Images of Gaza: A few places that caught my eye

By Ali Abunimah

The minaret and entrance of the Great Mosque of Gaza, also known as the al-Omari Mosque.

(Several nice photos posted)

"Before I went to the Gaza Strip for the Palestine Festival of Literature (palfest.org), I had only ever experienced that part of Palestine through words, images and videos.

I had imagined Gaza City would feel much more intensely crowded and dense, and there are of course areas that feel that way. But my impression of the old city was that it had the laid-back feeling of a smaller coastal town, one whose history extends to ancient times.

Destruction due to Israeli bombing is visible in many places around the city and up and down the Gaza Strip — sometimes a particular building on a street has been taken out leaving a mass of oddly angled concrete slabs and steel reinforcement bars, sometimes a whole city block. It is terrifying to imagine what it must have been like when Israel was wreaking such devastation.

But destruction was not my overwhelming impression of Gaza City and not what I chose to focus on in these images.

Gaza City is all about life: just like every other city in the world, people wake up every day and go to work. Students and children flow into their schools as the early morning quiet is overtaken by the sounds of human voices and cars blowing their horns.

For thousands of years, Gaza, as a coastal city, was a cosmopolitan crossing point — which makes its isolation today as a result of Israel’s internationally-backed siege and sea blockade all the more cruel and poignant....."