Down on the Gaza Strip

I SUPPOSE WE shouldn't be surprised at the sort of sentiments expressed by our letter-writer Alex here. In an increasingly polarised world, its easy to brand Arabs or Muslims as evil, especially for those able to swallow the Bush logic.

But if we apply Alex's logic to the situation at hand, then why should Saddam disarm to appease the UN when Israel continues to ignore UN resolutions passed against it? Or, as Alex somewhat crudely suggests, why should Israel offer protection to the inhabitants of the land it occupies when suicide bombers from those territories menace innocent citizens in Israel itself?

Saddam is being forced to disarm precisely at a time that military forces amass on its borders ready to strike him down. Maybe if thousands of 'folk' from across town gathered outside your house, armed to the teeth with sticks, stones and Molotov cocktails, and demanding your head on a platter, you'd come out with a white flag, promising to behave. Or maybe you'd hide a couple of catapults in your back yard, just in case the mob tried to take you away by force and appropriate your prize apple trees for its own use?

Anyhow, yesterday, I visited Gaza City - quite possibly the most miserable place on earth. We toured filthy streets in which barefoot children played in the puddles between the run-down breeze block homes. Our driver pointed out the areas known as refugee camps, though to my untrained eye, there seemed to be no difference between the state of the camps and the town proper. Here and there were piles of rubble, the remains of buildings that at one time housed members of this miserable population. "F-16s," our driver might say. "Israelian tanks, helicopters."

Curious eyes scanned us as we passed. Groups of men idly gathered on street corners and sat in dark cafes pulling on Sheesha pipes. Dark eyes peered through veils, children stopped their games to shout "Hi, man!" or "How are you?" in the direction of the alien white folk, dipping their toes in the muddied waters of misery.

We got caught up in a procession of dirty coaches and battered taxis. They were converging on a piece of waste ground within the Jabalya refugee camp. "Hamas," our driver informed us: "festival." The 'festival' turned out to be a an ant-war rally. Thousands gathered in a sort of natural amphitheatre amid the remnants of destroyed housing. We stopped nearby and our driver asked if we wanted to have a look. Nervously, we joined the masses on the raised banks to the left of a large stage. The crowd was singing some anthemic song of the struggle, whilst in front of the stage, members of Hamas paraded up and down displaying replicas of Qassam missile launchers, the home-made weapons Hamas fighters cobble together in underground workshops. The songs gave way to speeches, stingingly delivered, as the various groups of young warriors ran in formation through a path in the crowd, to disappear, chanting, into a nearby main street. They carried flags to denote their affiliations. Green for Hamas, black for Islamic Jihad, white for the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, red for the secular Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine.

By now our pale faces have begun to draw attention. "What's your name?" asked the young man at the head of a group of half a dozen or so inquisitive teenagers that latch onto us. "Paul," I offer, hesitatingly.

"Where are you from?"

"London," I reply, offering the name of a city rather than a country, at the same time wondering whether Paris or Berlin may be a more prudent answer. Frankly, I'm shit scared, but there is no menace, no loathing or anger in their approaches. They smile and laugh and we stare at each other uselessly, divided by the lack of a common language with which to discuss the thousands of questions that we each have for one another.

The speeches hammer on. The crowd, orderly and made up of representatives of the whole popluation: women, children, old men, young girls, responds at given moments, with cheers and chants, cries of solidarity. And here, for the first time in this god forsaken city, I feel the one thing that has been otherwise absent from the grey walls of this overcrowded cesspool. It is hope.

This ogre, this murderer of Israeli innocents, this terrorist organisation, this beastly Hamas is, for the disenfranchised and utterly forlorn population of Gaza the single symbol of hope that may touch their miserable existence. Here, in the struggle for freedom from oppression, is a unifying spirit of the power to resist, the right to exist, a lone expression of a fundamental urge towards freedom and dignity. Only in this resistance is there hope. And only here, amid the rubble and the coloured flags and the calls to arms is a potential escape route from the misery of oppression.

But increasingly, I am concerned that I look like the oppressor. I can't understand the speeches and wonder whether the urgings are to rise up against the infidel. And maybe I'm the infidel. I scan the faces around me, looking for signs of hostility where in reality there are none. But I'm a product of our media, too. And even if I'm not attacked for political reasons, maybe the few Shekels I have in my pocket could feed a family here for months.

It is with relief that we return to the relative security of our yellow taxi.

Hamas, we learn from our driver, provides schooling and housing and aid for the people of Gaza. He said the organisation recently handed over $700,000 to a bunch of workshop owners who had their ramshackle businesses demolished in Israeli raids seeking to destroy manufacturers of the low-tech Qassam rockets. I ask him if Hamas really brings hope to the people of Gaza and he replies in the affirmative. "And Saddam?" I ask. "Yes," he says. "And Arafat?" He snorts in derision. "Arafat, no," he says.

Later, we cross the wide, desolate checkpoint back into the sanctuary of Israel. The clean, empty highways flanked with comfortable white stone houses feel reassuringly secure.

If there's one people that understands the value of hope in the face of persecution, then surely it is the Jews. There are many here I have met who keep trying to reach across the divide that separates them from their Palestinian neighbours. Yet every night we hear of 'incursions' into Palestinian territories, and every Palestinian killed is branded a 'militant', making them a legitimate target. Even the eight-year old boy ruthlessly gunned down last week in one such raid posed a threat to the security of Israel, we were told.

While the US determines to bring 'rogue' nations to justice, the atrocities perpetrated by Israel on its increasingly hopeless neighbour are washed white by a compliant media machine. If Bush means his rhetoric about bringing freedom and democracy to those corners of the globe where there is none, then maybe he should cast an eye towards Gaza. The plight of the Palestinian people is shameful and injures every one of us. Demonising and dehumanising them is simply a sin, and one in which we are all complicit. µ

This article does not necessarily represent the views of the INQUIRER