Shqaqi still mobilises thousands in Gaza

From the roof of an abandoned five-storey building behind the massive stage, the view of thousands of Islamic Jihad supporters – around 40,000 – gathered in Khatiba Square in central Gaza City after Friday prayers was impressive.

Fourteen years since the assassination of their founding leader, Fathi Shqaqi, in Malta, this marginal yet fiery Islamist movement is still mobilising the masses in one way or another, vowing revenge on Israel and its annihilation while steadfastly refusing to engage in Palestinian elections and any negotiations for peace.

On the ground, young men covered from their heads in white sheets – the so-called martyrs-in-waiting who would be sent for the next suicide missions – marched over the Israeli flag while hundreds of others wore mock suicide bombers’ vests and carried plastic rockets, and others still burnt the Israeli and American flags.

A masked gunman standing on top of the building, clearly happy to be photographed, posed with his Kalashnikov for the picture.

“Where are you from?” he asked me.

In all my life, that question never seemed as risky as today. Many Palestinians have a vague idea of Malta as a peaceful and lovely island, but for any Jihadist, it is the place where Shqaqi became a “martyr”.

The faceless militant made the connection immediately, but luckily he also seemed convinced Malta was just a victim of what many believe to have been an Israeli Secret Service (Mossad) operation carried clandestinely on its shores.

The bearded doctor from Gaza born to a refugee family had founded the movement in 1979, inspired by the Islamic revolution in Iran. He was previously active in the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood but left disappointed because of the movement’s belief back then that the Islamic world had to be unified to liberate Palestine.

Opposing secular Arab governments and declaring a holy war on Israel, Shqaqi is believed to be the first Palestinian to justify suicide attacks as part of an armed guerrilla struggle against Israel – distinguishing between prohibited suicide and martyrdom.

Arrested twice by Israel in the 1980s for subversive activities and subsequently deported to Lebanon and then to Syria, Shqaqi secured funding and solidified alliances outside the Palestinian territories with radical Shi’ite movements in Iran, Lebanon’s Hizballah and Damascus, which remain to this day.

In 1994, just a year before he was gunned down in Tas-Sliema, he was a key player in a coalition of factions rejecting Palestinian President Yasser Arafat’s signing of the Oslo Accords and the ensuing peace deal with Israel, embarking on a series of suicide attacks on Israeli military and civilian targets. Months before his assassination, Shqaqi’s organisation claimed responsibility for a suicide attack on a bus stop near Tel Aviv that killed more than 20 people.

On 26 October 1995, Shqaqi arrived in Malta by ferry from Libya using a fake Libyan passport in the name of Ibrahim Ali Shawesh, after reportedly meeting Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi.

Hours after landing, a man accompanied by a driver on a foreign-registered motorcycle – both wearing helmets – stopped him outside the Diplomat Hotel, where Shqaqi had booked a room, and shot him several times from point blank range in front of shocked onlookers and traffic. The hit man and the driver are believed to have escaped from Malta shortly afterwards on a speed boat.

The assassination sparked furious protests outside the Maltese embassy in Tripoli and a dramatic downturn in relations with Libya, which for some months suspended the ferry service with Malta – at the time its only link with the rest of the world.

Carried out under former Police Commissioner George Grech, the murder was never solved. The Maltese government never named anyone, nor did Israel ever comment on the case, but then foreign minister Guido de Marco had said “we would not accept any settling of scores in our country.”

For years after Shqaqi’s assassination, the Palestinian Islamic Jihad carried out several other terrorist attacks with its leadership based in Damascus. The US government lists it as a foreign terrorist organisation committed to suicide bombings against the state of Israel.

Despite their seemingly similar goals, Islamic Jihad is nowadays at loggerheads with Hamas, which currently rules the Gaza Strip. Unlike Hamas, which is far bigger and runs schools, hospitals and social services, Islamic Jihad has no social or political programme and is close to the Shi’ite Iranian regime and Lebanon’s Hizballah movement.

The movement still uses the same fiery rhetoric as its founding father’s, although in the last years it has been unable to carry out attacks in Israel. Yet Friday’s rally showed Shqaqi’s movement is still alive and its intentions remain as militant as when it was founded.

“Death to Israel,” the masses chanted in reply to one of the leaders’ calls from the podium. “Muhammad’s army will be back to wipe off the Jewish state.”

Art under blockade

Dozens of people are flocking to a modest house recently converted into an art studio by a handful of young artists from Gaza. The streets in central Gaza City are dark after the latest power cut, but generators serve to light up the exhibition space, making it possible to see the works of art.

The lights also expose the poor quality of some of the photo prints.

"It's impossible to find good printers in the Gaza Strip," says artist Bassel Al Maqoussi, who had to make do with inferior prints of his works to be able to exhibit them here. "There is no professional equipment to print high quality photos, so we have to manage with what we can."

Under blockade, even art here suffers from the same problems faced by every other sector. Paint and raw material is scarce, of low quality and very expensive.

"We depend on material coming through the tunnels from Egypt," says another artist, Sharif Sarhan. "Sometimes we have to ask anyone coming from Israel or Jerusalem or Ramallah to bring us material with them. I have some friends working with UNRWA, but not everyone is so lucky. No artist here can live on art, so we all have to have another job. There are no materials here, and no good places to hold exhibitions; maybe three spaces in all of Gaza."

Even the de facto Hamas government of Gaza does not help much. The Islamist movement is, at best, indifferent to anything that is not immediately religious or political within its own agenda.

"I have no work or cooperation with the ministry of culture, no contact," says Sarhan, who has participated in numerous exhibitions abroad in the past. "We don’t really have problems with them. Government is not interested in art. Maybe they organise different activities falling under culture, but not art. We’re not on the same wavelength... maybe even seeing women coming for this exhibition won’t please them."

The occasion for tonight's event is meant to mark the opening of an exhibition called 'Tribute to Jerusalem'. Yet in the besieged and impoverished Gaza Strip, an art exhibition is also a statement that the people here are alive and daring to dream.

Organised by Windows from Gaza, a collective of Gazan artists working to promote contemporary modern art, the exhibition pays homage to the holy city that is completely forbidden to Gazans and the vast majority of Palestinians.

Sarhan last visited Jerusalem 16 years ago. What he misses most are the little, ordinary details of life in Jerusalem. Like having tea with friends on a pavement, walking in the labyrinthine cobbled streets, or buying a souvenir.

“We can’t move out of here, definitely not to go to Jerusalem,” Sarhan says. “Our idea behind the exhibition is to say ‘hello, I’m here’ to Jerusalem. It’s our way to tell Jerusalem that it’s still in our hearts, that we’re thinking of it all the time.”

Al Maqoussi last visited Jerusalem in 2007, before the civil war between Fatah and Hamas and the ensuing blockade. But even on that occasion, he could only see the Old City from the outside.

 “I was with my friends at the gates of Jerusalem, at Damascus Gate, and we were prevented from entering by Israeli police, specifically because we are from Gaza,” he says. “I couldn’t even take a photo of the Old City. We could only see Jerusalem from outside the fortress walls.”

Another artist from Gaza exhibiting her works is Maha Daya, whose colourful landscapes with domed buildings and arched doorways give one a glimpse of her dream of Jerusalem. Her last visit to Jerusalem was in 1996, and she is well aware of the ongoing changes happening under Israeli occupation.

"If I had to go there again I’m sure I’d find that a lot has changed. It’s not just the landscape and the buildings, but also the people – there are much fewer Palestinians living there now.”

A peace prize without peace

When Barack Obama was declared the Nobel peace prize winner last week, perhaps nobody could take the news as a joke more than the Palestinians. After decades of hearing words and promises about a peace that never materialised, Palestinians watched the US president getting the world's most prestigious peace award without having accomplished anything to deserve it.

Palestinians have already seen another Nobel Peace Prize awarded to Middle Eastern players with no ensuing peace, but at least when Yasser Arafat, Shimon Perez and Yitzhak Rabin received the prize jointly in 1994, Israel and Palestinians had just signed the Oslo Accords – a source of much criticism from Palestinian intellectuals but also inspiring much needed hope at the time.

Obama got his Nobel just as his grip on the situation in the Middle East was slipping spectacularly, not to mention the hopelessness in Iraq and Afghanistan. Israel refuses to commit to a settlement freeze while the Palestinian President, Mahmoud Abbas, has been left on his own to fight hopelessly for his survival.

Just as the Nobel prize was being announced, the US administration was pushing Abbas into a corner by forcing him to abandon the UN human rights report on the Gaza war, a move that exposed him to intense rage among his own people and forced him into a full U-turn in a couple of days.

The UN report, which is based on a fact-finding mission headed by the South African Jewish judge Richard Goldstone, documents cases upon cases of war crimes and possible crimes against humanity committed by Israel last January. It also accuses Hamas of war crimes for the thousands of rockets it launched into Israel and calls for International Criminal Court proceedings against individuals on both sides unless Israel and Hamas investigate the accusations thoroughly.

In pressing Abbas not to endorse the Goldstone report, the US administration put him in an impossible position without giving him anything in return. His own people were calling him a traitor, and in Gaza some Palestinians were throwing their shoes at photos of their president during Hamas rallies. In an ironic twist, Hamas has fully endorsed the Goldstone report even if it means that its own fighters might be summoned at The Hague as war criminals. Eventually, Abbas pushed forward the report at the UN Human Rights Council, but the damage was irreversible.

The US administration's stand against the UN report echoes Israel's rhetoric that there can be no peace process as long as Israeli army generals and officers can be charged as war criminals. But failure to pursue justice and accountability for Israel's disproportionate offensive that left up to 1,400 Palestinians dead and thousands of houses demolished will also keep peace as elusive as ever.

Goldstone – respected by human rights movements but much reviled by Israel – accepts Israel's premise for attacking Gaza, but denounces the type and extent of force used by Israel to "defend itself". In other words, Goldstone accepts that one is entitled to attack his neighbour in self-defence, but that does not give one a right to destroy the entire neighbourhood.

In opposing the UN report, Obama, together with all the countries that voted against it, is not only denying Palestinians' right for justice, but he is also weakening Abbas to the point of leaving him utterly powerless, both internally and as a party for peace. Added to that, the Obama administration is also undermining Egypt's attempts at reconciling Hamas and Fatah – itself a Herculean task – by stating that it would not recognise national unity that would pave the way for general and presidential elections, except on its own terms.

A Fatah memo leaked last week spoke of Palestinians' hopes in Obama having "evaporated". Some may think that is premature, just nine months since Obama took office. Hopefully it's as premature as his prize.

Hamas’s PR coup

Hamas is not new to coups, but on 2 October the Islamist Movement staged a bloodless one when for less than three minutes of footage of the captured Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit it got 20 female prisoners released from Israeli jails.

Not only was the footage acceptable for Israelis, which found in it all the signals they needed of Shalit’s good health and lucidity, but it scored highest marks on the Arab street as Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza were reminded that Hamas’s approach – that of the armed struggle – in contrast with that of Mahmoud Abbas, was ultimately yielding results.

It was not just a great PR victory for the de facto government in Gaza, but it did it with a sense of magnanimity too. Only two out of the released 20 prisoners were from Gaza, and Hamas was the least represented among the former detainees. By all accounts, Hamas came out with flying colours as busloads of people swarmed in Gaza and Ramallah to greet their “sisters” while Shalit’s footage was being handed over to Israel.

“These are all our sisters, this is all good,” said Mahmoud Abu Hamza, 47, from Jabalia camp who works as a caretaker in a Gaza City motel and who does not normally see eye to eye with Hamas. “Hopefully this will lead to an agreement on Shalit and to the lifting of the siege.”

Known for their black humour, Gazans have turned the Shalit ordeal into a joke, with the young and old quipping they have seen the Israeli corporal directing traffic at a Gaza junction as a Hamas policemen.

“He’s in my basement,” said Majed Abusalama, a young graduate from Gaza City, recounting how Israelis regularly bombard Gaza with SMSes and leaflets dropped from fighter planes with messages urging Palestinians to give any information about Shalit’s whereabouts for a US$ 2 million reward.

Abu Hamza’s generation speaks of the period “before Shalit” and “after Shalit”, to contrast the times before and after the blockade imposed by Israel on Gaza. Many people resent the abduction, blaming it for the hardships that ensued, crippling their daily lives.

Abu Hamza contrasts “the miserable life today” with the time when he worked as a construction worker in Israel, although in reality he and many other Gazans were stopped from working there after the 2000 intifada, years before Hamas took over.

Hamas’s popularity was dealt a further blow after Israel’s 22-day war on Gaza last winter, when an estimated 1,400 Palestinians were killed and thousands of houses were destroyed in Operation Cast Lead.

“After the war people said there is no resistance,” said Sami Ajrami, an independent political analyst from Gaza.

Today, an estimated 85 per cent of Gazans survive on humanitarian aid. The UN agency helping Palestinian refugees (UNRWA) says abject poverty has tripled this year to 300,000, that is one in five residents out of the estimated 1.5 million in Gaza. UNRWA’s head in Gaza John Ging links poverty directly to the border blockade, calling it a “man-made disaster” and “a predictable consequence”.

A survey carried out in Gaza and the West Bank last April by Birzeit University found Fatah’s popularity rising, with 31 percent of respondents saying they would vote for it against 17 percent favouring Hamas. Significantly, Fatah enjoyed more support in the Gaza Strip than in the West Bank.

But the deal Hamas just struck with Israel, with the mediation of German and Egyptian interlocutors, gave it a great boost of credibility among the people living in the besieged strip.

“The Shalit deal is great for Hamas’s popularity because it shows that there is, effectively, a connection between resistance and political reward,” Ajrami said. “It is an investment because Palestinian elections will arrive after reconciliation between Fatah and Hamas.”

On the day of the prisoners’ release, images of a beaming Ismael Haniye – the deposed Hamas prime minister in Gaza – hit the TV screens and the next day’s front pages.

“We will keep our promise to liberate all the male and female Palestinian prisoners,” he said.

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas and Fatah members could only watch in embarrassing silence as the news unfolded. A Fatah official admitted to Israeli newspaper Haaretz that “the only way to bring the release of prisoners is through force. We have already learned that negotiations with you Israelis do not bring results” – a clear sign of exasperation at Fatah's exclusive resort to largely unfruitful negotiations with Israel and abandonment of armed resistance.

“All Israel wanted was to see that Shalit was OK and to make Hamas feel responsible for his life. Hamas proved that, and in so doing it showed it was in total control of the situation,” Ajrami said.

The deal proved once and for all that Shalit, as is the security situation inside Gaza, is under Hamas’s total control, through its Izzadin Al Qassam military wing. It dispelled any questions there may have been that Hamas was held hostage by any faction, particularly the armed Jaish al Islam (Army of Islam) which was involved in Shalit's capture in the cross-border raid.

Headed by Mumtaz Daghmash, Jaish Al Islam and the Daghmash clan had held Hamas hostage through its series of kidnappings of foreigners, the most famous among them being BBC correspondent Alan Johnston. But ever since Hamas secured Johnston’s release after four months in captivity in July 2007, it has cracked down on all the warring factions, killing most of the Daghmesh clan militants and establishing its own version of law and order across the strip.

“Mumtaz is out of the picture. He’s been out of it since the end of 2007. Jaish is finished,” Ajrami said.

The fact that Hamas fulfilled the Shalit video deal’s requirements sent a signal that it was in control within the strip, as opposed to Abbas’s disintegrating political capital in the West Bank.

Abbas in freefall

Just as Hamas was still savouring its moment, Abbas headed straight into a minefield when news broke out he had deferred to next March the endorsement of Richard Goldstone’s report on the UN Human Rights Council, shortly after he was visited by the US Consul-General.

While Hamas was initially hostile to the Goldstone report (named after the head of the UN Fact Finding Mission which besides accusing Israel of committing possible war crimes in the 22-day assault also blames the militant movement for firing rockets) the leadership was quick to turn Goldstone into a gold mine as Abbas came under fire from all sides. If Shalit was Hamas’s winning card in the last week, Abbas gave it another victory with the unlikely name of Goldstone – a South African Jewish judge with a daughter living in Israel.

By requesting the postponement of the Goldstone report discussion, Abbas sealed his reputation as a “traitor” to his own people – a charge never fired from as many quarters at the beleaguered president at once.

Mahmoud Zahar, the number one Hamas political leader in Gaza, went as far as saying Abbas should be “stripped of his Palestinian citizenship” for this “act of treason” during an emergency meeting of the Gaza Strip’s legislative council last Monday.

But beyond Hamas and the usual opponents, the extent of Abbas’s crisis could be glimpsed from the range of harsh critics from within his own constituency and independent organisations.

The PA’s minister for the economy, Bassem Khoury, reportedly resigned in protest from the Cabinet (he gave a ‘no comment’ when asked after official Palestinian agencies reported the news). Speaking on condition of anonymity, other Fatah members have called for Abbas's resignation.

Reputable human rights organisations teamed up to issue an unequivocal condemnation against the Palestinian Authority leadership.

“This deferral denies the Palestinian peoples’ right to an effective judicial remedy and the equal protection of the law,” a statement signed by 16 Palestinian NGOs said. “It represents the triumph of politics over human rights. It is an insult to all victims and a rejection of their rights.”

The media war against Abbas in Gaza and the West Bank was relentless.

“Right now there is a media war against the Palestinian National Authority,” Ajrami notes. “They can see Abbas getting weaker day after day. He had no justification to throw the Goldstone report out of the window.”

Overwhelmed by accusations from all fronts, including a wave of mass demonstrations in the West Bank and Gaza, Abbas on Monday launched an “investigation” into “the circumstances” that led to the postponement of the Goldstone report’s endorsement.

In reality, the circumstances were all too transparent. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu made it clear that any endorsement of the Goldstone report would stall any hopes of resuming the peace process, with the Obama administration paraphrasing the veiled threat into stating that peace talks, not finger-pointing, was the priority. The pressure, or “intense diplomacy”, was too much for Abbas. While the US administration denies exerting pressure, Obama administration spokesman Ian Kelly on Monday said: “I think that we recognized that we had serious concerns with the recommendations and some of the allegations (in the Goldstone report). … We appreciate the seriousness with which the Palestinians approach this very, very difficult issue, and we respect this decision to defer discussion of the report to a later date” to remain focused on re-establishing the peace process.

Soon after that round of praise from the US administration, in what could only be described as a U-turn, Abbas’s right hand man and chief negotiator, Saeb Erekat, announced Tuesday that the Palestinian president was “seriously considering” taking the Goldstone report directly to the UN Security Council and admitted the original decision was a mistake. The news was immediately followed up by Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi through his request to the United Nations Security council to discuss the findings of the report, but the damage for Abbas was irreversible.

By Wednesday, posters of Abbas with his face crossed out amid images of victims of the Gaza war were posted all over Gaza, as Hamas was calling on people to throw their shoes at photos of their president. The caption to the posters read: “Destined for the garbage of history, Mahmoud Abbas”.

“Abbas is paying a high price for his decision on the Goldstone report,” Ajrami said. “He is now trying to cover up for his blunder, but nothing short of a big and quick response from Israel and the Obama administration will get him out of this, in the form of starting peace negotiations and Israel’s recognition of 1968 borders for a Palestinian state. But Israel will remain keen on undermining Abbas.”

Proof of that, Ajrami says, is the timing of another sinister and serious charge that Abbas is blackmailed by Israel – an allegation first touted by Hamas media attributing it to unnamed “sources in Washington”, then picked up by the Israeli press claiming that Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman had video or audio evidence exposing the Fatah leadership of complicity in the war on Gaza.

According to the version reported by Israeli daily Yediot Ahronot and in turn picked up and distributed by Hamas media, Lieberman is in possession of tapes in which Tayeb Abd Al Rahim – secretary general of the Palestinian presidency – can be heard in a telephone call with the Israeli Army Chief of Staff during the assault on Gaza, allegedly imploring him to strike at refugee camps.

“This is the time to enter refugee camps in Jabalia and on the beach,” Abd Al Rahim allegedly says in the phone call. “The fall of the two camps will lead to the end of the authority of the Islamic movement in Gaza and force them to raise the white flag.”

According to unnamed sources upon which both the Israeli newspaper and the Hamas media agree, the Army Chief of Staff, Gabi Ahskenazi, replied that “such a step would lead to the demise of a lot of civilian casualties”, to which Ab Al Rahim allegedly replied: “They elected Hamas ... they chose their own destiny, not us”.

Even if that may sound far-fetched, the damage is done and it serves only to consolidate Abbas’s image as “Israel’s best collaborator”, and not just among Palestinian hardliners.

Abbas’s close cooperation with Israeli forces under the leadership of US Lt. General Keith Dayton brings smirks on the faces of many Palestinians. While they acknowledge that the PA’s security forces – funded, trained and armed by the US – have imposed law and order in the West Bank, they also decry what they call “doing the dirty work for the occupation” – a phrase coined by Hamas that is gaining currency in the Palestinian street in the face of arrests, torture and killing of armed militias and fighters who refuse to surrender their arms.

“Ultimately the PA forces in the West Bank are subservient to the higher forces of the occupiers,” said a Palestinian involved in the US training programme for the forces loyal to Abbas. “In exchange, Israel is relaxing on some outposts and minor checkpoints, but whenever the Israeli army launches a raid in the West Bank, it merely informs Palestinian security forces, with the latter standing by the side.”

Just a few days before Abbas’s decision that shocked all Palestinians, Israeli newspapers were reporting of Israel’s request to drop the war crimes suit in exchange for a mobile telephony frequency that would enable a second operator, Wataniya, under heavy investment from the PA, to launch its mobile phone service in the West Bank and Gaza.

“That was not the reason for dropping endorsement to the Goldstone report, but it just made Abbas appear more ridiculous,” Ajrami said.

Reconciliation on paper

The blow to Abbas’s image also comes just days ahead of the date set by Cairo for a final agreement on national reconciliation between Fatah, Hamas and the rest of the factions.

In the ongoing war of words, Hamas is threatening to delay the agreement meeting on 26 October, citing “Abbas’s act of betrayal” in deferring the endorsement of the Goldstone report.

“The people won't have mercy on us if we reconcile with those who failed to protect the nation’s rights,” said Senior Hamas leader Salah Bardawil at a session of the Gaza parliament.

In spite of the incitement, many believe Hamas will still attend the grandiose ceremony being prepared by Egypt for the signing of the official agreement after months of discords. A Hamas insider said the movement will argue its problem is with Abbas, not with Fatah, in justifying its decision.

“Hamas has taken the decision to go to Cairo,” he said. “They will sign it.”

The agreement will pave the way for the formation of an interim unity government until new elections are held, possibly by next March. In turn, Hamas – considered a terrorist movement by the US and the EU – will expect an easing of the blockade that has crippled the entire Gaza Strip.

“Hamas wants to avoid the elections, but it is also aware that at present it has no recognition whatsoever, not from the international community and not even from the Arab countries,” Ajrami said. “So they are trapped and that’s why they will sign the Egypt paper, in the hope of relaxing some of the pressures on Gaza. I doubt the agreement will be implemented, but they will sign it.”

Despite its expected signature on paper, Hamas opposes two main points written on the Cairo paper: letting Abbas’s forces take back control of Gaza, and letting Abbas himself rule the Gaza Strip by stopping the Haniye government.

“They will do anything to prevent that,” Ajrami said.

Should Hamas renege on its agreement and Abbas push forward with his forces, Gaza could easily see a repeat of the 2007 bloody civil war when Hamas routed forces loyal to Abbas and seized the strip.

A third intifada?

As if that were not enough, tensions are also escalating dramatically between Muslims and Israel in Jerusalem. Controlled by Israel since the annexation of Jerusalem in the 1967 Six-Day War, the old city remains a flash-point between the two sides. For Muslims, it is home to Al Aqsa Mosque – considered the third holiest site in Islam – and Al Haram Al Sharif – the Noble Sanctuary. For Jews, it is home to Temple Mount and the Western Wall.

At the end of September 2000 it was the stage for the second Intifada, also known as the Al Aqsa Intifada, when Ariel Sharon set foot inside Temple Mount sparking the bloody uprisings lasting years and that left an estimated 5,500 Palestinians and 1,000 Israelis killed.

The last weeks’ clashes, coinciding to the day with the ninth anniversary of that unholy visit, lifted the lid on the buried tensions that remain. Dozens have been injured in the riots that saw Palestinians clashing with thousands of police deployed in the city, amid exhortations that Israel was planning to “take over Jerusalem and Judaize it.”

During a mass rally organised by Hamas and televised live on its TV station, Al Aqsa channel, one of the Hamas leaders in Gaza called for the resumption of suicide bombings in Israel in response to the clashes.

“I long to see bus ceilings blowing up in the sky,” Mohammad Abu Askar said in his speech, calling on Abbas to free prisoners from Palestinian jails and allow them “to continue bombing buses and restaurants” in Israel.

But it is not just the hardline Islamists who are calling for an uprising. Talk of “the third Intifada” in the offing also came from Fatah and all the other Palestinian factions. Erekat charged Israel with “lighting matches in the hope of sparking a fire, deliberately escalating tensions in occupied East Jerusalem”. Yet Fatah and the Palestinian National Authority are also suffering a deadly blow as they prove they are unable to follow their words with action. Some believe they are not even interested.

“There will not be a third intifada,” Ajrami said. “People in the West Bank are tired and exasperated after years of struggle that led only to worsening conditions. But also because the PNA won’t allow it as it would destroy everything with Obama. No intifada will happen now because even the other Palestinian factions are not interested in a third intifada. They won’t follow words with action. Israel is interested in the third intifada, because it only stands to gain from anything that would stall peace talks.”

Yet the spontaneous nature of the previous intifadas should prompt observers to also look at the peripheries. In the last days, as the secular Palestinian leadership in Ramallah watched helplessly, a charismatic sheikh who heads the northern branch of the Islamist Movement in Israel has been mobilizing opposition in the city. On Tuesday, Israeli police arrested Sheikh Ra’ed Salah after he had called for Muslims to go to Haram Al Sharif to protest and prevent right-wing Jewish groups from entering the site. Although he was released after four hours, a Jerusalem judge banned him from entering the city for a month, but his influence in the street is bound to keep cutting across political movements and mobilizing thousands.

Meanwhile in Gaza, ordinary Palestinians fear that Israel may launch another war on the strip following a recent upswing in rocket fire towards Sderot and the Western Negev. The rockets left no victims, but Israel has already responded with intensive shelling in Jabalia and along the coast. At least seven tunnel workers were killed by Israeli bombings last week in Rafah, and three Islamic Jihad militants believed to be preparing a rocket attack were killed in a targeted attack from an Israeli helicopter.

“Our only hope is that there is a change in the political situation,” said Said Wahid from Zeitoun, father of six-month-old baby Nancy killed in the war after inhaling large amounts of white phosphorus when Israeli troops shelled the border village. “I don’t even want to think of the possibility of another war. We would have nowhere to go.”

Over the last months, Hamas has been reining in on factions shooting Qassam rockets towards Israel after a career launching such assaults itself, but some fringe Salafist movements have still managed to shoot their home-made rockets.

“Hamas is against the rockets but it also wants to show that resistance is good for the people, and that they are still the militant resistance,” Ajrami said. Netanyahu, he believes, will do anything to stall any movement towards the next step demanded by the US – a settlement freeze and negotiations about Jerusalem. “That may also include new military strikes soon on Gaza”.

Be it the third intifada or a new war on Gaza, what is sure is that both sides have their finger on the trigger.

(Published on Russian Newsweek, № 42 (261), 12 - 18 October 2009)

Sanaa's unfinished house

Opening the door to her house, Sanaa El Nahhal warns me there is still a lot of work to be done before it can be called a home. The dust on the unfinished floor, the glassless windows and the bare cement make it immediately clear that the house is still under construction. But in reality it isn’t.

“It would take a few more months’ work to finish, but we can’t find the material to continue,” Sanaa tells me as we walk through room after room left incomplete for years.

Like thousands of other unfinished houses in the Gaza Strip, Sanaa’s was caught in the period when Hamas took over control of the territory in 2007. The ensuing blockade by Israel and Egypt meant that all construction material, including cement, tiles and even glass panes, were banned from entering the strip.

Israel cites “security” reasons to justify the siege in place since the Islamist movement took control of the Gaza Strip.

Yet the siege has made the lives of 1.5 million Palestinians living here miserable, 85 per cent of whom survive on humanitarian aid, and with the number of abject poor tripling since Israel’s war on Gaza last January. Indeed, after the war, the number of houses in need of reconstruction increased by thousands, but none of the works could start as the crippling blockade remains in place.

Sanaa, who has been living in Malta for the last 20 years, was planning to build her own family house in Rafah a few years ago, where the rest of the El Nahhal extended family lives.

Even her brother, Samir, who was in Malta after the war, has an unfinished house nearby, waiting for the moment when tiles, cement and paint are back on the market.

“Right now it’s very hard to find anything, or else it’s very expensive,” he said. He was lucky enough to have finished the ground floor, where he lives with his wife, son and two daughters, but the stairs lead to empty, unfinished rooms.

Their father’s fields on the border with Egypt lie abandoned, an olive grove surviving on its own.

“We used to grow fruit and vegetables and sell them in Israel, and they would even be exported as products of Israel at a high price,” Samir says. “But now we can’t get them out of the strip.”

The price their produce would fetch today in Gaza has gone down to one-tenth of what it was a few years ago, forcing them to abandon agriculture completely.

“My father still comes here to look at the trees and to water them, but there is no work to be done,” Samir said. “I told him if it were up to me, I would have already sold the land, but he insists this is family land and that we have to hold on to it.”

In a nearby field, Sanaa’s cousin Khaled El Nahhal is still growing some tomatoes and marrows, although most of his fields are empty. He also laments the fall in work and shows me damaged greenhouses that cannot be repaired.

Sanaa is now waiting for the Rafah border to open to be able to return to Malta after visiting her family.

“We have been planning to come back here and resettle in Gaza,” she says about her husband and two children living in Malta as we walk away from the area. “But not now.”

Two weeks in Gaza

Walking down the main street of Gaza City this week, I realised how quickly I had adapted to the overwhelming destruction as the new setting for everyday life.

Two weeks since my arrival here, I have begun to appreciate that this is the backdrop to which Palestinians, young and old, in the besieged Gaza Strip have learned to somehow get on with life.

In a place where street names change according to who is giving you directions, the only reliable way to get to your location is to ask for landmarks. Parliament, for example, is the landmark everyone refers to for central Gaza City.

However, there now remains only the skeleton of the once imposing Parliament building after it was bombed by Israeli forces last January. Al Jundi Square – the Square of the Unknown Soldier – just in front of the Parliament, still has the pedestal of the former monument, but there is no soldier above it. Yet ask any taxi driver to drive you to Al Jundi and that is where he will take you.

Nine months since the 22-day assault, none of the reconstruction has started as construction material and equipment remains banned from entering the strip.

That is why you find modern blocks of apartments without windows, others only half-finished, and others belonging to luckier owners who repair tiles and windows with different styles and colours according to what is available.

Generators outside shops and offices are part of the street furniture. The electricity goes out so frequently that mobile generators are just left outside on the pavements to keep business moving. Sometimes you only realise there is no electricity because of the sound of generators.

All desktop computers in offices are equipped with UPS (battery back-ups) just so their users don’t have to restart between every blackout and the starting of the generators.

Watching TV is also a different experience. As spy drones and surveillance planes fly above Gaza’s air space, satellite signals get scrambled giving you pixellated pictures or leaving you without sound for a long stretch of time. No TV movie can be enjoyed in Gaza without these exasperating surprises, which also become normal after a few days.

Gaza is one of the oldest cities in the world, yet there is little evidence today of the different civilisations that have passed through it. Indeed, Gaza is a place of extremes. Resistant to almost every occupier that tried to seize it, the many wars and battles have repeatedly leveled Gaza’s buildings, which then had to be rebuilt from scratch.

People may greet you with open arms, some just happy to have a foreigner to speak to, some glad to have someone to practice their English with, others amused that a non-Arab speaks their language. Like Hamada, the total stranger I stopped in the street to ask where I could buy a top-up card for my mobile. He took me by the hand and accompanied me to the shop, made sure I got the card I wanted, noted down my number and called me later just to check my mobile was working and to say hello.

But people may also greet you with suspicion verging on paranoia. I catch a lot of people staring at me, asking each other who I am and what I am doing in their city as they assume I don’t understand them.

The total blockade has meant that only a handful of foreigners make it into the Gaza Strip, mostly UN workers. In contrast with older generations who used to work in Israel, a whole generation of children is growing up having never met a foreigner, further strengthening the siege mentality. The only Israelis they have seen in their lives are soldiers keen on destroying their homes and killing their parents.

Billboards everywhere rarely show adverts, but the absolute majority of them show pictures of Palestinian “martyrs” carrying machine guns or RPGs; the only role models left for a society that seems to have nothing left to lose. Children beneath them play with their toy guns, mimicking their heroes.

Only last Thursday, the United Nations agency helping Palestinian refugees revealed that the number of Gazans living in “abject poverty” had tripled to 300,000 this year, or one in five residents. The agency’s chief, John Ging, did not mince his words: it was a “man-made crisis”, he said.

But he depicted the extent of the crisis best during a meeting with foreign activists a few days earlier. “If you have no reason to live, you will seek a glorious death,” he said.

That too may risk becoming all too normal in Gaza.