Democratic Palestine : 31 (ص 57)
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- Democratic Palestine : 31 (ص 57)
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Book Review
Stateless in Gaza
Stateless in Gaza is part of a modest
but meaningful trend that began a few
years ago to focus on the occupied
Gaza Strip, after years of this area’s
being neglected, even in literature on
Palestine. Other contributions to this
trend are the excellent film «Gaza
Ghetto» and the spat of media coverage
generated by the report on the Strip
published by Meron Benvenisti’s West
Bank Data Base Project.
While painting a picture of
socioeconomic conditions no less grim
than those revealed in Benvenisti’s
statistics, Stateless in Gaza puts flesh
and blood on dry facts. The reality of
life under occupation is portrayed in
vivid human and political terms, via
interviews with the Palestinians
themselves. The authors’ contribution
is in letting the people speak, injecting
only brief explanatory passages and
arranging the narratives into main
topics: Dispossession, Society, Oc-
cupation, Resistance. Cossali and
Robson lived in the Strip for a time,
and interviewed Gazans of varying
ages, educational levels, backgrounds,
vocations and political views. The
result is a lively composite not only of
Gazans, but of the Palestinians as such,
both as refugees and as a people striv-
ing to assert their identity.
Stateless in Gaza is highly relevant as
a background for understanding the
causes of the current uprising and the
forms it has taken. It chronicles the
devastating extent to which the oc-
cupation has disrupted people’s lives,
victimizing them in countless ways, big
and small. As one Palestinian says:
«Unlike most governments which give
protection and support to enterprises
operating under their jurisdiction,
Israel is only interested in bleeding us
slowly to death.» Another notes:
«Socially, Gaza is unique: surrounded
and occupied, with a real sense of
helplessness and isolation. All sectors
of the community feel the need for
change, from the communists to the
Muslim Brotherhood.» Though the
Strip is de facto absorbed by the Zionist
state and half its labor force works
there, an older Palestinian reports:
Stateless in Gaza, by Paul Cossali and
Clive Robson, was published by Zed
Press, 57 Caledonian Road, London
N1 9DN, in 1986. It is 160 pages, il-
lustrated with photographs of life in the
Gaza Strip, and costs £5.95 for the soft
cover edition.
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Paul Cossali & Clive Robson
STATELESS
IN GAZA
«I’ve never met a settler... I only ever
see them in their cars. They seem to be
mostly European and American... It
was bad enough being surrounded prior
to 1967; now they are building little
fortresses actually among us - in our
little crowded corner of Palestine.»
The difficulties experienced by the
Palestinian revolution at the time are
also addressed by some of those inter-
viewed: «I think that the situation is
becoming so desperate now in Gaza
that we can’t afford to wait for unity
outside, just as we can’t expect to be
delivered by waiting for revolution in
the Arab world or some kind of
diplomatic initiative.»
These factors combined go a long
way towards explaining the sense of
nothing to lose which we have seen in
the children confronting Israeli tanks
with stones, and the persistence of the
uprising despite the great sacrifices ex-
acted.
PROPHESY OF THE
UPRISING
The book also gives an impression of
the difficulties encountered in any kind
of organizing work, since the armed
resistance in Gaza was brutally sup-
pressed by the occupation army in the
early seventies. At the same time, the
interviews reflect the persistence of
people’s will to struggle, and the critical
thinking to which political activists
subject their past experience. Many of
those interviewed, while expressing
loyalty to the PLO, leveled hard
criticism at the leadership for failure to
promote strong grassroots organization
- something which has since been
created by the dynamics of the uprising.
Some expressed ideas which in
retrospect seem prophetic of current
developments. For example, a young
political activist says, «To succeed, we
need three things: the elimination of
collaborators, strong grassroots
organization and a gradual shift away
from our economic dependence on
Israel... We must learn to refuse to do
things which it would be impossible for
the authorities to force us to do.» A
young boy’s description of confronta-
tions with the Israeli occupation forces
in Jabalia camp in the spring 1982
uprising stands out as a rehearsal for
the current uprising, and clearly shows
the continuity between earlier struggle
and today’s.
Despite presenting a broad range of
opinion, the book fails to present an
integrated view of some essential ques-
tions. This is especially apparent con-
cerning the role of armed struggle and
the relationship between the revolution
inside and outside of Palestine.Some of
those interviewed reject armed struggle
as such in the process of critically
reviewing past experience, instead of
discussing how armed struggle can be
an integrated part of the mass-based
struggle they advocate. It is also
generally overlooked that the revolu-
tionary Palestinian organizations, >
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