I had only been to Gaza once before this war. Erez, the terminal by which you enter into the prison, is the size of an airport terminal. Metal, concrete, grey, some Ebola warnings and completely empty if it wasn’t for the Israeli soldiers and their M-16’s or whatever you call those huge monsters they carry. Every time I have been there, there were only two or three people crossing, once, I was the only person. It is like a very good – or very bad – science fiction movie. You are asked the usual questions: what are you going to do in Gaza? What is your job? What is your organization? Etc. Then you walk down an alleyway that is a kilometre and a half long in between fences and then you reach the Palestinian checkpoints. Before this war, my impression of Gaza was that it was quite a peaceful and joyful place. Life in the streets of Gaza is like life in any other Arab city, for those who know them: lively, colourful, and loud, with the added benefit of the sea. Gazans love the sea and they often stay there until very late at night with their families. There you can smoke argilla, ride a horse and eat the delicious sweet potatoes that are cooked in a mobile oven in front of you.
This time, my first time back since the war, the Palestinian checkpoint was nothing but rubble. Then, on the way to MdM’s office you see with your own eyes what you could only see in pictures every morning when you rushed to your computer to check the news and, above all, to check if your colleagues were still alive. And that was only Gaza City, the downtown of the Gaza Strip, the one that had been the least attacked but still had the highest casualty rate because of its population density. However, as for the rest, nothing had changed: life seemed to go on as if nothing had happened; in appearance. Fruit and vegetable markets were still open, the roads were busy, children were running around, often in the middle of the traffic, cars were roaring, people were eating ice creams on the streets, students were going to the university… As soon as I entered Gaza that day Heba, my Gazan colleague, invited me to try a passion fruit ice cream at the best ice cream place in Gaza. Perhaps this was to “sweeten” what was lying ahead of me over the next few days.
I was met with tears and outpourings of affection by the team in the office, after meeting Dr Mai, whom I had been talking with almost every day during the war but that I had never met before, after all this deep and almost unbearable emotion, I left with Nasser to visit MdM’s mobile clinics in three of the most devastated areas of Gaza. These were the regions on the buffer zone, three kilometres away from Israel, and therefore where the land incursion had been the most brutal. Khuza’a, east of the Gaza Strip, there was nothing standing. Nothing. Like an earthquake. Except that an earthquake lasts for several seconds and this lasted for 51 days. People in this village are farmers, they live off their land, or they try to live off what are their lands but that have been confiscated by Israel for “security reasons”. I met Mariam, a two month old baby who was born on the first day of the war. We saw remnants of war everywhere that children now play with – since the end of the war five people have died because of their explosions. A restaurant that had just been built with one family’s entire life savings was now just dust; we visited a popular Gazan painter, whose house had also been bombed. You can imagine that not a single one of his paintings had survived. The French Cultural Centre is preparing an exhibition with the rest of his works. We met Hassan who is now in a wheel-chair and mentally disabled because of the phosphor thrown during Cast Lead (2008/2009). His family invited us for a cup of tea at their home. Their home was a hole in the concrete left from what was their house. A few blankets offer a little privacy.
“I have seen enough Wissam, can we go? I saw, Ale, I saw you. I really wanted to take you in my arms and comfort you, but you know in this country we can’t”. That’s Gazans: they comfort you. They have been bombed for 51 days, relentlessly, and you enter only when it is safe, and they want to comfort you… Palestinians see themselves as heroes, which makes it very difficult to make them understand that some sort of psychosocial support after what they go through might be good for them. No, they are heroes, they are resilient. Children play “Palestinians and Israelis”. Funny enough, or dramatically enough, they all want to play the role of the Israelis. We all want to be on the winning side, don’t we? Yes, they are resilient…or rather they have no choice but to adapt to a life surrounded with violence, the one that they suffer and the one they witness. But they pay a high price for this adaptation. These wounds are hidden, invisible. But they are very real.
But the most poignant story came on the drive back. He was once married to an Israeli. He used to work in Tel Aviv, they fell in love, they married, not a major problem for their families by the way, and they stayed together for 10 years. Then the first Intifada broke out and he had to leave Tel Aviv. They had to separate and could never see each other again. She remarried and so did he. “But we still talk on the phone on a regular basis and during the war she called me every day. When my wife asks me which of the two I love the most I stay silent. I can’t lie to her”. Love in the time of Ebola.
November, 2014