“Welcome to Gaza” written on a bullet-ridden sign is what greets on entering the strip, after 100 yards of no-man’s-land which separates Israel from Palestine territory, the first world from the last. Behind me I leave a modern border station with air conditioning, where, before going on, I had to sign a waiver which absolves the State of Israel from any responsibility “in case of death, injury and/or material damage related to military activities”, probably as a consequence of the lawsuits brought by the relatives of the cameraman James Miller and of the two young members of the International Solidarity Movement, Rachel Corrie and Tom Hurndall.
The first two having been killed and the last seriously injured by Israeli soldiers while they were trying to report life in the ghetto of Gaza and acting as human shields with their bodies to protect Palestine families and homes.
One of the young Israeli soldiers on duty at the border, a blonde-haired Norwegian Jew, had told me that he was unsure as whether to stay in Israel or to go back to Norway like his parents had already done, “because it was less violent there”.
On the Palestine side I am met by a PNA militia member sitting in a rusty container. He nonchalantly leafs through my passport and tells one of the taxi drivers to take me to Gaza City. The taxi driver’s name is Ahmed Al Salah and he wants to invite me to his home, but considering the short amount of time we have, we just stop to have a glass of mint tea in a bar along the way.
Between one puff and another from a narghile, the Arab water pipe, he vents his rage against the Western World and against those who have “forgotten about the Palestinians”. When I ask him if he agrees with the human bomb strategy or if he thinks that they have damaged the image of the Palestinian struggle, Ahmed cuts me short saying: “We didn’t ask for occupation and it is our right to fight it.
If we had F16 bombers, Apache helicopters and tanks we would not deploy suicide bombers. We love life too and we would like to live in peace”. He does not think that there is a solution to the conflict, at least for the time being.
Even in Tel Aviv, Jerusalem, Ramallah and Hebron they are sceptical about the possibility of long lasting peace, even after Sharon’s historical commitment to an Independent Palestinian State. Hopes have been quashed too many times in the past. Not even the Israelis believe it any more, they have seen promises for peace vanish into the desert air too many times before.
After the war on Iraq, the United States have widened their sphere of influence in the Middle East area and the Palestinians, who lost an important ally in Saddam, are reconsidering their violent strategy against Israel. It is still too early to be celebrating peace: Sharon might find himself under severe pressure from Washington, or he might try to bide his time, waiting for the next suicide attack so that he can increase the stakes on the negotiating table.
He has no interest in making concessions, and the Palestinians, after the boomerang effect of the human bombs, the loss of its ally Iraq, the threatening messages to Syria, the bloody repression on the field and the imposition of the leader desired by the west, Abu Mazen, are more desperate than ever and ready for anything in order to not loose their cause.
Translated by interpres sas
