I STARTED down the road and I did everything right. 鈥淒on鈥檛 go to the left, don鈥檛 go to the right,鈥� the Israeli soldiers had said, and it鈥檚 best to do what they say. They watched me go and the Palestinian policemen at the other end of the road watched me come. Everyone had a gun except me and all the guns seemed to be pointing at me. I had a half-kilometre of road all to myself and it was very quiet.
This is no-man鈥檚-land at the entrance to the Gaza Strip. It is one border you don鈥檛 have to queue at. The soldiers were surprised that I wanted to go in. I could see their point. Their air force had bombed the place an hour before. 鈥淗ave a blast,鈥� one of them had said. Not literally, I hoped.
I took a taxi the 10 kilometres into Gaza City and the first thing I noticed were the children. They were everywhere. It looked like one enormous playground. Of course, Gaza is no playground. Look beyond the children and you see chaos. Many shops looked like they鈥檇 been shut for months. Some buildings looked like they鈥檇 been bombed. There was graffiti on every wall. The sun was shining and the children were playing but it didn鈥檛 feel right. I wasn鈥檛 seeing the full picture.
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I got part of the picture from the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, whose white Land-Rovers I had already seen in the streets and whose compound in the city is like a town in itself. It has a department for everything: education, health, food, social services, environment. It runs many of the schools, finds shelter for the homeless and provides food to 144,000 families, many of whom would starve without it. Yasser Arafat鈥檚 Palestinian Authority is the official government here but it鈥檚 pretty clear who鈥檚 running the show for the poor.
I met several UNRWA officials, all of them Palestinian. This is what they said. Of Gaza鈥檚 1.2 million residents, 80 per cent are refugees or descendants of refugees who fled from around Beersheba and Jaffa when Israel was created in 1948. Half these people live in eight refugee camps, where the population density is among the highest in the world. The population of Gaza is growing at a rate of 4.6 per cent a year. Half the people are under 18 and there are so many children that the schools can accommodate them only in shifts.
I wondered why everyone stayed. 鈥淏ecause they are not allowed to leave,鈥� says Aqil Abu Shammala, chief of UNRWA鈥檚 field relief and social services programme and himself a third-generation refugee. Since the beginning of the intifada in September 2000, the Israeli authorities have sealed the borders of the Palestinian Territories to try to contain the militants and to put pressure on the people to end the uprising. Exports from Gaza and the West Bank are banned, and imports strictly controlled. As a result, the proportion of people in Gaza living on under $2 a day has increased from a quarter to a half. Some 40 per cent of the workforce is unemployed.
Abu Shammala is a big man and he tells me these things straight and without emotion. He wears a suit and tie and he seems imperturbable. Then he tells me he has not seen his family for five days because the Israeli army has set up a security barrier that cuts the Gaza Strip in two, and they will not let anyone pass. He and tens of thousands of other Palestinians are cut off from their homes. Others are cut off from their work. He says it happens often. When he tells me this he is shaking his head and you can see the anger rising. 鈥淚f you keep people in these conditions,鈥� he says, 鈥渉ow can you expect them to keep the peace?鈥�
There is little peace in Gaza. The next day, Israeli F16 bombers flew over the city at precisely the time they had attacked it the day before. This time they didn鈥檛 bomb, but the psychological effect was conspicuous: everyone braced themselves as if they would.
I found a lift out of the city going south along the coast to the Israeli army鈥檚 security barrier. About 200 metres from the checkpoint a Palestinian policeman was standing in the road. He said if you go any further the Israelis will shoot you; they will not know whether you are armed and they will not wait to find out.
Many people had gathered here and they were agitated. Some had been waiting days for the army to open the road. A few had decided they could wait no longer and were heading down a cliff to the beach to get around the checkpoint. I went with them. I start to walk and I am not yet level with the checkpoint when the gunner in a tank at the checkpoint starts shooting. He is firing a heavy machine gun at the people on the beach below him and I think, I hope, they are safe in the lee of the cliff. The gun is very loud, and though I cannot see the tank I can hear it and I can see the puff of diesel smoke as it manoeuvres. Now the bullets are close to me and the people ahead of me drop into the sand. I am looking at a man beside me with a baby in his arms, and I am listening to the bullets slapping into the sea. Incredibly, nobody is running. Some people are even trying to carry on.
None of the war films I have seen comes close to conjuring up what this feels like. A man with a red scarf looks at me and grins and asks me if I鈥檓 scared. 鈥淣o,鈥� I lie. How can anyone not be? A man and a woman on a donkey-drawn cart are coming the other way and they pass close to me. They are very scared, they are close to tears, and I realise they must have been opposite the checkpoint when the shooting started. The man with the red scarf sees me staring at them and says: 鈥淭his is how we live.鈥�
The next morning I went to see a man whose name I had heard often, a man respected by many here. Eyad El Sarraj is founder and chairman of the Gaza Community Mental Health Programme (GCMHP) and he has been studying the psychology of the people for years. He is in his early 50s. He is tall, speaks quietly and is always eloquent. He hates violence.
El Sarraj calls Gaza an open prison. 鈥淵ou feel exposed and vulnerable. There is no way to escape. You are trapped. Over the years, the Palestinians have developed the psychology of victims, and this has been reinforced over the past 18 months,鈥� he says. 鈥淭here is a sense of helplessness, a sense of persecution. There is trauma, and so much anger.鈥� If El Sarraj gets angry he is good at hiding it.
The planes, the bombing and the threat of it are not things you get used to, he says. They affect the children most. A recent study by the GCMHP in Khan Younis and Rafah refugee camps in southern Gaza found that of 121 mothers and 121 children, more than a fifth had witnessed members of their own family killed or injured, and more than half the children had started to develop acute symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder. Of the 1400 Palestinians killed since the start of the intifada, at least 160 were under 16. Many children have nightmares about Jews coming to their house.
And yet, says El Sarraj, none of them has ever met a Jew. He knows how they feel. 鈥淚 grew up in Gaza hating all Jews, believing they were blood-suckers, that they had robbed me of my land, my rights and my freedom and that they killed my fellow men. That was before I met my first Jew. Palestinian children today are growing up the same way I did. All they know about Jews are bad things.鈥� This, he believes, is why many Palestinians demonise the entire Israeli population as one. Few Palestinians feel disgust when an activist blows himself or herself up in West Jerusalem; the activist is celebrated as a shahid or martyr because all Israelis are considered as guilty as soldiers of the injustice wrought on them.
I set off in a taxi to the southern part of the Gaza Strip, scene of some of the worst fighting of the intifada. After 20 kilometres we come to a set of traffic lights, a checkpoint and a queue of cars waiting to cross one of the specially guarded roads that link the 18 Israeli settlements in Gaza to Israel 鈥減roper鈥�. I can see gun barrels sticking through the windows of the checkpoint but I cannot see the soldiers. 鈥淲hy are we waiting?鈥� I ask the taxi driver. He says that if a settler鈥檚 car is within half a kilometre of the crossing, the soldiers switch the lights to red and Palestinians have to wait. And if we choose not to? 鈥淲hat do you think?鈥� he says. Then he repeats the words of the man on the beach: 鈥淭his is how we live.鈥�
The more I saw, the more surreal it felt. We stopped at the Eid El Agha school in Khan Younis refugee camp, where the children are taught in classrooms with bullet holes in the walls. Such violence in a school feels like sacrilege. Through the broken windows of her classroom a teacher points out the watchtowers that hide the Israeli soldiers who fire the bullets, and beyond the high fence the modern, red-tiled roofs of the settlement the soldiers are protecting. The settlers have swimming pools, she says. Have any of her pupils swum in a swimming pool? Of course not. Many of them will go home after school and collect water from a communal well.
And there in this senselessness sits a classroom of 30 schoolchildren trying to learn maths. Through the teacher I asked them what they had seen. I asked who had seen someone shot, or killed? Almost all the hands went up. Who had smelt tear gas? Almost all. How can you experience these things and still be a child?
The last person I met in Gaza was a physician, Mahmoud El Zahhar. El Zahhar is also the third or fourth most senior member of Hamas, an organisation known to the outside world mainly for its violence against Israeli targets. People in Gaza will tell you that Hamas is the protest voice of the people and as much a social organisation as a militant one.
El Zahhar agreed to see me in his surgery in Gaza City, which consists of a single room with a desk, a bed and a few medical supplies. He wears a leather jacket and scarf. He shakes my hand when I walk in but he does not rise. He does not once laugh or smile while I am there. In the middle of our interview he breaks off for ten minutes to pray. He has a small beard and brown pool-like eyes. He expresses little in his eyes. He speaks quietly, he says everything with conviction and he does not appear to blink. The only thing that breaks this calm is the constant tapping of his right heel as he speaks.
He lives in constant fear of assassination by the Israeli army. For him this fight is about two things: religion and justice. And since justice is a manifestation of religion the two cannot be separated. 鈥淪ince 1967, we have suffered too much from the Israeli occupation. They have killed our people, they have put us in jail, they have demolished our houses, they have destroyed our infrastructure,鈥� he says. 鈥淲e are not allowed to travel to Jerusalem to pray in the Al-Aqsa Mosque. This is our life.鈥�
I ask him what Israel would have to do for Hamas to end its armed struggle. 鈥淕et out of the Territories. If they are not here, whom am I going to fight?鈥� This, he says, is the minimum. There are other things, such as the right of return for Palestinian refugees and the establishment of a Palestinian state. But nothing is possible while there are Israeli soldiers and settlers in the Gaza Strip and West Bank.
I ask him about suicide bombers. How can he justify them? His heel quickens but if I have angered him it does not show in his voice. 鈥淚t is not suicide. Suicide is not allowed in Islam. It is the highest form of martyrdom. All Israelis are potential soldiers. They are all potential killers of Palestinians. When Israelis kill our women and children, are they not terrorists? You鈥檝e heard the saying, an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth.鈥�
I recalled what Eyad El Sarraj had told me about martyrs. He has found that almost without exception they suffered severe trauma as children鈥攚atched their parents killed or humiliated or their homes destroyed鈥攁nd felt they had to combat their sense of helplessness and victimisation on behalf of the nation. They had the desperation but they had something else: permission from their religion. El Zahhar explains that when the martyr is sacrificed he is elevated to the level of a prophet. If you are desperate you look for a form of power that will help you, and the ultimate form of power is God.
The day I left Gaza, Israeli F16s and Apache helicopter gunships were attacking the city. I walked back across no-man鈥檚-land and I felt I was walking out of prison. But I was arriving in something just as frightening. In Israel the terror is invisible, until it hits you. It was a strange thing to walk down Jaffa Road in West Jerusalem, scene of several recent bombings and gun attacks, and feel scared on account of what a Palestinian might do. I鈥檇 become used to being scared of what an Israeli might do. In Gaza the fear came with the planes, the tanks and the Israeli soldiers. In Jerusalem and in Tel Aviv it comes with the territory. It sat in my stomach until the moment I came home, and some of it stays even now.
I wanted to see inside a Jewish settlement. Hebron in the West Bank is one of the most volatile places in the Middle East. It is mostly a Palestinian town, but in the middle of it live 750 Jewish settlers protected by 2500 Israeli soldiers. I travelled to Hebron from Jerusalem in a bulletproof bus, the only safe way to get to a settlement in the Palestinian Territories. The bus had bullet marks on the side and most of the people on it were soldiers. It drops me in the Jewish part of the town. There are soldiers everywhere, and they do not seem pleased to see me. They want to see my passport, my press card, my camera. They are edgy and so am I.
I ask for David Wilder, spokesman for the Jewish community of Hebron. They point towards a block of neat sandstone houses and what looks like a disused market. This is the heart of the settlement. There is a security camera on every roof, two soldiers on every corner. A large noticeboard reads in capital letters: 鈥淭his market was built on Jewish property stolen by Arabs after the 1929 massacre.鈥� There are sandbags in all the windows of the houses.
Wilder鈥檚 office is in the basement. Every surface in it is covered with papers. He is short and neat with a grey beard that covers half his face. He seems restless and he hardly has the time to look me in the eye. He talks very quickly and never needs to think before answering my questions. In short, he does not look relaxed, and it isn鈥檛 hard to see why.
Wilder was born in the US and emigrated to Israel 25 years ago. Five years later he moved to Hebron, after a 63-year-old rabbi was murdered here. He came 鈥渢o make the point that terrorists wouldn鈥檛 win, and to practise what I preached鈥�. The settlers in Hebron have seen much violence, but the past 18 months have been the worst. They regularly get shot at by Palestinians in the hills and people regularly get killed. Last year a 10-month-old baby was shot dead outside Wilder鈥檚 office. This is why we live behind sandbags, he says. This is why we carry guns.
Why does he stay? 鈥淏ecause Hebron is where Jewish history began. All the founding fathers are buried here and they have been here for 4000 years. There are a number of references to Hebron in the Bible. As Sharon said before he became prime minister, what other state has such a site? Hebron is the roots of our people. It is the second holiest site for Jews after Jerusalem. This is why we stay.鈥� Would he ever leave? 鈥淚t would be giving them a victory, and under no circumstances are people willing to do that.鈥�
I asked him if he thought the Israelis and Palestinians could ever live together in peace. 鈥淭he Palestinians have never been interested in peace. The potential for terrorism exists in the overwhelming majority of them. The majority back suicide attacks. If you know that鈥檚 what they think, you鈥檝e got to be out of your mind to let them wander around your backyard.鈥� This, he says, is why Israel must prevent the formation of a Palestinian state at all costs. And for the first time he pauses, and then more slowly he says: 鈥淭here is no such thing as a Palestinian people. Look back in the history books and find me a reference to a Palestinian people. People don鈥檛 like it when I say that, but it鈥檚 very simply the truth.鈥�
It is important to remember, I kept telling myself, that this man is not representative of the Israeli nation. Most Israelis would probably call him extreme. I met plenty of people in Israel who believed that the Palestinians should have their own state, and that the settlements in the West Bank and Gaza would have to go. Yet most of them, when pushed, were uneasy about living next door to an 鈥渦nsupervised鈥� Palestinian nation. The past few weeks will have made them uneasier still.
During my last few days in Israel I talked to many people about what it was like to live through these times, about their hopes for peace and what they thought their government should do, about what they thought of the Palestinians. I spent an afternoon with Gershon Salomon, head of a group called the Temple Mount Faithful, who equates the Israeli Defence Force to the Biblical army of God and who wants to raze the Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem and build a Jewish temple in its place.
I went to a rally in Tel Aviv organised by the campaigning group Peace Now, where 5000 people had gathered to call for a complete Israeli withdrawal from the Palestinian Territories. As this demonstration was going on, a Palestinian walked into a Jewish settlement in the West Bank 40 kilometres away and blew himself up, killing two Israelis and wounding 27.
I spoke to Amir Tadmor, an Israeli in Tel Aviv who with a Palestinian friend founded a reconciliation group called Children of Abraham, but whose attempts over the past 18 months to get Israelis and Palestinians together have completely failed. 鈥淚t鈥檚 hopeless,鈥� he said. 鈥淩ight now there are no peace initiatives whatsoever.鈥� Each of these people had a different opinion on the nature of the violence and each a different solution. There seems to be little consensus, beyond most Israelis鈥� mistrust of the Palestinians.
It is hard to make sense of this conflict in terms of politics and grand theories. I can see it emotionally but not intellectually. I think of the great barrier between two peoples, and John Steinbeck鈥檚 observation that people who understand each other will be kind to each other and that knowing a man well never leads to hate and nearly always leads to love. In this case knowing simply that he is human would be a start. I can鈥檛 help thinking that what the politicians need is a lesson not in politics or diplomacy, but in basic human nature. I recall my own anger and embarrassment, while sitting with Palestinians in a room in Gaza City, hearing my country鈥檚 foreign minister, Jack Straw, declare that it was up to the Palestinians to make the first move towards peace. Come to Gaza and say that, I wanted to tell him.
Lastly I think of the fear. I think of what it feels like to walk down Jaffa Street. I think of the look on the children鈥檚 faces in Gaza when the planes come, and the feeling in the pit of my stomach. I wake up often in the night when a plane flies over my flat, and that feeling is still there.
