A Month by the Sea E-Book

Dervla Murphy

• Herausgeber: Eland Publishing
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2013

Beschreibung

Over the summer of 2011, Dervla Murphy spent a month in the Gaza Strip. She met liberals and Islamists, Hamas and Fatah supporters, rich and poor. Through reported conversations she creates a vivid picture of life in this coastal fragment of self-governing Palestine. Bombed and cut-off from normal contact with the rest of the world, life in Gaza is beset with structural, medical and mental health problems, yet it is also bursting with political engagement and underwritten by an intense enjoyment of family life. During her month by the sea, Dervla develops an acute eye for the way in which isolation has shaped this society. Time and again she meets men who have returned to the Strip as an act of presence. Yet the mosque is often their only daily activity, as difficulties obtaining supplies mean few opportunities for creative work. This acts as a recruiting sergeant for the Islamist Qassam brigades and a pressure cooker for the creation of domestic tyrants. In this situation, Dervla becomes a shameless supporter of women's rights -acting as agony aunt and feminist mentor by turn. The ironies of Western and Israeli attitudes to the Strip are ever present: most notably the championing of democracy yet the refusal to recognize the legitimacy of Hamas; and the way in which violent attempts to eradicate terrorism breathe life into the very monster they aspire to destroy. Even so, there is a still, small note of hope. For underlying the book is Dervla's determination to try to understand how Arab Palestinians and Israeli Jews might forge a solution and ultimately live in peace.

Leseprobe

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 SEApage

One

Two

Three

Four

Five

Six

Seven

Eight

Nine

Epilogue

Middle East Conflict Timeline

Glossary

Abbreviations

Bibliography

Index

Copyright

The Map

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.

After the bulletin, as Abdallah put on a rollicking Arab tape, I wished we could converse. (Later I learned that that tape was an anti-Mubarak ballad.) We were now surrounded by wide mango orchards, vivid fields of leafy vegetables, colonies of plastic tunnels, wayside spurts of bougainvillaea and groves of date palms. Momentarily I was puzzled by an optical illusion: motor vehicles seemed to be flying through the air. In fact they were crossing a very long bridge spanning a delta on high stilts. Beyond that flourish of hi-tech engineering we escaped from the Port Said traffic and were down on the desert where Bedouin homes – windowless concrete cubes no bigger than bus shelters – huddle amidst untidy vegetable patches. Most men were wearing galabiyas, all women were enshrouded and many carried head loads. For the rest of the way donkey-carts far outnumbered motor vehicles; the donkey was first domesticated hereabouts, some 3,000 years ago. Thrice we passed mothers with small children, trudging through heat and dust to distant towns, but Abdallah wouldn’t stop. (Insurance? Or contempt for Bedouin? Or both?) When all cultivated areas had been left behind we were on the coast road along which General Moshe Dayan’s victorious troops advanced into Egypt on 7 June 1967.

That chanced to be the date of my return from Ethiopia and I remembered staring down at the Sinai desert as our pilot reassured us that the war was confined to ground level, that the Egyptian airforce had been destroyed by the Israelis. Beside me sat a young Englishman who had been tutoring two of the Emperor Haile Selassie’s grandchildren. Excitedly he suggested that the third world war might soon begin – if Israel invaded Syria and the USSR decided to protect its precious protégé. Everyone then believed that Israel had attacked Egypt only because Egypt was about to attack Israel. In fact Zionist expansionism prompted the Six Day War, which owed its brevity to some fifteen years of meticulous preparation.

Along the roadside, among many rusting relics of past conflicts, there loomed ambiguous tanks which might or might not be usable. Army checkpoints were numerous but uninterested in an aged foreign taxi passenger. As we passed, Abdallah waved cheerfully at the young soldiers who grinned cheerfully in response. Thinking back to the West Bank’s checkpoints, I couldn’t recall even one exchange of smiles.

Nothing was stirring in el-Arish, the Sinai’s tourist capital – an agreeable enough place, as mass developments go. In the old, paint-thirsty town Abdallah pointed to traces of the British army’s occupation in December 1916 when Sir Archibald Murray’s troops were preparing for their attack on Gaza three months later. Twice they failed to take the Strip from Turkish troops under German commanders, then General Allenby assumed command. Those three battles devastated many of Gaza’s ancient monuments and in 1926 an earthquake destroyed most of what remained.

Half an hour after el-Arish, Rafah Gate’s formidable superstructure rose above the desert’s bleached flatness. Having been thwarted for so long, it suddenly seemed incredible that I was about to enter Gaza. Our journey time pleased Abdallah: four and a half hours including a twenty-minute P&T stop.

I had expected a crowded scene but at 11.45 no vehicles were queuing. A pole-barrier stopped us some 150 yards from the Gate; only VIPs could drive through, we must park behind the three empty buses. My documents were merely glanced at before a policeman waved us on saying laconically, ‘Today is problems.’

As we followed the wide unpaved road, its verges merging into the rock-strewn Sinai, an excited young man rushed towards us. He was small, slim and designer-dressed with a gold Rolex and an engaging smile. Seizing my hand he said, ‘Welcome to Gaza! You are from where? From Ireland – then more welcomes to Gaza! In Ireland is Gerry Adams and many, many good friends for Palestine! I want to show you my country. After nine years in Cairo today I go home – now a doctor! You have paper for my name and number? Atef the name. Give me a number and tomorrow we make plans, I want to talk English to go to America for work.’ As he scribbled his details, and mine, I noted Abdallah’s disapproval.

Atef raced ahead of us to overtake his luggage, loaded on a donkey-cart. For him a side-gate was opened at once and he had vanished by the time we joined an angry crowd of 100 or so, all shouting and jostling around the iron double gate – high, wide and heavy, embedded in concrete fortifications. Everyone knew there was a problem, most likely Egypt-generated and evidently complicated but never to be clearly defined. The benign afterglow of Egypt’s revolution had, one sensed, faded in relation to the Palestinians. Who and where were the decision-makers? There was no obvious individual in charge. Many rough young men in civvies were on power trips, seeming to make decisions and ordering people around in a frenetic way – until uniformed characters appeared briefly, to worsen the tension and distress by cancelling their orders. I was clutching my essential documents (passport, letter of invitation from a Gazan resident, exit chit from an Egyptian government department) but could see no office or kiosk at which to present them. Occasionally the side-gate opened – just wide enough to admit one person. Why was there no crowd within agitating to get out? (I had a lot to learn about Rafah and one day I’d learn it all the hard way.)

When I turned to Abdallah and urged him not to wait, to get home before dark, he refused to move until I was safely through. At that point the Gate was opened to admit twenty, summoned by an obese bureaucrat reading names from a long list. Hastily Abdallah took my passport, grabbed a passing policeman and thrust it into his hand with an impassioned plea. The policeman looked bemused, then gave it to the bureaucrat who scowled at me and snapped in English, ‘Two hours’ wait.’ Uneasily I watched him sauntering away, shoving my passport into his shirt pocket.

While Abdallah was seeking sustenance in a lean-to café (Rafah’s only ‘facility’) I sat on my luggage and counted my blessings – all two of them. Were I required to produce a different sort of permit, Abdallah’s touching loyalty would help. And the weather was tolerable, a strong breeze coming off the invisible Mediterranean to temper the midday sun. Distant dust clouds indicated the arrival of two more buses. The passengers’ heavy luggage was immediately heaved onto home-made carts drawn by dainty white donkeys driven by fully veiled women, only their eyes visible. They unloaded beside me, seeming young and strong, able to lift heavy trunks, crates, sacks and unwieldy cardboard cartons. None of the luggage owners, or the many youths idling nearby, thought it necessary to help them. Returning to the barrier, those well-fed donkeys trotted faster, on their spindly legs, than I’ve ever before seen donkeys moving.

The newcomers were Gulf State workers; some had not seen their families since the Second Intifada (2000–5) and they thanked Allah for Rafah’s reopening. (Did they blame Allah a month later when many found it impossible to get exit chits in time to return to precious jobs?) At Cairo airport, police had conducted them to ‘prison buses’ (their phrase) which they were forbidden to leave, without a police escort, until arriving at Rafah. Now they pressed against the Gate, some silently tense, some angrily shouting at the Egyptians strolling from office to office on the far side. Mourid Barghouti was not exaggerating when he wrote: ‘The Rafah crossing point on the Gaza–Egypt border is the ugliest embodiment of the ruthlessness of Egyptian official policy and the cruelty with which the regime treats the ordinary Palestinian citizen.’

I withdrew from this unhappy throng to sit with Abdallah under the café’s awning, assembled from shreds of UN-blue tenting. Two other foreigners, hitherto unobserved, were slumped in a far corner. The lanky blond American, severely sunburnt, wanted to settle in Gaza for a year while learning Arabic and was being querulous in an old-mannish way because no one had told him he needed an Egyptian chit. Hearing of the Gate’s reopening, he had assumed anyone could walk through unhindered. His companion in distress was an ersatz foreigner, a Canadian passport-holder born in Gaza whose grandmother was dying. He had been told he must show a permit from the Hamas representative in Cairo – a document furiously spurned by Rafah’s Egyptians. According to the Canadian Consul in Cairo, it would take at least a month to obtain the acceptable permit, and granny was dying fast. He rang his uncle in Toronto, the sponsor for his Canadian citizenship, and was advised to tunnel in. But he couldn’t afford to; no one would take him through for less than US$800. He didn’t know any Hamas operators – ‘My family is Fatah by orientation.’

As I tried to think of some comforting comment Abdallah, who had ambled back to the Gate, suddenly yelled and beckoned. I sprinted to join him. He was laughing and clapping and repeating ‘OK! OK!’ Hastily we shook hands before I made to step through the main Gate, being held slightly open for me by a man waving my passport. But then someone slammed the heavy mass of iron against my breasts (very painful) and I was locked out – by my old enemy, he who first said ‘No!’, the senior officer with the white uniform, lavishly gold-braided. I pointed out that the blue-uniformed man, holding my passport, had invited me in. Whereupon his senior snatched the passport and gave it to a man in civvies who drove out of sight in a shiny new limousine. He wasn’t seen again for one hour and forty minutes, during which time I’d no idea whether or not I’d get in. Was this a bribing situation? If so, I didn’t feel like giving a present to any of these uncommonly nasty men. Now more busloads were arriving and all was in such flux one felt officials were making it up as they went along. Later we heard that high-level confusion had prevailed throughout the day as Egyptians and Israelis quarrelled over how best to deal with Naksa Day border demos, should they happen. Then some policy shift or softening of bureaucratic hearts allowed a dozen Gazans to trickle through. When Gulf State returnees pushed smallish bags under the side-gate these were quickly appropriated and loaded onto porters’ trolleys by un-uniformed louts who rushed them into a nearby building – and perhaps held them to ransom.

Meanwhile one-person dramas – like my own – were being played out on the edges of the throng. For hours I had been aware of an anxious young man – shabbily dressed, his holdall held together with string – who clung doggedly to the Gate and diffidently attempted to argue his case whenever an official came within earshot. Now his wife appeared on the other side, holding a toddler son who squealed joyously on recognising father. Moments later a junior policeman strode towards them with bad news. Father’s application to enter had been decisively rejected and mother had no right to be in this space near the Gate. Again the young man kissed his son through Rafah’s iron bars, then sobbed goodbye to his weeping wife who quickly walked away – the toddler looking over her shoulder, his arms outstretched towards his father. As the young man picked up his holdall and turned back to the pole-barrier, tears were flowing and I wanted to hug him. But such bodily contact with a female (however octogenarian) would have been inappropriate.

Back at the café, craving a strong drink, I had to choose between Coca-Cola and Nescafé made with dodgy water. The American was again being querulous, this time about his sunburn; he seemed to think the sun itself, as a hostile entity, was to blame. He planned to return to Cairo with Abdallah. The Canadian citizen had gone, having met someone offering a cut-price tunnel walk. Everyone was hungry, the café was foodless. Abdallah remained smiley and optimistic; all my documents were in order, eventually they’d let me in. But I couldn’t persuade him to go home before they did so.

I pondered the true significance of those documents. Only my passport seemed of interest; the Egyptian exit permit, in theory so important, was being perversely ignored. As was the formal letter of invitation from Nabil al-Helou. Nabil and Nermeen were an elderly couple whose youngest son (a Cork University student) I had met in May at a Dublin pro-Palestine rally. Hearing of my plan to rent a room in Gaza, as I had done in Balata, he promoted his family’s spare flat and promptly made all necessary arrangements by email. Abdallah had tried to ring Nabil soon after our arrival at the Gate, hoping a foreigner’s Gazan host might be able to cut Rafah’s Gordian knot, but his cell phone wouldn’t talk to a Gaza phone.

At 3.15 a youth came running towards us waving his arms and making strange sounds which might have been ‘Dervla Murphy’ in Arabic. This time we didn’t allow ourselves to become over-excited – yet it was true, I really could enter through the side-gate. Having given Abdallah a grateful embrace and a very large tip I passed between two brown-uniformed men and was in Gaza – or so I thought.

With difficulty I evaded three competing trolley louts and hurried across a wide empty plaza between grassy borders, stubby palms and lines of whitewashed one-storey offices. The Gaza City bus stop must surely be close … Then the plaza narrowed and I swore and ground my few remaining teeth. A sprawling edifice, guarded by Egyptian soldiers and labelled TRAVEL HOUSE in high yellow letters, completely blocked the way ahead. I was still in Egypt, now at the mercy of immigration officers, policemen, currency clerks, customs inspectors, exit fee collectors and truculent army officers. (Those last because of Naksa Day.)

In ‘Passport Control’, a vast concourse, scores of travellers sat on a phalanx of metal chairs in the centre of the floor – from where they could watch their luggage, piled against the walls. I saw some familiar faces and several Gulf Staters were lamenting ‘lost’ bags. Small children slept in corners; their older siblings romped tirelessly and were the only jolly people in sight. Of course being inside made this a different sort of ordeal, exhausting yet free of suspense. Here everything was organised – moving very, very slowly but one could discern a pattern. The Immigration Officers processed passports in bulk, a bus-load at a time. Then names were shouted, owners went to the counter, handed over a stamp costing two Egyptian pounds (about 50 US cents) and watched it being stuck to the relevant page. I stood alone at the 20-foot-long counter and slid my passport under high brass bars, smiling ingratiatingly at an officer with a bulbous skull, a sharply pointed chin and rotten teeth. As a solo traveller, perhaps I could have my passport stamped without delay. But alas! my being a brazen lone woman obviously irritated this officer. Glancing at me spitefully, he placed the foreign passport under a pile of 44 Gulf-State travel documents. It was then 3.50. Ten minutes later another clerk neatly stacked all those IDs on a wire tray and took them upstairs. At 4.40 they reappeared and a third clerk spread them on a desk in a far corner and carefully copied all details into a massive Victorian-era ledger.

Meanwhile I’d been having a currency crisis. The stamp-seller (a policeman wearing a distinctive arm-band) rejected a US one-dollar bill. He could accept only Egyptian money – I must change – but not here because the currency clerk had just gone off duty. I stared at him in silent dismay, foreseeing a long night on the Travel House floor. Suddenly he relented, gave me my stamp and sent a trolley boy to wherever irregular currency changes happen. I didn’t even register that the Egyptian state now owed me fifty US cents. It was quite a moving experience to be handed two Egyptian pounds, half an hour later, by the trolley boy.

Reunited with my passport, I hurried through a long wide corridor where in the old days luggage was x-rayed. Free at last? No, not quite – at the far end, barring the exit, three men in civvies sat on a wooden bench beside a new-looking notice saying DEPARTURE FEE. No amount was specified; those officers demanded what they estimated they could get – EP 120 in my case. Another currency crisis, another youth sent off to – wherever … Now at last I could see The Border, an enormous wooden gate where a soldier glanced at IDs before passengers boarded a luxury coach, with laden trailer attached. This takes one a few miles to the EUBAM building. It surprised me that nobody cheered as we passed beneath a colourful archway saying ‘Welcome to Palestine!’ and flying the Palestinian flag.

Here all was simple and swift. A tall, polite, English-speaking PA official, his precise status unclear, took charge of the one foreign arrival, led me past the customs queue, paused for two minutes to register my passport on a computer, rang Nabil and requested a communal taxi (a serveece) driver to leave me on the al-Helou doorstep. My fellow-passengers spoke no English, seemed ill at ease with the lone woman and ignored me. I sat in the back between two fortyish clean-shaven men who argued incessantly with the short-bearded driver and his young friend in the front seat – long-bearded and long-robed, his turban untidy and his gesticulations uncontrolled. He was not a typical Gazan.

What little I could see of the Strip from a speeding taxi was as expected: depressing. Time has been unkind to the region. In 1500 BC, according to a Karnak inscription, Gaza was flourishing, renowned for its rich soil and deep-water harbour. Thereafter the usual suspects came and went: Egyptians, Philistines, Canaanites, Israelites, Persians, Greeks, Romans, Byzantines, Crusaders, Mamluks, Ottomans, British. Ironically, now-isolated Gaza ranked for centuries among the Near East’s most cosmopolitan cities, where travellers met en route to or from Egypt, Central Asia, East Africa, Arabia. Always there was much fighting, trading and building; not until the twentieth century did the Strip lose its cultural and commercial significance. In the spring of 1917 the Royal Flying Corps sent SE5s to help Allenby’s troops by dropping so many 250-pound bombs that most Gazans fled. (One forgets that until 1940 Britain’s cavalry and airforce coexisted.)

The Strip’s population was less than 35,000 in 1948; after partition it rose, within months, to 170,000. In 1996 Gaza City, towards which we were now travelling, became the PA’s administrative centre, sometimes wrongly described as its ‘seat of government’. (The 1993–5 Oslo Accords did not allow Palestinians to govern themselves.) Now ‘Gaza’ has become synonymous with ‘blockade-as-punishment’ and by 2011 more than 75 per cent of families were wholly or partly dependent on food aid.

Throughout the Strip small ragged dark-green flags hang from electricity poles or are strung as bunting across busy streets – reminders that Hamas Rules OK. The IDF have left many speed bumps on the reasonably well-maintained roads. These explain a low accident rate despite the popular Palestinian belief that if Allah doesn’t want you to die you can get away with breaking all the rules. In Gaza City the dominant continuous sound is of motors hooting, loudly and continuously; private car ownership is rare, yet a Gazan conviction that vehicles won’t move unless fingers are kept on horns gives an aural impression of heavy traffic.

The driver’s excitable friend got off near Bureij camp, the others were delivered to apartment blocks near my destination – Rimal district, which retains many traces of poshness. Because the kind driver had been busy on his mobile, the whole adult al-Helou family stood smiling on the pavement outside their front door: Nabil and Nermeen, their married son Khalil and his wife Amal, their unmarried son Mehat. (Two other married sons have long been settled in Europe.) The al-Helous are ‘native’ Gazans, rooted on the Strip for uncountable generations. Their four-storey family home, pleasingly Ottoman-influenced, has been divided into flats and everyone escorted me to the top floor, roomy enough for a family of six – at the other end of the comfort scale from my Balata squat on the West Bank. Astonishment was expressed because I wouldn’t be using the microwave, the washing machine or the iron. Also some relief: electricity cuts wouldn’t bother me too much. However, as in many otherwise luxurious non-Western homes, the most important mod con was missing: a bedside light.

In the elders’ flat a ‘Welcome to Gaza’ meal awaited me and at the time seemed almost embarrassingly lavish. I was to discover that all Nermeen’s meals are equally lavish and memorable. Cooking, she explained, is her main hobby. Whereupon Nabil corrected her, preferring to describe his wife’s dishes as works of art.

I was asleep before dark; it had been quite a gruelling day.

* * *

Waking at dawn, for a moment I fancied myself back in Cuba. The only sound was the brisk clip-clopping of horse traffic as farmers drove their produce to market. My bedroom window overlooked a mature olive grove and a small, surprisingly green lawn with flowery borders. Next door lived a Christian family, also ‘natives’ and lifelong friends of the al-Helous. ‘It’s sad,’ Nabil had said, ‘that by now most Christians have left Gaza.’

Soon after my return from a walk in the cool of the morning, through dreary littered streets, Atef rang – oddly, this being his first day at home. ‘Is OK I show you Gaza now? Only today I have. My father goes for long treatment to al-Shifa hospital – kidney cleaning. I leave him there, then find you living near it. At 9.30 is OK?’

By 9.30 I was waiting on the pavement, chatting to Khalil and two of his friends who chanced to be passing. When Atef flung his arms around me and kissed me on both cheeks all three young men hastily turned away before I could do introductions. (Khalil later commented that it’s easy to forget how to behave during a long exile in Westernised Cairo.) Unaware of his solecism, Atef led me around the corner to father’s car, a new Volvo imported though a tunnel and looking aggressively affluent in contrast to Gaza’s average vehicle. I would not have chosen to glean my first impressions from the cool comfort of a walnut-panelled limousine but I do believe in ‘letting things happen’. And our tour proved illuminating. My companion, home for the first time since 2002, reacted with mixed and sometimes disconcerting emotions to the many profound changes. Politically he seemed a babe in arms and when I provided current facts and figures, based on my recent homework, they didn’t really interest him.

Before switching on the engine Atef switched on a gadget displaying numerous pictures of his daughter Mira, then aged seven months and one week. She had, it seemed, been photographed several times a day since birth. Skirting Beach/Shatti camp we drove along wide, dismal al-Nasser Street where Israel’s blockade has killed businesses that were still alive – if only just – before the Second Intifada began in 2000. Mingling with the motor vehicles were scores of horse- and donkey-carts, most animals well-fed, the more shapely Arab horses groomed to a glossiness not usually associated with draught animals in poor communities. Atef looked puzzled when I admired the cart-drivers’ skill, and their animals’ remarkable adaptability, and the motorists’ intelligent coping with these equine rivals for space. He glared at a horse’s ear, three inches from his window, and said, ‘Soon I hope we ban these carts. They are uncivilised and wrong in a modern city. On the West Bank you don’t see this.’ He ignored my riposte that, given polar ice-caps in meltdown, animal transport is the only sensible way forward, its waste fertilising the earth instead of polluting the air.

This was a day of blurred vignettes – mere glimpses of camp-slums where malnourished children swarm, of unexpected stretches of empty golden beaches (why were the children not frolicking there?) and of war-degraded fields where women labour in the midday heat wearing garments prescribed by fundamentalist bullies.

Arriving at the far end of the Strip from Rafah, we paused near the closed Erez crossing to survey the site of Gaza’s vast Ottoman-era government building, one of Operation Cast Lead’s earliest targets. There I noted Asef’s (self-protective?) detachment from his birthplace. As a boy he had often visited those offices with his father. Now he seemed to view that shockingly empty bomb site almost as a tourist attraction.

Before the First Intifada in 1987, Israel officially employed some 45,000 Gazan day-workers and an estimated 10,000 more who, lacking permits, could be extra-severely exploited. At least 30 per cent of those ‘illegals’ were adolescents. Permit holders received approximately one-third of the Israelis’ minimum wage. Before the Second Intifada, 30,000 or so workers crossed every day at Erez, a number reduced to 2,000 or less by July 2005, the date of the ‘withdrawal’. Since June 2007 only Israeli-approved VIPs and NGO employees and some urgent medical cases (with the right connections) have been allowed through.

Erez’s grimly militaristic infrastructure includes one passageway for labourers and petty traders and another for the elite. Those neglected buildings and their IDF-ravaged environs seem to symbolise the cruel futility of ‘collective punishment’. At a pole-barrier two semi-uniformed, short-bearded Hamas policemen spurned Atef’s attempt to engage them in friendly conversation. Gesturing angrily, they shouted something my companion declined to translate. As he hastily backed, turned and jolted away on a tank-torn surface, I could see figures moving within an IDF watchtower sporting outsize Israeli flags.