SHORTLY before Christmas 1981, I managed to smuggle myself into the Gaza Strip in the back of an Arab taxi which left from East Jerusalem during a period when the Israeli authorities had denied journalists access to the tiny coastal Palestinian ghetto, writes Denis McClean
I was rather pleased with myself on my first clandestine excursion into the world of foreign news gathering. There were no suicide bombers around in those days, just a very disgruntled populace struggling to get by in a land under occupation where all material decisions about their daily lives were made by the Israeli military and government.
I had no difficulty, among those naturally kind and hospitable people, in finding a host family to provide me with food and shelter for the few days I spent there. In light of all that has happened since, I find it salutary to recall now, almost a year after the de facto takeover by Hamas, that the only knowledge of my own country among Palestinian youths at that time was evinced in their unconcealed admiration for the recently deceased IRA hunger-striker Bobby Sands.
After that doleful year in Ireland, I first heard the phrase "You for Bobby Sands or not?" in Gaza on the lips of a small boy with a bright smile which seemed to suggest that suicide and martyrdom were right up there with playing for Manchester United as a boyhood dream - years before the birth of Hamas or the transformation of this boy's birthplace into what the Israeli human rights group B'Tselem describes as "the largest prison on earth".
Nowadays, strawberries, carnations and tomatoes rot in containers because of the Israeli ban on exports. Foreign-born mothers and wives are not allowed to return if they choose to leave. There is no cement for gravestones. Families cannot visit loved ones detained in Israel. Eighty per cent of the population lives below the poverty line. Even cancer patients are denied the right to leave for treatment.
The head of operations for the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), Paul Conneally from Ballinasloe, is now coming to the end of a two-year stint in the region and he has no doubt that "the civilian population of Gaza is paying the real price of Hamas's international isolation. The economy is grinding to a halt, basic commodities are extremely scarce and the lack of fuel allowed into the Gaza Strip means that the management of waste water and sewage for 1.5 million people is getting more and more critical."
He was the main author of the recent ICRC report The Occupied Palestinian Territories: Dignity Denied (www.icrc.org) which may or may not have been included in President Bush's briefing pack in advance of his visit to the region last month. There was certainly no evidence that he had read it in anything he said during his wholehearted participation in Israel's 60th birthday celebrations.
"Through its enforced isolation, Gaza is being brought to its knees", says Conneally. "It's a complete sham to present it to the world as a humanitarian emergency when in fact it is a political crisis that logically can only be resolved through political means."
As Hamas militants continue to fire Qassam rockets into Israeli communities and the Israeli Defence Forces strike back with even deadlier force, neither side seems to have much respect for the Geneva Conventions. From the outbreak of the Second Intifada on September 29th, 2000 to the end of April, 2008, 573 Israelis died as a result of the conflict while 4,678 Palestinians were killed by the Israeli security forces. Another 577 Palestinians have died in factional fighting.
According to Dignity Denied, "Throughout the occupied Palestinian territories in the Gaza Strip, as well as in the West Bank, Palestinians continuously face hardship in simply going about their lives; they are prevented from doing what makes up the daily fabric of most people's existence." One Gazan farmer summed up for Conneally the Sisyphean nature of the Palestinian struggle to survive under an occupation which wages psychological and economic warfare on its victims: "First, they took land for the road, then more land for the security zone along the road, and then they destroyed my house because it was too close to the security zone."
As summer approaches, memories are fresh of how last year "farmers helplessly watched as wild fires destroyed olive trees isolated behind the [ West Bank] Barrier. They were barred from the area because the gate was not scheduled to open or they lacked the appropriate permit." An olive tree is a symbol of peace and takes many years to grow but if no one can touch it, tend to it and clear away the overgrown grass around it, then it's only a matter of time before it is taken by fire in the fields.
It seems also like an apt metaphor for the international isolation of the Gaza Strip, which led Karen Koning AbuZayd, who heads the UN agency responsible for Palestinian refugees, to declare recently: "There has never been a more urgent need for the international community to act to restore normality in Gaza. Hungry, unhealthy, angry communities do not make good partners for peace."
In 1981, as Bobby Sands and nine other IRA hunger strikers lay dying in prison, who would have bet that, 26 years later, a former IRA commander, Martin McGuinness, would be ringing the closing bell in the New York Stock Exchange with a man once thought to be his greatest enemy, Dr Ian Paisley?
Such a Kodak moment seems a long way off for Palestinian and Israeli leaders, but the Ballinasloe man's report is a timely memo to all concerned that before any lasting peace can be achieved Palestinians must be allowed to live their lives with basic human dignity.