Gaza defies bleak predictions demonstrating resilience and vitality
Despite predictions of an unliveable Gaza, a recent visit highlights the city's resilience, beauty, and the vibrant life that persists amidst adversity.
Did anyone really believe it was necessary to drop 2000-pound bombs on hospitals, burning people alive? The wholesale death and destruction lacked any meaning other than as an act of revenge and ethnic cleansing. So please spare us your shock at Trump's articulation of that reality.
To make Gaza unliveable has always been the plan. But if you think that Palestinians agree that Gaza or any part of Palestine can ever be made "unliveable", you have clearly never met a Palestinian in your life.
Let me take you back to the headlines made by the United Nations when it predicted "Gaza would be unliveable by 2020". I visited Gaza in 2023. The city was not only liveable but magical, befitting its reputation as a phoenix, the mythical bird reborn of its own ashes.
We had just moved into a new apartment along Gaza's beachfront. (Yes, Mr President, we had gorgeous beachfront properties that your country's bombs destroyed.) There on our balcony we would have morning coffee, the sea before us, the red-tiled roofs of Rimal out the side windows, and we reflected every morning on the miracles that Gazans achieved despite continuous military offensives and 17 years of stifling siege by Israel, a siege that limited building materials as well as basic food supplies.
The city was on a par with the best Mediterranean destinations I have visited. Clean, beautifully landscaped and kept, organised and welcoming. The beach was lined with cafes made mostly out of recycled material, restaurants and hotels built with the rubble from previous wars, rooftop gardens yielding organic fruit and vegetables. The city was the embodiment of the miracle of living.
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