Neighborhood memories (Amira Hass)

[Violet_Crumble]

When I hear Israelis propose that a Gazan neighborhood be obliterated, I see Yafa, 15, in her neighborhood. I've known her since she was a year old. Always-curious eyes, now behind thin-rimmed eyeglasses, a slightly husky voice, bouncy and quiet, persistent, good in English and math, helps out at home and tries to calm down her two younger sisters - balls of energy who, unlike her, are talkative. She likes to surf the Internet and chat with her friends online. Within a range of hundreds of meters from her home, in Gaza City's Tel al-Hawwa neighborhood, a few houses already have been obliterated by Israeli bombs.

I remember the name of the neighborhood, of course: Saja'iyya. I have forgotten the name of the young woman who had just begun to publish her poetry: personal poems, in a minor key. The pages of the newspaper in which they appeared were laid out, with great excitement, on the table in the rented apartment.

"Obliterate a neighborhood," and even I don't know in which Khan Yunis neighborhood M., a dyed-in-the-wool feminist, lives. Her sharp, critical tongue is aimed at officials of every rank. She was the first woman I ever saw smoke a nargileh (water pipe) in Gaza. I believe she is among the few women who still go out bareheaded. Unfortunately, we have lost touch. I occasionally receive reports about her from a mutual friend, such as how close she was to a missile fired by an Israeli army helicopter. Ask where the schools is and you will get to our neighborhood, Bassam once directed me. Later on, when I got lost in the alleys of the Jabalya refugee camp, he sounded impatient. "I forgot that you weren't born here," he said, and I couldn't tell whether he was being serious.

<snip>

Abu Aouni likes to sit outside his door, in the Shabura refugee camp in Rafah, in the neighborhood called Bureir, named after his village that was destroyed and on whose lands Kibbutz Bror Hayil now stands. Tall, with a voice that is hoarse from cigarettes (despite his bad heart) and the hands of a farmer, his memories crumbling the lost clods of earth. He, too, has stopped counting the number of houses that the Israeli army has obliterated in Rafah since 1967, even though his son, a field investigator for a human rights organization, carefully counts each such house and neighborhood since 2000.

Obliterating neighborhoods, what's new about that, people in Rafah ask.

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/953666.html

[bemildred]

1. Did you look at the comments?

Damn she hit a nerve.

[Violet_Crumble]

2. I avoid Ha'aretz talkback...

The last time I looked at any of the talkbacks there were calls for exterminating the Palestinians and lots of people seething with rage accusing others of being full of rage. I haven't bothered reading any talkbacks since then...

[bemildred]

3. Don't blame you.

It's sort of like a long thread here. In this case though, I think it's because what she says is so effective. Cuts right through all the dehumanizing bullshit.