by Benjamin Granby

Benjamin Granby is one of many foreign observers getting a first-hand look at the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians. His journal from Gaza documents the experience of being "on the ground" in Gaza during March, one of the most pivotal and violent months of the current intifada.

GAZA CITY, MARCH 7 — As the Israelis wrought retaliatory carnage in Rafah, Khan Younis and Beit Hanoun in Gaza, as well as in Bethlehem, Ramallah, Deishia Refugee Camp and Tulkarem in the West Bank, Gaza City was quiet. Times were tense as helicopters and fighter/bombers buzzed the city. But most obnoxious was the incessant flyovers of tiny spy planes. They are recognizable by their buzzing prop engines, sounding more like a neighbor's hedge clippers than a military vehicle. Yet they must be effective, for at night they are invisible and — I imagine — are able to fly slow enough with night-vision to pick out potential targets. Since most of Gaza's military targets are well-known, the spy planes must serve only to seek out targets for assassination. Or they're just doing their job of pissing me off as I try to sleep.

Sounds began to get to me. A passing truck, rumbling down the road? Sounds like a barrage from warships. A door slamming upstairs? The thud of a shell. A car peeling out of a driveway? An incoming rocket. This was no different though than I was used to in the past. Even the week before in Rafah, I had mistaken a basketball's bounce for gunfire. And after living through a gunbattle last summer in Hebron, any sudden sound made me jump in my chair — even weeks into returning to Madison. I began to record the sounds in my notebook for some reason.

3/7/02
9am Missile hit, shook - @ police city
3/8/02
1:16am - explosion after hearing helicoptor overhead for 10min; again @ 1:20, 1:24am, 1:26am, 1:27+1; 1:44am - heavy cal fire, 4 bursts

On Thursday March 7, I met with an elderly Dutch couple working as Christian peace observers. They have spent the latter half of their lives living in Third World nations, but this was their first time in a region of conflict. We hit it off well politically, as I delved into my ranting against the US policy here and how piss-poor the American media was on the subject when compared to the European media. For the most part though, as was the case with the American interns I had met, we primarily exchanged stories relating to problems with Israeli soldiers.

We decided to investigate the damage done from the missile attack that morning on Police City (a large walled block filled with police record facilities and training schools). According to people at my work, the neighboring Red Crescent building had been damaged, along with an elementary school. Before that we walked through Ansar. An initial police post denied us entry, insisting that it was too dangerous, so we simply entered from the back.

Ansar is (or was) a collection of small single-story buildings that housed a variety of security services and stored equipment. It was an unimposing site, at least compared to the multi-story complexes at Police City. Nevertheless, repeated Israeli bombing and shelling had left it little more than a rubble playground.

What stood out were the massive craters created by the shells from Israeli warships. The Dutch couple claimed to have found at least seven spread around the compound.

We moved east down Nasser Street toward the Police City. On the southeast corner, just outside the compound's walls, lay an elegant three-story complex owned by the Red Crescent society where most of their lab work is done. Almost all the windows were blown out. I'd passed by the same building on a walk two days before and noticed nothing out of the ordinary.

What looked like superficial damage on the outside proved devastating. In giant patches, the red-masonite roof had collapsed, taking along with it the entire framework of the second story ceiling.

We moved on to the neighboring United Nations-run elementary school. There, local residents unchained the gate and gave us a tour. A group of four tiny children arrived, two of whom had no shoes. They lived in a shack that resided on a far corner of the school grounds. The damage here seemed minimal though — that is to say that the school had already had all of its windows blown out by previous airstrikes, and this time there seemed to be nothing new.

Friday, March 8, 2002

The rest of the week was relatively uneventful, but I took note that the situation was far more dangerous in any other given Palestinian city. On Friday, I awoke to a few gunshots and found that the nearby mosque was hosting a funeral for a slain policeman. I threw on my camera gear and headed over there. Amassed was an enormous collection of policemen, militiamen and children. I found very few women if any. Easily, there were more than 500 people, each carrying automatic weapons among various vehicles which brandished different factional flags: Hamas, Islamic Jihad, PFLP, DFLP, Fatah, and so on.

Invariably children discovered me and didn't let me be until the procession began. I cannot imagine that seasoned and aged journalists experience this same problem. It must be that I look too damn young. Needless to say, a group of 6- to 9-year-old kids surrounded me, sparked by one who noticed my camera. "Soura! Soura!" (Photo!) came the familiar call. I only obliged when one child produced a Hamas flag. Once done, that child left, but the rapacious ones only grew in number. An older child of about 11 or so tried some of his English on me. "Keif (how is) Sharon? Sharon ees donkey, yes?" He asserted this view about 40-50 times with me, and no matter how much I assured him that I understood and agreed, he kept stopping me and repeating it.

I made my escape once the prayer service ended and people began to load into vehicles. Unlike the funeral I witnessed in Ramallah last year, this one was a long way from the cemetery, so a motorcade was in order. Or disorder. Adults with guns rode in the back of pickup trucks. Adults without went in taxis. Adults and teenagers with guns left over climbed on the backs, on the roofs, or hung on the windows of any car. For the young children, someone had brought a fleet of cranky old buses. As I walked past one, a child with a PFLP flag leaned out the window and asked me to take his picture. As I did, the chaperone on the bus urged me to come on board. Surprisingly, the children proved to be fairly well-behaved. As I pulled out my videocamera, they broke into a series of political chants — many were familiar in sound, but I still don't know the translation.

Once the procession began, gunfire erupted all along the road. Almost everyone with a gun began firing — and few stopped before we reached the cemetery a half hour later. Once the body was moved to the grave, the chants died down, the gun shots became more sporadic and people began splitting up. I put my cameras away, and spying the same "Sharon Donkey" kids as before, darted home as fast as I could.

— graphic by Carl Durbridge (carl@fuzzynet.co.uk)