News reports have alluded to the fuel shortage in Gaza, with complaints from Hamas officials about Israel chocking Gaza off, and most recently a retort by the Israeli government that Hamas is intentionally causing the shortage (by avoiding pick up of fuel trucks) to create political crisis.
I decided to ask a couple of colleagues living in Gaza how the people on the streets saw the situation. Here is one response:
A couple years back, a comment that was making the rounds among Israeli policy-makers was that "Palestinians need to have their own Altalena."
Our leaders in Gaza have expanded on their recent campaign and are reaching out to more and more places. Below are a couple of pictures from their most recent town hall meeting in Jabaliyah Refugee Camp, building on the message of empowering citizens to propel a two-state-agreement.
It may surprise many, but OneVoice continues its work and its message for a two-state solution through empowerment of the ordinary citizens on both sides who are fed up and want this conflict to end once and for all.
Below are a few pictures from recent town hall meetings conducted by our executive leadership in Gaza.
The title of the workshop was "Examining the Palestinians’ National Aspirations and the Two States for Two People Alternative."
A prior workshop in Deir El Balah in Central Gaza took place earlier in the month and an outline of what was discussed can be read by expanding this posting (clicking "more")…
Here is a note I got today from one of our team members in Gaza:
I know well that you understand the sensitivity of the day to day situation in Gaza, we absolutely experiences the conflict between the moderate people who live unacceptable and unbelievable life and the extremists who enjoy the role they play in governing the others, I’m not the only one who analyze current Gaza as it is now, in short we live in a miserable condition, there is nothing reach the minimum standards starting from the rule of law and not ending by the milk and the medicines for the children.
For one second don’t ever think that we gave up or we hesitate in acting for the goodness of our people and for OV message, we are doing our best to remain in contact with the necessarily people in Gaza and we enlarging our circle day by day, our action may not covered by media or documented by photos but personally and on behalf of [my team] I confirm that we are happy by every step that we take forward toward our goal.
One of my favorite movies ever, which I just saw recently after many years, is The Mission. Like all great movies, its power to entertain and its message stand the test of time…
It is instructive to take a look at the groups opposing the efforts to negotiate an end to the conflict through negotiations among Israelis and Palestinians….
These primarily include:
Ayatollah in Iran: Says Annapolis "Doomed To Failure"
Hamas in Gaza: Sponsors Anti-Annapolis Meeting and Slams Arab Countries for Participating, Condemns Abbas and Arab Leaders
An Unholy alliance?
You may not see this on TV, but something huge happened in Gaza over the last couple days.
Hundreds of thousands of people rallied across the center of Gaza City to commemorate Yasser Arafat’s passing.
The rally was organized by the "National Committee", a group of Palestinian civic leaders, primarily from Fatah but also spreading across other parties and unaffiliated Palestinian luminaries tasked with representing the people.
The few media reports that I’ve seen on this are reporting that 5/7/10 people were killed and many others wounded as the Hamas-led police force opened fire at the crowds that were condemning their coup d’etat.
But the bigger story is that this is the biggest demonstration since Hamas took over Gaza by force, and arguably the biggest demonstration in Gaza ever.
THE PEOPLE ON THE GROUND were shouting "Shiia, Shiaa" against the Hamas forces, openly associating them as peons of the Iranian government.
For days, Hamas had been trying to prevent this mobilization from happening, going to the lengths of blocking out all the bus companies so they could not be rented by organizers to bring in people from the outskirts.
But people drove in their cars, and walked long distances, to make their voices heard.
Checkpoints across Gaza set up by Hamas forces were not able to stop this mobilization.
We had a setback last month when we had to postpone the OneVoice Summit in Jericho intended to send a message of support to President Abbas.
But this time the people of Gaza, hundreds of thousands of them, risked their lives to vote with their feet against militant extremism.
Here are a couple of stories that provide more context on this important development:
AFP: Hamas Kills Six at Arafat Rally in Gaza
IHT: Former Gaza strongman Dahlan says Hamas breakup of rally sign of group’s growing difficulties
The OneVoice Gaza office was burglarized last night.
At 1:30am, armed guards forced the landlord of our office at gunpoint to open the doors to the OneVoice office in Gaza.
They stole two old laptops.
Nobody was harmed.
At first I tried to assuage my team members and joked that the thieves would be "cursed when they find out how old those two laptops are, and end up with frozen screens all the time."
But frankly the feeling of being violated does creep up, and I am sure it is ten-fold greater on the people on the ground.
It is particularly disturbing that they zoned in on our laptops and could be trying to data-mine to get information about the 18,000+ Gazans that joined our movement in June, prior to our freezing the signature drive (which we hence have re-launched in spite of the conditions in Gaza now).
Other civil society organizations have complained about similar incursions and violations. Hamas has a tight control over society and there is no "crime" committed and no action taken, certainly no armed groups roaming around, without the blessing of or active guidance by the militant wing of Hamas.
Civil society organizations need to band together and stand up against such abuses. Otherwise they will continue to be intimidated and subjugated till there is no civil society left.
The first set of sad news for the people of Gaza this last week was that Hamas again violently suppressed the popular non-violent protest driven by the people.
I had reported a couple weeks ago that the people in Gaza were self-organizing a day of prayer outside the mosques, as an expression against the hijacking of religion and co-opting of all mosques by Hamas.
After the demonstrations took place, Hamas lashed out and reacted violently.
That did not deter the citizens, who last Friday again demonstrated by praying outside the mosques.
But for some reason the media is reporting that these demonstrations are organized by Fatah, and that Hamas is lashing out against Fatah supporters.
Certainly many of those demonstrating must be Fatah supporters. But to dismiss this as a political move on the part of the Fatah party is to miss the big and real point – that these demonstrations were truly driven by civil society, by young people, by different NGOs upset at Hamas’s oppression.
This is not about power struggles between two factions.
This is about suppression of liberty, vs. citizens’ quest to regain their freedom.
So the second set of sad news is that Fatah is trying to co-opt a courageous move from ordinary citizens and claim it as its own, causing harm to the cause.
This is not the first time this happens. Many times when OneVoice has taken important initiatives, one political party has tried to co-opt our work, forcing us to not take such initiatives, because OneVoice must remain non-partisan and not aligned to any existing political party.
