The Home of My Closest Friend Has Been Demolished

Earlier this week the Israeli military demolished the home of my closest friend. To stand in the rubble of the home that witnessed the best days of my childhood is devastating. In her home I learned the meaning of love, care, and true friendship. It is all gone now.

As with my parents and grandparents homes in Israel, we are left now with only the memories. A decade ago when I went to Hebrew classes in Israel to build a better future I would not have believed that Israel would still be occupying Gaza in 2004. I do not understand how Israel thinks it will strengthen voices for peace like mine when it demolishes Innocent people homes at the very moment it is telling the world it plans to exit Gaza. My stomach turns at the thought that Sharon needs to demolish my friend’s home in order to look sufficiently tough to "sell" this plan to the Israeli public.

The Israeli army is advancing fast and our turn is coming. I visited this area a week ago and my friend's home was still standing. My own family home is five rows far from her home. We moved to Gaza over half a century ago after being forced out of Israel.Now, we may be forced to flee in the dead of night once again.

By the meager means available to me, I have reported to the world this tragedy of home demolitions many times before. But it is substantially different when you report about the home demolition of someone you don't know and then report about homes you know very well.

I now better understand the magic connection and the flash of my grandmother's eyes when she speaks about her demolished home and village in Bait Daras from which she was spit out 56 years ago.

Do Democrats and Republicans not understand that when they speak of the "Jewish state of Israel" they are talking about the ethnic cleansing of my grandmother? What has become of the "fair play" of the American people that they now justify such state terror? Are justice and compassion no longer of concern to the American people and their leaders?

My grandmother did not forget. I asked her once to forgive so that my daughter Ghaida and I could live happily. Now Ghaida and I will be unable to forget or forgive these daily atrocities. What is transpiring in Beit Hanoun, Rafah, and Khan Younis is more savage than an eye for an eye.

Every time the Israeli occupation forces demolish homes they expand the wire further, swallowing more and more of what little land remains to us. It's as if they are determined to strip us of the final dreams and possessions that we hold. Psychologically they appear intent on depriving us even of the hope that next year they will have left all of Gaza, albeit leaving us confined within an enormous open-air prison, Â newly dubbed by Amir Oren as an occupation by remote control.

The same razing of homes taking place in Khan Yunis is going on in Rafah and Beit Hanoun. The policy is the equivalent of Guatemala's scorched earth policy against the indigenous people there. At this rate, we will have no infrastructure, no land or space, notrees or agriculture. Already Israelis are consuming a disproportionate amount of our water resources.

To leave your neighbor with nothing but despair, bitterness, and anger does not bode well for the future of either Palestinians or Israelis. Our situation will be extraordinarily difficult if we are left with nothing more than a pulverized desert strip of land.

Sharon himself seems to be acting more out of anger and revenge than from a considered and rational policy. His approach to getting out of Gaza is extremely unsettling. He seems hell-bent on making this place either ungovernable or a fiery place of unquenchable rage that is controlled by isolated pockets of armed young men running for their lives but unable to think the coherent thoughts necessary to build our future.

These young men are determined to protect us and some of them will make fine leaders in years to come, but they are ill-equipped to govern today. Sharon knows this. And he knows that chaos in Gaza strengthens his grip on the West Bank and East Jerusalem which are his true goals.

As a girl and young woman I used to find my own strength in my grandmother's eyes. Now, this woman who has seen so much has only sadness and a dead, haunted look. I, myself, am afraid to look to my daughter's eyes. There is no guarantee I can provideher beyond my own love. I certainly cannot guarantee her physical and mental security.

Last week I left Ghaida with my extended family in Khan Yunis when I had to be in Gaza City. I was shocked to learn that my precious child was upstairs sweeping the floor while gunfire raged nearby. When I talked to her about this and how dangerous it is she told me that she misses her relatives who have been killed. She said that if she got shot andKilled she would go to see them. She spoke of her love for them. The open discussion of the possibility of being killed, from a child so young, is terrifying. How will she turn out, living amidst such uncertainty and trauma?

Haters of Palestinians say that we saturate our children in a culture of death. But how do we insulate them from the gunfire of an ostensibly withdrawing army that is laying waste to our refugee camp?

The world has gone deaf and blind to our struggle. Fifty-six years after our national catastrophe at the hands of the United Nations, where is Kofi Anan? Why does he not speak out for us more vigorously? The nations of the world should remember well that there once were Palestinians willing to reconcile. But when Israel's parting gift is to threaten the home of my memories this becomes well-nigh impossible.

To the people of Israel: You claim to be leaving Gaza next year. Why then demolish my neighbor's home, and perhaps my own, on the way out? You leave us no choice but to remember our old dreams -- not to return to our homes in Khan Younis refugee camp but to the homes and land you stole from us 56 years ago. Ironically, you have returned to me my memory and my grandmother’s memory of the future. There is madness to the policy you pursue today. And if you are wise, it will end without delay.

Finally, Mr. Bush: Whatever happened to "riding herd" on the both of us? Instead, you have abandoned us to the gentle mercies of Ariel Sharon who says one thing to the world about disengagement while at the same time marauding through the neighborhoods of my youth, devastating lives and landscape alike, with not a thought to the reality that we are destined to live as neighbors.

Gaza: horror beyond belief

Ghada Ageel writing from ZAHRA, occupied Palestine, Live from Palestine, 16 May 2004

Mohammed, 3, son of Ibrahim Abu Auda, during Israeli shooting in Rafah at 3:30AM, July 2002. Their house is 40 meters from the Gaza-Egyptian border. (Johannes Abeling)

The situation in Gaza is horrific beyond belief.

Since Tuesday, May 11, thousands of people have been denied the simple right to return to their homes; this includes infants, children, students, employees, women, and men of all ages. There is no law in this life or world that should prevent someone from returning to his or her home.

Yet in Palestine this is happening. And it is Israel, the storied democratic state, that is practicing this grave violation of very basic human rights.

Tens of thousands of students and employees came from the south of the strip (Khan Younis and Rafah) to Gaza City for university studies, work, and for other various needs. They got stuck in Gaza after Israel closed all the internal checkpoints in the strip -- dividing it into three separate parts.

My mother was one of those people. She came to visit my sister in Gaza City on Monday afternoon. She was planning to stay overnight and go back home on Tuesday morning. But on Tuesday morning she was jolted by the news of the closure and by what was going on in the Zeitoun neighborhood of Gaza City, which is very close to the Sabra neighborhood where my sister lives.

Like everyone else in the Strip she has followed the news not only via television and radio, but by watching and hearing the rockets launched by the Israeli combat helicopters which hovered over the buildings of Sabra and rocketed Zeitoun with air-to-ground missiles and shelled the neighborhood with high-explosive ammunition.

To reach Khan Younis refugee camp, she has to cross two checkpoints. The first is beside the illegal Israeli settlement of Netzarim where the tanks stand by two huge hills of sands. These tanks close off access to the coastal road and block anyone intending to cross. The second checkpoint is the one between Khan Younis and Deir Al-Baleh. This is Abu Holi checkpoint (so designated on account of the family name of the owner of the land and to call to memory that it was this family's land that Israel confiscated and uprooted for the checkpoint).

On Tuesday, my mother decided that the next day she would cross the first checkpoint.This is easy compared to Abu Holi. She was dying from worry for my two brothers and my sister whom she left alone at Khan Younis camp as it was subjected to several largely unreported incursions in the last few days. She was terrified that the army might invade Khan Younis while she was in Gaza. The fear is always there that something more might happen to our family. She wants to be with them at such times no matter the cost. But it is especially important to her now with my father in Egypt and there being no older family members with them. My sister and I failed to convince her to give up her idea.

We agreed that she get a taxi from Sabra to the northern part of Netzarim where I would meet her. And because we cannot use the main road where the tanks stand, we have to circumnavigate this via a one kilometer trek on the beach before we can use the main road again to get another taxi. I walked half an hour on foot to meet her. Many children and students also made the trek. The army shot above our heads many times. At such moments we ran -- myself every bit as much as the children and students around me.

I was notorious in my family for liking to run as a child. Now I run because my life may depend on it. But running on the sandy Gaza beach was extremely difficult. Some people, in their haste and fear, lost their shoes while running, but continued barefooted. Others were holding their shoes in their hands and running.

Many old women were crying after they fell to the ground and the sea water made their clothes wet. It was humiliating and yet I continued running. When I met my mom on the other side I started to worry about how I could get her safely to the other side. She cannot run. She cannot walk for even three minutes without sitting for a break. Then we saw the donkeys with carts coming to carry people. We paid four shekels and got on the cart. The donkey owner asked us to hold carefully to the edges of the cart and lie flat on it if there was any shooting. If so, we would then have to pick up the pace.

It is crazy. But in our situation today, nothing is normal. We sat. The driver ran alongside us. I closed my eyes and cried in silence. For a minute I wished that my mother had not brought me into this life. The 14-year-old driver saw my tears and told me to cheer up. At least, he said, you are not in Zeitoun where people are getting slaughtered. You have a chance to survive.

It was, he claimed, only another two minutes before we would arrive. And, after all, if anything happened there was a cameraman to take our picture. Apparently not all the journalists were blocked at Erez checkpoint on their way into Gaza. Some had obviously arrived earlier or were with the Palestinian press.

Despite all the hazards we succeeded in crossing. My mother was so happy and for a minute I was happy for her happiness.

We arrived at my apartment. The first leg of the trip was done. We decided to take a short break before continuing to Abu Holi checkpoint.

While listening to the radio we heard that the IDF opened Abu Holi. Quickly, my husband Nasser got our two kids and we raced to our car. More slowly, I helped my mother. We drove as fast as the engine could bear. My mother was so happy that she would go home. But her happiness did not endure. We arrived two minutes after the checkpoint was closed. The IDF had opened it for a scant 20 minutes. We waited for four hours before we returned home. My mother was so disappointed.

She could not sleep that night so on Thursday morning at 8:00 am I again took her to the checkpoint. It was so hot and thousands of people were there waiting. They all were praying that the army would let them cross. People were following the news and they learned more about the destruction at Zeitoun after the pervasiveness of the damage became clear following the IDF withdrawal. They also heard about the Apache helicopter strike in Rafah which left 13 people dead. Two girls, who were relatives of one of those killed, were seized by hysteria and tears. People at the checkpoint tried to calm them.

There was a woman who had left her 5-week-old infant and come to see the doctor in Gaza City. She could not return home. There was a young man who came to get his certificate stamped in search of a job, but got stuck.

The faces of the people were pelted by the relentless force of the sun. Many of them spent the night under the trees or sleeping in their taxis. Some returned to the middle camps or Gaza City to sleep with friends. Students who spent all their money on transportation going to and out of the checkpoint were sitting in great despair with nothing to do.

People were calling the Red Cross, UNRWA, the Egyptian Representative's office, and the Red Crescent asking them to try to contact or pressure the Israelis to open the checkpoint. Then, in the middle of the day, two mature men went to the Israeli soldiers and pulled off their shirts and put their hands above their heads in an attempt to speak to them.

After they explained the situation from a great distance -- a scenario that of course did not need any explanation beyond a simple glance the faces of the waiting people -- the soldier promised to open if we remained quiet. We remained quiet for six hours in the hope that they would open. It was not until 4:30 pm that people started to approach the checkpoint again in another attempt to speak to the soldiers or even to walk through.

Suddenly, the soldiers started to shoot using live bullets and tear gas grenades. The tanks and the jeeps started to drive towards us. I took my mum from the taxi where she had been sitting for eight hours and we started to run. Every single one of us tried to escape. I was holding my young son Tarek with one hand and helping my mother with the other while Ghaida, my young daughter, was screaming somewhere close by.

My mother -- my mother! -- fell to the ground and people carried her. I carried Tarek and ran far from the gas. I shouted and called to Ghaida. She was shouting for me somewhere nearby, but out of sight. As a mother, these moments were the worst.

Five people got injured and approximately 10 were rendered unconscious by the gas. Ambulance sirens started to be heard and I still could not locate Ghaida. The shooting was still going on and the wheat field beside the checkpoint had caught on fire.

No words can adequately express the fear and humiliation of those minutes. And you wonder for a moment what life is this? Do we, too, not deserve to live as human beings?

Even after what happened, people still maintained hope that the IDF would open the checkpoint. And again we sat quiet in lines; hundreds of grim faces waiting. I tried to convince my mum to return to my apartment, but she had hope that they would open. She said the soldier promised the two men to open and they might honor their commitment. By now I had found Ghaida. She, at age eight, and Tarek, who is nearly four, were so tired and their faces were yellow.

We sat for another two hours for my mother. Again the bulldozers accompanied by the tanks started to move. They brought sand and began to close the road. We were thinking that they were cleaning or leveling the area but they were closing the road.

People started to scream in one voice: No, please, do not close, let us go. There was no act violent act from those waiting, either by way of action or words, but they started to shoot again.

By now, it was around 7:00 pm. The same scene as before was repeated. But this time we escaped with no hope -- just with great despair -- after more than 10 hours of waiting.

Almost every woman and child was crying or screaming. Men were helping and I could not look at my mum's face. I had no words to say. I again noticed how tired my children looked. On our way back there was complete silence. Even our tears were spent. I wished that my mother could speak or cry to relieve her stress and heartache, but she did not.

The same exhausting wait happened on Friday, but this time we were not there. We decided not to go, but to call people we knew at the checkpoint to get the news.

There is no conclusion to this story. Tomorrow, we will wait again. Will we walk forward to our destination or will my heartsick mother fall unceremoniously to the ground and be borne away in retreat from gas, bullets, and hate?

Ghada Ageel lives in Zahra, Gaza Strip. Her story was delivered in three parts on account of the inconsistent electricity in Gaza. This time, her mother was able to make it home to Khan Younis on Saturday. Mike F. Brown assisted with editing the text.

The Shape of Violence to Come

Sharon Has a Plan, But It Doesn't Involve Peace or Palestinian Hopes
By Ghada Ageel
Sunday, March 28, 2004; Page B01
ZAHRA, Gaza Strip
The assassination of Sheik Ahmed Yassin last Monday is an attempt by Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon to kill any move for peace in the Middle East.
For the past decade, Yassin had been making proposals which marked big shifts toward a pragmatic solution to the Arab-Israeli conflict. Since the second intifada erupted in September 2000, Yassin had proposed several cease-fires in return for Israel withdrawing from the territories it occupied in 1967 and ending military action against Palestinians. Yassin declared that Hamas accepted a two-state solution, Palestinian and Israeli states existing side by side.
Three weeks before his death, Yassin had announced a plan for Hamas, Yasser Arafat's Fatah and other factions to unite in administering Gaza in the event of a unilateral Israeli withdrawal as proposed by Sharon. This was not in Sharon's interest at all. The late Israeli prime minister Yitzhak Rabin once said he wished to see Gaza drown in the sea; Sharon wants Gaza to drown in the blood of a civil war between Hamas and Fatah.
Yassin had offered a strong base for making peace. The Israeli government's decision to kill Yassin at this moment strengthens the belief among many Palestinians, including me, that Israel simply does not want peace. Every step forward by the Palestinian Authority or political factions such as Hamas is met with a step backward by Sharon. This latest assassination proves that the Israeli government is not ready to talk the language of peace. Under Sharon, Israel talks only the language of power and blood.
Many Palestinians were already convinced of this because of the assassination by Israel of Ismail Abu Shanab, a moderate Hamas leader, last August. Shanab openly accepted a two-state solution. If Israel had wanted to listen to the language of peace, strengthen the moderate camp in Hamas and save the blood of two peoples, it would have kept Abu Shanab alive. It did not.
The bloodshed continues because Sharon's government believes that it can bring Israelis security and peace with a policy of assassination and occupation. It cannot. It believes that these crimes will persuade the resistance groups to abandon their goal of ending the occupation. They will not. On the contrary, Sharon knows that blood demands blood and actions create reactions. He knows that the only likely outcome of Yassin's murder will be to pour fuel on the fire that is already burning and motivate Palestinians further to fight the illegal Israeli occupation of their land. This resistance will in turn produce an Israeli military response, and so the cycle of violence, including the inevitable suicide bombings, will continue without end. But it is important to keep in mind that the occupation causes the suicide bombings, not the other way around.
Sharon wants to distance himself as far as possible from any peace solution that might put pressure on him to make concessions. If he had been interested in peace, he would have followed up on the "road map" for a two-state solution to the conflict, which was accepted by the Palestinians and the international "quartet" (the United States, European Union, United Nations and Russia) but has never been implemented.
Yassin was killed when Israel targeted him with three rockets that mutilated his paralyzed body and the wheelchair in which he was sitting. Later, tens of thousands of ordinary Palestinians filled the streets to express their shock and anger. Even though Israel had targeted him before, no one could quite believe that this had happened -- and in this way.
Yassin was a spiritual leader, not a military target. At 67, he was an old man, paralyzed from the neck down. He was nearly blind and deaf. He was being wheeled home from the mosque after saying the morning prayer. He was an easy target, powerless to run and escape death. How could Sharon consider this crime a victory? The location of Yassin's house was well-known to Israeli forces, and it was no secret that he went every day to the mosque to pray. There was no ingenuity in this operation except that it crossed all the boundaries of humanity and made the tunnel to peace look darker than ever.
Israel has the power in this standoff. If it wanted peace, it could implement it. It is in a position to offer a solution. The Palestinians are only in a position to negotiate in response. The Israelis are proactive. We are reactive because of the imbalance of power. I don't find it so complicated. For the first time, the two camps of Palestinian society, the Islamists (in the form of Hamas) and the nationalists (all the factions of the PLO), have agreed to a two-state solution. The next move is Sharon's. And the international community must offer support for implementing a peace agreement.
It's clear to me that, by killing Yassin, Sharon's government wanted to send a message and to show its maximum power before it withdraws from Gaza. Sharon's message is that if Israel has to withdraw from Gaza, then it leaves as the victor, not as a refugee. Israel lost enough of its reputation withdrawing from south Lebanon. Because Sharon has no strategy for peace, he can only offer this policy of blood.
Like many Palestinians in Gaza, I wonder how the Yassin assassination can be swallowed whole by the international community, particularly the Bush administration, which has refused to criticize the operation. In the eyes of the Palestinians, Arabs and many others in the world, the killing breaks every norm and law, and contravenes every human right we have ever known.
Israel could have arrested Yassin and tried him in court had it wanted to. After all, it invades Gaza almost daily and arrests or kills whomever it wants. Instead it sends Palestinians the message that nothing can stop Israel from doing anything to anyone at any time. No one is immune.
When I saw people of all ages running to join the demonstration last Monday, I realized that, like me, they were weeping for something more than the physical death of Yassin. They were mourning their own victims -- family members, friends and neighbors -- weeping at the brutality of an occupation that has systematically destroyed their livelihoods, weeping over the silence of the international community. I was crying for my cousin, who was paralyzed last October by an Israeli attack, and for the hundreds like him.
The assassination of Yassin was a way to ensure that the violence continues, which will enable Sharon's extremist government to stay in power and continue to avoid any concessions for peace.
Sharon triggered the latest intifada with his visit to the al-Aqsa mosque in 2000. Many Palestinians fear that his government's assassination of Yassin will provoke a new and terrible phase of the intifada, a phase that has no rules except those of revenge. It is usually the Palestinians who are accused of missing the opportunities for peace. This time it is Sharon, and we will all pay the price.
Author's e-mail: g_ageel@yahoo.com
Ghada Ageel, a lifelong resident of Gaza, is a doctoral candidate in Middle East politics through Exeter University in England.

MEANWHILE : At a checkpoint in Gaza, courage and fear

ZAHRA, Gaza: Last month, I went to visit my cousin Muhammad Aqil Abu-Shmaleh at the European hospital. Muhammad had been wounded in October in an Israeli missile strike that killed two of its intended targets and a bystander. A piece of shrapnel had plunged into Muhammad's spinal cord and left him paralyzed. He had been at the wrong place at the wrong time.

The life of my family has now been turned upside down as we fight for Muhammad's physical and psychological health. The one comfort we have is the outpouring of concern and support from our neighbors in Khan Yunis, from Israelis of good will, and from friends the world over.
On our way home from visiting Muhammad, my husband Nasser, my 3-year-old son Tariq and I were stuck at the checkpoint between Khan Yunis and Gaza City for more than six hours. This should be a 40-minute trip.

At 6:50 p.m., the Israeli soldiers finally allowed some cars to pass. After five minutes they closed the checkpoint again. The people stuck on the other side of the checkpoint became so angry that they left their taxis and started to walk, challenging the Israelis and their guns. I felt a mixture of shock that people in Gaza were confronting guns with their chests, pride that Palestinians could do such things, when it was all too possible that nonviolent resistance could result in their death, and fear of what would happen.

I had good cause for concern. Israeli soldiers started to shoot toward the people. It was very close and absolutely terrifying. I have lived with war, violence and occupation for all of my 33 years, but will never become accustomed to the horror and the fear.

Adding to my fear was the presence of our son. Close by, a young man was shot in the back of his leg. Incredibly, the people continued to walk. Friends of the youth put him in our car.
The youngster was bleeding and crying and his sobs mixed with those of my child. There is a powerful instinct, which I believe all mothers have, to protect children at any cost. But there, at that time, I felt totally powerless. Yet I was not completely immobilized. I started to shout at people to open the way for our car to move. At the same time I punched the numbers I know all too well for the hospital to send an ambulance.

After 15 minutes of shouting and maneuvering, we got the youth into an ambulance. I discovered I had lost my voice from screaming.

My family's refugee camp, Khan Yunis, was recently attacked twice in one week by Israeli forces. Dozens of homes were demolished, like the hundreds of others in Gaza and the West Bank that have been reduced to rubble over the past three years. Many families came to my parents' home to take shelter. It may be 2003, but in my mind we have traveled back to 1948 when my parents and hundreds of thousands of our people fled their homes.
What more does Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's government want of us? What benefit is gained by the Israeli Army keeping civilians waiting for hours at checkpoints? How can Israel's leaders justify driving us from our homes 55 years ago and then setting their sights and bulldozers on our refugee camps?

How can it be conscionable for good people anywhere that Palestinians are forced to flee from place to place, never to return home?

Having seen my cousin lying in a hospital bed and a teenager bleeding profusely in the back of our family car with my 3-year-old looking on, I realize that there is no place to run and no place to hide in Gaza. My son was not physically harmed, but how can a 3-year-old process what my mind can scarcely comprehend? His psychological processing consists of running around the house, cocking his finger like a gun and shouting, "Tah, tah, tah" to imitate the sound of the Israeli bullets so recently fired in his direction.

When Nasser and I married we thought a just peace was a real possibility. We thought we would be able to offer our children safety and a hopeful future. I went so far as to study Hebrew in Israel. But our hopes for the future of our family and our people have not been met.
The occupation continues because Sharon's government continues to think it can have both quiet and occupation. It cannot.

When you see people walk unarmed into gunfire to reach their destination you realize that they are striving for something more than a physical destination. This is what I believe can be best expressed as the very human desire for freedom. No power and no force can enter our hearts and extinguish it.

That day of Palestinian freedom will be sped up considerably if such spontaneous, nonviolent displays of principle and courage receive more coverage in the United States and elsewhere. We need no U.S. Army to fight for us. We ask only for a commitment to evenhandedness.
We have suffered long enough.

The writer, a doctoral student at Exeter University, Britain, lives in Gaza.