Stanford University Press Blog

Boom: A Photo Essay

Construction and destruction in Shatila and Gaza.

by DIANA ALLAN

All photos courtesy of Hisham Ghuzlan

When I visited Shatila last week two topics dominated conversation: the carnage in Gaza and the deleterious effects of the construction boom underway in the camp. I’ll take them in turn, though Shatilans usually don’t; for them, each topic seems the underbelly of the other.

Building in Shatila has long been described by residents as a kind of cancer, its growth both irregular and hazardous. The waves of Syrians and Palestinians fleeing Syria since 2011 have caused it to metastasize. Two years ago its population was estimated at 21,000, around 9000 of them Palestinian. Friends tell me the influx of refugees, alongside the steady flow of Lebanese and labor migrants seeking cheap housing in Beirut, has brought the number closer to 35,000. Shatila’s density rivals that of Gaza City.

The camp has spatially transformed since my last visit in 2012. For the first time I found myself unable to recognize certain streets. The building I lived in has grown by three floors­­; others have grown by four. The memory of natural light cools near windows now giving out onto cinderblocks. There is a pervasive sense of foreboding; miming the blind, hands outstretched, my former neighbor told me she now prayed for divine guidance when the electricity cut. Services already overextended are collapsing under the strain. Electricity cuts are now constant, the water has turned salty as the camp’s wells run dry­ (“even the earth is crying!” said one resident) and the overflow of sewage and garbage is now overwhelming. “Our blood is boiling over Gaza, but also over conditions here—we can barely move or breathe,” explained Abu Hasan, who has lived in Shatila for forty years. “We’re dying everywhere.”

Views on Gaza: A Blog Series

Scholars reflect on the recent intensification of Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

After three weeks of bloodshed and failed cease-fires, the violence in Gaza shows few signs of letting up. This week, the Stanford Press blog presents a 10-part series, featuring essays from noteworthy scholars on the ongoing crisis in Gaza, as well as reflections on the Arab-Israeli conflict writ large. See the full list of posts in the Gaza series below.

A CITY-SIZED PRISON-HOUSE

With Israeli forces besieging Gaza again, Western ambivalence is inexcusable.
by LORI ALLEN

ISOLATING GAZA

The restriction of Palestinian movement in Gaza and elsewhere has long been a central tactic of the Israeli occupation.
by ILANA FELDMAN

SEAM ZONES, SECURITY ZONES, DEATH ZONES, AND WALLS

How Israel controls and contains the Palestinians within its borders.
by LALEH KHALILI

Watching the Occupation at a Close Distance

Surveillance cameras capture the violence as it unfolds in Gaza and the West Bank.

by AMAHL BISHARA

On May 15, 2014, Nakba Day—a day on which Palestinians commemorate the mass dispossession caused by the formation of the state of Israel—Israeli army snipers shot and killed teenagers Nadeem Siam Nawara and Mohammad Mahmoud Odeh Abu Daher during a protest outside of the Ofer prison, where Palestinian political prisoners are held near Ramallah. A few days after their deaths, Defense for Children International-Palestine (DCI) issued a video, “Unlawful Killing of Two Palestinians Outside Ofer,” featuring surveillance camera footage of the shootings from a nearby business, as well as an interview with the business owner.

In measured Arabic, the business owner explains that the area had been calm at the moment of the shooting. We see that at 13:45:08, according to the time code of the surveillance camera, one boy walks calmly toward a building on the right side of the frame. Suddenly he stumbles, sticking his arms out straight for an instant. By the time his body hits the ground he is limp, and then still. Just over an hour later, as black smoke likely from a fire in a dumpster clouds the left corner of the video, a boy walks slowly away from the building. He, too, suddenly crumples to the ground. By the time the time code reads 14:58:55, it is all over.

The Other Israelis

The radical Jewish left in Israel and Gaza is lending its voice to the outcry on behalf of Gazans.

by ORIT BASHKIN

This image was created by political satirist, Amir Schiby, following the deaths of Ahed Atef Bakr, Zakaria Ahed Bakr, Mohamed Ramez Bakr, and Ismael Mohamed Bakr in Gaza while playing on the beach.

Following Operation Protective Edge, many cities around the world have witnessed demonstrations sympathizing with the people of Gaza. Tel Aviv had a few as well. Haggai Matar, a leftist activist, participated in one on July 12:

The right-wingers announced in advance that they would be coming to physically assault us in the protest. However, police paid no heed to the warnings, nor to the threats made on the scene when the protest began, nor to our requests that the very few police officers present would call for backup and try to physically separate the two demonstrations.

When the air raid sirens wailed in Tel Aviv that evening, we knew one thing for sure: The thugs in front of us were more dangerous than the rapidly approaching Hamas-fired rockets. While the Iron Dome intercepted the rockets, by the evening’s end one leftist activist was injured and hospitalized, an independent journalist had his video camera stolen and dozens of others were hit, pushed, thrown to the ground or had eggs thrown at them. Two local coffee shops were vandalized as the right-wingers suspected that demonstrators were hiding inside.

Now, I’ve been shot at, beaten, arrested and spent two years in prison for conscientious objection, but this brutal attack by dozens of bullies chanting, “Death to Arabs” and “Burn the leftists” — just two weeks after a young Palestinian boy was torched to death — was one of the most frightening experiences I’ve ever encountered.

Matar captures the sense of terror and isolation that many Israeli radical leftists have felt in recent weeks. The brutality of the right-wing was condemned in mainstream media, but the event itself marks a dangerous trend in Israeli society.

Racism is the Foundation of Israel’s Operation Protective Edge

How pervasive anti-Arabism has paved the way for Israel's latest assault on Gaza.

by JOEL BEININ

On June 30 Ayelet Shaked, chairwoman of the Knesset faction of the ultra-right wing ha-Bayit ha-Yehudi (Jewish Home) Party, a key member of the coalition government led by Prime Minister Netanyahu, posted on her Facebook page a previously unpublished article written by the late Uri Elitzur. Elitzur, a pro-settler journalist and former chief-of-staff to Netanyahu, wrote

Behind every terrorist stand dozens of men and women, without whom he could not engage in terrorism… They are all enemy combatants, and their blood shall be on all their heads. Now, this also includes the mothers of the martyrs, who send them to hell with flowers and kisses. They must follow their sons. Nothing would be more just. They should go, as well as the physical homes in which they raised the snakes. Otherwise, more little snakes will be raised there.

 

Shaked’s post appeared the day the bodies of three abducted settler teens­—Naftali Fraenkel, Gilad Shaar, and Eyal Yifrach—were discovered. It has since received more than 5,200 “likes.”

For over two weeks, Netanyahu and the media whipped the country into a hysterical state, accusing Hamas of responsibility for abducting the teens without providing evidence to support the claim and promoting hopes that they would be found alive, although the government knew that the boys were likely murdered within minutes of their abduction. Their deaths provided a pretext for more violent expressions of Israeli anti-Arab racism than ever before.

The international community typically sees the manifestations of Israel’s violent racism only when they erupt as assaults on the Gaza Strip, the West Bank,
or Lebanon.

The viciousness of Mordechai Kedar, lecturer in Arabic literature at Bar Ilan University, was even more creative than Shaked and Elitzur’s merely genocidal proposal. “The only thing that can deter terrorists like those who kidnapped the children and killed them,” he said, “is the knowledge that their sister or their mother will be raped.” As a university-based “expert,” Kedar’s heinous suggestion is based on his “understanding” of Arab culture. “It sounds very bad, but that’s the Middle East,” he explained, hastening to add, “I’m not talking about what we should or shouldn’t do. I’m talking about the facts.”

Racism has become a legitimate, indeed an integral, component of Israeli public culture, making assertions like these seem “normal.” The public devaluation of Arab life enables a society that sees itself as “enlightened” and “democratic” to repeatedly send its army to slaughter the largely defenseless population of the Gaza Strip—1.8 million people, mostly descendants of refugees who arrived during the 1948 Arab-Israeli war, and have been, to a greater or lesser extent, imprisoned since 1994.