Home The Gaza Blockade is No Game – Oh, Wait, Yes It Is

The Gaza Blockade is No Game – Oh, Wait, Yes It Is

Gisha: Legal Center for Freedom of Movement, a multi-ethnic, multi-religious Israeli non-profit, has launched a game called “Safe Passage.”

The group works in Israel toward establishing freedom of movement for Palestinians. The blockade by the Israeli government of the Gaza Strip is an object lesson in what they believe is wrong with current Israeli policy. So to express the trials of impinged movement they have leveraged game dynamics to share the experience.

The recent news of ships attempting to run the blockade may give the impression that the sea is the main barrier here. But it is, according to Gisha, laws, red tape and checkpoints. In this game, specifically, the ban on commerce between Gaza and the West Bank is underscored. A user plays as a businessman, a student or a father and tries to get home.

Gilad Baker, the game’s chief animator, explained the goal of the game.

“We faced a challenge – how to make military documents accessible to the public. Our solution was to integrate them into the personal stories of real people in the Gaza Strip and West Bank, to help people understand the policy”.

The three character types are confronted with different obstacles and required to get very creative in surmounting them. The Gazan student has to employ a flying hat to convince a military mailbox to examine her request to study at a West Bank University. The West Bank family man enters play by being catapulted from a bench beside his home in the West Bank into Gaza and has to get back. The Gazan businessman has to avoid or neutralize giant coins that threaten the ice cream factory he is trying to open in the West Bank.

According to Palestine Notes, the characters were composites based on real people.

“The student is based in part on the story of Berlanty Azzam, the 22-year-old Bethlehem University student from Gaza who was seized by Israeli soldiers and removed to Gaza just two months before completing her degree.”

Reflecting the membership of the nonprofit and the reality of the people involved in the real-world conflicts the game describes, the game can be played in Arabic, Hebrew or English.

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