You know it is the beginning of the year and everybody starts sending text messages, emails or whatever have you, wishing a happy new year or even stranger things like "may the best of 2007 be the worst of 2008." You can't blame me or us, more or less, in Gaza for not having big hopes for the New Year. I guess not! However, as human beings, we hang on to hope, even at our darkest moments, hope is our only exit. What else do we have to depend on other than hoping that things will take a better turn in Gaza, though we have absolutely no indicators for that yet!
Friends of mine asked me about the things that I remember the most about the past year. It took me a while to decide since it was a roller coaster year to Gazans in a sad regressive manner. In 2007, we saw with our own eyes factional fighting and as hard as it was, for people, to digest the fact that Palestinian blood is irresponsibly spelt, as an accepted thing of the history it became later. Of course, sitting on the kitchen floor with my husband and terrified daughters during the peak of the fight is something difficult to erase from my memory and from theirs. The astonishment that hits me every time one of my little daughters sings a factional song, such as "Hamsawi" or "Om El Jamaheer ya Fateh"; songs that they pick up from playmates or radio stations, is all the same. It makes me think how bizarre it is the way politics, in our case as Palestinians, crawls under our noses to our houses and starts messing up with our kids' innocence.
The change of power and Hamas becoming the government in Gaza with Abu Mazen forming a different government in Ramalla — with all the positive and negative changes that took place in Gaza of enforcement of order, protection of properties, control over irresponsible weapon use, tension with Fateh supporters, complexity of formal procedures in ministries and governmental bodies, etc. — is of course the most remarkable change of all, a change that has follow up scenarios that are yet unwritten.
And, I don't even want to go there and talk about Gaza siege. But how can I help it? It is there and it is tangible; the imprisonment, dire constant need, deprivation, anticipation and tunnel light waiting, relentless attempts to get a job, always wondering about fuel or electricity availability, extremely high prices, patients dying dreaming at night of a permit or a border open, women; sad old women urging emergency programs for a food coupon, and political speeches; long political speeches condemning asking for lifting the siege from Gaza, and deaf ears to people's suffering, suffocating, and drowning in despair.
Nevertheless, the most vivid thing in my memory about the past year is my visit to a community center in Beit Hanoun in the Northern area of the Gaza Strip, right on the border with Israel. In there, I met a group of teenage girls (aged 13-15 yrs.) who came to attend a workshop on child human rights. So they were supposed to perform acted scenes that they wrote as a group on some of the children's rights, such as child right to education, to play, to health services, etc. I looked at them, whilst performing, young girls in different body shapes, dressing in their mothers' clothes, not a single one had boots on; all wore sandals in cold winter, pale and seemingly poor. Regardless, you can't imagine how full of life they were, how innovative standing there bravely acting their roles, laughing full-heartedly, carefree still of life troubles, and smarter than expected in their society criticism. I remember in one of the scenes, one of them was asking her father (acted by another female colleague) to give her pocket money and he said "I have no money" and she said "but you only have money to buy cigarettes which are very expensive." How perceptive and reflective of the cruel reality of unemployment and prices inflation in Gaza. At the end, I asked them with eyes watered with tears "what do you want girls in the future." They said "We Want a Better Life." So I want a better life for my people in the year to come with whatever that entails!
Friends of mine asked me about the things that I remember the most about the past year. It took me a while to decide since it was a roller coaster year to Gazans in a sad regressive manner. In 2007, we saw with our own eyes factional fighting and as hard as it was, for people, to digest the fact that Palestinian blood is irresponsibly spelt, as an accepted thing of the history it became later. Of course, sitting on the kitchen floor with my husband and terrified daughters during the peak of the fight is something difficult to erase from my memory and from theirs. The astonishment that hits me every time one of my little daughters sings a factional song, such as "Hamsawi" or "Om El Jamaheer ya Fateh"; songs that they pick up from playmates or radio stations, is all the same. It makes me think how bizarre it is the way politics, in our case as Palestinians, crawls under our noses to our houses and starts messing up with our kids' innocence.
The change of power and Hamas becoming the government in Gaza with Abu Mazen forming a different government in Ramalla — with all the positive and negative changes that took place in Gaza of enforcement of order, protection of properties, control over irresponsible weapon use, tension with Fateh supporters, complexity of formal procedures in ministries and governmental bodies, etc. — is of course the most remarkable change of all, a change that has follow up scenarios that are yet unwritten.
And, I don't even want to go there and talk about Gaza siege. But how can I help it? It is there and it is tangible; the imprisonment, dire constant need, deprivation, anticipation and tunnel light waiting, relentless attempts to get a job, always wondering about fuel or electricity availability, extremely high prices, patients dying dreaming at night of a permit or a border open, women; sad old women urging emergency programs for a food coupon, and political speeches; long political speeches condemning asking for lifting the siege from Gaza, and deaf ears to people's suffering, suffocating, and drowning in despair.
Nevertheless, the most vivid thing in my memory about the past year is my visit to a community center in Beit Hanoun in the Northern area of the Gaza Strip, right on the border with Israel. In there, I met a group of teenage girls (aged 13-15 yrs.) who came to attend a workshop on child human rights. So they were supposed to perform acted scenes that they wrote as a group on some of the children's rights, such as child right to education, to play, to health services, etc. I looked at them, whilst performing, young girls in different body shapes, dressing in their mothers' clothes, not a single one had boots on; all wore sandals in cold winter, pale and seemingly poor. Regardless, you can't imagine how full of life they were, how innovative standing there bravely acting their roles, laughing full-heartedly, carefree still of life troubles, and smarter than expected in their society criticism. I remember in one of the scenes, one of them was asking her father (acted by another female colleague) to give her pocket money and he said "I have no money" and she said "but you only have money to buy cigarettes which are very expensive." How perceptive and reflective of the cruel reality of unemployment and prices inflation in Gaza. At the end, I asked them with eyes watered with tears "what do you want girls in the future." They said "We Want a Better Life." So I want a better life for my people in the year to come with whatever that entails!
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