Commemorating Nakba Day in Occupied Gaza felt somewhat like every day in Gaza feels: an atmosphere totally sodden with politics, life going on, as it does at a subdued and sad level throughout the blockade, and then something piquant.
The piquant was when my friend Ramzi went off to study in Italy for two years, a BA program in political and economic science. When a Palestinian from Gaza goes abroad to study for two years, this is not the euphemistic “two years” of American living-or-study-abroad: I lived abroad for two years, punctuated by seasonal trips home etc.
Two years means two full years: contact with family and friends back home solely by e-mail, no holiday visits back home that I know of. If they are students, it means winters alone in dormitories or at home-stays. If they come back to Gaza, they may not be able to leave again and no one wants to risk that after having gotten lucky enough to secure an impossible-to-get scholarship. Ramzi got on a bus, one of the few lucky enough to secure limited bus-slots.
Several of the parties, including Fatah, smaller leftist groups in the PLO, and the PFLP, came together during the most-demonstration press conference, which proceeded to UNSCOP, behind a fluttering huge Palestinian flag and cardboard cut-outs of keys. The keys are huge stand-ins for the physical keys Gazan families hold on to, the keys to their homes in ’48. They are physical reminders: We are refugees.
After, we went to a soccer match, for the Gaza World Cup. The Palestinians working the gate (I think) assumed the friend who I walked in with and I were Palestinian. They asked us if we worked with the UNDP (good jobs for well-educated Palestinians in Gaza, I think).
Not realizing what was going on at the moment, I looked at the man baffled, and told him that I didn’t understand. Only when we were sitting in the stands did I understand the point. Dispossession and occupation create administering classes both within the native population and, amidst the NGO-ization and welfarization of solidarity, the peoples whose countries support occupation.
Meanwhile in Gaza? What is the difference between yesterday, when a man was shot dead near the Karni crossing on Palestinian land for God knows what and two weeks ago when a boy was shot dead near Nahal Oz right near Karni for being on his own land in a “closed military zone,” closed because apparently a muqawama took a pot-shot at a farmer, dinging his tractor, a couple years ago?
Maybe what was a little different was the sign reading that the core of the Palestinian struggle is the Right of Return? But was that different from the older Palestinian man who will die in exile in Gaza who, nearly screaming, told Pal-Fest participants with whom we were video-linked in Ramallah that he was from Jibna and what he wanted was to go back there, repeating it so many times that I think they started to feel uncomfortable? No, I don’t think so. In a dense mass of refugees, the Nakba is ongoing, and every day is a day to remember it, because forgetting it is impossible.
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The piquant was when my friend Ramzi went off to study in Italy for two years, a BA program in political and economic science. When a Palestinian from Gaza goes abroad to study for two years, this is not the euphemistic “two years” of American living-or-study-abroad: I lived abroad for two years, punctuated by seasonal trips home etc.
Two years means two full years: contact with family and friends back home solely by e-mail, no holiday visits back home that I know of. If they are students, it means winters alone in dormitories or at home-stays. If they come back to Gaza, they may not be able to leave again and no one wants to risk that after having gotten lucky enough to secure an impossible-to-get scholarship. Ramzi got on a bus, one of the few lucky enough to secure limited bus-slots.
Several of the parties, including Fatah, smaller leftist groups in the PLO, and the PFLP, came together during the most-demonstration press conference, which proceeded to UNSCOP, behind a fluttering huge Palestinian flag and cardboard cut-outs of keys. The keys are huge stand-ins for the physical keys Gazan families hold on to, the keys to their homes in ’48. They are physical reminders: We are refugees.
After, we went to a soccer match, for the Gaza World Cup. The Palestinians working the gate (I think) assumed the friend who I walked in with and I were Palestinian. They asked us if we worked with the UNDP (good jobs for well-educated Palestinians in Gaza, I think).
Not realizing what was going on at the moment, I looked at the man baffled, and told him that I didn’t understand. Only when we were sitting in the stands did I understand the point. Dispossession and occupation create administering classes both within the native population and, amidst the NGO-ization and welfarization of solidarity, the peoples whose countries support occupation.
Meanwhile in Gaza? What is the difference between yesterday, when a man was shot dead near the Karni crossing on Palestinian land for God knows what and two weeks ago when a boy was shot dead near Nahal Oz right near Karni for being on his own land in a “closed military zone,” closed because apparently a muqawama took a pot-shot at a farmer, dinging his tractor, a couple years ago?
Maybe what was a little different was the sign reading that the core of the Palestinian struggle is the Right of Return? But was that different from the older Palestinian man who will die in exile in Gaza who, nearly screaming, told Pal-Fest participants with whom we were video-linked in Ramallah that he was from Jibna and what he wanted was to go back there, repeating it so many times that I think they started to feel uncomfortable? No, I don’t think so. In a dense mass of refugees, the Nakba is ongoing, and every day is a day to remember it, because forgetting it is impossible.
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Technorati Tags: Gaza, Israel, Nakba Day, Palestine, refugees, Zionism
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May 16th, 2010 | Tags: Gaza, Israel, Nakba Day, Palestine, refugees, Zionism | Category: Uncategorized
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