Letters from Palestine (37 page)

That was the state of things when I left for
Palestine. What happened after that, Zohair will tell you in his
own words.

* * *

As a Palestinian from the Gaza Strip, I could
not have been more proud to learn in June 2008, that I had earned a
prestigious Fulbright Scholarship to study in the United
States.

As a child, I would wonder how televisions,
computers, and other electronic devices actually worked. I took
this fascination to the Islamic University of Gaza, the only Gazan
university offering a degree in electrical engineering. There, I
developed an ECG-monitoring system that enables patients’ hearts to
be monitored at home through a personal computer and an Internet
link. I won the university prize for distinguished projects for my
innovation. I long dreamed of the other advances I might make after
an education at the University of Connecticut, where I was
scheduled to study last fall for a master’s degree in electrical
engineering.

Now, my dream has been stolen from me. I am
devastated; my parents heartbroken. Though Israel withdrew its
settlers from the Gaza Strip in 2005, it still controls our borders
and determines who and what enters or exits. Since a 2006 election
that brought a Hamas majority to the Palestinian Legislative
Council, Israel has steadily diminished access into and out of
Gaza. More than 250 Palestinians died in the past year because they
could not leave to obtain medical care they desperately needed.
Food, fuel, and medicine are scarce. Hundreds of students like me,
with scholarships to study abroad, are being arbitrarily denied the
right to leave Gaza to fulfill our educational aspirations.

A few months ago, when I went to the Erez
checkpoint between Gaza and Israel, I was told by the Israeli
official that I could not leave unless I provided information about
my neighbors, colleagues, and relatives. I refused. My conscience
and my people’s right to freedom and equal rights mean more to me
than even the finest education.

U.S. officials came to my aid. They held
special visa interviews along the Israeli-Gaza border for me and
two other Fulbright scholars in a similar position. The U.S.
granted my visa. Once again, I could imagine taking my seat in a
lecture hall in America. I packed my bags, bought souvenirs for my
future friends in America, and bade farewell to my family.

Then came a phone call that changed
everything. My American visa had been revoked based on “secret
evidence” provided by Israel. I cannot see the evidence and so have
no opportunity to contest it.

I was not at all prepared to give up my
ambitions. I worked very hard and earned another full scholarship
to the U.K. to study in one of the best universities in the world,
Imperial College London. I got the British visa last September, but
my travel plans still needed a miracle to occur so that Rafah
borders would open.

The good news came on September 21 when the
Rafah border opened, so I grabbed my luggage, brimming with hope
that I would finally be able to take my seat beside other
international students in one of the Imperial College halls. I
approached Rafah and stayed there for about twenty-four hours in
no-man’s-land. I spent a whole day and night there waiting for my
bus to come. It never did. Only three buses were allowed, and I was
in the twelfth. There I recognized the fact that I am different
from my international colleagues at Imperial who have already
started their study last October while I was still stranded in the
hell that is the Gaza Strip.

A month after studies started at Imperial,
the borders opened again. But I was informed that I could not
engage in studies if I missed the two-week arrival limit set by the
university. However, I was in contact with the student union, which
convinced my university to extend the limit for me since I was
living on “another planet” and had an odd case. When I heard that,
I became indescribably happy and did not think twice. Again I
approached the Rafah crossing, only to spend another day and night
there before I was sent back home with more than four hundred
students for no reason. Imperial deferred my study to the next
year, and I submitted to the de facto situation.

What troubles me most, however, is not my
own personal plight, but the effect this experience has had on my
talented younger brother. After watching what I had endured as an
innocent and politically unaffiliated student, he has concluded
that he will no longer pursue the educational dream outside of Gaza
he once held. His horizons are closing.

As an older brother, from a family that
places deep value on education, as all Palestinian people do, it
pains me to see his own ambitions falter because of the injustice I
was facing.

I wonder what hopelessness all children in
Gaza suffer when they learn that Gaza’s best students are confined
by Israel to the cramped Gaza Strip? How are they to succeed when
their parents discover local stores are empty of pencils, pens, and
notebooks because of the harsh blockade of our small parcel of
land?

Hope shone again last December when a
British academic delegation visited Gaza on the
Dignity
, one
of the boats which were being sent to Gaza by a U.S.-based movement
called Free Gaza Movement to break the siege. They came to Gaza to
visit the academic institutions and get to know the situation of
the academic system under siege. They were aware of the Gazan
students’ difficulties of not being able to fulfill their eagerness
to get education abroad, and they intended to get out as many
students as possible on their return from Gaza to Cyprus.

As a student with a very well-known story
who had lost his Fulbright and was about to lose a second
Scholarship in U.K., I was selected to travel on
Dignity
with another ten students to different destinations. After a
fourteen-hour, very tough voyage, the boat landed on Larnaca
Seaport, Cyprus. I could not believe that at last I was away from
the prison of Gaza, that I was now set free and would travel to my
university with no problems. How amazing that moment was, a moment
that made me forget all the pain and fatigue I had endured on deck
to reach this point. I even forgot all the difficulties and
disappointments I had faced in the past months. In that moment, all
I was thinking of was that I was free.

I spent three days in Cyprus before I flew
to London. There, a professor from the delegation and a student
from the student union were waiting for me at Heathrow Airport.
They welcomed me and helped me in finding a place to stay. They
were more than kind and friendly and really made me feel at
home.

But as usual, the Israeli occupation state
stole my happiness. Ten days after arriving in London, I woke up to
watch the news, only to find that a very inhumane and
indiscriminate war had been launched on the Gaza Strip. I tried to
contact my family but I hardly could. I tried again and again until
I succeeded. They were all fine, and the aggression was away from
my neighborhood. I was relieved to know that and was hoping and
praying that the war would end soon. But it was escalating rapidly,
and the heartbreaking images of the victims were broadcast on TV.
At that time, I wished I were in Gaza again with my family and not
living in this peaceful calm city while my people in Gaza were
being massacred in cold blood. I could hardly live during those
days and nights. Anyway, the first thing made my heart bleed was to
see the news of my university hit by U.S.-made F-16s. It was
bombarded by tons and tons of explosives. The tears escaped my eyes
after I saw my dearest laboratories where I spent six years
learning and then teaching. It was a massive event for which I will
never forgive Israel.

_PHOTO

Islamic University after the Israeli
bombing

Days passed, and the situation and my ability
to contact the family in Gaza became more difficult . . . until I
received a text from them asking me to call them for urgent news.
My heart stopped beating, and I was afraid to make that call. I was
wondering what kind of urgent news is this. I collected my courage
and phoned them; again I could hardly succeed in getting through.
Five of my close cousins were massacred while they were staying at
home. Eight other members of my family were injured, some
critically hurt and transferred to Egypt to get treatment. My home
was also hit in the war, but thank God my family escaped it
beforehand and were already living with my married sister when the
bombs destroyed it.

_PHOTO

Two of Zohair’s brothers survey the wreckage
of their home

The war ended, but the siege is still
imposed, and nothing will improve until the Palestinian people are
treated as human beings with the right of self-determination,
freedom of education, freedom of movement, and every other right
most people in the world enjoy. There are still hundreds of
Palestinian students in Gaza hoping for a miracle to happen so that
they can pursue scholarships that may offer them a
once-in-a-lifetime escape from ignorance and poverty. We are
determined not to be rendered a dependent people lacking advanced
education.

And yet the silence of the world suggests
that Israel will succeed in keeping us within the limiting confines
of Gaza. Perhaps the students of the world will think of me and my
fellow Palestinian students as the academic semester begins because
the students of Gaza long to be with them.

February 8, 2009.

You have already read several selections that
refer to conditions in Gaza since an Israeli blockade was imposed
in 2006. In this section, you will read some firsthand accounts
from people living in Gaza who describe in some detail the terrible
hopelessness and agonizing daily hardships that result from years
of living under these cruel conditions. However, to set a context
for what follows, I will make use of a letter here, written by a
physician in Gaza, which provides something of a larger view of
just what exactly the people in Gaza had to try to cope with during
this time, particularly in regard to medical and health issues. The
letter itself was written seven weeks before the Israeli attack,
which began on December 27, 2008, and lasted three weeks.

As of this writing (October 2009), the siege
continues in full force and is even worse in many respects because
of all the damage and loss of life that was sustained during the
Israeli invasion. Now, here is the physician’s letter:

* * *

Anyone who is monitoring the quality of life
in the Gaza Strip, which has been under a tightened eighteen-month
siege, will be shocked by the catastrophic humanitarian situation.
Unemployment rate has risen to 80 percent, and the majority of the
population is living far below the poverty line on one or two
dollars a day. As a concerned medical professional, I would like to
draw your attention to some harsh aspects of life for the civilian
population in Gaza:

First, there are tremendous health problems,
which threaten people with either death or lifelong disability.
There is a severe shortage in medicine and medical equipment.
Hospital maintenance and upgrades for X-ray rooms, labs,
pharmacies, and operating rooms are desperately in need of
attention. People with chronic and serious illnesses such as cancer
or diabetes do not stand a chance for recovery or receiving the
appropriate treatment. Since June 2007, 257 persons have died due
to the inability to receive medical treatment. Many seniors and
children with chronic illnesses, such as two-year-old Said
Al-Ayidy, three-month-old Hala Zannoun, fifteen-year-old Rawan
Nassar, and numerous others, died because they were denied travel
permits for treatment and were simply left to die.

Hospitals in Gaza are anything but what
hospitals should look like. Daily power cuts for long hours have
caused immense suffering, especially to patients whose lives depend
on medical machinery. Hospitals used gas-powered generators as
substitutes. Yet, because of the Israeli-imposed blockage, the
generators no longer serve their purpose due to the lack of gas and
diesel, and the problem has escalated.

Sadly, the only opportunity that patients
with serious diseases have is to be transferred either to Egypt or
Israel. Often, it is extremely complicated and next to impossible
to obtain permission to be transferred to either country. Many are
barred from even considering treatment outside of Gaza except for a
few urgent cases. Many patients have died while waiting for the
official documents to be issued; others have died on their way to
Israel or Egypt. Hospitals have been turned into places where
patients sleep for several days without any healing or proper
treatment due to the absence of drugs and medical equipment. Such
supplies are not allowed to cross into Gaza from the commercial
border points due to Israeli closure of such borders.

Second, we face another serious problem:
sewage and pollution. We live in a densely populated area. The
people of Gaza live in poor shantytowns, refugee camps, and crowded
neighborhoods, which share fragile and inadequate infrastructure.
Lack of a fuel supply stops the water pumps that deal with the
treatment and sanitation of sewage water. The only solution that
the city has is to drain the sewer water into the Mediterranean. As
a result, the beaches have been polluted, and the fishing season
has been significantly damaged.

On rainy winter days, the streets and homes
are flooded with water, and the already bumpy and unpaved roads
become even worse. Sewer pipes often burst and get damaged due to
inadequate infrastructure and lack of maintenance and repair. Dirty
and toxic water is flooding out from broken pipes into streets and
homes. In some refugee camps, the floods were so severe that people
were forced to assemble primitive boats and float over the water.
In Jabalia refugee camp, where I work as a physician in a United
Nations clinic, people have increasingly reported illnesses and
sickness due to exposure to toxic air and chemical wastes.