NOT WITHOUT MY CHILDREN …

Been thinking about a story I did in Gaza and Israel. Was a really touching human interest tale.

A woman in Israel by the name of Galit Popik, originally from Russia, met and married a Palestinian man from Gaza. She moved to live with him and his family just outside Gaza city. There they had six children. But after a few years the marriage fell apart and Galit, who now lives in Israel, says she "escaped" with three of her children back to Israel. I meet her in Nazareth where she now lives with her mother and three children, speaks Hebrew and practices Judaism. Her husband was killed in last year's Gaza war in a freak accident - a stray bullet hit him just metres from his front door as he was walking home from work. I also met his children in Gaza - his oldest daughter (who is about eight or nine years old) spoke in Arabic about how much she misses her mother and sisters. She looks after the youngest children - twins who are slightly mentally retarded - who were left behind in Gaza with her. (Galit says she couldn't take more than three children with her when she escaped and decided not to take the oldest as she might have said something to her father; and the twins were too heavy to carry). She asked the Israeli army to bring her remaining children with them back to Israel when they left Gaza at the end of Operation Cast Lead in January 2009 - the army of course refused.

So, you have this legal nightmare. In Israel, Galit and her children fall under the jurisdiction of the Israeli authorities. In Gaza, her three other children who live with their paternal grandfather and his family fall under the ruling Hamas authorities. They speak Arabic, practice Islam (they took us to their father's grave and recited Muslim prayers) - and would now find it difficult to talk to their siblings who speak only English. Galit is too afraid to return to Gaza - even though her former father-in-law says he would welcome her back with open arms. Neither side is prepared to compromise so you have this tragic situation of a split family - and there is nothing anyone can do because Israel and Hamas don't speak with one another - quite the opposite - they are at war. It's not that this is a love story gone wrong - perhaps the surprising part is that the love story could have begun in the first place!

TUNNELING TO EGYPT

Both Israel and Egypt have announced they’re closing off part of their border with Gaza by erecting a wall. For years Gazans have complained they’re living in a giant prison – seems that expression just took on an even more sinister reality.

I spent some time observing the tunnels along the Egyptian/Gaza border. I’m told there were about 1 200 tunnels before Israel’s operation last year; 80 % of them were destroyed during the war, but within days of the war ending, many were already being rebuilt.

Many of the tunnels I visited had electrical powered pulleys that would lift up either buckets full of sand or huge washing machines and other goods from the ground. I saw a lot of children working on them. A man who looked about seventy years old (but who told me he was 45) owned one of these tunnels and employed many of his nephews and sons. He said the children got paid $100 a day, which seems unrealistic, but I didn’t press him on it.  There was one tunnel where a girl of about two years old was playing while her father directed operations.

This is a huge money-making industry – often involving families. Everybody I interviewed told me the tunnels were a lifeline and while I’m sure it’s true for many, there are also the reports that Israel claims that they’re used to smuggle weapons in. Naturally everyone I spoke to in Gaza denied this.

What I found particularly strange was that many of the tunnels were covered with these huge white tents – it seems absurd as it shows clearly where the tunnel openings are – surely they’d want to hide this?

I decided to go down a tunnel myself and it took a bit of convincing to get the guys who owned one to let me down. Eventually Rami, my fixer, explained that because I was a woman (and he encouraged me to do a little bit of indirect flirting) they let me go. They wanted to give us only a few minutes underground, so I stood at the bottom of the tunnel, looking up at about 20 beard-covered faces looking down at me, trying to have a conversation with them in my poor Arabic, while Rami and the cameraman filmed as much as they could of the other guys working down there.

It was humid, stuffy, I felt claustrophic – we crawled for a while so I could get the feel of the “place” and do a standupper for the camera. The guys working inside the tunnel were young and were constantly drilling at muddy walls that didn’t seem too secure to begin with. I had the very real feeling that everything could come crushing down at any moment! While we were there we heard two huge crashes above and the guys started screaming at us from above that the Israelis were firing on the tunnels and we must get out immediately! Four people had already died in the tunnels in the previous days because of the Israeli fire that caused the tunnels to collapse around them. Needless to say I climbed out at a twentieth of the speed I used to climb in. What for me was particularly strange was that it was the Egyptian border guards who were alerting the tunnel builders – the two sides were definitely working together, which flies in the face of the announcement that Cairo now plans to build a wall between the two. Then again, what happens on the political level is often light years away from the reality on the ground!

GAZA ANNIVERSARY A YEAR ON

This time last year I was in Gaza covering the war dubbed "Operation Cast Lead" by Israel. At the time I wasn't keeping a blog but was jotting down on scraps of paper my impressions (not incredibly sophisticated, I know - thank heavens I've improved since then!)

I'd like now to reflect on those impressions and see what - if anything - has changed.

I was surprised to find out but most Gazans do not support Hamas. I interviewed many locals who said they'd been intimidated into letting Hamas fighters into their residential buildings. Colleagues in our sister organisation, Russia Al Yaum, said Hamas fighters had been hiding in the basement of the media building and they couldn't go on air and admit it as otherwise they would have become targets. So, in this respect at least, when the Israeli army justified its attacks on media houses, they were telling the truth when they said fire was coming from them!

I interviewed a Fatah man who'd lost his job the day we met him because he was not Hamas. His wife was panicking, stomping up and down behind him throughout the interview, and literally screaming all the time, "We have no money, no income, no food to feed the family, nothing!" There were many people sleeping outside on the streets - their houses had been completely destroyed - and like many Gazan businesses - they were not insured. How then to start life anew is mind-boggling.

There was one street in a residential area where the houses had been completely destroyed. We interviewed a father-of-four, Majdi, who seemed traumatised by his ordeal. He'd been used by the Israeli army as a go-between - next door to his home three Hamas militants had been hiding out. He recounted how the soldiers would give him a message to deliver to them, he'd then run up the stairs onto the roof and relay that message down through another stairway. In the end the three fighters were killed, the soldiers left, and Majdi's house was destroyed.

Having said all of this, I did however expect there to be more damage. The pictures coming out of Gaza at the time showed constant bombing and explosions. The Israelis kept saying their operation had specific targets at which they were aiming and to be honest - I did see evidence of this. For example, there is a beach street with four hotels. Three had remained standing - but the fourth which was renowned to be a 'Hamas hotel' with Hamas sympathisers hanging out inside, had been bombed to the ground.

The local city prison - like all other Hamas governmental buildings - had been destroyed. In the prison, there'd been three Fatah supporters asking about their friends who'd been imprisoned by Hamas, when the Israeli bombs hit - and they were also killed in the strike. Between a dozen and twenty Fatah prisoners were killed in the cells underground where they were being held. Next door to the Hamas police training grounds were fancy office blocks (well, fancy by Gazan standards) - I remember quite a few had glass fronts. Well, naturally all the glass had broken and these new buildings looked as if some of them would need to be torn down - again, no insurance for their owners in a place like Gaza!

Because Israel had targeted as much of Hamas' infrastructure as it could, the police no longer had offices from where to run their affairs. It was quite a bizarre sight to see policemen on street corners operating out of their vehicles - they'd write tickets, do interrogations, meet people - all in the back of a car! Their vehicles had become police stations.

It didn't take long for all of this to change and new offices to be sought - but during this time last year - in the midst of the war with Israel - Hamas was fighting not only its enemy across the border, but clamping down internally so its own people would continue to support it.