Of all of the inspiring stories I have witnessed in the days I have spent in Egypt, the story of the French delegation remains a beacon in the darkening sky over the Sinai that separates us from Gaza. We tell their story again and again, engraving it into our hearts as a sign of how much we can accomplish when we stand together.

Organized by Euro Palestine, the French delegation numbers over 300. Their members are from all over France, and they have been preparing for the March for months. Euro Palestine and their partners held regional meetings every week to ensure that delegates would have plenty of time to discuss their plans for the trip to Gaza, how to bring their humanitarian aid to Cairo, and what the group would do if they were denied passage at the Rafah border. Some of their members have told me that in all of their strategizing, they never considered the possibility of being barred from leaving Cairo.

While the rest of us planned to meet our border-bound buses on January 28th, the French arrived to their embassy the night before, where their buses were expected at 7pm. They waited on the sidewalk of the busy Giza/Charles de Gaulle Street, their bags and tents in tow, but the buses never showed. All of a sudden one of the main organizers shouted “Onn’yva!” (“Here we go!”) and, grabbing the hand of a woman next to him, ran straight into the heavy traffic of Giza Street. Without even thinking, hundreds of delegates dashed into the street, followed by Egyptian cats and dogs caught up in the excitement. Moroccan French activist Hamid Rabhi, a Muslim from Beaune, recalls these moments with a shine in his eyes, pausing to pull smoke from his shisha. “And then I understand,” he says, “This is the beginning of the adventure.”

The traffic on Giza Street was truly terrifying, but the French refused to move, holding the street for over an hour. Finally the police convinced them to move to the sidewalk, promising their buses would arrive soon if the hundreds would only allow traffic to pass. The French moved to the curb and soon began pulling sleeping bags and tents from their luggage, forming the camp we would come to call the “Giza Strip.” Three rows of riot police guarded the narrow encampment of 300 on all sides, and more than 40 military trucks waited across the street, perhaps to bring the police back to their stations, or maybe to arrest the protesters and deport them back to France. “That first night was the worst,” Hamid says, “We were forbidden to come and go. I think they were testing us, to see if we were serious.” Over the coming days, the French would prove just how serious they were.

As negotiations between the Gaza Freedom March and the Egyptian Foreign Ministry continued to deteriorate, a growing number of us looked to the French as a beautiful vision of what our movement can be. The French delegation reached all decisions by consensus and with remarkable speed, yet they remained flexible enough to consider new ideas in smaller groups, and to take on smaller-scale actions while still honoring the vision of the whole: Upon hearing that four activists had raced an enormous Palestinian flag up the side of one of the pyramids, a group of about twenty-five French quickly planned their own action at the pyramid, this time bringing a little street theater to passers by:

On a cool, beautiful afternoon at Egypt’s top tourist attraction, two dozen French “tourists” encircle the unexpecting pyramid, dancing and prancing as they close in on their prey. And then, disaster! An elderly French woman collapses to Giza’s sand. As Egyptian police rush to her aid, the pyramid becomes a stage as eight activists race up its four faces, converging on one side as they spread a twelve-foot by six-foot Palestinian flag, proudly displayed before a cheering crowd of hundreds. After fifteen full minutes the police finally notice the cause of the excitement and rapidly climb the pyramid, becoming complicit in the highly illegal act of trespassing on one of the seven wonders of the world. Our French heroes know they cannot hold their stage for long, and so they bundle the flag into a ball and launch it into the sky, and then follow the flag as it drops to the ground, diving to the sand where they link arms and sit in a circle atop the flag, insistent that the red, black, green, and white will return with them to their camp at the French Embassy. When they do return to Giza Strip, not a single one has been arrested for their act, and the flag has come back with them as well. A few hours later a video of the entire action is posted to their website, europalestine.com, which has been hacked repeatedly by pro-Israeli techies (another sign of how powerful the French’s efforts have been!). By the next day delegation members are distributing posters and postcards featuring an image of their comrades on the pyramid, the Palestinian flag between them, with the title “Gaza Freedom March in Cairo” in both English and Arabic. The same image has since run on the front page of newspapers in Egypt, Kuwait, Yemen, and throughout the Arab world.

The French have brought a much-needed sense of levity to our difficult situation here in Cairo. Their creativity is endless: When non-French campers were denied the use of the embassy’s bathrooms, the French began to chant “Toilet pour tous!” (Toilets for all!). Our French friends have also proved to be some of our bravest members: As dozens rushed to the aid of protesters being beaten and dragged by Egyptian police during our December 31st protest, the French, and particularly the French Muslims, were some of the strongest in their defiance of police violence. These same French Muslim brothers reminded us all of the honor and beauty in this struggle when they knelt in front of lines of riot police to pray at noon during the same demonstration. The next day, hundreds of activists followed the lead of the French when their delegation called for a protest at the Israeli Embassy, demanding that we keep our focus on the government that truly holds the power over the people of Gaza.

We were all sad to see the end of the French camp on January 1st. Their encampment had become a place of tremendous comfort for the rest of the Gaza Freedom Marchers, despite the hundreds of riot police that never left the borders of the Giza Strip. Many of us would visit in the night to feel the remarkable solidarity that reverberated from the most famous pavement in the world. And as more than 100 French delegates departed for Paris on January 2nd, they left Cairo with one more action to complete before returning to their homes: Upon arriving at Charles de Gaulle airport, where they were greeted by the cheers of dozens of supporters, the contingent immediately made their way to the Israeli Embassy in Paris, luggage and all, to stage yet another protest there. Israeli Embassies beware: Sooner or later we will all return to our home communities, and we have not forgotten our mission to continue the struggle there!

As we each make our own arrangements to continue on to Rafah in smaller groups, the French remain an inspiration, even though their numbers in Egypt are now diminished: On January 2nd a group of about 15 French climbed into a bus bound for Rafah, but were removed from the bus at the first checkpoint. They sat in a circle in front of the bus, refusing to move until a checkpoint guard climbed onto the bus and explained to all passengers that these internationals had been removed for attempting to travel to Gaza. The people of Egypt will remember the Gaza Freedom March for a long time to come, and I believe they will remember the French most of all.

On January 4th we said goodbye to the last contingent of French delegates, who left for Paris the next day. Among them were a couple who had spent their honeymoon in the Giza Strip, and several Muslim brothers who have developed strong relationships with Palestinian and Egyptian activists living here in Cairo. They are all determined to return to Cairo on December 31st of 2010, for the second Gaza Freedom March. Their solidarity and tireless efforts have inspired many people in Cairo, Gaza, and around the world, and next year they will return even stronger than they were when they began. And until that date, the streets of Cairo, Gaza, Paris, and all of our communities around the world will be inspired daily by the chant that still rings in our ears: Palestine Vivra!

The cause of freedom is not the cause of a race or a sect, a party or a class–it is the cause of humankind, the very birthright of freedom.

–Anna Julia Cooper, page 27, my US passport

The Gaza Freedom March announced the Cairo Declaration to End Israeli Apartheid on January 1st, and so yesterday hundreds of Marchers smuggled freedom’s smoke signals in our luggage as we climbed into buses, vans, and taxis and made a mad dash for the Rafah border crossing. My own van was pulled over at the first checkpoint on the way out of Cairo, where we sat on a dusty curb for two hours before being forced to turn back. As we waited for guards to run our passport numbers and strategized about next steps, a small bus filled with our French friends sped by on the other side of the road, headed back to Cairo. Their hands formed peace signs through the windows as they shouted at border guards, and we were reminded once again of the historic nature of these days, when more than 1,300 people have come to Egypt from 43 different countries to support our sisters and brothers in Gaza. When we were first pulled over I felt silly for thinking our small van, filled with aging activists and suitcases overflowing with medicine and other forms of aid, would be permitted to pass to Rafah. As we drove away from the checkpoint, where we picked up two stragglers who had been pulled from buses and told they must return as well, my thinking began to change: Even if none of us arrive in Gaza (an impossibility given the resourcefulness of this remarkable group), our global solidarity community has accomplished something amazing here in Cairo, and in countries around the world. We will now leave Egypt, either for Gaza or for our homes, with a unified call to action, and a concrete plan to continue this crucial work.

We have seen so many victories here in Cairo in the crazy days since the Egyptian Foreign Minister announced we would not be permitted to cross the Rafah border. There are some moments when the haze of Cairo clouds our eyes with dust and disappointment, but we sing our successes into the smog of this city, reminding ourselves and our allies around the world that our efforts will not be deterred by Egyptian guards at checkpoints and the Israeli politicians who are calling the shots:

On December 27, the French group of over 300 allies and mentors took over Giza/Charles de Gaulle St, a terrifyingly busy thoroughfare, when their Rafah-bound buses did not arrive at the French Embassy. They held the street for a full hour before agreeing to wait for the buses on the sidewalk in front of the Embassy. They camped in “Giza Strip” for a full five days, guarded by three rows of riot police.

On December 29, Hedy Epstein, an 85 year-old Holocaust survivor, began a widely reported hunger strike with thirty activists, announcing that they will feast when all of Gaza feasts.

Later that night, hundreds of internationals stood alongside hundreds of Egyptians, who bravely protested Binyamin Netanyahu’s visit to Egypt and demanded an end to the siege.

On December 30, the Egyptian government sent two buses of marchers to Gaza in an effort to temper the terrible press Mubarak is receiving in Egypt and throughout the Arab world. So many of us refused to be satisfied by this token gesture that the buses were not full when they reached Gaza.

Later that day, hundreds protested at the American Embassy, where police managed to fracture them into small, highly guarded groups but could not divide the loud, unified voice with which they demanded an end to the siege, both from the streets in front of the Embassy and from negotiations inside.

Also on December 30, 25 French activists raced an enormous Palestinian flag to the top of one of the pyramids as hundreds of Egyptians and others cheered them on in this highly illegal act. This was the flag’s second trip to the top of the pyramid since we’ve arrived.

On December 31, more than 500 internationals set out on a Freedom March to Gaza from the Egyptian Museum, where they stopped heavy traffic on Tahrir Square and fought fearlessly against guards who violently moved them to pedestrian areas. In Gaza, internationals joined Palestinian marchers in the trek to the Erez crossing, where hundreds upon hundreds protested the siege from the Israeli side of the border. Thousands more joined solidarity protests around the world.

On January 1, more than 500 protested at the Israeli Embassy, forcing global attention on the government that is desperately seeking to divert our efforts to the Egyptian government’s role in the siege. We have proved that we will not be fooled.

Later that night, the South African delegation officially announced the Cairo Declaration that we have worked together to create in partnership with our sisters and brothers in Gaza. The Declaration demands an end to Israeli Apartheid, lists our renewed commitments, and provides an action plan as we move forward in this important work. In a week of historic events, this document proves we have accomplished the mission that brought us to Cairo: We are now united with the people in Gaza, and have a unified plan as we move forward in our crucial work.

While Egyptians turn us away from check points and borders, we remember that it is the Israeli government that has demanded we be kept out of Gaza. And the Israelis have made this demand because they are terrified of our movement. Their weapons and soldiers are no match for the ideas we carry with us, sparked in Palestine and now aflame in Egypt and throughout the world. Our global community join Palestinian civil society in some demands of our own, which the Israelis cannot quell by preventing our passage to Gaza. As the Cairo Declaration states, we demand Self-Determination for all Palestinians. We demand an End to the Occupation. We demand Equal Rights for All within historic Palestine. We demand the full Right of Return for all People of Palestine.

And we insist that as a global solidarity movement, we have the right to make these demands. Egyptian guards have been unable to stop us as we scream our demands from atop the pyramids, from the sidewalks of the U.S. and Israeli Embassies, and from the front pages of newspapers in Egypt, Kuwait, Yemen, and around the world. Allies have stamped these demands into the world’s streets as they march for Palestine’s freedom.

We must make these demands because our work is too important to wait for the the governments of the world to acknowledge that the Israelis will never offer Palestinians what they are owed. We can make these demands because we have the power of a global boycott, divestment, and sanctions movement that will some day be strong enough to cripple the Israeli economy, if we do the work we have promised here in Cairo. And, as Anna Julia Cooper so eloquently states in the US passport that was rejected by Egyptians working on behalf of Israelis yesterday, we will make these demands because freedom is the birthright of humankind.

We celebrate our sisters and brothers in Gaza and throughout Palestine, who have worked so hard to bring us to this historic moment. We celebrate allies here in Cairo and around the world, who are renewing their commitment to their crucial solidarity work by endorsing the Cairo Declaration. And we celebrate all of the travelers who slowly make their way to Rafah, whether they arrive or not. May the Egyptians run our passport numbers thousands of times as they turn us back. May the Israelis be reminded again and again that they have only encouraged us to work more tirelessly than we have so far. May the U.S. government be reminded of the wisdom of Cooper’s words, spat on every time we are rejected at a checkpoint or border crossing. May we leave Cairo with more hope than when we arrived that the siege will end and Gaza and all of Palestine will be free.

The Egyptian government has revoked the contracts for the buses that would take us one step closer on our journey to Gaza and has forbidden us from leaving Cairo. Military police have torn down our small hand-written cards tied to the Kasr al Nil Bridge, following the Israelis’ lead in trying to disappear the names and numbers of Gaza’s martyrs. Candles meant to float along the Nile in remembrance are still in their boxes, their hundreds of distributors never permitted to board the feluccas (river boats) waiting just beyond overwhelming security forces. We regroup, circle again, and find another path to remembering and reminding, another way through the many checkpoints and the impossible border ahead.

The Egyptian government taunts us, encouraging us to enjoy the tourist attractions Cairo offers during our mandatory stay in the city. And some of us do. We even take Gaza with us: Yesterday, Abdullah Anar, a Turkish Muslim, and Max Geller, an American Jew, raced up the face of one of the pyramids to unveil a 12 meter by 6 meter Palestinian flag. For about three minutes one of the most resilient structures on earth proudly called the name of one of the world’s most unbreakable people. We smuggle stories like this one through the tunnels connecting our hearts, exposing them in whispered reminders of the beauty and truth in this struggle, and the unending patience and flexibility we are slowly learning from our friends in Gaza.

We are more than 1,300 representing over 40 nations; we are scrappy, and we are undeterred. More than 330 French delegates camp out at their embassy, demanding the buses that never arrived there last night. They face an army of twenty-five military trucks, and a wall of police three bodies deep on all sides. 8 of us are held in Ismailia, a long way from our border destination. 30 more are detained in Al Arish, near the Rafah crossing. 2 keep a lonely vigil at a checkpoint just outside of Al Arish, refusing to turn back. And hundreds of us circle silently in the smoky haze of Cairo, evading the informants that infest our hostels and meeting spaces, planning, failing, and then planning again.

We do not forget that our frustrations here in Cairo are the smallest fraction of what our friends in Gaza suffer every day. We do not forget the passport privilege that has so far kept us from physical harm. We do not forget the shelter awarded by some of our embassies, and our friends and allies who make endless appeals to the Egyptian Foreign Ministry on our behalf. Yesterday was not a day of forgetting. December 27th is a day to remember.

We remember the more than 1,400 that were murdered. We remember the hundreds more who have died as a result of this horrific siege. We remember the tens of thousands who are still homeless, one full year later. And we remember our sisters and brothers on the other side of the Rafah border who have breathed life into this historic march every day for months, who have guided our feet to Cairo, and who light the shadowy path to Gaza. Most of all we remember that they will still be caged in Israel’s massive open-air prison long after we’ve safely returned home.

And so we freedom march in circles, planning, dodging, regrouping, often failing, sometimes succeeding, and then circling again. Joining our friends in Gaza for the Freedom March on December 31st is possibly nothing more than a dream now, but in these long days we take lessons from our Palestinian mentors, who have walked far more treacherous circles than ours. And we march with them in Cairo and in dozens of cities across the globe as we demand that the Israeli, American, and Egyptian governments listen to the people of the world and set Gaza free.

We were students, teachers, activists, and community members. We were Muslims, Jews, Christians, Palestinians, and allies. We were many, many more than the war criminal and his Mossad protectors. And we were powerful, more powerful than his security checkpoints and his electronically amplified lies. We strapped red tape to our bodies and stashed fake-bloodied clothes in our packs. Those of us who had the required documents, who had student IDs from New Orleans’ universities, passed through the checkpoints while our barred friends and allies gathered outside, armed with truths painted on posterboard and voices amplified by our growing numbers. With less than two weeks’ notice, we had formed a broad coalition that planned a multi-phased action to reclaim the same campus that is home to TIPAC (the Tulane-Israel Public Affairs Committee), that hosted Ann Coulter for “Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week” in 2007, and that was now inviting Ehud Olmert for a brief respite during his flight from international and Israeli courts. As Tulane University constructed a safe-haven and solicited interviews and meetings on behalf of its delinquent guest, dozens of our neighbors began to organize. And scores more responded to the call for action.

Tulane has long been an unwelcoming environment to our broader community, as well as to Muslim and Arab students. The culture of the white Northeastern American upper class dominates the campus, creating a space that vehemently reinforces a racist and elitist status quo and virulently quells dissent. Olmert’s strategists and local friends had chosen the city’s most Zionist and “secure” nonreligious institution for his visit, and many activists questioned the wisdom of challenging a hostile student body and a sometimes even more hostile private police force. Tulane voices have been almost entirely absent in a great many community dialogues and meetings about Palestine solidarity work, and the prospect of initiating a campaign for boycott, divestment, and sanctions on Tulane’s campus has always seemed laughable. But New Orleans is a city where so many feel linked to the Palestinian struggle through shared themes like the experience of diaspora, the right of return, and near-daily racist violence and oppression by police and military authorities. There is no space in our city where Israeli war criminals will not be challenged.

Tulane was as hostile an environment as we expected. Hundreds of Tulane students showed up to hear Olmert speak, and many laughed and applauded when he made jokes about the comments of overwhelmed Palestinians who threw up their hands in exasperation at his lies and walked out of the building. Many of our own group were only kept silent by the red tape we’d hidden on our bodies and then used to cover our mouths when Olmert first walked onto the stage. Scrawled on the tape were words that enumerated some of Olmert’s administration’s crimes, such as “human shields,” “illegal settlements,” “white phosphorous,” and “occupation.” We breathed deep and sat through an onslaught of racist lies about our Palestinian friends and family, until Olmert began to talk about the mistake Israel had made in “withdrawing” from Gaza. Then, one by one, our jaws aching from biting down on our testimonials of what we have seen with our own eyes and what our families and friends continue to suffer, we rose from our seats throughout the auditorium, slowly made our way to the aisle, and walked out.

Olmert’s audience, which for a moment became our own, gasped and whispered as more than twenty people stood, staring daggers at Olmert and his Mossad agents speaking into their sleeves, and then trailed down the aisles to the auditorium’s exit. Some of us cried, others shook with rage, but we all celebrated our action, small but fluid, and impenetrable by Olmert’s snide remarks and Mossad’s hidden weapons.

As we left the auditorium we heard the chants of our friends, and breathed freely for what felt like the first time in over an hour. The hostility had been palpable inside the auditorium, but our friends cried out to us and embraced us, and their numbers had easily tripled since we’d last seen them. They’d been shouting for two hours now, competing with calls of “Heil Hitler” and “Palestinians are Nazis” from students passing by. A Muslim woman in hijab had been hit with plates of food thrown from an adjacent third floor balcony while campus police looked on. Within twenty minutes we’d set up the next phase of our action: Four people dressed in bloodied clothes laid down on the ground in front of the auditorium, and we placed cardboard grave markers with the numbers of massacred Palestinians and Lebanese around them. As students began to flow out of the auditorium, we handed out fliers detailing Olmert’s war crimes and tried to prevent passers by from spitting on our friends on the ground. We were mostly successful, and managed to keep a student from urinating on one of the participants.

We were not at all surprised by the hostility we faced, but we were surprised by the positive responses of far more Tulane students than we expected. Members of Tulane Amnesty International, Tulane American Socialist Students United, and individual undergraduate and graduate students printed fliers, spread the word, and were an unmistakable presence in every phase of the actions. A day that we had dreaded and actions we had hated having to plan had resulted in a broadening of our local Palestine solidarity network into a community we had dismissed for too long. Our new friends and allies at Tulane know first-hand how much they are up against in an institution that is between one-quarter and one-third Jewish and regularly equates Zionism with Judaism, but they are aching to take up the challenge. They are Muslims, Palestinians, Jews, and allies. They are freshman, upperclassmen, and graduate students. On October 13th, they joined students from the General Union of Palestine Students and Amnesty International of University of New Orleans, as well as students from Loyola University, in standing up to hundreds of aggressive classmates, taping their mouths shut to announce their presence and their intentions. Suddenly the challenges we face in our local solidarity work seem more surmountable. The despicable war criminal inadvertently gave one gift to New Orleans during his visit: He gave the beginnings of Tulane’s Palestine solidarity movement an unforgettable debut.

We continued this way for I don’t know how many meters, and soon I couldn’t hear anyone behind me, only a murmur that might have been distant voices ahead. Each point of light held the promise of hot sun and desert air, but each time I arrived to find only more tunnel, and a hand imploring me to follow deeper.

Soon my legs were burning with wanting to stand. It became so dark in the long lapses between electric lights that my guide had to take my hand as we felt our way along. So many times I said “Khalas” — I have seen enough. But at each light he would signal that it was just a little further.

Finally, I was finished. I could not remember why I had followed, and why I had continued to follow. I’d lost track of how many lights we’d passed, and had no idea how far the journey back would be. My guide pointed to a light maybe 8 meters ahead, and this light was different. Brighter, and more yellow. I knew this time we’d almost reached our destination, perhaps the end of the tunnel and the relative freedom of Egyptian sun and sand, but I couldn’t continue. “Khalas,” I said, and this time he knew I meant it. I turned and began to feel my way back.

Soon I was tearing through the tunnel, tripping over the uneven floor and scratching my fingers on the packed dirt and sand of the walls. Craggy sections of the ceiling tore at my hijab but I would not slow. My guide grabbed my hips to steady me and force a more even pace, and so I dragged him with me. Finally he pulled me to my knees inside one of the occasional wooden box frames supporting the more than 20 feet of packed sand and dirt above us. He sat down next to me and pushed his open palms up through the air in front of his chest and then down, showing me how to breathe. “Shway,” he said, “slow.”

Nearly everyone I’ve talked to in Gaza has told me that the effects of the siege and the massacre have been worst for women and children and I believe them, but seven meters below the rubble of Rafah and the rumbling of the tractors that push this endless sand away from the mouth of each new tunnel, my thoughts turn to Gaza’s men.

The guide kneeling beside me, and thousands like him, cheat death every day in these tunnels as they journey back and forth between Rafah, Egypt and Rafah, Gaza, one city divided by a border and a cruel siege. And nearly every day, at least one of these men loses his gamble and does not come home. The siege has kept out everything but a painfully short list of humanitarian items. Building materials, a wide variety of foodstuffs, ink and paper, and so many other necessities are not permitted to enter Gaza. If the people of Gaza are to have anything close to a life, to bathe and eat and rebuild and learn, they must purchase this contraband illegally, and someone must illegally import it.

The Israeli government claims that the tunnels must be bombed because they are used to smuggle weapons, but in reality the tunnels are almost always used for anything but. After the massacre the tunnels brought lions and tigers to replace the ones loosed by the attack on Gaza’s largest zoo (Can you imagine? Amid all the bombing and chaos, wild animals running through the streets of Gaza!) Many people have told me the next big project is to smuggle in cars, a necessity in a place where virtually every vehicle is subject to regular breakdowns.

The tunnels provide a necessary lifeline for the people of Gaza, but as my guide patiently awaited the end of my panic attack, I began to realize that they are born out of another necessity: The tunnels offer an opportunity for men to reclaim their place as protectors and providers in a society where occupation and siege make those roles virtually impossible.

A few days earlier, Palestinian psychiatrist Eyad Sarraj told me of a game he plays with his young nephew called “Arab and Jew.” In the game, his nephew would play a Palestinian, chasing Dr. Sarraj around the yard and pretending to throw rocks at him. Not long ago, they played the game again, but this time his nephew insisted on playing the Israeli. Shortly into the game the small boy leapt onto his uncle’s back and began to beat him as hard as he could. Once Dr. Sarraj was able to escape his nephew’s brutal attack, he immediately asked his sister about the change in her son’s behavior. She told him that the child had recently witnessed his father humiliated and severely beaten by Israeli soldiers. Dr. Sarraj tells this anecdote to illustrate a growing trend he’s seen in young Palestinians: As parents, especially fathers, are humiliated, beaten, arrested, and otherwise disempowered in front of their children by Israeli soldiers, they lose their status as protectors in their children’s eyes. Desperate for signs of strength in terrifyingly unstable and dangerous times, young Palestinians find a new role model: the Israeli soldier.

Dr. Sarraj finds the origin of this trend in the Nakba (catastrophe) of 1948, when Israelis began ethnically cleansing Palestinians from their land. Since 1948, the trauma of losing agency over one’s life and living conditions has become, in the words of Dr. Sarraj, “a part of the Palestinian psyche.” This trauma, which has grown with every violent incursion into Palestinian communities, strongly intensified with the first Intifada in 1987, when Israeli soldiers mercilessly beat children armed only with rocks, and also beat and arrested their parents. The psychiatrist notes that many of these children grew up to embrace more violent weapons in the second Intifada in 2000, a response to the brutal abuse and humiliation they’d witnessed. More than 45% of Palestinian children have watched Israeli soldiers beat and/or arrest their fathers, and the trend Dr. Sarraj describes has grown exponentially since the December/January massacre. Since the attacks, more than 75% of the youth of Gaza do not believe their parents can protect them from Israeli soldiers. Surrounded by the rubble of schools, hospitals, and whole neighborhoods, and with virtually no hope of employment upon graduation (the siege-induced unemployment rate is 80%), it is hard for the youth of Gaza to envision much of a future. And it is virtually impossible for their parents, highly educated but lacking agency and employment, to give them hope.

The trauma that is now part of the Palestinian psyche, that forces Palestinian youth to seek the new role model of the Israeli soldier, can be seen at its worst when these children grow up. Dr. Sarraj tells another story from a brief detention in a Palestinian prison. In the cell next to his, he heard a Palestinian guard interrogating a prisoner. The guard’s voice became louder and more frantic as his anger grew, until he began screaming at the prisoner in Hebrew. Dr. Sarraj later learned that the guard had been severely tortured in an Israeli prison. In this moment of uncontrollable anger, the guard became his tormentor.

Stories like these are all too frequent in Gaza, where weddings and graduations are celebrated with a soundtrack of constant Israeli bombing and shelling. My own such story came on a beautiful afternoon on the beach, while eating lunch with a large family. One of the older sons, maybe in his late teens, asked me to follow him to a small tent tucked behind the rows of family tents facing the Mediterranean. The son sat me down at a cheap metal table that had been transformed into a desk, decorated with a poster of young men murdered by Israelis, a couple of notebooks, and a mug holding some pens and a small Hamas flag. The man seated behind the desk and surrounded by young boys anxiously awaiting their next task made it clear that he would interrogate me, and sent one of the boys to find an interpreter on the beach. The son who had brought me beamed at my side, occasionally picking up the Coke my interrogator had presented me, encouraging me to drink more. After about ten minutes my interpreter arrived, another boy in his late teens. My interrogator spoke in a serious voice, but his questions were the same as those I’d received from students and families, curious about my country, a source of so much fascination and suffering for the people of Gaza. “What do Americans think of Palestinians? Who do Americans blame for the ‘war’ in December and January? What does American media say about the people of Gaza, and about Palestinians? What do Americans think of Bush? What will Obama do differently?” Throughout my “interrogation” I could not distract myself from the image of this authority figure, digging his toes into the sand, surrounded by a volunteer staff of young boys, protecting the beach by investigating a camera-toting foreigner from behind his make-shift desk and small Hamas flag.

This story is not representative of my experiences with Hamas. I do not know my interrogator’s official role within the government, if he actually has one, and I expect that the members of Hamas who were tasked with protecting and providing for our delegation would have been angered to learn of my unauthorized interrogation, an inconvenience they would have spared me. But this story stays with me because of the trauma Dr. Sarraj describes, which was palpable long before he described it to me. In detaining and interrogating a foreigner whose American passport can take her anywhere in the world and could have rescued her from the December/January massacre, this man momentarily seized his agency. In front of his young, eager audience, he claimed his place as their protector.

The phenomenon Dr. Sarraj illustrates is not only visible in individuals. One need only look at the devastated building of the Hamas-led Palestinian Legislative Council (PLC) to see the Israelis’ humiliation and abuse on a governmental scale. Of all of the destroyed buildings I’ve seen in Gaza, in some ways this one haunts me most. These walls housed a democratically elected government that has endured a vicious siege since 2006, fought off an attempted coup, and has struggled with great patience and flexibility to be seen as legitimate by the global community. All of these pressures combined are enough to destroy a government, but they are magnified exponentially by the horrific massacre that stole the lives of more than 1,400 Palestinians and forced the PLC to meet in a tent behind their largely collapsed building. I think often of the meetings held in this vulnerable tent: I wonder if sometimes the pressures bearing down on these legislators simply become too much, and they are unable to breathe, to force their words out into the hot air of a Gaza parking lot.

Just as the task of protecting and providing for one’s children in Gaza is nearly impossible, the task of Hamas to fulfill the role of protector and provider for 1.5 million people is truly Herculean. Every day the leaders of this government wake up to regular attacks from one of the best-funded militaries in the world and a global misrepresentation as a terrorist organization that took power by force. Because of the horrific Israeli siege Hamas cannot provide rebuilding materials to the people of Gaza, or even feed the people who voted them into power based on the party’s history of providing necessary social services to the Gaza community. The vast majority of food aid that reaches Gaza comes from the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), tasked with caring for Gaza’s refugees (80% of the population). While UNRWA supplies vital necessities to the slowly starving people of Gaza, their presence is a constant reminder of what Hamas cannot provide. It would be a lie to say that Hamas is loved by everyone in Gaza. But every action for which Hamas is condemned by western media must be understood in the context of the inhuman Israeli occupation and ethnic cleansing, which have become so commonplace and expected we sometimes forget they exist. With the siege, their complicity in the attempted coup, and the December/January massacre, the Israeli government has stolen the agency of the government the people of Gaza chose.

While Dr. Sarraj’s explanation of the societal effects of trauma explains so much about my interactions in Gaza, about the youth who only want to be photographed pretending to shoot guns at my camera and the gaming centers whose violent advertisements are omnipresent on Gaza’s city streets, the brilliant professor and one-state activist Haidar Eid makes an important counterpoint to Dr. Sarraj’s theory. While Dr. Eid agrees with much of what the psychiatrist describes, he insists that by attributing every action Palestinians take to Israeli-induced trauma, one steals the last ounce of agency Palestinians have. When Palestinians take up arms against their occupiers, or smuggle food and tigers through tunnels, they resist the inhuman Israeli occupation and reclaim some of their agency. As a Palestinian soldier told a delegation member, “What else are we supposed to do? We cannot sit by when they come to kill our families. We have to protect them.”

It has been more than 12 hours since I left the tunnel, and I still can’t catch my breath. Dusty walls of packed earth occupy my eyelids, and whenever I near sleep the walls begin to crumble. When we finally neared the tunnel entrance and I could see real, natural light maybe 15 meters away, we heard a distant rumble. Bombs dropped from Israeli planes perhaps, or a partial tunnel collapse somewhere, or more mechanical digging. All of these things happen almost every day in Rafah, and then there are the near-daily silent threats, like the poisonous gas the Egyptian military releases into tunnel entrances before permanently sealing them. As I scrambled out of the narrow tunnel passage and into the loop of rope that would pull me up to the surface and back to a reality where my American passport and some patience guarantee my safe passage across the Rafah border, I watched my guide shrink below me, before ducking back into the bend of the tunnel and resuming his daily routine.