Letters from Palestine (32 page)

To which the soldier answered, “This is a
nice Arabic song. You do not know it?”

I said, “No! I have not heard it.”

So that is how I entered from Jordan to
Israel.

My cousin was still not done with his work,
so I took a taxi and met him in Um El Fakhim. We drove to see the
rest of my relatives in Baka El Gharbia, where my father was born.
It was quite late, and the Erez crossing into Gaza was already shut
down for the night. So I spent the night in Baka.

Early the next morning, we headed for Gaza.
The last time I was at the Erez crossing was close to six years
ago. Things looked very different now: new building, separate
parking lot, fences and barbed wire, cameras everywhere. I asked my
cousin to wait for me in the parking lot as I wanted to approach
the security area alone. I wanted to try and enter on my own
merits. If they see me with somebody and a car, it is normally
easier for them to send you back. I was very determined to enter
Gaza by any means possible. (Peacefully, of course!)

The guard asked why I was there. I told her
I wished to enter to Gaza! She said, nobody is allowed. It is
dangerous! I said, I understand. I was born there and wish to enter
to see my eighty-seven-year-old father.

She then said, “Who are you, and do you have
a permit?”

I handed her my American passport and said,
“What permit? I have a visa to Israel!”

“No!” she replied. “You need a permit to
enter Gaza.”

I said, “The Palestinians should not need a
permit to enter their birthplace.”

Then she looked at me and said, “
Estana
shewia
!” (Wait for a moment.) She got on the phone, and I heard
her ask for somebody to come out and see me.

A few minutes later, a soldier came out of
the building, walked across the parking lot, got into the security
kiosk, and talked to the girl who pointed at me outside and handed
him my passport.

The soldier then came out, and I met him at
the blockade. “Sir,” he said politely, “you cannot go to Gaza. You
have no permit.”

I said, “Why do I need a permit, and from
whom do I need the permit? I am a Palestinian, born and raised in
Gaza, and I am going to see my old father and my family.”

He said, “Sir, you do not understand.”
(Those were his exact words.) “You cannot get into Gaza!”

At that moment, I replied, “You do not
understand. I must get to Gaza! And the people there did not ask me
to get a permit to see them!”

He looked at me while he was backing off.
“It’s not me; these are the orders!”

I said, “Would you please call the one who
made these orders?”

He pointed at a bench far off and told me to
wait there. Then he went back to the main building. During the time
I was waiting, I witnessed a few instances of humiliation and
degrading treatment toward Palestinians and internationals who were
trying to enter Gaza. Anyway, about thirty or forty minutes later,
I saw a military officer walking toward the gate. I got up and
walked toward the gate.

He immediately tried to hand me my passport,
saying, “You do not have a permit. You cannot get in.”

I did not take my passport from his hand.
Instead, I told him that I did not come all the way from America to
be turned back when I was but ten or fifteen minutes away from my
eighty-seven-year-old father, sisters, and relatives because of a
lack of a vague permit. I said that looking him straight in the
eyes.

He tried to persuade me for about twenty
minutes or so—I do not wish to bore you with his fabricated
arguments—but I would not budge. He asked me to wait. I then asked
him if he knew who I was (just to set him off) and could he connect
me with the party that made up all those rules, which he kept
distancing himself from with every passing minute. I always like to
use this kind of technique in arguing with them, just to make the
one enforcing these rules think and not be emotionless robots
carrying out ridiculous, inhuman, criminal acts against human
beings.

After three attempts of going and coming
back, of trying to send me back, I still would not leave. And
during all this time, I kept pumping him with my own information
and facts that were making him uncomfortable. Like they claim to be
out of Gaza totally, yet they control every aspect of Gazans’
lives: who cannot go in, who cannot go out, when they can have
water, when they cannot have power, medicine, food, milk for the
babies. Who made all those decisions at the borders when sick
infants died in their mothers’ arms when they were not allowed to
cross the border for special medical treatment?

He did not want to hear any of this. By now,
at least three hours had passed, maybe more. So to get rid of me,
he gave me a telephone number to call, where they might give me a
permit, or answer my questions. Of course, nobody ever answered
that phone. It did not take more than ten to fifteen minutes of
trying, then I went back to him. He told me that he would not be
letting me in and would not be coming back to talk to me.

At that moment—I had now been there over
four-and-a-half hours—I realized that I had done all I could on my
own. Now, I needed the big guns (metaphorically speaking). So I
called my main contact, my other cousin. Maybe some fifteen or
twenty minutes more passed. Then, who appears out of the building?
That same officer, looking for me!

“Mr. Deeb. Now, I know who you are! I
apologize. You know how things are in Israel!” He said, “Give me
your passport. Please, there is a coffee shop at the corner of Yad
Mordachi. Give me your phone number and go to have a cup of coffee.
In half an hour or so, I will call you, and I will have taken care
of everything.”

Before my cousin Salam and I had finished
our coffee, the phone rang. “Mr. Deeb, your entry permit is
ready!”

When I had gone for the coffee, I called my
father and sister and told them to pick me up in an hour. They were
very surprised because almost nobody gets in.

The minute you walk out of Erez building, on
Gaza side, you get the shock of destruction! The signs of what
Israel is doing to the Palestinians are everywhere. The
Palestinians must be made of steel to survive all that Israel is
throwing at them! They are the real heroes! And Israel’s crimes are
so apparent. No wonder Israel does not want anybody to enter Gaza:
they want no witnesses to their crimes!

But because of the landing of the Free Gaza
boats, the spirit of Gaza was up in the clouds. The visitors and
the locals were mutually thrilled. The people of Gaza offered
everything and anything to make us feel welcome, even though all we
brought to them is the sense that they are not forgotten! The
children’s hearing aids were given to them. The black, red, green
and white balloons were let go on the shore, and some given to the
kids. Hospitals were visited. The site where Rachel Corrie was
murdered by the Israeli bulldozer was visited. The building where
the Israelis killed sixteen members of one family, including five
children and their mother while they were eating breakfast, was
shown to us. Homes were visited, and friends were made. Even with
the little they had, their generosity exceeded all
expectations.

My friends and I were delighted to be
reunited in Gaza. They did not believe that I would get in, and
felt bad that I was not on the boat. I told them all that mattered
to me is that we broke the siege of Gaza and showed the people of
Gaza that they are not forgotten, and one day, they are going to be
free!

_PHOTO

Mohammed Omer, twenty-four, was born and
raised in the Rafah refugee camp in the southern Gaza Strip near
the Egyptian border. The oldest of eight children, Mohammed began
working to support his family at age six when his father was in an
Israeli prison. He hustled odd jobs and sold things like beans and
popcorn in the street. In time, Mohammed landed a job in a backpack
factory. Since then, he has built an impressive résumé as a
translator, journalist, and photographer.

On October 18, 2003, an Israeli sniper
killed Mohammed’s seventeen-year-old brother, Hussam, as he was on
his way to school. Nine days later, an Israeli D-9 bulldozer
crushed Mohammed’s family home without warning while his family was
inside. As the walls buckled and the roof collapsed, the family was
able to escape by climbing through a window. His mother was
severely wounded as she was attempting to flee, an injury from
which she still suffers today. Over the years, almost all of
Mohammed’s siblings have been seriously maimed or injured by
Israeli military forces.

In June 2006, Mohammed graduated with dual
bachelor’s degrees in English and literature from the Islamic
University, Gaza’s premier institution for higher education.

At seventeen, he began translating for
Global Exchange delegations to Gaza, traveling dignitaries, and
foreign reporters. At eighteen, he began writing regularly for
international media and has since published in dozens of newspapers
and magazines worldwide, including the
Vermont Guardian
, IPS
News Agency,
New Statesman
, the
Washington Report on
Middle East Affairs
, and the online magazine, the
Electronic
Intifada
. At age nineteen, he regularly appeared as an
on-the-ground radio correspondent for Free Speech Radio News.

Mohammed now makes frequent appearances on
BBC and BBC Scotland radio, BBC News 24 TV, the Norwegian national
NRK TV, and stations in Australia, South Africa, Ireland, and New
Zealand. Currently, he writes regularly on life in Gaza for various
newspapers and online news sources.

An excellent photographer, Mohammed’s images
are regularly featured in various international news agencies. He
is also known for his blog at RafahToday.org.

Mohammed’s work has already gained him wide
recognition and several awards in recent years. For his articles in
the
Washington Report on Middle East Affairs
, he was honored
by New American Media as the Best Youth Voice for 2006. In 2008, he
was awarded the prestigious Martha Gellhorn Journalism Prize in
London, and in 2009, he received the Press Freedom Prize from
Reporters Without Borders in Sweden. He has also been invited to
address a number of European parliaments about his work as a
journalist as he continues to function as a “voice for the
voiceless,” reporting on the conditions of life in Gaza.

Having read and appreciated a number of
articles written by a Gaza journalist named Mohammed Omer that
appeared in the
Washington Report for Middle East Affairs
, I
wrote him at the very end of May 2008 to say how much I admired his
reportage and to ask my usual favor during that period: did he know
of any Palestinians I might get in touch with about my book?
Mohammed replied with a very kind note and gave me some suggestions
for me to follow up on.

About a week later, I learned that he was to
receive a coveted journalism award in London on June 16, so I made
a point of watching the video of his acceptance speech. Later that
month, after giving some additional talks in Europe, Mohammed, on
returning to Gaza, was savagely attacked and seriously injured by
Shin Bet agents. When I read about this incident, I was furious and
decided to get involved.

To begin with, I wrote letters of protest to
the San Francisco Israeli Consulate and to my representatives in
Congress as well as getting in touch with some other Palestinians
journalists and activists who knew Mohammed personally. We were all
doing what we could to publicize this heinous action and to try to
help Mohammed in various ways. Not long afterward, I myself wrote
an article about this incident called “The Ordeal of Mohammed Omer”
that was widely circulated on the Internet and also appeared in a
few print newspapers. And not long after that, I was put in touch
directly with Mohammed, who was then recuperating in Gaza from his
injuries, which turned out to be not only painful but
long-lasting.

Mohammed himself in what follows will be
telling you the story of his brutal interrogation and its immediate
aftermath, so all I need to do here is to recount briefly my
involvement with him over the past year where more than a hundred
emails and various phone calls have taken place between us. Mostly
my efforts came down to two undertakings: (1) to do what I could to
bring Mohammed’s situation to the attention of people who might be
able to help him, in particular to facilitate his being able to
leave Gaza in order to have an operation and other medical
treatment he desperately needed, and (2) to help bolster his
spirits when, understandably, he was feeling low, or even
despondent, because of his continuing physical and psychological
pain.

During these months, it was evident to me
that Mohammed was also suffering tremendously from post-traumatic
stress and was having great difficulty sleeping as well. Like many
of his friends, I was very concerned for his welfare.

During all of this time, Dutch diplomats who
had been involved with Mohammed, and very helpful to him beginning
with his original trip to London, continued to press for his
release. But month after month passed without any real indication
whether their efforts would be successful. Meanwhile, Mohammed
continued to stew and suffer in various ways—from depression, from
physical pain, and from the torments of uncertainty over his
fate.

But however gloomy things looked during
these months, there were still many people working, some of them
tirelessly, for Mohammed’s release, including one Dutch diplomat in
particular and, as it happened, a good and very influential Dutch
physician friend of mine who had made Mohammed’s plight his own and
who was able to intervene at the highest political levels in his
attempts to arrange for Mohammed to receive the medical treatment
he so urgently needed.