TEN DAYS IN GAZA – Photobook

The photojournalists had long gone by the time we walked into Gaza, over 10 years ago following the aftermath of operation Cast Lead, as the Israelis codenamed their devastation. Then we described the country as deeply scarred, the effects of horizontal shelling both horrific and extraordinary. There was so much visually disturbing destruction, it was tempting to jump out of the car, photograph what we saw and drive on to the next devastating scene. Such a visceral reaction however had nothing to say. That is, nothing more than what had been and has been said a thousand times before by a thousand media people.

There is in a place like Gaza a geological like profile to the people
and their collective experience. The great seismic shifts of the 20th
and 21st Century have imposed many deep strata and ‘folds’. To
jump out of the car and photograph and then on to the next, captures only top soil, it fails to see rock and layer after layer beneath.

We had gone into Gaza, to photograph the effects of what the Israelis described as an “incursion” to take photographs for a book and an exhibition of the children and young people affected by that “incursion”. We saw terrible things that deeply upset us but did not surprise us and we saw things that gave us hope that did surprise us. We saw large barns were orphans ate slept and did their schooling and we saw patient loving people in temporary buildings looking after children who had lost touch with the real world, constantly nervous and frightened. Those who hung on to their sanity gave us a slim hope for a better future. They had clearly clung like the vast majority of young people did to their education, the one thing the Israelis could not take away from them. Students would sit with us at the end of the day in cafés discussing politics, literature and philosophy well into the evening. We like to think we made friends and indeed often these students would meet us the next day to take us to places that either our hosts did not want us to go or did not even know about.

Some of those friends had not lost touch with us until last October when everything changed. Reports of friends’ death started to appear on our Instagram, Facebook and X accounts and then the pictures started coming in and the damage and destruction became clear. It was as though 2008 had repeated itself, only worse, much worse, a thousand times worse. Whereas 12 years ago there existed the possibility that things might have got better, there appeared to be no possibility of things getting better anymore and the truth that had always been there dawned on us, that nothing has ever got better since 1948. Perhaps what this book and accompanying exhibition does in equal amounts is underline the regularity with which Gaza and her people are attacked and that all the people smiling in our book were to be, wanted to be, the future. Even if they are still alive, today that seems only a remote possibility.

The visual journey of the photographers Anthony Dawton, Jim McFarlane and Giuseppe Aquili through the refugee camps of Gaza, as presented in the exhibition “The Children of Gaza” is a daunting experience. The circumstances of life in Gaza speak of hardship, despair and hopelessness, of the loss of home, belonging and existence: makeshift lodgings, the rubble of bombardment, a dividing and isolating border.

These children are brought up in a world dictated by international politics, which takes no account of their needs, interests and futures. Yet these children tell stories of innocence, resilience, perseverance, pride and joy. We can see in their faces that there is hope. The works contributed to this exhibition by Dia Azzawi with their colourful montages are further tribute to that.

Children are the guardians of the future. They represent our hope for a world free of war, terror and injustice. As a human race we must ensure that the children of the world enjoy our support, affection and protection, as they themselves will take our place one day.

Children in Gaza are a constant reminder that growth, education and development should be the maxims of any civil society and no-one should be deprived of them. Through education we form the future of our world and its well-being and ensure that the legacy of a civil society in which each member takes responsibility continues.