Dec. 18, 2008 (World News Trust) -- It’s
incomprehensible that a region such as the Gaza Strip, so rich with
history, so saturated with defiance, can be reduced to a few blurbs,
sound bites and reductionist assumptions, convenient but deceptive,
vacant of any relevant meaning, or even true analytical value.
The
fact is that there is more to the Gaza Strip than 1.5 million hungry
Palestinians, who are supposedly paying the price for Hamas’s
militancy, or Israel’s ‘collective punishment,’ whichever way the media decide to brand the problem.
More importantly, Gaza’s existence since time immemorial must not be juxtaposed by its proximity to Israel, failure
or success in ‘providing’ a tiny Israeli town -- itself built on
conquered land that was seen only 60 years ago as part of the Gaza
Province -- with its need for security. It’s this very expectation that
made the killing and wounding of thousands of Palestinians in Gaza a price worth paying, in the callous eyes of many.
These
unrealistic expectations and disregard of important history will
continue to be costly, and will only serve the purpose of those
interested in swift generalizations. Yes, Gaza
might be economically dead, but its current struggles and tribulations
are consistent with a legacy of conquerors, colonialism and foreign
occupations, and more, its peoples collective triumph in rising above
the tyranny of those invaders.
In relatively recent history, Gaza
became a recurring story following the 1948 influx of refugees, who
were driven from their homes by Zionist militias or fled for their
families’ sake, hoping to return once Palestine was recovered. They settled in Gaza, subsisting in absolute poverty, a situation that continues, more or less, to this day.
The history of Gaza,
and the place itself was largely irrelevant, if not revolting from the
point of view of the refugees who poured into the Strip mostly from the
south of Palestine,
for it represented the pinnacle of their loss, humiliation and, at
times, despair. It mattered little to the peasant refugees as they fled
to Gaza that that they probably walked on the same ancient road that
ran along the Palestinian coast when Gaza was once the last metropolis
for travelers to Egypt, just before they embarked on an unforgiving
desert journey through Sinai. So what if Gaza was described as the city, as told in the Book of Judges, where Samson performed his famous deed and perished. Christianity was relevant to the refugees insofar as a few of Gaza’s
ancient churches provided shelter to the tired bodies escaping snipers,
bullets and massacres. Even the strong belief amongst Muslims that
Prophet Mohammed’s great-grandfather, Hashem, died on one of his
journeys from Mecca to the Lavent and was buried in Gaza, was largely
sentimental. His shrine in Gaza City was visited by numerous refugees,
who kneeled and prayed to God that they, some day soon, would be sent
back to their humble existence, and their ways of life from which they
have been forcefully estranged.
But Gaza’s
history became more relevant to the refugees when it appeared that
their temporary journey to the Strip was likely to be extended. Only
then the areas’ many stories of conquerors, tragedies, triumphs but
also sheer goodness, became of essence. A pilgrim to the Holy Land, who passed through Gaza in 570 AD, wrote in Latin, “Gaza
is a splendid city, full of pleasant things; the men in it are most
honest, distinguished by every generosity, and warm to friends and
visitors.”
Gaza’s history became even more relevant when the refugees realized that their violent encounters with Israel
were not yet over, and that they needed the moral tenacity to survive
what would eventually be viewed as one of most severe humanitarian
catastrophes in recent memory. And indeed, there was much history to
marvel upon, and from which to extract strength and substantiation.
Conquerors came and went, and Gaza
stood where it still stands today. This was the recurring lesson for
generations, even millennia. Ancient Egyptians came and went, as did
the Hyksos, the Assyrians, the Persians, the Greeks, the Romans, the
Ottomans, the British, and now the Israelis. And through it all, Gaza
stood strong and defiant. Neither Alexander the Great’s bloody conquest
of 332 BC, nor Alexander Janneus’s brutal attack of 96 BC broke Gaza’s
spirit or took away from its eternal grandeur. It always rose again to
reach a degree of civilianization unheard of, as it did in the 5th
century AD. It was in Gaza
that the Crusaders surrounded their strategic control of the city to
Saladin in 1170, only to open up yet another era of prosperity and
growth, occasionally interrupted by conquerors and outsiders with
colonial designs, but to no avail. All the neglected ruins of past
civilizations were only reminders that Gaza’s
enemies would never prevail, and would, at best, merely register their
presence by another neglected structure of concrete and rocks.
Now Gaza is undergoing another phase of hardship and defiance. It’s modern conquerors are as unpitying as its ancient ones. True, Gaza
is ailing, but standing, it people resourceful and durable as ever,
defiant as they have always been, and hell-bent on surviving, for
that’s what Gazans do best. And I should know, its my hometown.
Excerpts from this article will appear in Ramzy Baroud’s new book, My Father Was a Freedom Fighter -- Gaza: The Untold Story (Pluto Press, London).
Ramzy
Baroud (www.ramzybaroud.net) is an author and editor of
PalestineChronicle.com. His work has been published in many newspapers,
journals and anthologies around the world. His latest book is The
Second Palestinian Intifada: A Chronicle of a People's Struggle (Pluto
Press, London).
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