Kites and Gaza's children
You may remember the recent story about the UN and various local organizations in Gaza organizing a mass children's kite-fly that, by sending 6,000 kites into the sky at once aimed at getting into the Guinness Book of World records.
I think it's quite appropriate that Gaza children should get this award. Every time I've gone to Gaza I've seen homemade kites flying up out of the many very heavily populated refugee camps and urban neighborhoods in the Strip. (It is worth remembering that some 70% of Gaza's population are people whose families have been refugees since 1948, having fled or been pushed from their homes and farms in the lands that became Israel that year, and having been barred from returning to those properties ever since then.)
Now, the Palestinian writer Ramzi Baroud, who grew up in Gaza's Nuseirat refigee camp, has written a great little essay on the importance that kite-flying had for him and the other children back when he was a boy there:
- In the summer, in Gaza's scorching heat and humidity, we had two escapes, swimming in the sea and flying kites. The first option was interminably blocked by the Israeli military under various guises. During the intifada of 1987-93, the sea fell under Israeli siege. My house was a very short walk from the beach, yet somehow we spent over seven years without visiting it once. Not once.
So kite running became our most favored pastime.
Gaza's children don't buy ready-made-kites. There is no such thing. They construct them by hand and with unparalleled craftsmanship. To be entirely honest, I was terrible at making kites, as I am at anything that requires manual skills. The kite maker in the family was my older brother Anwar. His skill was both impressive and troubling.
Well, just outside the Nuseirat refugee camp was,
- A notorious Israeli military camp and detention center ... [that] served multiple purposes. It was to immediately dispatch troops into our refugee camp at the first sign of protest.
Further, the men stationed there guarded a nearby Israeli settlement. Finally, it also served as a temporarily prison where Palestinian activists suffered torture before being hauled off to Gaza's central prison, or worse, the Al-Nakab jail [i.e., a detention center inside Israels Negev region.]
The military camp, however, hardly enjoyed a moment of peace. Students and other refugees from adjacent refugee camps would descend into the Israeli military grounds almost daily with marches, carrying flags, throwing stones and demanding that the soldiers depart. Of course the soldiers didn't oblige, and my refugee camp paid a heavy price in blood with every confrontation.
- [The] children made kites carrying the colors of the flags and other symbols of resistance at the time, such as the initials PLO. They often flew them to be visible from the Israeli military camp, and if the wind was right, right on top of it. The cleverest amongst the kite runners were those who managed to drop the kite, in an unprecedented moment of sacrifice, right into the military camp.
During the uprising's summers, there would be dozens of kites, all red, black, green and white wavering atop the Israeli military camp and temporary detention center. The soldiers would often fly into a rage, storm the [refugee] camp, seeking their target: children with kites. We could determine the location of the raid when all the kites from a particular location would fall from the sky in unison...
The event looked like a lot of fun for all the children involved!
When every effort appreciated of bringing some enjoyments to Gaza kids, but still the big and long standing question is what future waiting these kids in Gaza?
I would like to bring your attentions to BBC program about Israeli troops 'ill-treat kids', which telling sad stories by those kids who arrested in moment of panic.
These Palestinians kids had treated badly with fears and humiliations by IDF, they will never forget that as long as they live, but any one asked what the consequences of all these acts on them and their sociology?
While Israelis putting and eliminating their stories as us, usual of victimisation as here with most Sderot kids exhibit post-traumatic stress symptoms, but they forgot what the done and doing to the kids in GAZA.
You can read more from palestinian mothers, and here
Finally let not forgot Iraqi kids and what went through wars and invasion and Shock & Awe war, then more than six years they are left with 5,000,000 orphans on the ground no one care how these millions will treated and care them this side highly neglected by Iraqi puppet thug government supported by US, no vices from UN to give them their share of OIL money from their RICH country.??
Gaza is surrounded by two borders, Israel and Egypt. If a martian lands in the area and is asked about what the solution to the Gaza human density and refugee status is, the martian knowing no history and having a high IQ would say that the obvious solution is to expand westward towards Egypt. The SInai is empty, and it can be a win-win for constructing a prosperous future. You can expand along the coast, you can expand southward, or both.
Ask the martian for his opinion of solving their plight by creating an extra-territorial corridor towards Judea, crossing into enemy land and somehow claiming their property, and he will look at you like you are the martian...
Who’s a terrorist? I’m a terrorist?! How am I a terrorist when you’ve taken my land? Who’s a terrorist? You’re the terrorist! You’ve taken everything I own while I’m living in my homeland
You’re killing us like you’ve killed our ancestors You want me to go to the law? What for? You’re the Witness, the Lawyer, and the Judge! If you are my Judge I’ll be sentenced to death You want us to be the minority? To end up the majority in the cemetery? In your dreams!
You’re a Democracy? Actually it’s more like the Nazis! Your countless raping of the Arabs’ soul Finally impregnated it Gave birth to your child His name: Suicide Bomber And then you call him a terrorist?
You attack me and then you cry And then you rush to complain about me [to the world] When I remind you that you started the whole thing, You jump to say "You let small children throw stones! Don’t they have parents to keep them at home?" WHAT?! You must have forgotten you buried our parents under the rubble of our homes And now while my agony is so immense You call me a terrorist?Refugee camp kids
Titus, how very convenient that your Martian "knows no history". I imagine he has no understanding of property rights, either... So for him, it would be quite okay for Jewish immigrants from all over the world to come into the south of what is now Israel and to take over the lands and properties of the Palestinians ethnically cleansed from there. How convenient.
Knowing no history is quite incompatible with "having a high IQ".
As it happens, the Palestinians of Gaza would love to have good, close economic and personal inks with Egypt but it is the Government of Israel that prevents that by imposing suffocating restrictions on what (and who) Egypt is allowed to let pass across its short border with Gaza. Gazans would love to have free access to the world economy and world society through Egypt-- but Israel, which still runs the occupation of Gaza by controlling all of its borders with the outside world, insists on prohibiting that. Maybe you're unaware of this state of affairs. If so, please don't come here with all your ill-informed and faux arguments.
Helena,
I have no doubt many Palestinians in Gaza would love free access to the world economy and world society. Maybe even a majority would. The problem is a number (maybe a minority, maybe a majority) have used any opportunity at that access to try, sometimes successfully, to kill Israelis. Starting with Israel's withdrawal from Gaza, every time a crossing was opened it got attacked. Every time Israel would try to a new approach to security and reopen the border crossing, it got attacked.
Now you can argue that this was a Palestinian right of defense or freedom fighting, whatever. But the ones who would prefer to attack and kill Israelis won the battle over the Palestinians who would want that access to the world economy and society.
I'm not asking that you see an equalivance or anything like that just, a small acknowledgement that maybe Israel isn't entirely to blame. If and when Israel does ease restrictions at the border it is very important that those Palestinians who would love that border to be open, prevent attacks against Israelis.
Oh no Helena, the martian is a good problem solver, and he is looking at the future like any good problem solver. There are multiple narratives and we don't want to burden our poor martian with reconciling the narratives, just observe the facts and look at the future.
Now your statement Knowing no history is quite incompatible with "having a high IQ". is very puzzling. Why do you say that? There is no history section in an IQ test, and intelligence is the ability to solve new problems in my book, not to memory some tales.
I agree with you that the Gaza border should be open on the Egyptian side and possibly entrust the Egyptians to make sure that nothing untoward occurs through their border (like Iran positioning long range missiles, not that the Mullahs would do that, just a for instance...)
your statement Knowing no history is quite incompatible with "having a high IQ". is very puzzling. Why do you say that? There is no history section in an IQ test
well titus, those of us w/IQ's have an understanding of what compatibility stands for. one would have to go outside of ones environment (like say....mars) to find an adult with a high IQ who has no awareness of history.
david, I'm not asking that you see an equalivance or anything like that just, a small acknowledgement that maybe Israel isn't entirely to blame.
why? are you on a mission to be an israels apologist?
David, from the website of the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs, this page, roughly half way down:
B) Many examples which illustrate the influence of internal Palestinian relations and Palestinian-Israeli relations on Hamas' rocket fire policies are contained in this study . For example:... iii. Since the Palestinian Legislative Council elections on January 25, 2006 and the establishment of the Hamas government in March 2006, for long periods of time Hamas... preferred not to participate directly in rocket fire.
So did the newly elected Hamas administration's willingness and ability to police the Gaza-Israel border and prevent fire against Israel in that period lead to Israel wanting to build on that behavior and help them to open Gaza up to the world economy through Egypt? Of course it didn't. It led to Israel delivering very widespread threats of assassination of Hamas leaders and anyone who joined their government and the tightening of the siege imposed on the entire population of Gaza under the rubric the "Weissglass diet".
So maybe you should go talk to your Israeli friends about their behavior, instead?
Titus, thanks for underlining the extreme limitations on the relevance for any purposes of that archaic instrument the IQ test. Of course what I should have written was, "Knowing no history is quite incompatible with having a high intelligence."
Helena,
Thank you for the link. I have been too busy to read it but hope to over the weekend. I know I usually harp about rockets from Gaza, this time I choose to focus on the suicide attacks against the Israeli soldiers maning the crossings from Gaza instead. My point is still the same.
There are two groups of Palestinains. One group would like to live a normal life, ie go to work, enjoy time with friends and in the evening go home to a family and discuss with their children how was their day at school. Much like the life I currently live.
There is a second group, for whom the nekba cannot be forgotten. They don't care for any normal life. They seek only to overturn the current situation and use any and all opportunities to attack their enemy, Israel.
Those who seek a normal life will only get it when they stop the second group from their attacks.
annie,
I'm not sure what an "israels apologist" is, but if you mean someone who doesn't think all of the problems in the middle east and most of the ones in the world are Israel's fault.
Then yes, I am.
"There are two groups of Palestinains..."
Beautifully over-simplified, David.
"There is a second group, for whom the nekba (sic) cannot be forgotten.
So, you think the Palestinians should just forget the Nakba? OK, tell you what. Let the Jews set the example by forgetting the Shoa. Deal? No, I didn't think so.
Shirin,
No, I'm not suggesting they forget it. Just stop refighting it.
If the Palestinians want to have a state where they can enjoy life they will need to convince Israelis that they are not going to use that state as a launching pad to try to destroy them.