By IPS Correspondents
GAZA CITY, GAZA STRIP, Mar 26 2001 (IPS)

After a night of listening to Israeli tanks fire at Palestinian targets in his hometown of Khan Yunis, Hazem Arkub is ready to make his daily escape into cyberspace.

“I feel completely unwell inside,” says Arkub, 23, waiting his turn for a computer at the simply adorned Gift Palace Internet Cafe.

Arkub, a student at the Islamic University, is unable to leave the Strip, one of the most crowded places on earth, due to sweeping Israeli travel restrictions.

Travel curbs have for years been a part of Israel’s military occupation, but with the outbreak of the Palestinian uprising in late September, they were tightened into a type of siege. After attacks against Jewish settlements near Khan Yunis, Arkub is unable to travel even within the Strip.

But as the Palestinians have found out, the Internet is immune to Israeli barriers. “The computer helps me,” says Arkub, before sending messages to friends in the United Arab Emirates. “The world is open on the internet.”

But, he stresses “it is nothing like seeing people.” Arkub’s brother lives in the West Bank, which is two hours driving away. But Arkub has not seen him in eight months due to the travel curbs.

Israel says the strictures are necessary to protect the security of Jewish settlers and citizens inside its borders, who have also come under attack. But Palestinians and foreign observers consider the measures a collective punishment.

Economically, they have been devastating, preventing workers from getting to their jobs and making people progressively poorer. The inability to travel is also harming Palestinian youth psychologically, Palestinian health specialists say.

“People feel suffocated, unable to do anything. There is a sense of an inability to go where they want to go,” says Mustafa Barghouthi, head of the Palestinian Medical Relief Committees.

He added that many young people channel their energies into volunteer work, for example for the first aid teams of his organisation.

But in Gaza City at Gift Palace, one of six Internet cafes in the neighborhood, youthful energy is spent creating a virtual reality. “We use the computers to escape from our miserable lives here,” says Islam Abdu, a public relations major. “We do this by meeting new people, surfing and traveling.”

The computers also have become vehicles for supporting the uprising against Israel, as students use chat sessions to press the Palestinian case abroad.

“A lot of people don’t know the real picture, but on a chat we can tell them the truth about what is happening,” says Ra’ed Ferwana, 20, a computer science student.

Amani Saqqa, another student, used to conduct research on line, but says she now devotes most of her time to ‘telling the truth’ to users abroad.

Abdul-Aziz Abu Haya, 19, was flirting on line last week with a young Palestinian woman whom he has no chance of meeting due to the travel curbs. Abu Haya, better known in chat sessions as Friendly Man, says his chats with foreigners are often frustrating.

“We feel good when people know what we are suffering,” he says. “But I don’t know why a lot of people don’t know that we are suffering, and they don’t know what a Palestinian is.”

“A lot of Israelis enter (the chat rooms) and make some problems, they curse me, the Palestinians and Yasser Arafat,” adds Abu Haya. “One Israeli said maybe we can be friends and neighbours. I told him that cannot happen until you leave our land.”

The Israeli-Palestinian exchanges turned violent last month when a Palestinian woman, Amina Najjar, 25, allegedly used an internet exchange to lure a 17-year-old Israeli, Ofir Rachum, to the West Bank, where he was shot and killed.

And a website, MSNBC.Com recently became a venue for Arab- Israeli fighting as supporters of the Palestinians and of Israel bombarded it with votes in a contest for best picture of the year 2000.

The Palestinian supporters voted for a picture of a boy, Mohammed al-Dura, moments before he was shot to death in September in the Gaza Strip when he and his father were caught in a gun battle.

The Israel supporters voted for other pictures in the hopes of averting an outpouring of sympathy for the Palestinians. The website eventually cancelled the contest on the grounds that people were voting multiple times.

In Gift Palace, Shadhi Adam, 21, says Internet relationships are a mixed blessing for the beleaguered Gazans. “We can talk to anyone anywhere,” he says. “But for me, it doesn’t relieve the pressure. I feel like a prisoner in my own house. The computers just create more pressure because I know I cannot meet the people. I can write a lot on the Internet to someone in Jenin (in the West Bank) but I know I won’t have a chance to meet her. She might just as well be in Australia or America.”

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