The Closed Gates to Gaza - Political Forum

Trojan_Horse · #1 (**permalink**) 08-01-2007, 08:15 PM

The closed gates to Gaza

Laila El Haddad writing from , Live from Palestine, 31 July 2007

Link : The closed gates to Gaza

Palestinians return to the Gaza Strip after crossing Erez checkpoint, between Israel and the Gaza Strip, 29 July 2007. More than 100 Palestinians stranded for weeks in Egypt after Israel sealed the border following the Hamas takeover of Gaza began returning home Sunday, crossing into Israel and riding buses to a crossing point between Israel and northern Gaza. (Wissam Nassar/MaanImages)

So much has happened since we left Gaza and in such a short period of time. If it was mentally exhausting being there, it is even more overwhelming being away and processing it all.

I was in Gaza during the months of May and part of June shooting a film (ok, two films) with my friend and colleague -- one about the tunnels along Rafah's border, another about the remarkable story of Fida Qishta and her attempt to establish Rafah's only true recreation center amidst everything that is going on there. It was exhausting, but rewarding, work. We were traveling to Rafah from Gaza City almost every day, for the entire day, in the midst of internal clashes that gripped the city where we live.

We had planned to leave Gaza around the beginning of June, with tickets booked out of Cairo 7 June. My parents were to come along with us for a visit. As is often the case in Gaza, things don't always go according to plan.

Rafah was open erratically during the month of May, and closed entirely the week prior to our departure. We received word that the crossing would open around midnight of 6 June. Wonderful, we thought -- at least we could make our flight, if only barely.

We spent 14 grueling hours at the crossing, along with thousands of other Palestinians, desperate to either leave or enter Gaza. Busload after busload, entire families were clinging to the ceilings, crushed inside, or piled on top of the luggage in the back. Some fainted. Others erupted in hysterics. Everyone had a reason to. There were mothers separated from their spouses, students needing to return to college, the ill, the elderly. And those with nothing particularly remarkable to justify their reason for traveling -- it was their right, after all.

In the early hours, there was a chill, and we warmed up with sugary mint tea and bitter coffee. But by noon, the midday sun was fierce over our heads with no place to take shade. And so we waited. And we waited. And every time a bus would heave forward a few inches, our spirits would lift a tiny bit; everyone would cheer.

At one point, hundreds of anxious passengers, each following the advice passed down along the Rafah Crossing grapevine from those who had successfully made the journey across, began to pour across the fence into the Palestinian terminal, throwing their bags over first then climbing across themselves -- "It's the only way you'll get through today ... in a place where there is no order or sense or logic to why and how this damn place opens, you have to find your own way across." I thought of the tunnels we had been filming, how one tunnel lord told us some people pay him $5000 just to get into Gaza via a tunnel when the crossing is closed.

The European observers of the crossing "suspended" their operations as a result of the "chaos" for several hours. They eventually returned, but by the time the crossing closed at 2:30pm, we were left stranded on the Palestinian side of the crossing, with the Egyptian side only meters ahead.

It difficult to put into terms what it means when a territory of 1.4 million people's only passage to the outside world is for closed for the majority of the time, and open for only a few meaningless, infuriatingly slow hours when it is open at all.

We returned to our home in Gaza City exhausted, demoralized, dehumanized. We received word the crossing would open again the next day. We debated whether or not to attempt to cross after the day's events. We had already missed our flights out of Cairo, and attempting to explain Rafah to distant airline customer service representatives was never a simple task.

A few hours later, we were on the road again. We clung to the hope that at the very least, the crossing might be less crowded the next day. We were sorely mistaken. There was perhaps double the amount of people we saw the day before. This time, the packed buses extended way beyond the crossing. We waited till the afternoon. It was only then we began to hear through the taxi drivers that some skirmish had broken out between Fateh and Hamas in Rafah, that the Fateh-led preventative security building there was surrounded. But we made nothing of it.