Gaza -" Our Second Home"
Shae Popovich, Associate Director, Office of the Americas
July 2009
I traveled to Gaza last month and I have been forever changed. I am not a politician. I am not a journalist or filmmaker. I am a regular citizen/activist who decided to make a trip to the Middle East to witness first-hand the destruction and devastation I had read and heard about. During my stay I made several new friends in Gaza, but the chances of their ever visiting me in the US are remote. That is because my friends in Gaza are in prison. Any attempt by them to evade their captors or come within 300 meters of these borders could very well result in their death.
Wherever I moved in Gaza, from the north to the south, from the luscious Mediterranean Sea over to the west, I heard stories from Palestinian people who simply wanted to live their lives: to farm (agriculture and labor being the main economic industries in Gaza), to go to school, to be able to move freely from one border to the next. Our delegation of 66, composed of journalists, teachers, students, filmmakers, activists and more, was mainly from the US but delegates from Canada, Italy, Portugal, and Australia also joined us. The delegation was organized by the anti-war activist group Codepink, and we were joined by noted political activist and author Norman Finkelstein as well as Colonel Ann Wright and the co-founder of Codepink, Medea Benjamin.
This was the second Codepink delegation in a matter of months. The first, in February, brought supplies to the women of Gaza. Our delegation was to focus on the children. Nearly 60% of Gaza's population is under 15. Our delegation hoped to bring some smiles to the children by delivering toys and building some playgrounds. I was fortunate enough to help build one in Beit Hanoun. My fondest memory of that day was having hundreds of children eagerly crowding me, asking my name, where I was from, wanting to shake my hand, dance for me, help carry a piece of the playground. At times it got chaotic, but I quickly realized that these children simply wanted and needed some form of human contact and interaction.
Each day we had meetings with representatives of various NGOs, schools, and youth institutions. Some days there were unscheduled events such as our impromptu meeting with Hamas female and male members of parliament. Many of the women in government started their careers as students involved in their universities' political and student unions. Others were involved in the community. I asked the female Hamas leader, Rajaa Alhalabi, what we as a delegation should tell the citizens of the US about them. She replied, "Show the world we are trying to change the culture as women of Hamas. We do not support violence to achieve our goals. The media has a misconception about us. Take the evidence of what you as a delegation have seen and show the role of women in society and how significant it is." She also stressed the importance of keeping the media informed of the dire conditions in Gaza and that lifting the siege and aid to the people was paramount.
What struck me the most during the course of my time in Gaza was the unbelievable spirit of the Palestinian people and their unwavering commitment to stay strong. "We will survive" was something I heard uttered time and time again from school-age children to grown adults. It was part of the Palestinian culture to welcome you into their homes and their hearts despite their situation. By the end of a conversation over peppermint tea, you felt as if you had a lifelong friend. They would tell us that Gaza was now "our second home." Codepinker Joanne and I stayed with a young family in Gaza City, Abeer, Hazem, and their 4 children. The first evening we arrived, Abeer apologized repeatedly that the electricity had been out for several hours and that we would have to eat by candlelight. To me it seemed slightly enticing. Dinner by candlelight on the roof of their home? How lovely. I quickly realized that power outages, some scheduled and others not, were a great hindrance to daily life in Gaza. That included, of course, businesses and hospitals. The largest hospital we visited, Al Shifa, would often go 6-12 hours with no electricity. Power plants couldn't keep up with the demand due to the lack of fuel blocked by Israel. Water is another major concern. A good deal of Gaza's drinking water is contaminated. Water and electricity. Could those of us here in the US imagine being inconvenienced like that on a daily basis?
There are several images of Gaza that float through my mind, but I seem to come back to 2 or 3 that I cannot shake. One is Saib Samih El Sheik, the son of an ambulance driver who was standing amid the ruins of his home at Jabalia Camp in south Gaza. Straight ahead I could see the Israeli border and all around the camp were homes and structures in rubble. To the left of Saib's house were the remains of an ambulance and a paramedic uniform that had been crushed beneath another home. Saib's father, a paramedic, was trying to rescue 2 young girls. He was ordered out of the ambulance and asked to disrobe from his uniform. The structure was bombed. The girls were never rescued. Down the road from Saib's former home were a Palestinian and a UN flag perched atop two destroyed buildings. Two small semblances of a community that vowed to keep going.
A second powerful image that I cannot forget is when our UNWRA guides took us to a large refugee camp in Rafah, on the border with Egypt. We witnessed the place where Rachel Corrie, a Jewish peace activist from Seattle, WA, was killed by an Israeli Caterpillar bulldozer in 2003 while defending the home of a Palestinian doctor. Most everything here was destroyed. In a remote small, sandy area that consists of two goalposts is the Rachel Corrie Peace Park. I couldn't imagine nor could I see any children playing here since it is far too dangerous and very close to the Rafah tunnels. I stood there for a moment, alone, imagining the inconceivable: what this brave young woman went through and recalling what she uttered in a documentary I saw before I left for Gaza, that "you cannot begin to imagine what it is like here until you witness it first-hand for yourself."
And yet a 3rd image is a K-12 school in the north part of Gaza called The American International School in Gaza. I was not prepared for the magnitude of devastation that I witnessed: beams, wires and structures completely ripped apart. The scattered compositions and graded papers that littered the landscape in front of me were one of the few indicators that this was indeed a school. Several former students, aged 9-15, immediately greeted our delegation. As they walked us around what was left of the school, I knelt down and picked up a piece of what was once perhaps part of a wall or a ceiling. As I held the piece in my hand, I fought back tears as the children responded to my question, "What do you want to be when you get older?" "Engineer, designer, architect, computer expert," they said so very enthusiastically. I carried 35 handmade cards from a 4th grade class in Sherman Oaks, Ca. I couldn't pass them out fast enough. As our bus signaled for me to get on with the others, I reluctantly pulled myself away, the children still clamoring for a piece of paper from strangers halfway across the world. I waved goodbye and then I walked without turning around, tears streaming down my cheeks.
All 66 of our Codepink delegation could fill a book with our stories, stories that ranged from utter despair to mild hopefulness. We promised the incredible people of Gaza that we would tell their stories, that we would tell the world, that we would refuse to remain silent. We write. We speak. We draw pictures. We do what we must to keep the flame burning. We will not forget.
As I hugged my home stay family and said my goodbyes, I couldn't help but burst into tears once again. This time, I couldn't hide them. I knew I was leaving this so-called "prison." I was free. Who knows when they will be released? As I climbed into my host's car to meet up with our delegation and head to the border and back to North America, I thought to myself... Two continents. Two languages. One common vision...peace.