November 30, 2009

In Gaza City I have seen 1948 in 2009. The same images: the images of the Nakba, the Palestinian catastrophe. But now they were moving. It was not a film. It was not theater. It was real.

On Saturday 27 December 2008, at precisely 11:25, Israeli Occupation Forces launched a ferocious offensive against the Gaza Strip by air first, and then by sea and ground. Some days later, on Wednesday 7 January, near Al-Shifa hospital, I met my friend Rami Al-Sultan: "Come to see my people... Come to see them in the UNRWA schools... They are fleeing their homes because Israel bombards the area."

We continued to walk in Al-Shifa Street (officially Izzeddin Al-Qassam St.) and reached the compound of UNRWA schools. We stopped at the first entrance. The sign read "Beach Elementary A & B Boys' School." It was mid-day. On the opposite sidewalk a group of ten or so women were walking towards the school. Around them many children. Some of the women were carrying small babies in their arms. A boy, perhaps eight, was leading the group. When they were close to us I saw a hole on the chest of the old olive green sweater of the boy. The women begged me for help... and entered the courtyard. They were coming from Al-Salatini, an agricultural area in Beit Lahia, northern Gaza Strip. Inside the courtyard a small boy was walking with a white flag: a stick where a headscarf had been attached.

In the afternoon, in an adjacent street, a vehicle of the International Committee of the Red Cross was parked with inside a foreign lady. I asked her why the people in the schools had nothing, not even drinking water, just the walls of the schools as shelters, and why there were sleeping on the floor without any protection from the cold. She couldn't say anything, she replied.

Later on with Rami we went nearby to an another compound of UNRWA schools, on the fringe of the Beach refugee camp. In Asma school, most of the refugees were fleeing Al-Atratra, an agricultural area of Beit Lahia, also under tremendous IOF attacks. The day before, the first day the school was opened, on Tuesday 6 January 2009, at approximately 23:30, three youth were leaving the toilets located in the courtyard. One had in his hand a mobile phone, another one carried a transistor with an antenna. A missile fired from an Israeli aircraft instantly killed the three cousins. The UNRWA official in charge of the night shift collected pieces of bodies.

One of the fathers told me: "My son had no time to have his last supper. We arrived here yesterday at 17:00, at 23:30 my son was dead." I spent that night in the school with them and the following night too. Here, there were some blankets, mattresses, pillows. But the people were left without any food assistance.

My night neighbor was a widow, a woman of a certain age with her only 10-year-old boy. In her escape she had time to take with her some za'atar (grinded thyme), olives and home-baked bread. For eating she was putting her food directly on the blanket because there was nothing else. And for breakfast there was not even a cup of tea.

I often returned to visit Asma school. More and more people were coming daily. The vast majority were farmers, like the people of Al-Salatini. They were living in constant fear of new missile attacks on the school.

It took time for UNRWA (United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East) to be able to cope with this emergency crisis. The Agency was totally unprepared and failed lamentably, even if the Israeli occupying power had threaten to re-invade the Strip so many times and to eliminate physically the Hamas leaders.

In Asma school, from time to time, the refugees got the news that some of their relatives and friends were killed in Al-Atatra. They were furious with UNRWA, in particular for the crowded and very dirty toilets, the lack of water, the absence of showers. It was only after five or six days from the opening of the school that UNRWA started to distribute bread, canned meat , sardines, fruit juice... At the end of the war UNRWA assisted with milk and diapers. By that time the refugees were over 400 and more than fifty should be sent to another schools.

The people also were furibond with the ICRC and the entire planet. One day the first news they gave me was: "This morning came to visit the school delegates from the ICRC. They had a look and they left. They didn't take the pain to tell us one word. We don't want to see these people here."

In the first compound of UNRWA schools I visited, in Al-Shifa St., new refugees were continuing to arrive daily in huge number. Sometimes they had to walk a long distance on foot due to the heavy shelling, the destruction of their roads and the absence of any transport.

On the same side of the compound there is another entrance for a preparatory and an elementary boys' school. Just in front is located the Christian quarter of the Beach RC. Live here Palestinians who in 1948 were ejected from their ancestral land together with their Muslim brothers in order to create an empty land for a people without a land and labeled it Israel. Among them are former inhabitants of Jaffa who were thrown into the sea by Zionist gangs and reached the shores of Gaza in small fishing boats.

Every morning during all the war a handful of Christian refugees were sitting in the street, in front of their doorsteps, under the winter sun, observing what was going on on the opposite sidewalk of the UNRWA schools. The 1948 refugees of the 61-year-old Nakba were watching waves of new refugees. The old refugees saw the new 2009 refugees coming with only the clothes they were wearing. They saw women carrying on their heads blankets or mattresses. Once an old woman came carrying a large aluminum tray with kitchen utensils on her head. They saw dozens and dozens of cars of ordinary people who brought them blankets, mattresses, food, water, clothing... At that time we called them new refugees because we ignored how long they would be only displaced.

In early morning, on Sunday 18 January 2009, Israel declared an unilateral ceasefire. The day was full of loud explosions. On the evening a few police and security people were already on duty wearing their uniforms. The day after the order was for all of them to be in uniform. It was a timid day... but 24 hours later life returned to its normality . The Israeli aggression "Cast Lead" was over.

A friend of mine, politically independent, was on duty in one of the UNRWA schools in Gaza City. He was furious and told me later: "Concerning my school we, the UNRWA employees, took the decision to open it because the situation was dramatic. There was no order from above, no one word. They completely abandoned us. We found the guard and he came with the keys and we organized everything. The people were kept like animals. UNRWA offered just the schools as shelters. They invited the people to come in telling them they would be safe. Some arrived in the school barefoot. For a long time they gave them nothing. UNRWA had plenty of food. What they were waiting for? They waited till their stores would be bombed and destroyed?! [On the UNRWA HQ, in the center of Gaza City, on Thursday 15 January 2009.] The common people living around the school instead came immediately. They gave us mattresses, pillows, blankets, clothes, food, bread, water, even candles because we were without electricity. Almost all the blankets you have seen came from the ordinary people, not from UNRWA. Once came a woman with a bag, she told me she had nothing else to give me. I opened the bag and inside there was an old pair of shoes belonging to her boy. I wanted to cry.

"People from the Hamas government came the very first night too. They asked me what was needed. They were in two. They said they would return every night. And every night they returned for five minutes. Sometimes they asked me just with their eyes... When they came they put themselves in great danger. They returned... till both were killed... The government provided us daily with two large tanks of drinking water and also bread, because at the beginning we were without bread. Behind the scenes Hamas security worked and kept an eye on the school for our safety. Probably ordinary people joined them too, and all together kept the entire neighborhood under control. Once a day the displaced got a hot meal distributed by some local NGOs."

One of these organizations was Human Appeal International - a NGO based in the United Arab Emirates - which distributed in the UNRWA schools food, a hot meal twice a week with rice and meat, and other items. Since the very beginning of the Israeli aggression the director himself drove his van till 21:00 under the shelling to give assistance also in the refugee camps. On the other hand, the Palestinian Ministry of Social Affairs in Gaza provided UNRWA with blankets and mattresses.

According to the Gaza-based Palestinian Center for Human Rights the number of killed was 1.419. The injured were in thousands. During the same period, despite all the miscarriages, the Ministry of Interior registered 3.966 new births. According to UNRWA 49 schools were opened to shelter between 50.000 to 55.000 people.

It lasted for 23 days for 1.5 million people living in the 365 km2 of the Gaza Strip, enclosed by the international community like flies in a bottle with three rifles and four home-made rockets to defend themselves. The Gazans blamed through the war - like before and like today - the US and its military wing Israel, the UN, the EU, the Arab League, Egypt, Saudia Arabia, Jordan and all the Arabs - a word always pronounced with disdain. They held responsible for their plight the entire world. They questioned where was al-ummah (the Muslim community). They asked where was their president Mahmud Abbas-Abu Mazen and what he was doing. And they repeated again and again in their total loneliness: We have only God... They were right.


- Flora Nicoletta is an independent French journalist who lives in Gaza. She is currently working on her fourth book on the Palestinian question.