Gaza's misery, among brothers

By Ahmed Burai and Jeffrey Fleishman

Jan. 16, 2009 12 AM PT

Burai is a special correspondent.

THE GAZA STRIP AND JERUSALEM — Every day he scours the market for apples, okra, diapers; listening to the warnings of men with radios to their ears and the rumble of shells and missiles, a strange throb that plays through blackouts and prayers at the mosque until Yousif Nagla returns home.

Death notices rattle on alley walls, replaced quickly by new ones. If he’s lucky, on a good day, he can find oranges and thyme in the market, breathing in their scents like the times before the bomb craters and quickly dug graves. He is a teacher, he knows the laws of science, but these days in the Gaza Strip laws seem inapplicable.

“This life is really odd, you see; our brothers are being killed and we are going shopping,” Nagla, a trim man with wide eyes, said winding through the market in the town of Deir al Balah. “It’s the irony of life. But what can we do? One feels pity for himself and his people. As you can see the market is nearly empty.”

There are carrots and cucumbers, but no milk, biscuits or cheese.

“We used to have all these things,” he said.

There is talk of a cease-fire between Israeli forces and Hamas militants, but the air over the seaside Palestinian enclave cracks with jets and rockets. The sky is its own eerie show, smoke blossoming like flowers the color of coal, and white, incandescent flares bursting and arcing, their plumes hanging over cities and towns.

There is much a man can talk about when he moves beneath such a sky. Nagla bought tomatoes, beans, a few potatoes and walked home. He had heard not long ago someone from the United Nations talking on the TV about how difficult it is to describe what’s happening in Gaza because every day things get worse. “If we call it a crisis today,” Nagla said, “what will we call it tomorrow?”

On the way home hushed voices around him turned a question into a chorus: “When will it end?”

The 42-year-old Nagla lives in the nearby village of Az Zawaida in a house he shares with his two teenage sons and two of his younger brothers and their families. The house is not plastered -- the blockade around Gaza since 2007 has strangled supplies of mortar and cement -- and rain often seeps through, but the yard is big, with a garden and a pen for chickens.

The brothers gathered the other day and ruminated, assessing, arguing, trying to find logic in battle plans and diplomacy, and remembering many years ago when young Palestinian men fought the Israelis with rifles and rocks.

“Let us speak bluntly and honestly,” said Mohammed Nagla, a heavy-set man in a cap. “Despite the fact that we may not accept their strategies and tactics, Hamas fighters are brave and lions in battle.

“Don’t believe the Israeli propaganda about destroying Hamas’ infrastructure. You’ll be naive if you buy into this,” said Mohammed, the second oldest. “I assure you that they were not even harmed. Go to the hospital and ask, ‘Where are the Hamas fighters?’ You will not find any of them. . . . They proved themselves to the whole world. Even [President] Bush himself speaks about Hamas.”

“You’re right,” said the youngest of the three, Sameh, a bodybuilder and martial arts coach. “But does this deserve the unbelievable losses our people are suffering?” He was angry at Khaled Meshaal, the Hamas leader in exile in Syria who has been more radical and inclined to continue the battle with Israel than the group’s officials in Gaza.

“Meshaal keeps saying, ‘My Palestinian nation, you have to be patient and endure the suffering to reach liberty, this is the path of freedom,’ ” Sameh said. “Meanwhile, he is living in Syria. Why doesn’t he come and fight instead of leaving his own people to die and suffer?”

Yousif told his brothers: “Don’t quarrel.”

About 1,100 Palestinians, roughly half of them civilians, have been killed since the Israeli offensive began Dec. 27. In that same period, officials say, at least 13 Israelis, including three civilians, have died. The Israelis say the campaign was ordered to stop Hamas from firing rockets into southern Israel.

Gaza has become a sequestered place of water hauled in buckets, power outages, funerals, patients stacked in hospitals, fires in the night, suicide bombers on bicycles, evacuation leaflets fluttering to the ground and militants creeping along walls and crawling through tunnels to ambush Israeli tanks. One man said every day is like a slap in the face -- waiting, knowing it’s coming, but never having time to duck.

Sameh’s baby cried in the other room. He rushed to him.

“You see, he was terrified by the sound of his crying baby,” whispered Yousif. “What shall those whose children lost limbs do?”

Sameh soothed his child and returned. The heavy fighting has stayed clear of his village, but it creeps closer, and, like the others, he wondered when it would come.

Yousif headed for the mosque. Prayer times have been shortened since the Israeli invasion. When the prayers were finished, the imam began supplications and asked God to destroy Israel. Minutes later, the 150 men in the mosque heard a fighter plane, distant, moving fast. The ground shook. Two missiles exploded in an empty lot about 600 yards from the mosque.

People pushed and ran. Ambulances streaked past, but no one was hurt in the bombing; the ambulances were carrying other casualties to the border with Egypt. Yousif made an aside: “ ‘Don’t worry,’ Israel said. ‘We are not targeting civilians.’ ”

It was after sunset and cold; Yousif, dressed in a sweater and scarf, went home and told a story:

“In the first intifada against Israel,” he said, “Palestinian children used to throw stones and the Israelis responded with gunfire and rubber-coated bullets, but this resulted in anti-Israeli suicide bombers. In the second intifada, the Israelis used tanks and helicopters, and the Palestinians used Kalashnikovs, and this brought the Israelis [danger from] missiles and rockets. This time the Israelis are using white phosphorus and F-16 fighter planes. So, they have to expect something different next time from the Palestinians.

“This is the formula of violence and counterviolence,” he said. “It doesn’t breed anything but extremes.”

[email protected]

latimes.com

/columnone

Previous Column One articles are available online.