GAZA ~~ THE 3 WEEK NIGHTMARE THAT HAS LASTED FOR 3 YEARS

January 2, 2012 at 10:30 (Crime, Ethnic Cleansing, Gaza, Israel, Palestine, War Crimes)

Two Reports…

A nightmare that lasted three weeks; memories of Gaza massacre

Rafat Abushaban 

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Israeli leaders threatened to wipe Gaza off of the map during the first hours of bombing. (Hatem Omar / MaanImages )

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Here comes that difficult time of year again: the anniversary of an event that changed the taste of life for Palestinians inside the Gaza Strip and throughout the world. It is three years since the Gaza massacre, or what Israel called Operation Cast Lead.

I still vividly recall the first hours of this 22-day nightmare, when I was with my classmates at university, sitting a final exam paper. We were almost done with the paper when we heard the first explosion. It is somehow common to hear explosions in Gaza, so we kept still until two louder explosions occurred. It was then that we dropped our pens and looked throughout the clouds of smoke that were getting closer. Supervisors immediately called on us to evacuate the campus through safe routes.

Once we got to the street, it was a different world. There was smoke and ash everywhere and Israeli F16s and drones were filling the horizon. Ambulances and fire trucks were speeding up along the opposite road, civilian cars were going in all directions and people were running as if they had all just entered into a bad dream. No matter how hard you tried to look, there were neither policemen nor officials to help the terrified people running here and there. Up to that moment, we had no idea of what was going on. We just knew that something really bad had happened, and that we were not safe walking on the streets with the lack of of safety procedures and shelters.

However, I will never forget how some young people had the courage to act voluntarily in that crucial time on diverting the traffic and helping other people out, risking their own lives. Two hours later, it was all over the news channels. Approximately forty persons were killed in the first air strikes and Israeli officials were threatening to wipe Gaza off of the map.

Blackout

The bombs kept on falling and the death toll was increasing rapidly. My relatives had gathered at our house, believing that it was in a more secure area than theirs. We were continuously watching the news and had limited our movement outside the house to the extreme. Two days after that, a bomb fell on a main electricity line in our neighborhood, causing a blackout. The blackout remained until after the massacre was over.

By the third or fourth day there was a de facto curfew. Israeli jets were dropping loads of announcements for the people of Gaza to stay at their homes and to call the military about anybody shooting rockets on Israeli towns. The water supply was cut off and we and thousands of other households were isolated from the world. I will never forget how neighbors were so helpful in sharing their water supply with others.

The Saraya, a large security complex near our house, was a military base built during the British mandate of Palestine (1920-1948). This base was targeted during the massacre with heavy missiles until it was totally destroyed. As each missile fell, a window was broken or a door was jammed. We were alerted 24/7 and could barely sleep during the night that was always glowing due to the daily dose of white phosphorus.

Never safe

After the first two weeks, it was apparent that the Israelis had run out of targets as governmental, military and even international aid bases were completely or partially destroyed. Absurdly, the air strikes started targeting open land and already destroyed buildings, presumably just to terrify people. The rubble at the Saraya base was bombed for a third and fourth time.

Some of the blasts were so powerful that rocks and bricks flew for hundreds of meters, hitting all the houses close by. It was a shocking experience witnessing the huge explosions, while seeing and hearing the metal, bricks and wooden parts of your house falling apart all around you. Here I believe is the very basic rule of life in Gaza: the place that was thought to be safer than others is dangerous after all. You are never safe.

During the following days, a two-hour break in the curfew was announced. People rushed to secure their families’ basic needs. I could not forget the long rows of people awaiting their turn to collect some bread or to fill one small gasoline tank (which was the limit per person), but people were sharing their everyday needs with each other It is said that hardship brings people together. The need for unity and helping others was the prevailing feeling inside homes, between families and among neighbors in these harsh days.

After more than 22 days of continuous fear and terror, the operation was over. We lost 1,400 martyrs; thousands of people were wounded with white phosphorus and other state-of-the-art Israeli weapons. Electricity and sewage infrastructure, transportation systems and roads were severely damaged.

International solidarity

In the aftermath of Operation Cast Lead, the international empathy for the Palestinian cause rose and pro-Palestine movements across Europe, the Americas, Asia and Africa became stronger than ever. Demands for boycott, divestment and sanctions against Israel grew louder.

Until today, a number of families that were left homeless by the massacre have not yet managed to find permanent housing. The infrastructure is still damaged and the reconstruction process is moving inefficiently and very slowly due to the banning of construction materials. In the meantime, the Israeli siege remains in place. As I wrote these lines at night, at least two Israeli strikes took place, killing at least one and injuring a dozen, some with serious wounds.

United we can overcome the hurdles and defeat the occupation.

Rafat Abushaban, 23, is a Palestinian activist living in Gaza. His blog iswww.zaitoontree.com.

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Three years ago: A “normal morning” turns to horror in Gaza

Mohammed Suliman 

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The memory of Israel’s 22 days of bombing in Gaza evokes sadness, anger, pain and inexplicable pride. (Ashraf Amra / APA images )

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It was a few minutes past eleven. I woke up “early” to start preparing for my school exams that were due to start in a couple of weeks. It was a lovely morning, warm and sunny. The December sunlight filtered through the curtained windows and so beautifully decorated the carpeted floor.

Everything was completely normal, except that the sky seemed clearer than usual with the absence of the Israeli unmanned drones that would fly and buzz in the sky above. No abnormal signs, no reason to worry, and not a single harbinger of an impending war.

My mom was away for the weekly shopping. My sisters, who had been halfway through their day, were back home from school and were already seated before the television, watching cartoons. I made myself a cup of tea and, as is my habit, started to count the pages I had to finish studying that day. Very soon, I was immersed in my book.

A little while later, and all of a sudden, all hell broke loose. I can’t even remember how it all started. It just happened. There was no beginning, and there was no end.

The bombs rained down from every direction. I felt the floor beneath my feet shake so terribly. The entire building shook back and forth with every falling bomb. It seemed as if all the bombs had been dropped in my neighborhood, just next to where I lived.

The bombing was so horrendously ear-piercing. My heart skipped many a beat. Wide-eyed and petrified, my sisters stood transfixed next to me, tightly clutching my arms. I wanted to calm them down, but not until I calmed down myself first. Not until I could get myself to think clearly, and not until I could understand what was happening in the first place.

This is probably how it began. But this is one simple and detached account of one who was sipping his tea and enjoying the sunlight at his home when this all happened. For many others it was the end.

When I later watched the videos of the first locations to be targeted with the first bombs, I saw numerous bodies lay lifelessly on the ground, many repulsively disfigured — defaced, limbs chopped, torn apart, yet many, thankfully, were in complete shape — but still they were bereft of life.

Horror and agony in the streets

While I was on the rooftop disinterestedly trying to film a few scenes of the aftermath of each of the bombings that would not cease for twenty-two days, mothers, not far from where I stood, were grievously bewailing the deaths of their sons; daughters were sobbing in agony over the loss of their fathers; little children were scared stiff and crying out in horror. Some were running scared for their lives in the streets, and others were lying beneath the rubble, powerless and surrounded by the dead bodies of their siblings.

Typical of all wars, electricity was soon cut off and water was no longer in abundance. Cooking gas and bread became scarce. Basic needs became like priceless luxuries. Dreams, ambitions and hopes were shattered and lost, only to be replaced by survival which becomes everyone’s ultimate goal in war times.

The thought of dying alone

I joined crowds of people queuing up at six in the morning to buy a bag of bread. I saw others in front of oil shops fighting and pushing one another to buy a small amount of kerosene heating oil.

I stayed amongst crowds of people for hours on end in the gas station, hopelessly trying to get our cylinder half-filled with gas — filling a gas cylinder entirely at that time was an unthinkable wish. I developed a daily ritual of testing the amount of water inside our water tank by knocking its sides while leaning my ears against them. I spontaneously joined in the joyous celebrations when the electricity came back on.

I had grown an arcane love for the dark and an unusual appreciation of time. I cherished company and abhorred being alone like never before, for nothing scared me back then as much as the thought of dying alone.

Personal stories behind shocking statistics of death

Nothing yet had made me more dejected than how I became engrossed with following ever-changing statistics. The humanness of the victims was unthinkingly reduced in my mind to mere numbers which were drastically, and always more shockingly, on the rise.

The memory of the first statistics of more than eighty persons killed in the first wave of bombings has been engraved in my mind forever. As I look back on it now, I believe it was an extremely helpful, though selfish, tactic unconsciously devised to help me through the day in my right mind by getting around the insufferable pain of knowing the personal stories behind every one of these numbers.

Nonetheless, every now and then, a few stories would jump out from behind the numbers, and everyone would inevitably listen to them, many against their will, and perhaps soon, they would start to narrate them in a casual manner.

Only this explains the comment by the uncle of a Kashimiri friend in London on the way I spoke of bombings when he asked me about life in Gaza.

He wondered at how casually I talked of bombings as though they were a common thing that didn’t worry me. I told him a common story about little children in Gaza who would be playing in the streets when some bombing hit the nearby area. Their reaction would be to either totally ignore the bombing and carry on playing, or they would stop their game, cheer loudly and clap their hands, as if bombing were reason for one to be happy.

After three years, the 22 days are still engraved

Now it has been three years, and I’m still capable of evoking every minute detail of the twenty-two days which have become an experience I recall with feelings of sadness, anger, pain and a little bit of confusing pride, the reason for which I cannot understand.

The thunderous bombings, the creepy gunfire, the hovering Apache helicopters always sending a chill down the spine. The glass shattering, our neighbor’s wailing, mourners chanting “La Ilaha Illa Allah” (there is no God but God). The smell of kerosene heating oil stuck in my nose, the unnerving hums of our kerosene stove. The large, intricate clouds from the white phosphorus bombs, spreading through the sky like spider webs. My spite toward our neighbors’ generators, the fragile short periods of silence, the gloomy faces filling the green or blue condolence tents. The endless statements of the Ministry of Health’s spokesman.

These and a whole host of other memories form a rare experience. Perhaps it is that we survived that lies behind that odd sense of pride.

Mohammed Rabah Suliman is a 22 year old Palestinian student and blogger from Gaza. Mohammed currently undertakes graduate studies at the London School of Economics. He blogs at Gaza Diaries of Peace and War as well as at The Electronic Intifada, and can be followed on Twitter @imPalestine.

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