I passed through immigration uneventfully. Erez was built to accommodate the thousands of Palestinians who crossed into Israel each day to work and back again, until fighting between the two states made Gaza an open-air prison: Few Gazans were allowed out through Erez, and no Israelis were allowed in. The border was traversed almost exclusively by journalists and aid workers, a stark reminder of the economic consequences of Gaza’s isolation.
I spent almost two weeks in Gaza, photographing relatives and bedrooms of prisoners due home after years away, and Hamas’s parade of weapons for the cameras in their ominous black attire and balaclavas. The prisoner exchange came at the end. As the buses full of prisoners streamed across the Egyptian border into Gaza, men, women, and children—relatives and friends—threw themselves at the prisoners as they exited the buses. Tasting their first steps of freedom in years, they looked half-shocked by the crush of loved ones. Momentarily forgetting I was pregnant, I jockeyed for a position close enough to capture the initial moments of euphoria with my cameras, throwing myself into the mix of hundreds of frenzied relatives. As the weight of men around me started to push me to and fro, pressing against my body in the natural hysteria of the moment, I recalled my fragile state. But my stomach and I were so deep in the crowd, I couldn’t extricate myself. What if someone pushed my stomach? What if I miscarried right then and there at the prisoner release? I panicked.
In the Muslim world, women and children were often put on a safety pedestal—and pregnant woman were slightly higher up on that pedestal. Naturally, no pregnant woman in Gaza would voluntarily be in that mix of madness, but it was too late to lament my stupidity. I had an idea: I threw my arms up in the air and screamed “Baby!” and pointed down at my very round stomach with my index fingers. “Baby!” I screamed again, pointing down.
All the men around me momentarily paused, and the man beside me looked at my face and down at my stomach and instinctively made a human gate around me, cocooning me from the crowd. It was as if the seas parted. And I continued shooting the madness, with my spontaneous bodyguards keeping watch over my unborn son.
Before heading back to Erez Crossing to make my way home, I called Shlomo in Israel and expressed a gnawing concern: I was twenty-seven weeks pregnant and concerned that the full-body scanners at Erez Crossing might harm my pregnancy. Shlomo reassured me that he would notify the soldiers in advance of my arrival. The crossing back into Israel from Gaza entailed an intensive security procedure in anticipation of suicide attacks. The entire border crossing is partitioned into cubes of bulletproof glass, with a series of heavy electronic doors that the Israelis open and close once the passerby’s identity has been confirmed. There is a traditional luggage belt for luggage, which is handled by a Palestinian. All Israeli soldiers monitoring the movement of people passing from Gaza into Israel are standing out of harm’s way, on a glassed-in balcony overlooking the entire security area. They communicate through an intercom system as they watch from above. You can see them, and they can see you, and you could potentially shout up to them in a raised voice, but the intercom stands in for any personal contact. Everyone must cross through the first metal detector and bulletproof gate and into an advanced full-body scanner; once a red light turns green, you eventually pass through a final gate and on to collect luggage off the belt, then through immigration on the other side of the security area. An American AP photographer based in Jerusalem had warned me of a tiny room off to the side where suspicious crossers were routed after the scan: It had a metal grate for a floor, so if one detonated himself, the body parts and the brunt of the explosion would fall down through the grates rather than outward. I had that image in the back of my mind as I pressed the first intercom button at the entrance of the security labyrinth.
“Hi, we are with the New York Times. I called Shlomo this morning and explained that I am twenty-seven weeks pregnant and wondered if you could do a manual body check rather than have me pass through the scanner? I am worried about my baby and the radiation.”
A snarky voice wafted from the intercom on the door: “Well. You can strip down to your underwear and we do a strip search, or you can just pass through the scanner.”
I turned to Steve, who was married to a Palestinian Christian and had been living in Jerusalem for several years.
“Steve, what should I do? I’m worried about passing through the scanner.”
“Well, I think if you opt out of the scanner, they’re going to keep you here all day. You might as well pass through once. It probably won’t harm the baby to pass through once.”