A Land Diminished: Reflections on Gaza’s Landscape

Abstract

Roy describes how the people of Gaza struggle today, facing a situation far more devastating than before: an inability to visualize a future for their children that departs from the damaging reality they must currently endure. She makes it clear that the injustice of the occupation, and the inability of Palestinians to defend themselves against it, had affected her deeply. She further examines the two themes she consistently encounters regarding Gaza. The first theme is Israel’s wish to rid itself of any responsibility for the territory, while maintaining absolute control; the second is Israel’s desire to give up settlements in Gaza for full and internationally (i.e, American) sanctioned control of the West Bank, thereby precluding the creation of a Palestinian state. She says that Israel has achieved these ends. Unlike the West Bank, which has effectively been subdued by Israeli policies of land expropriation, settler expansion, territorial cantonization, and other forms of military control, Gaza has continued to resist defiantly. In her concluding thoughts, she questions why, in the continued absence of a political resolution to the conflict, occupation must be the default position. Why must Gaza be pauperized and the West Bank cantonized and annexed, and Palestinians treated as a humanitarian problem rather than as a people with political and national rights entitled to self-determination?