Stateless in Gaza

by Clive Robson, Clive Robson

Doctors and big landowners, small artisans and casual labourers, Muslim fundamentalists, left-wing intellectuals, ordinary people - all reflect on their fate with surprising wisdom and insight. Their vivid stories, told without bitterness, cover everything from the growth of a women's movement in the Strip to the role of the United Nations, from working conditions inside Israel to criticisms of the PLO leadership. The presence of an army of occupation makes itself felt in countless ways throughout the small coastal strip mostly populated by refugees. The economy is tightly restricted, even to the sort of wooden crates into which the Gazans pack their oranges. Homes are regularly bulldozed; women and children confront the Army with tragic results. From these short personal accounts it becomes clear why Gaza is the epitome of the Palestinian problem.

159 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1986

Reviews

[Adam · Rating 5 out of 5]

A short but thoroughly outstanding work. This book is a treasure of oral history, it consists of a series of interviews with a broad range of Palestinians in Gaza. They all seem to have been done in 1984, with the book having been published two years later. It is striking to see just how truly brutal and inhumane the occupation was and has always been, before the intifada, before rocket launches, before suicide bombs, before Hamas, before any of the excuses we hear about today. There are harrowing tales of cruelty and torture, as well as petty humiliations, and the soul destroying effects of having neither a present nor a future.

Reading this book 40 years later, knowing what followed – the intifada, the early hopes, quickly dashed, of the Oslo process, the second intifada, the blockade, and of course, the genocide – it is impossible not to wonder what became of all of these people. Those that were still alive on October 7, 2023, have lived through the sort of hell that I can only pray that I will never know firsthand. What the world has allowed Israel to do to the Palestinians is beyond imagination and beyond comprehension. I can only hope that some of the interviewees will somehow live long enough to see some measure of justice granted to them.