Pulitzer Center Untold Stories

Juggling the Occupation: a night at the circus

Elliott D. Woods
Elliott previously reported from Gaza for his Pulitzer Center project, "Inside Gaza." He has continued living in the Gaza Strip since finishing the project in the spring of 2009, and is now working for a humanitarian organization.

Ramallah — Speckled in dayglo, the young girl shimmying her way up the ropes can’t be older than twelve — but her strength is uncanny. By appearances, she’s spent at least a quarter of her young years growing the mane of curls atop her head, a wild mop that flirts with protest in this headscarved land. Several hundred little kids squirm on edges of theater seats in the Ramallah Cultural Palace, spellbound, as she twists and tumbles through the air. She hangs by one arm, her feet extended in a swan pose behind her. Spinning like an ornament on a mobile, she flashes an ecstatic grin. From her perch, soaring above the crowd, she is free.

The amazing accessibility of Hamas.

Elliott D. Woods, for the Pulitzer Center

Elliott Woods traveled to Gaza on a Pulitzer Center grant

Senior Hamas legislator Sheikh Ismail Radwan sips a cold beverage at a festival celebrating Jerusalem as the "Capital of Arabic Culture."  — Elliott D. Woods

Gaza City — I don't mean to say that Hamas leaders are available for walk in appointments.  Hamas leaders are relatively accessible for interviews, and possibly even chatting, if you have contacts — senior Hamas leader Ghazi Hamad gave me his personal cell-phone number — but I lack the connections at present to get in touch with most of the big fish, though I did interview a barefoot and rather rotund son of Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh at his mosque in Beach Camp, at the drop of a hat too.

What I mean is that when Hamas leaders are out in public, it's very easy — frighteningly easy — to get close to them and even to talk to them.  I attended a festival last Saturday celebrating Jerusalem as the "Capital of Arabic Culture," and I got in the faces of such Hamas powerhouses as Mushir Al-Masri, Sheikh Ismail Radwan, and Hamas spokesman Fawzi Barhoum (to be honest, I was kind of annoyed, because I'd lugged out my leaden 70-200mm lens thinking I wouldn't be able to get within fifty meters of them).  There were dozens of soldiers and policemen present at the festival, which took place before the skeletal remains of what was once Gaza's central Legislative Building, but security was, well, lax.  I walked right into the festival and into the press area without anyone checking my ID or asking me who I was or anything.  The same went for all of my Arab counterparts.

Can't I just read in peace?

Elliott D. Woods, for the Pulitzer Center

Elliott Woods traveled to Gaza on a Pulitzer Center grant

Fishing boats at anchor in Gaza's lone protected harbor, on the Mediterranean coast beside southern Gaza City.  — Elliott D. Woods

Gaza City — The Gaza Strip boasts a beautiful stretch of Mediterranean coast line, and the breeze down by the water is oddly warm for this time of year.  In the southern part of Gaza City, a wandering foreigner starved for bow-tie clad waiters and sleek décor will be pleased to find a string of nearly-luxury hotels with sun-splashed terraces and stunning views nestled against a long stretch of haphazardly stacked concrete tenements — otherwise known as Beach Camp, one of Gaza's many permanent refugee communities.  When I know I'll be in the area, I like to bring a book and sit for a couple of hours reading in the sun, listening to the surf and the fishermen, smoking shisha.  That's exactly what I planned to do this afternoon.  But the Israeli military had other plans. 

I shouldn't have been surprised.  Last night Apache helicopters thumped back and forth above my neighborhood for almost two hours, doing god knows what.  This morning, F-16s were all over the place.  By the time I got settled with my new book and my shisha, nary a second passed without the "voice" of the F-16 drowning out the waves.  Gazan English speakers frequently use the word "voice" as a synonym for "sound."  It's always the "voice" of the drone, the "voice" of the helicopter, the "voice" of the bomb.  Today, the sky was full of menacing "voices."

Reminders of a not so distant threat.

Elliott Woods, for the Pulitzer Center

Elliott Woods traveled to Gaza on a Pulitzer Center grant

Gaza City — A few minutes ago, as I was walking back from the peculiarly named Popeye Coffee Shop, a dull thumping in the sky raised the hair on my neck. "Oh great," I thought. "The Apaches are back." I quickened my steps toward home as the noise grew louder until it seemed like it was right behind me. I turned to look over my shoulder, and to my relief, I saw a kid on a beat-up motorbike pulling around a corner in my neighborhood. The dreadful Apache of my imagination, loaded with Hellfire missiles and orders to kill, turned out to be a kid out for a spin before bed.

When I first arrived, my Gazan hosts practically wet their pants laughing when they saw how I shuddered at the sound of nearby explosions. But one of them — middle-aged, thick-necked Mahdi — later admitted to me, "We're all scared, all the time."

Gaza City street art

Elliott D. Woods, for the Pulitzer Center

Elliott Woods traveled to Gaza on a Pulitzer Center grant

Former Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) chairman and Palestinian President Yasser Arafat.  In Gaza, Arafat is usually referred to by his nickname, Abu Amar.  Despite the fact that Abu Amar's face is everywhere in Gaza, many Hamas supporters have little affection for him.  Hamas preaches "no negotiations with Israel," and Abu Amar is remembered by many as the man who signed away Palestine.

Gaza City — Here are some photos of street art in Gaza City.  The Fatah slogans are gone, they've been whitewashed and scribbled over with new Hamas slogans, but the face of Abu Amar — Yasser Arafat, grandfather of Fatah — still keeps watch over at least one corner in every neighborhood.

I don't know what all of the slogans mean in all of these photos.  For some of them, I just liked the colors.  Gaza City is a pretty grey place.  Most construction is blocky and non-descript — maybe
because everything is built from cinderblocks.  Just a guess.  Anyway, the graffiti is a welcome diversion from the architectural monotony, even if the slogans probably don't correspond to my idea of art in the service of humanity.

Reckless closers.

Elliott Woods, for the Pulitzer Center

Elliott Woods traveled to Gaza on a Pulitzer Center grant

A young boy prepares tea in front of the cinder-block structure his family has constructed from the ruins of their home in Beit Lahia, Gaza.

Gaza City — I recently read through all of Rod Nordland's pieces from Gaza for Newsweek.  He was quite prolific while here, and most of his stories show a clear sense of repulsion at the level of destruction brought to the doorsteps of ordinary Palestinians — regardless of whether they may have sympathized with Hamas or Fatah or no one at all.

I met Mr. Nordland when we crossed through the Rafah terminal together on January 16. He offered my friend Theo and I a ride into Rafah City with his driver, Hassan.  I was impressed by his first reports from Gaza, especially by his piece about Zeitoun, which came out at about the same time as my piece about Zeitoun for GlobalPost.  Mr. Nordland's story about the massacre of the Samouni family in Zeitoun, by air strikes and aimed rifle shots, showed the disastrous level to which "disproportionate" Israeli violence escalated once ground troops arrived in Gazan villages.  The reporting in the story is meticulous, the illustration of violence directed at civilians clear and potent.

But at the end of a piece about young Palestinian men reacting to Obama's inauguration, written after a trip to a shisha joint in Gaza City, Mr. Nordland makes an uncharacteristic jab at Hamas that undermines the objectivity and evidential power of his other stories:

"As the old saying goes, Palestinians never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity. It was a grim reminder that Gaza is still run by terrorists from Hamas, who were popularly elected. Until Palestinians do something about that, there will be limits to what Obama can do for them."

Speaking Urdu In Gaza

Asim Rafiqui in Gaza, for the Pulitzer Center

Are you from Pakistan?

I am not sure how he knew for we had not met nor spoken to each other.

I was just about the get up to leave Al-Awda mosque in Rafah, Gaza when a man sitting behind me introduced himself and asked if I was from Pakistan. Nothing about my appearance that day - I in my conventional trekking pants and checkered shirt, suggested my background. 

How did he know?

Burnout.

Elliott D. Woods, for the Pulitzer Center

Gaza City — It's too early to start talking about burnout, but let's face it — it's already here.  It's not just me, it's the whole of the Gaza Strip. 

The journalists who began flooding over the Rafah border crossing a few days before the Israeli cease-fire have practiced scorch-and-burn journalism among Gaza's war-weary population, and the endgame is near.  The funerals have been chased, the flag-sheathed bodies buried, the tunnels explored, the cease-fires reported, the photos snapped, the wounds recorded, the tears collected into metaphors. 

There has been no shortage of excellent work, but the work has been hard on the individuals who have facilitated it, and the doors are starting to close.

War Crimes

Elliott Woods and Asim Rafiqui, for the Pulitzer Center

There has been a lot of talk about allegations of Israeli war crimes during Israel's recent three-week war on Hamas.  Obviously, as journalists, we are not in a position to prosecute or arrest suspected offenders — but we do have a responsibility to report what we see, and to not shy from the evidence and the real story of violent and unnecessary destruction here for the sake of appealing to American media audiences, who may have little or no interest in stories about human suffering, wanton demolishing of civilian structures, or anything else that portrays the Israeli operation as anything other than a normal modern military action against a discrete threat.

Working in the wake of the Israeli offensive — among the heaps of wrecked homes and wrecked lives — is not easy, though obviously Asim and I are keenly aware that our professional difficulties pale in comparison to the sorrow and hardship that Gazans are experiencing at the moment, as they try to piece together their broken world, as they struggle to collect themselves from a brutal beating without any justification. 

The Familiarity Of It All: Photographing The Gaza Aftermath

Asim Rafiqui, for the Pulitzer Center

On the Getty Images archive you can type in 'Gaza Destroyed' and retrieve over 5,500 images to select from. If you run the query 'Gaza Funerals' you will get back over 7,000 images. I was unable to check the Corbis archives because at the time of writing this entry their site was undergoing maintenance. But I am confident that I would find a similarly large number of images for both the queries above.

The challenge for a photographer arriving in Gaza is that s/he is walking into a place that has been consistently and extensively photographed for decades, and that there are many fine, talented and professional Palestinian photographers who carry out this task for their various agencies. In addition, some of the best and most talented international photojournalists have also made Gaza the focus of their work.

I have arrived in Gaza in the aftermath of Israel's most recent military operation against the region, Operation Cast Lead. And I find that though the scale of this latest venture is larger than anything I can remember from my previous travels to Gaza, its impact and consequences are very familiar.

The official numbers state that over 1,300 people have been killed, of which it is believed that nearly 400 were children, about 100,000 made homeless, and about 5000 left injured.

I arrived here just as the cease fire had been declared, and I was immediately struck by how familiar it all seemed.

My first trip to Gaza was in 2003. I then returned and continued to document the situation here, particularly in Rafah, Gaza, in 2004 and 2005.