Gaza International Airport (code
GZA) -- often jokingly referred
to as
"
Yasser Arafat International", but Abu Amar has not yet seen it
fit to join the ranks of fellow
Middle Eastern dignitaries King
Saud,
Sultan
Qaboos and
Saddam Hussein (among others) by naming an airport
after himself -- is a
microcosm of the dashed
aspirations of
Palestine.
Facts and Figures
Located in Dahaniya, at the southern end of the Gaza Strip near
the Rafah border crossing between Israel and Egypt, the airport
was opened to great fanfare in November 1998. The airport is a modern
little facility with a small but impeccable terminal building and
a single runway, all built with extensive aid from the European Union.
In its brief heyday, flights operated to Egypt, Jordan, Morocco and
Spain, but Israel went out of its way to cripple the newly-born airport
and eventually shut it down entirely.
The Story
Since I gather that the number of Westerners who managed to use the
airport can be counted on my fingers, at the risk of GTKY I
suppose I'd better record my own experience (in April 2000) for
posterity.
The flight from Cairo was first delayed for two hours, since in
the mornings a fog often settles on the airport (which is near the sea),
and while the Palestinian Authority has bought, paid for and shipped
equipment that would allow landings in inclement weather,
in the name of security Israeli Customs have
impounded the gear for 3 years and counting. Once we finally took off,
the EgyptAir flight itself passed
uneventfully, taking all of 40 minutes aboard a Boeing 737 with
seven (7) passengers.
We landed at Gaza airport, and waited. Nothing happened for half an
hour or so. Eventually we descended to the tarmac, and waited some
more. A little bus showed up, we climbed in, and after another
half hour the bus started moving. The bus trundled along the heavily
guarded border, stopping every now and then at checkpoints and
remote-controlled gates. I counted six parallel electric and/or barbed
wire fences, the land underneath undoubtedly heavily mined, and naturally
lots of watchtowers to watch over it all. There is more of the same
a few kilometers away on the Egyptian side of the border.
At Rafah, the luggage from the plane was plonked onto a conveyor belt
that disappeared into a building. We were ordered to strip off
all metallic objects, including belts, and pass through a hypersensitive
metal detector while our carry-on baggage was searched. Next we went
through Israeli immigration -- an almost painless process for me,
considerably less so for the locals -- and then waited. An hour or so
later, the luggage appeared, at the other end of the belt, all bags and
suitcases opened and presumably carefully examined, all out of
sight. (Lose any valuables? Just try proving it.)
One more hour of thumb-twiddling later, we picked up our baggage, reboarded
the bus and returned to the terminal. At the terminal there was a cursory
Palestinian passport check and then I finally emerged into the harsh
daylight of the Mediterranean. The 40-minute
flight had taken me over 7 hours, and I didn't even get a single stamp
in my passport as a souvenir. (I did, however, get an entry stamp
from the Israeli border at Erez, which furnished obvious proof
of having been to Gaza and resulted in a rather detailed interrogation
upon departure from Israel...)
The Justification
So why does Israel do this? A part of the reason is simply that
it can. Another part is that Israel wants
to rub in the fact that Palestine is not sovereign and that
Palestinians remain subject to Israeli whim. And the excuse always
offered, the justification for any deed, is bitachon, security.
On my way out of the airport, I ran into a little group of schoolchildren
out on a school trip. They weren't going anywhere,
mind you; they were visiting the airport itself,
because it's about the most exciting thing there is in Gaza. More likely
than not, none of those kids have ever left the 40-by-6 kilometer Strip,
and most of them will never get the permits to do so. They will spend
the rest of their lives trapped in their rabbit pen of unemployment,
desperation and brutality, surrounded by barbed wire and
watchtowers.
The Present
Even at best, flight schedules from Dahaniya were erratic, as
Israeli fighters turned around incoming and departing jets on random
pretexts (the fate of the next Cairo-Gaza flight after mine, among others).
Due to the intentionally stretched-out border control measures,
flights via Israel's Ben Gurion International Airport were far faster and
flying to Gaza was a losing proposition both for airline and passenger.
(There is also a commercial angle here, as every flight to Dahaniya
means more revenue to the PA and less revenue for
Israel's flight authorities. In fact, before Oslo, it was government
policy enshrined in legislation to forbid any Gazan businesses that
could compete with Israeli companies -- one reason for the 60%
unemployment rate.)
In case you're wondering why I chose Gaza, I needed to return to
Tel Aviv a few days early but the direct flights were full, so
blissfully unaware of the complications I decided to take a little
detour...
Soon after the start of the al-Aqsa Intifada in 2000, the airport
was forced to shut down entirely as a means of collective punishment.
In November 2001, after a terrorist attack in Haifa, Israeli
troops entered the airport, bulldozed the control tower and
blew up the runway. The airport is thus not operational and is
likely to remain so for the foreseeable future.