Friday, January 07, 2005
From Gaza City to Oklahoma City
It turns out that Gaza City, Gaza and Oklahoma City, U.S.A may not be so different after all, except that the latter is a part of a red state and the former is a part of a black and blue occupied, not-yet state. There is also the fact that the entire Gaza Strip is about 5 miles wide and 22 miles long (140 square miles) and has about one million people living there, about 770,000 of whom are not native to Gaza, having been displaced from their homes and living as refugees in Gaza camps since 1948, while the metro area of Oklahoma City is about 625 square miles with roughly the same population as the Gaza Strip. That aside, I think Gaza (both the city and the strip) can teach us something about our U.S.A., maybe even why 51% of us would re-elect George W. Bush.
When Arafat returned to Gaza from exile in 1994, optimism that the Oslo agreements would end the Israeli Occupation produced a decline in outward demonstrations of religious piety, especially in Islamic conservativism associated with Hamas. More Gazans started attending Fatah-affiliated than Hamas-affiliated mosques. Amira Hass, a journalist who writes for the Israeli newspaper Ha’aretz, describes an increase in the sale of hair-care products during this time, which meant more than a few Gazan women were prepared to dispense with religious edicts to cover their heads. Men would leave the mosques to watch soccer matches. And at political rallies, men and women stood side by side. Indeed, at one such rally, Hass asked a Hamas supporter, “Will Hamas try to stop this from happening again?” to which he responded: “We don’t want to impose our will when we clearly can’t succeed.”
This is telling. When hope was high, when Israeli curfews were lifted in Gaza, and when Gazans were living a bit less in constant fear of Israeli Defense Forces, they, in general, behaved more progressively. Men and women crowded the streets and beaches in the evenings (after years of living under evening curfew). And when Hamas condemned such “immoral” behavior, Gazans tended to respond: “As if we need an occupation to keep us moral” (Hass).
And yet it seems that for many in the U.S., we need a war on terrorism to keep us moral—or at least to remind us of what immorality can supposedly “lead to” and hence impose our so-called morality, even violently, on others. It is fear that encourages such thinking, and the Bush campaign orchestrated that perfectly, as is well known. How easy it is for a “war on terror” (terror is not an enemy but a tactic, and so can easily become a fill-in for whatever we fear) to become a war against all “immorality”: gay marriage, abortion, political correctness, foreigners. In this, perhaps Gaza City and Oklahoma City aren’t that different.
For once real hope faded in Gaza, once Palestinians realized how humiliatingly one-sided the Oslo agreements and the “peace process” were, Hamas support increased to its 1987-1993 Intifada numbers. As Hass writes, “support for the Islamic movement is closely tied to a sense of Palestinian impotence.” The Bush administration and campaign has engineered (think wolves stalking in the woods, WMDs, etc.), marketed, and profited from a similar fear and impotence, trying to convince Americans that Oklahoma City is like Gaza. As if.
When Arafat returned to Gaza from exile in 1994, optimism that the Oslo agreements would end the Israeli Occupation produced a decline in outward demonstrations of religious piety, especially in Islamic conservativism associated with Hamas. More Gazans started attending Fatah-affiliated than Hamas-affiliated mosques. Amira Hass, a journalist who writes for the Israeli newspaper Ha’aretz, describes an increase in the sale of hair-care products during this time, which meant more than a few Gazan women were prepared to dispense with religious edicts to cover their heads. Men would leave the mosques to watch soccer matches. And at political rallies, men and women stood side by side. Indeed, at one such rally, Hass asked a Hamas supporter, “Will Hamas try to stop this from happening again?” to which he responded: “We don’t want to impose our will when we clearly can’t succeed.”
This is telling. When hope was high, when Israeli curfews were lifted in Gaza, and when Gazans were living a bit less in constant fear of Israeli Defense Forces, they, in general, behaved more progressively. Men and women crowded the streets and beaches in the evenings (after years of living under evening curfew). And when Hamas condemned such “immoral” behavior, Gazans tended to respond: “As if we need an occupation to keep us moral” (Hass).
And yet it seems that for many in the U.S., we need a war on terrorism to keep us moral—or at least to remind us of what immorality can supposedly “lead to” and hence impose our so-called morality, even violently, on others. It is fear that encourages such thinking, and the Bush campaign orchestrated that perfectly, as is well known. How easy it is for a “war on terror” (terror is not an enemy but a tactic, and so can easily become a fill-in for whatever we fear) to become a war against all “immorality”: gay marriage, abortion, political correctness, foreigners. In this, perhaps Gaza City and Oklahoma City aren’t that different.
For once real hope faded in Gaza, once Palestinians realized how humiliatingly one-sided the Oslo agreements and the “peace process” were, Hamas support increased to its 1987-1993 Intifada numbers. As Hass writes, “support for the Islamic movement is closely tied to a sense of Palestinian impotence.” The Bush administration and campaign has engineered (think wolves stalking in the woods, WMDs, etc.), marketed, and profited from a similar fear and impotence, trying to convince Americans that Oklahoma City is like Gaza. As if.
YDB Guest Blogger: Spence, Yellow-Dog Pal
