A place of peace and calm in Gaza
I read an account in The Observer on Sunday by my Newsnight colleague Mark Urban who set out in pursuit of his great-uncle’s war grave in Gaza. (He’s got a piece on this on his programme tonight, but I don’t know how my editor will take to me flagging this up.)
The reason this particularly caught my attention is because when I was in Gaza, straight after the recent ceasefire, I too went to visit the war graves – but I went to a different cemetery to the one in which Mr Urban’s great uncle is buried. He mentions being greeted by Ibrahim Jeradah MBE, former chief gardener, now night watchman.
I was greeted by Mohammad Hussain Mohammad Awaja (below), who for 23 years has been the custodian and gardener of the Deir el-Belah War Cemetery on the outskirts of al-Zawaida village, near the town of Khan Younis.
Mohammad tends to 727 graves dating from the First World War. He lives next to the graveyard with three generations of the Awaja clan. This is the smaller of the two Gaza war cemeteries, where a total of 3,900 Commonwealth war dead lie.
Most of those buried at Deir el-Belah were fallen British soldiers, but, Mohammad told me, as he counted off on his fingers: “There are also Canadians, Australians, New Zealanders, three Algerians, 43 Indian Hindus, 21 Indian Muslims and seven Jews.” Mohammad is very precise and knows his headstones.
When I entered Gaza, from Rafah in Egypt, I had to sign a piece of paper for the British Embassy in Cairo which agreed that it would indeed be reckless for me to travel there and acknowledging that I’d been strongly advised not to go. It’s hardly surprising that few of those whose forbears died fighting the Ottomans ever make the pilgrimage to this site any more, to lay wreaths and remember.
But if you’re among the descendants of those laid to rest here, lest you think the war dead of Gaza are forgotten: they are not. Rest assured… Mohammad Hussain Mohammad Awaja solemnly and lovingly maintains a sanctuary in the midst of mayhem. The lush lawns are trimmed, the edges neatly defined; the flowers thriving in the bone dry, sandy soil.
Today, despite being bombed and badly damaged just last year, Deir el-Belah is a place of peace and calm in a corner of Gaza where tranquil oases are few and far between. It is a moving experience just to be there and to reflect on wars past and wars present.
Mohammad’s son brought me and my team a bottle of Coke which we shared in the late afternoon winter sun. He wanted to tell me particularly about the graves of the seven Jewish soldiers which he tends just like all the others.
He walked me down to examine the Magen David on the grave of Private J. I. Breslauer of the Royal Fusiliers, whose headstone was damaged, he told me with a wry look, by gunfire from an Israeli sniper position nearby.
And just a bit further along, the grave of Private S. Rosenberg, also of the Royal Fusiliers – same story. They were hit, Mohhammad said, not in the latest fighting, but a couple of years back. He pointed out the sniper position – it’s the ochre-coloured building just over his right shoulder in the first picture.
I looked the two soldiers up on the War Graves Commission website. Private Jack Isadore Breslauer, aged 42, born in Poland. That’s all we know. And Private Solomon Rosenberg, died aged 38, also the son of two Polish Jews from Kielecka, left a widow in Great Portland Street, London.
They were both killed in October 1918, less than one year after the British Foreign Secretary Arthur James Lord Balfour had secretly penned the “Balfour Declaration” which stated that “His Majesty’s Government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people…”
It would be another eight years before this British policy became public knowledge. But as a Brit, I’ve been publicly admonished more times than I care to remember in Gaza for what Lord Balfour set in train.
Not that that makes any difference to the Gardener of Deir el-Belah, Mohammad Hussain Mohammad Awaja.
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