Gaza Blackout

When I finally got home yesterday it was already around 1 am. After having iftaar at a great aunt's house, we then went to another aunt's house to welcome back her son from the ghurbeh-six years spent studying in Russia. I was dying for internet access. I've become somewhat of an addict, and for some reason the internet in my aunt's home wouldn't work on my laptop. The hours spent drinking tea and coffee and eating qatayif were a bit marred by the black looks I was shooting my mother. Yallah Ma are we planning on sleeping over?

I had planned on cobbling another informal post about the second PalTweetUp meeting. Instead, news across Twitter quickly spread about a mass communications cut in the Gaza strip, entering its seventh hour. My heart dropped somewhere between my toes. The first thought I had was "Ground Invasion. Air Raids. Naval Attacks." In short, another Operation Cast Lead.

Less than three years ago, my family in Ramallah were gripped by frustration, helplessness, and total despair. My father's family in Gaza were witnessing firsthand Israel's murderous onslaught that lasted for twenty two days, and all I could offer them was a watery phone call imploring them, rather stupidly, to stay safe. I'd start off with false cheeriness before my voice would break, the tears gushing down my face. If half the Samouni family were wiped out, who's to say my family won't be next? My uncles and their wives over the phone would be doing what I was supposed to be doing to them, comforting me, trying to downplay the risks and their suffering: "We're fine, the explosions are only shaking the building. Of course the children are terrified, but that means that we're all sleeping together, good for staying warm. Chin up Linah."

Quickly, news came in that the mass cuts were caused by Israeli bulldozers that destroyed a fiber-optic cable near the border, thus severing land lines, the internet, and cell phone connectivity. That didn't stop me from calling my uncles though. I tried both their land lines and their cell phones, over and over again. I tried to stop myself from overreacting. Why else would there be a massive communication breakdown? It's not a mistake. Mistakes on this large scale don't last for eight hours now. I pushed images of ground troops stealthily infiltrating Gaza from my mind. It was a scary notion, a cruel fact that Gaza was completely isolated from the whole world.

The only other explanation was an oversimplified one, that it was just a technical problem. That still doesn't deter from the real issue at hand: Gaza is still being effectively occupied. Israel controls all border crossings, including the Rafah border, and has the power to turn on and off the electricity that 1.7 million people depend on. It supplies water, and also can cut that off whenever it feels like it. For Gaza to become a black hole for those hours was a terrifying concept to grasp because no one know what was going on. Yasmeen Elkhoudary, probably the only one tweeting -- albeit from a shaky connection -- from Gaza via her Blackberry, provided information that land lines were working, and that to the best of her knowledge, there were no air strikes or anything of that kind.

My finger was still pushing the redial button religiously. Sixty miles separate Ramallah from Gaza, but it seemed like sixty thousand miles. Around 2:40 am, my uncle Mohammad from Tal il Hawa district picked up. I screamed, "'Amo!"

"Ahlain, ya 'ami. How are you?"

He sounded groggy. It suddenly dawned on me that I might have woken him up.

"Don't worry about it," he yawned. "I have to get up for su7oor anyway."

"What's going on? Why are all the telephone lines down? What's happening?"

"The land lines work."

"No, I think they only work within Gaza itself. Because I called you and Amo Mahmoud and Amta Najat and all I get is a busy signal."

"Yeah well..we don't really know what's going on. No one knows the reason for the power cuts. We've heard something about Israeli bulldozers digging too far and hitting a few cable lines, but that's about it. I'm surprised you managed to get through to me. You're probably roaming on the Orange network."

"Are you safe? Do you hear any drones? Missiles? Any news of anyone killed?"

"We're fine. The sky is quiet tonight. Nothing's happening on the ground. People got bored because of no electricity and went to sleep early."

"Are you sure there's nothing?"

"Yes habibti. Go to sleep."

"What time do you go to work? I'll call you then."

I tried my other uncle's cell phone. It was turned off. Relief flooded through my body. Nothing is happening, yet. A couple of hours later I finally crashed.

I woke up at 9am and immediately called Mohammad. He picked up and said something before the line disconnected. I swore under my breath as I realized my phone's battery died. Half an hour later there were confirmed reports that the communication lines were working again. The night had passed smoothly, relatively speaking. I called my uncle again at 2:45pm. He had went home because there was no work in the bank without the internet. People are still bewildered. He told me Jawwal's service connection was back on fifteen minutes earlier, not at 9:30am as some initially reported. I suppose it depended on the different districts and areas. A fifteen hour blackout is no different from a twenty hour blackout. He hadn't heard anything, not even rumors. I called my other uncle a few hours later. I heard waves crashing in the background. He was standing on a hill in Khan Younis overlooking the sea. He seemed convinced that what happened was just a technical problem, but the cynic in me won't shake off the feeling that there must be an ulterior motive on Israel's part.

The psychological warfare inflicted was just another used tactic of Israel's. My family and Gaza were safe, for now.

Looney Tunes

Dangerous Lunatics aren't the ones locked up in padded rooms with their mobility fixed due to their tightly strapped in straitjackets. No, they are leaders of social/religious/community centers, preaching hatred and intolerance to their flock of sheep, gesticulating ferociously while frothing madly at the mouth. With handlebar moustaches. Enter Pastor Terry Jones. Please, we are so sick and tired of hearing and seeing his mug on our screens. There's a link here and a link there and oh, there's another one also. Goodbye, sayanora, we didn't care before we sure as hell don't care now. Just one of those get-famous-quick schemes:

Recipe for Presupposed Disaster:

One bigoted man of God

30 person congregation

One outlandish "shockingly" zealous idea

Media

Reaction of notables

Dump them all in a transparent mixing bowl, and pour the bothersome media awareness generously while whipping it all together. Result? A creamy load of shit that just made Martha's newest cookbook for the addition of the dabbling of the President of a superpower country.

Terry. Oh Terry. Your plan to seek fame and recognition has worked, because instead of belittling your crazy ideologies and antics by ignoring you like the unlovable punk you are, the powerful force of the media decided otherwise. No, they decided to thrust you right in the limelight, garnering outcries and condemnations and protests and best of all...INTERVIEWS! Although, had your plan actually worked out, these interviews would have turned into vicious hate mail and a public flaying of your skin, because your extremist views would have set off a chain reaction of other extremist views, and hey, first it was the Twin Towers, next it could be..Sarah Palin's Alaskan Russian-viewing house. Over and done with.

Next we have the equally unlovable punk that calls itself Glenn Beck fighting for the, nay, restoring the honour of Americans. But is he really all that he seems to be? (Sorry to ruin it, but yes.)

Oh, oh! The whole Ground Zero Mosque fiasco!

1) It's not a mosque

2) It's not built at the site of Ground Zero.

Oh, so it must be more fear-mongering and vilification of the Muhamadets! Those pesky conservatives!

The army of stupid is rising, Tea Partiers are taking over the woooooorld!!

(PS, masturbation is a SIN!)

Our first teenage crush, Jon Stewart, has called for sanity! What we wouldn't give to be able to go to this one..

Conspiracy Theories Regarding Our Pet

It's been more than a week since our last post. There's a reason for that. No, not exams, but that this blog was temporarily disabled by Google. We were what they called, a positive negative. Basically, there's a lot of spamming and porno blogs (called splogs) and when they get deleted, innocent blogs like ours unfortunately get caught up in the whole deletion process. At first, we thought that since we also couldn't access our gmail account, something more than fishy was going on. Yep, we thought the intelligence agencies were behind our asses! Oh, we're kinda paranoid. Then we came to the conclusion that it must have been Mossad who chose to victimize us, since they have a penchant for royally effing things up. We were on some kind of paranoia roll for a few days, always looking behind our shoulders, never making eye contact with anyone, learning a few Krav Maga chop suey moves. Eventually we took the daring step to figure out how we can retain this pet of ours, and things were looking extremely down after the first couple of account recovery forms were submitted. This is all a ploy to get bloggers to read and understand the Terms of Service for both Google and Blogger, as if we weren't sick of research. Our phases can by summarized as follows:

Paranoia. Heart in mouth.

Confusion. Ray of hope. Despair.

Beyond despair. Comatose. Unresponsive even to Johnny Depp pictures.

Anger. Rage. Shredding of vocal cords.

Eerie calm. Beginning of acceptance.

Disregard for everything living.

Acceptance grows. Formulation of new plans.

An early email. Shrieking joy.

Happiness. Content. Abundance of love.

The information we submitted to recover this blog was rendered insufficient and therefore we were advised to create a new blog. This is when the hard acceptance began to sink in. Then one day we received the mother of all emails, and we began doing the happy dance. Aaah it's good to be back. But we're in the midst of exams so we'll holler at yall sooooooon!