Gaza. As the sun sets over Gaza, there isn’t a table to be found on the terrace of the Roots hotel, with views overlooking the port and the gently crashing waves of the Mediterranean.

Crowds have gathered for iftar – the nightly breaking of the Ramadan fast – and the atmosphere is excited: young men and women taking photos on their iPhones, puffing apple-scented nargile pipes and watching a dance troupe as they dine on hummus, pita, chicken and sweet pistachio cakes.

It is a far cry from the death and destruction that consumed Gaza a year ago, when Israel launched an air and ground assault to put an end to constant rocket fire by Hamas militants from Gaza. The July-August conflict left more than 2,100 Palestinians, most civilians, and 73 Israelis dead.

The scene on the hotel terrace is not a sign of how far Gaza has come since – quite the contrary, as not a single one of the estimated 100,000 homes damaged or destroyed in the war has yet been rebuilt – but of the stern resilience of many Gazans.

It reflects, too, the striking contrasts the territory throws up – outside Roots, a stylish hotel that wouldn’t look out of place in Europe, there are smart cars parked two or three deep. A few kilometers away in the district of Shejaiya, there are whole neighborhoods lying in ruins, families sleeping rough in makeshift shelters amid the smashed rubble of the war.

If the former is an image of what Gaza might aspire to be, the latter is closer to what many parts have become.

Since the end of the war, the flow of reconstruction materials into the territory has been greatly restricted, with Israel insisting on tight monitoring of all imports of cement, iron and other materials that could be employed by Hamas to rebuild secret tunnels that were used to attack Israel.

So slow has the influx of goods been that the United Nations last week said it could take 30 years to rebuild the damage.

Last month, the International Monetary Fund described Gaza’s economy as being on the verge of collapse, with unemployment nearing 45 percent, gross domestic product down 15 percent in 2014, and the once-strong manufacturing sector dying.

Of the 1.8 million people who live in Gaza – a population growing by 50,000 a year – nearly two-thirds are dependent on aid in some form or another. It is the United Nations’ longest-running relief operation, set up in 1949.

The head of those operations, Robert Turner, will leave his post next month after three years in Gaza. Since the war, he has been witheringly critical of the obstacles to reconstruction. But ahead of his departure, he tried to sound a positive note.

“I refuse to yield to pessimism,” he said. “Gaza is a place where the human spirit has shown its indomitability time and time again.”

More militant

To many Gazans, that is part of the problem.

So adept have they become at getting by – finding a way to deal with up to 16 hours of power cuts a day, smuggling in everything from live animals to cars via tunnels, scraping together an existence amid militant rule and war – that people begin to regard the extraordinary as normal.

“Outsiders think, ‘Well, if they’re managing to get by, maybe it’s not so bad,’” said one life-long Gaza resident.

Sitting on the terrace of Roots, where young men and women, many not wearing Islamic headdress, were comfortably chatting and smoking together, it is easy to forget that Gaza has been run by the Islamist movement Hamas since 2007.

At night, after iftar, masked Hamas militants, many of them bearing arms, walked through the streets of Gaza in a military-style parade, urging young men to sign up to the movement.

Rather than clamping down on the freedom on show at Roots and other beachfront hotels, Hamas’s priority is to retain power and deliver something to those battling to make ends meet.

In recent weeks it appears to have made some progress. After more than a year of keeping its border with Gaza mostly closed, Egypt has in recent days opened the crossing at Rafah to allow people and goods to move in both directions.

There is talk of Hamas offering Israel a long-term truce, which would free up the flow of goods and people across their shared border. In recent weeks, up to 2,000 Gazans a day have been crossing, a marked increase from a trickle months ago.

Qatar, a major financial supporter of Hamas, has nearly completed the construction of a new road along the beachfront and has other projects in the pipeline. Yet there are threats.

Militant Salafist groups claiming ties to Islamic State have started to agitate in Gaza, firing occasional rockets into Israel and carrying out attacks. They have threatened to overthrow Hamas and its rival Fatah party. As well as a threat to Palestinian authority, they are of deep concern to Egypt and Israel.

While Hamas may turn a blind eye to the small liberties taking place at Roots and elsewhere during Ramadan, Islamic State and its sympathizers are unlikely to be anywhere near as accommodating.

Reuters

The post A Year After Gaza War, Ruins, Small Joys and Much to Fear appeared first on The Jakarta Globe.

Gaza. As the sun sets over Gaza, there isn’t a table to be found on the terrace of the Roots hotel, with views overlooking the port and the gently crashing waves of the Mediterranean.

Crowds have gathered for iftar – the nightly breaking of the Ramadan fast – and the atmosphere is excited: young men and women taking photos on their iPhones, puffing apple-scented nargile pipes and watching a dance troupe as they dine on hummus, pita, chicken and sweet pistachio cakes.

It is a far cry from the death and destruction that consumed Gaza a year ago, when Israel launched an air and ground assault to put an end to constant rocket fire by Hamas militants from Gaza. The July-August conflict left more than 2,100 Palestinians, most civilians, and 73 Israelis dead.

The scene on the hotel terrace is not a sign of how far Gaza has come since – quite the contrary, as not a single one of the estimated 100,000 homes damaged or destroyed in the war has yet been rebuilt – but of the stern resilience of many Gazans.

It reflects, too, the striking contrasts the territory throws up – outside Roots, a stylish hotel that wouldn’t look out of place in Europe, there are smart cars parked two or three deep. A few kilometers away in the district of Shejaiya, there are whole neighborhoods lying in ruins, families sleeping rough in makeshift shelters amid the smashed rubble of the war.

If the former is an image of what Gaza might aspire to be, the latter is closer to what many parts have become.

Since the end of the war, the flow of reconstruction materials into the territory has been greatly restricted, with Israel insisting on tight monitoring of all imports of cement, iron and other materials that could be employed by Hamas to rebuild secret tunnels that were used to attack Israel.

So slow has the influx of goods been that the United Nations last week said it could take 30 years to rebuild the damage.

Last month, the International Monetary Fund described Gaza’s economy as being on the verge of collapse, with unemployment nearing 45 percent, gross domestic product down 15 percent in 2014, and the once-strong manufacturing sector dying.

Of the 1.8 million people who live in Gaza – a population growing by 50,000 a year – nearly two-thirds are dependent on aid in some form or another. It is the United Nations’ longest-running relief operation, set up in 1949.

The head of those operations, Robert Turner, will leave his post next month after three years in Gaza. Since the war, he has been witheringly critical of the obstacles to reconstruction. But ahead of his departure, he tried to sound a positive note.

“I refuse to yield to pessimism,” he said. “Gaza is a place where the human spirit has shown its indomitability time and time again.”

More militant

To many Gazans, that is part of the problem.

So adept have they become at getting by – finding a way to deal with up to 16 hours of power cuts a day, smuggling in everything from live animals to cars via tunnels, scraping together an existence amid militant rule and war – that people begin to regard the extraordinary as normal.

“Outsiders think, ‘Well, if they’re managing to get by, maybe it’s not so bad,’” said one life-long Gaza resident.

Sitting on the terrace of Roots, where young men and women, many not wearing Islamic headdress, were comfortably chatting and smoking together, it is easy to forget that Gaza has been run by the Islamist movement Hamas since 2007.

At night, after iftar, masked Hamas militants, many of them bearing arms, walked through the streets of Gaza in a military-style parade, urging young men to sign up to the movement.

Rather than clamping down on the freedom on show at Roots and other beachfront hotels, Hamas’s priority is to retain power and deliver something to those battling to make ends meet.

In recent weeks it appears to have made some progress. After more than a year of keeping its border with Gaza mostly closed, Egypt has in recent days opened the crossing at Rafah to allow people and goods to move in both directions.

There is talk of Hamas offering Israel a long-term truce, which would free up the flow of goods and people across their shared border. In recent weeks, up to 2,000 Gazans a day have been crossing, a marked increase from a trickle months ago.

Qatar, a major financial supporter of Hamas, has nearly completed the construction of a new road along the beachfront and has other projects in the pipeline. Yet there are threats.

Militant Salafist groups claiming ties to Islamic State have started to agitate in Gaza, firing occasional rockets into Israel and carrying out attacks. They have threatened to overthrow Hamas and its rival Fatah party. As well as a threat to Palestinian authority, they are of deep concern to Egypt and Israel.

While Hamas may turn a blind eye to the small liberties taking place at Roots and elsewhere during Ramadan, Islamic State and its sympathizers are unlikely to be anywhere near as accommodating.

Reuters

The post A Year After Gaza War, Ruins, Small Joys and Much to Fear appeared first on The Jakarta Globe.

Ramallah, West Bank. On top of land, settlements, resources and borders, Israel and the Palestinians can add another dispute to their long history of conflict — football.

In 10 days’ time, at the request of the Palestine Football Association, FIFA will hold a vote among its 209 members at a Congress in Zurich on whether Israel should be suspended from the world football body for violating rules relating to racism, the free movement of players and where clubs are based.

If Israel were to be suspended, its clubs and teams would not be able to take part in international competitions such as the Champions League and the Euro 2016 competition.

While Palestinian officials emphasize that there is nothing political about their move, it raises parallels with FIFA’s suspension of apartheid South Africa in the 1960s and Slobodan Milosevic’s Yugoslavia in the 1990s, making it a highly emotive issue with ramifications that go far beyond sports.

The Palestinians have raised three major complaints: that Palestinian players and officials are routinely restricted in their movement, making it difficult to play matches; that five clubs play in the Israeli league that are located in settlements in the Palestinian territories; and that the Israeli Football Association (IFA) is turning a blind eye to racism.

The complaints are long-standing, with the PFA having put them on the agenda at FIFA meetings in both 2013 and 2014. In the past, last-minute compromises have been found to prevent the Palestinians pushing the issue as far as a vote.

But this time the Palestinians are determined to go all the way, saying Israel has been hoodwinking FIFA for the past three years and has done nothing to change its behaviour. Israel’s federation says it has been doing everything it can to help.

“We will never, ever accept any compromise, any agreement or deal outside the Congress,” Jibril Rajoub, a former politician who has headed the PFA since 2008, said on Tuesday.

“[The Israelis] think they can keep leading the world by the nose because of the Holocaust,” he said, emphasising the point twice. “They are the bully of the neighborhood.”

Voting rules 

FIFA President Sepp Blatter arrived in the region on Tuesday and met Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Jerusalem to try to find a compromise solution. He declined to reveal details of the meeting but said he was “optimistic.”

In welcoming remarks, Netanyahu praised Blatter for keeping politics out of sport.

“Sport is a vehicle of goodwill among nations. The thing that could destroy the Football Association is politicizing it. You politicize it once with Israel, then you politicize it for everyone, and it will cause the deterioration of a great institution,” Netanyahu said.

At a later news conference, Blatter said he had proposed that FIFA organise a “peace match” between the Israeli and Palestinian national teams in Zurich. He said Netanyahu had promised to attend the event if it went ahead.

The Israeli federation has said it cannot be held responsible for restrictions imposed by the state of Israel, which frequently limits Palestinians’ movement or holds up the delivery of goods because of security concerns.

That position was reiterated by Rotem Kamer, the chief executive of the IFA, in a conference call on Tuesday, as both sides stepped up their public relations ahead of the Congress.

“I don’t think there is any football association around the world which can tell its government how to deal with security issues, including the Israeli Football Association,” he said.

He also dismissed the charge about racism in Israeli football, saying it was an unfortunate phenomenon around the world that everyone had to fight against.

Palestinian officials have said quietly that they think the area where they have the strongest case is when it comes to teams from settlements playing in the Israeli league.

“If the other side insists on causing us suffering, we are not using violence or weapons, we are using the legal leverage of the FIFA statutes,” said Rajoub. “This is nothing to do with politics, this is a sport issue.”

If it does end up in a vote in Zurich, it is far from clear how it would turn out. And there’s also a dispute over what the threshold of the vote would be, whether 75 percent of members present or 50 percent plus one.

The Palestinians are confident they have widespread support. Gonzalo Boye, a lawyer advising them, said the motion to suspend Israel required the support of 50 percent of FIFA members who are present plus one vote, with abstentions not counting.

The Israelis take a different view, saying they have received a “clear interpretation” from FIFA that the proposal will need a 75 percent majority to pass, meaning the Palestinians will need about 160 votes — a tall order.

If Israel is suspended it would represent a major victory for the Palestinians as they prepare to take on Israel in other forums, such as the International Criminal Court, adding a political dimension beyond a sporting dispute.

Reuters

The post Palestinians Stare Down Israel as FIFA Suspension Vote Looms appeared first on The Jakarta Globe.