when I lived in Gaza, I danced. And went to parties, where we drank and laughed, then drove home late at night. I went to barbeques, and dinners on the beach and I swam in the Mediterranean with my friends and their kids. I browsed in markets, bought fruit and herbs and spices and went home by public taxi where we bantered all the way home.
Looking back, I experience quite profound nostalgia for those joys that have outlived the fearfulness I learnt to manage at the same time. And deep anger at the terrible waste of what we have all lost, this incredibly rich culture of a society filled with poets and thinkers, entrepreneurs who built businesses against insuprable odds, families so hospitable they invited me for dinner night after night after night. Gaza has been ripped limb from limb, become a masse grave where thousands of Palestinian children are missing.
Let me be more precise here; Save the Children estimated back in June this year that up to twenty one thousand Palestinian children are missing, presumed dead under the rubble of their homes or shelters, detained by the Israeli forces, or buried in unmarked graves, where their grieving parents will probably never find their bodies, even body parts, to bury.
Just beyond the sealed borders of Gaza, the general strike that brought much of Israel to a halt today, is not surprising. Netanyahu and his government have clearly invested all-out in this bloodbath of a war: it’s increasingly accepted that Netanyahu is stalling against any ceasefire agreement to save his own political skin, damn the hostages. The only element of this strike that surprises me, is why it took Israeli society so long to organise an effective peaceful standstill. Families of the 97 Israeli hostages still imprisoned inside Gaza say they pleaded with the Netanyahu government for an effective hostage strategy for months.
How do we even imagine the stress for Israeli families who still hope their parents, partners or children are alive, and functioning? How do we begin to comprehend the relentless stress for every family inside Gaza, continually being ordered to ‘evacuate’ by Israeli forces also accused of heinous abuses against the men and children they detain?
These abuses are documented by, amongst others, the Israeli Information Center for Human Rights, B’Tselem; their report is titled ‘Welcome to hell.‘
This is not an attempt to be ‘balanced’ or to write an ‘impartial’ post; I am simply writing it as I see it, having lived in both Israel and in Palestine. No-one can win this bloody war (please stop calling it a conflict). Netanyahu is more responsible than anyone for this protracted horror; Joe Biden meanwhile, misjudged the entire trajectory of this war, exposing his own political ineptness alongside his inability to wield influence over Israel’s political warmongers, and force them to negotiate.
After her recent meeting with the Israeli PM in Washington, Deputy President Kamala Harris reported she ‘raised her serious concerns’ regarding the ‘dire’ humanitarian situation across Gaza, merely confirming the US inability to speak truth to power and hold it to account.
Gaza is not facing a humanitarian crisis: this is a political war campaign and a manufactured humanitarian catastrophe imposed by Israeli politicians who have previously alleged that ‘the children of Gaza have brought this upon themselves.’
Hamas are, as always, playing the long game, including during negotiations, blatantly prepared for as many civilian and hostage deaths and suffering as it takes for them to strike a better deal. Yaya Sinwar, long reknowned for his brutality, has now effectively taken over as Hamas political leader, and despite an ‘unprecedented manhunt‘, remains an elusive ghost. He is a politicial match for Netanyahu, both of them rigidly intransigent and violently relentless in pursuit of a political win. No matter the cost.
photo is by me: a silent vigil for Gaza with Oban Concern for Palestine
