The Eclectic Linda by Linda in Northfield.

I’ve been to Gaza.

In October 2001, I joined a group of journalists on a long-planned trip to Israel organized by the National Conference of Editorial Writers. There were 14 of us (only one person dropped out because of 9/11). The purpose of these NCEW trips abroad was to afford people an opportunity to visit the places they might be writing about but had never been to, and to meet people who were making the news in those places.

Though we did visit the Biblical sites, the journalist who planned the itinerary had invited people of widely different perspectives to meet our group, and much of our time was spent with those who accepted the invitation. We had meetings with former Prime Minister Shimon Peres and the president of Israel, Moshe Katsav. We also met officials of the Palestinian National Authority in Ramallah in the West Bank and, in Hebron, a different group of officials from other West Bank cities.

Those meetings were on our schedule. But midweek, we learned we would be meeting Yasser Arafat at his office in Gaza at 10 o’clock that evening.

We entered through the Erez crossing, at the north end of the Gaza Strip. As we left the Israeli post, there was ahead of us a dimly lit paved area running for perhaps 200 feet between two-story buildings on either side. There were no lights on in the buildings, so it was eerie and rather intimidating. I’m sure I wasn’t the only one who was thinking that if it was on someone’s agenda that night to eliminate some American journalists, there was nowhere to run.

At the far end, there were two vans waiting for us along with a number of armed men wearing camo. I don’t know whether they were soldiers or police.

During our brief ride to Arafat’s PLO headquarters, we could hear sporadic gunfire, not close by, but still alarming. Less than it might have been, though, since the camo guys in the back of the vans were chatting among themselves, unconcerned.

We must have been near the Mediterranean shore as we disembarked, because we could smell the sea (and the reek of sewage was much diminished).

Arafat was waiting for us in a rather crowded conference room, and began by apologizing that we had been troubled by the violence nearby. That he knew about the gunfire persuaded me that he’d had it laid on for our benefit, but possibly it was real. Our visit was during the Second Intifada, a Palestinian uprising against the Israeli occupation of Gaza and the West Bank, in which Arafat’s Palestine Liberation Authority played a major role.

Arafat took questions, but didn’t really answer them. He began his answers before the questioner had finished, and said pretty much the same things he always said when he was being interviewed by non-Arab journalists. The Palestinians were not at fault for the ongoing violence. If Israel ended the occupation, all would be peaceful.

I didn’t believe him. But I think some of our group did, because it was what they wanted to hear.

Arafat left the room first, and as we exited one by one, he shook hands with each of us, and his photographer took pictures of each handshake. (I included mine with my Christmas letter that year.)

I believe Arafat was deliberately lying to us, but the elderly officials at the Hebron meeting had said much the same things, although less tactfully, and I think they believed what they were saying. It was if they thought their American visitors had simply never heard their side of the story, and as soon as we heard it we would agree with them immediately that the Israeli occupation was the most oppressive ever. The “occupation” meant not just Gaza and the West Bank, it was “From the river to the sea,” and there was a map on the wall of that council chamber showing Palestine from the Jordan to the Mediterranean.

Israel did end the Gaza occupation in 2005, Hamas won the first and only election, and the rest is not history. It is current events.