Caught an early service with Catherine to Gaza. You have to pass a sort of border control, with lanes and booths, then the road becomes very dusty and sandy, you pass between orchards and palm trees before the city sprawls out beneath you. The roads are narrow, traffic (mostly old white Peugeots, it seems) heavy and the litter abundant Many shop fronts are shuttered, and every piece of wall is plastered with graffiti – the only word I can make out is “Fatah” (Yasser Arafat’s Palestinian nationalist and social democratic party).
We step out into the pleasant morning, and walk through the gates of Ali Arab hospital (private) in search of Catherine and Yehudit’s contact, Saoud Abu Rahman. He turns out ot be lat 20s, well dressed, soft spoken. We sat down among the hospital’s flowers and greenery to get acquainted. After studying English for 5 years at the Islamic University of Gaza, he was unable to get a teaching job because neither government nor UN would recognize his qualification, so ended up working in a shop in Gaza. To practise his English, he went to the hotel where foreign journalists stayed, became a useful contact for them, and is now salaried by CBS news. He was also production assistant on a a pair of documentaries on Pauline Cutting.
We hop into a cab and head for the airy, enormous UNRWA headquarters. The public information office tells us that 800 000 people are registered in the area of the Gaza strip, which works out as 1800 people per km3. 73% of them are refugees. Since the beginning of the intifada (December 9th 1987) about 400 people have been killed by soldiers, an equivalent number have been killed for collaborating (one such death in the West Bank this morning…); there has been a nightly (9pm-4am) enforced curfew, and in May there was full curfew for 25 consecutive days (one hour per week movement allowed to obtain necessary supplies). Now with the peace process in motion, people are not demonstrating as much as they used to. With the expulsion of Palestinians from Kuwait, incomes are down, and the workers are encamped on Gulf state borders as Jordan and Egypt refuse to accept them.
Saoud himself has had his new apartment surrounded then entered by soldiers. He is helping an attempt at compensation for 150 dead kids’ families. He takes us to Beach camp to meet one such family – 6yr old son was caught by an Israeli rubber bullet intended for the legs of stone throwers. They proudly show his entry in the “Book of Martyrs” that depicts each death, a brief history of the incident and the location. Fortunately Umm Yussuf managed to have 2 more sons. Now Abu Youssuf sells Egyptian dresses from his home. There are over 50 000 people living here in Beach camp, but it’s not the biggest camp. The streets are uneven, sewers are open, and houses packed close together (although they may be spacious inside). Abu Youssuf supports anyone who fears God and loves the Palestinians, which includes Abu Nidal and Saddam Hussein: it seems his hatred may need more than a peace process to be quenched…
But despite having been to Jordan and to Egypt, he said Gaza was still best, simply because it was his home (he and his wife originally came from a nearby village, but left in 1948 as children with their families – El Nakba, the disaster, as this mass migration is now known).
The roads in the camp are wide, but unsurfaced, potted and dusty. The houses present a haphazard face, each is different, all seem unfinished or makeshift. Some have corrugated iron roofs, weighted down with rocks. Little alleys lead off the road. We pass half a car body. There are few people around, it is very quiet, and the house fronts are blank. Occasionally you glimpse the sea behind, the only thing that could be called beautiful here.
We catch a service after saying goodbye to Saoud; 2 of the other passengers are middle aged women wearing the traditional embroidered dresses. These are so beautiful, it’s a shame you never see anybody under the age of 40 wearing them (and I doubt they would be used for special occasions either). At the army checkpoint, the three men (including me) are told to get out, and made to approach the soldier one by one with our ID. If you are male and under 35, you need a special card which the soldier checks with a hand held barcode scanner. He sees me taking my passport out of my money belt, so he makes me hand over the money belt and gives it a feel, then spends a couple of minutes checking my passport. Finally he says “Sa” (go) and pushes me aside – habit, I suppose. The other 2 wonder why I took so long, so I tell them the soldier wanted to see my stomach, and the tension dissolves into laughter.
A final note: while we were waiting to pass UNWRA security, a civil judge approached us (wearing a fez wrapped in a white scarf) and asked Catherine whether she had lost any money. This was very odd, but she checked and said no; he pointed to a taxi driver had found some money. Later she found she had indeed dropped a 100 NIS (£20) note, and we hadn’t recognised our own driver. That’s some honesty.