The Foreign Service Journal, December 2004

R EFLECTIONS On the Road to Gaza B Y W ILLIAM R OEBUCK No real temples came tumbling down, and darkness didn’t really cover the earth. It was like any of dozens of other trips to Gaza to see the Gaza City businessman, or the Fatah official, or the contact who knew the Hamas guys. Poloff was late, as usual, coffee in hand, Joking as we left Tel Aviv, seeing how hard he could make the PD cultural affairs guy laugh, as the driver and the young DS agent cast glances backward, and seemed to ask themselves, “Are these guys real diplomats or what?” The DynCorp guys were in the other Suburban, real soldiers, on a mission, like so many missions before. A third car, with more security guys, met us at the border. It seemed kind of silly, all that hardware, speaking into sleeve mikes, armored cars, accelerating to ride side by side, blocking “the principals” from an obviously dangerous donkey cart or Palestinian kid on a bike. We stood around in the blinding sun at Erez crossing, on the border with Gaza, the burly one laughing and telling me of plans to head to Iraq to guard Bremer; then a brief mention of shifting the order of the cars, “you guys go first,” to facilitate a training mission for new agents. They radioed it in to the Marines back at the embassy: “Eleven men entering Disneyland” to signal our entry into Gaza. The surly Israeli teenager and his older, shaggier Palestinian counterpart down the road, waving us through; nothing different, like so many trips before, some completed and reported on, with this or that minister or snaggle-toothed PA security officer; Many others aborted over, obviously idle security concerns. This one proceeded two miles into sunny Gaza, until we in the lead car were suddenly showered with dark dust and strange debris and heard the explosion. The DS guy in our car frantically calling out on the radio, “Cheez, Cheez,” the moniker for the burly guy in car number two Radio silence. A hasty discussion of limited escape routes, a long U-turn, and then horror: An armored two-ton Suburban, lying in a crater across the median, Upside-down, and mangled like a toy car stomped on by an angry or uncaring god. A sudden wave of super-normality, a second of time slowed and every breath, every syllable became audible. A gathering crowd, amid the smoke and carnage, A sighting, a man down. Nothing. Time stood still. A suggestion that we keep moving colliding with A frantic radio call for the third car to check out the scene and look for survivors. The temple had come down. Some of us would walk out; Others would be caught in the rubble and debris. The man down eventually got up, and out. The burly guy and two others had told their last joke, and carried out their last mission. A temple of sorts had come tumbling down, crashing on our assumptions of safety and normality and our sense of importance, and crushing with blinding force our illusions that we were among friends, that we were spreading good will and processing peace, or that we were all destined to be heroes. The questions about “why” came later, as did the realization that those of us in the first car walked away in a bubble of grace that had blown our way back at Erez crossing, five minutes before the bombing. No real temples came tumbling down, And darkness didn’t really cover the earth, But as some of us staggered back to Tel Aviv that day, I realized that no one had radioed the Marines at the embassy with the routine call that we had left Gaza, and no one ever would. 104 F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L / D E C E M B E R 2 0 0 4 William Roebuck joined the Service in 1992 and has served in Kingston, Jerusalem and Tel Aviv. He is currently assigned to Damascus.