In the mid-1970s, a young couple who had recently begun their married life together in the Jabaliya refugee camp in Gaza celebrated the arrival of their first born child, a little girl.  They called her Bushra, meaning “good news”.  Though they were too poor to have a photograph taken of her, she was the pride of their lives, and they watched her growing up with joy and hope in their hearts.

.
When Bushra was just five, she was killed by an Israeli military jeep which ran onto the pavement.

.
The official report called it an accident.

.
Bushra died before Ahmed Masoud was born, but her death touched his life deeply.  The gap left by her death could never be filled.  To make it worse, the family did not believe her death was accidental.  Before he ever learned his multiplication table, Ahmed learned to run away whenever he saw a jeep.

.
The first intifadha began when he was six or seven.  He enjoyed it at first: he and his friends used it as an excuse to bunk off school.  He would leave class to shout at the Israelis and throw stones at them, and even visited other schools to encourage the kids there to do the same.  His teachers wrote to his parents complaining about his truancy, but everyone was going on demonstrations at that time and his parents could do little about it.  He saw the whole thing as a game, anyway.

.
Then the Israelis began a new policy, known as “break their bones”.  If they caught a stone-thrower, they would smash his arm.  Ahmed witnessed this happening, but still did not take it seriously.  Other boys who got their arms broken were congratulated by their friends: it was cool - it showed that you were a real man.  You were tough.  You were a somebody.

.
At the age of ten, Ahmed was walking home from school one day when he found himself surrounded by Israeli soldiers, who were chasing some adult Palestinians.  He and the other kids threw stones at the Israelis, and were in turn chased by them.  Ahmed found himself cornered by a soldier.  He could have turned and run, but feared that he would be shot in the back.  He decided that the best thing to do would be to stay where he was.  He expected to be beaten up a little: perhaps hit a few times, knocked to the ground and kicked, as had happened several times before.  The soldiers generally got bored before very long and let him go home, bruised and bleeding but in one piece. 

.
But this time it was different.  He watched, fascinated, as the soldier bent down on one knee, and carefully aimed his rifle at him.  Ahmed could not believe he would actually pull the trigger.  He thought he was just trying to frighten him.  He heard the sound of the shot, but it did not seem to be connected with him - it seemed to have come from a long way away, and to be happening to someone else.  It seemed that seconds passed; as he started to fall over he realised he had been shot, and then the world went black.

.
He woke up in hospital.  He was a celebrity for a while: kids from his school visited him and brought gifts.  His wound was not life-threatening - he had been shot in the foot - and when it healed and he finally went back to school there was clapping, shouting and ullulating.  But underneath, Ahmed had changed.  He was now a “shot person”.  He realised that bullets hurt; his foot had been very painful.  He realised that what he had been doing was not a game.  And his parents were worried and angry with him - he had told them that he would not get involved with the stoning, and he had deceived them.  He was now afraid that if he went back to the protests, his family would lose him, and he had seen other families torn apart by the loss of their loved ones. 

.
And he started asking questions.  Why had he been targeted?  Do stones hurt that much, that he should be shot in return?  Why had he become a victim?  Why were the Israelis were there, in Gaza, in the first place?  What did they want? 

.
And he experienced real fear, for the first time.  He felt different from the others.  He realised that death was plentiful, and therefore cheap in Gaza.  Coming much later to Britain, he found life here being treated as something very precious.  But in Gaza at that time - and subsequently during the second intifada - life and death were almost equal.  As the gift of life was not appreciated, and as death had no impact, there were many people willing to mount suicide attacks.  But Ahmed wanted to live, and to be a human being, not a human bomb.
.

The second intifada was fought much more aggressively.  It began with stone-throwing, but the Israelis responded with missiles.  So the Palestinians responded with weapons.  It is a mistake to see Hamas as responsible for the initial upsurge of violence.  At the outset of the intifada, Hamas went around Gaza begging parents to keep their children at home, and to stop them throwing stones at settlements.  Those who did attack the settlements sometimes paid dearly for their rashness: Ahmed was standing near a stone-thrower when he saw his head blown off by a small missile fired from one of the settlements.  The Palestinians called these missiles “lao-lao”, and believed they were individually guided to their destination: they would follow you around, and once targeted, the individual had no escape.  They were as inexorable as fate.

.
After the stone-throwing was succeeded by armed violence on the Palestinian side, the Israelis mounted a series of air raids and invasions of the refugee camps.  Ahmed recalls the first invasion of Jabaliya camp.  First, the Israelis cut the power supply, so that it was pitch black.  Then the troops came in, firing at anything that moved, human or animal.  After the initial hurricane of destruction, the troops called on people to come out of their houses, so that they could find out who was there, and track down any wanted men.  But the people refused.  The people in Jabaliya camp always defended their territory - and paid the price in deaths. 

.
After the first ground incursions the Israelis used small pilotless aircraft, or drones, to control the territory from the air.  They carried missiles, and (the Palestinians believed) were controlled by computers.  The drone’s computer would launch a missile at any group of people over a certain size, or at anyone carrying a long tubular object which might be an improvised rocket for firing into Israel.  Unfortunately, these categories might include a group of shoppers in a market, or a plumber carrying a length of plastic piping, as well as a band of Hamas men about to launch a Qassam missile at a settlement.
.

The drones were too small to be easily seen, so they were difficult to avoid.  But Hamas devised a low-tech countermeasure in the Jabaliya camp: they collected everyone’s blankets, and strung them between the houses to cover the alleys, blinding the aircraft’s trackers.  Then the Israelis returned to the tactic of ground incursions.

.
Life for ordinary people in Gaza at this time became very difficult.  In terms of natural assets they had the sea, and that was about all.  Even that was not always safe, after the Israelis - claiming that arms were being smuggled in that way - started shooting at bathers.  But after a while people drifted back to the beach. 

.
Even moving around on dry land was difficult.  The Israelis divided Gaza into three sectors for security purposes: North, Central and South.  Palestinians could not move freely between these sectors.  Ahmed did not see his sister, who lived in another sector, for months at a time.  Many students at Gaza University failed their exams because they could not get in to study.  Meanwhile power, water and gas supplies were intermittent and unreliable.  The Karni crossing, through which nearly all commercial supplies enter and leave Gaza, would be closed for long periods. 

.
Travel outside Gaza itself was almost impossible.  A two-year-old cousin with cancer needed to visit Egypt for treatment.  But the Rafah border crossing into Egypt was closed at that time.  When her mother arrived there with her sick child, the Israelis agreed, as a concession, that the girl could cross into Egypt.  But in what can only be interpreted as a piece of cruel mockery, they specified that she had to cross the border, and go on to Egypt, by herself.  Of course, her mother had no alternative but to abandon the attempt and take her daughter back home with her.  A few months later the little girl was dead.
.

Meanwhile, Ahmed had begun to study English literature.  His mental world was expanding, but his physical existence was bounded by the two square kilometers in which he could move freely, including Gaza City and the Jabaliya camp.  For entertainment, he had the music of the bullets and missiles at night, which lulled him to sleep.  And his friends and relatives were dying.  Every three months, someone he knew well and loved would be killed.  He was himself close to death many times, and began to wonder, like Hamlet, whether it was better to wait quietly on fate or to act.  If he did nothing, when would it be his turn to be killed by a stray bullet?  Would it not be better to go out and meet his death head on?

.
His family were also affected.  His father and brother were both members of the Palestinian security forces.  Although the Israelis had agreed that these people were allowed to carry guns, the Palestinian Authority were worried that if the arms were stored centrally, the Israelis would steal or destroy them during their incursions.  (This fear was not groundless: the Israelis reduced nearly every Palestinian security building in Gaza to rubble during the course of the intifada). 
.

So as to prevent this, security personnel were ordered to take their weapons home for safe-keeping at the close of every working day.  However, this merely transferred the danger from a collective to an individual one.  If the Israelis discovered weapons in someone’s home, they would assume the person to be a terrorist: the person would be arrested and his house destroyed, rendering his entire family both penniless and homeless.  Therefore, every time the Israelis mounted an attack, Ahmed’s father and brother had to leave their house with their guns, and slip out of the camp into a place of safety - usually Gaza City - until the troops had left again. 

.
But have things improved since the Israelis withdrew from Gaza and dismantled the settlements there?  And what of the future?  Ahmed sees little hope for radical change any time soon, at least until a proper Palestinian state is established in the Occupied Territories.  Although the Israelis don’t invade Gaza any more, they still mount regular air attacks on the camps, and when not doing that they fly over Gaza at low level, breaking the sound barrier, terrifying the children with the sonic booms and shattering windows - just to show the Palestinians that they are still the boss.  They are winning few hearts and minds among the people. 

.
And the handover of the settlement lands (some forty percent of the total land area in Gaza) is not quite what it seems.  Before leaving, the Israelis sold the land to wealthy investors in the Gulf states.  The Palestinian Authority should never have accepted this arrangement, in Ahmed’s view: the land did not belong to the Israelis, so what right had they to sell it?  But the situation now is that Palestinians cannot farm the land without permission, even if they claim legal title to the land and have documentary proof of it. 
.

It appears that the United Arab Emirates wants to build up the tourist industry in Gaza.  But things may not be entirely plain sailing for them.  Hamas is beginning to ask whether those who did not liberate the land should have the use of it.  They intend to use at least part of it to house the homeless, with priority given to those who had their houses destroyed in the Rafah camps. 

.
So how have things changed for Ahmed since coming to study in Britain?  He says that is has been hard to build a new life, and to develop a different aspect of himself. 

.
To begin with, as he continued to receive news of the deaths of his friends and cousins that he had left behind, the losses actually became harder to bear.  Living in Britain he saw how beautiful life could be, and found it harder to accept death.  And in Gaza, there was a network of friends and family that would support him and grieve with him.  People here have other lives, and are concerned with the latest episode of Big Brother, not the latest fatalities in their family circle. 

.
Ahmed recalls that the first inkling he had of the death of one of his cousins was seeing his photograph in a copy of Metro, that a woman in the bus was reading.  He wept, and the woman treated him with kindness, sympathising with him and giving him the paper to keep.  Yet for most of his friends, and work colleagues, such events are remote and hard to understand.  Ahmed used to work at “front of theatre”.  He had to be sociable, chatting with customers and appearing unconcerned about anything.  It was very difficult.  He did not want to go clubbing and drinking with friends.  When he explained about life in Gaza, they thought he was exaggerating or fantasising.  So with these friends he had to suppress his thoughts, and to be silent.
.

Other friends treat him differently, and identify him too much with Palestine.  They only want to talk about the struggle and his political views.  Actually, even in Palestine they don’t talk all the time about the intifada.  As he says: “I am not a Palestinian theme park, and I do not want a tank as a birthday present”.  Ahmed also likes to talk about his work, and his studies.  After all, if there were no war in Palestine, they would still have to talk about something; they too are human. 

.
As he spends longer in the UK, Ahmed is learning to balance his two selves, which are bound up with his life here and his life there.  He has changed and adapted, so as to be able to deal better with the situations he encounters here: he is becoming as he puts it “a normal human being”. 
.

Meanwhile, I can’t help feeling that if the Bushra’s of tomorrow are ever to be born into a world where they can live and play happily like children in Britain, and can grow into adults without the fear of sudden death, the Palestinians will have a real need for the influence and example of people like Ahmed, who have gained a personal knowledge of different and gentler possibilities for their future lives.

.
(Interview with Rory Allen)