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THE HORSE LEAPS into the air, obediently following the young woman’s command to jump the fence. Every so often the dull thud of hooves hitting the ground coincides with an air strike. Nobody aside from me seems to notice when it does, but, then again, nobody else seems to be paying any attention to the air strikes at all, least of all the horse.
Gaza feels normal, and that’s the strangest thing about it. People are going about their days, buying clothes, playing football on the beach, eating ice-cream with friends. At the Faisal Equestrian Centre young girls ride horses while their parents sip coffee.
In the distance is the war. Mortars, rockets and missiles fly overhead; from Gaza into Israel, from Israel into Gaza. Below, the people get on with their lives.
The peppering of the afternoon sky with artillery fire is so unremarkable that nobody appears to notice it. The young girl on horseback doesn’t miss a single step. When I ask our driver about it, he appears not to have registered that it is happening. This is just a regular Thursday.
Christmas stories about Palestine
Over the next few days, the names of Palestine will be heard in homes across Ireland. Bethlehem, Jerusalem, and Jericho are places indelibly linked to Christmas stories.
But while we hear stories of life in these places 2,000 years ago, we rarely stop to think about life there today. The cities that grew from Biblical towns are today places of occupation and division, where people live a daily reality of military law and restrictions on movement.
The Separation Wall cuts through Bethlehem, slicing through land and dividing neighbours. The capital city of Christmas is today a place where people queue for hours each morning to pass military checkpoints.
Life across this region has been shaped by conflict
Nowhere is this more evident than in Gaza. There is a serene madness to Gaza. People smile but you sense that inside they are crying or screaming, or probably both. That is Gaza’s great trick: masking its madness behind a veneer of normality.
The illusion begins at the Erez border crossing. Erez is spacious, modern and designed to accommodate large volumes of commuter traffic. It’s also completely deserted, because while Erez was built to facilitate travel from Gaza into Israel, the blockade ensures that it does not.
The illusion and the reality
Inside Gaza, the pretence continues. The streets are vibrant. For a moment you’re embarrassed that you thought they would be anything else.
At first, only the little things give it away. You notice that there are no planes in the sky and you remember that there is a blockade on Gaza’s airspace, as well as its sea and land ports.
You see people sitting on steps staring into the distance and you remember that Gaza has the highest unemployment rate in the world. You spot the bags of maize resting outside warehouses and you remember that 80% of Gaza’s population receives humanitarian aid.
Under the shade down at the pier a young man sits under a sky where no planes can fly and stares out to a sea where no ships can sail.
Behind him, the far side of Gaza’s narrow sliver, stand eight metre high walls that form a semi-circle, locking him and his 1.8 million fellow inhabitants into this tiny parcel of land. He walks over and tells us his problems.
An open-air prison
He is 22. He has no job, no income and no possibility of leaving. His wife gave birth to twins last year but one of them died. He doesn’t elaborate, although it’s not hard to wonder whether given a functioning health service this would have been the outcome.
“My life here is like a prison,” he says. “There is nothing for me here.” He says that sometimes he wants to die, and I believe him.
Less than two kilometres away, Sr Bridget Tighe stands in a narrowly lane. Doorways line her path. Behind each doorway is a family, each one packed into one or two rooms.
Sr Bridget is from Sligo but for 18 months has called Gaza home. She runs a health centre for children, supported by Trócaire. Many young people here are severely traumatised. Any child in Gaza over the age of 8 has already survived three major wars. The last one, in 2014, saw 2,200 people killed over the space of 54 days.
Trauma here runs deeper than the mental scars of war
This is a trauma borne from being trapped. Gaza is less than one quarter the size of Leitrim but is home to a population equivalent to that of Northern Ireland. Very few of them are eligible for permits to leave. The vast majority are trapped into a tiny strip of land that is crumbling at the seams.
Sr Bridget says that people aren’t angry any more, they are just depressed. Speak with people and that becomes evident. You mention that you are returning to Jerusalem in the morning and their eyes fill with sadness. It is an hour up the road but it may as well be another world.
We meet one young man, a Christian, who was granted a temporary visa to visit Bethlehem during Easter. He diverted to Tel Aviv. What did he do there? “Drank beer on the beach,” he says with just about the biggest grin you can imagine.
A black sense of humour prevails. We tell one young man that we hope to meet him again next time we are in Gaza. “Don’t worry,” he said, “I’m not going anywhere”.
Back on the beach, a group of young people jump from walls, performing elaborate somersaults as they fall into the sand. This is Gaza’s Parkour Club. It’s a dangerous hobby but it’s not hard to see why they do it. Sport is an escape.
Each jump and each twist is cheered by an enthusiastic crowd. For a moment, at least, they are normal teenagers on a regular beach enjoying themselves. Each time they jump, they leap into the illusion of what Gaza could be. Each time they land, they crash back into the reality of what it is.
Sometimes they land just as the air strikes hit. But they don’t seem to notice. Or perhaps they just no longer care.
Eoghan Rice works for Trócaire. You can purchase a Christmas Gift of an olive tree for a family in Palestine for just €5 at trocaire.org/gifts
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Solving the climate crisis and emissions is really about making the majority reduce their consumption through using less or paying more taxes so the elite can carry on as normal. If the govt or the world as a whole were serious then we would each have a carbon allowance, but how would that work, far easier to tax the lower income people on fuel for their cars,houses etc than ask the wealthy to stop flying private jets, driving cars that do 20mpg and leave a carbon footprint that’s massive compared to ordinary people.
If the ordinary car is such a threat, why are people being asked to go electric when to do so would either bankrupt them or mean they simply couldn’t afford a car. Its simply not going to happen unless somebody is making a fortune out of it.
@Rex Tilson: absolutely. A survey in the U.K. found that the top 15% of flyers took 70% of flights in that year (2014). Their Carbon costs are even higher because the top 15% fly more long haul and private jets. 50% of people didn’t fly that year but they did fly every second or third year.
Increasing carbon taxes would have little effect in any one year as it would penalise the people taking only 30% of the flights. Most of top 15% are rich enough to continue flying.
A voucher allowing one short haul return per person would massively reduce those flights while not affecting the bottom 85% of flyers who take one or none every year. Maybe corporations can have a few more vouchers. Otherwise – zoom.
At the very least we should ban private jets – are we all in this together or not.
There are chasms between Government words/plans and their actual actions, from health, education, infrastructure, etc decades of incompetence and cronyism.
The climate change advisory council?? Money for old rope for sure isn’t it. Anyway we the people soldier on. Chin up folks.
What’s telling for me, is the amount of rubish that comes outta the journal and all the other outlets singing from the same script. Money most be worth it, won’t last long.
Blah blah blah is right…..Go talk to the Chinese & American’s first
@Christopher Byrne: yep, and then we’ll be fed the same BS that the smallest countries must lead by example first.
according to the ESB data centres use 1/3 of the grids capacity. we bow to america all the time,,,banking crises, housing crises, homelessness, i think they global mind is changing and corporates with larger finances than countries are eventually gonna get reigned in. ofc we are gonna be the last to do it as usual. gombeen politics.
@Mick Heery: I understand that DC’s use a lot, but, do you have a link for the above claim of 1/3rd usage please?
The fact that Ireland has yet to switch to E10 petrol is very telling as to the seriousness of our climate strategy. Literally the lowest hanging fruit, it would remove the emissions equivalent of 100,000 cars off the road practically at the stroke of a pen. If we can’t do something that simple, I’m not sure we’re up to the more serious tasks..
Completely shutting down the import of UK car market totally contradicts govs emission fairytales since local consumer can not get a cleaner – newer car that falls under low co2 regulations from abroad (Since UK is the ONLY AND CLOSEST PLACE where wheel ks right-handed) leaving Irish motorists to use the old diesel engined cars since the car prices are sky high on the island.
The first thing that needs to happen is that people’s attitude needs to change so that they genuinely care and are motivated to make changes to support these goals..
I honestly believe that all the talk in this article will not make people care and threats will only make people do the opposite.
Governments here have a very poor track record on bringing people together as one Nation.
@Roger Bond: people’s attitudes will only change when they see politicians stop squandering billions on every single development they touch.
Start producing results. Not just throwing more taxes at people with no end result visible.
Personally I am more concerned about affording to put fuel in my car, getting appointments at hospital and paying my mortgage.
Regarding climate change I’m inclined to listen to someone who has seen it first hand & that’s David Attenborough, he has said due to climate change & it causing methane gas immissions there’s going to be at least 4/5 viruses per annum!
@Colette Kearns: Sir David frederick attenborough collette. Agree
“Climate Experts” … well. Looking through the history of mankind, the “Climate Experts” helped the society to deal with changes to the climate. They didn’t have computers or smartphones, but an open mind and common sense.
But now that we are in the days of “peoplekind”, our experts are more like the experts of the Aztecs. When the climate changed back in their days, their answer was to kill thousands in order to please their gods, so they’d stop the climate change.
I don’t want to hear another squeak about Planning for more big wind and solar, without first hearing all about the Planning for how they intend filling in the big intermittency gaps. Massive electrolysis plants here or there. Mega grid all over the place.
In reality though all this carbon account game, is just that, a silly game. The only way we will solve this problem is by fighting it as a Warming World War. We need the military industrial combines to stop making weapons and instead make thousands of new generation SMRs. and let the Australians make the fuel for them, instead of exporting vast quantities of coal.
More methane is already boiling out of the permafrost, than from a billion more cows. What the hell are we on about. If we could solve the problem by virtue signalling, it would be solved long ago.
@Nicholas Grubb: I agree…last night on Eirgrids dashboard there was nearly 4000MW of wind available but the grid could only absorb 2000MW so nearly 2000MW of wind power had to be turned off all night but the wind turbine owners still get paid for the curtailment.
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