MIDDLE EAST: The crossing point from Israel into the Gaza Strip is empty when Ghazi drops me off. "I'll wait for you here in the parking," he says. It is not worth his while to drive back to Jerusalem and then return in a few hours to pick me up. Once upon a time there were dozens of taxis competing for Jerusalem fares at the gates of Gaza. No longer.
I sling my computer bag over my shoulder and walk to the booth where two indolent Israeli soldiers lounge, their M-16s swinging on shoulder straps. A blonde woman with her kepi perched on her nest of hair examines my well-worn passport and lifts the telephone receiver. There is no dial tone.
She taps and taps, picks up a field phone to ask immigration if I can enter the checkpoint. She hands me my passport and nods.
At immigration I am given a gate pass without formality or fuss. It's an easy day.
I stride through the dead zone, a vast collection of empty sheds, collection points and walled walk-ways through which Palestinian labourers were once funnelled into Israel. I hand over the pass and proceed to the Palestinian shed where a policeman signs me in on a sheet of blank paper.
I hire a battered yellow taxi to take me into town. The road to Gaza, once jammed with vehicles, is empty. The roadbed is covered in piles of rubble and sand and deeply potholed. Gaza City itself is surprisingly tidy. Garbage is collected, the road has a reasonable surface, traffic lights work, policemen are posted at intersections to control the flow of cars and carts drawn by donkeys.
There is still a semblance of order here. Gaza and Jericho were the first Palestinian cities evacuated by the Israeli army under the Oslo accord, signed just 10 years ago. Gaza and Jericho were meant to be the foundation of the Palestinian state which never materialised.
Ahmad, an old friend, is expecting me. He lives in a block of flats on Omar Mukhtar Street, Gaza City's main thoroughfare.
Ahmad and his wife Selwa are first on my list because their son, Karim, was wounded on September 1st by shrapnel from an Israeli missile fired from an aircraft at two cars driving down the narrow side road beside the flat. Karim, a tall thin youth of 17, is sitting stiffly in a straightbacked chair, one hand in a cast, the other clutching a crutch.
"It was the first day of school so I went out with a mate to buy supplies," he says with a wry smile. He has a broken index finger and a tiny triangle of shrapnel lodged at the base of his skull just two millimetres from the spinal column. A piece of bone was sliced from his leg. As Selwa serves coffee and bite-size Arabic sweets, Ahmad shows me the X-rays. "You see how lucky he is. Two died in the attack and others were more seriously wounded." Neither Ahmad nor I say anything about that piece of shrapnel. It will threaten Karim for the rest of his life.
"We have been lucky for the past three days, we haven't been bombed," Ahmad remarks. "We no longer have direct occupation, but we don't have any freedom either."
En route to my next appointment, he takes me to see the house of Dr Mahmoud Zahar, the Hamas spokesman who was nearly killed by an Israeli quarter-ton bomb early this month. His two-storey house, located next to the Rahmah mosque on the sands, was flattened. Dr Zahar survived because the ceiling slabs made a tent when they buckled. "We don't dare to speak out against the occupation because the Israelis kill people who do," Ahmad remarks.
"Look at [Palestinian President Yasser] Arafat. As long as he did what the Israelis wanted, he was OK. When he refused to act as their policeman and arrest members of the resistance, they decided to kill him."
Rawia Shawa, a tall, imposing woman, is a representative of the city in the Palestinian Legislative Council. Over glasses of sweet tea in her office, she observes, "No one can arrest people who defend themselves and their country, not Abu Mazen [also known as Mahmoud Abbas, the outgoing prime minister], not Abu Ala [Ahmad Korei, the premier designate]. Even Arafat cannot do this. Only a Palestinian government which has the support of the people can provide Israel with security."
The threat to remove Arafat issued last week by Israel's security cabinet has energised the Palestinians and boosted Mr Arafat's power and popularity. "Today all the people are with him. [Israeli Premier Ariel] Sharon did not calculate carefully. He made Arafat into a hero. Israel depended on the indifference of the people; this was a fatal mistake."
I find a third friend, Ziad Abu Amr, in his new office at the Ministry of Culture sitting in front of the Palestinian flag and a photo of the President. I congratulate him on being made a minister in the fallen four-month-old government. "We have been doing our best to put new structures in place. Although we haven't had much time or money, we have been holding plays and musical performances and providing books for libraries. Of course, we rely heavily on international agencies and foreign countries."
Ziad pauses, then remarks, "I can't say if the Palestinian Authority will survive without Arafat. No one knows where the Palestinians will go from here." Although Israel has effectively finished off the Authority's political role, essential services continue to function. Water, electricity, schools, and universities carry on. For the time being, Gaza is better off than Baghdad.