4 The University of Jordan is considered one of the most prestigious universities in the Arab world. It was founded in 1962 and currently serves over 30,000 undergraduates.
5 Mahmoud Darwish (1941–2008) was considered Palestine’s leading poet and helped lead a movement to promote Palestinian cultural heritage. Darwish was also a political leader of the Palestinian liberation movement and part of the executive committee of the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) from 1973 to 1993. For more information on the PLO, see the Glossary, page 304.
6 The Bethlehem Arab Society for Rehabilitation (BASR) was originally founded in 1960 as part of the Leonard Cheshire Disability project, a major charitable organization in Great Britain dedicated to global disability care.
7 The First Intifada was an uprising throughout the West Bank and Gaza against Israeli military occupation. It began in December 1987 and lasted until 1993. Intifada in Arabic means “to shake off.” For more information, see Appendix I, page 295.
8 Jordan administered the West Bank and Egypt partially administered Gaza until 1967. Textbooks developed during those administrations were used even during the Israeli occupation after 1967, but when the Palestinian Authority assumed administrative control of the West Bank in Gaza after the Oslo Accords, it developed its own educational texts. For more information on the Oslo Accords and the Palestinian Authority, see the Glossary, page 304.
9 Newcastle University is a public research university in northeast England. It serves over 20,000 students.
10 The Second Intifada was also known as the Al-Aqsa Intifada. It was the first major conflict between Israel and Palestine following the Oslo accords, and it lasted from 2000 to 2005. For more information on the Intifadas, see Appendix I, page 295.
11 The Dome of the Rock is an Islamic shrine built on the site of the Temple Mount in Jerusalem. For more information on the Dome of the Rock and the Temple Mount, see the Glossary, page 304.
12 For more on checkpoints and border crossings, see the Glossary, page 304.
13 As of 2014, the Erez crossing is the only remaining crossing point between Israel and the Gaza Strip accessible to Palestinians. The crossing is tightly restricted since 2007, and special case-by-case permits granted by Israel are needed. For more on checkpoints, see the Glossary, page 304.
ABEER AYYOUB IN WEST JERUSALEM
ABEER AYYOUB
Journalist, 26
Born in Gaza City, Gaza
Interviewed in Gaza City, Gaza
In the spring of 2013, we manage to travel to Gaza after navigating a maze of bureaucracy with both the Egyptian government and Gaza’s ruling party, Hamas. Inside the tightly sealed borders of Gaza, our guide and translator is a young journalist named Abeer Ayyoub. Through our conversations, we soon realize Abeer possesses an interesting perspective on life in Gaza. And though journalists generally avoid interviewing other journalists for stories, the more we get to know Abeer, the more we know her narrative is a valuable one to share with our readers.
During our time with Abeer, she is constantly on her phone or tablet. Like many full-time journalists, she compulsively checks her e-mail, keeps track of social media, and plans meetings throughout the day. But her real weakness is Instagram. If she’s not using her devices for work, she’s taking pictures of what she’s doing. Sitting at a café: picture. Walking down the street: picture. At the corner store: picture. Nothing is too banal to make her Instagram feed, but it makes for a thorough view of life for a young working woman in Gaza.
As part of Gaza’s small middle class, Abeer has better access than other Gazans to resources that are hard to come by in the midst of the blockade that Israel has implemented since 2007. She also has access to small comforts that make her the envy of her peers. “My friend from the American consulate was going to Jordan, and he asked me if I wanted him to bring me back anything,” she tells us. “And I said, ‘As many lip glosses as you can carry.’ I’m usually out on the streets looking for stories for ten hours a day, and I need three things in my bag—a notebook, a pen, and lip gloss.”
GAZA WAS LIKE A HOLLYWOOD MOVIE
Oh, well, of course it was just lovely growing up in Gaza. It was like a Hollywood movie. But not a romance or comedy—more like an action movie. I’ve witnessed two Intifadas, two military offensives, one Hamas coup.1 Still, the more trouble I’ve witnessed, the more I’ve felt lucky to survive, and to be alive.
I was born in Gaza City the year the First Intifada started, in 1987.2 By the time I started school, I’d already become used to the sight of Israeli soldiers patrolling the streets every morning. I used to be really scared of them—my grandma would warn me that I shouldn’t talk to them. In school, we’d teach each other tips about dealing with the soldiers. For example—when you see an Israeli jeep, don’t run, ’cause the soldiers will think you’re doing something bad. But we were naïve as children, and I didn’t think too much about who the soldiers were or why they were around. I only knew there were strange people with green uniforms everywhere. And I wondered, All of the soldiers have guns, but nobody else I see ever does. Who do they need to protect themselves against with guns if everyone else only has rocks as weapons? But I didn’t understand the occupation at all. It just wasn’t something my family talked about when I was growing up.
I grew up feeling like a typical Gazan. I have four brothers and five sisters. I’m number eight out of ten kids. My dad had a good income when I was young—he ran a metalworking business. But because there were ten children, it cost him a lot to send us all to school. So even though my family was relatively well off, my childhood seemed typical. I got the things I needed, but not all the things I wanted. We’d get new clothes for school, but not whatever we asked for or anything like that. Like most people in the community, we’d go to shop when the school year started, and then shop around Eid Al-Fitr, the feast after Ramadan, and then Eid Al-Adha.3
We lived on a street that was made up entirely of my family. My dad had one house for his family, and he had four brothers with their own houses on the block. So between my siblings and my cousins, I spent my whole childhood playing with family. As boys and girls, we’d play soccer together in the street, go to school together, then come home together. We had a few neighbor kids nearby who would come play with us as well.
My mother was a normal housewife in many ways. She worked very hard and tried to give all of us kids the attention we wanted. I remember when it was time to do homework, she’d try to help us all. Of course, she couldn’t spend much time with any one of us! I still remember her teaching me how to write my first words, though, in Arabic and in English. She didn’t know English herself, but she’d memorize my English lessons and try to help me understand them. I remember her reciting the days of the week in English, so that I’d learn, even if that’s all she knew.
The Second Intifada started in 2000, when I was twelve or thirteen. I saw a lot of shooting and violence—there were direct clashes around the Israeli settlements.4 And I used to go to school some days and not other days because of what was happening out in the streets. Other young people from schools around the area, they used to come and get us out to go and participate in the clashes. It was violent all the time. Mostly, we just tried to stay safe. A lot of days, we’d leave school early because there were often clashes at the end of the school day. If we slipped out before the day ended, we might not have to walk home through teargas.
During the time of the Second Intifada, I was a teenager, and back then I was the stereotypical stupid girl who wanted to get married at the age of sixteen. I’d never dream of having male friends I might just hang out with alone.
The separation of boys and girls was actually something that surprised me at first, but I got used to it quickly. Some of the neighbor boys I used to play soccer with every day suddenly stopped talking to me around the time I turned fifteen, and my brothers and cousins told me I should just pretend I didn’t know them. This was the culture—these boys I’d played with for ten years every day were suddenly strangers to me, since they weren’t related and I was a young woman. It was disappointing, but I got used to believing that wearing a hijab was something important, that I had to hide myself from men.5
My dad always told me that I was the most clever of his children, and I got great grades. But I never had any examples of women who went on to have impressive careers, and nobody ever encouraged me to think in those terms. But I studied very hard. Honestly, I didn’t think I was very pretty, and I thought I’d have a hard time finding a husband. I thought I’d prove I was special instead by getting good grades and a very high grade on the college qualifying exams. And I did. My parents were so impressed by my score, they told me that they’d support me in going to any school and in any field I chose. I was studying for the exams in 2005, and that was a big year in Gaza as well. It was the year Israeli soldiers left Gaza. That felt like a real achievement.6
The next year, I started at Islamic University of Gaza here in Gaza City.7 I wasn’t happy about religious control of the university, but it had a curriculum in English literature that I wanted to study, and it was impossible to attend a university at the time that wasn’t under Islamist control if you lived in Gaza. I’d been studying English through school, and I wanted to keep that up. I thought it might be a good way to get a job doing something important after school.
So I spent my first year at university studying English literature. Then, in 2006, Hamas captured Gilad Shalit, and Gaza became a different place.8 Israel began cracking down, and we had less money and less freedom. Because we didn’t have as much money coming into our household, my dad wanted to pull us out of school. My mom is fond of gold and accessories, but she got all of her jewelry together and sold it all to pay for our college fees. So she’s the reason I could continue my education. In many ways, it was my mom who made me what I am today.
I WOULD WAKE UP AND SCREAM, “I JUST NEED TO SLEEP!”
In my second year at university, I took a course where the teacher asked us to do a research project on people working with English-language skills. I hit on the topic of news editing. I don’t remember the reason. I just wanted something to write about so I could hand in a paper. But when I started searching, I found so many books on the subject, and they were really interesting.
Then as part of the project I interviewed a journalist here in Gaza—his name was Saud Abu Ramadan. He was a freelancer, and he wrote for newspapers all over the world. Our interview was really lovely, and he told me he’d be happy to mentor me as a journalist if I wanted. I accepted. Here in the media world, there are so many creeps who expect something from a girl. I’ve met so many men who will be like, “I’ll teach you about journalism, but you have to do something for me.” Bad stuff. But Saud wasn’t like that, and through his office I also met a journalist named Fares Akram, who was a journalist and also a research consultant for Human Rights Watch.9 They were both professional, and I learned a lot working with them. I started training with them once a week until I figured out it was exactly what I wanted to do. I wanted to be a journalist.
I was still a student when Israel sent soldiers into Gaza in 2008.10 Because of the bombing, I was shut in at home for twenty-two days with my extended family. There were more than thirty of us in a single apartment, and we’d have breakfast, lunch, and dinner together—being together made us all feel a little safer. There was no electricity at all during that time. It was very cold, and we spent many hours huddled up under blankets. We cooked our food on an open fire and we had a little tank of propane gas to cook with as well, but we were trying to conserve the gas as long as possible. Nobody was selling things out in the open in Gaza during that time. During the days, some of my brothers would sneak out and head to secret black markets they knew about for some basic supplies. I spent most days listening to news on a battery-powered radio. I was trying to understand the situation as a journalist. What is really happening? What’s the real story? How are journalists trying to cover these stories? As scared as I was, I felt like that time was a kind of training for me.
There were air strikes day and night. We were all especially scared at night, when we were trying to sleep. I remember falling asleep for a couple of minutes, then hearing the bombs start to fall. I would wake up and scream, “I just need to sleep!” By the final days of the campaign, we were all crying because we wanted to sleep so badly.
We learned to distinguish two types of noise—the zzzz of drones passing overhead, and the whoosh of F-16s coming in for air strikes. The sound of drones was annoying, but hearing the whoosh of F-16s was frightening, because it meant bombing was about to start. My nephews, who were just infants at the time, they learned to tell drones apart from planes. Nowadays, they don’t even wake up for drones. We were never hit, though we did have windows broken on our building from nearby strikes. The windows on an apartment above ours came down. Nobody was injured, but I still remember the sound of the bomb falling—schhhhh.
I became paranoid after so many days of bombing. I used to think, My house will never be targeted because we have no one engaged in military work. But it could be for any reason—a militant passing by in a car. Maybe someone in one of the empty fields by our building—the bombers used to target empty fields because militants might use them for launching rockets.
Then, after three weeks, there was a cease-fire. I went back to the university the day after the cease-fire, even though it was still dangerous. When I saw the campus, I cried. It had been demolished. In many ways I hated that school—I didn’t like the strict religious element—but the devastation made me cry. The school made many repairs over the next month, just fixing broken windows and making sure standing buildings were safe enough. And then all of us students went back to classes, even in buildings where the roofs were still broken. I was in school another year before I graduated, in 2010.
For the next year I worked as a fixer—someone who helped journalists make contacts in Gaza, set up interviews, that sort of thing. I was actively learning about journalism, meeting a lot of journalists. It was a good apprenticeship.
