http://www.salon.com/2015/05/31/the_...is_checkpoint/

A 30-minute trip could take 10 hours -- I wondered how people could accept the unendurable with such quiet patience

The next morning I awoke early, and decided to take a walk along the empty streets around the hotel while it was still relatively cool. Since arriving in Gaza I had seen little of the UNDP party I had come with. They were busy with their projects, and had picked up two more workers who had been in Jerusalem and would return with us. Looking at the scenes around me I might have been in a poor Indian city: cracked pavements, mounds of rubble and sand, overflowing rubbish bins. A young boy passed by me, barefoot, sooty black with dirt, his blue eyes and fairish hair suggesting his normal complexion underneath was also fair; a grubby T-shirt and short trousers clothed his angular frame. The beaches were deserted; no throngs of skinny boys like him splashing and running in and out of the waves.