Four Gaza lives made difficult

Fouad al-Amoudi, 44, fisherman, Khan Yunis

When the Israelis left Gaza, Fouad al-Amoudi rushed down to the sea. His heart flooded, he remembers, with hope. A lifelong fisherman, he hadn't seen the water for almost five years.

For generations, fishermen from the inland city of Khan Yunis have sailed off the spring-fed sand dunes of nearby Mawasi. But gradually, Israeli settlements fenced off the city from the beach. In 2001, during the bloody intifadah, Israel, citing security concerns, grounded the fishing fleet and barred all men under 25, and many others, from the shore.

That day last fall, Amoudi hurried to check on his family's 36-foot wooden fishing boat, named Maher after his youngest brother. It had moldered after sitting on the sand for years. But Amoudi looked out at the bright blue-green waves and felt free. He painted the boat bright orange, and started fishing.

But his new freedom turned out to be, as he puts it, "only on land." Israel restricted fishing to 12 nautical miles from shore, meaning smaller catches. His family could finally eat fish again, but couldn't save much for chicken or meat or tuition.

Things got worse when Hamas militants captured an Israeli soldier June 25. Fearing the hostage would be spirited away by sea, Israel again banned fishing altogether. Nine days later, Amoudi stood on the beach, worrying. He had 12 family members to feed, he explained, and he was just one of 3,000 Gaza fishermen.

Equally painful, he said, was losing, again, the nights at sea, lighting lamps to lure fish to the surface. From age 10, he said, "I slept on my father's knees, on the sea, on the boat. I didn't sleep at home beside my mother as much as I slept on the boat on the sea."

Amoudi still comes daily to the beach. When it's calm enough, he catches small fish from the beach. One recent night, he decided to risk his life by venturing about a mile from shore. An Israeli gunboat shot one of his lamps, setting a fire. Now, fixing the charred boat is one more expense.

Major Iyad Kullab, 32, police investigator, Gaza City

Major Iyad Kullab was a Fatah militant in the 1980s. He joined the police force after the 1993 Oslo Accords set up the Palestinian Authority, and he became head of criminal investigations in Gaza City. But now, he reports to a Hamas interior minister who still espouses armed struggle against Israel. Kullab's new boss has hired 4,000 new police known as the Executive Force, many young, bearded, religious, and contemptuous of the secular Fatah loyalists in Kullab's veteran ranks.

"They don't like each other," Kullab said dryly, days after the groups clashed in gun battles that killed 12 people.

Robbery, theft, and carjacking are skyrocketing as poverty deepens. Early this month, two of his officers had their apartments robbed on the same day. His men, short of fuel and equipment because of the government budget crisis, must race their Executive Force rivals to crime scenes. If the untrained Executive Force officers get there first, he said, they sometimes beat suspects, destroy evidence, shield their friends, and generally spoil cases.

Worse, Kullab said, police draw power not from their badges but from their individual connections. He said he can arrest powerful criminals without fear of revenge only because he has a prominent family and friends among Fatah's militants. He and his brothers recently fought off masked men he found digging in his yard, trying, he believes, to plant a bomb as payback for his arrest of a Hamas-linked car thief.

"If they are the sons of armed movements, we are the sons of armed movements; if they are the sons of powerful families, we are the sons of powerful families," he said. "The only difference between them and us is that they want to spoil the law and we want to implement the law."

Hamas, of course, makes the same allegation against Fatah.

Ahmed al-Najar, 42, garment maker, Gaza City

Ahmed al-Najar and his brother Nabil run a sewing workshop in Gaza City. They take in fabric from Israeli companies and get paid only after they send back finished clothing. The two high-ceilinged, concrete rooms once hummed with 20 workers who could churn out 1,500 shirts in 10 days.

By April, mountains of shirts had piled up on the factory tables. The Najars didn't have the clout to get their products exported during the rare openings of the freight crossing -- when connections and bribes push shipments ahead in line -- and could rarely pay workers. The brothers took to sitting side by side at the sewing machines, stitching shirts and putting them in a pile to sell in better days.

"What else am I going to do, fool around in the street?" Najar asked as he hemmed a shirt collar.

By early this month, he was trying to sell the shirts inside Gaza for 20 shekels, less than $5, at a profit of about a dollar each, but few people are buying. He has gotten out only a couple of small shipments in six months, and he lost a contract making uniforms for an Israeli kindergarten.

Customers won't wait for the border closures to end, he said. "If we can't deliver the stuff, they will work with others."

He voted for the Fatah party, he said, but held out hope that life would improve under Hamas.

"But everything is worse than before," he said. "The Israelis are besieging us . . . . They cannot keep being radical in this way. It is meaningless. They have to deal with reality."

Khaled Abu Taha, 33, contractor, Khan Yunis

One of the few new buildings rising from the former settlement area is a simple, elegant dome, a mosque that will seat 700 people. Khaled Abu Taha, a contractor from Khan Yunis, is building it with cash from his brother Abdullah and other relatives and a design by another brother, architect Abdelaziz.

The dome stands in the dunes of Mawasi, on what was once the main road for Israeli settlers, near where a sliding gate once led to the largest settlement, Neve Dekalim.

"This is the only mosque on the liberated land," Khaled Abu Taha said proudly, wearing a Los Angeles Dodgers cap.

In July, when the rest of Gaza was worrying about the Israeli invasion, his workers were hammering away high up in a scaffolding as intricate as a spider's web. Two weeks into the project, the dome, 25 yards in diameter, had already taken shape. Now smooth with cement, it awaits gold-colored tiles.

Gold, Abdullah Abu Taha said last week, because of the strange feeling he had when he first saw the beach he'd imagined for years: The sand seemed to shine like gold. He and Khaled bought patches of land there for summer houses.

Their new neighbors complained they'd never had a nearby mosque. Abu Taha knew right away how to express his thanks to God. He saw no point in seeking government permission. "There's no authority," he said.

Abdullah voted for Hamas, he said, not so it would fight Israel or establish Islamic rule -- "Unrealistic," he said -- but to end corruption and build a functional state. Instead, nine months later, he found himself afraid to leave his house because of a violent feud between his family and another clan.

His brother Khaled was still willing to hope, displaying the patience that may yet help Hamas hold on to power.

"Things are not better yet," he said. "But we hope. We wish."

Globe correspondent Ahmed Abu Hamdeh contributed to this report.