Gaza live: a snapshot of life amid blockades and daily gunfire
The Guardian launches a 12-hour project to document life in Gaza, featuring families, fishermen and business people
A local zookeeper explains how he has resorted to taxidermy to preserve his lion and tigress. Link to this videoThe crossing from Israel into Gaza is always an unsettling experience. In a few hundred metres, you pass from an advanced hi-tech western state complete with generously watered municipal flower beds and lawns into an impoverished dusty enclave where the once-thriving economy has been thrust into reverse and where up to 80% of the population is dependent on humanitarian aid.
The vast Israeli border terminal at Erez echoes to the footsteps of a handful of people monitored by cameras and Israeli security personnel, protected by bullet-proof glass. The numerous metal turnstiles clang, breaking the silence.
After a remotely operated gate within the 24ft-high concrete wall closes behind you, a long walk in a steel-caged corridor though the Israeli-imposed security "buffer zone" lies ahead. It is surprisingly tranquil: lizards scuttle, birds flit – there is only the occasional crack of gunfire.
At the other end, uniformed Hamas officials in a shabby portable building inspect documents before searching luggage. Passport details are logged in a computer; until recently, a printed notice informed foreigners that it is forbidden to bring alcohol into Gaza.
This passage from Israel to Gaza symbolises two connected realities: the continuing isolation of the tiny enclave and its 1.7m people, and the entrenchment of Hamas rule.
Five years ago this month, Hamas – which had won elections 18 months earlier – seized control of the Gaza Strip in a bloody battle with its arch rivals Fatah. Israel responded by drastically tightening the economic blockade which it had imposed the previous year following the capture of an Israeli soldier. By mid-June 2007, Gaza was under siege, cut off from the rest of the world.
Israel's aim was to push the squeezed population into forcing the radical Islamist faction from power. Many, both in Gaza and in the international community, saw the policy as collective punishment. Two years ago, under international pressure following the killing of nine Turkish activists on board a ship bringing aid to Gaza, and in the growing realisation its strategy had failed, Israel eased – but did not lift – the blockade.
The continuing restrictions have, according to Filippo Grandi, head of the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA, "completely obliterated" Gaza's economy. "The people who really have been penalised are not the people in power in Gaza; it is the common people who are being impoverished by the blockade, but also the business community, which has a greater stake in peace," he said.
Gaza has made many headlines in the past five years. But the experiences of ordinary people trying to go about their daily business are often obscured behind the frequent rockets, bombings, shootings and demolitions.
Now, in a unique venture for a mainstream news organisation, the Guardian is attempting to redress that. Over 12 hours, we will tell the stories from Gaza on our website, which we hope will draw a picture of life behind the fences and walls. Some of this material has been gathered over recent days, but much of it will be reported and published in real time during the course of the day.
A fisherman speaks of the Israeli warships which prevent him going beyond three nautical miles from the coast. A family preparing Friday lunch, the most important meal of the week, will describe living on food aid and without power for many hours a day. We will report from Gaza's biggest hospital on the challenges it faces. A businessman describes the catastrophic effect of the blockade on his small factory. We will look at life under daily gunfire in the buffer zone, how farmers are adapting to the export ban, and the rise of the tunnels industry.
We speak to children about their lives and hopes for the future. We will look at the prospects for a baby born today. We visit a zoo whose owner, unable to replace dead animals, has resorted to taxidermy. We meet a woman prevented from travelling to the West Bank to complete her Masters degree. We will listen to a sermon delivered at Friday prayers at Gaza's main mosque; we will interview a motorist about the fuel crisis. We plan to visit a yogurt factory destroyed – for the fourth time – in an air strike earlier this week.
We speak to an artist inspired by her local landscape, and a young woman who refuses to conform to conservative social pressures. We will visit the beach to witness families enjoying the afternoon sun, and we will attend a wedding celebration this evening.
This cannot be a comprehensive picture; rather it is a series of snapshots of life in Gaza. It will be accompanied by commentary and interviews providing a wider context, and it will be open for readers' comments.
Earlier this week, we visited the offices of al Mezan, a human rights centre in Gaza City, for an assessment of Gaza today from director Issan Younis. The situation, he said, was "a bit easier now compared to the first three years of siege".
But, he added, "what is important is that the consequences of the closure will continue for a long time. What we have seen is the hijacking of a piece of land, and throwing it back 30 or 40 years. The closure and siege has gone beyond collective punishment. What we have now is the de-development, the reversal, of a society and an economy. It has affected the dynamics of the whole community."
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Daily life in Gaza -- in pictures
As our live blog follows a day in Gaza, these photographs capture ordinary life for some of its 1.7 million inhabitants
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