When Gaza celebrates, it is usually to champion others’ victories. Most often it’s football: Barcelona or Real Madrid drawing the crowds and the car cades, Egypt at the World Cup, and outside the football grounds, Egypt on the day it got rid of Mubarak.
Not last Wednesday. As Palestinians awaited in front of TV screens, ears stuck to radios, to see and hear the news they wanted to hear from Cairo, Gaza’s streets were full of expectation, waiting for the moment to burst. After so many ups and downs, highs and lows, dashed hopes and shattered expectations, Palestinians were to witness the closing of the unity deal between Hamas and Fatah and all of the Palestinian factions.
The scenes on TV were moving: Seeing Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas in the same room with exiled Hamas leader Khaled Meshal for the first time in four years; hearing Abbas speaking clearly about putting the division behind to confront the real problems ahead, united.
What followed on the streets of Gaza is hard to understand unless you have witnessed daily harassment, arrests, beatings, slander and accusations of “collaborating with the Palestinian Authority” by none other than your Palestinian brothers – only of a different faction.
For the last four years, Hamas has been suppressing all forms of political and civil expression that had any hint of not towing its own line. Anything related to Fatah had no chance of even making it to the public. Journalists, NGOs, authors and independent youth have been caught in the quagmire that polarised Palestinian society so devastatingly.
In the West Bank, Abbas’s forces have been similarly arresting, torturing, killing and suppressing anything that had to do with Hamas, only that the PA had the American and European funding to torture people more sweetly.
The division between Hamas and Fatah goes way beyond the immediate political and civil freedoms – that is only the tip of the iceberg but perhaps also the most visible one. That is why last Wednesday night, seeing Gaza City flooded with Fatah’s yellow flags side by side with Hamas’s green flags, and even more Palestinian colours, was a touching moment for anyone who has been here in the last four years.
Of course it would have been nicer if people came out with the Palestinian national flag, but one also has to understand the significance of the moment of freedom for every individual to come out with any flag he or she liked. At the end of the day, Palestinian unity is a victory for democracy, the same democracy other Arab brothers are dying for as we speak.
To think that less than two months ago Palestinian youth in Gaza were being beaten up and arrested by Hamas forces for merely calling for Palestinian reconciliation, that walking around with the traditional kufiyeh was interpreted by Hamas people as support for Fatah, that waving a Fatah flag in Gaza was as taboo as giving the Nazi salute in Israel.
Beyond the big words, the Palestinian division has all but crippled society, over and above the Israeli occupation and the blockade of Gaza. Ultimately, it is the very product of the Israeli occupation and blockade which Palestinian leaders were entrapped into by the international community, starting off with the geographic isolation of Gaza to the political boycott of democratically-elected Hamas and the collective punishment of 1.5 million people.
What the division has meant for ordinary Palestinians trapped in Gaza ranges from finding no essential medicines at the government clinics because the Ramallah government did not coordinate with the Gaza one; to having no electricity because the two government can’t agree on a solution to pay old bills just when the blockade plunges the enclave into total darkness.
It has meant that only those very close to the Ramallah government could have the privilege to travel to the West Bank (same country, by the way) – all the rest had to wait in Gaza for Israel’s “security clearance” which rules you out just because you are from Gaza.
It has meant that thousands of professionals, highly trained and skilled people employed with the government – from helicopter pilots to gynaecologists to teachers and diplomats – have been told to stay at home or go on strike while receiving their US and EU-funded salaries, others were downgraded to make space for less competent friends of the government. The result is a total mess of politicised international aid and money down the drain, not to mention the chronic depression all of this has brought to the Palestinian household.
For entire years, these people have stared at the walls of their houses in a complete state of depression while their wives took over control of the family. The more enterprising ones – and there are many – found other things to do. A gynaecologist I know has been doing private practice while receiving the PA salary. He knows it’s wrong, Hamas have been trying to stop double salaries, but that is the situation that the European and American governments have been financing to keep in place: total dependence on humanitarian aid, fragmentation, no economic development for Gaza, keeping Palestinians fed but jobless.
It is perhaps the Gazans, more than the other Palestinians, the ones who can appreciate most this moment of reconciliation. Questions abound, of course. Will it last? Will the security forces really work together? Will Hamas really go for another election?
There are also the anxious Gazans who are now under a lot of stress wondering how they will be re-integrated into the government. The husband of a colleague of mine is a lawyer who hasn’t reported to work since four years ago, after the bloody battles that routed Fatah out of Gaza. He cannot sleep at night and behaving very strangely, my colleague tells me.
The psychological effects of the division will take long to heal, but for the moment, judging by the first steps since last Wednesday, Gaza already feels freer, waving a flag is no longer an act of defiance but looking more like normality. With self-declared statehood set for September, Palestinian leaders need to keep focused with the bigger picture in mind before screwing it all up. But from Gaza, for the moment, if things keep going on at this pace, it looks as if they can only get better.
