Letter from Ramadan:

Meaning of freedom for us in Gaza;

It was a dream for us to see Gaza free, no check points, no military towers, no settlements and nothing of occupation. We could not believe it when they were talking about it in the news, even when they were covering it live, the Israeli tanks leaving the Gaza strip and the settlements are empty. Even when people could inter the settlements and next morning and move all over Gaza with no closures, even Gaza looked too big for us all that we could move inside the settlements freely. Oh my God, you can not imagine how beautiful are the areas that were taken by the settlers, clean nice wide beaches, prairies, fruitful trees, the sweetest water wells in the Gaza strip, the best agricultural areas, in addition to more that 60% of all Gaza strip (not 40 as they always say).

Even, Palestinian in Gaza strip could go into Egypt the first week of withdrawal through the open Egyptian borders, families could meet and come together from the Egyptian Rafah and the Palestinian Rafah, people went into AL Aryeesh into groups of thousands to buy Egyptian goods, they even walked miles to just feel free. You could not imagine how many people were on Khanunis and Rafah beaches, even, 8 people died because of drowning first morning after the withdrawal, they were happy to the point that they did not recognize danger. Those 8 people died free and did not lose the meaning of freedom because they were free only for 2 hours, and then their souls got free and they will stay free up there.
Now, it is the third week after what so called freedom, we all in the Gaza strip still don’t understand what does the word freedom mean, especially us who were born under occupation, it’s a thing inside us that we can not express it, we feel something strange but we don’t find it, we can not touch it. Then, the massacre in Jabalia and whose fault was it, which is still not clear, but we all know Israelis and we are used to their air force killing machines, it might be them who killed the 20 people in Jabalia, but also Hamas is still guilty to collect all those people and weapons together to be an easy target for the Israeli planes.
Should it be this way, should our freedom be with blood taste, or what is it our freedom, is it like all other people’s freedoms, like in Holland? I don’t think so, what we feel is fear and fear, nothing more than fear, fear of freedom or what so called freedom, we can not picture our freedom with all colorful beautiful nature colors, it is still dark vague, no specific features are clear to be taken into granted. All those Israeli tanks, canons, heavy gun machines that are surrounding Gaza are the only thing that is clear and we could take into granted, other things are still a dream.