Gaza Mom

Well, as those following my twitter feed may already now, we have made it into Gaza safe and sound. Apologies for taking a while to update my blog/twitter: I was without internet access for several days while traveling, and then without electricity for 10 hour stretches when we made it to Gaza. We are trying to found a way around this by buying something akin to an internet data card.

In any case, I flew from Washington to London to Cairo, and thank God there were no complications ala 2009 there this time. I then took a taxi across Sinai, staying awake the entire way to keep my sleepy driver entertained. We had to stop just ahead of the Suez Canal for a few hours, which was shut down to allow several US naval ships passage (to where? one driver said towards Iran, as they did last month).

During this pause, I met a young Palestinian mother (originally from Lydd) who lives in Dubai. She was taking her 1 year old to Gaza to add him to her hawia (Israeli-issued Gaza ID), as I was doing with Noor. However because he had only a “temporary” Palestinian Authority passport issued to him by the Palestinian embassy (with their limited authority) in the UAE, the Egyptians would only grant him a 7 day visa “under security surveillance” (seriously, it said that in his visa, I saw it! ” تحت السيطرة الأمنية ” ).

We made it to Arish by morning, where I joined forces with Yousuf, Noor and my parents. The next day we drove to the border, which has been open on a regular basis for several weeks now (note: the border is still closed to all non Gaza ID card-carrying Palestinians, to foreigners, and generally to everyone else with rare exceptions).

The border was a breeze-the first time in my life I remember it being so easy (which goes to show that, no surprises, if it was open on a regular basis like most airports and border crossings are, there would be no backlog and jam; also shows that the policy of closure beforehand was very much intended as collective punishment). The Hamas-run Palestinian side of the crossing, now void of EU observers or Presidential guard (just “border security”) was incredibly organized and smooth. But then, the problem has always been being able to actually reach the terminal, what with all the Egyptian/ Israeli restrictions on who gets to travel and when. People seem happy with the internal security situation-one of the only issues around which people seem to agree.

As we drove from Rafah to Gaza City, Yousuf kept asking when “we’d reach Gaza” and why there weren’t any traffic lights

Amazingly, he also jumped for cover every time he heard firecrackers going off, worried they might be shelling.

I have yet to re-orient myself and adjust my schedule to the long electricity outages. At night, our street turns into one large noisy orchestra of generators. They comes in all shapes and sizes, and power everything from shops to pharmacies to homes.

Its summer here, school’s out and summer camps are winding to a close as Ramadan nears. The humid heat burns your eyes at times.

As I upgrade my internet, I hope to be posting much more videos and photos, so stay tuned !

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