I’m a poet, an English Jew and a frequent visitor to Israel. Deeply disturbed by the reports of wanton slaughter and destruction during Operation Cast Lead, I felt I had to see for myself.
I flew to Tel Aviv and on Jan. 28, using my press card to cross the Erez checkpoint, I walked across the border into Gaza where I was met by my guide, a Palestinian journalist. He asked if I wanted to meet with Hamas officials. I explained that I’d come to bear witness to the damage and civilian suffering, not to talk politics.
What I saw was that there had been precision attacks made on Hamas’ infrastructure. Does U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon criticize the surgical destruction of the explosives cache in the Imad Akhel Mosque, of the National Forces compound, of the Shi Jaya police station, of the Ministry of Prisoners?
The Gazans I met weren’t mourning the police state. Neither were they radicalized. As Hamas blackshirts menaced the street corners, I witnessed how passersby ignored them.
There were empty beds at Shifa Hospital and a threatening atmosphere. Hamas is reduced to wielding its unchallengeable authority from extensive air raid shelters that, together with the hospital, were built by Israel 30 years ago.
Terrorized Gazans used doublespeak when they told me most of the alleged 5,500 wounded were being treated in Egypt and Jordan. They want it known that the figure is a lie, and showed me that the wounded weren’t in Gaza. No evidence exists of their presence in foreign hospitals, or of how they might have gotten there.
From the mansions of the Abu Ayida family at Jebala Rayes to Tallel Howa (Gaza City’s densest residential area), Gazans contradicted allegations that Israel had murderously attacked civilians. They told me again and again that both civilians and Hamas fighters had evacuated safely from areas of Hamas activity in response to Israeli telephone calls, leaflets and megaphone warnings.
Seeing the Jabalya refugee camp made it impossible to understand how U.N. and press reports could ever have alleged that the UNRWA-run school had been hit by Israeli shells. The school, like most of Gaza, was visibly intact.
I was shown where Hamas had been firing from nearby, and the Israeli missile’s marks on the road outside the school were unmistakable. When I met Mona al-Ashkor, one of the 40 people injured running toward the al-Fakhoura school — rather than inside it as widely and persistently reported — I was told that Israel had warned people not to take shelter in the school because Hamas was operating in the area, and that some people had ignored the warning because UNRWA previously told them that the school would be safe. Press reports that fatalities numbered 40 were denied.
I was told stories that contradicted each other, what I saw and later media accounts. Examples of these inconsistencies are that 24, 31, 34 or more members of the Samouni family had died, that all the deaths occurred when Israel bombed the safe building it had told 160 family members to shelter in. The safe building was pointed out to me, but it looked externally intact.
Other reports I heard: that some left the safe building and were shot in another house; that one was shot when outside collecting firewood; that there was no resistance (despite a black mark above a window that indicated weaponry having been fired from inside); that victims were left bleeding for two or three days.
The media have manufactured and examined allegations that Israel committed a war crime against the Samouni family without mentioning that the family is Fatah and that some of its members are still missing. They have not considered what might flow from those facts: that Hamas might have been active not only in the Samouni killings but in the exertion of force on the Samounis to accuse Israel.
The Gaza I saw was societally intact. There were no homeless, walking wounded, hungry or underdressed people. The streets were busy, shops were hung with embroidered dresses and gigantic cooking pots, the markets were full of fresh meat and beautiful produce — red radishes were bigger than grapefruits.
Mothers told me they were bored of leaving home to sit on rubble all day to tell the press tales of how they’d survived.
No one praised their government as they showed me the sites of tunnels where fighters had melted away. No one declared Hamas victorious for creating a forced civilian front line as they showed me the remains of booby-trapped homes and schools.
From what I saw and was told in Gaza, Operation Cast Lead pinpointed a totalitarian regime’s power bases and largely neutralized Hamas’ plans to make Israel its tool for the sacrifice of civilian life.
Corroboration of my account may be found in tardy and piecemeal retractions of claims concerning the UNRWA school at al-Fakhoura; an isolated acknowledgment that Gaza is substantially intact by the New York Times; Internet media watch corrections; and the unresolved discrepancy between the alleged wounded and their unreported whereabouts.
Yvonne Green is a poet and freelance writer who lives in London. Her collection “Boukhara” was a 2008 Smith/Doorstop prize winner. This piece first appeared in the Jerusalem Post.