Symbol of Freedom Waits for Takeoff

Zakaria Mahra, the caretaker administrator of Gaza International Airport, turns up for work every day in a crisp suit and neatly knotted tie, the natty overseer of an empire of ghosts.

In the gleaming, marble-floored airport terminal, rows of check-in desks stand empty. The arrival and departure boards still work, though they have no flight information to impart. The sofa cushions have been plumped and the air perfectly chilled in the vacant VIP lounge. Air traffic controllers report for duty daily in the tower, where they have a bird’s-eye view of the ruined runway.

No aircraft has taken off or landed at Gaza International in nearly five years, yet its 400-member Palestinian staff strives to keep the airport in working order, hoping that they might reclaim what was once their proudest symbol of sovereignty.

Debate over the fate of the airport speaks to the larger question of whether Gaza will gain any real measure of freedom when Israel hands over the seaside strip of land to Palestinian control, as it plans to this summer. Beginning in mid-August, Israel intends to relinquish all 21 Jewish settlements and withdraw its thousands of army troops who guard them.

“If we were to get our airport back, we would have dignity, have some sense of controlling our own destiny,” said Gaza-based human rights activist Raji Sourani.

“But if there’s no way in or out -- if Israel controls the entrances and exits, if it keeps the airport closed -- then Gaza,” Sourani said, turning up his palms and smiling faintly as he uttered a much-invoked Palestinian phrase, “Gaza is just one big prison.”

When the airport was opened in late 1998, it triggered a burst of patriotic pride among Palestinians. At a local celebration of the opening, a Gazan tribal sheik on horseback and in full regalia had to be restrained from taking a triumphal gallop down the 10,000-foot runway. A few weeks later, President Clinton on a visit to Gaza helped inaugurate the tarmac when he landed in the Marine One helicopter.

In its heyday, the airport was a symbol not only of Palestinian aspirations for statehood but of the ability of Palestinians and Israelis to work together. Israeli troops carried out security checks of passengers and baggage at the adjacent Rafah crossing before they were bused to the terminal for boarding.

Planes to and from the airport were not allowed to enter Israeli airspace, which is some of the most tightly guarded in the world, but pilots checked in with Israeli traffic controllers as they made their final approach. Often, the exchanges were friendly, Rabia Ali Ayoush of the Palestinian Civil Aviation Authority said.

“And then our own controllers would say, ‘You are cleared for landing at Gaza International Airport,’ ” he recounted. “I can’t tell you what a feeling this was, bringing in a Palestinian plane, landing on Palestinian soil.”

Well-off Palestinians in Gaza still speak nostalgically of the days when they could get on a plane and fly off to Dubai or Istanbul, journeys that seem to them, in retrospect, akin to a magic carpet ride.

“It was important, it was wonderful,” recalled Abdel Hakim Dgeim, the manager of an accounting firm who travels throughout the region on business. The overland journey to Amman, the capital of neighboring Jordan, can take him two arduous days.

The airport’s reopening does not appear to be on Israel’s agenda, despite the World Bank’s assertion that an air link to the outside world would be a crucial element in rebuilding Gaza’s shattered economy.

Israeli Vice Prime Minister Ehud Olmert told an international economic forum in Jordan last week that even after the hand-over, international flights in and out of Gaza would pose an unacceptable security risk to Israel.

Israel has repeatedly expressed skepticism about the ability and willingness of Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas to rein in militant groups who have continued to fire rockets and mortar shells at Jewish settlements and Israeli towns.

Nonetheless, the Palestinians, particularly the airport’s longtime custodians, remain hopeful that international pressure might lead Israel to relent.

“If there is a political process, if the two sides are talking, we can be optimistic about our airport,” said Mahra, the caretaker administrator. “If there is no political process, then there is no airport.”

Set in the desert scrubland of southern Gaza, the airport lies adjacent to the Palestinian town of Rafah, which in the last four years has been the scene of some of the worst fighting of the intifada, or uprising. The facility suffered what Palestinians said was $20 million worth of damage when Israel bulldozed the runway, separating it into 17 segments divided by deep trenches, and bombed the German-made radar array, reducing it to a pile of expensive scrap metal.

Even in these days of relative calm, Rafah is considered a prime trouble spot by the Israeli military, a stronghold of Palestinian militant groups and a haven for gunrunners who use a honeycomb of tunnels under the Egyptian border to smuggle explosives and heavy weapons into Gaza.

During the height of the fighting, it was a point of pride for the airport staffers to get to work, and they routinely commuted through battles between Israeli troops and Palestinian militants to do so. They feared that the facility would be looted by impoverished locals or bombarded by Israeli troops if they abandoned it, “and we couldn’t have let that happen,” Mahra said.

Despite the damage sustained during the fighting, Palestinians believe that with Israeli permission and international help, they could have the airport operational again in a matter of months.

“We’d kill ourselves to do it; we’d do whatever we had to do,” said Ayoush, a former Palestinian Airlines pilot.

During the intifada, the tiny Palestinian Airlines fleet -- two Fokker-50 turboprops and a Saudi-donated Boeing 727 -- was tucked away in Egypt, and its planes still make regular flights from Egypt’s dusty El Arish airport. Late Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat’s personal aircraft were destroyed, however.

The Gaza airport was formally renamed after Arafat, who died Nov. 11, but no move has been made to change the big sign on the terminal to reflect that. Like some other intended tributes to the late leader, this one might not take hold, especially if Palestinians are hoping to elicit goodwill from Israel.

In the tower, air traffic controller Doah Akila spoke longingly about the prospect of guiding airplanes into Gaza International once again.

“It will happen, inshallah,” he said, using the Arabic for “God willing. “But after all this time,” he added a little nervously, “I think we will need a bit of a refresher course.”