Ahmed Abu Artema
The Electronic Intifada / August 7, 2024
I’ve always dreamed about the Bedouin life and imagined living it.
To me, Bedouin life means freedom, native intelligence and a simplicity of life that heals us from the diseases of modern industrial civilization, the pressure to pay bills, the air pollution and the food contaminated with preservatives.
Before Israel’s ongoing genocide in Gaza, I would often sit in front of the television with my family in the evening and watch a Bedouin series extolling the simplicity of life in the desert.
The program depicted tribes living in oases in the heart of the desert, building simple homes, raising goats, camels, horses and chickens. When someone wanted to wander, he would simply mount his horse and set off across the vast sands of the desert.
The Bedouin did not need passports or transit visas because their land was large and knew no borders. People lived on what they produced from agriculture and animal husbandry.
There were no debts to banks to pay in installments for the homes, cars and furniture modern living demands. A person erected their home in an hour using whatever fabric or leather was available and would dismantle it in the same time when it was time to move on.
As I watched, I would tell myself that giving up aspects of modern life is a price I would be willing to pay in exchange for a life of freedom and simplicity.
Yes, they live without electricity. But they stay up at night with the moon and stars.
Yes, they do not have air conditioning or an electric fan to ward off the heat. But they learn how to cool themselves in the breeze.
Yes, they have no refrigerator for storing food. But they eat what they grow and raise instead.
Yes, they do not have phones or the internet. But they have social gatherings, friendships and community, where, if someone has more than they need, they barter with neighbors, not with a company or a government.
This is freedom.
Radical change
Since the first day of this genocidal war, our lifestyles in Gaza have radically changed.
Right from the start, Israel imposed a tight siege on the Gaza Strip, including even hospitals, prohibiting the entry of basic necessities of life.
Superficially, our lives and those of the Bedouin seemed to grow similar.
Without electricity or fuel to power generators, people have become accustomed to a pitch black night undisturbed by modern lighting, with only the moon lighting up the sky.
With no fuel, there is no traffic. Instead of cars, people now use carts pulled by donkeys or horses.
Refrigerators have stopped working, and people have returned to our ancestors’ methods of cooking and preparing food – if they can find any.
Heaters stopped working during the winter. And in the summer, there is no air-conditioning. Gaza’s people no longer have any option to deal with the cold other than using heavy blankets. They have no option to confront the heat except by pouring whatever water is available over themselves.
People have reverted to a profoundly simplified life. There is no running water, and every day is shaped by a quest – often requiring long distances and long waits in exhausting lines – to secure a few gallons of water for domestic use and drinking,
Most people have lost their homes, with estimates suggesting that more than 70 percent of Gaza’s homes were destroyed or damaged since 7 October.
There is no shelter. Instead, we live in tents or build make-shift homes. Using their bare hands, some people have dug latrines in the sand.
Scarce firewood is now the go-to alternative to cooking gas.
Life without dignity
In February, I went to Al-Mawasi, in Gaza’s south, where tens of thousands have sought shelter from Israel’s bombs.
The scene first reminded me of the television series I used to watch on Bedouin life. Tents were erected on sand dunes for as far as the eye could see. Women were washing clothes by hand in the open air and hanging laundry on ropes.
The sea breeze would drift through the tents and clothes.
For a brief moment, I felt the joy of outdoor living. But this, of course, was an illusion.
Tents are extremely crowded to the point of suffocation, leaving little room for a person to feel any kind of freedom, privacy or calm.
The crowds lining up at food distribution points or waiting for water trucks spoil any notion of the benefits of a simple life.
I turned south and saw the Egyptian-Palestinian border, where at the time – now the Israeli military has taken control of the border – the Egyptian army had erected an iron wall followed by a barbed-wire wall to prevent a mass exodus of displaced people.
This is not the life of freedom that the soul longs for. The Bedouin life has no borders that restrict people from setting out.
Israel gave us the misery of a caged life before 7 October. It has deprived us of any of the advantages of a simple life since.
The ways of our ancestors resonated with a certain freedom that encompassed everything from the coastal plains to the heights and valleys of the West Bank – and all the land in between.
The life forced upon us by Israel – a life without dignity – surrounds us with walls and fences on every side.
Our souls are tired.
Where we would once plant and eat what we harvested, in the dangerous wasteland of genocide, people can no longer even farm.
Israel’s indiscriminate and massive bombardment of Gaza has destroyed most of Gaza’s agricultural land and decimated the environment.
Gaza’s sky
In ancient times, the sky at night was looked to for meaning in life. So during these nights of war, I thought I would at least take advantage of the dark to truly feel the vast sky.
But I quickly realized that my sky isn’t the same as that observed by the poets and prophets.
Mine is a sky of warplanes, quadcopter drones, surveillance drones and F-16 fighter jets, these “marvels” of American and Israeli technology that have contributed so greatly to the killing of more than 39,000 of my people.
Poets and prophets once observed the sky with tranquility to find revelation and inspiration.
We look up at the sky in fearful anticipation.
We know that it is from the sky that it will most likely be decided if we are to join the long convoy of death that offers us our only freedom of movement today.
Ahmed Abu Artema is a Palestinian writer, activist and refugee from Ramle
