Lara Kelly in Occupied Palestinian Territory

Friday, 3rd November

2006-11-06T06:42:00.000-08:00

Yesterday's blog about hope makes hard reading today. We spent the morning travelling around the south of the Gaza strip, visiting homes that have been demolished or riddled with bullets by the Israeli army. Abandoned sandals, copy books, carpets and curtains lie among mangled metal and concrete rubble, the shells of people's lives - people who sometimes had only ten minutes to leave their houses before the tanks rolled in.

On our way back to Gaza city we tuned in to the UN station on our walkie talkie. The latest Israeli incursion into Beit Hanoun in the Northern Gaza Strip is said to be in response to Hamas missiles being fired into Southern Israel. Once again the term 'collective punishment' comes to mind, as tanks and F16s send a resounding message to the people of Gaza. We listen on the walkie talkie as the numbers of casualties rise. 21 dead and 45 seriously injured at the last count. We meet for lunch with the wife of a surgeon at Gaza City's hospital. She is sorry he cannot make it for lunch - he is dealing with a huge amount of serious injuries, lost limbs, organ damage.

As we queued this evening to leave Gaza through the Erez crossing in the north of the Gaza Strip, the dull thud of shelling was not far away. Strangely I didn't want to leave - I had been welcomed so much into a place in such turmoil. And as we drove to the relative safety of Tel Aviv, I felt that we were walking out on people whose voices can barely be heard above the bombing, the hysteria, the empty promises and the international double-speak.

Thursday, November 2, Gaza City

2006-11-06T06:22:00.000-08:00

I’m sitting here in my room in Gaza City. With the windows open I can hear car horns beeping, the drums and music of wedding parties (we have seen two this evening), sirens, the call to prayer being sung from the nearby mosque, fireworks and, below my window, the sound of the sea. This place could have it all; the weather is beautiful, the people are welcoming, the fresh produce tastes like real food and along Gaza’s 40km western side is the sea. A dream. But the dream isn’t happening.

Everyone we have met here says the same things: "We live in a big prison". Israel controls the borders to the north and east of the Gaza strip, and maintains some control over the crossing at the southern border with Egypt. Some 15,000 people rely on the fishing industry in the Gaza Strip. But fishing is severely restricted, people have told me. Fishermen, on the rare occasions that they are allowed out in their boats, must stay within three nautical miles of the beach. An Israeli naval ship sitting in the bay gives the incentive to follow this rule. Fishermen have been shot at for being too far out to sea, their boats, destroyed.

We have been traveling around the West Bank and Gaza for the last few days, and have been asking the same questions: "where do you find your hope? What keeps you going?" One man who spent over fourteen years in an Israeli jail told us today that to give up your hope is to give up entirely. A priest in Gaza, who has suffered along with his parishioners from the Israeli restrictions on freedom of movement, said that he has to keep hope alive, because he preaches hope on Sundays and: "I cannot be a liar in church". In the West Bank, a group of young men from Ramallah said that the thought of a Palestinian state keeps them going.

But for others, this hope must surely be hard to cling to. In the old city of Hebron, wire mesh covers the city streets from above, creating a cage-like effect. Why? Because a small group of extremists throws rubbish, furniture and sometimes bleach down at the Palestinians on the street below. And yet, there is hope here. The people are the hope; the well educated, passionate Palestinians who have told us they want peace, the Israeli activists who can criticize their government from within, the many Trócaire partners we have met who work from early morning to late at night for the rights of Palestinians and for a just peace for both communities. And then there is us. We can’t let ourselves off the hook and say that we did not know what was happening.

Arrival in Tel Aviv

2006-11-01T07:19:00.000-08:00

We arrived wearily at 4.30am, arriving into Tel Aviv’s Ben Gurion airport. The airport was an apt beginning to a journey that has so far exposed many contrasts and inequalities. It was huge, with gleaming floors, tall pillars and impressive fountains and pools. While I was admiring it, I was informed that West Bank residents cannot use the airport in Tel Aviv; instead they must travel to Amman in Jordan.

I am here in the Occupied Palestinian Territory (OPT) to learn, to hear stories from Trocaire’s Palestinian and Israeli human rights partners. We have a packed week ahead of us, and I am looking forward to meeting some of the groups I have heard a lot about; B’tselem, the Israeli Human Rights group; Rabbis for Human Rights; the Palestinian Human Rights Centre in Gaza, and many others.

Today we met a remarkable group of young Palestinian Christian men in Ramallah, part of Caritas Jerusalem’s work to empower young people and encourage them to become leaders in their communities. They detailed the many challenges of living in the West Bank, the lack of freedom of movement, whether it be to go to college, to find work or to visit family in other parts of the West Bank. Some of them said they didn’t have much hope for the future, but listening to these articulate and determined people, I couldn’t help thinking that I was sitting across the table from Palestine’s hope for the future. Any one of these men could go on to lead their communities, given the opportunity, It is this lack of opportunity, with unemployment in Palestine running to 70%, that leads to a feeling of imprisonment. It’s something I cannot really fathom, having had the luxury of an Irish passport and free passage around the world.

Our taxi driver back from Ramallah to Jerusalem, where we are staying, told us that he has been to university to study hotel management and that he speaks 6 languages, “And now I am driving a taxi. That’s the way things are here”. We passed a checkpoint, and sat in a queue of cars. As there were a few cars ahead of us, I couldn’t see the checkpoint itself. But I could hear what sounded like a gang of boisterous teenagers. As we approached the checkpoint, I saw that they probably were teenagers, but they were also soldiers, with guns. In Israel, military service is compulsory; 3 years for men and 2 years for women. One of my fellow travelers remarked, “this is an area in which we women have not clamoured for equal treatment!”. Until the age of about 40, Israeli citizens must complete an annual military service of 40 days or so. It’s a frightening thought that even with your military service completed, and perhaps with a family, it is a long time before Israelis are free of the army’s demands. Our taxi driver is resigned to being stopped arbitrarily by youngsters half his age and knows better than to challenge them.