Gaza: Beneath the Bombs

Author Interview with Emdad Rahman

Gaza: Beneath the Bombs is an eyewitness account of events in Gaza that brings home the horror of life in a war-zone, based on the author’s candid and dramatic blog.

The Israeli offensive in Gaza was described by Amnesty international as ‘22 days of death and destruction’. Sharyn Lock’s eyewitness account brings home the horror of life in Gaza beneath the bombs.

Sharyn Lock went to the Gaza strip with the Free Gaza Movement, thinking the greatest danger she faced was making it past the Israeli sea blockade in a fishing boat, but soon after her arrival Israel attacked Gaza’s 1.5 million inhabitants by land, air and sea. With others from the International Solidarity Movement, Sharyn volunteered with Palestinian ambulances, assisting them as they faced overwhelming civilian casualties. Her candid and dramatic blogs from Gaza gave the world an insight into the conflict that the mainstream media - unable to enter Gaza - couldn’t provide.

Gaza: Beneath the Bombs provides a view of Gaza difficult to glimpse from outside - of a people who face their oppression not only with courage but with humour.

Sharyn has been volunteering in Palestine since 2002. She writes for New Internationalist, Red Pepper and the Big Issue North.

Sarah Irving is a freelance writer. Her work has appeared in New Internationalist, Big Issue North and Electronic Intifada. She has been reviews editor at Red Pepper and Peace News, and features editor at Ethical Consumer. She has been an active campaigner on Palestinian issues since 2001.

1: Please describe some of the horrors of life in a war zone?
It's really hard to pick out one thing, and the problem with Gaza is that most people focus on a small amount of time during the 'Operation Cast Lead' invasion because it catches their attention. But everyday in Gaza is still a warzone everyday, even when Israel declares there is a 'ceasefire' it's still attacking fishing boats and carrying out so-called 'targeted assassination,' which often don't just kill so-called militants but also ordinary people around them. And then there's the blockade, so people can't get in or out to see their families or study or get healthcare, and the Israelis stop almost everything, even building materials after they've bombed thousands of houses, and stupid things like the batteries that people need for their hearing aids, and even certain types of food, like pasta. So there are the big horrors, like the people we had to collect in the ambulances who had been killed and injured by shrapnel or burned by white phosphorus, but there's the everyday horrors like the number of children in Gaza who are malnourished because of the blockade.

2: Did you write a daily blog online?
Yes, the book of Gaza: Beneath the Bombs was based on my blog at http://Talestotell.wordpress.com, which I really started for my friends and family but which ended up with thousands of readers and links from places like the Telegraph newspaper, because the Israeli's were banning journalists from entering Gaza so there was so little information really getting out.

3: Tell us about the Free Gaza movement?
The Free Gaza Movement (www.freegaza.org) was set up by a group of us who had worked, mainly in the West Bank, with the International Solidarity Movement. That was mainly accompanying Palestinian people who we just trying to do things like get to school or harvest their olives, but can't because of Israeli soldiers and settlers. But a lot of us were blacklisted by Israel, so we can't get to the West Bank any more, so we thought about how we could get to Gaza and make a statement about the Israeli blockade and try to get through that. We realised we were going to have to use boats, so we fundraised and worked on that for two years, and we got the first boat through in August 2008, and I was on that. There have been eight trips in total, although not all of them have succeeded in reaching Gaza – some of them have been stopped and rammed or kidnapped by the Israeli navy. But FreeGaza is planning a flotilla of six more boats this spring...

4: Tell us a little about the fishing boat trip
If you mean the first trip to get to Gaza, In August 2008, it seems so long ago, so the best thing to do is probably just give you the email I wrote to all my friends as soon as I arrived:

We left Cyprus August 22, in the morning, and were very lucky to have it and the following day be the only two slightly cloudy days I've experienced onboard, because normally there simply wasn't enough shade for 25 above deck on the Free Gaza, and below was steaming hot. The sea was good in sailors terms but enough so that most people were a little sick and about 8 very sick. Medicing with former nurse Kathy turned out to be the perfect job for me. I spent most of the night feeling a little queasy unless lying flat on the deck, but one of my comrades was so ill all night that we had to give her dioralyte at 15 minute intervals most of the night. I simply lay down beside her, drowsing in between dosing her, observing our fantastic crew (including the wondrous OJ, and Vik who along with me learned the basics of driving) as they stepped over me and Donna to keep the Free Gaza going through the night in two hour watches. The sense of being in a great randomly rocking cradle was intensified by watching the unchanging stars above me.

Sometimes I could get up for a little while and gaze at the horizon, sea-edged in all directions, watching lights of the occasional other ship (which always unnerved us a little) as well the red port light of the Liberty moving parallel with us. In the day, the sun was harsh, but in the sea at night there is just beauty. By early evening, we were getting what I considered the best quality Channel 16 harassment of the trip. Channel 16 is the emergency channel which must always be kept unobstructed, but ever since sailing from Greece there'd been regular strange messages in Hebrew, Arabic music played us, etc. This time, someone was just repeating: “They're lost. They're lost.” Simple yet very sinister under the circumstances! Who was lost? Us? The Liberty? But we could see their lights over there. Or could we? Was that really the Liberty? And if it was – did it still have people aboard? How could we be sure...

Because for long stretches at a time, we couldn't contact each other. Never trust technology, I tell you – statellite phones, radios, extremely expensive satellite internet and video streaming – the last had apparently been sabotaged pretty thoroughly from long distance before we even set sail, though
we had a little capability left sometimes, and the rest entirely stopped working on both boats shortly after the “they're lost” broadcast. We no longer were able to use the normal sea communication systems even for SOS messages. We heard later that the Greek government, wondering how the MP they sent with us was doing, had tried every method to contact us and eventually decided we must have been sunk. Before the comms system when down however, we'd heard that media coverage had taken off and that the Arab League had announced its support of us, and stated that Israel must act in every way to protect our peaceful mission. Then there was silence.

But we had two secret weapons – one, our walkie talkies, too low tech to be sabotageable apparently. They worked at least some of the time, meaning we could talk between boats. Secondly, Mr Ramatan and Mr Aljazeerah – our captive journalists – had between them a working satellite phone. On this we put out a press release accouncing the apparent sabotage, calling particularly on the Greek government to protest this as we were sailing under Greek flags. (Actually we were sailing under about 50 flags, including a Free Leonard Peltier one, but you know what I mean.)

Morning was a blessing. Everyone cheered up, I felt fine again, the sick people attempted some dry Greek bread, the undefeatably cheerful Lauren stopped juggling walkie talkies and made yet another round of tea. (Let me apologise now for thinking her most useful role was going to be being related to Tony Blair.) The single working satellite phone began ringing and didn't stop – Musheir giving interviews in Arabic, Vik in Italian, Jeff in Hebrew. We began to put up more flags. Conflicting messages came in about whether a media boat was coming from Israel or not to try to meet up with us. We kept grabbing passing crew and asking them – how many hours now left of international waters? Two, one.

...20 minutes after that, we got a call from the Israeli media. The Foreign Minster had just stated, “We are not going to stop the boats.” We weren't going to prison. Vik wasn't going to be climbing the mast. I wasn't going to be shot for refusing to co-operate with the Israeli Navy. We weren't going to get to eat our seige supply of vine leaves. Lauren wasn't going to get to sing “Israeli men” to the tune of “It's raining men” as we were boarded, which was just as well since we hadn't worked out the dance routine yet. None of that was happening. The impossible was happening instead. We were going to go to Gaza.

5: What did you do as a volunteer?
When I went in December 2008 I was supposed to be doing the kind of things I'd done with ISM before – accompanying farmers and fishermen, writing stuff up to send out from the ISM website and things like that. None of us, I think, expected the invasion to be quite so bad. So during that, yes I was writing the blog and talking to the international press, but I was mainly riding with the ambulances, being an international presence on them in case that was useful and helping with some of the medical stuff.

6: What can the international community do to help the indigent?
There are so many things that individual people can do. It's really important to be supporting the boycott of Israeli goods – it really is starting to make an impact on the economy. There are lots of charities trying to work in Gaza as well, but one that I visited and appears in the book is the Atfaluna Centre for Deaf Children, where you can donate at www.atfaluna.net. And a campaign was started from Gaza to support the ambulancemen and other emergency workers that we worked with. It's called Defend the Rescuers and its at http://defendtherescuers.wordpress.com – in future we hope to be able to supply them with better safety equipment but at the moment the blockade makes that impossible to get in. In terms of what the international community can do at the level of international governments and the EU and the UN, well they need to be withdrawing funding and support from Israel right now.

7: Do you intend to go back?
I hope so. At the moment I'm doing a midwifery degree, so I'm in Britain for the moment, but afterwards I'd love to go back to practice as a midwife or work with the ambulances again.

For further information, to request a review copy or to speak to the author please contact Jon Wheatley at jonw@plutobooks.com or on 0208 374 6424.

Readers can gain advantage of a special offer by visiting www.plutobooks.com. Click on promotions and enter the code GAZABANGLA. Readers can get the book for the bargain price of £8.99. (RRP £12.99).

TESTIMONIALS:

This is an honest, forthright account full of compassion and insight; it plunges the reader into Gaza.

Jeremy Hardy

Moving and understated ... Sharyn Lock manages to humanise the inhuman...Unforgettable.

Richard Falk, United Nations Special Rapporteur on Palestine and Professor Emeritus of International Law at Princeton University