Category: Gaza Drama Long Term

HOSSAM MADHOUN’S MESSAGES ABOUT HIS EXPERIENCES DURING THE ISRAELI ATTACK ON GAZA IN 2014

3 September 2014

Regarding Gaza? It is:
as if nothing happened,
as if 2200 lives weren’t lost
as if 40,000 houses weren’t destroyed
as if more than 50 local factories weren’t damaged
as if 100,000 people aren’t without shelter
as if hundreds of kids haven’t lost their parents
as if hundreds of parents haven’t lost their kids
as if all of Gaza wasn’t suffering shortages in food, in water, in electricity, in money,
Fatah and Hamas are back to square one
Arguments and fighting in the media
Fatah blaming Hamas for having a shadow government in Gaza
Hamas asking for the salaries of their employees
Accusation from both sides that none of them want unity, that none of them are committed to the obligations they agreed upon
And Gaza keeps bleeding this time in silence.
The irony is that all the media celebrates the extra quantities of fish because fishermen are allowed to fish within the 6 mile limit whereas this was allowed 55 days ago.
By the way, the price of fish is still affordable only by the same people as 55 days ago, those who were not able to afford the price of fish before the war are still unable to afford it after the war!
Victory is ours !!!!!!!???????

 

HOSSAM MADHOUN’S MESSAGES ABOUT HIS EXPERIENCES DURING THE ISRAELI ATTACK ON GAZA IN 2014

27 August 2014

This below is Hossam response to my asking about reactions to the indefinite ceasefire declared yesterday.  First have a look at the previous message.  This will give you a sense of the significance of the ceasefire. We still don’t know what our partners, Theatre for Everybody, of which Jamal and Hossam are directors, are going to be able to achieve for our planned live exchange on Sunday 14th September at Rich Mix in London.  They were to have had a two-week workshop with their actors leading up to this event and this was a part of our partnership development of a production of an original Arabic stage version of Tolstoy’s War and Peace produced in Gaza.  Anyway the event will happen.  There will be a live exchange with Hossam and Jamal.  And our project will continue.  This is just the beginning.

Dear Jonathan
We are fine my friend, we are safe (personally)
We (personally) survived this savage brutal attack
We (personally) do feel some relief
But, a big but, a very big but
I am not sure Gaza is fine
I am sure Gaza is not fine
Gaza is not fine at all
Yesterday evening Hamas celebrated victory
But Gaza is still bleeding
The end of the fight is not the end of Gaza’s agony
Many people who took refuge in schools will go back home
But at least 100.000 people have no home anymore to go back to
18000 housing units destroyed completely
In Gaza before the war there was a deficit of 4500 housing units
This is only one catastrophe
The 2200 killed, are dead, they have no pain any more
The pain is for those who are still alive, their mothers, fathers, brothers, sisters, friends ….
Among the 3000 children who were injured, according to WHO and OCHA, 1000 of them will live with lifelong disability
Among the other 8000 adults injured,  according to the WHO and OCHA, 3000 of them will live with lifelong disability
50 days ago the unemployment rate was 43% in Gaza
Food insecure affected around 67% of the population
Today with the destruction of 15 local factories employing thousands of people with low salaries, poverty increases, daily suffering increases, food insecurity increases.

Yes I am fine, my dear
But Gaza is not fine
Hamas celebrated a triumph yesterday
But Gaza in still in huge pain
The deal is to open the crossings for humanitarian aid, (it was not closed for humanitarian aid, even during the last 50 days!!)
The deal is to allow fishing up to 6 miles, (this is no more effectively sufficient for fishing than the previous limit of 3 miles); moreover this is to start at the end of the year (and this is if Israel to be trusted)
I survived this war my dear, but Gaza did not
We are still in blockade, the agreement says nothing about freedom at all
Maybe one positive thing could be mentioned, that the Palestinian negotiation team was representing all the Palestinians; maybe this will start to end division between Palestinians, Maybe this might unite us (I pray)
Gaza is not fine, my friend                                                                                                    More than 2.5 million tons of rubble spread all over Gaza needs to be removed
The huge destruction of the water system, of the sewage system, of the solid waste system, of the power system, needs hundreds of millions to repair
I really do not know what all this infrastructure has to do with this war, and why the Israelis had to bomb a water well, or the power plant or a water reservoir or a solid waste station or a sewage treatment plant (what do all these have to do with Hamas or rockets or resistance????????)
Or why a child of 4 years old should ask his pregnant mother to hide him in her belly with his brother inside her
What harm could such a child cause to the Israelis? (a potential terrorist???!!!!! )
According to Golda Meir (the former Israeli Prime-Minister in the 1970s): There is no such thing as Palestinians
They proved today that this is what every single Israeli government believed in
I am fine my friend, I survived this war, but Gaza is not fine, not fine at all, and will never be fine without freedom, freedom to Palestine, to Palestinians, to humanity
freedom my friend, this is what we need, this is what we want, this is what we cannot live without, this is what no man can live without
freedom.

 

HOSSAM MADHOUN’S MESSAGES ABOUT HIS EXPERIENCES DURING THE ISRAELI ATTACK ON GAZA IN 2014

26 August 2014

I had an email exchange with Hossam yesterday and I didn’t have enough time to post his reply. Take a look at what he had to say about the bombing of the tower block in downtown Gaza. Anyway, this is what Hossam sent today!

Another night when death was knocking on doors! With every bombing you believe it is your door. It is your turn. Are you ready?
How? How do you get ready for death?
What you should do?
OK, this is what I do. I make sure that I dress well because I don’t want those who will move my body to see me naked; I also want to appear nice when my relatives and friends take their last look at me.
But you know, this is not guaranteed. Maybe I will die in pieces and my clothes will be also in pieces; maybe my body will be burnt, and then my clothes will be burnt too.
But I do dress well.
I will meet death with a smile? That’s a lie told only in Hollywood movies! My face will be shaped according to the level of fear I will be at the moment death comes.
But maybe I will be smiling, as death might come suddenly. This has already happened to more than 1500 people in Gaza. They did not expect death, but it came through an artillery shell, or a tank bomb or an air strike or an F16 missile, or naval bombing or some bullets in the back while they were trying to run for their lives.
So it is possible to meet death with a smile, but nothing is guaranteed.
While waiting for death, I try not to sleep so I can spend the last moments, minutes, hours looking at the angel face of my wife, visiting my daughter’s room to put what I expect to be the last father’s kiss on her cheek.
And it is not so difficult to stay awake, the sound of bombing and shelling and air strikes and bombardments keeps me awake as much as I want.
Other preparations for death knocking on the door?
During the day, you make sure that no one is angry with you, because you want people to say good things about you when you’re gone.
You make sure that you left no debts, because you don’t want people asking your wife and child for money that they may not have after you’re gone.
You make sure that home is a safe place (or at any rate make it a safer place than any other place is) for your wife and daughter. You want them to live. Of course you want to live too, but they are the priority.
Another two huge tower blocks in Gaza were bombed last night; another 100 families in the street with no shelter.
Another five tower blocks were warned to evacuate in order to be bombed; hundreds more families are in the street without shelter; thousands more people lose their dreams; hundreds more children wonder why their parents had to wake them up in the middle of the night to get them to run away from home, refusing to let them take their favorite toy;
hundreds more fathers can give ….. can give nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing to their children, to their wives, to their old parents, to themselves.

 

HOSSAM MADHOUN’S MESSAGES ABOUT HIS EXPERIENCES DURING THE ISRAELI ATTACK ON GAZA IN 2014

25 August 2014

I asked Hossam in an email what he thought was the significance of the Israeli destruction of a downtown apartment block. What did he think was happening? His reply:

Yes Jonathan, since the start of this brutal offensive on Gaza by the Israelis, the main aim was to hurt everyone and every single person in Gaza is hurt. In the media they say what they are doing is minimizing Hamas’ ability to attack Israel or to stop the rockets being launched from Gaza but in every single action they only hurt Gaza, all of Gaza and with different means:
they start bombing randomly,
then they move to push people out of their houses and force them to get refuge in the town center,
they increase the number of civilian causalities , mainly among children,
then they start personal assassinations, targeting vehicles
then they start on other buildings and tower blocks
food shortage
water shortage
no electricity (bombing in the dark)
they create the no safe place at all in Gaza
no one is guaranteed safety, whether supporting or opposing the resistance.
People know that the blockade is imposed by Israel (people cannot and will never believe or accept that it is because of Hamas)
they want every single person in Gaza to be in pain
they believe or they want to believe that by hurting all of Gaza’s people, Gaza people will turn against Hamas or the resistance.
They might succeed, but never for long, people do really want the war to end, some voices may now be starting to blame the resistance, but this is only temporary and due to the pain, but people will always blame Israel and this is not temporary this will continue until people become free.
Freedom is the only way to put an end to this tragedy.
Nothing but freedom.

HOSSAM MADHOUN’S MESSAGES ABOUT HIS EXPERIENCES DURING THE ISRAELI ATTACK ON GAZA IN 2014

24 August 2014

 

I just emailed Hossam and Jamal earlier today to tell them that I was thinking about them and to tell them that I went to see Rafeef Ziadeh perform her poetry at the P21 gallery on Friday evening after she was in conversation with Rich Wiles and to tell them that she performed this poem, and that I learned a lot at this event and that when we named our project they had told me that they wanted the title ‘War and Peace: Gaza (Palestine) – London (UK)’ and that sometimes I had shortened this title to ‘War and Peace: Gaza- London’ (because I’m a bit lazy!!) and that I would never shorten it again (get it?!).  And just now Hossam sent me this message.

Dear Jonathan
I started start writing this message after more than 15 minutes of opening it. I do not find words any more, I feel very much depressed and unable to control it, I am opening my computer trying to read a project that I must start in few days and am unable to continue more than some lines, I am very frustrated, I want to shout, to scream, to curse, to beat something, to break something, I feel very, very, very angry, and afraid, terrified, panicked. I feel lost, I try to calm down, but do not succeed, I try to get busy with something but can not concentrate, unable to focus on anything.
Yesterday they bombed a housing tower block, a 14-floor building with 54 apartments, 54 families were obliged to evacuate the building in 30 minutes, 54 families came onto the street with nowhere to go, 54 families, including men, women, children, old people, babies, people with disabilities, a complete society thrown out of their home, out of their shelter, out of their safe place, or what they believed was a safe place!
Abeer was panicked, she could not stop thinking that it might be our building next!! What if? What would we do? Where would we go? How would we continue our life? Would we get out of it safely? What about our daughter, Salma? Would we will be able to protect her? What life would mean without our home?
Do you hear my cry? You may do.
But you don’t see my tears
h

I wrote back:

Yes, Hossam, I can hear your cry.  I can feel your anger.  I can feel your depression and your inability to continue to work.  Nobody is indestructible.  Nobody is a total hero.  And I wonder whether anything is helped by my solidarity, my listening, my thinking that I understand?  Is anything helped by me posting this latest message?  I hope so because that is what I am about to do!  Just to cry out into the space of world, just to sing out our anger, just to stamp our feet on this old earth, just to hear some kind of echo and know we are not completely alone. Of course words by themselves are useless but they are never by themselves.  These words are between you and me and the world can listen.

Love and strength and life and joy to Abeer and Salma

Jonathan

 

HOSSAM MADHOUN’S MESSAGES ABOUT HIS EXPERIENCES DURING THE ISRAELI ATTACK ON GAZA IN 2014

20 August 2014

 

Yesterday I received an email from Hossam and Jamal saying that they could not guarantee they could to bring together their company for the work leading up to Sunday 14th September but were working on it.  Our launch event for our War and Peace: Gaza-London project is on that day at 4pm at Rich Mix in London. They said they would do everything they could to be there for the skype exchange.  As hostilities started again last night I got this SMS from Hossam:

No agreement, my dear. Nothing clear.

And then this morning, this email message with the following attachment:

Dear Jonathan
Yesterday we were almost sure that war ended, at the last hour everything collapsed, war continues!
Attached something I wrote
Be well and pray for our safety
Love,
Hossam

… and in the war

… and in the war, like in every war, sadness prevails….

… and in the war, like in every war, you don’t watch the news, you are the news …

… and in the war, like in every war, you look for safety and some bread …

… and in the war, like in every war, you cannot alleviate the fear of your children, as you are as afraid as they are …

… and in the war, like in every war, you want to escape, but there’s no way out …

… and in the war, like in every war, faces are gloomy and you may not ask why, you know why …

… and in the war, like in every war, wherever you go destruction surrounds you ..

… and in the war, like in every war, you postpone all your plans…

… and in the war, like in every war, you cancel your holidays …

… and in the war, like in every war, you miss your friends who live nearby but you cannot visit them..

… and in the war, like in every war, no time for 5 o’clock tea …

… and in the war, like in every war, you don’t walk your dog every day as you used to do …

… and in the war, like in every war, you don’t go to the cinema anymore …

… and in the war, like in every war, no time for music …

… and in the war, like in every war, war continues.

But this war is not like any war!

In this war, the powerful army is supported by everyone

In this war, the ICRC (International Red Cross) can’t help as the powerful army prevents them from helping

In this war, children are the favorite target

In this war, the powerful army enjoys bombing civilians’ shelters

In this war, hospitals are targeted

In this war, every single person is in misery

In this war, no one is not in pain

In this war, the pain stings everyone to their bones

And last word is to my dear Tolstoy:

‘We are still looking for peace.

Dear Tolstoy, we do really want peace

May peace come one day.

May peace prevail soon?

Dear Tolstoy, so far, darkness prevails over Gaza.’

 

 

HOSSAM MADHOUN’S MESSAGES ABOUT HIS EXPERIENCES DURING THE ISRAELI ATTACK ON GAZA IN 2014

16 August 2014

Another letter from Jonathan Chadwick included here for the record:

Dear Hossam and Jamal,

The conditions provided by the ceasefire are making me think about the work we are planning to do together on Tolstoy’s War and Peace.  But also I am thinking about what Hossam said about the peace negotiations in Cairo in his last message.

The governments of the world (apart from Brazil, Chile, Ecuador, El Salvador and Peru who have withdrawn their embassies from Israel) have failed the Palestinians.  While the governments of the ‘international community’ have failed, the people of the world, in considerable numbers, have responded with heartfelt protest and solidarity, and a schism seems to have appeared between people and their governments. In the future this may offer grounds for hope.  The governments have, with notable exceptions, accepted that what is happening is a war between Hamas and Israel and their response is based on the right of Israel to defend itself.  This contradicts international law.  See article by Noura Erekat.

The negotiations in Cairo are another part of the war process.  The Israelis will take as little notice of the agreements made as they did in 2012 or in any made before that.  For them, and surely also for the Palestinian negotiators, the war – the war of occupation and resistance to it – will continue whatever the outcome of their deliberations.  The situation is even more clear now than it was a month ago.  For Palestinians to get justice and freedom, Israel will have to be defeated.  This defeat may not be a simple and straightforward military defeat.  It won’t necessarily involve the destruction of Israel.

There is not one instance of a successful military occupation faced by the resistance of the occupied people.  See article by Marwan Bishara. Maybe the Israeli occupation of Palestine will prove to be the exception.  I hope not.

So how does our work on War and Peace seem relevant now?  Our project has lots of aims.  We want to use cultural exchange to undermine the blockade.  We want to use theatre to make better the lives of people especially in Gaza but also here in the UK.  Creating things together, cultural exchange, involves thinking together and feeling together.  So can this work on the Russian novel help us think about our situation?

In the novel there are many levels.  There is the story of the loves and lives of the main characters centred on Pierre, Andrei and Natasha.  Our attention is drawn to the relationship between individual destinies and historical movement.  I wonder how this seems to you now?  Will we see freedom and justice for Palestinians, that is an end to the occupation, in our lifetime?  What about for our children and grandchildren?

There is also the story of war and peace.  This is to some extent is connected to Tolstoy’s historical-philosophical investigation of human motivation.  The war between the Napoleonic army and the coalition between the Prussians, Austrians and Russians in the first half of the book culminates in the Battle of Austerlitz in 1805.  Then there was the Treaty of Pressburg which took the Austrians out of the war and strengthened Napoleon’s German allies and effectively led to the end of the Hapsburg Austro-Hungarian empire.  The peace consisted in an agreement about territory and control.

Tolstoy draws a distinction between this war and the war in the second half of the book.  This war involved the invasion of Russia.  It was like an occupation.  In this instance the Russians refused to make peace.  They would not countenance a peace until the invading armies had been driven from Russian territory.

It was during this war and the war in the Spanish Peninsula that ‘guerilla’ warfare was used so effectively against the invading and occupying army.  It was because of these changes in the nature of war that Carl Clausewitz wrote his celebrated classic work On War. He wrote this work in the early decades of the 19th century while of course Tolstoy didn’t write his novel about these same wars until the 1860s.  Clausewitz work is famous for its emphasis on the ‘moral’ dimension of war. In other words he speculated that wars were not won simply by military means. It is in this book that he came up with the famous assertion that ‘war is a continuation of politics by other means’.

In previous conversations we have noted that now in Palestine the Israelis have conducted peace as a continuation of war by other means.  In other words they have used peace negotiations (or the so-called ‘peace process’) as a way of extending their occupation which they do through theft of land and building settlements.  The withdrawal of their settlements from Gaza was accompanied by an extension of settlement building on the West Bank.  The blockade policy is an attempt to divide the Palestinian people and to isolate armed resistance.  This is clearly described in this article by Mouin Rabbani

Evidently, the moves towards a unified Palestinian ‘government’ set the context for the Israelis attack on Gaza.  The difficulties this presents to the Israelis are highlighted, incidentally and in the form of a kind of delusional wish, by a senior Israeli spokesman asserting that the Palestinians on the West Bank were rising in support of the Israeli offensive against Hamas. See the exchange between Dan Gillerman and Rafeef Ziadeh on Al Jazeera on the 7 August 2014

By the way, it’s worth reading Rafeef Ziadeh’s argument for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions against Israel  This movement could be important in ending the occupation, that is, the defeat of Israel as the occupying power.

Do you think working on War and Peace will mean us thinking through some of these questions?  Good thinking seems to take place when clear comparisons are made between one thing and another.  Will it help us understand more clearly the situation of people in Gaza and here – and, of course, the relationship between us?

Art can do lots of different things and we have been concerned in our partnership with how theatre can be made useful.  This is what I have always found inspiring about your decision at the advent of the Intifada in 2000 to turn your theatrical capabilities away from producing plays and performances to working with young people who derive therapeutic benefits from participating in drama.

We have always been concerned in Gaza Drama Long Term with creating spaces in which creativity and the imagination can take flight.  Is our work on War and Peace and our attempt to use this work as entertainment that inspires original and creative thinking still valid for you?

I know that there will be enormous difficulties in bringing together the company of creative artists for the two-week workshop leading up to our joint events in Gaza and London on Sunday 14th September.  I think we have now raised enough money to make this work financially possible but is it humanly possible and is it still desirable and necessary?

I should say, if it is not clear from what I have said above, that I am really keen to continue our work on War and Peace.

Best love,

Jonathan

Read messages from Gaza. Next

 

 

 

 

 

HOSSAM MADHOUN’S MESSAGES ABOUT HIS EXPERIENCES DURING THE ISRAELI ATTACK ON GAZA IN 2014

15/08/2014

Yesterday I wrote to Hossam and Jamal to ask how things were going during the truce. After sending an SMS yesterday evening, Hossam wrote this message:

Dear Jonathan
I was planning to reply tomorrow as I said in the SMS I sent you earlier tonight, as I am really tired and need to sleep but how can anyone in Gaza sleep with this noise above our heads? The drones?  Do you know what this is? Planes without pilots flying by remote control! The noise they make drives us crazy!
Let me tell you what it is like. Imagine an old noisy washing machine operating just beside your bed or a fly getting inside your ear and trying to get out or sleeping beside your car while the engine is on all the time! Can you sleep however tired you are?
I will answer: yes, you sleep exactly the same way a very sick man falls unconscious, this is how we sleep in Gaza. So instead, I decided to write to you, my dear, until I fall unconscious.
The 120 hours truce is good and very bad at the same time. Good because there is a possibility that there will be no bombing or killing, so people are moving; you walk in the town centre and you’d believe that there had been no war and life is normal but… but just move a little bit out of the centre, toward Shejaea, Khozaa and Beit Hanoon in the north of Gaza, or towards the Alnada neighborhood, east Bureij, east Maghazi, east Khan Younis, east Rafah, things are different. People there are cleaning the remains of their homes, moving rubble to rescue a mattress or a blanket or anything that could be useful; some are trying to clean up their homes, many others are moving around with empty jerry cans looking for some water. Complete streets totally destroyed and empty.
Back in the town center, at the present time more than 300.000 people are still in the schools (the shelters). For many of them their homes are not destroyed but they are afraid to go back as they don’t trust the truce or the Israelis; they have already lost a loved one, a son or a father or an uncle or a neighbor. They are afraid to go back, but also they have nothing at home, the shelter at least provides some food (never enough, only 2 meals a day, no breakfast) and some safety (although they know that 6 shelters have already been bombed).
The negotiations in Cairo!!! What is it about? Some easing of the borders to get some more consumables and some cement to fix some of what has been destroyed in this war, By the way, even today they have not finished fixing the homes destroyed by the Israelis in Rafah and Khan Younis in 2001 and 2002. What more? An extra 3 metric miles for fishing? We used to have this but it did not make our life better at all. The catastrophe in these negotiations is that they discuss humanitarian needs rather than human freedom. They are talking about the possibility of 5000 permits per month for people to leave Gaza (oh God, what about the 1.7 million people?)! It means we need 100 years until every Gazan will get the chance to leave Gaza!  What are they negotiating? To allow farmers to plant their lands near the borders?!  Is this to be negotiated for God’s sake ??? A farmer needs a permit to plant his land??
You ask me about the truce and what does it mean? We have a saying in our culture: having the catastrophe happen is much better than waiting for it!  People are terrified, my dear, they are completely exhausted; they can not bear any more bombing or killing. The war was never against Hamas; the war was never against the resistance or the armed resistance, the war was against Gaza and what Gaza has, against civilians first of all, against people’s dreams and their future, against everything alive in Gaza!
I am so tired, my dear, very sleepy, but this sound does not make it easy, it is driving me mad, as it does to every single one of us in Gaza.
You know how much I hate numbers my friend and you know why, but please allow me to share with you some numbers and please try to see what lies behind them. How many families will not have a place to go back to? How many dreams have been killed? How many memories assassinated? How many years of work and pain and building have been wasted? How many individual tragedies? How many children’s toys broken? How many parents’ presents destroyed? How many family photos lost or burned?
Unfortunately the table below only shows how much money is needed to rebuild the stones and the concrete!! Anyway it is a table from the UN agency. They can not and they don’t know how to calculate the other losses.
dear Jonathan,
I miss you a lot my friend
love,
Hossam
I will try to get some sleep if I can

In fact the table that Hossam sent didn’t come through properly.