Blog 8 – Of Tin Smiths in Gaza and Bambous
20.11.2023
It is an ordinary day. I go to see the tin smith to see if my two watering cans are ready yet. The Bambous tinker says, “next week”. It is, as expected, once again “next week”. I ordered a pair of bespoke watering cans and, though not in a cast-iron hurry, may live to regret it. When I brought up the original possibility of self-designed watering cans, I explained what I wanted: a pair like his middle-sized watering cans, only oval not round. Age makes even light things heavier. So, the oval shape makes the weight nearer my body, thus less heavy to lift and carry. To think I used to do agricultural work, carrying two big watering cans from the spring up at La Ferme co-op farm to its tomato plantations, back and forth for a whole day. Anyway, the tin smith turned me down flat. He only makes round ones, he said. So, I said, thinking fast, “And what if I bring a cut-out of the oval shape?” And he said, “It’s a deal!” So, the next week I took a carefully designed and cut bit of cardboard, an elongated oval. He took it from me and said, “Come next week.”
I did. He said the same thing again.
I went around again. He said the same thing again.
I had, meanwhile, begun to have a nightmare that he might make two watering cans with the spout coming out of the long sides instead of the short sides. Ram confided he had, from the get-go had the same thought. So, I awaited his reply in trepidation on this third return visit. He did say, “Next week”. But, he added, “wait”. He disappeared into the back of his stall and brought me an exhibit. He showed me that he had started making one. The hole for the spout to come out is in the correct place. So, I smiled, thrilled. Admittedly, he has the difficult task of making the model cut-out for each bit of the production. He intends to keep the pieces of pattern he makes so that he can make some more watering cans on the new model he is inventing, to adorn his fine display on the Royal Road, where he has his shop, he says.
So, I will pop around next week. And I naturally expect to hear, “Come next week!” Anne, ma soeur Anne, ne vois-tu rien venir? Luckily rain is falling just about every day in Bambous. So, the watering cans are not essential.
And, all thoughts these days, ending up in Gaza, I found myself wondering if there are tin smiths in Gaza? And are they still working? Still alive? A genocide is hard to bear. I Googled “tin smiths in Gaza”. Yes. In May this year, UNRWA was looking to hire tin smiths for the maintenance of its properties. I imagine the maintenance. What would the tin smiths do in those 26 out of the total number of 35 hospital properties in Gaza hit by bombs and shells? They are either destroyed or forced to stop working for lack of electricity, water, food, oxygen, and medical supplies. No tin smith could hope to restore those hospitals. Any number of the UNRWA schools have been bombed beyond the possible repair by a tinker, however skilled. I feel sick to the stomach at the very thought of the strategy of destroying people’s hospitals and schools. And bombing 60% of the houses and flats, killing some, depriving the others of health care, and then making the rest flee, waiting for the bombs to explode anew.
But, I was set thinking.
Why is it that a UN body has premises and is offering health care to Palestinians in Gaza? What are we supposed to know, when we watch the news about the genocide the Israeli state is inflicting on Gaza?
The answer is that there were already so many Palestinians that were refugees that, in 1949, UNRWA was set up just for them. For no-one else – before or since. In Gaza, and also in the “West Bank including East Jerusalem”, in Jordan, the Lebanon and Syria. In fact, UNRWA still exists, one of the biggest UN bodies, only for Palestinian refugees. For their welfare. This is a sign that the international community, the United Nations, itself is responsible for the plight of the Palestinians. We, too, are. Israel occupies Palestine, including the Gaza strip, which it has occupied by a siege for 17 years, but the UN foots the bill, not Israel. It is the occupying power Israel that is supposed to have this responsibility and to bear its cost. (FYI, aid for Palestinian refugees living outside these five areas is provided by United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, UNHCR, which looks after the rest of the world’s refugees.) UNRWA was created in 1949, and has a humanitarian and development mandate to “provide assistance and protection to Palestine refugees pending a just and lasting solution to their plight”.
“The question of Palestine was first brought before the General Assembly in 1947. By resolution 181 (II), the Assembly decided to partition Palestine into two states, one Arab and one Jewish, with Jerusalem placed under a special international regime.” This quotation is from the United Nations web site.
The State of Israel came into existence in 1948, as planned, when the British colonizer withdrew.
The State of Palestine has until today never existed.
That is the injustice. Palestine was never decolonized. Its people were instead routed, made to flee their homes, and become refugees looked after by UNRWA or, failing that, placed under permanent military occupation, or failing that, under a state of “total occupation” or permanent siege, like Gaza has been for the past 17 years.
What Hamas reminded us on 7 October was this: “Anne, ma soeur Anne, ne vois-tu rien venir? to save us?”
The Palestinian people have waited long enough. Yes, they do exist. Long live the Palestinian struggle!
The people of Palestine, including Gaza, ask one thing: “And us?”
Lindsey Collen
for LALIT
Anyone who wants a fine introduction to the issues (if not tinkers), please just listen to Israeli historian now working at the University of Exeter, Ilan Pappé. On YouTube, just tap in “ilan pappé berkeley university” and you will get a talk given about three weeks ago. He speaks both brilliantly and humanely.
