“They hear the sound and they hold their breath,” Ramadan said.
The head of the Gaza Community Mental Health Program, Eyad Sarraj, said the drones’ noise is something “you can’t escape.” Whether intentional or not, Sarraj said their constant presence induces a sense of helplessness among Gaza’s residents.
Video
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“In the back of the minds of everyone here is fear — from the psychiatrist to the student, a sense that something terrible is going to happen,” Sarraj said. “The drones are part of that story. They are part of the conditioning — every time we hear them, we go back to those events of violence and death.”
Entrepreneur’s challenges
Gaza is divided, not only between Fatah and Hamas, the primary political parties in the Palestinian national movement, but between fans of the European soccer giants FC Barcelona and Real Madrid.
Mohammed al-Mabrouk makes a brisk living exploiting this split. He works in the Rannoush sports bar in downtown Gaza City, where patrons pack into the low-ceilinged rooms to sip bitter coffee, smoke water pipes and root for their side in the big games.
None is bigger than “El Clasico,” the Barcelona-Real Madrid match that comes along a few times year. He charges an entrance fee for those games, shown on a handful of high-definition televisions smuggled through the tunnels along Gaza’s southern border with the Sinai. With 220 patrons paying $5 each, the occasions yield a small windfall.
But the take from the November 2010 match was wiped out by a drone, whose looping patrol blurred out much of the match. He reimbursed more than $1,000 in cover charges to a roomful of angry patrons, and since then he has added expensive subscriptions to several other satellite signals. That has done little good. But now Mabrouk can change satellites, flip through channels and show his patrons that he has done all he can. “So at least they know it won’t be better anywhere else,” he said.
His customers still make for the doors at the first telltale signs the picture is fraying, as it did during a recent Chelsea and Liverpool match. For reasons that no one can explain, only Russia Today, an English-language channel promoting Russian views, is resilient enough to survive the drone interference.
“The problem is in the sky,” said Nahed Hammad, who sells satellite dishes from his dimly lit storefront a few doors down, “not in the receiver.”
To some, proof of occupation
Hamdi Shaqqura, the human rights advocate, came downstairs one recent morning in his Gaza apartment to find a note from his daughter, Bisanne, a 22-year-old medical student. She had counted four drones overhead, and she advised her father to skip his morning run.
“But I’m all dressed and I think, ‘I can’t not do this, I can’t change because of this,’ ” Shaqqura recalled. So he set off, only to turn back in fear after about 100 yards, as several drones buzzed above.
“So I get back to my door and I say, ‘Come on, Hamdi, this is Gaza,’ ” he scolded himself, and headed back out. He got as far as he had before when he noticed that, as usual, he was dressed in an all-black track suit — the color of choice for many Palestinian militants. Once again, he headed home, shaking his head at the ridiculousness of the back-and-forth. “It affects every aspect of our lives, all day long,” he said.
For Shaqqura, though, the drones mean something else as well. In his view, they are proof that Israel still legally occupies the strip despite having pulled its soldiers and settlers out.
Israel has argued that it no longer occupies the area, meaning that it is not responsible for the health and welfare of its residents under international humanitarian law. But Israel controls the crossings between Gaza and Israel, the waters off its coast, and the airspace where the drones circle.
“This is the first meaning of the drones,” he said. “Israel’s military may not be on the ground anymore. But they are in the air — looking, always, at every square inch of Gaza. They don’t have to be here in Gaza City to affect every aspect of the lives of Gazans.”
The data collected by the Palestinian Center for Human Rights since the summer of 2006 reflect the up-and-down nature of Israel’s conflict with Gaza. In 2009, the year of the most recent war in Gaza, 315 people were killed in drone strikes, according to the center. The number so far this year is 60.
But Abu Ahmed believes the figures are too high, and that many of the deaths attributed to drones are actually the result of Apache helicopter strikes or F-16 missions, aided by drone surveillance. And as a leader of the Islamic Jihad in Gaza, Abu Ahmed, a big, bearded soldier in the movement’s war against Israel, has a closer-to-the-conflict view of those deaths.
Abu Ahmed is a nom de guerre, and he operates as much as possible away from the view of Israel’s drones.
His office curtains are drawn on a recent sunny day, his walls decorated with posters celebrating the deaths of Islamic Jihad fighters in combat. A ficus plant adds a bit of life in one corner.
In dealing with Israel’s military, Abu Ahmed abides by a basic rule: The higher-tech Israel goes, the lower-tech go the Islamist movement’s foot soldiers.
“When drones are above us, we must meet face to face,” he said. “We must not drive our own cars or take taxis. So we walk. It is obvious when we are being tracked.”
He lists the different names of Israel’s drones — the Hunter and Heron, among others — and cites their range and maximum altitude. A group within the Islamic Jihad works on collecting such information, although so far that intelligence, along with improved weaponry flowing through Gaza’s southern tunnels, has not bolstered the group’s defense against them.
They have never shot one down.
“We advise the people to think of this voice like the noise of rain, something light and humorous and part of life here,” Abu Ahmed said. “But we don’t have the ability to face these drones. The most important thing we can do is to alert our people that they are in an area and how best to avoid them.’’
He paused, resigned, and added, “We will adapt.”
Staff researcher Julie Tate in Washington contributed to this report.
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