Aggiornamenti da Gaza

["Edvino Ugolini" <edvinoug at tin.it>]

> Monday, October 14, 2003
> Laura
> Rafah, Gaza Strip
>
> Then the streets started screaming and we were running almost
> without thinking, down the edges of the street around the people who
> had lost their fear, around donkey carts loaded full, ran until we
> fround a corner to turn into and then we ran past families and
> children, through narrow streets far enough from the main street not
> to know the worst, far enough that we were the ones spreading the
> news that the army had come back.  Old men's eyes opened wide and
> mothers pulled their children inside, casting weary gazes in the
> direction from where we had come.  We found Sea Street and a taxi
> and headed towards Block J.  A machine fun fired from a tank as it
> entered Yibneh.  It was maghreb time.  The sun burning a hole in the
> sky as it fell behind the wall at the edge of town.
>
> When we'd come to Yibneh the camp was already in exodus mode.
> Donkey carts piled high with furniture, men removing the doors of
> their homes from the hinges, children holding the keys to their
> homes on neon green keychains, the modern picture of a refugee
> descended from refugees, meeting exile every other generation.
>
> The army had gone during the night leaving a city stripped bare, the
> broken bones of houses like twisted bodies reaching up to heaven.
> Trees and streets, power lines and water pipes, broken, twisted
> around each other, uprooted.  A graveyard of life things.  The real
> dead had been carried out on stretchers, mostly after lying on the
> street for hours between tanks and the frightened closed doors of
> curfew, while the ambulances negotiated with the army to gain
> access.  It was a perfect autumn day, soft clouds dotting a sky blue
> as swimming pools.
>
> The army had gone during the night in the sound of thunder rumbling
> down the border frightening the whole town.  It left, not through
> the streets as it had come, but by creating a path through the homes
> still standing in Yibneh, demolishing anything in its way and
> driving over the remains.  It left 10 people dead and upwards of 80
> injured; over 100 homes demolished and over 1500 people homeless,
> according to the UN's estimate.  And even then, the army left
> incompletely and provisionally, remaining stationed along the
> border, and Moshe Yallon calling to deploy more reserves; the word
> on the street is, the army has left just long enough for the
> frightened families to leave the camp, an empty shell for the army
> to finish demolishing.
>
> That night I stayed with Noura and the family down by Salah el-Deen
> gate.  In the morning we peeked over the balcony.  A tank was still
> sitting by the Block O tower.  It didn't stop shooting either.  All
> day in spurts.
>
> ...
>
> Most of the dead were teenage boys with more curiosity than fear who
> went outside just to see what was in their street keeping them
> inside their homes.  They were wheeled out on stretchers to sit in
> the hospital refrigerators for days, waiting for their family to
> identify them, some unidentifiable.  Held in limbo waiting for the
> army could leave so their families could bury them.  When they did
> hold funerals it was not in the camp where the army was threatening
> to reinvade, but far away, in the center of the city, in Hay Il-
> Ijnena.  But not far enough.  An Apache dropped a missile on an
> empty field next to a funeral on the second day of invasion, the
> funeral of ??? who lives in Hay Il-Ijnena, the most expensive part
> of town, known for its distance from the border, who died when an
> Apache fired massive bullets through the roof of his home.
>
> ...
>
> When the army entered we were on the roof passing aroung stories and
> dreams.  The Apaches came in like a foreboding signal of the end of
> the world, dropping fist-sized bullets - boom boom boom, explosions
> every several minutes from the planes and the tanks.  We spent the
> night in the office waking with fear and coffee, every bullet
> sounding like it was coming through our windows.  We are in the
> center of the city.  All the shooting comes from the borders, and
> even if it doesn't reach our walls it shoots in our direction, it
> sounds awful, like wretching or like rain.
>
> People filled up the hospital and in the morning it was already low
> on supplies.  Nobody could get to the European Gaza Hospital, the
> only descent facility in the area, where tanks had been parked for
> days not letting anyone out or in.  The dead waited in the
> refrigerators for identification.  The beds were full and
> overflowing.
>
> My friend Adwan was the first to identify his friend since 12 years,
> Mabrouk, whose name means congratulations, shot three times in the
> head and five in the back, at the age of 19, while walking home.
>
> In the mosque, men gathered for prayer and sharing information.
> Mohammed came back with news.  The sheikh at the library, the one we
> all know, had been killed while walking down the street, a bullet in
> the heart.  One of the ambulance drivers that drove Rachel Corrie to
> the hospital had also been killed on his way to rescue the injured.
> His was one of two ambulances the army shot at that night.
>
> Down the street from my friend Feryal in Block J an eight-year-old
> boy, her neighbor's son, was killed at the door of his home when a
> tank backed into his home and then shot him as he ran out, and then
> denied the ambulance entrance for two hours while he bled to death.
> Feryal was pregnant and expecting her fifth child any day.  Four
> tanks were parked at each corner of her block.
>
> ...
>
> I went with the municipality workers to negotiate with the army to
> let them fix the water and electricity on a street that hadn't had
> for days.  The real heros here are the municipality workers and the
> ambulance drivers who have lost their fear in order to keep the city
> together.  I spoke from a distance of ten yards with a soldier in an
> APC, to see if the workers could fix the water system.  He gave me a
> thumbs up sign.  He appeared to be trying to understand.  Parallel
> universes colliding.  I couldn't believe I was talking with a real
> person inside this massive machine, I was so hungry for human
> contact, to put a face with the military machinery.  We shouted to
> each other from opposite sides of a road block the army had put up,
> the divide was a gulf none of us could cross.  I stood for too long,
> gawking at him, wishing I could talk to him for hours until he left
> his tank, feeling naive and silly in the afternoon sun.
>
> The army had uprooted the entire street.  Water was filling the sand
> everywhere in the places water pipes had been broken.  People had
> run out of food, had no water or electricity for two days at that
> point.  Two women who wanted to bring clothes for their children
> inside the militarized area were denied entry.  The municipality,
> who wanted to bring food relief to the people in the sealed-off area
> and to fix the water and electrical systems there, was denied entry.
>
> ...
>
> The night before I had slept with Naela's family.  The invasion was
> one day old.  Jenin was the word on everyone's lips, "b'eyn Allah
> (It's in God's eyes)."
>
> ...
>
> My friend Anees' house was partially demolished.  Abu Ahmed, the
> carob juice vendor, his house was demolished.
>
> ...
>
> The army used nerve gas for the first time in Rafah, leaving people
> shaking for days.
>
> ...
>
> And last night, I ran from Yibneh's streets as the army came back in
> and found my way directly to Feryal's house in Block J, better to be
> with her under curfew than to worry from outside.  The army didn't
> come as it had before but drove in enough to scare the people into
> exodus and then shot all night long.  I began to mix all loud noises
> with gunfire, the way I used to when I first arrived here.
>
> We slept incompletely.  Outside, everything around had been
> demolished.  The morning was still.  Families were sitting on the
> doorsteps of their neighbors' homes gazing at the damage.  The area
> had gone from a crowded lively neighborhood to a strange antique
> gallery, children rummaging through the best climbing spots of
> twisted cars and broken homes.  A few more weeks and the army will
> finish its work and "clean" the area - dig away the dead bones of
> the city - until nothing remains but a flat, sandy expanse, a
> military parking lot.  Even the ghosts will leave the area,
> searching for better horizons.
>
> Even as I sit by Feryal now in the crowded clinic benches full of
> pregnant women and screaming children, tanks shoot into the camps.
> It hasn't stopped all morning or all night, and there are four new
> injuries.  The whole town is frightened, afraid to let out its
> breath.  The sadness is dry and wordless.  People are staying in
> tents on the street, some families have room to take in the new
> homeless.  The army is lying as usual, saying only 10 homes were
> destroyed and that the people killed were gunmen.  Journalists are
> trying to get here but with difficulty and on the guideline that
> they follow military instruction.  The ultrasound machine sounds
> like gunfire to my frightened ears.  Feryal looks forward, eyes
> cynical, sarcastic, watching from a distance.
>
>
>
>
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