OneVoice Palestine-Gaza Director Ezzeldeen Masri during the Rafah City town hall meeting on July 2.
With each passing day, events in the Middle East uncover
ever more headlines as the region continues to bubble with volatility.
In Syria, President Bashar al-Assad and opposition forces
remain locked in a bloody civil war two years on, with Lebanon also tangled in
the uncertainty.
In Turkey, protestors in the thousands were in a standoff against
President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan over plans to demolish parts of Gezi Park and
over excessive force used by Turkish police.
In Egypt, President Mohamed Morsi of the Muslim Brotherhood was
toppled after just one year in office.
U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry’s shuttle diplomacy
between Israel and Palestine has markedly increased the chances for
negotiations, but it comes during a period when both parties are experiencing domestic
political pressures that reduce their freedom of action.
In all the chaos, and if one cares to remember, a question
may arise…what is going on in Gaza?
The small coastal territory on the Mediterranean Sea remains
under air, land, and sea blockade by Israel (with Egyptian acquiescence) since
an upsurge in violence in 2007 following the Hamas takeover of the enclave the
previous year. Gaza’s people have dealt with gas and electric shortages, a ban
on construction materials, and fear of Israeli air attacks as part of the
current dynamic of violence that has plagued Gaza and southern Israel for over
six years.
But what many do not know is that support for OneVoice has found
a foothold in Gaza.
The uptick in regional instability led OneVoice
Palestine-Gaza (OVP-G) Director Ezzeldeen Masri to increase the number of town
hall meetings and grassroots youth leadership trainings in the territory. Amidst
talk of potential negotiations between Israel and the PLO – including
assistance from Washington and potentially Amman – there is little room for
ordinary Gazans, who feel cut off from their fellow Palestinians in the West
Bank, to feel included in the process.
Masri, born and raised in Gaza, has worked over two
years to rebuild OneVoice’s presence there after the office had to close
during the intense violence of the Gaza War in 2008-09. So far, 2013 has been a stellar
year for engagement. Over 10 town hall meetings have taken place throughout
Gaza – including within the refugee camps that are dotted across the mere 223
square miles that make up the Strip – reaching over 400 people to date, while the
territory’s first 25 youth activists will graduate from OneVoice Youth
Leadership Program this month.
The latest town hall meeting was on July 2nd, this time in
Rafah City, close to the Egyptian border. Rafah has been experiencing
volatility since the Egyptian military intervened to seize power in their
country, with the adjacent Sinai Desert experiencing an upsurge in violence—something
many locals fear will have a knock-on effect within Gaza. Forty people turned out for the meeting, which
was called “The Threats against the
Two-State Solution,” a topic which had plenty of content for locals to mull
over.
Masri, along with Rafiq Elmasry, Central Committee member of
the Palestinian People’s Party (PPP), spoke to the challenges all too familiar
to OneVoice’s Palestinian supporters: internal,
including a lack of Palestinian unity around a vision to end the conflict; Israeli, which include the air, land,
and sea blockade, settlement building beyond the Green Line, and open calls for
West Bank annexation from right-wing members of the Israeli government; and regional and international, which take
the form of the tumultuous events engulfing the region, as well as the United
States' perceived unwavering support of Israel.
The meeting lasted two hours, though most of the
participants stayed behind, including a group of young women eager to continue
contact with OVP.
“This town hall meeting was different from all the political
events we have attended in the past,” one young woman told Masri. “We actually
gained a lot of important information about the two-state solution, and would
like [OVP] to organize one for the Women’s Union of Rafah City.”
Masri accepted her request without hesitation, and hopes to
tie the activity to the Women of Influence program which OneVoice
Palestine is pioneering in the West Bank.
OVP-G partners with local organizations to better reach a
broader audience. The Adam Center is one such group, along with the PPP. The budding
relationship OVP-G has with the PPP stems from their common goal of an
independent state through ending
the occupation and blockade. Elmasry said that the PPP was the first to
call for the establishment of a Palestinian state on the 1967 borders back in
1983 – pre-Oslo – in order to safeguard the national identity of the
Palestinian people, which is also one of the prime motivations of OneVoice
Palestine’s volunteers.
To attain this goal, however, one needs not just colorful
language, but action.
At the heart of OVP’s campaign is “Shu Dorak?" or “What
is your role?” a question that must be asked by every Palestinian man and woman
by themselves to themselves and then acted
upon. If every person has a role to play to establish an independent
Palestinian state, says Masri, then popular opinion will prevail.
Masri explained to the group that as people under a foreign power,
resistance is necessary, but creative yet peaceful resistance opens up the
floodgates for all Palestinians to participate and cannot but be seen as
entirely legitimate in the eyes of the international community.
Elmasry agreed. “Only with nonviolent popular resistance can
we end Palestinian national division and the Israeli occupation,” he said.
Many more town hall meetings and trainings are planned for
the rest of 2013. Masri and local partners will continue to spread OneVoice’s
message to Gazans despite the territory’s lack of involvement in the peace
process, and will continue to urge the Palestinian people to reconcile
their differences and achieve national unity.
“You cannot ignore the voices of 1.6 million people,” said
Masri. “Outsiders look at Gaza and they generalize about the people living
there. That’s wrong. Gazans want to live in an independent state in peace and
security as much as the next person, and have suffered due to this conflict
more intensely than anybody else. The only way we Palestinians can achieve our
self-determination is by ending the occupation and Israeli blockade.”