“Gaza Strip” pushes the viewer headlong into the tumult of the Israeli-occupied Gaza, examining the lives and views of ordinary Palestinians. The documentary often sees the world through the eyes of young people. The central character is Mohammed Hejazi, a 13-year-old paperboy in Gaza City, one of the young “stone-throwers” who risk their lives throwing rocks at Israeli tanks across the barbwire fences. As the newspapers arrive announcing Ariel Sharon’s victory in the Israeli elections, Mohammed offers up tirades against Arafat and Sharon alike. We also catch glimpses of his inner world: his sense of hopelessness, his sorrow at the IDF killing of his best friend, his conception of death. As the camera floats through the Gaza Strip, we encounter signs of the occupation everywhere: crowds of Palestinians are making their way along the beach on foot, donkey carts and tractor trailers when the Israeli soldiers close the roads. The Palestinians interviewed as they pass by reveal a common internal conflict, between anger at the Israeli occupation and the desire to live in peace. In the Khan Younis refugee camp, “Gaza Strip” documents an extremely controversial incident in February, which fell largely through the cracks of international scrutiny, when the Israeli Defense Forces used an unidentified, powerful gas during a firefight, hospitalizing over 200 Palestinians with severe recurrent convulsions. Inside a Red Cross tent near an Israeli checkpoint, a Palestinian mother and daughter debate the politics of their situation. As night falls on their camp, the mother describes how Israeli soldiers came with bulldozers, leveled their home and destroyed all of their belongings. The eye of the film is usually passive and watchful, sometimes almost invisible, even in the most intimate settings. When a Palestinian child is blown up in Rafah, we see the entire process of his internment, from morgue to mosque to grave, unblinkingly. The camera moves slowly over a Palestinian neighborhood being strafed by Israeli machine-gun fire, schoolchildren scattering. “Gaza Strip” culminates in a nighttime raid in April, when Israeli bulldozers stormed into the Khan Younis refugee camp under the cover of tank and helicopter fire, and destroyed the homes of 450 Palestinians – the first of many such armed incursions into “Area A” by the IDF. -- © Little Red Button