Movement

I lost my camera at the gates of Gaza. I was preoccupied with the street boys who were grabbing at my bags in the back of the taxi. “La, la,” I yelled as I turned to get out, and as I did, the camera fell unnoticed from my lap.

On November 2nd and 3rd 2009 I attempted to enter the Gaza Strip through its only viable border crossing, its Egyptian border to the desert south. Rafah is a border crossing for human traffic; it’s shared by armored personnel carriers and ambulances alike. The border opens sporadically and is guarded by an outpost of armed troops. Sometimes the gates of Gaza open a couple consecutive days a month. Sometimes they open every three months. Since 2007 the Gaza Strip has been under siege, so movement of any kind is strictly limited.

I’ve had plenty of time to reflect on photographs. Their proliferation, their meaning, their worth. Does our reliance on photographs, the assumption they most accurately capture a scene, alter the way we pay attention? What do we notice about a sandstorm or a handshake that in a photo is lost?

There is one image I wish I had captured, though I don’t know how I would have done so even with my camera. It is difficult to capture, in still frame, something as volatile as movement.

In Rafah, these are images of movement: families struggle to walk the meters dividing the loved ones they haven’t seen in years; a line of orange and green ambulances waits days to cross the border; children beg in the streets—for water.

There is one image from the Gaza border crossing I’ll never forget. Perhaps my attention to this image was enhanced because I carried no camera. I knew I would have to etch the moment in my mind with sensation, reaction, emotion. For two days I inscribed the faces of people and the undercurrents of events. Especially the children, I was aware of their impermanence.

During my first day at the Gaza border, I sat through an eight-hour sandstorm. I made slow progress with the border agents. After my second day of waiting, I sat to one side, temporarily defeated, on a cement stoop with two journalists who had likewise been rejected. There was a café behind us that sold strong tea in plastic cups for a single Egyptian Pound. The journalists and I sipped tea as we stared across the road at Egyptian women wrapped in billowing black hijab who sold bottles of olive oil to passersby. Next to these women, a military outpost housed soldiers dressed in riot gear. It was afternoon, and the traffic of people successfully crossing into Gaza was slow.

Then the water truck appeared. We watched as the water tanker, with a wave of blue painted on its side, inched toward the inspection gates. As the truck came to a stop, two young street boys ran to the back of the truck. The children had torn clothes and dirty hands. They were worse than hungry. One of the boys turned a valve and began drinking water that dribbled from the truck’s back hose. When the truck lurched forward, the boys grew frantic. Their desperation was palpable. Despite the armed guards, one boy ran after the truck gulping as quickly as he could water he moved by his hands to his mouth.

Humans build walls for many reasons. The wall surrounding the West Bank snakes and curves, diverging in some places for miles to accommodate Israeli settlements or to choke and isolate Palestinian cities. Every day the wall moves closer to enclosing and fragmenting an island whose land mass is slowly wiped away as if by an encroaching sea.

The sea, forming the west wall of the Gaza Strip, rises as well as it sinks. And seeps. The freshwater aquifer buried under the Gaza Strip has been mined to exhaustion inviting saltwater intrusion. The population of the Gaza Strip, at 1.5 million, is crammed into an area twice the size of DC, making it one of the densest on earth. Gaza’s semi-arid land, large clods of it, are washed away with time, with opposition, and with little recourse.

Freshwater is the most precious natural resource in the Middle East. There is not enough for those living in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Inhabitants of these islands raise their eyes, their cups, their barrels and their catchment troughs to harvest rain that falls like mercy.

Most water quality problems in the Middle East are a combination of three factors: overpumping aquifers; agricultural runoff; inadequate sewage collection and treatment. All three factors contribute to the Gaza Aquifer’s severely degraded condition.

The Gaza Aquifer is the only significant source of water for the Gaza Strip. Due to both salt and nitrate contamination, fewer than 8% of wells in the Gaza Strip meet World Health Organization drinking standards. Salt in the aquifer is a result of both Mediterranean seawater intrusion and lateral saline inflow from Israeli agriculture. Two recent studies report if no action is taken to repair the water quality of the Gaza Aquifer, then the entire water source, Gaza’s only, will degrade beyond usability in 10 years’ time. These studies were conducted before the recent targeted and widespread devastation that included Gaza’s water and sanitation infrastructure.