Gaza Mom

Midnight breadmaking in Gaza

Laila El-Haddad — Mon, 26 Jul 2010 02:21:06 +0000

Click To Play

Here’s a short clip of a young Palestinian man hand-tossing and baking traditional Palestinian Taboon bread on a griddle around midnight. ; Around him one can hear a symphony of generators, which power basic appliances during 8 hour rotating electricity cuts. At night residents of the city escape outdoors to beat the suffocating indoor heat until the electricity comes back on.

Incidentally, after this visit, Yousuf thinks he’s a dough tossing expert-and has managed to knock down two cups, one vase, one pot…and the list goes on

My other project: the Gaza Kitchen

Laila El-Haddad — Fri, 23 Jul 2010 22:19:40 +0000

Madrid-based journalist Maggie Schmitt and myself are working on a new book project with Just World Publishing tentatively titled The Gaza Kitchen. Its will include stories and recipes from the Gaza Strip, but goes further to explore the influence of migration patterns, refugee glows, politics, and siege on Gaza’s cuisine. For those familiar with my ~~obsession with all things food related~~ work you know this is a long time coming!

Here is the still nascent website with an introduction to the book: http://gazakitchens.wordpress.com/

The Shalit Sweepstakes

Laila El-Haddad — Fri, 23 Jul 2010 21:44:20 +0000

Also known as “Who Wants to a Millionaire!” : Gaza edition.

The Shin Bet has taken to calling Palestinian land lines on a daily basis with a prerecorded audio message asking people: “Do you want to become a millionaire? Well now you can! And no annoying TV hosts or suspense involved! You don’t have to be smart-in fact its probably better that you’re not because you have to be a dumbass to take this message seriously! It can be your destiny, like the kid from Slumdog millionaire! All you have to do is provide us with information leading to the release of Gilad Shalit, and you can have your share of 10 million dollars! Yes you!”

OK, so I editorialized a bit. But you get the picture (the first and last parts are actually true).

Apparently this has been going on for some time now. My father, who was visiting the US and with whom I just returned to Gaza, told me he heard the same message repeating itself over a year ago. I’ll try to record it next time I heard it for blog documentation purposes, and then maybe, for a new “Shin Bet punk’d” along the lines of this brilliant piece of activism from the days of Cast Lead.

In Gaza

Laila El-Haddad — Fri, 23 Jul 2010 10:06:36 +0000

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 !

Gaza bound

Laila El-Haddad — Fri, 16 Jul 2010 13:31:54 +0000

Well, by now I should have been writing this message from Gaza-or at the very least from Egypt. However not surprisingly my plans have been postponed yet again, this time due to an “IT malfunction” in the computer system of the British Consulate in NY, who require I go through a ridiculously cumbersome procedure to obtain a transit visa so I can fly through Heathrow Airport. Don’t ask.

That said, my passport was set to arrive one day later than my flight, and we were faced with the prospect of canceling our entire trip. Instead, we decided to send our kids along with their grandparents to wait for me in Egypt (they are now in Arish by the border) as the airlines suggested it would be easier to find a single seat than 3 seats when re-booking.

And off they went. I spent an ulcer-inducing day of uncertainty-being told I couldn’t get my ticket refunded, re-booked, or even rerouted and that there were simply no seats on the Cairo flights from Heathrow on BA. Good ‘ol BA, gotta love ‘em (incidentally, since my post several years ago “I complain, therefore I am” they have now added “Palestinian Occupied Territory” to their drop-down menu of “countries”).

Finally, through some small miracle and lots of du’a, the travel agent was able to convince a woman at the airlines to refund my ticket and rebook me at the earliest for Sunday evening while charging me a nominal fee (ok…more like $500…but I’ll try to forget that part).

More updates as I travel, inshallah. There is yet the obstacle of getting past Cairo Airport, though I am armed with a multiple exit re-entry visa this time, one can never be certain.

Israel & Apartheid South Africa: my interview with Sasha Polakow-Suransky

Laila El-Haddad — Tue, 29 Jun 2010 16:18:21 +0000

Sasha Polakow-Suransky, a senior editor at Foreign Affairs, poured through 7,000 pages of never-before-seen classified South African documents while researching his book, Israel’s Secret Relationship with Apartheid South Africa.

In it, he relays the minutes and details of conversations between top level officials on both sides that shed light on the extent and nature of Israel’s cooperation with and enabling of South Africa’s Apartheid regime, both in military and non-military matters.

It was a relationship that benefited both sides: South Africa acquired vital components from Israel to help advance its nuclear programme, while sharing their knowledge and components with Israel as it pursued its own nuclear ambitions.

An excerpt:

I discovered that the real story here is not so much money or the exchange of tritium and yellowcake uranium but that South Africa responded to an Israeli request to release safeguards which essentially stopped this uranium from being used for military purposes and agreed to lift safeguards which essentially allowed the Israeli to use it in Dimona [Israel's nuclear research centre] for their nuclear programme.
That is the most important and revealing thing in the book.
…
The most interesting part of this is how the Israelis advised South Africa on selling itself to the West.

There are documents from the South African foreign ministry archive detailing conversations between South African diplomatic officials and Israeli visitors, with Israelis saying things like “make them think there is an agreement” and “you must be hypocritical in order to survive”.

There’s another conversation with a knesset member who talks about using Israeli-Arabs and Druze to go and sell Israel’s story to the world and how South Africa should send some “happy blacks” to sell their image.
…

A map of South Africa's former Bantustans alongside the modern-day occupied West Bank (maps from the book, image photoshop mine)
If you look at the maps in the book, on a map of Israel, you see a series of noncontiguous Palestinian enclaves around the West Bank that are cut up by Israeli-only access roads, the wall weaving in and out, and also Jewish settlements in between everywhere cutting up this territory and making the possibility of a viable and contiguous Palestinian state in the future much less likely.

Read the rest here:

http://english.aljazeera.net/focus/2010/06/201062274848326213.html

Gaza bound!

Laila El-Haddad — Fri, 18 Jun 2010 03:12:44 +0000

I’m happy to announce after a 3 year exile, it looks like the kids and I will inshallah be heading to Gaza next month and staying through September. Of course all tentative, but if all goes as planned (which as experience shows is seldom the case!) we leave in a few weeks. It seems post-flotilla, the Egyptian government has somewhat eased its restrictions on allowing Palestinians into Cairo and the besieged beyond. Although as we also know, policies can change in an instant with no rationale.

If we do make it, besides lots of reportage, I plan to work on my second book in cooperation with a fellow Madrid-based journalist- Gaza: a culinary journey.

Stay tuned!

Roger Waters on Gaza: We Shall Overcome

Laila El-Haddad — Mon, 07 Jun 2010 13:30:29 +0000

Roger Waters of Pink Floyd fame was moved to record this version of We Shall Overcome after the act of Israeli piracy off Gaza’s coast. The piece and the accompanying images are moving, and remind us all to stand together in the face of Israeli oppression, occupation, and now piracy. In the words of Desmond Tutu, “In the world, you have very bad people…and they look like they are going to win. All of them–all of them–have bitten the dust.”

In his own words:

“Over the new year 2009-2010, an international group of 1500 men and women from 42 nations went to Egypt to join a Freedom March to Gaza. They did this to protest the current blockade of Gaza. To protest the fact that the people of Gaza live in a virtual prison. To protest the fact that a year after the terror attack by Israeli armed forces destroyed most of their homes, hospitals, schools, and other public buildings, they have no possibility to rebuild because their borders are closed. The would be Freedom Marchers wanted to peacefully draw attention to the predicament of the Palestinian population of Gaza. The Egyptian government, (funded to the tune of $2.1 billion a year, by us, the US tax payers), would not allow the marchers to approach Gaza. How lame is that? And how predictable! I live in the USA and during this time Dec 25th 2009-Jan3rd 2010 I saw no reference to Gaza or the Freedom March or the multi national protesters gathered there. Anyway I was moved, in the circumstances, to record a new version of ” We shall overcome”. It seems appropriate.

Roger Waters

Many thanks to G.E Smith: lead guitar and Thor Jonsson, drum programming and whatever. Thanks guys!!!

PS. 3rd June 2010

And now piracy!!!!!!!

US Navy being sent to Israel

Laila El-Haddad — Fri, 04 Jun 2010 23:09:42 +0000

I’m not in the habit of reporting hearsay, but this one comes from the source itself. A confidential source just told me that a US Naval Officer he spoke with told him they just received sudden word today that they (the US Navy or contingents thereof) are being deployed to Israel next week. The timing obviously suggests the deployment is related to the flotilla debacle, but what purpose their deployment serves is anyone’s guess (well certainly not mine, since I’m not a maritime expert). Perhaps deploying off Iran’s coast along with the Israeli nuclear missile subs under the cover of worldwide protest over and distraction by the flotilla?

A colleague offers another possibility:

“Obama has made a deal with Netanyahu that Israel will “ease” its blockade of Gaza on condition that the US monitor Gaza’s coastline and inspect all cargo ships. The object of the exercise here for the US and Israel is to keep Gaza under tight control but defuse the humanitarian issue. Normalize conditions just enough so that they can quiet the international ruckus. It might “work” — from their point of view. Cynical bastards.”

BDS: global call to action

Laila El-Haddad — Fri, 04 Jun 2010 17:18:50 +0000

Occupied Palestine, 1 June 2010 – The Palestinian Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions National Committee (BNC) strongly condemns last night’s fatal attack by the Israeli navy on the Gaza Freedom Flotilla carrying humanitarian aid to the occupied and besieged Gaza Strip.

In response, the BNC calls on international civil society to:

* Mobilize for an emergency Global BDS Day of Action on Saturday 5 June 2010 — the 43rd anniversary of the Israeli occupation of Gaza and the West Bank, including East Jerusalem
* Pressure governments to start implementing trade sanctions and arms embargos
* We call specifically on transport and dock workers and unions around the globe to: Refuse to load/offload Israeli ships and airplanes, following the historic example set by the South African Transport and Allied Workers Union (SATAWU) in Durban in February 2009 and endorsed by the Maritime Union of Australia (Western Australia).

Israel’s impunity is the direct result of the international community’s failure to hold it accountable for its ongoing occupation, colonization and apartheid against the Palestinian people. Israel’s most recent war crimes committed in Gaza and documented in the Goldstone report as well as crimes committed in 2006 against the Lebanese people did not trigger any UN or official sanctions, entrenching Israel’s feeling of being above the law. In fact, Israel’s grave violation of international law was recently rewarded when the OECD voted unanimously to accept its membership. The BNC urges international civil society to end this deep and fatal complicity.

The BNC also welcomes and affirms the call of the UN expert on human rights Prof. Richard Falk who stated,

“It is time to insist on the end of the blockade of Gaza. The worldwide campaign of boycott, divestment, and sanctions against Israel is now a moral and political imperative, and needs to be supported and strengthened everywhere.”[1]

The BNC also calls on people of conscience and citizen groups all over the world to intensify BDS campaigns against Israel as the most effective means of holding it accountable to international law and ending its fatal impunity.

For action ideas and updates, please see: http://bdsdayofaction.net/

Complete press release, including contact information for coordination of action, go here:

http://www.bdsmovement.net/?q=node/710