It’s easy to understand the desire to stay. One thing that was patently obvious from the very start is just how lonely the people are here. It really is like visiting someone in prison. In fact, our schedule was crammed with appointments from morning to night without so much as a lunch break for the simple reason that, with so few visitors, everyone wanted to meet with us.

As we prepare to load the bus, the support staff from the UN, who have been such gracious guides over our short stay, as well as several of our Palestinian friends, stopped by to say goodbye. “We will miss you!” It’s difficult to reconcile the desire to go home with that of wanting to stay on, of leaving friends behind in jail.

We traveled in two buses from Gaza City to Rafah, stopping along the way to buy bread, fruit and water for our long trip to Cairo. While waiting on the bus, people along the street and on balconies waved. We held a Palestinian flag out the window and more gathered around to cheer us on. It wasn’t even necessary to decorate our bus, as any foreigners traveling in Gaza are unmistakably supporters.

At the border crossing, we staged a small protest calling on Obama to come to Gaza. The mayor of Rafah was there, as was the Palestinian family that hosted Rachel Corrie. We held our banners and flags while chanting, “Obama, Obama, come to Gaza!”

Meanwhile, a small group from our delegation that had left a day early was in Cairo delivering 10,000 signatures on a petition urging Obama to do just that! The signatures were delivered to the U.S. Embassy in Cairo and the mini delegation stood outside Cairo University all day with banners reading “Obama Stop Funding Israeli War Crimes” and “End the Siege of Gaza.”

The Cairo group also delivered a letter from Hamas to Obama.

“We in the Hamas Government are committed to pursuing a just resolution to the conflict not in contradiction with the international community and enlightened opinion as expressed in the International Court of Justice, the United Nations General Assembly, and leading human rights organizations. We are prepared to engage all parties on the basis of mutual respect and without preconditions.

However, our constituency needs to see a comprehensive paradigm shift that not only commences with lifting the siege on Gaza and halts all settlement building and expansion but develops into a policy of evenhandedness based on the very international law and norms we are prodded into adhering to.” Read the entire letter.

We said our final goodbyes to the UN staff that came with us to the border, and even the ever-present Hamas security guards and prepared for the long wait as Egyptian officials processed our passports and checked our temperatures for signs of swine flu.

Just as nothing could have prepared us for the destruction we saw on the trip, those of us new to the region were also caught off guard by the incredible resilience of the Palestinian people. In one of our recent films in Rome, or during the discussion, someone commented on the fact that Palestinians are often characterized as violent while they are probably the most non-violent people on earth considering what they’ve gone through for decades.

Emotions on this trip were either sky high or rock bottom. There was nothing in between. This is Gaza.

Now it is up to us to follow through on the two requests we heard repeatedly: take their stories home and work to break the siege so they can take care of themselves.

The international fact finding mission has been given the mandate “to investigate all violations of international human rights law and international humanitarian law that might have been committed at any time in the context of the military operations that were conducted in Gaza during the period from 27 December 2008 and 18 January 2009, whether before, during or after.”

He started off by saying that though they had planned to enter through Israel, they had been forced, like us, to travel through Rafah. “We had hoped Israel would cooperate with our investigation, but unfortunately that have chosen not to.” He also commented on the immense amount of data and the very short time period his mission has been given to complete their report – just three months. They had held their first hearings in Geneva in early May and this was the first trip to the area.

One person from our delegation suggested that they contact the volunteers of the International Solidarity Movement with whom we had met the night before. They have footage of the Israeli military firing on unarmed Palestinian fishermen and farmers.

Roane Carey, managing editor at The Nation and part of our delegation, asked Justice Goldstone if, given the tight time constraints on his mission as well as the lack of cooperation on the part of Israel, he felt he could do still do his job. Goldstone replied that they had no choice and that they would do their best to work within the limits imposed upon them.

The most passionate appeal came from Norm Finkelstein. “People here just want you to be fair. They’ve lost faith in international law and UN resolutions, which bore them to tears.” He reminded Justice Goldstone that there would be immense pressure on the mission not to be evenhanded. And that this was an incredible opportunity to show the Muslim world that a Jew can be fair. Goldstone replied that his first loyalty was to truth and justice and that loyalty would guide him in the investigation.

We first stopped by a storage facility of the Ministry of Youth and Sport to load the playground equipment on a truck and then drove to the north to Beit Hanoun, an area just across from the Israeli border and heavily damaged during the attack. We met with municipality officials who first directed us to a small private garden. This site was rejected because of the locked gate – we wanted a place that would be open as much as possible – and, in any event, it was too small.

We then drove over to an area where there was a soccer field, with no grass, of course, and a bombed out mosque in the background. This was looking a little better, certainly symbolic with the mosque, but we wanted to try one last possibility.

The third location was by far the best. It was in a public garden, and though there was already a playground there, funded by The Gates Foundation, USAID, and Save the Children, it was in a state of complete disrepair. We started unloading the truck.

Slowly, children from the neighborhood began to arrive. We had learned from the team that set up the first playground to be ready for swarms of kids. Before we knew it, there were literally 300 children surrounding us, making it nearly impossible to work. Half of us were given the task of distracting the children so the others could complete the assembly. Just taking their photos and showing them on the camera was almost enough, the children were so starved of any kind of guided playtime. But it was clear that we needed to get more creative.

I had just recently taught my Italian niece to do the Hokey Pokey (You put your right foot in, you put your right foot out…) so I tried it on these kids and it worked. I soon had a circle of about 30 kids around me, dancing and laughing. We also played ring around the rosy and formed a choo choo train of kids winding through the playground. Some of the older girls tried to teach us debka, the traditional Palestinian dance, but they were far to fast for us! Rose, Shelley and Jeanie played similar games with the children, and together we managed to keep at least half the children busy. Though we did have a number of older boys who were at times a bit aggressive, making it difficult to play with the younger ones.

Many of the children spoke a few words of English, such as “What is your name?” and “Where are you from?” We were all taken aback when even the really young children asked, “Hamas or Fatah?” It was an clear indication of how politicized the society is. I responded, “Palestine!”

Meanwhile, the rest of our team, with the help of some locals, assembled the playground. We had a swing set, with a baby swing for toddlers, a slide, a teeter-totter, monkey bars and a rope ladder for climbing. Medea’s initial theory that no boys would want to play on a bright pink playground was dead wrong – they were all over it!

It was evident that what the kids need more than anything else is simply some structured playtime. Athena and I have taken on the task of contacting the Gates Foundation to let them know about the state of the playground they funded and suggest they donate the money needed to employ a local person to spend time with the children at the playground several days a week.

The staff of the GCMHP, which has three women’s and three children’s centers in Gaza, has seen striking changes in children following the recent war, with more aggressive behavior, a sharp decline in academic performance, lack of concentration and insecurity.

Dr. Zeyada also told us that the prolonged stress due to the conditions in Gaza has also hampered creative thinking. People no longer take initiative. He predicted that if the social, economic and political conditions do not change soon, the Palestinian society will no doubt become more aggressive.

The GCMHP recently organized an international conference in which many mental health experts from around the world were to participate. However, just shortly before the conference, which had been planned for nearly a year, Israel announced it would not allow the internationals entry to Gaza. Our group in Rome sent a solidarity message to the GCMHP and we also organized a fax blast to the Israeli Foreign Minister, Tzipi Livni, calling on Israel to permit the health experts to attend the conference. Over 400 faxes were sent. We shared this with the staff of the GCMHP and they send their gratitude for our support.

We then talked a bit of politics with Dr. Zeyada. He said the main problem is that we are dealing with immature politicians. “I’m talking about Israelis here.” As a mental health professional, he talked about the feelings of guilt on the part of Zionists for what they are doing in the Occupied Territories and how that was preventing them from admitting it. “They are in denial. And they need our help. We must do more to reach out to Israelis. And the entire international community must stop treating Israel like a spoilt child, giving in on all her demands.” He was concerned, however, that mounting objection to Israeli policies would lead to acts of desperation.

Just two weeks prior to our visit, Dr. Zeyada’s 5-year-old daughter had asked him, “Why did God create the Jews?”

The UNRWA Youth Activity center in the Jabalia refugee camp, which is located just 2 km from the border and has the dubious honor of being largest in population yet smallest in area, provides a variety of activities for the young people, including theatre. We saw a performance of a traditional Palestinian wedding. Afterwards, during a question and answer session, we asked if they had any questions for us. Two requests were repeated by several people: to go back to our homes and tell their story and to work to end the siege. “We don’t need money or aid. What we need is your political support to end the blockade so we can take care of ourselves.”

We also visited the Al Amal Orphan Society, which first opened in 1949 to help the homeless children following the Nakba. In Arabic society, an orphan is defined as a child who has lost his or her father. If the mother remarries and the new husband chooses not to accept the children of her previous marriage, they will be sent to an orphanage. The children spend at least one day a week and two weeks during the summer with their relatives and mother, if she is still alive. The children also attend school outside the orphanage in order to be more integrated with society. Most of the children at Al Amal are from the poorer border areas.

During the 22-day Israeli assault, because the center is close to the Ministry of Health and other targets, the children were moved out to stay with members of their extended families. We were shown a large piece of shrapnel that was found in the yard. The kitchen of the center was used to feed people left homeless by the attack.

After the ceasefire, Al Amal sent out notices via radio and TV letting the people know they were prepared to receive new orphans resulting from the attack. However, not a single child was sent to the orphanage. Despite the desperate conditions, the families chose to keep the children close, even if they had lost both parents.

In the Gaza Strip there are 53,000 orphans, with an additional 2200 resulting from the war.

The director of the center had lived in Spain for 17 years. He spoke of Picasso’s Guernica and asked, “Who will create a painting for Gaza?” What we offered was a quilt donated by the “More Than Warmth” society of Tennessee made up of drawings representing peace and love from children in the U.S. to the children of Gaza, as well as paints and poster board so the children could tell their own stories.

We also met Sharif, a university student studying business administration. He was in his second year and had top marks in his faculty. Though he had been offered a scholarship at Portland University in Oregon starting in the fall, he still had no idea if he would be allowed to go. “If I can’t get authorization by August, there goes my scholarship.” At Al Aqsa University, one of the professors has been offered a teaching position at the University of Manchester, however, he has been denied permission to travel. Professors are also unable to travel to attend international conferences.

Power outages were, of course, regular occurrences. The Gaza power plant simply can’t keep up with the demand due to a lack of fuel, which is blocked from coming in by Israel, as is electricity produced in Israel. There are both scheduled blackouts of 8-10 hours, as well as spontaneous outages. We visited a wonderful center that provided employment to women sewing dresses and linens as well as offering computer courses for young people. Unfortunately, there was no electricity the morning we were there, so the women sat around talking and the children were playing a game.

At the UNRWA vocational training center in Khan Younis, we were shown their library, which consisted of about 12 bookcases, 10 of which were completely empty and the others were half filled with photocopied manuals. The books destined for the center were held up in a storage facility in Jerusalem; the Israelis simply refused to allow them in. They are also unable to get the raw materials for their metal and woodworking training courses.

At a women’s center making traditional handicrafts, we were told their embroidery thread, which was produced in France, as well as the cloth they used was all smuggled in through the tunnels. A children’s center told us their computers had come through the tunnels.

At Al Shifa hospital, the largest in Gaza, we saw state of the art isotope scan and radio therapy machines that cannot operate because the radioactive material as well as a calibration tool had been refused entry by Israel. Dialysis machines sat unused, as they were out of the required fluids.

We heard over and over again about projects for which funding had been approved but were suspended for the simple fact that they could not get the materials in. Al Aqsa University, for example, has a new library that has been funded by Turkey, and Information Technology center funded by PalTel, the Palestinian telecommunications company, however the materials to complete these projects cannot enter.

As we were told by one of the UNRWA officials, it’s also a problem to get the actual banknotes in. They are often only able to get money in to pay the salaries of their employees while money to fund projects is blocked.

Not only are Palestinians restricted in their movement out of Gaza, but also within. Just days before we arrived, Israel began dropping thousands of leaflets near the border areas warning Gazans not to come within 300 meters of the border or they would be fired upon. The same restrictions are imposed on Palestinian fishermen. We heard shots fired nightly as the Israeli gunboats fired on fishing boats that attempted to venture far enough away from the shore in order to obtain a good catch.

We passed a number of UNRWA food distribution centers, where crowds of men waited to load WFP sacks onto donkey carts.

UNRWA runs over 200 schools serving nearly 200,000 students, 48% of which are female. Even with 85% of the schools running two shifts daily, classroom size still averages over 40 students. UNRWA operates 20 primary health care facilities and six community rehabilitation centers for persons with disabilities. Ten women’s centers provide refugee women with workshops to promote their role in the family, to raise awareness about domestic violence, which is, as one would expect, on the rise, and help create job opportunities for women. Gaza’s young people are served by six youth activity centers, which have all played a vital role in promoting psycho-social well being as well as simply providing much needed escapes from the dreadful conditions in the Gaza Strip.

UNRWA also organizes the annual “Summer Games,” a ten-week recreational initiative that gives nearly a quarter of a million young people in Gaza something to do during the long summer break from school. Some of the sports equipment brought in by our delegation was destined for the games.

We talked to a number of Palestinians to find out how UNRWA is seen in Gaza. Everyone recognizes the fundamental role they play, and we were told that while Hamas certainly doesn’t appreciate the co-ed schools and training centers, they are still mostly supportive of the work done by UNRWA. Some people did talk about risks of creating a dependency on the aid given, but for the most part what we heard was a passionate appeal to end the siege so they could rebuild their economy and take care of themselves.

We asked a woman with the UNRWA support staff what the concerns were with the home stays. She said it was obviously over our security and just made things more simple, security-wise and organizationally, to have us all in one place. She also mentioned that it could also create problems for the host families. And she definitely had a point. Our family definitely tried to keep it quiet that we were staying there, ushering us in from the street each day when we arrived home and discouraging us from a walk in the neighborhood. Another family was actually harassed by Hamas and had their identification confiscated.

This harassment of families, in addition to rather oppressive security while we were out on our visits, led to a midnight meeting between CodePink, Hamas and UNRWA. The harassment by Hamas was attributed to a few overzealous officials and we were assured that security would back off. And they did to some extent, though we still had to remind them that at times their presence wasn’t necessary or appropriate, for example while talking to young girls inside an orphanage!

By the end of the trip, we were allowed, or rather, simply took more freedoms. A few of us dared to walk unescorted down the street from the hotel to a souvenir shop to buy Palestinian flags, keffiyehs, etc. As luck would have it, just as we were leaving the shop, a rally of the political party Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine was just going by. We stood on the sidewalk waving our flags and shouting “Free Gaza! End the Siege!” The cars, trucks and vans going by with the red flags of PFLP were both surprised and thrilled to see us cheering them on.

There have been a number of kidnappings, and certainly with the infighting between Hamas and Fatah, continued bombings by Israel – several camps were bombed during the night while we were there – you can’t say Gaza is among the safest places in the world. However, we never felt unsafe or even uncomfortable, aside from being swarmed by hundreds of children as we assembled the playgrounds. What we did feel was the warmth and hospitality of the people of Gaza.

Medea spoke, reminding everyone that during his campaign for president, Obama said he would talk to everyone and was greeted with great applause for his emphasis on diplomacy. But also warned everyone that there were still strong elements of pressure trying to push him in the other direction, for example, our Congress! “The world will be a better place if we just talk to each other and our trip is an example of citizen diplomacy.” She talked about the petition launched by CodePink calling on Obama to go to Gaza to see with his own eyes the effects of the siege and Israel’s 22-day attack. And while she admitted it was highly unlikely that Obama would travel to Gaza, our hope is that with continued pressure at least George Mitchell might make the trip. He has been to the Middle East three times without ever setting foot on the Gaza Strip. Medea echoed sentiments felt by all when she said she was ashamed of our government and all the military aid going to Israel. “Instead,” she said, “our tax dollars should be going for schools and medicines and other life giving resources.”

Norm Finkelstein then spoke, and laid out what we began to call the “grand plan.” He said our number one priority should be to break the siege. He called on Palestinians to organize a mass demonstration in the Gaza Strip. “But it has to be non-sectarian. We can’t be seen as supporting Hamas. Our first concern has to be Palestinian rights.” The march would be led by prominent international figures who have been critical of Israel’s policies, such as Jimmy Carter, Mary Robinson and John Dugard. At the head of the march would also be Gazans seeking medical treatment abroad who have been unable to travel because of the siege as well as university students who have been awarded scholarships at foreign universities. He called on universities in the U.S. to organize fundraisers to send at least one student delegate to Gaza for the march as well as a satellite hook-up to broadcast the march into campuses throughout the U.S.

We were all given scarves from the PLC and stood on the steps in front off the bombed out building for a group photo. We were all floored when we were then invited to tour the remains of the parliament building, through which we could see the sky as well as the Mediterranean from the huge holes and collapsed roof.

The media like to refer to Palestinian administrative buildings as Hamas headquarters, and while Hamas is currently the elected government in Gaza, these are Palestinian institutions. Try to imagine the capitol building in Washington or your state being bombed!

The following evening we met with women of Hamas – 20% of Palestinian parliament is made up of women! We broke into small groups to learn more about their positions. Most of the questions centered around the difference between Fatah and Hamas, with many expressing frustration with Fatah, feeling that their strategy of continuous negotiations and giving in too much to Israel had been a failure. Huda Naim, who had been with Hamas since 1987, told us she chose Hamas because it is rooted in Islam. “It is best when rights are supported by a religion, not just one person’s ideas, which can then be taken away at any moment.” We talked about how George Bush had also used religion to carry out the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and asked how that differed. She replied that Hamas was using religion to promote rights, but things got lost in translation and distorted through cultural filters so at times it was difficult to comprehend the answers. One of the Catholic members of our group talked about the separation of church and state, and the fact that she followed U.S. law but turned to her religion for moral guidance. She asked why Hamas felt it necessary to impose religion by law. Huda Naim replied that no one was forced to follow Islam. “We have some co-ed universities, and we don’t like it but they exist.” She did say she and fellow Hamas leaders would like to see Palestine as an Islamic state with Sharia law imposed.

We had done what many Western political leaders had refused to do: simply listen to the elected leaders of this war torn area and try to understand their positions. We also tried to explain ours, and hopefully our desires to stand by the people of Gaza who have suffered so much, helped to open their eyes as well.

Among the rubble, students’ papers were strewn by the wind. We picked up one exam by a young girl in which she had scored 95%. Making the experience even more dramatic were the former students of the school who accompanied us as we walked around this massive pile of concrete and protruding rebar that used to be a sanctuary of learning.

The young students talked about the fact that many of their foreign teachers had been sent away a couple of years ago because of the situation in Gaza. Having “American” in the name of the school had made it a target of extremists. And now their school had been demolished. “Why was our school targeted? What did we do to deserve this?” The school itself is located in an open area with no other buildings around, so “target” was indeed the correct word to use. Fortunately, the school was closed at the time for the Christmas holidays, but the night watchmen was killled.

This was a private school so most of the students were admittedly privileged, but there were also students from poor areas attending on study grants, which were funded in part by the U.S.

Norm Finkelstein spoke with a young girl about her studies. As we were leaving, he told her, “You’re so smart. When I’m an old man, you’re going to be a leader of Palestine.”

We knew we would be touring the demolished areas of the north, but nothing could have prepared us for what we saw at Izbat Abd Rabbuh. The entire area, just a short distance from the border, had been razed, and all in just the last 4 days of the assault. By the shape of the rubble, with walls and ceilings collapsed in on themselves, it was evident that the Israelis had mined the homes. We met the son of an ambulance driver. His father had been stopped by the Israelis, forced to get out of his ambulance, and strip down. Then the building next to him was bombed and his ambulance, along with his clothes, were still there under the rubble. He thankfully made it out alive.

We were told that when Sen. John Kerry visited the area, he never got out of his car.

There was certainly a concentration of destroyed buildings in the area, though signs of the Israeli attack abound throughout Gaza: piles of rubble of bombed out buildings, the twisted iron and aluminum of destroyed factories, once green fields reduced to sand and dirt by Israeli tanks, apartments with 2 meter holes in the walls, toppled minarets of mosques turned to ruins.

The “precision” of the Israeli military was evident.

Aside from a few rare cases in which cinder blocks have been used to fill gaping holes in the sides of buildings, nearly 4 months after the ceasefire, no reconstruction whatsoever has begun. The blockade keeps the necessary building materials out of Gaza.