Streaks of light are seen as an Israeli Iron Dome anti-missile system intercepts rockets launched from the Gaza Strip toward Israel, as seen from Ashkelon, Israel, May 12. Photos: CNS. The unrest wracking the Holy Land is mired in history, culture, religion and emotion, but the root causes remain unaddressed, writes Jason Osborne
An Irish sister on the ground in the Holy Land has described as “desperate” the current conflict between Israel and Islamic militants in Gaza with little sign of a ceasefire on the horizon.
Sligo-native Sr Bridget Tighe of the Franciscan Missionaries of the Divine Motherhood (FMDM) was mostly based in Gaza over the past two months, leaving last Monday unaware that within hours tension in Jerusalem would spill over with Hamas terrorists firing rockets at Israeli communities.
Israel’s reaction was swift and the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) have been targeting sites linked to Hamas and other militants ever since while the rockets continue to rain down on Israeli soil.
As General Director of Caritas Jerusalem, much of Sr Bridget and her team’s work sees them operating in Gaza. Covid-19 was challenge enough for them, as reported on by The Irish Catholic last September, but this latest conflict has made bringing aid to one of the most troubled patches of land in the world all the more difficult.
“I’ve actually been living in Gaza on and off much more than previous years…because during Covid, I wasn’t able to go into Gaza at all because Erez [border crossing] was closed, the border was closed,” Sr Bridget explained.
“So once Israel had got a quite high percentage of people vaccinated, I had my two vaccinations myself, it was possible to go in. It was more than a year that I hadn’t been in. It needed a bit of attention, so I’ve been in Gaza more than in Jerusalem for the past two months, coming out here [to Jerusalem] regularly.”
“I had already decided to come back to Jerusalem on Monday and stay until the following Monday, so I came on Monday out of Gaza, knowing there was a lot of tension and there was violence in Jerusalem. But I came out about 11-11:30, and by 12 o’clock, Gaza, the Erez Crossing, had closed in both directions and is still closed,” she said.
“So, if I was in Gaza, I couldn’t do much at this point, but I hope that I’ll soon be able to go back as soon as the active fighting ends.”
Conflict
Need her there, they will, as Sr Bridget maintains contact with her team and others in Gaza, making her privy to the scale of the devastation the conflict is wreaking.
Providing context, she said, “the first thing that I think people in Ireland, or around the world, need to know is that the Gaza Strip…has a population of now more than two million. It is about 40 kilometres long, and between 3.7-5 kilometres wide – 5 kilometres at its widest place, and it covers in the area of approximately 227 square kilometres. So, if you can imagine that with more than two million people”. For scale, it is about a quarter of the size of Co. Carlow.
The vast majority of people in Gaza have no way to leave, with the narrow strip of land under blockade by Egypt and Israel since 2007 when Hamas seized power in a coup. As a result, those caught in the conflict have nowhere to run.
“These people have nowhere to hide. I don’t know if there’s any place else in the world where people under attack don’t even have the possibility to run. And so they’re trapped: two million people, trapped in this densely populated strip of land at the mercy of intense air and land bombardment.”
Since May 10, the day Sr Bridget left Gaza, conflict erupted to the surface. Following tensions, Hamas and other militant groups issued an ultimatum to Israel to withdraw police from the tense Temple Mount area of Jerusalem. That went unheeded by the Israelis, and Hamas began firing rockets into the neighbouring state, with some rockets slipping through Israel’s famous ‘Iron Dome’ defence to land near Jerusalem. Sr Bridget says this move crossed “a red line” for the Jewish state. Israel immediately proceeded to return fire, and the conflict has continued since.
“There was very, very heavy bombing in the east of Gaza city and the north of the Gaza Strip, some in the south, and huge damage to the infrastructure, public buildings and private homes. On that day, there was a report of two multi-story apartment blocks destroyed – and it was probably true [reports that the buildings housed Hamas militants], the Israelis have very good intelligence, so they were probably offices of Hamas or other groups,” she said.
But there is also collateral damage, Sr Bridget says. “There were many, many ordinary apartments of people living there. I believe now there are several of those high-rise apartments destroyed, I don’t know how many. Somebody said to me there were three, somebody said there were six or seven – this was on the phone, so I really don’t know. But these are people’s homes, and of course, this is a densely populated area, so there are civilians everywhere.
“And Hamas is everywhere. I mean, Hamas isn’t just the fighters. Hamas are like a political party. The people that we work with, they may be affiliated to Hamas, but they’re not active, so it’s hard to know. And many people will say they’re Hamas just so that they will get jobs or they’ll get assistance,” she says describing the group’s grip on the region.
Hamas is currently the ruling power in Gaza, having seized control from the Fatah faction of Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas. Parliamentary elections due to be held were recently cancelled. The group is designated as a terrorist group by the European Union (EU), the United States and Israel, as well as other powers.
Asked about the support Hamas has on the ground in Gaza, Sr Bridget said it’s hard to know, as many people will be reluctant to say they’re anti-Hamas, for a number of reasons.
“It’s difficult to give a genuinely true answer to that because people will be reluctant to say they’re anti-Hamas”. Yet, she believes the group has lost some of the popularity it had when it won more of the popular vote than Fatah in 2006.
“That’s when there was more or less civil war. It wasn’t quite civil war, but it was between Hamas and Fatah, and Hamas won [in the Gaza Strip]. Hamas had won the popular vote and there’s been no election since. And people in the West Bank, leaders in the West Bank, the PA [Palestinian Authority], are afraid that if there was an election, Hamas might win. So it’s hard to say. Many people in Gaza will say they aren’t anything, but some of them I’m told will say they’re Hamas because it’s easier to get jobs, if there’s social help, humanitarian aid, you’ll get it if you’re that way.
“I’d say it has lost popularity in the last couple of years,” she said.
As the combatants war, ordinary people on both sides suffer. Sr Bridget is keen to communicate the scale of the fighting as experienced by those on the ground.
“It’s been almost non-stop bombardment. Now what people have said to me…I talked to people on Tuesday [May 11], this was after the first attack, I talked to a few different people, some of our own staff, some people that I knew,” Sr Bridget said.
“There’s a 60-year-old man who has lived through many, many wars in Gaza, and he said that the bombing this time and the nature of the bombs, is something like he has never experienced before. A younger man took that up and said before – this other man is in his 40s so they’ve all lived through wars – he said before, with the Israeli bombs, you got to know the sound of the bombs coming, but this time, you hardly hear them until they explode beside you.
“And he said either they’re hugely bigger than before, heavier bombs than before, but more likely, something different. As they talk, the recurring phrase was, ‘This is different to anything we’ve experienced before’.”
Sr Bridget said the people she’s in contact with in Gaza described the way the “foundations of the buildings” are shaken by these bombs that “somehow dig into the ground”. At the same time, in Israel millions of people have been forced to flee to bomb shelters with thousands of rockets being directed from Gaza.
Sr Bridget says that in Gaza, people have been seeking shelter in schools – either those run by the government or UNRWA (the United Nations Relief and Works Agency). However, as of now, UNRWA schools have not opened their doors as shelter as they did in 2014 during the last major conflict.
“This is what’s happening on the ground, it’s absolutely desperate,” Sr Bridget said.
Source
Asked about the source of this present conflict, she said, “the root cause of all of this violence is well-known. It’s not addressed, and it’s never been solved: the root cause is occupation, dispossession and eviction of people from their homes.
“What caused the uprising this time – and I think it’s all over the international news – was violence first at Damascus Gate, which is one of the main gates of the old city [of Jerusalem],” she said, continuing “in peaceful times, I used to often say you should sit at Damascus Gate and you’d see the world go by. In the past when there were tourists and vendors and beggars and everyone.
“So, traditionally, young men would gather outside of Damascus Gate, just socialising – it wasn’t violent. And then they would walk through the old city towards the Al-Aqsa Mosque. For some reason, I don’t know why, the Israelis put metal barriers around that area this year and would not let the people congregate, so that caused tension.
“Another thing that caused tension, and I think this is in the media, was the impending eviction of a few families from their homes in a suburb of the old city called Sheikh Jarrah. This is only one of many, many evictions when Palestinian families, who have lived in their homes in other areas also around east Jerusalem – they may be in their homes for decades, and some of their families for centuries – but these very radical, right-wing settlers, with lots of money to support them have gone back and found maybe hundreds of years ago, evidence that these properties were at one time owned by Jews and they go to the courts and claim that this is theirs, and they always win. So, there are a few of these properties in Sheikh Jarrah that were expecting a court ruling,” she said.
Causes of tension
The Irishwoman insists: “That was one of the causes of tension. The other one was that because there was trouble and demonstrations by Muslims around the Al-Aqsa Mosque, objecting to their prevention from congregating at Damascus Gate, linked to the coming evictions, and then there was some violence and the Israeli army or police went up onto the Temple Mount and entered the Al-Aqsa Mosque and fired rubber bullets and tear gas inside the Mosque, which is absolutely anathema to Muslims.”
Israeli authorities later released footage of stones and other weapons they seized in the operation blaming some elements in the Muslim community for throwing the stones at Jews trying to pray at the Western Wall below.
These incendiary factors resulted in a potent mix, and it comes as no surprise to Sr Bridget that they came to head. In attempting to “quell” tensions, they were made worse, she believes, and it was this that led to the ultimatum from Hamas and other militant groups to Israel.
Worrying aspects
One of the most worrying aspects, according to Sr Bridget, is the potential for “civil war” within Israel, as alluded to by Israel’s President, Reuven Rivlin.
“I think everyone is very worried in Jerusalem because this, for the first time, has boiled over into Jewish-Palestinian – may well be Jewish-Muslim, but not all Palestinians are Muslim – but Jewish-Palestinian tension and fighting and mobs in mixed cities within the state of Israel, between Jews and Arab Israelis.
Many Arab Israelis identify as Palestinian, but they have grown up in Israel and attended Israeli schools and colleges and often served in the IDF.
“They [Arab Israelis] had, sort of, grown apart a bit from Palestinians in the West Bank, or in Gaza. But something has changed, and they seem to be now aligning themselves more – at least some of them – with their Palestinian brothers and sisters than previously, and this is a new development and for Israel a very serious development,” Sr Bridget said.
As for the way out of the conflict, Sr Bridget is unsure at the moment. “The will is not there,” she said of the attempts to reinvigorate the peace process.
“There is no peace process anymore,” she says pessimistically with hope in short supply in the seemingly intractable situation.
Pope Francis was among those world leaders lending his voice to the plea for peace. “Let us pray constantly that the Israelis and Palestinians may find the path of dialogue and forgiveness.
“Let us pray for the victims, in particular for the children; let us pray for peace,” the Pontiff tweeted.