Meet Me in Gaza

Shortly before I left the West Bank, a friend of a friend, originally from Gaza, gave me some advice. ‘Worry about your own safety, but not too much – there’s no point,’ he said. ‘Just keep your eyes open, don’t do anything really stupid – and laugh as much as you can.’

I want to be happy here, but – who can be happy in Gaza?

He’s in his early twenties and has Down’s syndrome. Eyes still cast to the floor, he tells me that he loves Fatah and Yasser Arafat.

some religious men and women don’t shake hands with anyone of the opposite sex outside their immediate family, or even make direct eye contact, to guard against fitnah, or temptation.

I’ve heard West Bankers describe Gazans as primitive villagers and as crazies who cannot be trusted – and heard Gazans complain bitterly about West Bankers despising them and doing nothing to break this choking siege. Israel’s divide-and-rule policy has helped turn Gaza and the West Bank into bitter divorcees, to Israel’s own short-term advantage.

I’ve been giving up for years, but there’s no hope for me here because every man seems to smoke, many of the women too. Maybe because they spend so much of their lives waiting.

‘We are not fighting the Israelis any more,’ he says sadly, ‘just destroying each other.

The twentieth century also saw some good times in Gaza, squeezed in between half a dozen wars and military occupations. Even now, under the shadows of Israel and Hamas, my new friends are making life more than worth living.

Despite its blighted history of being invaded and occupied over and again, there have been golden times too, when Gaza flourished and everything seemed possible. Perched at the edge of the eastern Sinai, the ancient crossroads between North Africa, the Middle East and Mediterranean Europe, Gaza was a lodestar of the medieval spice trade, once the most lucrative business on earth. For at least ten centuries Arabian merchants crossed the Rub’ al-Khali, the fabled ‘Empty Quarter’, with fragrant cargoes of frankincense, myrrh and other spices, bound for the port of Gaza.

the night’s twice as dark –
its double darkness
is up to no good