Photo credit: Mohamed El-Reefi
Date taken: January 16, 2013
Location: Gaza City, Gaza Strip, Palestine
A fisherman rests and inspects his leg before leaving the Gaza City’s mina, or port. [Read more...]
Photo of the Week: A fisherman in Gaza inspects his leg
March 23, 2013 By 1 Comment
Photo from Gaza wins 2013 World Press Photo Contest
February 16, 2013 By Leave a Comment
The winners of the 2013 World Press Photo Contest were announced on February 15. An international jury of established photojournalists selected Swedish photographer Paul Hansen’s photograph from Gaza to bear the title Photo of the Year 2012.
The photograph shows a group of men rallying in Gaza City carry the bodies of two children killed during Israel’s invasion of the Gaza Strip last November. On the left is three-year-old Muhammad Hijazi and on the right is his younger brother, two-year-old Suhaib. The two were killed after an Israeli missile tore through their home. [Read more...]
A cup of hope
January 24, 2013 By 2 Comments
Guest contribution by Deena Kishawi
“Kubayyit barrad yakho” you shout to the guy at Kazem as he takes your shekel.
He hands you a cup of icy yellow slush.
Flavor: mystery —
Or rather, TOP SECRET.
No one knows how it’s made.
No one can replicate Kazem’s barrad.
Banana flavor? Mango? Pineapple? Lemon? Guava?
Only Kazem knows.
A corner on Omar Al-Mukhtar Street is home to the city’s favorite colorful ice cream shoppe.
The clear plastic dixie cups with
The clear plastic straw and
The yellow concoction
Bring a smile to any Gazan’s face,
Young or old. [Read more...]
TIME selects 2012 Best Photographer for his work in Egypt, Palestine, Syria
December 26, 2012 By 5 Comments
TIME’s Photo Department faces a daunting task every year as it shuffles through millions of powerful photographs to determine the best and most dynamic photographer on the wires. This year, they honor Italian-born Marco Longari, the Jerusalem-based chief photographer for Agence-France Presse (AFP) who in just the last few months covered the revolution in Syria, the Israeli shelling of Gaza, and the persistent protests in Cairo.
His photographic tour through the Middle East took viewers on a journey of shifting political landscapes. But he focused on the human aspect of these turbulent times and managed to tell important stories. As the TIME Photo Department so aptly writes, “Longari made picture after picture this year that mattered.”
In an interview with TIME, Longari shared what he calls “the most humbling lesson in compassion” he’s experienced in his entire career. He arrived at Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City just after an Israeli air strike. Waiting to photograph the ensuing chaos, he phoned his family currently staying in Jerusalem but the line was cut. He managed to compose himself but the unease was still there. That’s when he felt the burden that Palestinians face on a daily basis.
Here are a small selection of his photographs. The rest can be found here.
Death before liberation
November 30, 2012 By Leave a Comment
He lived his entire life under occupation. Even in his few moments of freedom — which were more illusion than anything else — he was confined to a depressing reality, a fate suffered by Palestinians for decades.
I know very little detail about his final moments. I keep it vague in my head for a reason, but I don’t know what that reason is. I just choose not to ask for more. I’ll listen if someone wants to fill me in but I won’t ask. The details don’t change much because the context stays the same. He lived his entire life under occupation. He saw death before liberation, just like he used to chant.
The last time I saw him was in 2004 in his mother’s living room laying back on a loveseat sofa, legs up, cigarette in hand, hair combed back, television turned on. He had an affinity for American films, which were almost always dubbed at least three years after their release in American theaters. Sometimes I’d have to pretend I hadn’t seen the movie before. That way, he could explain the plot to me and I could be impressed by his ability to slip in the occasional English word. [Read more...]
Goodbyes are never easy
October 24, 2012 By Leave a Comment
“One Occupied Gazan Summer” is a three-part personal narrative by Mariam I. who explores her thoughts and retraces her steps during her most recent visit to the Gaza Strip. Read part one here and part two here.
Part three of three. One of the most painful moments of my summer was sharing a tearful farewell with my mother the morning she was set to leave Gaza through Egypt, one week before her flight to the United States. I woke up, got dressed for work, and went to the side of her bed to tell her two months was not long enough to be sad about not seeing each other and that before we’d miss each other, I’d be rejoining her in the United States.
Before I could say any of those things, my mother’s tears were streaming down her face. I knew that as hard as it was for her to leave Palestine, it was harder for her to leave me there, uncertain of my safety. I hugged her, told her I’d miss her, and asked her to have a safe trip before I ran out of the room as quickly as I could. She couldn’t see me cry; I had to be strong so she wouldn’t worry. Goodbyes are never easy.
I cried in the stairwell and as I walked down the unpaved road in front of the house. I was able to compose myself in time to not look crazy before I had to hail a taxi. That was a difficult day of work. I found myself constantly searching the news for information on the status of the Rafah Crossing. How many busses were let through, how may were sent back, how many people were trapped in the lobby waiting to cross into Egypt?
I was terrified; my mother’s flight was approaching and she needed to get through as soon as possible, but also, I didn’t want to have to deal with another painful goodbye. I went home from work that day in the same depressed state that I arrived in. I entered the house and went straight for the kitchen, but oddly, I imagined my mother’s laugh. [Read more...]
No clearer reminder of the occupation than the raining of missiles on its land
October 15, 2012 By Leave a Comment
“One Occupied Gazan Summer” is a three-part personal narrative by Mariam I. who explores her thoughts and retraces her steps during her most recent visit to the Gaza Strip. Read part one here and part three here.
Part two of three. Oddly, while I was in Gaza, even the moments of national celebration reminded me of how occupation and siege shaped our lives. I remember the end of the prisoners’ mass hunger strike that began on April 17 and ended on May 14. It was my first day in Palestine. I was thrilled, smiling uncontrollably, suppressing gleeful giggles, and using my utmost restraint to keep from flipping cartwheels up and down the alleys of my refugee camp. Then news of the end of the hunger strike broke and as all of the televisions in the densely populated camp were turned to the same channel and poor insulation, open windows, and gaping roofs allowed the sound to escape into the alleys, it felt like the women on the news ululating in celebration were with us in this very camp. Their cries of celebration were as real and present as the Israeli drones circling above our homes.
I remember when Thaer Halahleh decided to end his hunger strike. I remember exactly where I was when the radio news reporter announced that Halahleh was being released to his family. I had just spent several hours with my uncle’s family at a Gaza beach and we were in a taxi on our way home to our central Gaza Strip refugee camp. We were driving past al-Mughraga village and I was choking on the rancid smell of sewage and rotting garbage. I don’t know if I was holding my breath from the excitement of Halahleh’s release or from my disgust of the smell forcing itself down my throat. Either way, I was sitting between my thirteen year old cousin and my mother whispering to each of them about how incredible Halahleh’s heroism was and how thrilled I was to receive the news of his release, all the while excited giggles escaped from me and I held myself down to the backseat to keep from jumping through the roof of the car from my joy.
The next morning was another story. On my way to work, the car radio was playing the message of a prisoner’s mother to her son. She was telling him how much she missed him, how she prays for him often, how she is proud of him, how he is a hero, how his entire family is awaiting his release, how he must remain patient and steadfast. And as she indirectly shared with her son, through the ears of the entire nation, messages of motivation, love, and encouragement, I wept silently and uncontrollably in the backseat of a taxi at 7:45 in the morning. I arrived at work face red, swollen, and lined by streams of tears. The plight of the prisoners and their families was no longer just a news story; it was a real mental and emotional struggle that countless Palestinians had to live through every day. [Read more...]
In Gaza, everything stops at night, including the wind
October 9, 2012 By Leave a Comment
“One Occupied Gazan Summer” is a three-part personal narrative by Mariam I. who explores her thoughts and retraces her steps during her most recent visit to the Gaza Strip. Read part two here and part three here.
Part one of three. As summer ends and fall begins, I find myself reflecting on the three months of summer I spent in Gaza this year. Though the sweet moments I miss most are the ones I spent laughing with my cousins deep into the night and getting lost with friends in neighborhoods we’d never before seen, the hardest moments to forget are the subtly brutal ways siege and occupation impacted our daily lives.
I remember two weeks in June of muted activity and total fear of non-emergency movement in the Gaza Strip. I had made my first set of plans with the girls from work; I was excited to finally have some kind of non-family-centered social life and to bond with a couple of girls my age. We were going to have lunch at a hotel in the Sudaniyyeh area of northern Gaza City.
I’d heard a lot about this place; it was fancy, extravagant, had a beautiful swimming pool, was impossible to afford for the overwhelming majority of Gazans, and hadn’t made any profit since it was built. I was a little too excited when I got dressed that morning. I remember hesitating before I decided to wear sandals to work. They are horribly too informal for a law student intern trying to make a good impression. But hey, I was going out with the girls. My boss would have to learn to deal with my sandaled feet.
I hopped out of my cheap, decrepit taxi and half-skipped to work. The girl who spearheaded the plans was the receptionist, Nour. As soon as I walked in, overly chipper and with a bounce in my step, I asked Nour if she was excited for our lunch date. She frowned and looked at me sympathetically as she explained that the Sudaniyyeh area, where the hotel was located, was totally off limits for our lunch plans. This area was known to be targeted during surges of Israeli attack, like the one we were experiencing. [Read more...]
Profile: Khalil Kishawi, earning a Master’s at a taxi stand
June 27, 2012 By 3 Comments
‘Palestinian Profiles in America’ is a project committed to exploring and documenting the personal histories of Palestinian Americans from all walks of life. In order to best examine the Palestinian condition in the United States, it is absolutely necessary to share the stories of refugees, blue-collar workers, newlyweds, and anyone in between. To suggest a story or individual to be profiled, please use the contact form here.
Khalil Kishawi shares his personal history from when he first worked in Libyan oilfields to when he worked dayshifts as an accountant and nightshifts as a taxi driver.
Standing at the six-cornered intersection where Elston Avenue crosses Western and Diversey is a woman in her mid-30s patiently waiting to cross the street. But the virtually imperceptible way her eyes darted from car to car tell veteran taxi driver Khalil Kishawi she is actually trying to flag down a cab.
This ability to read pedestrians is a skill he had developed when he first began driving in the mid-1980s. Three decades and a combination of careers later, Khalil lets me in on some of his most personal experiences living far from his home in occupied Palestine.
Khalil Kishawi is one of nine siblings born to Abdelrahman and Mozayyann in the dense Remal neighborhood of Gaza City. Born just a year and a half after Israel’s unilateral declaration of independence in 1948, he watched Gaza’s landscape transform from colorful economic and cultural prosperity to the drab green of military fatigues surrounding the territory.
For the first seventeen years of his life, Khalil bore witness to the harsh realities of foreign occupation. Control of Gaza transferred from the British to the Egyptians and then to the Israelis. His prospects for a stable future seemed to slip away after each subsequent military operation so, in 1967, he left Gaza and joined three of his older siblings in Cairo.
Khalil graduated from Cairo University with a degree in commerce (equivalent to a Bachelor’s degree in accounting) four years later. Intending to become entirely self-sufficient and to help support his younger siblings back home in Gaza, he traveled to Libya to work for Esso, known today as the Exxon Oil Company in Brega. For just under a year, Khalil handled the oil terminal’s inventory and accounting. He would work for two weeks straight before taking a weeklong vacation outside of the industrial settlement and seaport.
Eventually, Khalil moved on to work as an accountant for Libya’s state television network. Himself being Palestinian, he felt particularly sensitive to the way the television network unabashedly colluded with the Libyan government in exploiting the Palestinian struggle for its own political advancement. When Muammar Gaddafi’s 1977 speech was met with a tremendously low turnout, he contacted Khalil’s managing director and demanded the network broadcast footage from an old and more lively rally in which he championed, among other things, the Palestinian cause.
No longer capable of tolerating the network’s attempts to deceive the public in the government’s favor, Khalil quickly resigned and left the country for the United Kingdom. [Read more...]
Walls of a different kind in Palestine
May 31, 2012 By Leave a Comment
It’s almost been an entire year since I traveled to the Gaza Strip. Much has changed since then and much has abandoned me in the form of forgotten thoughts, but the memories of my experiences in Gaza stick with me.
Having been to the West Bank only once in 2000 for a few hours, I’ve never seen Israel’s apartheid wall in person. As much as this is a blessing, I can’t speak much about the individual effect of that particular wall. The walls I’ve seen are of a different kind. Here’s a small album of photographs from my stay in Gaza as I reflected on all kinds of walls.
A multi-textured wall of walls stands just minutes from the seacoast in Gaza City.
A large stone hangs from a rope in front of a wall at a fancy hotel in the north of Gaza.
Inside of a small spice and produce shop in a Gaza market, the walls are lined with yellow boxes, yellow oils, yellow prayer rugs, yellow teas, and a variety of other colorful items.
The coastal road between Gaza City and Khan Younis is a place of solitude for many Palestinians where the seemingly infinite sea is complemented by the absence of walls. [Read more...]
