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Authors: Dervla Murphy
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volunteered to escort me into Gaza City’s ‘financial centre’ where one of the three banks might be able to cope with a Visa card. This took courage: I could see how tense he became as we entered those enormous, dreary, Mandate-era buildings now associated in his mind with Hamas’ world. The first two were moribund: silent and deserted apart from a few clerks slumped in cubicles, looking bemused and mumbling incoherently when we paused to enquire about the Foreign Exchange department.
Then – action! A bank with a queue! Just one short queue in a wide vaulted concourse but proof that here transactions could happen. These men were, said Mehat, public sector workers collecting their meagre wages – wages they couldn’t have, I reminded him, without a tunnel economy. We were directed to the fourth floor and saw no signs of life as we ascended an unswept marble stairway.
The top floor had been partitioned into a network of mini-offices and in the remotest of these two formally dressed gentlemen, with tidily trimmed beards, seemed taken aback by our arrival. There were only two camp chairs in this tiny space (a very hot space, under the roof) so the four of us stood while the bankers conferred at length with Mehat before committing themselves to looking into the matter when the power cut ended. Their generator had broken down two days ago and they didn’t expect the spare part to arrive for a week or more – possibly even a month. But if I left my Visa details and returned next morning for a further consultation, we should be able to sort the matter out (electricity permitting) – though of course it might take some time … I could feel the tentacles of a bureaucratic octopus tightening around me. Yet when I saw an electronic credit card terminal on the little table that served as a desk I knew all would be well – eventually.
Three rather stressful days later I escaped from the tentacles clutching a fistful of dollars.
* * *
On the evening of 11 June I was visiting a Beit Lahia family when news came through of the death of their fifty-year-old friend, Mohammed Sha’ban Mohammed Eslemm, who had been wounded in his own home on 15 January 2009 as Cast Lead was drawing to an end. That 2,000 pound bomb killed twelve people, including six members of the Eslemm family; its target was the Hamas Minister of the Interior, then being sheltered by the Eslemms. I remembered sitting in my Balata room reading the
Ha’aretz
account of Said Siam’s assassination. A former teacher and founder member of Hamas, he had topped the poll in Gaza in January 2006 and gone on to become an extremely effective Minister of the Interior, largely responsible for the rapid restoration of law and order in 2007. The IDF flaunted him as their second most important Cast Lead ‘trophy’. The first was Sheikh Nizar Rayan, ‘eliminated’ on 1 January 2009, together with his four wives and nine of his children. Mohammed Eslemm had been transferred to an Egyptian hospital on 24 February 2009 – then on 29 May 2011 to an Israeli hospital, where he died.
My friends were relieved to hear of Mohammed’s death. ‘He had suffered too much,’ Sari said quietly.
Amira and Sari shared a small top-floor flat with two married sons and their families; both homes (near the buffer zone) had been bombed in 2010. We were sitting on the child-free roof where Amira grew pots of herbs for sale in the street market.
Sari had been among the 415 Hamas activists deported by Israel to south Lebanon in December 1992. Throughout the OPT this was seen initially as a brutal blow to Palestinians in general and Islamists in particular. The expulsions followed a series of Hamas attacks on Israeli personnel, calculated to secure Sheikh Yassin’srelease; he had been jailed in 1991. Hamas’ campaign backfired – but so did the Israeli expulsions. In Palestinian eyes, these came to look like a panic reaction – said Sari – and for the first time made Hamas seem a
Then – action! A bank with a queue! Just one short queue in a wide vaulted concourse but proof that here transactions could happen. These men were, said Mehat, public sector workers collecting their meagre wages – wages they couldn’t have, I reminded him, without a tunnel economy. We were directed to the fourth floor and saw no signs of life as we ascended an unswept marble stairway.
The top floor had been partitioned into a network of mini-offices and in the remotest of these two formally dressed gentlemen, with tidily trimmed beards, seemed taken aback by our arrival. There were only two camp chairs in this tiny space (a very hot space, under the roof) so the four of us stood while the bankers conferred at length with Mehat before committing themselves to looking into the matter when the power cut ended. Their generator had broken down two days ago and they didn’t expect the spare part to arrive for a week or more – possibly even a month. But if I left my Visa details and returned next morning for a further consultation, we should be able to sort the matter out (electricity permitting) – though of course it might take some time … I could feel the tentacles of a bureaucratic octopus tightening around me. Yet when I saw an electronic credit card terminal on the little table that served as a desk I knew all would be well – eventually.
Three rather stressful days later I escaped from the tentacles clutching a fistful of dollars.
* * *
On the evening of 11 June I was visiting a Beit Lahia family when news came through of the death of their fifty-year-old friend, Mohammed Sha’ban Mohammed Eslemm, who had been wounded in his own home on 15 January 2009 as Cast Lead was drawing to an end. That 2,000 pound bomb killed twelve people, including six members of the Eslemm family; its target was the Hamas Minister of the Interior, then being sheltered by the Eslemms. I remembered sitting in my Balata room reading the
Ha’aretz
account of Said Siam’s assassination. A former teacher and founder member of Hamas, he had topped the poll in Gaza in January 2006 and gone on to become an extremely effective Minister of the Interior, largely responsible for the rapid restoration of law and order in 2007. The IDF flaunted him as their second most important Cast Lead ‘trophy’. The first was Sheikh Nizar Rayan, ‘eliminated’ on 1 January 2009, together with his four wives and nine of his children. Mohammed Eslemm had been transferred to an Egyptian hospital on 24 February 2009 – then on 29 May 2011 to an Israeli hospital, where he died.
My friends were relieved to hear of Mohammed’s death. ‘He had suffered too much,’ Sari said quietly.
Amira and Sari shared a small top-floor flat with two married sons and their families; both homes (near the buffer zone) had been bombed in 2010. We were sitting on the child-free roof where Amira grew pots of herbs for sale in the street market.
Sari had been among the 415 Hamas activists deported by Israel to south Lebanon in December 1992. Throughout the OPT this was seen initially as a brutal blow to Palestinians in general and Islamists in particular. The expulsions followed a series of Hamas attacks on Israeli personnel, calculated to secure Sheikh Yassin’srelease; he had been jailed in 1991. Hamas’ campaign backfired – but so did the Israeli expulsions. In Palestinian eyes, these came to look like a panic reaction – said Sari – and for the first time made Hamas seem a
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