Across the border from the Egyptian Sinai town of Taba is Elate, the posh Israeli tourist town on the Red Sea. If one approaches Taba from the Egyptian side, as our auto did, it appears like a mirage out of a fog bank that shrouds the sea cliff margin with the vast desolation of the Sinai. I was unprepared for the sight of half billion-dollar casinos rising from the steep red rocks of the Red Sea coast. Only a few miles behind us, our van had sped past a herd of 20 or more wild camels nosing in the sparse vegetation.
Taba is 500 kilometers south of Tel Aviv, and the same distance west of Cairo. My Arab guides and driver had not told me any of this. Hani and Gammel had simply said they thought the best way to get into the occupied territories of Palestine was by way of Taba. It turned out they were right, but they neglected to tell me how far it was or that we were going to Gaza, by way of the Red Sea.
Hani aimed me at Egyptian customs. In Taba, none of the Egyptians spoke English, and none of them knew how to get to Gaza or how much it would cost. All were smiling and one told me the half-truth of the day, “America is the Greatest.” I told him it is the greatest and also the worst, and he did not understand a word I said. Hani told me I would find out how to get to Tel Aviv only when I got to the Jewish side, if I got through Jewish immigration. If not, he would wait for me one hour before returning.
My backpack was full of miniature recording disks, borrowed photographic equipment, film and a laptop. Hani insisted I go through my gear and remove all references to We Hold These Truths and all of our writings that I had brought along as calling cards. “It not good if the Israeli’s find what you write when they go through your baggage,” he said. “Tell them you are strictly a tourist on busses.”
A half an hour later, I was in Israel. No one on the elaborate entry system had shown the slightest interest in reading my articles or in even opening my bags. Furthermore, every Israeli employee spoke acceptable English and a few were nearly polite. It was a relief after Egypt ! Obviously, they encouraged tourist to buy Shekels and spend them in Elate’s casinos. I bought a cheap ticket on a clean but crowded subsidized Israeli bus bound to Tel Aviv leaving in 30 minutes. I relaxed. It appeared that the next challenge would be when I tried to carry all my photographic recording stuff into Gaza.
On the previous morning, the Egyptian TV in our hotel room was filled with chilling news of successful killings by both sides in Gaza. On March 3rd, a single unknown Palestinian had managed to ambush an Israeli military unit at a Jewish settlement near the town called Rafah, killing and wounding up to a dozen Israeli boy soldiers and settlers with a sniper rifle. He had gotten away. Reprisals from Israel were swift. Tanks had rolled in to Rafah, the border town where I was planning to cross the next morning, and it was closed. Israelis brought in F-16s to bomb the Rafah refugee camp with a large death count of civilians. The Israelis also destroyed two ambulances with tank cannons, killing the passengers including one 57-year old doctor and two nurses who were trying to evacuate the wounded.
A call to my contact in Gaza on the cell phone, an American teacher and a former Christian Missionary and resident of Gaza City (who I shall not name for now), both confirmed that the border was closed. It was not likely that I would get in through Rafah, if at all. The trip to Tebi became my best alternative.
At Ariz gate in north Gaza, an Israeli girl soldier was the first of several to ask for my passport. After she had provided directions for the next stop, her companion, a tall pink faced male under 20, said in the most polite tone I had yet to hear in Israel, “Excuse me sir, but do you mind if I ask why you would want to go there?” It was as if he was asking why I would want to sleep in a pigsty, asked with complete sincerity. He simply did not regard the other side fit for human habitation and wondered why I would degrade myself by looking at it.
A half mile long cement and razor wire gauntlet connects Israel to occupied Palestine on the north end of the Gaza Strip. I pulled my bag and carried my backpack from station to station and no one even looked at my luggage. In the 15 or so minutes it took to cross ‘no man’s land,’ not another person or auto crossed the border going either way. I heard about three volleys of small arm’s fire, but I was later to learn this was a funeral salute to the Palestinian killed the previous night in the Jabalia Refugee Camp the night before. I was greeted in the Gaza by the sound the funeral. I entered the world’s largest prison, one million captured and incarcerated men women and children.
The boy solder was not the first to tell me he considered Palestinians subhuman. In Elate, an Israeli cab driver first asked where I was going in Israel and when he found out he said, “You will never get in, they have closed all that area off on account of war…. There are lots of great things to see in Israel, why would you want to see those animals?”
Not satisfied that I was convinced, he went on with his recital in total arrogance and without any hint of apology for his profession of racism. “Let me give you some advise, don’t go there. You have an American passport, how long do you think you will last in there…don’t you know what they think of Americans?” The cabby had no doubt served his time in the military and was my first witness to the open, incredibly harsh racist bigotry that Israelis harbor toward the million Arabs. Like the man I will call Ahmad, my guide in Gaza, some of these Arabs are Christians. Even if you do not ask them, Israelis do not mind telling you that they feel perfectly justified to imprison and even to kill a million Arabs in Gaza because they are “animals.”
Next First day in Gaza City.
