Gaza: suspicion and resistance

Human rights activist Jody McIntyre took advantage of a temporary opening in the border to visit disabled people in the Gaza Strip

It was during a solo trip around South America, in my wheelchair, that I heard about Israel’s invasion of Gaza. Ever since the war in my grandmother’s native Lebanon, in 2006, the question of Palestine had always been a pertinent issue to me, but Gaza’s devastation had made it all the more urgent.

Getting into Gaza was never going to be an easy task. Ever since Hamas were democratically elected in 2006, Israel have been maintaining a land, naval and aerial blockade of the tiny strip of land, home to around 1.5 million people.

In the first days of 2010, however, an exception had been made; part of the border would be opened for 24 hours, to allow a small amount of aid to pass through. I was staying with an Egyptian friend in Cairo.

There were around 1500 foreigners in Cairo that week, all hoping to travel to the Gaza Strip. The Egyptian authorities were determined to stop them from doing so – demonstrations in the capital were immediately crushed, and several checkpoints were set up across the Sinai desert to prevent foreigners from getting further than the Suez Canal.

However, with my determination and the Arabic I had learnt from a previous six months in Palestine on my side, the mother of another Egyptian friend’s family took me to the bus station, explaining to staff that I was her son, hoping to travel to al-Arish [a small town in the Sinai, about half-way between Cairo and Rafah] to see my father. The plan worked, and in minutes I was on the next bus to al-Arish.

At the first checkpoint, the police asked for my passport. I answered, in Arabic, that I was an Egyptian and didn’t have one. They insisted, but when I said that I couldn’t walk, simply shrugged their shoulders and walked off the bus. By the fourth checkpoint, it was plain sailing. Early the next day, I was making my way into Gaza.

Once I had arrived in Gaza city, I met up with two brothers from the PFLP who had agreed for me to stay with them, on the condition that I didn’t tell anyone where I was staying. Bullet marks pocked the front of their house; results of the 2007 Fatah-Hamas inter-fighting.

Unfortunately, my electric wheelchair had broken in Cairo, so I spent the next few weeks travelling the city by foot. Luckily for me, virtually every car in Gaza doubles as a shared taxi, so I quickly discovered that by raising your arm at any street corner, you were only a one shekel [around 20p] ride away from anywhere else in the city.

I met up with Hamdan Jew’ei, a 26-year-old Palestinian man who was born with cerebral palsy.

I asked Hamdan how living under the Israeli occupation made life more difficult for disabled Palestinians.

“I remember once, just before the second Intifada,” he replied, “I was taking a bus from Ramallah to Bethlehem, through Jerusalem, and we were stopped at a couple of checkpoints. At one of the checkpoints, an Israeli soldier stopped the bus, and out of all the passengers, he only asked me to get out of the bus. I told him, look, I am using crutches to walk, you can see I’m a disabled person, so why are you asking me to get off the bus? And he said, because you are disabled, get off the bus. So I jumped down; it was difficult for me to get down because of the height, and of course the bus drove away.

The soldier told me to leave my crutches on the ground, but I told him that without the crutches I would not be able to stand, so he would have to bring me a chair before I gave
him the crutches. So he did, and then I asked him what they wanted to do with my crutches.

He said, look, you might be a disabled person, but we consider you as the most dangerous people. He told me that I could be carrying something within my crutches which could be a danger to the security of the State of Israel.”

Hamdan’s sentiments certainly rang true with my own experiences. Before my trip to Gaza, I had spent six months living in the West Bank village of Bil’in, situated on the path of Israel’s wall, which had stolen half of the village’s land. The Israeli army would invade Bil’in almost every night, and the fact that I was in a wheelchair certainly didn’t put them off using violence against me. I remember during one night raid, a soldier rolling a sound grenade directly under my wheelchair, so that it exploded up into my face. I wonder if he felt that my wheelchair posed the same “danger to the security of the State of Israel” as Hamdan’s crutches?

It was in Bil’in that I met Rani Bornat, a 29-year-old man who had been shot in the back of the throat on the very first day of the second Intifada, and paralysed and in a wheelchair ever since.

Me and Rani spent many evenings together in his front garden, looking out at the fields of olive trees, cut through the centre by the snaking wall Israel had built.

“Rani, do you think the Israeli army treat you differently now that you are in a wheelchair?” I asked him.

“Jody...” he replied, “They treat me exactly the same. They don’t care if I am in a wheelchair or if I’m walking – according to them, I am a threat to the State of Israel, as ridiculous as that may sound. But it’s not important if you’re in a wheelchair or not ... what’s important are the ideas... the resistance, that’s in your mind.”