RAFAH TERMINAL, Gaza Strip - It was a smooth debut Saturday for the first Palestinian-run border crossing. Hundreds of travelers zipped through passport control without having to submit to Israeli security checks, savoring their new freedom after 38 years of military occupation.

— Ibrahim Barzak, Associated Press

By Serena

Reading the headline news on Rafah Crossing one would conclude that
Palestinians are free to come and go as they please with minimal control
by Israel over Gaza in general, nothing significantly impeding them from
creating a prosperous economy, controlling their borders, air space and
sea ports. The AP news wire with such titles as “Palestinians zip across
border” and “Speedy passage from Gaza” conjure up images of anyone being able to leave Gaza as they please, with a snap of their fingers. (more…)

By Rochelle

Pictured is our ORSCP Delegation with Dr. Samir Nasrallah meeting with the Governor of Rafah. Currently we are reaching out to a broad base of the community as we meet with governmental officials, leaders within different sectors of the municipality, women’s centers, children’s cultural centers, schools, environmental organizations and many more. This Thursday will be our first meeting of ORSCP Palestine with many members of the Rafah community that have been incredibly helpful and are interested in being involved.

Photo of Serena (left) and Rochelle taken at the site of the former home of the Nasrallah family in Rafah.

By Rochelle

Hello from Rafah,

We have been in Gaza now for close to two weeks. The situation here is very different on the ground than the West Bank and it has taken all this time just to begin to wrap my head around the reality. Serena and I both came down with an intense stomach flu and now I have a respiratory cold so this has slowed us down a bit. The Nasrallah home Rachel died defending housed two brothers and their families. The last e-mail we sent you about getting in was at the home of the first brother, Khaled, who is renting an apartment in Gaza. Now that we are living in Rafah, we have been staying with the other brother, (Dr. Samir) also known as Abu Kareem, his wife Umm Kareem and their three beautiful children. They have been incredibly generous and have been escorting us everywhere as we figure out the lay of the land and become known enough to be able to safely move around freely. I have not been tucked in and taken care of so intently while sick since being a child. Truly feels like an extension of my family.

So Gaza post-disengagement, what does this look like? I am sure all of you saw some of the American media show of the Israeli

disengagement. So often the settlers were portrayed as victims. Yet these 8,500 settlers who made up .6% of the population lived on 15% of the land, and were living in Gaza illegally by international law. Now all that remains are some greenhouses and demolished remains of their homes. Other than the occasional F16 in the sky, there is no physical soldiers in the area. The media called it a withdrawal of Israeli soldiers, Khaled calls it a redeployment. I think this is much more accurate. Just a pull back to the borders, yet they still maintain control of all entrances and exits, controlling and limiting the transfer of goods, controlling all airspace, access to the Mediterranean sea, controlling the drinking water, and the power resources. The occupation clearly continues. I know thanks to our own Condy Rice, Rafah Crossing into Egypt is slated to reopen soon, what form this really takes will make a large difference to the future of Gaza. And whether or not it will remain in its current state as an open air prison.

So it is a strange time, no Israeli troop presence except the occasional bombing from above, and yet all of Rafah is left with signs of the soldiers. Even in the governor of Rafahs office, as we listen to detail after detail, figure after figure of the devastation Rafah has suffered at the hands of the Israeli occupation in the last five years of the intifada, my eyes wander to the gunshot holes in the window of his office. This man, who is in charge of all civilian affairs, of taking care of his people, even he was under attack. The vulnerability incomprehensible.

So throughout this last week we have been wandering through Rafah, taking it all in, and even as aware as I have been of the atrocities of the last few years I am still taken aback by all the signs of this oppression. Tank marks in the streets, every home along the border riddled with bullet holes, huge vast expanses of land that used to be homes, and most tragically the human wounds, the unimaginable suffering that I can hardly comprehend but experience daily in story after story.

Dr. Samir told me of the strength he found in the eyes of his youngest daughter, to be able to stand confidently in front of his three beautiful children through the years of night after night tanks firing around and into their home. Although he was full of fear, he would stand showing none of it, even on nights when soldiers came into his home, forced him to gather his entire family in a corner of their living room and sit for hours as an Israeli soldier held a gun pointed at them. One night, tanks firing all around them, Eman, who would usually cower and cry in this situation entered the garden and began dancing. Eyes wide, he told me, one more year and his children would have gone crazy.

The next night, sitting over tea with another family on the border, we are shown the bullet hole in the dresser mirror of the daughters room, where now there is a plastic rose. In another child’s room the mother points out a hole in the wall at pillow level, where oddly the day before they had decided to rearrange the room and move the bed to another wall. The hardest part of this experience was that the entire time the mother and youngest daughter told these stories being translated for us they were laughing hysterically. Incomprehensible to handle this fear, this pain.

Rafah is plastered with a martyr poster of a baby killed during the intifada. We walked by the cemetery with 431 new graves just from the last five years of the intifada, over 150 of them children, yes children. This in a town the same size as Thurston County, 100,000. Can you imagine? And can you imagine as the ambulances went to retrieve these children that they to were fired upon? Can you imagine if the homes of 14,000 of our community members were demolished with no retribution by an occupying force. Six mosques demolished, can you imagine our churches? And can you imagine that we have funded and are still funding this nightmare? Allowed for the trauma of close to a million children throughout the Occupied Palestinian Territories? And for what? To stop terrorism? Something is wrong with this picture.

So now, here we are, Americans wandering these streets meeting the people, hoping that somehow, our smiles and compassion can prevent the growing hatred of Americans. And we can tell these stories to you and hopefully you to your friends so that as Americans we can keep an open heart to Arabs and know that they are not all terrorists and that we are not being told the truth about where our taxes are going. That our governments foreign policy is creating more hatred, more division, more injustice and for the sake of children all over the middle east, we must come together and do more to change it.

There are many complexities to Rafah. And I have much more to share about the growing Islamic fundamentalism and understanding the resistance but I have been going on too long. Next week we have many meetings, with the Mayor, municipality, children’s groups, womens centers. The kindness that is expressed to us so unbelievable. And the opportunities to work together unlimited.

Thanks for listening. More soon…

rochelle

The views and opinions of authors expressed on the ORSCP website and list serve do not necessarily state or reflect those of the Olympia-Rafah Sister City Project.

By Serena
I know this is late in coming but wanted send some thoughts about our time in a small village just south of Hebron in the southern West Bank. We spent two days in the village of Qawawis (kaw-ees) before heading to Gaza. Insha’allah, we will send an update soon from Rafah. But know that we are here and doing well. (more…)