Light in Gaza: Writings Born of Fire

Praise for Light in Gaza

"Light in Gaza is a strong, honest presentation of today’s Gazans, a necessary read that provides a good understanding of the humanity of the Palestinians in Gaza." —PALESTINE CHRONICLE

This book is rich in insights from Gazans living under Israel’s brutal siege as well as those living abroad. The editors and authors are determined to start a conversation about Gaza and to break the intellectual blockade imposed on it. From Jehad Abusalim’s introduction to the last word, these compelling works move from personal reflections to political and economic analysis. They capture the reader and pull them through a journey that is as uplifting as it is heartbreaking that it should have to be lived at all. It will not leave you unmoved and will reinforce your determination to strive for Palestinian freedom. —NADIA HIJAB, cofounder and honorary president, Al-Shabaka: the Palestinian Policy Network

"Because of Israel’s blockade, I’ve only been able to go to Gaza once. Everyone I spoke to there could tell me about the unimaginable hardship and trauma they’d experienced. But what stayed with me most was something I hadn’t expected: The unquenchable optimism and humor of Palestinians there. Reading Light in Gaza a decade after my visit brought that feeling flooding back. This brilliant, funny, inspiring collection of stories and essays by writers in Gaza was exactly what I needed to reinvigorate my hope and determination to work for a future that uplifts us all." —ALI ABUNIMAH, author of The Battle for Justice in Palestine

A must-read for anyone interested in learning about Gaza, from the Palestinians of Gaza themselves. Powerful and engaging. —LAILA ELHADDAD, coeditor of Gaza Unsilenced

"Gaza is often referred to as an ‘open-air prison,’ because it is so hard for messages, images or bodies to get out, or for resources to get in. Light in Gaza breaks through the prison walls and gives us a unique opportunity to hear and learn from those living under Israeli occupation in Gaza. Their voices are filled with pain, loss, frustration, anger, but most of all, hope. This powerful and beautifully crafted collection is one that readers must engage with heads and hearts wide open." —BARBARA RANSBY, historian, author, activist

An emotionally and intellectually sophisticated collection that is deep, processed and enlightening. —SARAH SCHULMAN, author of Let the Record Show

A book that embodies the central paradox all Gaza-watchers are aware of: while Israel—aided by Egypt and tolerated by the international system— constantly sharpens tools to control and brutalize Gaza, Gaza insists on its agency, its dignity and its imagination. Read these writings—literally ‘born of fire’—for the wealth and variety of their ideas and for their grounding of the aspirations and dreams of Palestinian Gazans. —AHDAF SOUEIF, author of Cairo: My City, Our Revolution

"Light In Gaza is essential reading, not least because it reflects the voice of a people who are routinely and egregiously robbed of their basic humanity. It also represents a profound challenge to anyone who reads it. One author asks, ‘Can a story or a poem change the mind? Can a book make a difference?’ The answer, as ever, is up to us all." —RABBI BRANT ROSEN, founding rabbi of congregation Tzedek Chicago

"As Mahmud Darwish wrote as early as 1973, ‘we do injustice to Gaza when we turn it into a myth.’ This is why Light in Gaza, through its insightful collection of essays and poems, offers such a unique picture of the Palestinian experience in a territory cut off from the world for a decade and a half." —JEAN-PIERRE FILIU, author of Gaza: A History

The poignant first-person essays in this wide-ranging anthology have the greatest and rarest of virtues: they are portraits—brave, tender, resilient— of life in Gaza by the people who actually live it. —NATHAN THRALL, author of The Only Language They Understand

© 2022 American Friends Service Committee

Published in 2022 by

Haymarket Books

P.O. Box 180165

Chicago, IL 60618

773-583-7884

www.haymarketbooks.org

info@haymarketbooks.org

ISBN: 978-1-64259-725-7

Distributed to the trade in the US through Consortium Book Sales and Distribution (www.cbsd.com) and internationally through Ingram Publisher Services International (www.ingramcontent.com).

This book was published with the generous support of Lannan Foundation and Wallace Action Fund.

Special discounts are available for bulk purchases by organizations and institutions. Please email info@haymarketbooks.org for more information.

Cover artwork by Malak Mattar. Cover design by Rachel Cohen.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication data is available.

Contents

MAP: GAZA STRIP AND GAZA DISTRICT BEFORE1948

FOREWORD

Introduction

Jehad Abusalim

Gaza Asks: When Shall This Pass?

Refaat Alareer

On Why We Still Hold Onto Our Phones and Keep Recording

Asmaa Abu Mezied

Breaking the Vicious Cycle of Permanent Temporality

Shahd Abusalama

Don’t Step on My Feet Again

Basman Aldirawi

Lost Identity: The Tale of Peasantry and Nature

Asmaa Abu Mezied

Why Are You Still Here?

Basman Aldirawi

Ethical Implications of Experimental Design on Affected Communities in the Gaza Strip

Salem Al Qudwa

People’s Light in Gaza’s Darkness

Suhail Taha

Artificial Intelligence as a Tool for Restoring Palestinian Rights and Improving the Quality of Life

Nour Naim, translated by Anas Abu Samhan

Exporting Oranges and Short Stories:

Cultural Struggle in the Gaza Strip

Mosab Abu Toha

In the Haze of Fifty-One Days

Dorgham Abusalim

Travel Restrictions as a Manifestation of Nakba:

Gaza, the Path Backward Is the Path Forward

Yousef M. Aljamal

Let Me Dream

Israa Mohammed Jamal

Gaza 2050: Three Scenarios

Basman Aldirawi

A Rose Shoulders Up

Mosab Abu Toha

NOTES

INDEX

ABOUT AFSC

CONTRIBUTORS

Foreword

Palestinians in Gaza are seldom given voice or asked to speak. Gaza is too often portrayed as a site of destruction or impoverishment. Yet it is so much more than that, as this collection of essays makes clear. In the pages that follow, Palestinians in Gaza powerfully narrate their reality so that people will understand their dreams, fears, and aspirations, including what is needed to bring about change.

The authors in this anthology offer their reflections through personal narratives, poetry, and analyses of economic and cultural issues. In so doing, they not only reveal a commitment to a future that will enable Palestinians to transcend the boundaries that limit them, but also speak about what is needed to realize that future.

We hope this collection will open new understandings and create a new discourse about Gaza and its people, by introducing authentic analysis rooted in scholarly and personal understandings. The damaging divisions and movement restrictions imposed on Palestinians by Israel, particularly since the 1993 Oslo Accords, have fragmented the Palestinian community and isolated Gaza. The intensified military closure and blockade of Gaza has only deepened Gaza’s misery. For change to occur, Gaza must be understood as an integral part of historic Palestine. There can be no meaningful or sustainable resolution in Palestine and Israel without Gaza. This book, in its own way, will explain why.

The anthology is deeply personal for us. It is a work inspired by our love for our friends, family, colleagues, and partners in and from Gaza. The brutal realities of Israel’s occupation and blockade have continued for too long and must end, and we hope that in some small way this work can contribute to that change.

As editors we have learned from this experience and from the authors, and we hope that you also will be impacted by their remarkable writing.

We are indebted to our editorial committee members (Tareq Baconi, Ann Lesch, Sara Roy, and Steve Tamari) who worked with the authors on their chapters during a pandemic and while Israeli aggression escalated in May 2021. Their expertise and dedication to justice for Palestinians enriched this collection of writings.

—Jehad Abusalim, Jennifer Bing, Michael Merryman-Lotze

Palestinian boys wave a Palestinian flag during a demonstration to mark the anniversary of Nakba, near the separation fence north of the Gaza Strip. May 6, 2011. Photo: Sameh Rahmi

Introduction

Jehad Abusalim

The Gaza Strip is a place we hear about often, on occasions that are not necessarily pleasant. An open-air prison, a besieged enclave, a territory with one of the world’s highest population densities—the list of phrases and metaphors experts and writers use to describe the Gaza Strip can be endless, given how much has been written on Gaza. Indeed, the common thread in all these descriptions is an attempt by experts to help their audiences relate to Gaza. However, because Gaza’s experience is unique, the place, the people who live there, and their story become abstract and challenging to explain to an outsider who has never been to Gaza or lived there enough to absorb aspects of its experience. This creates a barrier of understanding and imagination between Gaza and the outside world. This intangible barrier becomes an extension of the physical barriers surrounding Gaza. As a result, Gaza is unrelatable and distant.

It is imperative, then, for people of conscience to resist attempts to obscure the histories and experiences of oppressed people, including Palestinians. One crucial step in resisting such obscuration is to recognize the erasure of context. Regimes of oppression work tirelessly to render the historical context of oppressed people irrelevant and obscure. Their final goal is to portray oppressed people and their struggles for reclaiming their rights as irrational and, at worst, reduce them to a threat against those who built their privilege at the expense of others. This is precisely Gaza’s story and the story of the entirety of the Palestinian experience. For this reason, when it comes to understanding the Palestinian cause in general, and the contemporary reality in Gaza in particular, historical context matters.

The central element in understanding the historical context of the Gaza Strip and its current reality is the 1948 Nakba (the Catastrophe). For Palestinians, the Nakba was the moment when the State of Israel was established by the Zionist movement in 1948, leading to the uprooting of over 750,000 Palestinians from their cities, towns, and villages. As a result of the Nakba, Palestinians suffered a severe and unprecedented spatial and territorial rupture, which they still experience to this day. The catastrophic outcome of the Nakba for Palestinians manifested itself in numerous ways. First, the Nakba prevented Palestinians from enjoying territorial independence and sovereignty over the land where they embraced heritage and culture.¹ In this context, the Gaza Strip was born as a new territory in 1948. Prior to 1948, Gaza City was the capital of the Gaza District, which included more than fifty-three cities, towns, and villages, including Gaza, al-Majdal, and Khan Younis. As a result of the Zionist conquest of Palestinian land, the area of the Gaza District shrunk and was reduced to the Strip we are familiar with today. When the Gaza Strip emerged as a new geographic entity following the 1948 Nakba, within its new confines lived around 100,000 inhabitants, who were joined by 200,000 refugees uprooted by Zionist militias (and later the Israeli military) from lands near and around Gaza.²

The authors of this book hope to break the intellectual blockade on Gaza. This book is an attempt by Palestinian writers from Gaza, living in and outside Gaza, to start a conversation about Gaza. It is an intellectual venture that challenges the decades of marginalization and dehumanization imposed on Gaza by Israel and its allies. In an ever-connected world, the task of people of conscience around the world must be to challenge the blockades and isolation of entire groups of people who are subject to policies of collective punishment.

I was supposed to write this introduction before May 2021. That month, Israel attacked the Gaza Strip as part of a campaign of large-scale aggression that encompassed almost every corner of historic Palestine. Also that month, the Palestinian people, in Jerusalem, the West Bank, the Gaza Strip, inside Israel, and in their exile, stood up together in an uprising known as Intifidat al-Wihda, or the Unity Intifada. Palestinians rose against Israeli actions in Jerusalem—which they viewed as an assault on their collective dignity and existence. On the eve of the seventy-third anniversary of the Nakba, Palestinians watched with pain, on live television and on social media, as Zionist settlers backed by the full force of the Israeli state attempted to expel Palestinians in Sheikh Jarrah and other communities in and around Jerusalem. They watched in horror at scenes of Israeli police violating the sanctity of the Al-Aqsa Mosque. This brutal Israeli suppression of unarmed mobilization expanded beyond Jerusalem to engulf the Gaza Strip, which was subject to two long weeks of criminal bombardment and destruction.

As the Israeli assault on the Palestinian people raged and escalated, I put this introduction aside, suspended all work on this anthology project, and shifted my focus to advocating for an end to the aggression and raising awareness regarding the events unfolding in Palestine. My colleagues at the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC) and the editorial committee of this anthology were less concerned with deadlines and submissions and more concerned with the literal physical safety of the authors, most of whom are based in the Gaza Strip. During the Israeli assault on Gaza, I hosted two of the authors—Asmaa Abu Mezied and Refaat Alareer—on a Facebook Live event to speak about the situation as the bombs were falling. My colleagues and I were in constant touch with AFSC’s team in Palestine, especially in Gaza, and with the other authors throughout the long days of the aggression, making sure they were safe and sound. Indeed, one can say that this book was written under and during the most Gazan circumstances. It is as Gaza as it gets.

Writing this introduction after May 2021 did not change much of its content, though. The events of that month instead reinforced my conviction that such a book is timely and needed. The need for a serious, meaningful, and informed conversation about Gaza and the entirety of the Palestine question beyond the existing clichés, stereotypes, slogans, and ridiculous political processes and frameworks was even more clear. While May 2021 and the months that followed showed much progress in growing global solidarity with Palestinians, including notable shifts in US public opinion, the conversation about Palestine in general, and Gaza in particular, still suffered from the same old problems. Overall, conversations about Gaza fall under a security discourse promoted by Israel and its allies, one that reduces the question of Gaza’s reality into how it factors in Israel’s security, therefore dismissing the political and historical roots of Gaza’s ongoing predicament. Moreover, others approach Gaza from a humanitarian lens that sees the population merely as hapless victims. Still others see Palestinians in Gaza as heroes and martyrs on the front line of the Palestinian liberation struggle. What is missing is a meaningful conversation about Gaza, led by Palestinian voices, that reflects on the past, present, and future of Gaza as a place with two million people with dreams, aspirations, and an unresolved plight for justice, return, and the reclamation of their rights.

I started working at AFSC in the spring of 2018. My first day at work coincided with the start of the Great March of Return, a movement of unarmed, mass popular mobilization by Palestinians in the Gaza Strip. In the words of Palestinian writer and intellectual Ghassan Kanafani, the march aimed to knock on the walls of the tanker.³ It was one of the most prolonged, rigorous protest movements in Palestinian history, lasting for over two years. The central theme of the march was the issue of the right of return—hence the name. From my first day at AFSC, I dedicated my time, focus, and energy to shedding light on the March of Return. I was lucky to find the proper political and intellectual foundation and understanding of Gaza’s experience, which made it possible for our team to engage in a focused effort to educate the American public— and beyond—on the events unfolding in the Gaza Strip. What made our engagement on Gaza unique, however, was an unwavering willingness to constantly situate Gaza and any developments that unfold there within the broader context of Palestinian history—especially in the shadow of the Nakba, its continuation, and the need for its end as a way forward for peace and justice in Palestine-Israel and the larger region. AFSC’s early attention to the significance of the Great March of Return, and its constant focus on Gaza, stems from the organization’s experience working on the ground, in the Gaza Strip, immediately following the Nakba of 1948. In 1949, AFSC agreed to a request from the United Nations to assist Palestinian refugees in the Gaza Strip. AFSC’s engagement early on with the issue of displaced Palestinians, which was followed by decades of direct political and humanitarian work on the ground, has made the organization a leading voice on the need to understand the Palestinian experience in Gaza, especially with regard to the issue of return and the need to engage Gaza’s crises through addressing their root historical causes.

The idea behind this book evolved thanks to years of focus on questions related to the Gaza Strip—its past, present, and future—as part of the Palestine issue. In 2015, AFSC launched the Gaza Unlocked campaign to access firsthand accounts from Palestinians living in Gaza and advocate ending the Israeli-imposed blockade, which had intensified starting in 2007. The campaign relied on various tools to educate the US public on Gaza, including holding events, seminars, and the production of visual and written educational materials.

Throughout our work on Palestine and on Gaza, the AFSC team noted an enormous desire on the part of activists, advocates, and people with interest in Palestine to learn about Gaza, talk to people there, and understand the Palestinian experience through Gaza’s lens. In 2018, AFSC’s Gaza Unlocked campaign published an essay booklet entitled Life Under Blockade: A Collection of Essays, in which twelve Gaza-based young authors wrote in English about their experience growing up under Israeli blockade, closure, and military aggressions. In 2019, AFSC hosted Rafah-based author, intellectual, and activist Ahmed Abu Artema, a refugee who dreams of return and whose words helped inspire the Great March of Return. Ahmed travelled across thirteen cities in the United States, talking about Gaza, the right of return, and the need to end the Nakba. In recent years, as part of the Gaza Unlocked campaign, AFSC organized a myriad of panels, events, seminars, and workshops for activists, students, and the general public to advance the conversation about Gaza. In addition, we coordinated virtual connections between Palestinians in Gaza and Palestinians and advocates in the US. The more spaces we created for such conversations, the more people participated, and the more they expressed passion for connecting with Gaza and fighting to end the blockade and the Nakba. This passion and enthusiasm inspired us to conduct this project.

Throughout our work, the AFSC team also noted several patterns and issues regarding Gaza and how people approach it, whether in the broader public or the context of the Palestine solidarity movement. First, because of the many years the Gaza Strip has been physically isolated, most people think of it in abstract and simplistic terms. Second, unlike other parts of historic Palestine, the Gaza Strip is not accessible for many Palestinians, solidarity activists, visitors, or tourists. The other consequence of Gaza’s isolation is that fewer Palestinians living there can travel and meet people outside the Gaza Strip. The result of this isolation is Gaza’s remoteness, not only in terms of physical distance but also in terms of how we understand Gaza, the experiences of people there, and the kind of discussions and conversations people have about Gaza. Third, the Gaza Strip has also been politically excluded because of a series of sanctions the international community, Israel, certain Arab regimes, and the Palestinian Authority imposed on Gaza. These sanctions were first imposed following the 2006 Palestinian Legislative Council elections by the actors mentioned above, the same actors who also intervened in Palestine in other ways that fomented civil strife and violence, leading to the Hamas takeover of Gaza in 2007. That takeover in turn resulted in strengthened sanctions and the collective punishment of two million Palestinians in Gaza with the goal of taming Hamas. Today, almost fifteen years since this process ensued, Hamas is still in power in the Gaza Strip, and the measures of blockade and collective punishment have failed to topple Hamas’s rule; instead, they caused deep social, economic, health, and psychological disasters—adding to the endless list of difficulties of life in the besieged Gaza Strip.

When people talk about Gaza, there has also been a tendency, intentional or unintentional, to reduce Gaza to Hamas, and vice versa. The result is an obscured understanding of the Palestinian experience in Gaza, one that overlooks the rich, diverse, and sophisticated experiences of Palestinians who live there. These false narratives about Gaza that are used to justify its political isolation are desirable outcomes for Israel and its allies. They have created a situation where Gaza has been taken away as an immediate problem and where it can be viewed as a problem to be dealt with later. Gaza can be kept out of discussions regarding peace, and Hamas can be blamed for a lack of Palestinian political unity and, consequently, as the reason there is no partner with whom Israel can dialogue regarding a peace agreement. This justifies a complete lack of engagement with the genuine issues at the core of Gaza’s many crises, namely the refugee issue and the refusal to acknowledge that a just resolution, rooted in the law and in the Palestinian people’s historic and inalienable rights to live in their homeland, is central to achieving lasting peace in the region.

The problem with the current discourse on Palestine in general, and on Gaza in particular, is that Palestinians are not allowed the space to engage in conversations about their future. The formal political framework maintained by the international community is no less violent than life on the ground in Palestine. This violence manifests when the international community comes up with solutions and visions for the present and the future that fit Israel’s interests, at the expense of Palestinian rights and well-being, in the short and long term. It is the violence of ignoring honest and brave Palestinian voices that refuse to succumb to the narratives and agendas imposed by Israel and its allies. It is the violence of abandoning Gaza to years of closure, isolation, and blockade, normalizing the collective punishment of two million Palestinians, and then talking about such measures as policy approaches in ways devoid of consideration for the humanity and pain of Palestinians. It is the violence of criminalizing and silencing honest Palestinian voices that refuse to relinquish their rights and submit to the fragmentation that is maintained in scenarios put forward by proponents of the two-state solution.⁴

No issue more clearly exemplifies this exclusion of Palestinian concerns than the Nakba. For Palestinians, the Nakba is not just an event that occurred in the past; it is a process that continues to shape life in Palestine in general, and in Gaza in particular. The centrality of the Nakba to the Palestinian experience is not just about the commemoration of a tragic event from the past. It is about understanding how injustice and discrimination were produced between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea, and how they continue today.

The continuation of the Nakba as a process can be described as a painful but straightforward equation: Israel’s existence as a Zionist and Jewish-majority state must be at the expense of Palestinian existence. This is very clear in continuing the plight of the refugees and other Palestinians plight regarding the loss of land and lack of rights. For Israeli Jews to realize their potential, enjoy self-determination, sovereignty, and access to rights, including the right to land, property, and safety, Palestinians were—and to varying degrees still are—deprived of these rights and privileges.

The need for the Nakba to come to an end has been the common thread running through the entirety of the Palestinian struggle for liberation since 1948, up through the March of Return of 2018 and the Unity Intifada of 2021. Both moments of mass popular mobilization and resistance reiterated what Palestinians have considered their core demand—to go home. For decades, Israel, the United States, and parts of the international community have dismissed the centrality of this demand, treated it with cynicism, and focused on promoting solutions that do not take seriously the question of Palestinian refugees, as well as the continuation of the Nakba as a process that encompasses every aspect of life in historic Palestine and beyond.

The only solution accepted by global power brokers is the two state option, which the international community has declared the only path to peace. But if there is one thing more impossible to achieve at this point than the two-state solution, it perhaps would be counting the many articles by experts and pundits that describe the two-state solution as dead or impossible to achieve. Yet, despite decades of warnings, calls for the two-state delusion persist.

In discussions regarding the death or failure of that solution, the focus, rightly, tends to be on how settlement building and expansion is the major obstacle, if not the nail in the coffin of the two-state solution. Yet, those epiphanies—and late realizations—could have been realized way earlier if those experts had paid attention to other aspects of the Palestinian experience under Israeli settler-colonialism.

Palestinians object to the two-state framework on moral, political, historical, and legal grounds. But there are additional practical factors that should make it clear to all why the two-state process as it has been pursued is not acceptable to most Palestinians. The Gaza Strip represents 1 percent of the total area of historic Palestine. Currently, two million Palestinians live there, 70 percent of whom are 1948 refugees and their descendants. Today, the Gaza Strip is one of the most densely populated places on earth—with an average population density of 13,069 per square