Experiencing Gaza's poverty and war
Foreign journalists have only one access point to Gaza, and that is the Erez checkpoint on the northern border of the Gaza Strip. Although Gaza and Israel are only separated by a wall, there are two sides: the Israeli side is rich and bountiful, with neat and lush crops in the fields; after the checkpoint, it is barren, with only sand and dilapidated houses. This side of the checkpoint is heavily guarded by Israeli soldiers with advanced weapons and facilities; on the other side, there are Palestinian security forces who can only collect information about people entering and leaving Gaza by hand, and whose most advanced office equipment is a walkie-talkie used to communicate with the Israeli side. Even this rudimentary staffing and equipment disappeared without a trace after Hamas took over Gaza in the first half of 2007, and even the buildings on the Gaza side of the checkpoint were demolished by donkey carts of local residents.
Enter any town in the Gaza Strip and you get the same feeling of overcrowding and poverty. Garbage everywhere, cluttered houses, noisy traffic and adults and children with nothing to do. The garbage piles on the side of the road are filled with rotten vegetable leaves, broken furniture, or diseased and dead livestock. The only way to dispose of garbage locally is to pile it up and burn it, so the air is perpetually filled with the smell of decay and burning.
It is one of the most densely populated places in the world, with 1.5 million people living in this narrow strip of land, and most of them clustered in a few towns. In the camps, people have to turn sideways to even get through the alleys between houses to their doorsteps. Some families have 10 or so people crammed into the same bed.
Because of the blockade and the war, local people live in poverty, with many relying on relief to survive. Hospitals also often lack the most basic medicines and medical facilities, and even electricity is not guaranteed.
Drinking Gazans' coffee with tears in my eyes
Despite the harsh living conditions, Gazans are some of the purest people I've seen, if you put politics aside. No matter what faction they belong to, rich or poor, Gazans are always warm and friendly. During my two years in Palestine and Israel, Gaza has left me with the most warm and touching moments. in June 2006, when the Israeli army launched a large-scale military operation in Gaza, my colleague and I hid in a family's house in the town of Beit Hanoun in the northern part of Gaza, and not far away from the window, the sound of explosions came from the artillery shells fired by the Israeli army tanks. The owner, Masri, settled his seven children and risked being hit by shells to get us to Gaza City.
Before that, I also went to the town of Beit Lahia in the Gaza Strip to interview a family that had lost one of its children to Israeli shelling. An Israeli tank shell landed right in the family's living room, where the children were hiding, killing one girl and injuring several other children to varying degrees. Several walls of the house had also collapsed, and the family was sleeping in an airtight room. When we arrived at the house, the host insisted that the children go and borrow coffee from the neighbors in order to serve me as a "guest". I drank that coffee with tears in my eyes.
Hamas is good at winning people over
But Gazans are also hateful when politics is involved. Their hatred has deepened with one Israeli economic blockade and military strike against Gaza after another, while boosting the local population's support for Hamas. To outsiders, Hamas is a hard-line militant organization, and many Western countries have labeled it a "terrorist organization," but inside Gaza, Hamas is the largest charitable organization. They run schools and hospitals, support families in need, and have a very strong social and popular base that is highly regarded among the population. Among the many factions in Gaza, Hamas is the most organized and disciplined. And because of their strict religious beliefs, they are generally very kind and even cultured. Hamas' current top leader in Gaza, Ismail Haniyeh, is a university professor. For his part, Barhoum, the Hamas spokesman I interview regularly, speaks Arabic, English, and French. At a time when armed factions are fighting within Gaza, even many foreign journalists are willing to tag along with Hamas members because it feels safer.