Ehud Olmert has just announced that Israel will begin a unilateral ceasefire in Gaza at 2AM. I don’t believe him. Israel has announced unilateral ceasefires every day for the past two weeks, but it continues killing and bombing.

The announcement was made in a press conference so full of lies and distortions that I felt I was listening to George W. Bush speak about the invasion of Iraq. He stuck to the same Israeli talking points that we have heard over and over again since this massacre began, the same talking points that have been torn to shred by the news reports of what is actually going on in Gaza. Olmert looked like a fool, unbelievably out of touch with reality, but I doubt he cares. He was speaking to his public, a public that has been enthusiastically cheering on the slaughter of hundreds of civilians in Gaza over the past three weeks, a public so out of touch with reality themselves that they believe dropping one million kilograms of explosives from the air alone on the most densely populated area on earth is part of their moral, noble war. A public so deluded by conspiracy theories and exaggerated victim-hood that they believe Palestinians are forcing the Israeli army to kill their children, because there is no way Israel would ever do that by choice. A public so caught up in its self-righteousness that it sees the killing of 1,200, maiming of 6,000 and utter destruction of a refugee camp ghetto as necessary and laudable, without ever questioning its own role in the carnage.

Olmert told his public that his military had dealt a crippling blow to Hamas. Yet Hamas continues to fight his military, and its popularity, both in Palestine and in the world, has never been higher. He said that his military had control of the sites where Palestinians fighters launch their home-made rockets over the border into Israel. Yet the rockets have never stopped. He told his public that Hamas never expected such a forceful assault. I doubt any sane human on earth ever expected such a horrific bloodthirsty rampage, an insane attack on a besieged, impoverished, refugee population, a barbaric war utilizing millions of kilograms of explosives, of white phosphorous munitions, of chemical weapons against the most densely populated place on earth.

Olmert continued prattling on with his disproved talking points, calling Hamas an extension of the Iranian regime – a claim about as outrageous as Iraq’s connection to the attacks of September 11th, and one designed only to demonize everybody in Gaza so that the horrors they have been forced to live with for decades are accepted by the rest of the world.

Olmert told his ignorant public that Israel had achieved all of its goals in Gaza. How they can believe this particular lie is beyond me. In launching this war, Olmert declared Israel’s goals to be the destruction of Hamas and an end to Palestinian rocket fire. They are nowhere near achieving those aims.

Olmert revealed that he had spoken to Hosni Mubarak today, and they had agreed to this unilateral ceasefire. He made it clear that Hamas (i.e. the authority in Gaza) would not be included in such an agreement. Olmert’s stupidity shines through again. He wants an agreement on Gaza without including Gaza.

He also revealed that Britain, Italy, Germany, and France wanted to join the United States in stopping weapons smuggling into Gaza. That is just breathtaking. The world’s top economic and military powers are joining forces to patrol the border of one of the poorest and weakest territories on earth, rather than banding together to take a stance against the continued dispossession and oppression of Gaza’s refugees.

When Olmert reiterated the most persistent, and the most shameful, of those false talking points, I felt sick. He said that Israel was not targeting Palestinian civilians in Gaza, that Israel had no problem with the people of Gaza. I had just gotten off the phone with three different members of my family in Gaza. All had had their homes destroyed by Israel over the past three weeks. All knew people who had been killed by Israel over the past three weeks. All were suffering unimaginable trauma. Israel not only targeted Palestinian civilians in their homes and businesses and neighborhoods. It targeted them in their places of worship, it targeted them in ambulances, it targeted them in hospitals, it targeted them in UN schools that had been turned into makeshift refugee camps. Israel had made sure there was no square inch in Gaza that felt safe. It pounded Gaza from the air, from the ground, and from the sea. It has used machine guns, tanks, helicopters, fighter jets, drones, chemical weapons, incendiary weapons, prototypical weapons, banned weapons. For a year and a half before this war, it has barred foodstuffs, fuel and medicines from entering Gaza in minimally sufficient amounts, so that more than 260 people died due to a lack of medical equipment and Gazans were baking bread using animal feed.

Israel has always targeted Palestinian civilians, because the biggest threat to Zionist colonization is Palestinian society.
I woke up in the late afternoon because I had finally gone to sleep at noon today. My uncle Mohammad had sent me a picture on my mobile phone of a baby with big blue eyes and light brown hair in a red sweater eating an orange. At first, I thought it was his daughter Haya; it looked exactly as I remembered her. But the last time I had seen Haya was 4 years ago. I figured it must be Yazeed, his baby son. The picture made me smile. Only yesterday, we had been terrified that Yazeed, his parents. and siblings were dead as Israeli tanks were laying siege to Tal al-Hawa, where they lived. The picture seemed like a confirmation that they were still alive, that the baby’s life had not ended it before it had had a chance to begin.

But 15 other people were not as lucky today, killed by Israeli airstrikes and gunfire, bringing the total number of Palestinians killed over the past 3 weeks to an inconceivable 1,270. It is a staggering number, one that will sometimes roll off the tongue with ease yet stop you in your tracks at the same time. Palestinian medics were reporting that some of the dead and wounded were being found with their flesh burned to the bone. Gaza is being used by the Israelis to test the most horrific weapons of war. Prototypical DIME munitions that slice through limbs had meant that a large number of the approximately 5,000 Palestinians injured had lost limbs. Whatever Olmert’s insincere ceasefire means, Gaza will be left with thousands of cripples, and many tens of thousands suffering from the psychological trauma of this unending war.

Imad Eid, al-Manar TV’s Gaza correspondent, looked visibly shaken as he recounted, live on air, what he had gone through today. His apartment is also in Tal al-Hawa, but he had been amongst those who had fled earlier and avoided the terror of two nights ago. He had returned today after the Israeli tanks had pulled back, to assess the damage done to his home. He described the scene of utter destruction, of the buildings with gaping holes in them, of glass and mortar carpeting the streets and floors. When he reached his apartment, he found the door open (many had been blown open by the force of the explosions) and crossed the threshold to find a young girl, 14 years old, bleeding inside his home.

He had picked up the girl and rushed her downstairs towards an ambulance. She told him her name was Amira, and that she was sorry for entering his home, but she had nowhere else to go. She had been hiding with her brother and father when a missile had killed them, tearing them apart, and wounding her. She had crawled until she found Eid’s apartment, and lay there, bleeding, with nobody to help.

She was taken to the hospital and treated for her wounds. She had lost a huge amount of blood, but the doctors managed to save her. She had been reunited with her mother, who had thought Amira was dead. When the medics had recovered t
he bodies of her brother and father, they had found nothing but limbs and torn bodies. They were buried together, with the assumption that Amira was amongst the destroyed bodies. Her family had believed her to be dead.

I called my uncle Mohammad’s wife, Areej. When she picked up, we both started laughing. We hadn’t heard each other’s voices for three days, and in that time I had feared for her life. It’s strange to think how before this war began – before people began dying in the hundreds – Areej and I spoke once a year, if even that. But over the past few weeks, we had been talking almost every night, she pouring out her fears and terror and love for her family and dread over the phone, while I listened and did my pathetic best to alleviate her suffering. But it was so good to hear her voice.

She was staying with my aunt Najat in the tiny little home in the Shati’ refugee camp, the two women and their nine kids. Areej told me that, despite how cramped they were, she felt a lot better being with another family, with her kids having their cousins around. She began filling me in on some of the details of the other night that my uncle had missed out when he was telling me the story.

They had been in their own apartment when a shell had torn through the building, shattering the glass in the open windows and knocking down the doors. The wooden furniture had broken and fallen apart. The kids, who had been relatively calm up to that point even with the shelling around them, began screaming. They had tried to stay there for a while longer, but eventually went to their neighbor’s apartment on a lower floor. There they had huddled in a corner all day and night. It was too dangerous to move to go to the bathroom or get food or water. She told me she had spent the night praying, prostrated by her children, begging God to save them. It’s a miracle we got out alive, she said. Everything was destroyed. In the middle of the night, her youngest daughter, Dina, had asked for water to drink. The neighbor’s son had risked his life crawling to another apartment in the building to get the little girl something to drink. She told me she would always be grateful to him.

People had decided that it was safe to leave just after sunrise, when the shelling began to die down a bit. They began shouting at each other from the broken balconies and shattered windows, from building to building, each asking the other if the tanks were still around them or had backed off. Eventually, the neighborhood had decided that it would be better to leave, so they all streamed out at once. My uncle’s family walked to al-Shifa hospital, Areej lagging behind everyone else. I was exhausted, she said. I hadn’t eaten or slept in days. I don’t know how I got there. And the streets were empty except for other fleeing families, because the drones have been attacking people walking in the streets.

I told her how relieved and happy I was that they had escaped, how so many people, strangers, had been asking about them and praying for their safety. She told me she felt lucky so many people cared, because she had been certain that they would not get out alive. I asked about the kids. She told me they were doing okay. Being around their cousins was probably helping. But she was still finding it difficult to cope. You always have to put on a brave face for your kids, she said, but I just don’t want to anymore.

This is Gaza, where Israel does not target civilians.

I continued the conversation with my aunt Najat. I had not heard from her for two weeks, ever since I found out they had left their home because of the bombing. I told her I had tried calling her husband Tarek, a doctor at al-Shifa, several times, but he hardly picked up the few times I managed to get the call through. She told me they hardly saw him anymore. He is working in ER, and comes home for an hour or two at most every day. My aunt had always been the cheery type, always laughing and joking her way through any ordeal. But for the first time I heard a hard edge to her voice, a sarcastic bitterness that had never been there before. I asked her how things were tonight. She told me the F-16s were out in force. It seems like they had an early dinner tonight, she said, and they’ve come out to visit us earlier than usual. She told me it feels odd when the skies are empty of war planes. We stick our heads out of the window and look for them; I think they’ve made us stupid, she said.

When the electricity comes on, she continued sarcastically, we don’t know what to do with the extra light. It blinds us.
Life has gotten so tough, she told me. They cook over a gas lamp. The kids don’t leave the house. Her house has had its windows blown out. She told me about the day they had left. My aunt Najiya and her family had fled to her house because it was on the ground level. They had stayed there one night before the tanks came and they fled, on their feet, running and dodging behind walls with two of the girls, 12 year old Lamees and 19 year old Razan, screaming at every missile that was launched to ‘leave us alone’, until they came across an ambulance. They all piled into the vehicle, more than 10 people, and were driven to the Shati’ camp. She told us they had been counting themselves to see how many would die at once if Israel bombed the ambulance.
They had walked through the camp until they came to the old house. Najiya and her family had broken into the adjacent house, an empty home belonging to a relative in the United States. They had been living there for two weeks, and now were joined by my uncle Mohammad’s family. Everything is so tough, she told me, but somehow we keep going. People pull together. We don’t have anything, but we have each other. In Gaza, even strangers are pulling together to keep each other going. But things aren’t rosy. We all know that we can die at any moment. Even the kids know it, and say it.

This is the Gaza where Israel does not attack civilians.

I talked to my cousin Mosab next, Najiya’s son. He sounded depressed, not weary as he had been at times before, but despondent. He had been at al-Shifa for a few hours today, visiting wounded friends. Most of them had lost limbs-arms, legs, hands. Some were in intensive care. Many had died. He told me that since we had last talked, almost 3 quarters of the guys he knew from the neighborhood had been killed. One had been married only two months. Al-Shifa had been tough on him. Seeing so many young men now crippled, severely wounded, unable to lead normal lives even after this war finishes, had been very hard to take.

I told him I wish I could say something. He laughed bitterly. The words ran out a long time ago, he reminded me. I changed the subject and asked if they were comfortable where they were, but he answered about their real home: They bombed our house with three missiles, he said. It’s destroyed. I really want to go back to our neighborhood, just to see it. I miss it.

I asked again if they were comfortable. He told me it was okay. They had no power, no water. They had to fill up water in bottles from the local mosque to wash, bathe, cook and clean. But they had to go when the bombing calmed, because people had died walking in the street, even during the day.

This is Gaza, where Israel does not target civilians.

My final call was to my uncle Mohammad, who was staying in an apartment with other men who had dropped off their wives and children in safer places. He told me he wanted to sleep; he had gone to bed very early yesterday but hadn’t slept well. He had woken up many times in the night, worried. I asked him what it was that was waking him up. He said he was thinking of the future, of how much it would cost to repair their apartment, how long it would take, how long it would be before Tal al-Hawa went back to normal, if it ever would. When the schools reopened, where would his kids sleep? Where would they study? How long would they continue living apart? Would he be able to afford to rent in the mea
ntime? Would he be able to afford fixing his apartment? Was their building even salvageable?

This is Gaza. This is where people are bombed in their apartments, where they are bombed in the street, going to collect water.

This is where they are burned by white phosphorous as they shelter in each other’s homes. This is where the five Balousha girls are killed in their sleep, where the sixteen members of the Samouni family are murdered as they huddle together in their home, where girls like Amira crawl, wounded, through the rubble to get away from her father and brother’s mangled bodies. This is where 40 people are killed as they shelter in a UN school, where a hospital is burned with 500 patients and staff are inside, where food rations are burned when the UN headquarters is bombed, where 120 policemen are killed within minutes, where 14 paramedics are murdered as they attempt to save the wounded, where children starve for days by the bodies of their dead mothers. This is Gaza, where 1,200 men, women and children will die and the man who ordered their deaths can come out and lie, blatantly lie, about the reasons for their murder. This is Gaza, where the world conspires and colludes to pacify and neuter an oppressed, dispossessed population of refugees, rather than work together to end their plight. This is Gaza, where the people will not bow down to abuse, military might, or death.

Remember Gaza.

Related posts:

1. Gaza burning
2. Gaza: Where families die together
3. Gaza: Death is more common than sleep
4. Gaza: No sign of life
5. Gaza: What is there to say?