A Month by the Sea Read online

  A Month by the Sea

  Encounters in Gaza

  DERVLA MURPHY

  To the many Gazans whose helpfulness

  and hospitality made this book possible

  Contents

  Title Page

  Dedication

  The Map

  Foreword

  Prologue

  Acknowledgements

  Author’s Note

  A MONTH BY THE SEA

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Nine

  Epilogue

  Middle East Conflict Timeline

  Glossary

  Abbreviations

  Bibliography

  Index

  Copyright

  Foreword

  Home to 1.6 million Palestinians, the Gaza Strip is one of the poorest, most densely populated, isolated and embattled places on earth. Israel’s control of access by land, sea and air, coupled with the illegal blockade it imposed in 2007, have effectively turned this tiny sliver of land, 330 square kilometres, into an open-air prison. As a result of Israel’s restrictions, Gaza receives few foreign visitors and only limited coverage in the Western press.

  It is against this background of far from benign neglect that Dervla Murphy’s new book should be evaluated. The book gives a much-needed description of life inside the prison. Based, as are all her books, on first-hand experience, it sheds a great deal of light on all aspects of daily life and on the dire conditions in this dark corner of the Palestinian Occupied Territories.

  The title of the book carries more than a modicum of irony. A Month by the Sea conjures up images of a relaxing holiday with buckets and spades, ice creams and sun-kissed beaches. This image could not be further removed from reality. Dervla spent only a month in Gaza in June 2011. But what an intense, eventful and eye-opening month that was!

  As Dervla explains in the prologue, the section on Gaza was originally intended as only two chapters of a longer account of the life of the Palestinians under Israeli occupation. In 2008–10, she spent three months in Israel and five months on the West Bank. On the West Bank, she lived in the Balata refugee camp near Nablus. On reflection, she decided to write two separate books. The ‘month by the sea’ provided ample material for a separate book on Gaza. Hopefully this will be followed up in due course by another volume on the land-locked West Bank.

  The inhabitants of Gaza, like their fellow citizens on the West Bank and in the Diaspora, are victims of the cruel geopolitics of the region. The modern history of this region is punctuated by Arab–Israeli wars, starting with the war for Palestine in 1948 and culminating in the attack on Gaza (known by the Israelis as Operation Cast Lead) in 2008–9. In the course of the first Arab–Israeli war, the Egyptian army captured and retained the Gaza Strip. From 1949 until 1967, the strip was under Egyptian military rule. During the Six Day War of June 1967, the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) captured the Gaza Strip and the entire Sinai Peninsula from Egypt, the West Bank from Jordan, and the Golan Heights from Syria. In 1979 Israel relinquished Sinai in return for a peace treaty with Egypt but retained the Gaza area up to the old international border. The 1993 Oslo Accord raised the hope of, but failed to deliver, an independent Palestinian state alongside Israel with a capital in East Jerusalem.

  The essential framework for understanding the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians is that of colonialism. Although there are cultural, ideological and religious dimensions to the conflict, at its core is the appropriation of land and the domination of a weaker by a stronger power. The Oslo peace process was used by Israel not to end but to repackage the occupation. Under the guise of Oslo, Israel continued to pursue its aggressive agenda in the Palestinian Occupied Territories. The colonial exploitation was especially egregious in Gaza. At the time of Israel’s unilateral disengagement from Gaza in 2005, 1.4 million Palestinians and 8,000 Israeli settlers lived in the Strip. The 8,000 settlers controlled 25 per cent of the territory, 40 per cent of the arable land and the lion’s share of the desperately scarce water resources. Even after Israel’s withdrawal, under international law it remained the occupying power with responsibilities towards the civilian population, responsibilities it has flouted with complete impunity.

  Israeli propaganda portrays the people of Gaza as a bunch of Muslim fanatics, and terrorists to boot, who are implacably opposed to a Jewish state in any part of Palestine. What this book shows is that ordinary people in Gaza crave the same things as ordinary people anywhere: a normal life, freedom, democracy, respect for human rights, economic opportunity, social justice, independence and national dignity. There is certainly widespread hostility and even deep hatred towards Israel, but what Israelis tend to overlook is the part that they themselves have played in planting hatred in the hearts of Palestinians.

  Another argument frequently advanced by Israeli spokesmen is that real peace is not possible because of the Palestinians’ alleged addiction to authoritarianism. This too is a gross distortion. With the possible exception of Lebanon, the Palestinians have achieved the only genuine democracy in the Arab world. And they achieved it before the Arab Spring began to sweep through the area from the Atlantic to the Persian Gulf in early 2011. This achievement is all the more remarkable given that they had to operate within the constraints imposed by the Israeli occupation. In January 2006, Hamas, the Islamic resistance movement, won a fair and free election and proceeded to form a government. Israel refused to recognise this democratically elected government and resorted to economic warfare to undermine it. The United States and the twenty-seven members of the European Union followed Israel’s lead by refusing to deal with the Hamas-led government. In March 2007, Hamas and Fatah formed a national unity government with the declared aim of sharing power and negotiating a long-term ceasefire with Israel. Israel refused to negotiate, denouncing Hamas as a terrorist organisation. Behind the scenes, Israel conspired with Fatah, the Americans and the Egyptians to isolate, weaken and topple Hamas.

  To preempt a Fatah coup, Hamas violently seized power in Gaza in June 2007. Israel responded by imposing a blockade of Gaza and denying free passage between Gaza and the West Bank. A blockade is a form of collective punishment which is proscribed by international law. Israel justified the blockade as a measure of self-defence, a means of preventing Hamas from importing arms. The blockade, however, was not limited to arms; it also restricted the flow of food, fuel and medical supplies, inflicting heavy economic losses and serious hardship on the civilian population. Another consequence was to prompt Islamic militants to escalate their rocket attacks on cities in southern Israel.

  In June 2008, Egypt brokered a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas. The ceasefire worked reasonably well until 4 November when the IDF launched a raid into Gaza, killing six Hamas fighters. Hamas was willing to renew the ceasefire on a basis of reciprocity. Shunning negotiations, Israel launched a devastating military attack on Gaza, Operation Cast Lead, at the end of December. Dervla recalls Noam Chomsky’s reference, as ‘Cast Lead’ was ending, to the Israelis’ ‘desperate fear of diplomacy’. She also quotes the comment of Norman Finkelstein, another prominent American-Jewish critic of Israel, that ‘Israel had to fend off the latest threat posed by Palestinian moderation and eliminate Hamas as a legitimate negotiating partner’.

  The encounters described so vividly in this book took place in the shadow of Cast Lead. They were with people from all walks of life, including moderates and militants from a baffling array of political factions, and senior Hamas officials. Accustomed as they are to being ignored by the outside world, many of Dervla’s interlocutors warmed to her and opened their hearts.
They spoke with touching frankness about personal as well as political matters to this feisty eighty-year-old woman who cares so passionately about justice. Her official escorts were puzzled by her lack of journalistic equipment: no camera, no tape recorder, not even a notebook and pencil. ‘I don’t like interviewing people,’ she explained, ‘I just like talking with them.’

  All the qualities that make Dervla Murphy such an outstanding travel writer are on display in this wonderful little book: her love of people, her descriptive powers, her honesty, her unswerving dedication to social justice and her dislike of any kind of religious fanaticism, especially when hitched to nationalist bandwagons. One puts the book down with disturbing thoughts about the Israelis and their addiction to violence and collective punishment and with renewed respect for the Palestinians – for their resilience, tenacity and quiet dignity. It is these qualities which shine through Dervla Murphy’s fascinating encounters by the sea. They provide a ray of hope in what is otherwise a thoroughly bleak and shaming story.

  Avi Shlaim

  Oxford, July 2012

  Prologue

  In 1976, during the worst of ‘the Troubles’, I first visited Northern Ireland. Distrusting most media interpretations, I wanted to see for myself how things were, day by day, among the ordinary people on both sides. My book about that experience ended on a pessimistic note; there was no light, then, at the end of Northern Ireland’s tunnel. Yet now the region is at peace, with a power-sharing administration. Neither side has ‘won’. Both sides have accepted an honourable compromise.

  Also in the 1970s, Nelson Mandela and his comrades were labelled ‘terrorists’ and anyone predicting a black president within a generation would have been derided. Yet by 1993–5 South Africa was inspiring me to write a book about the transition from Apartheid.

  In many ways the Israeli/Palestinian problem is utterly unlike the Northern Irish and South African conflicts. But for me the resolutions in those places have sown a tiny, frail seed of hope. When a ‘problem’ reaches a certain stage – seeming insoluble and ever more threatening, inducing despair – something can shift and by default the unthinkable becomes thinkable. Possibly even doable – eventually …

  Over the past decade or more realistic observers have come to the conclusion that an independent Palestine is unattainable. Most of those who accept the need for compromise, as an escape from the trap both Palestinians and Israelis presently find themselves in, advocate the one-state solution. I am unlikely to live long enough to see this in place, but my travels have led me to the same conclusion – that only a secular, binational democracy, based on one-person-one-vote for all Arabs and Israelis, can bring peace with justice.

  * * *

  Between November 2008 and December 2010 I spent three months in Israel and five months on the West Bank. During Operation Cast Lead, Israel’s 22-day attack on the defenceless Gaza Strip in December 2008–January 2009, I was living in Balata refugee camp near Nablus on the West Bank. It was not until two and a half years later, in June 2011, that I was able to see for myself many of the durable results of that war crime (let’s give up calling spades agricultural implements).

  My Gazan month in the summer of 2011 was planned to provide the last two chapters of an account of those eight other months in Israel and on the West Bank. On returning home I decided to write them at once, while the material was fresh in my mind. Then Gaza grew – and grew – and became nine chapters, having taken on a life of its own. So here it is.

  Acknowledgements

  Gwyn and Avi Shlaim provided invaluable moral support and practical advice.

  Oliver McTernan kindly read the first draft and corrected a few errors which, had they got into print, would have made me look like somebody’s stooge.

  Rose Baring and Rachel Murphy patiently polished the final draft.

  Lovena Jernaill Wilson did all that was necessary to transform the unkempt twentieth-century typescript of a computer-illiterate author into something acceptable to a twenty-first-century printer.

  Five other people, who have chosen to remain nameless, provided crucially important introductions and background information.

  To all, my heartfelt gratitude.

  Author’s Note

  Many personal and place names have been changed to protect privacy. The exceptions are public figures and people whose experiences are already in the public record.

  A timeline of the Middle East conflict can be found at the end of the book, along with a glossary and a list of abbreviations.

  One

  For years it seemed that I would never get into Gaza. I made my first approach to the Israeli press office in Jerusalem in November 2008, bearing a letter from the editor of the Irish Times and requesting a one-month residence permit. Such a request, from a freelance non-journalist, provoked only scorn. Subsequently I made other less direct attempts to gain access, but without a sponsor (i.e. some insurance cover lest I might be killed by the Israel Defence Forces (IDF)) no one would help me.

  Since September 2005, when Israel had finally withdrawn the last of its settlers and soldiers from Gaza after a 38-year occupation, the Rafah Gate into Egypt had been the Strip’s only exit to the outside world. The IDF had bombed and bulldozed Gaza’s new airport in 2000 when the Second Intifada began, and the rest of the 70-mile perimeter was tightly sealed by Israeli land and sea forces. The European Union Border Assistance Mission (EUBAM) had remained on duty at the Gate, sharing control with Egyptian officials. But the 2005 US-brokered Access and Movement Arrangement (AMA) had restricted crossings to a few diplomats, foreign investors, international NGO employees – and a very few Gazans, holding Israel-issued ID cards (an awkward anomaly, inconsistent with Israel’s ‘withdrawal’). By the end of 2006 events had rendered the AMA obsolete and the Gate was rarely unlocked after June 2007.

  However hopes rose among Palestinians and their friends when Mubarak was deposed in February 2011 and Egypt’s Foreign Minister announced that the Rafah Gate was soon to open. Immediately I swung into action and with the help of a Gazan friend living in Ireland, and the Irish Embassy in Cairo, it took only a fortnight to obtain an Egyptian permit to enter the Strip through Rafah.

  * * *

  I rarely travel anywhere by taxi – never mind from Cairo to Gaza – but a friend familiar with the post-Mubarak Sinai had advised me that finding a bus could take at least a day, perhaps two days. And my Rafah entry permit stipulated that I must cross between 9.00 am and 5.30 pm on Saturday 4 June. Moreover, Gaza-bound buses – assumed to be laden with valuable cargo – were often robbed by Bedouin highwaymen. These have been busy over the last few millennia on all desert trade routes; they may have served as role models for our most successful twenty-first-century financiers. My friend therefore gave me the name of his trusty Cairo taxi-driver.

  So it came about that on 2 June, in a sunny, flowerful north Oxford garden, an eminent historian was telephoning Abdallah on my behalf. Avi hadn’t spoken Arabic for years and Abdallah seemed to find him hard to understand, especially when it came to my name. I recommended an accurate description: old white-haired woman, semi-toothless, slightly stooped, wearing black slacks and T-shirt, with hand-luggage only. In response Abdallah described himself: small, elderly, grey-haired, clean-shaven with a big stomach, wearing brown trousers and a blue shirt – which description must fit several hundred Cairo taxi-drivers. We arranged that as I emerged from ‘Arrivals’, we would each be holding aloft a placard. Abdallah planned to drive me to a hotel on the appropriate side of Cairo and at dawn we would set off on our 250-mile journey.

  It’s my habit to arrive at airports too early, so it didn’t matter that British Midland had transferred me to an Air Egypt flight with a check-in desk at the far end of Terminal 3, twenty minutes’ walk away. The travelling public’s twitchiness meant a tourist-free boarding queue and an 80 per cent empty Jumbo. Its centre aisles were given over to gleeful Arab children, their play admirably civilised – shoes off, decibels under control.


  That evening I noted in my diary:

  Vile food, surly cabin staff, sensationally bumpy landing for lack of ballast. No visa queue but closed desks meant a tedious immigration wait. Easy to find Abdallah: a brother accompanied him speaking basic English. Tomorrow morning the hotel staff must be told he’s driving me to the airport, not to Gaza. Did I understand? For Abdallah this was very important. Of course I didn’t understand but mine not to reason why. The Middle East is in transition …

  Smog blurred the rising sun as we left Cairo’s rush hour behind. Abdallah’s informal taxi was small and old with one broken door handle and no air-conditioning. It did however have a radio and beyond the industrial zone Abdallah fumbled experimentally with various buttons, then beamed in triumph – we were hearing an English language news bulletin, including obits of regional interest. Sami Ofer had died the day before, in Tel Aviv, aged eighty-nine, leaving 14 billion euros to prove that he was Israel’s richest citizen, which sufficiently explains why he was an honorary KBE. The Mossad agents who assassinated Mahmoud al-Mabhuh, a Hamas leader, in his Dubai hotel room are said to have left Dubai on an Ofer ship. Recently the US had punished the Ofer Brothers conglomerate for selling an oil tanker to Iran. In the past they had naughtily leased many tankers to that putative nuke-hatchery, just as Israel was loudly demanding increased international sanctions.

  Of more relevance was the next item. Under US pressure, the Lebanese government had dissuaded a group named ‘The Third Intifada’ from leading a march on Israel’s borders to mark 5 June 1967, Naksa Day – when Palestinians remember Israel’s seizure of the West Bank from Jordan, the Golan Heights from Syria, and the Sinai Peninsula from Egypt. A month earlier, inspired by events in Egypt, thousands of refugees had marked Nakba Day, which commemorates the earlier dispossession of the Palestinians, by marching on Israel’s borders from Syria and Lebanon – and the IDF had killed 13 unarmed men. Then we heard Netanyahu warning that new mines had been laid along Gaza’s fence and the IDF had been ordered to use live fire if anyone attempted border crossing.