Gaza Mom

How Congress is crushing Palestine

Laila El-Haddad — Mon, 30 Jan 2012 21:57:48 +0000

A few weeks ago, I emailed an old friend in Gaza, a thirty something economist, to seek out his expertise. Years ago, when I was living in Gaza, he and I frequently exchanged thoughts on the situation, particularly during the frenzy of the Disengagement, and I always valued his opinion. That was then.

I was writing a side-bar on the economic situation for my forthcoming book, The Gaza Kitchen, and was trying to remember a phrase he had frequently used to describe the paradoxical way that the Palestinian economy as a whole, and particular in Gaza, functions, where aid dependence is nearly 80%, yet where prices on par with a developed country.

Was it “lopsided economy” I asked him in an email, a response to a “happy holidays” message he had sent out to all his friends?

His response, which had nothing -and everything-to do with my question, took me by surprise:

Hi Laila. Things haven’t been good in Gaza lately. I was laid-off work 2 months ago when the US Congress decided to freeze aid to the PA. So the US company I was working with laid-off 30 of its employees, and I was one of the unfortunate ones. The Gaza job market is still going through a dry spell. Imagine a market that does not produces more than 10 vacancies / month at best!

I am trying to apply outside Gaza, but opportunities without good connections and a foreign citizenship are very difficult to get. In 2009, I tried to renew my Egyptian residency and move out of Gaza for good. However, the Egyptian authorities denied my request. So I am left struggling here applying for whatever jobs there are even if they are a down-grade from where I used to be.

I hope that you, your husband and the kids are all well. Anyway, sorry to respond with a very gloomy email, and I still believe that one has to keep faith and try to survive the ups and downs of life.

Gaza is commonly associated with gloom, so the email, one might argue, should not have caught me by surprise. After all, two in three Gazans live in poverty; three-quarters of the population is food insecure or vulnerable, and roughly one-third of the work-force is unemployed-a figure that nearly doubles when one takes into account the youth, who make up more than half the population. 30, 000 people join their ranks every year.

In spite of this, the most secure have always been the urban elite (or else, one might argue, anyone with an excellent command of English and a fixer contract. Media is the one enterprise that seems to thrive in such dark times), but in particular those who work with the countless international organizations and NGOs, who increasingly over the past few years have come to rely on local hires.

Yet here is one of these so-called “western minded moderates”, to quote a frequent and favorite refrain of Congress, educated in Cairo’s American University,booted from his job as a direct result of this same Congress’s policies aimed at, what exactly? Punishing the PA for its statehood bid? For attempting to reconcile with Hamas? Or simply in deference to Israel, their masters?

The West Bank, the conventional thinking might go, is a different story: we have become accustomed to hearing glowing World Bank reports about how well Fayyad’s Ramallah is doing. Earlier today, I came across a TIME blog post which depicts a similarly gloomy outcast, one that many Palestinian analysts have argued was a long-time coming:

In a donor economy – which Palestine emphatically is – tides and waves are governed by the whims of distant overlords as much as by global finance. Since 2007, Washington has sent some $4 billion to the West Bank, intent on encouraging the moderate governance of PA President Mahmoud Abbas, whose secular Fatah party the militants of Islamist Hamas had just chucked out of Gaza. While Israel enforced a siege on the coastal strip in hopes of making Hamas less popular, the international community gushed dollars into Ramallah. Thus did the city just north of Jerusalem take on the look of a boom town, its hills stippled with construction cranes and flashy new restaurants, especially on the north end, where aid agencies and “non-governmental organizations” set up shop…the effort put money in the pockets of the educated, Western-oriented locals who worked there. Those are the people being laid off now.

I Complain, therefore I am

Laila El-Haddad — Mon, 12 Dec 2011 00:39:48 +0000

Just came back from Detroit where I attended the ADC-Michigan annual awards gala, during which I received the Literary Leadership Award for my work in Gaza Mom. During my allotted two minutes, I read a selection from the book with which many be familiar, called “I Complain, therefore I am”, from 2006 (and which first appeared in the Guardian).

At the time, I wasn’t yet aware of Newt Gingrich’s disgusting Palestinians-don’t-exist comments, but given the circumstances, re-posting my entry seems timely. As an aside, the [lack of] response to Gingrich’s comments is simply appalling, as was the thunderous applause he received when he unabashedly restated his beliefs during the Iowa Republican debate.

Well Newt, this piece is for you.

I’m fairly certain I exist.

Descartes tells me so, and before him, Ibn Sina. And when my son drags me out of bed to play with him in the pre-dawn hours, I really know I do.

So you can imagine how distraught I was when my existence was cast into serious doubt by a major airline.

After booking a flight online with British Airways out of Cairo (the nearest accessible airport for Palestinians here, eight hours and a border crossing away from Gaza), I attempted to enter my “passenger details”, including country of citizenship and residence.

Most people wouldn’t give this a second thought. But being the owner of a Palestinian Authority passport (which one can acquire only on the basis of an Israeli-issued ID card), I have become accustomed to dealing with Kafkaesque complications in routine matters.

And sure enough, in the drop-down menu of countries, I found the British Indian Ocean Territory, the Isle of Man and even Tuvalu – but no Palestine.

Now, I understand “Palestine” does not exist on any western maps, so I would have settled for Palestinian territories (though Palestinian bantustans may be more appropriate), Gaza Strip and West Bank or even Palestinian Authority, as my “pursuant to the Oslo accord”-issued passport states.

But none of these options existed. And neither, it seemed, did I.

I was confused. Where in the world is Laila El-Haddad if not in Palestine, I thought? Certainly not in Israel (as one of many customer relations representatives casually suggested).

I sent an email of complaint to BA humbly suggesting that they amend the omission. Several days later, the reply came: “We are unable to assist you with your query via email. Please call your general enquiries department on ba.com…then select your country from the drop-down list.”

Frustrated, I sent a follow-up email and was told to contact my “nearest general enquiries department” (if I was to take that literally, that would be Tel Aviv). Instead, I opted for customer relations in the UK, whose web support told me there was no guarantee I would ever get a definite answer.

I relayed the tale to my friend, whose own status as an east Jerusalemite is even more precarious than mine as a post-disengagement Gazan. “Could it be,” she posited, “that there is no definite answer because we aren’t considered definite people?”

I’ll leave that for British Airways to answer.

Gaza’s Food Heritage-in Saudi Aramco World

Laila El-Haddad — Sun, 20 Nov 2011 16:26:15 +0000

A bit tardy of me to only post this now-but have been insanely busy putting the finishing touches on the first draft of our book! If you happen to live near Madrid or DC, stop by for some of the fruits of our kitchen-testing! In the meantime, enjoy this article-the product of many months of hard work, published in Saudi Aramco World magazine. Consider it a prelude to our book!

As home to the largest concentration of refugees within historic Palestine, Gaza is an extraordinary place to encounter culinary traditions, not only from hundreds of towns and villages that now exist only in memory—depopulated and destroyed during the Palestinian exodus of 1948—but also from the rest of Gaza’s long history.

Through decades of conflict, families in Gaza have held to recipes and foodways as sources of comfort, pleasure and pride. Unable to control much else in their lives, Gazans are renowned for lavishing care and attention on food and family. Visiting kitchens up and down the Gaza Strip, talking to women about cooking and about life, offers lessons in the vital art of getting by with grace.

More here:

Saudi Aramco World : Gaza's Food Heritage.

Israel to legalize outposts as prisoner swap deal signed

Laila El-Haddad — Tue, 11 Oct 2011 20:36:44 +0000

The airwaves are abuzz with news of the Gilad Shalit/Palestinian prisoner swap, in which 1027 Palestinian prisoners will be released over two stages and several months in exchange for the release of soldier Gilad Shalit.

Among those to be released are prisoners serving life sentences, and all Palestinian women prisoners, as well as big names like PFLP’s Ahmed Saadat, and Marwan Barghouthi.

AJE analyst Marwan Bishara refers to many of those being released as the “lost faces of this conflict” because of the sheer length of time they have been serving sentences-some from before the signing of the Oslo Accord.

5000 or more Palestinian prisoners will remain in Israeli detention of course, many without charge, and conditions conditions continue to deteriorate on the ground. Criticism of the deal aside-the distraction it is causing from ongoing Israeli colonization and apartheid etc., the deal is being celebrated by at least some people: children have grown up without ever knowing their fathers. For the first time in decades, they will re-unite. Tactically, this deal was one both Hamas, and Netanyahu, badly needed. It was Hamas’s power play answer to Abbas’s UN statehood bid, though Hamas’s Meshal emphasized in a televised speech earlier today that this was not a factional, but a national, accomplishment.

Also today, overshadowed by news of the prisoner swap, was this bit of less headline making news: Netanyahu today announced has decided to form a spin committee that would find a way to legalize the construction of illegal settlement outposts on private Palestinian land.

In response, B’Tselem – the Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories, stated that the move will “render the Israeli government an active accomplice in the private land theft and dispossession of Palestinians” and labeled the committee a merely more blatant version of an already existing Israeli occupation policies: “manipulation of the law in order to lend a guise of legality to the settlement project. Until now, the government aided the theft of Palestinian land by turning a blind eye, by lack of law enforcement and, in some cases, by funding construction in outposts. ”

The formation of the committee means that the government will now become an active accomplice in the private land theft and dispossession of Palestinians: until now, the government aided the theft of Palestinian land by turning a blind eye, by lack of law enforcement and, in some cases, by funding construction in outposts.

Hunger Strike for Palestinian Prisoners

Laila El-Haddad — Tue, 11 Oct 2011 13:29:18 +0000

On Sept 27, several hundred Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails started a hunger strike to protest the conditions of their incarceration. They have made several key demands, including an end to abusive isolation, restrictions on higher education in prisons, denial of books and newspapers, shackling, excessive fines, and most importantly, an end to all forms of collective punishment, including the refusal of family visits, night searches of prisoners’ cells, and the denial of basic health treatment.

All freedom supporters around the world are called to join the prisoners with one day hunger strike, on Wednesday October 12th, when they will have entered their 16th day of hunger strike.

If you are joining, declare it: “On 12.10.11, I will be on hunger strike in support of Palestinian prisoners’ hunger strike since September, 27th”

يوم 12.10.11 انا مضرب\ة عن الطعام دعماً للأسرى الفلسطينيين، المضربين عن الطعام منذ 27 أيلول

Hashtag on twitter: #HS4Palestine

Some 8000 Palestinians are being held in Israeli prisons or detention centers by the Israeli army, including 370 minors and 103 Palestinian women, according to the Palestinian prisoner’s rights and support group, Addammeer.

Over 750 are held without charge or trial.

These are not hardened criminals we’re talking about folks. The overwhelming majority of Palestinian prisoners are regarded as political captives who have been arbitrarily imprisoned or detained under the broad banner of “security”, according to the Israeli human rights group B’tselem.

“If these same standards were applied inside Israel, half of the Likud party would be in administrative detention,” noted the group in a report.

Palestinians have been subjected to the highest rate of incarceration in the world-since the beginning of the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories in 1967, over 650,000 Palestinians have been detained by Israel-constituting some 20% of the total Palestinian population, and 40% of all Palestinian men.

According to Amnesty, Human Rights Watch, and B’tselem, their conditions of detention are extremely poor, with many prisoners suffering from medical negligence, routine beatings, position torture and strip searches.Since the beginning of this Intifada in September 2000, over 2500 children have been arrested.

Fore more information regarding Palestinian Prisoners, please see this IMEU fact sheet.

Dumb and dumber…

Laila El-Haddad — Thu, 22 Sep 2011 21:05:34 +0000

I intended this to be a post about Abbas’s statehood bid, the confusion surrounding it, how Palestinians have largely been left in the dark about it, the implications, the strategy, indeed the futility and stupidity, but how could anyone listen to what Obama had to say and not want to respond? He gave his much anticipated speech to the United Nation’s General Assembly Friday, in which he lambasted the forthcoming bid for Palestinian Statehood by the Palestinian Authority. And short of standing up on the podium and waving the Israeli flag and singing Hatkivah and calling for the transfer of the Palestinians, he did everything the pro-Zionist right could have hoped for.

“Quite an achievement for Obama to take up a position on the spectrum to the right of Ariel Sharon’s man Olmert” tweeted Ali Abunimah.

“Introducing President Barak Netanyau” joked Akiva Eldar.

Indeed, it was an I love Israel fest. And listening to the speech, you would have thought it was Israel who was under occupation (but that word was never mentioned; neither, for that matter, were settlements, which encroach ever deeper into Palestinians lands as we speak).

As far as Obama was concerned, Israel is our bestest fwend in the whole wide world and nothing, I mean nothing, is going to change that (in case we had any doubts). Heck, Israel could have been stashing a secret stockpile of nuclear weapons (their supposed vulnerability notwithstanding), could have been responsible for the largest rate of political incarceration in the world, for attacking its neighbors multiple times (that they are the ones “dedicated to Israel’s destruction” is another story) for violently colonizing and subjecting millions of people to apartheid policies for decades, for besieging and bombing a defenseless population and depriving them of their basic rights… Oh wait. They are responsible for all these things. Sometimes I wonder if Israel just decided to obliterate us all at once and spare us the slow, painful death of the past few decades if it would make any difference to the United States. But then we would only be blamed for forcing them to this point, for not cooperating, for not being civil when Jim Crow came to visit. One thing’s for sure, even if Israelis themselves eventually protested, American leadership will still be singing the praises of the racist friends that rule over them.

Israel’s ongoing siege: in their own words

Laila El-Haddad — Mon, 12 Sep 2011 18:44:58 +0000

New documents obtained by Israeli NGOs HaMoked, Israeli Physicians for Human Rights, and GISHA under the Freedom of Information Act reveal further details about how Israel’s COGAT decides-on a weekly basis-what items to allow in and out of Gaza, and what items to ban.

The big takeaway from this for those not already aware: That the Israeli siege on Gaza is a siege of the mind and soul, a siege that is starving people of their basic freedoms and of mental sustenance, not of food.

By way of example, Gaza is still closed off from the West Bank, where many people focus exclusively on the Rafah Crossing; the newly obtained documents reveal that while soccer players have been given the green light to travel from Gaza to the West Bank, students are specifically singled out for the ban. So, in fact, are books, textbooks, printing ink, and writing instruments…all subject o individual approval by COGAT. Yes, you read that right. Books and students are banned.

Chilling, isn’t it?

Check out Gaza Kitchens!

Laila El-Haddad — Sat, 27 Aug 2011 16:15:16 +0000

After a long absence, Maggie Schmitt and I are back updating our Gaza Kitchens blog, which will serve to both keep our readers up to date on the progress of our book (The Gaza Kitchen) and help us tweak the recipes we’ve collected. So please-check it out, test the recipes, give us your feedback! We’re happy to report we now have a publisher (Just World Books in partnership with OR books) and we hope the book will be out by mid 2012!

Buy Gaza Mom, give Eid gift, help Palestinian refugees!

Laila El-Haddad — Thu, 25 Aug 2011 19:59:49 +0000

As Eid ul Fitr approaches, many of us are in a last minute frenzy to find just the right gift for our loves ones in line with the Prophet pbuh’s tradition: “هادوا تحابوا ” or “Give gifts, and love one another”. So in an act of shameless self-promotion, might I propose my book, Gaza Mom: Palestine, Politics, Parenting, and Everything in Between? You can buy it right here on my blog via the link on the right hand side, through Paypal! Easy! As a triple-bonus (remember, I am giving you a great gift idea, and making your life easy ), part of the proceeds will go to assist Palestinian refugees in Syria, who have been gravely affected by ongoing brutality of the Asad regime there, via UNRWA’s Syria Emergency Appeal.

So go ahead and gift something you can feel good about!

Racism and the Israeli housing crisis

Laila El-Haddad — Sun, 14 Aug 2011 20:59:08 +0000

I tuned in to the end of this segment on the Kojo Namdi show, on WAMU’s 88.5 station (NPR), which featured as its guest Bernard Avishai, author of “The Hebrew Republic: How Secular Democracy and Global Enterprise Will Bring Israel Peace at Last” and former editor of the Harvard Business Review.

Nnamdi introduced the segment by suggesting that “Israel seems like a strange place to have an economic protest”, what with growth around 4% and its economy booming “making it unique in the region and, really, unique in the entire global economy” (later, a caller named Anne reminded listeners that U.S. tax dollars are actually subsidizing Israel to the tune of about $5,000 per Israeli citizen).

This same caller later brought up another paradox: that of the ever-expanding settlements.

Avishai’s response was telling and brought up a point that I had yet to hear discussed in connection with these protests (possibly because for many of us, it is so obvious): the racism of Israel’s housing crisis. Over 90% of Israeli land is government owned, much of that property stolen from Palestinians following 1948 and 1967 under its “absentee property” law. To privatize this land is to open it up to Palestinian ownership (though here, Avishai continually refers to the Palestinians as the Arabs).

“Housing, of course, is a big deal, but it also is telltale. “Housing is driven by the cost of land. Land is 90 percent controlled or owned by the government. For the Israeli government to privatize and auction off a good deal more land, that would drop housing costs substantially, they would be, in effect, giving up control over what Israeli governments have always been very careful about, namely, creating a sector in housing which was exclusive to Jews.

The danger for the Israeli right — people like Netanyahu — in privatizing land is that Arabs can gain a great deal more land for the expansion of Arab cities and Arab towns. So here is a perfect example of, you know, how far can the government go in creating a bettering of — in bettering the cost of living without providing a kind of lever for Israeli Arabs to expand their own towns and cities?

As far as the settlements are concerned, it is true that the Israeli right, right wing government, have kept the cost of housing low, or at least kept the boiling point around the lack of housing at a lower temperature, by sending lots of people off into the West Bank and into the occupied territories. This is one of the reasons why some settlers and some people in the settlement movement have joined these housing protests because they want to see the government spending a lot more on putting housing in occupied territory.

And this is the kind of thing that this young coalition, this young leadership of the coalition, has to decide. Are they going to say things that, in effect, put a red flag in front of the settlers and the Israeli right? Or are they going to say, hey, we’ve got to do this without expanding into the West Bank?”