Notes from the Transition

100 days. and I feel numb. It started, this time, with something unusual. Something unheard of. We have become used, over the past 24 years of intifada suppression, to the regular bombings of Gaza. We heard the Israeli minister say in 2006 "We have decided to put the Palestinians on a diet", carefully calculating the number of trucks allowed to enter the tiny coastal enclave based on the Israeli calculation of the population of Gaza (a perpetual underestimate) and the Israeli calculation of the caloric intake that each Gazan should be allowed. And yet, the Gaza Strip flourished. Despite Israel's imprisonment of its population, guard towers looming large all along the north and east, and fishermen not allowed to go past the 3-mile Israeli-imposed nautical 'border'. Cut off from the world. Cut off from relatives in Haifa, Nazareth, Isdud, Lod. Cut off from family in Bethlehem, Jerusalem, Nablus, Jenin, al-Khalil. The lucky few who have escaped Gaza in the past eight...