Where the rubble once filled the streets it has now been pushed to the side, clearing the way for cars and people trying to go on with their daily lives. Everywhere twisted remnants belie their attempts to continue on life as normal. Twisted pieces of metal, once the support of houses, puncture the piles of crumbled, sterile, grey concrete that line the streets. Children play in the bombed out remains of houses where families once lived. Everywhere skeletons of houses remain, here and there one or two walls standing in a pile of debris. Melissa writes from Rafah. Read more about Picking Up the Pieces
Toine van TeeffelenBethlehem, Palestine18 December 2003
Our house is located close to the mosque of ‘Azza refugee camp and so we hear the muezzin or call to prayer five times a day. Even though the sound is loud, you get used to it and we usually sleep through it in the early morning. During the day Tamer enthusiastically shouts “Akka, Akka,” after hearing the sound of “Allahu Akbar!” He then listens to his own echo. Here in Bethlehem, the prayer calls somewhat differ in time from mosque to mosque. This has the effect that the songs “wave” across the land. Toine van Teeffelen writes about the song of the land. Read more about Song of the Land
Young men and women out of high school have one of two options: pursue their degree, or get married. For men there is a third option — be lucky enough to connect your way to someone who is high up enough in one of the Palestinian factions to be bribed to find you one of the few jobs that exist, and magically you will be transported into the 15% of people who have found work here. This is the zahag. “Zahag”, an Arabic word for this long, heavy boredom that feels like a slow death. Laura Gordon writes from Rafah. Read more about When boredom feels like slow death, what is left to lose?
There are no prayer mats to be found in this empty border apartment, only years of sand accumulated on the empty floors. A chandelier’s broken crystals spread in wide sunrays in the salon from the underground explosion some few meters away a few weeks ago — the army blowing up the imagined tunnels of its dream, those phantoms. Everyone knows they don’t exist on this street, which has meticulously rid itself of armed resistance and smugglers. Still, the army blow up dirt meters below the ground many times a week just next to the border homes, shattering their windows and shaking their foundations. Laura Gordon writes from Rafah. Read more about Broken Crystal
I’ve become enthralled with births and weddings — the creation of family — redemption from the ache of a war that systematically removes the most beloved burdens of a person’s full hands. A house, a brother, a mother. I count the marriages and the births like a high school student crosses off the squares of a calendar, measuring the distance between the dredgery of institutionalized education and the open arms of vacation. Every marriage is a triumph of construction in the face of this violent waste. Every birth is red ‘X’ on the calandar of the Occupation. Read more about Redemption in Gaza
The plot of Abu Jameel’s life unfolds like a tragic drama. His street, Abu Jameel Street, named after his grandfather, once the richest man in the area whose grandson used to scorn farmers, walk through the street as one known by face only, the untouchable man in the suit. Abu Jameel inherited the riches of his family and built a row of forty stores and several apartments with his two cousins and married a beautiful Egyptian woman who bore him a son and a daughter. These days fade to memories in black and white. Laura Gordon writes from Rafah. Read more about Tension and depression
Most of the time life in Rafah seems normal. A bustling city — taxis honking and speeding through the crowded streets, schoolchildren in their uniforms on their way to and from school, merchants of all types with their colourful wares lining the streets — fruits, clothes, household items — the perfume of life filling the air. Everywhere things seem normal, then all of a sudden something will happen and the facade of normalcy will disappear, and the ugliness of the reality will show through. Melissa writes from Rafah. Read more about Normal life in Rafah
Liran Ron Furer, a sensitive and creative young man, says he became a sadist in the course of his military service at checkpoints. Four years later, he has written a confessional book about his experience, which he says transforms every soldier into a beast. Written in the blunt and coarse language of soldiers, he reconstructs scenes from the years in which he served in Gaza, between 1996 and 1999, years that, one must remember, were relatively quiet. Ha’aretz’s Gideon Levy looks at the content and issues surrounding the publication of Furer’s diary. Read more about 'I punched an Arab in the face'
Even the incursions began to feel monotonous. The same stories. The same devastated families with nowhere to go. The same phrases to express anger and helplessness. Each story felt like a shadow of fatigue on the waves of an ocean. In the first months, my heart had broken daily and with every story, fresh catharsis bleeding onto paper, revelations in bright red. Now, eight months after my first step in Rafah, the pain is a gray weight on my stomach, always there. Laura Gordan writes from occupied Rafah. Read more about The Monotony of Chaos
“Khashem Zeneh is not difficult to find. Just head out of Beer Sheva on the Dimona road, opposite the exclusively Jewish community of Moshav Nevatim, then turn right at the sign which reads “CEMETARY.” It sounds easy, but on the map, Khashem Zeneh does not exist. In 1965, a quick stroke of a Knesset pen created the phenomenon of “Unrecognised Villages”. Along with many other Bedouin communities in the Negev, it was made invisible to governmental planners and thus illegal in the eyes of the authorities.” Nick Pretzlik reports from the Negev. Read more about For the life of Fatemeh
