A Month by the Sea

by Dervla Murphy

  I had long since given up trying to sort out relationships within such extended Palestinian families, a task greatly complicated by generational overlap, given so many early marriages in families of ten and twelve – leading to anomalies like a three-year-old being uncle to a twenty-year old.

  Our luncheon party had an unusually high incidence of English speakers: Abdel, Salem, Suzanne and two young men (Mariam’s nephews, I think) who were doing ‘Teach Yourself English’ computer courses and looking forward with determined optimism to the day of their escape from the Strip. Abdel failed to foster their optimism by focusing on the birthrates disparity. ‘As a Zionist state, Israel must fade away. It’s the dying kick of European colonialism. Zionists still hope they can do like Europeans in North America – demoralise us, drive us into reservations, make us dance for tourists. Or work for slave wages in their friends’ business parks.’

  Salem intervened. ‘Islam protects us – they can’t turn Palestinians into alcoholic slaves! We’re sure to win, with Allah behind us. That’s why we listen when our imams praise many children. Most governments back Israel, our hope’s in numbers.’

  ‘Demographics will solve it,’ agreed Abdel. ‘We’ll outbreed them in Israel as well as the Territories. That’s why they offer low rents and taxes to bring Diaspora Jews here. Anything to keep numbers up! Those Oldies will soon die but Zionists hope children and grandchildren will visit and think, “This is where we want to live!”’ He paused and looked at the two young men. ‘Demographics go slowly! For now we must be patient, accepting our destiny.’ To which Mariam added, ‘Ownership of Palestine has changed many times over the millennia and the Zionists will follow the Crusaders!’ (Give me a shekel for every time I’ve heard that ‘Crusader’ analogy and I’ll be a rich woman.)

  When I complimented Abdel on his English he laughed and said, ‘I finished my education over there – golden stone, not red brick!’ He lamented having almost no access to new publications but now he and Salem were planning to overcome the effect of the blockade through some antics in cyberspace way beyond my comprehension.

  My mentioning binationalism brought the reaction I had come to expect in such company: a reluctance seriously to consider it. Zionism’s perceived invincibility creates this blockage – not Palestine’s obduracy in the struggle for independence. My companions had no nationalistic aspirations left; they saw the two-state solution for what it is. They also scorned ‘President’ Abbas’s application for UN recognition of Palestinian statehood, at that date a fresh bone of contention. Abdel wondered, ‘How can you have statehood without a state?’ This ploy was soon to be exposed by Guy Goodwin-Gill, Senior Research Fellow at All Souls, as a bit of legal/constitutional nonsense. But damaging nonsense, leading the politically naïve Palestinian masses down yet another garden path. We marvelled then at a startling phenomenon: on this ‘statehood’ issue each of us was completely in agreement with Benjamin Netanyahu, the Obama administration, AIPAC and the Quartet.

  ‘Here’s something useful,’ said Abdel. ‘All this makes for so much public confusion people have to stop pretending there’s a Peace Process. With that charade out of the way, maybe there’s more space for thinking about binationalism.’

  ‘Or even talking about it’, I said. But obviously no one present was an eager proponent of the idea. They all lacked Anwar’s missionary zeal, his rare long-distance vision and – most important – his temperamental optimism, the sort that frees the imagination, enabling it to leap into a pragmatically inconceivable future. (M— is in another category, not openly campaigning.)

  While escorting me to the serveece route Abdel said something he might not have said in Mariam’s presence. ‘I can’t forgive those Salafist kids getting high on rocketry. Two days ago they hit Sderot, firing from open ground near here. Now we all wait for the collective punishment – could be a few shells right through this house!’

  * * *

  At sunset I arrived home to a kitchen floor flooded with red-brown blood. The giant fridge had run out of gas and in the family’s deep-freeze section many kilos of ox liver – a precious hoard – had been thawing all day. Poor Nermeen wouldn’t risk re-freezing meat in very hot weather and was desolate. It seemed small consolation that the only other hoard – large jars of lemon juice for winter use – could take re-freezing.

  While Amal set about cleaning up the mess – an arduous, unpleasant task – her husband Khalil sat cross-legged on the living-room sofa bewailing his boring life. After the pre-dawn prayer he goes for a run and a swim, then is lounging around at home with his computer for the rest of the day, apart from three more visits to the mosque. Keeping in touch with Allah is very important for solving problems. He went to school in Saudi Arabia, then studied at Gaza’s al-Azhar University – Saudi universities are reserved for Saudis. Until the Hamas takeover he served as a junior officer in the PA security forces. Despite his seventeen years’ residence on the Strip, he has only one real friend, one man he totally trusts – the rest are acquaintances.

  Listening to Amal mopping and scrubbing, I felt more and more exasperated. Finally I stood up and said, ‘I think Amal could do with some help.’ Khalil was shocked. ‘No, no! This is not work for guests!’ Nastily I snapped, ‘But why not work for husbands?’ Khalil laughed, seemed in no way discomfited. When I entered the kitchen and firmly took mop in hand he stood by the doorway for a moment, then went downstairs to visit his parents.

  Increasingly I regretted not being able to talk with Amal. Whenever I saw Khalil taking off for his run and swim, leaving her to cope with the daily chores in their stifling flat, I wondered how she would fare if ever they emigrated to a European country. She too, I suspected, would like to run and swim. As things were she couldn’t even walk around the corner to the bakery and the grocery store, or go to the market; Khalil was happy to see to those chores. He was among the several young men with whom I regularly had circular and occasionally heated arguments.

  However, as far as my limited observations went, most young Gazan women – even postgraduates on the way to their third degree – seemed resigned to their fate and robotically referred me to the Holy Koran, Mohammed, the Sura. Mujamma influences have been around for a long time. In contrast, the covert ‘liberated’, of both sexes, pleaded with me to write honestly about Palestinian Women’s Rights. Here they were echoing some of my Palestinian friends on the West Bank and in Israel who complained about the tendency of foreign pro-Palestinians to fudge this issue – being so conscious of the Zionist propaganda mill. According to one woman professor at Birzeit University, such fudging not only impedes the work of local campaigners but emboldens their Islamist critics abroad who sense the foreigners’ hesitation to denounce homemade cruelties as strongly as the IDF’s.

  Deeb could be very touchy about Women’s Rights and the 2009 regulations. These, he tried to persuade me, were merely reinforcing ‘family rules and customs’. He became almost angry when I suggested Iranian influences on IUG’s ethos. Impossible! There could be no Iranian input because of the religious divide – ‘Here all are Sunni!’ But might not a shared anti-US sentiment bridge that divide? I teased him that before the Battle of Lepanto newly Protestant England backed the Spanish/Venetian/Papal alliance. Yet the most he would concede was a certain Saudi Arabian Wahhabi fervour on the Strip – discouraged by Hamas.

  Many consider the grotesquely named ‘honour killings’ as the most disturbing feature of ‘backward’ Islamic societies. These are the murders of girls or women who have ‘shamed’ their menfolk by breaking a rule regulating relations between the sexes. For minor transgressions (like Aida’s meeting with her photographer friend) an unmarried woman may be severely beaten and/or imprisoned within the home for an indefinite period. For the ultimate disgrace – pregnancy out of wedlock – death is so socially acceptable a punishment that such killings are not included in crime statistics. On the West Bank, in March 2009, I was reliably informed that during the previous year 32 such murders had bee
n committed within the OPT. And of course not all cases are known; it can happen that a young woman or her baby or both simply disappear. In the Hebron area I heard of two cases of a mother being helped to escape into Israel – despite having no permit – leaving her baby behind with a married sister. In both cases the ‘shamed’ father sought out and murdered his own grandchild.

  This is not hearsay. I met one of the grandfathers (who had three regularly beaten wives) and his eldest son spoke in my presence of the action that ‘restored honour’ to the family. My interpreter, a friend and PWWSD member, found it hard to believe that Roman Catholic Ireland, until comparatively recently, was scarcely less censorious of illegitimacy. Although the murder of an erring daughter was not condoned, she could expect total rejection by the family. Therefore some panic-stricken women did murder their own babies. The profound shame associated with illegitimacy made possible Ireland’s notorious nun-run Magdalen Laundries. Within those institutions, subsidised by both Church and State, hundreds of the most vulnerable unmarried mothers were incarcerated for life – their only ‘crime’ a teenage pregnancy, their daily labour unpaid.

  It cheered and astonished me to learn, from Yara, of Gaza’s al-Rahma Association, an ISI founded in 1993 by Dr al-Zahar’s brother, Ahmad, and a few of his friends – to care for babies delicately described as ‘infants of unknown parentage’. The average intake is one baby per month. Some are brought from a hospital within hours of birth, others are handed in by an anonymous female who is never asked to identify herself, some materialise in the time-honoured way: left on the doorstep in a cardboard carton, wrapped in rags. Al-Rahma at once names the child, then applies to the Ministry of Social Affairs for a birth certificate, the parents’ names to be filled in following adoption. This standard certificate gives no indication of the child’s parentage being unknown. Al-Rahma keeps a list of dependable potential parents, usually but not always childless couples. Four bureaucratic hoops have to be jumped through before legal custody is established and this can take a few months. Traditionally, the baby is felt to be a family member once suckled by the adoptive mother or a paternal aunt. Thereafter the child cannot marry a ‘sibling’ and can inherit in accordance with Islamic laws. Children not placed with a family, perhaps because in some way handicapped, remain at al-Rahma to the age of sixteen. All their health and educational needs are cared for and the ISI, acting in loco parentis, arranges a suitable marriage.

  Equally (or more) remarkable are the ISIs established to look after the wives and children of men who have been executed for collaborating with the IDF. Naturally such families are ostracised and present a much bigger problem, numerically and psychologically, than illegitimate babies. Yara boasted that only in Gaza were associations set up to do everything possible to ease those misfortunates back into their communities by encouraging participation in ISI-sponsored activities – perhaps football for the boys, sewing classes for the girls. Up to the age of sixteen each child receives a monthly allowance of about $30, supplemented if necessary by food rations, clothes and school requirements. If destitute, the families of martyrs, and prisoners held in Israeli jails, are also helped. Many ISIs organise kindergartens for the poorest – often within a mosque; the classes of 40 or so running from 8.00– 11.00 am.

  Sara Roy begins her enthralling study of Gaza’s Islamist social sector by noting the methods used to cripple it. On 23 January 1995 President Clinton’s Executive Order 12947 pronounced Hamas to be a ‘foreign terrorist entity’ and post-9/11 the US Department of Treasury froze the assets of all US-based Muslim charities. Best known was the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development (HLF). In September 2001 President George W. Bush declared: ‘Money raised by the HLF is used by Hamas to recruit suicide bombers and to support their families. Our action today is another step in the war on terrorism.’

  The story took a turn for the worse when the PA’s unelected Prime Minister, Salam Fayyad (formerly employed by the World Bank and the IMF and Washington’s favourite Palestinian) supported the calls to blacklist the Strip’s largest Islamic charity, al-Salah Association. Its accounts were duly frozen – accounts through which outside donors sent 80 per cent of al-Salah’s funding. This blacklisting was devastating as those US donations were desperately needed because of the Israeli and US-led international blockade.

  I was in Israel on 24 November 2008 when five HLF leaders were charged in US courts with providing monies ‘in support to Hamas and its goal of creating an Islamic Palestinian state by eliminating the State of Israel through violent jihad’. None of the five was accused of directly funding terrorism but of illegally contributing to Hamas through its social welfare structures. Some of my Israeli friends opined that all five deserved the death penalty. Six months later the HLF CEO, and its Chairman, were each sentenced to 65 years; another worker went down for 20 years, two more for 15 years.

  In June 2010 the US Supreme Court ruled against non-violent activism by criminalising any ‘material support’ to groups labelled ‘terrorist’ by the US. ‘Material support’ includes organising demos in support of human rights and the peaceful resolution of conflicts, distributing related literature, advocating discussions with Gaza’s democratically elected government and (most heinous of all) ‘having direct contact with terrorists’. The Court explained that such activities ‘strengthen the image of the group and thereby legitimize it’. David D. Cole, in Advocacy is not a Gun, commented: ‘For the first time ever, the Supreme Court has ruled that the First Amendment permits the criminalization of pure speech advocating lawful, non-violent activity.’

  Sara Roy writes:

  Scholars such as myself could be imprisoned for up to fifteen years for conducting research of the kind presented in this book … The equation of Islamist social institutions with violence and the belief that the work of these institutions is merely a guise for promoting terrorism … remains deeply embedded and uncritically embraced at many levels of American society including the Supreme Court.

  Were I to seek another visa to visit the US it would probably be refused. Every day for a month I had ‘direct contact with terrorists’ and I’m very happy to strengthen Hamas’ image when the opportunity arises to do so honestly. This arrogant US insistence on everyone else accepting their definition of a ‘terrorist’ leaves some foreign NGOs in an anomalous position – wishing to help Gazans with professional detachment but fearing to tread on US corns.

  I decided, before leaving the Strip, to pay my respects to Save the Children Fund (SCF), with whom I worked, almost fifty years ago, in a Tibetan refugee camp in Dharamsala. An inconspicuous notice pointed to their spacious house, in a large, shrub-filled garden in affluent Rimal. The security guard who unlocked the street door went out as I came in and because the hall door was obviously unused I descended a slope to the rear, passing the wide windows of several unfurnished rooms. Then, in a small hallway with a bare reception desk, I was greeted effusively but cagily by a tall, slim, forty-ish man, a fluent English-speaker. He said he couldn’t give me permission to mention SCF in my book – that would have to come from someone higher up, in London. Rather testily I replied that I live in a free society where authors don’t need such ‘permissions’. A smiling young woman, standing by the desk, nodded at me approvingly while her boss looked taken aback. He refused to provide any information about SCF’s work on the Strip (I had come upon no trace of it) though most NGOs welcome the publicity that may accrue when writers take an interest in their projects. The Director had learned his English with the British Council – long since closed – and he regretted the younger generation’s ‘Amereng’. (Is this word a Gazan invention? I have heard it nowhere else.) When I asked how the medication crisis impinged on SCF’s activities, and if ‘Miles of Smiles’ was likely to help, he said he knew nothing about that motor convoy, then approaching through Egypt. It would deliver everything to the Ministry of Health and as SCF belonged to the ‘international community’ it didn’t deal with ‘this administration’. P
lainly the poor fellow was longing for me to stop asking awkward questions and go away. I wanted to talk to the young woman who seemed eager to talk to me. But her boss ruled that out by firmly conducting me to the street. One wonders why SCF hangs in there, when so hampered by deference to US edicts.

  At the other end of the scale is Medical Aid for Palestinians (MAP), described by its last President, Chris Patton, as ‘a tremendously important charity both because of the huge good that it does on the ground and its role as an advocate of better treatment of Palestinians’. It’s a piquant thought that in the eyes of the US Supreme Court that role criminalises this British NGO.

  Early one morning Fikr Shaltoot, Director of MAP’s Gaza office, came to collect me – bareheaded and driving her own tiny elderly car. At first I assumed her to be one of the Strip’s few Christians (I saw only one other Gazan woman driver: Mrs Shabaan). But no: Fikr was born in a refugee camp and schooled by UNRWA before graduating from a US university. She then felt a compulsion to be back with her own people – though on her own terms, hence the bare head and self-driving. She is a small, compact woman, radiating energy, competence and compassion. I took to her at once but unluckily we met on the eve of her departure for England (a fundraising trip) so we could talk only briefly in MAP’s simple office which needed no apparent security.

  According to Fikr, few Gazans go hungry but most are by now subsisting on a high-carb diet, unable to afford many fruits or vegetables and rarely eating meat. The mothers of young families are notably malnourished: 70 per cent anaemic, says the latest survey. Many share their own rations with growing children and sometimes with working husbands. (As though the mothers of six or nine children are not working!) MAP runs a long-term programme to provide the most needy with vitamin and mineral supplements. As the ‘international community’ collaborates ever more closely with the US to restrict ISI health services, MAP’s input becomes ever more urgently needed. Its teams operate not only throughout the OPT but in the Lebanon’s twelve refugee camps where 280,000 Palestinians have no government support and very few rights – a too-often-forgotten consequence of the Nakba. In all, some 425,000 refugees are registered with UNRWA in Lebanon but no Palestinian is allowed to work as a doctor, dentist, lawyer, engineer or accountant.