SOUNDING OFF:Gaza’s people struggling to survive politics

Editor’s Note: Husein Mashni is a former education reporter for the Daily Pilot who went on a Christian mission to Gaza, where he has lived for the past six years.

I’ve achieved a new milestone in my life. I ate nothing but Kentucky Fried Chicken for two days straight. Yes, that includes breakfast.

This week, the U.S. government evacuated me from my home of six years, the Gaza Strip.

With a group of about 30 other Palestinian-Americans, I was taken to the Israeli-Erez border, where photographers and reporters were waiting.

I was evacuated to Jordan where I am staying with friends. The last two weeks in Gaza were, perhaps the hardest two weeks in its recent history. About a week ago, Hamas staged a coup (some will call it something else, but it looked like a coup).

Because I live in one of the higher buildings in the southern Gaza Strip, my complex became one of the points from which bullets flew. Bullets also flew into my complex. My window sill is pocked with bullet holes. At least one bullet found its way in, shattering my living room window and piercing my front door.

I was crouching in my bathroom, the farthest point from any windows during the two-day fight. When I ventured out of the bathroom, I went and sat on one of my beds and played guitar. As I sang some worship songs, I noticed the gunfire stilled.

Shortly thereafter, my apartment shook the way it would in one of those 6.0 earthquakes that are so common in Southern California. It was an underground explosion aimed at the main security and police complexes in the city. The initial reports had it that 12 police officers were killed in the attack. I later heard as many as 24.

However many, it felt like a swift kick to the gut. It was so painful to consider how many children became orphans from the one ton explosion and how many women became widows that day.

The attack capped a week of attacks between Hamas and Fatah that included grisly stories of men being thrown off of the Gaza City high rises (which reach about 20 floors).

But the attacks in my city were like the straw that broke Fatah’s proverbial camel’s back. From there, Hamas managed to easily take over the rest of the security and police complexes of the Gaza Strip.

The next two days were relatively quiet. The political infighting and the international efforts to placate it provide the background for my departure from the Gaza Strip but are not the reason for it.

I have lived in Gaza for six years, working with various ministries. I love Gaza, and I love its people — the vast majority of whom are just desperately trying to put food on their tables.

Due to some visa problems, I haven’t been able to leave the Gaza Strip for the past year. I have been here through some of the toughest times visited upon this, the most-heavily populated strip of land on Earth.

Following Hamas’ election victory last year, the international boycott has created an economic nightmare for the people of Gaza.

Friends of mine who worked for the police would get occasional “half wages,” which amount to about $100 a month. These are the employed in an area that has up to 70% unemployment.

I was here at the beginning of the Intefada in 2001 when jets would come in response to suicide bombings and bomb complexes of the Palestinian Authority, then controlled by Yasser Arafat.

I was here the day Arafat died. People were proud their president had so many funerals around the world — Paris, Ramallah and Gaza.

I was living in Gaza City the morning Hamas founder Ahmed Yassin was killed by four missiles a few hundred yards from my apartment. I awoke thinking someone was banging on my door with a metal sledgehammer around 5 a.m.

I was here when Israel decided to uproot its 8,000 settlers. It didn’t turn violent but neither did it usher in a new dawn.

I was here when Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon fell into a coma, which he is still in, ushering in new Israeli elections which brought current Prime Minister Ehud Olmert to power.

I was here when Hamas won a landslide election victory in Gaza ushering them into power.

ABefore and after each major event there was hope of change. But things seemed to go from bad to worse for the people. The poverty increased. The violence increased. The hopelessness increased.

Yet, in spite of this, there is a treasure in this field. There are people who are trying so hard to better their situation and the situation of their people.

For whatever reason — and there are many, — Gaza seems to have the power to sway the whole Middle East and the world. New York Times columnist Tom Friedman said if the Middle East were fixed and Gaza remained broken, Gaza would drag down the rest of the Middle East.

That’s one of the reasons why I stayed here and believed in my work. I still believe, and I hope I will return.

In the meantime, I am in Jordan, which affords me some luxuries that I never had access to in Gaza — namely McDonald’s and Kentucky Fried Chicken.

I left Gaza because I’m exhausted emotionally and mentally. I find myself snapping at people, getting angry and overly sensitive. It’s been this way for most of the last year.

The timing of my departure makes it look like I’m fleeing the situation in Gaza, but I’m not. I’ve lived through worse. It’s just that the U.S. government was actually going to take care of the transportation, and for the last year I’ve had no other way to leave Gaza.

It is so painful to be away from all the friends and people I love in Gaza, but I felt I needed to do this for myself so I will be able to fight another day.

Pray for the peace of Gaza and the blessing and salvation of its people. That will translate in to the blessing of many, many other peoples as well.

HUSEIN MASHNI recently moved from Gaza to Jordan. He plans to return to the United States.