Gaza Diary: July 16th, 11:00 am
by Brian Lenzo | Monday, July 20th, 2009

July 16th, 11:00 am

Everyday life in Gaza city is a twisted amalgamation of normalcy and extreme abnormality.  Walking down the street in Gaza city in late morning is like watching the un-filmed time in between scenes of a Hollywood action film.  Time we take for granted in the theater.  It is the monotonous, mundane activity that takes place in the wake of the protagonists and that builds tension slowly but steadily to the next climactic encounter.

I made contact with a man named Mohammed, who is the Executive Manager of a prominent N.G.O. in Gaza.  Mohammed agreed to take me around Gaza City for a couple hours to take in as much as I could during my brief visit.

Downtown Gaza City looks much like any other city in the Middle East.  Shops were open, cars navigate around the city, people sit in sidewalk cafes smoking shisha and drinking fruit juice.  But the scene is different in one major way.  As I looked at a beautiful mahogany desk in a high end furniture store window, I glanced at the second story apartment windows and then the full picture became clear.  A few dozen bullet holes pock-marked the second and third stories. 

The building across the street had a cellular phone kiosk and a small bodega, but on its 4th floor you could see straight through to the buildings behind it due to a rocket strike, presumably from an Israeli Apache helicopter strike given the angle of the hole and damage.

Mohammed further filled in this bizarre picture.  He estimated that, due to the Israeli and Egyptian blockade, about 95% of the goods in the stores around me, including the mahogany desk, were smuggled into Gaza through the network of underground tunnels along the southern border with Egypt.  A network of tunnels that keep Gaza from outright starvation and economic collapse.  The cars driving around all run on gasoline smuggled through the tunnels.  Mohammed knew of a man who married an Egyptian woman and was force to smuggle her in through the tunnels too.

This is life in Gaza.  A land of extreme contrast.  A place where children play tag in a giant crater which use to be the road’s median.  A place where fishermen cast their nets in water filled with raw sewage under the watchful eye of Israeli gunships patrolling on the horizon.  A place where young boys play soccer on a lush green pitch next to a pile of rubble and twisted metal which used to be an athletic club but was bombed by the Israelis in January. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Gaza is a place where you can’t fill in a pot hole let alone repair a building since Israel and Egypt ban the transport of concrete into Gaza (the last concrete factory in Gaza was bombed by the Israelis earlier this year).

Gaza is truly a land in a fish bowl, carrying on as normal in the sand, rubble and dirty water, with the world watching through the glass.

Tags: Futbol, Galloway, Gaza, gaza strip, Palestine, Soccer, Viva Palestina

7:08 pm. Viva Palestina.