The Gaza experience in Egypt

When I was in Al Arish I coincidentally met a Palestinian from Gaza in an internet cafe. Within the first 15 minutes he had already told me a lot of sensitive information about himself. He informed me that he had come to Al Arish through the tunnels that Palestinians have made under the border with Egypt. He showed my a wound on his arm...a result of his 'trip' to Egypt. He was working in the tunnels with several others, transporting food, clothing and medicines for the people in Gaza when the tunnel all of a sudden got bombed. Three of the people he was with got killed. He managed to escape to Egypt, where he went to stay with two Palestinian friends that were legally residing in Egypt.
He also told me how he had been in prison for 1 year and 8 months until five months ago. There he had been mistreated considerably, with the Israeli guards tying his arms and legs to a chair every day for 12 hours, 40 days in a row, forcing him to admit that he was Hamas and that he was making qassam rockets. The first being not true, but the second was. Damn... Welcome to Gaza, where violence is just interwoven with daily life.

In the days after, me and another volunteer from Nablus that had come to Al Arish as well, hang out with our newly made 'tunnelfriends' a lot. They helped us considerably, taking us to the border with Gaza and by just being nice and opening their house for us. We had so much fun, almost as if there was no war in Gaza. Their behavior seemed normal, they were laughing and joking around. In the meanwhile, the police was posting outside of the house, most likely because it's not normal for them to hang out with internationals, but possibly as well because they were Palestinians. Just enjoying life and hanging out is a tricky business here in Egypt and not entirely without risks...as I said: welcome to fascist Egypt, where the state determines who can be your friend.

So their house became like a happy little bubble, devote of the outside reality of the war in Gaza and the Egyptian totalitarian police. But as is the thing with bubbles, sooner or later they crack. And so did this bubble. The first little crack showed up the night me and Henry were invited to sleep in their house. When I woke up in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom I saw two of them sitting in a dark room, anxiously making telephone calls. The air was tense and I knew that something was wrong. When I walked up to them I saw the despair in their eyes, leaving not much behind of the happy "tough" guys from before, these were five-year olds in the bodies of grown ups. Israel was bombing the area where they lived and had destroyed their family's house. Never before have I seen fear in such a pure and intense way, but in their eyes it was there. They couldn't reach their family, because the telephones there were hardly working and with every attempt I saw their fear grow and their bodies shrunk. In the end they managed to get a hold of them, using my Palestinian Jawwal sim, instead of their Egyptian ones. The family was fine, home-less... but fine.

The final burst came after a few days. While we were listening to music the doorbell rang... within no-time the house was filled with Egyptian secret service agents questioning us. They arrested the Palestinians and me and the other volunteer were also taken to the police for interrogation. Serious trouble...

In the police station I was questioned first. The police man was quite nice and polite and assured me that we as internationals would be fine.. Yes of course, the perverse power of a Western passport. At a certain point the officer told me that I shouldn't be hanging out with Palestinians in Egypt in the future, because it puts me in danger. I replied that I wouldn't change my behavior. He looked at me slightly surprised by such straightforwardness. I explained him: I like Palestinians, they are great people and I don't think there's anything wrong with hanging out with them. He replied: yes.... I like Palestinians too, but...
AH! The Egyptian 'but'...BUT not really, BUT only as far as it pays. As I've said in my previous post, the official 'but' is: we need to protect the security of our country.... Yes... BUT, and I take full credit for this last but, this is not the entire story.

Many people would say that Egypt is tight friends with Israel. At first I thought like that too. But not really. Egypt only sucks up to Israel when it has a clear political or financial interest to do so... so not a case of true and warm friendship. Political opportunism at the expense of suffering Palestinian civilians.
Why would Egypt not open the border and why would Egypt allow Israel to bomb the tunnels connecting Gaza with Egypt? It seems irrational if you realize that Egypt would gain a lot from opening the borders and is gaining a lot from the illegal tunnel trade. Business in Al Arish is benefiting from the dire situation in Gaza. When the border was blown up last year people from Gaza flooded into Al Arish to do shopping and spent their money.

Israel knows that and that's exactly why Tzipi Livni, the monster herself, went to pay Hosni Mubarak (the Egyptian president) a visit with Christmas...only days before the Israeli invasion of Gaza. If Israel wanted to have Egypt's approval for this war it needed to 'compensate' Egypt for the financial losses this war would bring for Egypt, in terms of lost trade revenues. So you get this amount from the tunnels? We will double it if you can assure us that you keep the borders closed. Great! Everybody happy... and the Palestinians?? Ah.. well if anyone asks we will just say how much we like them... BUT not from upclose/ BUT from a distance/ BUT only when locked away. The Egyptian love for Palestine... heartbreaking...

So that's how the Egyptian police showed how much they liked my Palestinian friends...they locked them away. Me and Henry were put in the street after a few hours. We decided to take the morning bus back to Taba, because we had already planned that and we didn't know what else to do. In the bus I felt horrible... slightly guilty out of an irrational feeling that we caused these problems for them. One of their friends called me: Hi how are you? When I said not too happy... he didn't understand why. He didn't know what happened and apparently no-one knew. I tried to tell him that his friends were in serious trouble but he patronized me, saying that I shouldn't worry and it would probably be nothing. I told him that he needed to take me seriously and that I knew what I was talking about, but he just kept on 'shush-ing' me as if I was a little girl that needed to go to sleep. One day later he called me again slightly more aware of the situation... he asked me a lot of questions about what happened exactly and finally came to the conclusion that they were in deep shit. DUH! What have I been trying to tell you all this time? Some Palestinians can be so annoying for not taking women serious and treating them like cute little creatures that you just have to pet a little if they make any noise.

In the meantime he mobilized everyone to find out where they were. They also called the brother of two of the guys in Cairo. In the end... this brother and a friend of him spent 2500 pound (around 350 euro) and three days of putting pressure on the police. The result two of my friends were released from prison. In the meantime I had found that the one without the passport had already been sent back to Gaza.
When I was in Cairo, one of my released friends called me to tell that he was in Cairo as well. To see him again was great. I had worried about them a lot. Their entire lives seemed fucked... in a few days they lost everything: their house, their freedom, their future and everything else.

But thanks to the corrupt Egyptian police they were released from prison. Their brother told me that if he and his friend hadn't had spent all that money that they wouldn't be freed and they would probably have been locked away for a long time. I realized that in the end it was a good thing that me and Henri were there when they were arrested, because without us no-one would have known what had happened to them at all.... damn.
In less than two weeks I've had a rather fair introduction to what it means to be a Palestinian from Gaza. My head is empty now of words to describe how experiencing this and meeting these people has impacted me, so let me share with you a poem that I've written a few days ago:


Gaza - Beyond imagination
you are
bombed into my heart
so close and yet so far away
as if even my heart got uprooted
when I stood by and watched you cry
by the silent tears and passive fear of my friends
your damaged children
the night their house, their home was mutilated by F16's.
I was there and I wasn't.
A distant witness to your sorrow
as if distance makes the pain dissolve
it doesn't
as I saw in their eyes
you were there that night
present in their prayers
even though the world has tried to lock you away,
ignorantly
unaware
that you are so much more than a piece of land.
You are a spirit...
Oh, you abused daughter of Palestine
you remain safe and sacred,
no matter how violence has befilthed your destiny,
in the minds of your children
in the mind of justice
you are seen
I can promise you
I was there that night
even though I wasn't