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Children in Gaza, 2009, from UK Guardian |
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The documentary film,
Gaza Strip, by James Longley was released in 2002. The
New York Times review says that "it provides a grim, upsetting glimpse at the lives of some of the 1.2
million Palestinians who live in the crowded cities and refugee camps of
Gaza." Seen mostly through the eyes of a thirteen-year old newspaper vendor, Mohammed Hejazi, and absent an Israeli perspective, it gives a one-sided view of this very complex situation. Shot with a hand-held camera in the "cinema verite" style ("truthful cinema") it is powerful piece, particularly in light of current events. Along with the equally insightful,
Promises, about a group of Arab and Israeli children living separate and unequal lives within 20 minutes drive of each other, these films help us clearly, but sadly, understand the role of violence in the social construction of hate and discrimination as seen through the eyes of middle school children in Israel and the Occupied Territories.
( See also,
Palestinian Children's Relief Fund, politics aside )
In July, 2011, I mentioned both of these films in a post entitled "
Soldiers, Children and War," about a report describing Palestinian children detained and jailed by the Israeli army over a five-year period, some as young as eight and nine years old (
Guardian UK "
Hundreds of Palestinian minors jailed for throwing stones, says report"). The films, the report, the news, and now the current escalation of hostilities between Palestinians and Israelis, all give evidence that children raised amid violence may well grow up normalizing violence.
Moreover, when sixty years on journalists are reporting from
"Maghazi Refugee Camp, Gaza Strip" the very meaning of the words "refugee camp" (prominent in the film
Promises), defined
by Collins online dictionary as "
a camp for sheltering and protecting people who have fled from some danger or problem,
especially political persecution," and understood by most accounts to be a temporary solution, needs to be reexamined. The
United Nations Relief and Work Agency (UNRWA) defines today's Palestinian refugees as "those who are descendants of the original Palestine refugees" and "
whose normal place of residence was Palestine between
June 1946 and May 1948, who lost both their homes and means of
livelihood as a result of the 1948 Arab-Israeli conflict." In 1950 when they began, the
UNRWA was responding to the needs of about 750,000 Palestine
refugees. Today, five million Palestine refugees are eligible for UNRWA
services and "one-third of the registered Palestine refugees, more than 1.4
million, live in 58 recognized refugee camps in Jordan, Lebanon, the
Syrian Arab Republic, the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, including East
Jerusalem."
This morning, in an article in New York Times, "Today Brigades Fire on Israel with a New Discipline," we see how, in their everyday lives, children raised under occupation are socialized towards violence. Read together with Sarah Mousa's first person narrative in Al Jazeera, "Notes from Gaza" (she graduated
from Princeton University's Woodrow Wilson School of Public and
International Affairs in 2010 and was a 2010-2011 Fulbright Scholar in
Egypt), we see how violence becomes a regular part of day-to-day living, leading to the emergence of a military force that is described as inseparable from the social fabric and lived environment of the refugees in Gaza. The New York Times reports that "Most Qassam
fighters have day jobs — as police officers, university professors,
ministry clerks." They live in a "150-square-mile strip with 1.5 million
people who know one another’s business, and parents are proud when their
sons enlist." Civilian soldiers fighting in communities where they work and raise their families. Sounds familiar.
From the time he was a boy, Ali al-Manama dreamed of joining the Izzedine al-Qassam Brigades, the military wing of the Islamic Hamas
movement. His commitment intensified when his father, a Qassam fighter,
was killed by an Israeli drone in 2001 as he fired mortar shells over
the border. Ali joined up at 15, relatives said, and by 23 had risen to
be a commander in this neighborhood in the midsection of this coastal Palestinian territory.
His wish to die fighting and become a martyr — and the honor it would
bring in his community — was fulfilled Saturday morning at 7:30, though
the missile struck him not while he was in active combat, but while
talking on a cellphone that Israeli intelligence might have used to
track his whereabouts.
“He had been telling us all week about all the achievements of Qassam,” Mahmoud said. “When he heard about the rockets in Israel, he would be very proud.”
In a quote reminiscent of the Continental Army in the Revolutionary War (I am not comparing the political aspects of these two groups) who hid their arsenals in barns on family farms, we learn that in Gaza "military
storehouses are woven into residential neighborhoods."
The article continues:
. . . .most fighters join at the age of 16 or 17, and spend about a year in
religious indoctrination, security education, and finally combat
training before secret induction ceremonies in which they take an oath
on the Koran.
Sarah Mousa's "Notes from Gaza" is a personal account
of the bombings in Gaza. In this piece she also compares the current situation to
the
2009 invasion. Below, her words could be describing footage from
Gaza Strip filmed, in 2001 or
Promises, filmed between 1995 and 2000, or any other hostility in Gaza in the last 45 years. The Arab children featured in the aforementioned films living in refugee camps, if they are still alive, could be the young adults mentioned in today's news.
From the moment I entered Gaza, the blockade and destruction were
apparent. Barbed wire fences line the territory's land border with
Israel, navy ships are visible off the shore, and drones occasionally
hover above. Gaza is indeed a prison, with tight controls on entrance
and exit. Although nearly four years have passed since the last major
incursion into Gaza, buildings were still left destroyed, as
prohibitions on construction materials leave rebuilding nearly
impossible.
When I arrived at the home of my friend Jeje, a young college student
majoring in English, her demeanour made me almost forget where I was.
Her friendly greeting and her mother's fish and spicy salads stood in
contrast to the scene around us. As I drove up to Jeje's home, I passed
by a crater-sized hole, which when prompted she later told me was from a
missile that had barely missed her home in the 2009 invasion and
shattered her windows, which are yet to be replaced due to restrictions
on glass. As we walked through Gaza City, my friend pointed to the
destroyed homes of a few of her classmates, no longer alive.
Throughout my time there, I continued to see contradictions. Children
played joyously in the rubble of destroyed buildings. Young students,
well-informed and outspoken, self-professed "tweeps", refused to
surrender to their circumstances. When asked what the "outside world"
(that is what Gazans call everything outside of the territory, land that
is for many of them beyond reach) should know about Gaza, they insisted
that they not be portrayed as humanitarian victims, as people starving
in need of aid. Instead, they wanted light to be shed on and action to
be taken against the daily violations of basic rights which they endure.
Much better writers with more experience and knowledge of this conflict will continue to analyze unfolding events in Israel and the Gaza Strip. As an outsider, I am in no position to offer insight or opinion to match first person accounts or political, military and academic expertise. However, I want to point out, as presented in the news and other media, how children living generation after generation in refugee camps, their homes patrolled by a well-trained and heavily armed military, their communities secured by armed guards at check-points, their routines subject to question at any time, the air they breathe and the streets in which they play filled with the sight and smell of gunfire, will find their own ways to give meaning to their lives when other avenues are denied, even if that means the possibility of violence or death.