Entry and exit into Gaza is only possible with an Israeli-issued permit. The "permit" is not actually a piece of paper or any substantive form of any tangible item so far as I can determine, but is a simple permission in some system that puts a name onto a permissable list. Entry and exit into Gaza than requires a second bureucratic step known as "coordination" made possible by Israelis. One day last week a member of the US Embassy security team phoned me out of the blue and said, "you are admitted to enter into Gaza on Sunday." It's not an invitation I could lightly turn down.
Directly prior to my leaving, I fortunately ran into an American friend who had entered Gaza in the past few months. She offered to give me a rundown of the procedures for getting through the border crossing (no simple procedure when it comes to any of Israel's border crossings) which I can summarize as "just keep walking, keep going through the turnstyles, there will be nobody around, you won't know where you are going, just follow those who offer help
With those helpful instructions running through my head, I pulled up to the Erez terminal on a bright, hot Sunday morning. Erez terminal is quite a sight - from the outside it looks like a clean, effecient, spanking new airport terminal. Except it is completely empty, there is no movement, no sound, no voices. I hand my passport to an Israeli soldier seated in a triple-glassed booth and then I wait for 20 minutes in the glaring sun waiting for my name to be called. When it is, I proceed through a metal gate and toward the entrance of the terminal, following the simple signs with arrows that say "Gaza". After a border guard grilled me with questions inside a glass booth, my passport is stamped and I make my way through a series of turnstyles (through which only fit a person and one small piece of luggage), then down a narrow, grey, silenced corridor which ends at a cement wall. In the cement wall are two large steel doors.
When I managed myself and my small bag through the final turnstyle, I was standing in front of the two large steel doors suddenly feeling as if I was at the moment in that Jim Carry movie, "The Truman Show" when Truman realizes that he's reached the edge of the set and he is being watched. Security cameras sit high on the wall. And suddenly, one of the steel doors opens automatically, ashuring me through to the other side
A smiling Palestinian greets me on the side, takes my bag, and leads me down a long, open aired cooridor where he passes me off to another bag handler who accompanies me a kilometer down a gravelled, pot holed road toward my waiting colleagues. I handed over some money for the baggage handling and I was then officially on Gaza territory. One additional checkpoint is left - a few cement barriers in the middle of the road where Hamas officials take down my name and the name of my organization, then welcome me to their country.
Its a country that has seen many changes, where current events change the landscape of the Strip in unpredictable fashion at a continual interval of every 3-5 years. Its immediately evident that this is the most populated piece of land on earth - miles and miles of cement buildings reach to the Meditteranean shores. The poverty is also immediately evident - in the smell of rotting sewage, in the site of a young, shoeless man limping down a street, and in the sounds of the donkey carts limping slowly down the paed streets with their human loads. And finally, it is evident who is in charge - the green flags scribbled with Arabic hang from every available light post, building and tree. Bearded men in clean, crisp navy blue uniforms bring a discipline to the streets that is definitely not evident in the West Bank
I watch and observe this place that seems like the other side of the world, if only because the journey was so strange.
Directly prior to my leaving, I fortunately ran into an American friend who had entered Gaza in the past few months. She offered to give me a rundown of the procedures for getting through the border crossing (no simple procedure when it comes to any of Israel's border crossings) which I can summarize as "just keep walking, keep going through the turnstyles, there will be nobody around, you won't know where you are going, just follow those who offer help
With those helpful instructions running through my head, I pulled up to the Erez terminal on a bright, hot Sunday morning. Erez terminal is quite a sight - from the outside it looks like a clean, effecient, spanking new airport terminal. Except it is completely empty, there is no movement, no sound, no voices. I hand my passport to an Israeli soldier seated in a triple-glassed booth and then I wait for 20 minutes in the glaring sun waiting for my name to be called. When it is, I proceed through a metal gate and toward the entrance of the terminal, following the simple signs with arrows that say "Gaza". After a border guard grilled me with questions inside a glass booth, my passport is stamped and I make my way through a series of turnstyles (through which only fit a person and one small piece of luggage), then down a narrow, grey, silenced corridor which ends at a cement wall. In the cement wall are two large steel doors.
When I managed myself and my small bag through the final turnstyle, I was standing in front of the two large steel doors suddenly feeling as if I was at the moment in that Jim Carry movie, "The Truman Show" when Truman realizes that he's reached the edge of the set and he is being watched. Security cameras sit high on the wall. And suddenly, one of the steel doors opens automatically, ashuring me through to the other side
A smiling Palestinian greets me on the side, takes my bag, and leads me down a long, open aired cooridor where he passes me off to another bag handler who accompanies me a kilometer down a gravelled, pot holed road toward my waiting colleagues. I handed over some money for the baggage handling and I was then officially on Gaza territory. One additional checkpoint is left - a few cement barriers in the middle of the road where Hamas officials take down my name and the name of my organization, then welcome me to their country.
Its a country that has seen many changes, where current events change the landscape of the Strip in unpredictable fashion at a continual interval of every 3-5 years. Its immediately evident that this is the most populated piece of land on earth - miles and miles of cement buildings reach to the Meditteranean shores. The poverty is also immediately evident - in the smell of rotting sewage, in the site of a young, shoeless man limping down a street, and in the sounds of the donkey carts limping slowly down the paed streets with their human loads. And finally, it is evident who is in charge - the green flags scribbled with Arabic hang from every available light post, building and tree. Bearded men in clean, crisp navy blue uniforms bring a discipline to the streets that is definitely not evident in the West Bank
I watch and observe this place that seems like the other side of the world, if only because the journey was so strange.
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