The rise and fall of Gaza’s airport

Linda Herr and her husband, James Wheeler, served with MCC in Palestine from 1995 to 1999, including two years in Gaza. They also served in various roles in Egypt, and as MCC’s Area Directors for Europe and the Middle East based in Amman, Jordan from 2019 to 2024. 

Gaza had an airport. 

Designed by a Moroccan architect, it was a gem with arabesques and attention to light and space. It embodied hope for peace, as the Palestinian Authority took responsibility for local governance from the Israeli military. The airport was in southern Gaza, nestled between Rafah and Israeli and Egyptian borders for ease of access to the Israeli military, who provided the security processes they deemed necessary. 

A fence was erected around Gaza. With each trip to or from the MCC office in Jerusalem, the crossing became more complex. At first, there was a check point upon entry. Then we had to exit one vehicle and transfer to another that was permitted to operate in Gaza; the next time, we hauled our three young children and bags across a wide parking lot and waited for border procedures to be completed before we could move to the Gaza-side vehicle.  

We lived in Gaza after the Oslo Accords were signed, after Yitzhak Rabin and Yasser Arafat shook hands on the White House lawn, alongside Bill Clinton. We moved there after Rabin was assassinated for signing the accords and were there when the Clintons cut the inaugural ribbon for the Gaza International Airport.¹ 

The roads were often ripped up, and visits to community organizations sometimes required detours. I complained about driving on the rough roads, as one does in Pennsylvania, until my contact at a local agricultural organization looked at me and said, “The roads are a sign of hope.”  

Infrastructure investments brought hope that the peace process was unfolding, and Gaza could become the “Singapore of the Middle East”, a strip of land rich in human resources and ripe to lead in technology and trade. Strangers assumed we were among the Palestinian diaspora returning from abroad (more precisely, that James was returning and I was the foreign spouse). James taught English in Deir al Belah refugee camp and at the Islamic University of Gaza, where students yearned and prepared for the dawn of an international era. 

Yet around us, daily life was increasingly restricted. Families who depended on a wage earner crossing into Israel, suddenly lost income as work permits were revoked by the score. MCC supported an organization that trained women to preserve food safely. When the Israeli military closed crossings and crops couldn’t reach markets in Israel and beyond, fruits and vegetables rotted. These women could pickle, dry, and store food they bought for a low price, feeding their families on a tight budget. 

The Khan Younis market day was Tuesday. On one trip, the usual roads to a partner’s office were closed for market stalls, so we took a longer route. I saw a graffitied wall and made out the words: “Ahmed and Amal’s wedding.” An arrow pointed down a lane to send guests in the right direction. Continued daily routines and celebrations signified resilience, even defiance in the face of entrapment. 

At the same time, Palestinians were organizing to educate youth, monitor human rights, and develop agricultural techniques. They sought support outside of Gaza to get their feet on the ground. MCC had modest funding and recognized the rapidly shifting landscape. I visited organizations throughout the strip. MCC was also interested in partnering with organizations motivated by their Muslim faith to serve their neighbors, parallel to MCC’s Christian faith motivation, and James’s English teaching was part of developing those relationships.  

When people visited, we took them to a restaurant by the sea or downtown to the Great Omari Mosque, which is believed to be the site of the temple that Samson brought down. We would stop at the airport under construction. We occasionally encountered a few workers or guards, and they were proud to show it. We wandered around the runway and empty terminal walls. Once, we climbed the air traffic control tower and looked down on the landing strip.   

The Gaza airport opened in November 1998. We flew out for meetings in Cairo, above the fence and no-man’s-land extending on each side, above military checkpoints and the guard towers encircling “the world’s largest open-air prison.” By the time it was destroyed in 2001 during the second intifada, we had returned to Pennsylvania. The terminal stood for years in hopes of being rebuilt, but that never happened. In 2010, I saw photos of a summer camp activity with some 7,000 children dribbling basketballs for five minutes on the runway tarmac to set a new world record. A news report quoted an 11-year-old, “I hope one day I can fly from this airport to the world as member of Palestine's national basketball team.”²  

Although we traveled to the region and were MCC Egypt Reps (country directors) for a term, we didn’t visit Gaza until twenty years after we had left, after becoming MCC’s Area Directors for Europe and the Middle East. The border crossing was elaborate. Taxis still waited on the Gaza side of Israeli procedures, gates, and corridors. One driver remembered us from the days when we crossed with young children. Hamas officials checked our papers and permissions, and the MCC partner hosting us assured them that the organization was indeed responsible for us. We completed the trip into Gaza City and stayed in a hotel down the street from our old neighborhood, a few steps from Shifa Hospital.  

Early the next morning, we were awakened by the whistle and thud of an Israeli missile. Then all was quiet. In the morning light, our hosts assured us it hit an empty field, and Israeli media would announce that Hamas arms were destroyed. We spent the day meeting staff at the partner’s office and visiting MCC-supported projects, families raising rabbits for protein, and homes that needed basic repairs. In the afternoon, we sat on the beach and ate grilled fish with our hosts. When the conversation turned to daily life, the women around the table talked about sleeping fully clothed so as not to run uncovered in the streets if they were forced to evacuate their homes in the middle of the night.  

Several months later, borders closed for Covid. We haven’t returned since. 

On October 7, 2023, we were in Germany meeting with European Mennonite relief organizations in our role as MCC Area Directors. We were discussing coordinated responses to needs in Ukraine. By the end of the day, I was late for our closing meal as I sat in the restaurant parking lot taking calls about monitoring staff security in Jerusalem and Bethlehem, and MCC’s potential response to the unfolding crisis. 

MCC’s first response was implemented with the partner organization we had visited. A staffer said that people needed food and bedding as they took in displaced relatives and neighbors. “Can you help us help?” she asked.  

Earlier this year, MCC’s UN office invited me to attend civil society consultations on the Question of Palestine, a gathering hosted by the UN's Palestinian Rights Committee. It was my first time at the UN. The meeting chamber was less grand than I expected, more practical and business-like. The matter at hand was grim and the mood, desperate.  

“We are humans,” a presenter declared after listing his family’s losses accumulated over generations, losses that had accelerated in Gaza in recent months, days, and hours. “Real human beings, not just numbers, were killed last night”, said a doctor who had recently worked in Khan Younis and Deir al Bellah hospitals. 

Rabbis wearing both ultra-Orthodox traditional clothing and Palestinian kufiyahs declared that the Torah does not lead to killing. Time and again, people gestured to their palms. “The genocide is livestreamed,” they said. “You are watching it on your phone. You cannot say you did not know.” 

The Nakba, the catastrophe that displaced and dispossessed Palestinians in 1948, is not linear, others noted. It is cyclical. The system of death and displacement has not ended, and current methods are more deadly and efficient. It is a system created by humans and humans can dismantle it.  

Determination mingled with desperation. Conversations that could only happen at a UN conference unspooled, such as the frustration that civil society organizations alone are pressuring the UN to hold a member state accountable for criminal actions. The drive to maintain pressure was palpable. Even one bomb diverted from its destination is one bomb not dropped, saving lives.   

The question of Palestine is the UN’s longest standing issue, a litmus test of the institution’s very validity. The list of relevant resolutions began in 1947 with 181, which recommended the partition of Mandatory Palestine into Arab and Jewish states, with international status for Jerusalem. And yet, at the consultations, someone remarked that UN resolutions can create change: “We know that resolutions implemented country-by-country, work.” He recognized that the Security Council will veto a good resolution, “but if it’s a good resolution,” he continued, “keep the discussion alive until the last possible moment. If it fails, we still must continue the work; we can't walk away saying that we did all that we could”.  

“Practical solutions are available”, one representative of an Israeli peacebuilding organization claimed. They envision a decolonized future that promises shared life, justice, and collective liberation. This view does not simply imply a return to October 6, but a movement towards security and equality for all on the land.  

Notes

¹Despite being progressively destroyed by the Israeli government, in 2004, the airport was renamed Yasser Arafat International Airport, following the death of the Palestinian leader, Yasser Arafat.