. Dr. Eyad Sarraj is one of the more prominent of these figures and I was fortunate enough to speak with him on several occasions during my time in the Gaza Strip.

Dr. Sarraj, a Harvard-trained psychiatrist, is the founder of the Gaza Community Mental Health Programme—a groundbreaking NGO in Gaza catering to the masses of Palestinians suffering from emotional trauma, especially victims of torture. Sarraj is well known for his outspoken criticism of the Israeli occupation and of corruption in the Palestinian Authority.

In the excerpts that follow, I discuss the state of Palestinian democracy with Dr. Sarraj. (more…)

The frontrunner for the Democratic U.S. Presidential nomination, Barack Obama, was apparently very impressed with the killing of Palestinian children and a Reuters cameraman yesterday. Obama voiced his support for Israel’s “right to defend itself” and condemned Jimmy Carter’s meeting with Hamas leader, Khaled Mashaal—even as bombs rained down on Gaza’s refugee camps.

Immediately following Wednesday’sskirmish near the Gazan border which resulted in the deaths of three IOF soldiers at the hands of Hamas fighters, Israel retaliated by… bombing the densely populated al-Bureij refugee camp.

I am always struck by the sensitivity of politicians when they choose to praise Israel in the midst of such glaring atrocities. (more…)

At a time when a majority of Israelis support an open dialog with Hamas, former U.S. President Jimmy Carter is on his way to Damascus to meet with exiled Hamas leader, Khaled Mashaal.

Now don’t get me wrong: I am not at all impressed by Carter’s lukewarm criticism of the Israeli occupation (yes, I read his book) and Khaled Mashaal should be slapped for his pontifications about a third Palestinian uprising from the comfort Damascus while the people of Gaza are starving and exhausted. So in my opinion, the meeting will do little good. Nevertheless, if they want to meet, so be it.

But the stonewall face of Israel’s opposition to Palestinian democracy cannot stomach such a meeting and neither can their counterparts in Washington (including all three of the main Presidential candidates):

“US government policy is that Hamas is a terrorist organization and we don’t believe it is in the interest of our policy or in the interest of peace to have such a meeting,” spokesman Sean McCormack told reporters.

(more…)

Around 10:30pm on the night of February 28, M and his wife S spoke in low tones in a dark room dimly lit by a battery-operated lamp. They were trying to decide if it was still safe to send their children to school and decided in favor because the elementary school building is in a safer part of the city near a number of international offices. The electricity in the building had been out 10 hours by then and the couple pulled blankets around them to keep warm in the damp winter air. They live on the 6th floor of Shifa Tower, an 11-story apartment building housing more than a hundred families.

When the blast occurred that took out the Interior Ministry building across the street, there was no time to think about what to do. M flew into his children’s bedroom and threw himself over the sleeping body of his son, Basel, to shield the young boy’s body from the glass shattering in the windows beside his bed. Then after a matter of seconds the three young children, two girls and the boy, were taken to the windowless kitchen, all of them now fully awake and crying out in terror. M threw blankets and pillows around them where they huddled for the night in restless sleep and dreams of horror, their mother sobbing silently over them as she caressed their faces. (more…)

I came across two interesting cases in a matter or hours yesterday as I checked my RSS feed from Ha’aretz. Both cases deal with censorship in some way, first of media and then of expressing Pro-Palestinian sentiments.

Apparently, Israel plans to impose an official embargo on the Qatar-based news network Al-Jazeera in retaliation for perceived “unfair” portrayal of the IDF.

“The Foreign Ministry has held discussions on the matter, and decided to embargo the station,” Deputy Foreign Minister Majali Wahabe told Army Radio, adding: “These reports are untrustworthy and they hurt us, and they arouse people to terrorist activities.”

Israel would do well to consider that killing over 125 people over a matter of days in Gaza (half of whom were children) is difficult to spin in a “fair” way—when fair means favorable to Israel. Perhaps they should even (gasp) consider that their brutal actions in the occupied territories fuel so-called “terrorist activities”. (more…)

Apparently, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has ordered a halt to Israeli attacks in Gaza and has instead entered into talks with Hamas via Egyptian mediators.

It should not be necessary to point out that Hamas has previously offered to talk with Israel on more than one occasion and that it was Israel, not Hamas, that finally broke the ceasefire in October 2006. Nevertheless, Olmert’s detractors cried for blood and he delivered. Over 125 Palestinians (half of whom were children) killed last week is enough to satiate the wolves for now, so this week why not put on the mask of peacemaker? Israel is no stranger to playing Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde in this way.

“We certainly appear to have entered a period of talking rather than fighting now,” Al Jazeera’s Jacky Rowland reported from Gaza.

“For more than three days now there have been virtually no rocket attacks into Israel … and also there have been no Israeli air strikes, no overflights of Gaza.”

(more…)

“I heard shooting, then screaming. I rushed upstairs to see what had happened, and they were both on the floor. Jaqueline was already dead, but Iyad was still alive. The neighbours called an ambulance and we ran to the hospital with him, but he died as soon as we arrived.”

East Jabaliya in the northern Gaza Strip bore the brunt of Israel’s latest military incursion into Gaza. The incursion, which was launched in the early hours of Thursday February 28, lasted four days and nights. In that time Israeli troops killed 108 Palestinians, including 54 unarmed civilians, 26 of whom were children. The Palestinians who live in and around Abed Rabbo Street in east Jabaliya suffered intense air strikes by F16 planes and helicopters, tank shelling, snipers, and having their houses invaded and vandalised by Israeli soldiers, who tied adults up with ropes, or else locked whole families into single rooms in order to use their homes as sniper towers to target local Palestinian fighters. Sixteen year old Jaqueline Abu Shebak and her fourteen year old brother, Iyad both lived on Abed Rabbo Street with their mother and three other young brothers and sisters. The children’s uncle, Hatem Hosni Abu shebak, who lives next door, found the bodies of Jaqueline and Iyad in the early hours of Saturday March 1st, when he rushed upstairs after hearing intense shooting and then screaming. (more…)

The Al Deira Hotel, in Gaza City, is a haven of calm in a land beset by poverty, fear, and violence. In the middle of December 2007, I sit in the hotel’s airy restaurant, its windows open to the Mediterranean, and listen to a slight, bearded man named Mazen Asad abu Dan describe the suffering he endured 11 months before at the hands of his fellow Palestinians. Abu Dan, 28, is a member of Hamas, the Iranian-backed Islamist organization that has been designated a terrorist group by the United States, but I have a good reason for taking him at his word: I’ve seen the video.

It shows abu Dan kneeling, his hands bound behind his back, and screaming as his captors pummel him with a black iron rod. “I lost all the skin on my back from the beatings,” he says. “Instead of medicine, they poured perfume on my wounds. It felt as if they had taken a sword to my injuries.” (more…)

Reflecting on the massive Israeli military operation in the Gaza Strip this past week, which left over 120 dead and scores wounded, I can only sit back in frustration at Israel’s sheer blindness and cruelty. Even as the U.S. House of Representatives arrogantly passes a resolution “strongly defending how Israel has repelled rocket attacks” and even as both Democratic contenders for the Presidential candidacy openly approve of Israel’s aggression by blaming Hamas, Human Rights groups including Amnesty International, Oxfam and Save the Children have issued a report highlighting the dire situation in Gaza—the “worst humanitarian crisis since the 1967 war”. (more…)

Israel issued a warning to Hamas on Sunday that the organization would be responsible for any injuries or deaths resulting from a mass demonstration against the blockade of Gaza held yesterday.

If necessary, IDF artillery will fire warning shots at open areas, and should the protestors continue their advance, troops will employ riot dispersal methods.

As a last resort, snipers will open fire at protestors legs. The orders were approved by senior General Staff officers as well as Defense Minister Ehud Barak. <<< more

Of course, it is ridiculous to claim that Hamas would be responsible for the killing of innocent civilians authorized by the Israeli military, but the logic of the blockade encourages these inanities. We are also meant to accept that Hamas is actually responsible for the international economic boycott on Gaza as well as for the severe shortage of food products and power resources. (more…)

JABALYA, Gaza, Jan 21 (Reuters) - Ready to act fast to save his life, Maher Al-Assali’s young siblings stand at his bedside, poised to pump air through a hole in the 12-year-old’s neck when the ventilator that keeps him alive cuts out.

Since being paralysed in a car accident seven years ago, Assali has depended on a mechanical ventilator to supply his lungs with oxygen. During the electricity blackouts that have plagued the impoverished territory for months, his family used to hook the machine up to a generator at a nearby clinic.

But Israel has cut fuel supplies to Hamas-run Gaza as part of sanctions it says are meant to stop militants firing rockets across the border. The clinic generator has shut down. So now, when the power grid fails, Assali’s family keep him alive with a rubber hand pump. (more…)

Of all the possible methods of dealing with Hamas, Israel’s slow and calculated suffocation of Gaza is perhaps the most sickening. Ostensibly aimed at weakening the Islamist government’s power in Gaza, the current fuel cuts constitute a bold-faced form of collective punishment—a way of destroying Gaza without having to pull a trigger.

Gaza’s fuel supplies come entirely from Israel… Naturally, Israel does not allow Gaza to seek such supplies elsewhere, which is why the recent pontificatons from Israeli politicians about ’supplying energy to the enemy’ are so disingenuous. Nevertheless, the closure of Gaza’s borders has blocked vital fuel supplies and has pushed Gaza’s only power-plant to the brink of closure, threatening the functionality of everything from the (already) limited medical capabilities, to the distribution of food by aid-workers. (more…)

Mariam Rahal, a 53-year-old grandmother and her two sons, were in the wrong place at the wrong time as they drove their donkey cart of oranges home through a mainly residential district of Beit Lahiya. Mrs Rahal was buried yesterday with one of the sons, Mohammed, 23. The pair were innocent victims of a four-day conflict between Israel and Palestinian militants that last night seemed far from over. They were killed when their cart was destroyed by a missile which targeted the car of a rocket-launching crew on Thursday evening.

At the mourning tent for mother and son, as another son, Mansour, 16, lay critically ill in Gaza City’s Shifa Hospital, a third brother, Amar, 33, explained: “They had gone to see another of my brothers who has just had a baby and on their way back they stopped to buy some oranges to sell.” (more…)

I am always interested to read the Gaza security briefings I receive daily. Today I read that the Erez checkpoint has been closed until at least January 21 for all but the most exceptional cases (and we all know that even then, it’s incredibly hard to get in or out of Gaza). Apparently the order came directly from Ehud Barak himself. But why should Erez be sealed? Certainly it is not off limits to the Israeli military; their unhinged presence in Gaza has become increasingly persistent and bloody.

In the wake of the horrific attacks now being prosecuted on a daily basis, it seems Israel is upping the ante further. This shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone familiar with modern history. After all, this is a tried and true method of avoiding peace and has almost become an Israeli tradition. The answer to peace talks? Bomb Gaza! (more…)

I wanted to wait for a few days before jumping to conclusions about the Annapolis Summit (they seem to have finally stuck to a name). Now that I have had some time to sniff around (i.e. sit in front of the TV flipping between the news networks), I have reached two conclusions and some predictions about the future of this process.

First, I find it amusing that this-and-that pundit from such-and-such think tank hail the attendance of various Arab leaders as a success. This is not a success. The puppet tyrants of the Arab world live to serve their master: Bush (and Syria is no exception). When the White House whistles, the would-be lapdogs come running. This has been true since at least the end of the Cold War… and when it isn’t, the United States launches a war. (more…)

First it was called a “conference”, then a “summit” and the latest preferred terminology is “meeting”. But whatever you call it, the Annapolis Conference/Summit/Meeting planned for November 27 is not being taken seriously. Just over a week away and there have been no invitations sent out, no joint declaration – not even a consensus on which countries will actually participate.

The usual game is being played out, however.

[Israeli Prime Minister, Ehud] Olmert is expected to announce at the meeting in Annapolis that Israel will freeze settlement construction and dismantle the outposts. <<< more

(more…)

The inanity of authoritarian movements can never be underestimated. The horrific shooting by Hamas of unarmed demonstrators is only the latest example of the Islamist group’s unwillingness or inability to control its forces in the Gaza Strip.

Squandering the general support they enjoyed here by forcibly seizing control of the Strip last June, many Gazans now regard Hamas as an unhinged group of fanatics more concerned with rooting out political opposition than in combating the Israeli occupation. (more…)

As I write this, thousands of pro-Fatah demonstrators are pouring through the streets of Gaza City, collecting at al-Anzar park near Islamic University to commemorate the third anniversary of Yassir Arafat’s death. Already, Hamas thugs have killed one and injured dozens of demonstrators. Because these events are literally occurring just blocks away from my flat, I’ll probably remain at my downtown office until things calm down. This is quite bad. All I can hear is shouting, sirens and heavy gunfire…

UPDATE: Seven have now been killed.

Tags: Violence, Gaza, Palestine, Clashes, Security, Fatah, Hamas, Gunfire, Al-Anzar, Islamic University, Yassir Arafat, Gaza City

The Palestine Chronicle published an essay I wrote upon arrival in Gaza. It was syndicated by the International Middle East Media Center here.
*   *   *
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…)

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

*   *   * 
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…)