This is not a civil war. It is a prison riot'
SAMAH SABAWI
Globe and Mail Print Edition 04/06/07 Page A13
GAZA: 40 YEARS AFTER OCCUPATION
'This is not a civil war. It is a prison riot'
Like mice in a laboratory, the people of Gaza
squabble, looking for ways out
SAMAH SABAWI
June 4, 2007
'Don't forget us!" has become a standard way for my
uncle in Gaza to end his conversations when we call
him from the comfort of our home in Ottawa. So, this
week, as we mark the anniversary of 40 years of
Israel's occupation of Gaza and the West Bank, his
plea should not go unheard.
Anyone who has family in Gaza understands well what
lies behind the headlines. For at least a year, my
in-laws urged us to visit them there, hoping that a
visit from the outside world would break their
isolation, and that the sight of their grandchildren
would bring a sense of normality to their lives and
lighten up their dreary existence. Even though we had
a dismal chance of being allowed to enter through the
tightly controlled Gaza gates, we still planned to try
this summer.
You can imagine our shock when, two months ago, we
heard my in-laws saying: "Don't come; it is no longer
safe." My in-laws, like many in Gaza, were not
surprised to see the heightened level of violence
between Palestinian factions in what is described here
as "internal fighting." The conflict in Gaza is not a
fight born of sectarian tensions, since the vast
majority of the population are Sunni Muslims. In fact,
the families in Gaza are connected through an
intricate social web, and I grew up with the Gazan
joke that all Gazans are blood relatives. The violence
is not purely political either - it is not unusual for
a family to have members who are affiliated with the
religious Hamas movement and others who are affiliated
with the secular Fatah. People in Gaza know this is a
special kind of war, a war that is funded by outside
sources and fuelled by poverty and desperation.
The conflict started as a power struggle between Hamas
and Fatah - with Fatah being under immense pressure
from the United States and Israel to strip Hamas of
its power. But Palestinians also know that now the
fighting has gotten out of hand. Neither Hamas nor
Fatah has much success maintaining any ceasefire as
frustrated youths, born in the Gaza pressure-cooker
with no future prospects and no hope in sight, take
over the streets. My cousin described it best: "This
is not a civil war. It is a prison riot."
This "prison riot" was inevitable. After Hamas's
victory in the Palestinian elections early last year,
Israel and the international community starved and
imprisoned the 1.4 million Palestinians living inside
Gaza in hope that they would overthrow an increasingly
helpless and besieged Hamas government. It was a cruel
act that meant collectively punishing an occupied
people by attaching strings to badly needed aid.
In the ensuing months, Palestinians found themselves
in a unique situation. They were sealed off from the
rest of the world, faced shortages of food, water and
medicine, suffered high unemployment rates and lived
in conditions not fit for animals. The only form of an
income for many of Gaza's youths was to join one
militia or another. The more powerless the government
became, the more powerful the militias got. Those who
did not join a militia had to be in the protection of
one. Many in Gaza began to wonder why at a time when
basic painkillers were not getting through the Israeli
controlled borders, so many guns became available.
More and more Palestinian intellectuals began to refer
to this as the "Gaza Experiment." Like mice in a
laboratory, Gazans squabbled, looking for ways out.
Every day, the pressure rose, the need to feed the
family became more immediate and the sick began to
die. While my mother-in-law was forced to endure the
horrific pain of arthritis without treatment for many
months, she still was thankful that her fate is better
than that of others. My sister-in-law, a physician at
the Shifa Hospital in Gaza City, told me several
months ago that a badly needed shipment of medication
for cancer patients was held up for weeks at the Gaza
gates. By the time it was finally allowed through, 35
high-risk cancer patients at the hospital had died.
The story of the children in Gaza is even more
heartbreaking. Many of them no longer find a reason to
attend school and have turned to the streets for
money. Some sell cigarettes or gum, and others steal
for their daily bread. Israeli sonic booms in Gaza's
sky have always thrown fear into their hearts - a
reminder of who has the power and who does not - but,
lately, the booms have come from a return of Israeli
shelling.
My young cousins in Gaza may not know how to read, but
they know the different warplanes and what they are
capable of doing. They brag that they are able to
recognize a rifle by the sound of its shots.
So while the world looks with indignation at the
situation in Gaza, let us not exonerate ourselves from
the events that are unfolding. We can't forget there
are human beings living in that highly politicized
strip of land. We have turned our eyes away from their
miserable reality. While boycotting a government
because of its political positions is legitimate, it
is immoral to put conditions on aid needed to save
lives. It is also immoral to deliberately sow the
seeds of violence and to interfere with a genuine
democratic process.
And it is equally immoral to turn our attention away
from the fact that 40 years later, the people of Gaza
and the West Bank have still not been freed from their
giant prison cell.
Samah Sabawi
Executive director, National Council on Canada Arab
Relations
---------------------------------
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