Israel controls the economy within and without the Strip – Gazans are literally forced by the barrel of American-made guns, the turret of American-made tanks, the missile launchers of American-made Apache helicopters and F–16s to be the unwilling consumers of Israeli trade and commercial products. The innocent prisoners of this Israeli-built, Israeli-guarded penitentiary breathe every breath, eat every meal, sleep every night, and wake up every day hemmed in by electric fences and “security” walls, houses, buildings and infrastructure destroyed in Israeli raids, refugee camps that are the most densely populated places on earth, a small strip of Israeli-patrolled shoreline, “checkpoints” that are really arbitrarily deadly harassment centers, Israeli “settlements” that are really thinly disguised fronts for heavy concentrations of IOF forces, etc, etc., etc. Gazans, however, somehow manage to struggle on. To me, as a foreigner in Gaza, ‘hope’ would seem a state of mind with no bearing here. Many Gazans, nevertheless, continue to draw their meager portions from a closely guarded well of hope.

Though no one I have met in the cities and camps of Gaza has actually read the works of Franz Kafka, a new word has gained currency in the lexicon of Palestinian Arabic. Palestinians of the Strip in particular have come to refer to their plight and condition as “Kafkaesque”; nowhere perhaps has this label ever more appropriate. On my return I think I will look into Arabic translations of The Castle and The Trial for shipment to Gaza. I think perchance that with the works of Kafka in hand, Gaza will soon produce the world’s most renowned Kafka scholars, living as they do the unreality and absurdity of institutionalized alienation and dispossession.

Jeff Kingham
Solidarity Movement with Palestinian People, USA volunteer.

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