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FEATURES/3
GAZA MOM
Palestinian blogger speaksout about conflict in Gaza
Tomorrow 
Mostly Cloudy 
5632
Today 
Brezzy 
6244
SPORTS/6
SENIOR SWINGS
Index 
Features/3 •Opinions/4 •Sports/6 •Classifieds/7
Recycle Me
CARDINAL TODAY 
 An Independent Publication
 www.stanforddaily.com
 The Stanford Daily
By KURT CHIRBAS
STAFF WRITER
Last spring,Martin Hellman,pro-fessor emeritus of electrical engi-neering,organized a public lectureseries titled “Defusing the NuclearThreat,”with the goal of educatingthe campus community about therisks associated with nuclearweapons.The lectures were held at HewlettTraining Center and attracted 50 to200 attendees each.Most of thoselecture-goers,however,came fromoff-campus.“It’s hard to get students out of their dorms to the teaching center,”Hellman said.“So if the studentswon’t come to the mountain,we’llbring the mountain to the students.”The solution? Bring the speakersto the dorm,Hellman said.That’s what happened Tuesdaynight when Siegfried Hecker,co-di-rector of the Center for Interna-tional Security and Cooperation(CISAC) and professor of manage-ment science and engineering,spoke at Florence Moore Hall’slounge.Hecker was the first speak-er in a three-part series that ad-dresses possible ways of eliminatingthe threat of nuclear weapons.Hecker,a former director of the
Faculty,sophsdine at iDeclare
By KABIR SAWHNEY 
DESK EDITOR
Numerous Stanford luminariesdiscussed academic exploration withsmall groups of students at last night’sSophomore Faculty Dinner in PaulBrest Hall.Political science professorCondoleezza Rice,a former Secretaryof State and former provost at Stan-ford,delivered the keynote address,sharing her own experiences and ex-horting attendees to explore numer-ous disciplines.The dinner was part of iDeclareWeek,which was organized and spon-sored by the sophomore class councilto help second-year students find amajor.The class presidents teamed upwith Undergraduate Advising andResearch (UAR),another sponsor of iDeclare week,to assist sophomoresin the declaration process.President John Hennessy and Rev-erend Scotty McLennan,dean of reli-gious life,hosted the week’s first eventon Sunday afternoon.Other events in-cluded drop-in advising sessions at theCoHo,where UAR advisors met indi-vidually with students to help them re-fine and focus their academic trajecto-ries.“Coming into our sophomore year,you have to find an academic footingand an academic home,”said ShaneHegde ‘13,one of the sophomore classpresidents.“It’s a very difficultprocess.”
STUDENT LIFE
Students want in-house draw change
By MARGARET RAWSON
SENIOR STAFF WRITER
After achieving quorum half an hour late dueto senators attending the sophomore faculty din-ner,the ASSU Undergraduate Senate passedfour bills Tuesday.The bills amended the rules of order of the Constitutional Council,instituted aSenate transition,reformed the special feesprocess and confirmed Senate Chair MichaelCruz ‘12 as ASSU Vice President.ASSU Executive Angelina Cardona ‘11 nom-inated Cruz Monday to replace Kelsei Wharton‘12,who resigned after taking a leave of absencefollowing a bike accident at the beginning of thequarter.After confirming Cruz as vice president,the Senate opted to determine a new chair anddeputy chair to take office if the Graduate Stu-dent Council (GSC) confirms Cruz today.Made-line Hawes ‘13 ran unopposed for chair and waselected unanimously by a role call vote.PatBruny ‘13 and Deepa Kannappan ‘13 ran fordeputy chair.Bruny was selected nine to five in aclosed ballot vote,with Cruz abstaining.For Cruz to assume the role as vice president,and for Hawes and Bruny to assume their new re-sponsibilities,the GSC must approve Cardona’snomination with two-thirds consent.The GSC will also likely vote today on thespecial fees reform legislation passed Tuesday.The Senate adopted a friendly amendment byGSC members to the bill,stipulating that theASSU financial manager shall remind studentgroup leaders of the private nature of informa-
Dinner part ofweeklong UAR,classeffort for sophomores to explore majors
By IVY NGUYEN
DESK EDITOR
Slightly more than half of students who respondedto a Residential Education (ResEd) survey indicatedthey would like to see a change in the in-house drawprocess.These results are part of an ongoing inquiryby ResEd to improve the in-house draw,the aspect of the annual Draw that is the target of most studentcomplaints.In the current Draw process,students are assigneda randomly chosen number and rank their residencesof choice online.Those with lower draw numbers aremost likely to get into their residence of choice.Once students are assigned to their building,it isup to that residence’s future staff to conduct thein-house draw,where students meet to select theirrooms.The way in-house draws are organized is large-ly left up to the new staff,and the process variesacross residences.Under ResEd’s proposedchanges,the in-house draw would also be done on-line.Rodger Whitney,executive director of student
Constitutional Council rules also passed to clarify hearing process
 WEDNESDAY Volume 239
February 16, 2011Issue 15
UNIVERSITY
Defaultedloan ratesstay low 
SPEAKERS & EVENTS
Hecker seekschange inKorea policy 
STUDENT GOVERNMENT
Senate confirms Cruz nomination to VP position
Three-year default rate1.3 percent last fiscal year
 Lecture recounts visit to nuclear facilities in Dec.
By TYLER BROWN
DESK EDITOR
Student loan defaults at Stanfordremain low,but recent made by theDepartment of Education requireuniversities to measure their defaultrates over three years instead of two,which could reveal more studentsmissing payments.Under this newcalculation,Stanford’s three-year de-fault rate is 1.3 percent,which mis-leadingly appears to have increasedfrom its two-year default rate of 0.8percent,despite the fact that overalldefault rates have not changed.The default rate is the ratio of stu-dents who have defaulted againstthose who took out loans.The U.S.Department of Education requiresthese statistics,and high default ratescould affect colleges’ and universi-ties’ access to federal funds.Financial aid director KarenCooper said Stanford was “well with-in the established parameters for re-sponsibly managing federal funds.“Across our whole population,wecan essentially count on two handsthe number of students who havegone into default after entering re-payment within their first threeyears,”she said.Recent adjustments to federal lawmay obscure this fact.“Now because you’ve expanded itto a three-year cohort,the calculationgoes up a little bit,but I don’t think it’sa reflection that Stanford students asa whole are going to see a drastic in-crease in defaults,”said Jack Ed-wards,director of financial aid at theGraduate School of Business (GSB).Typically,it takes 10 years to repaya student loan making the minimumpayments.“Adding that one more year to thecalculation gives you a bigger windowinto what’s going on with your stu-dents,”Cooper said.The number of undergraduatestudents who take out loans in thefirst place has fallen from between2,000 and 2,500 students to between900 and 975 students since the 2008-09 school year.Just over 1,900 gradu-ate students have taken out loans,anumber that has been “pretty steady”for the last four years,Cooper said.Edwards noted that about 60 per-cent of GSB students take out loansand that the default rate is consistent-ly under one percent.“They understand how it can im-pact their credit,so they are very con-scious of it.They are business stu-dents,so they pride themselves of having excellent credit.”Cooper said Stanford’s relativelylow default rate isn’t closely related towork done by the financial aid office.She attributed this success to “thequality of students”at Stanford and“the fact that they really do find good
Meat Market
IAN GARTCIA-DOTYThe Stanford Daily
 Athletes performed at Tuesday’s Date Auction, sponsored by Cardinal Council. The auction drew 518 peo-ple and raised $4,220 to money for Camp Kesem, a summer camp for children whose parents have cancer.
Please see
SENATE
,page 3
IAN GARCIA-DOTY/The Stanford Daily
Political science professor Condoleezza Rice spoke at Tuesday’sSophomore Faculty Dinner. The dinner was part of iDeclare, anevent aimed at encouraging sophomores to declare a major.
Please see
HECKER
,page 2Please see
LOANS
,page 2Please see
IDECLARE
,page 2
ERICKOFFMAN/The Stanford Daily
Please see
DRAW 
,page 3
 
Los Alamos National Laboratory,focused his talk on what actions theUnited States could take to dealwith North Korea’s nuclear pro-gram.He provided a brief history of the diplomatic relations betweenthe two countries,and described hismost recent trip to North Korea,which received significant mediaattention last November whenHecker returned with news that thecountry had built a state-of-the-arturanium enrichment facility.“It was shockingly modern,”Hecker said.“Everything else I hadseen in North Korea’s nuclear facil-ities looked like [it was built in the]sixties,Russian-style or forties,fifties American-style.But thisthing was modern.”Prior to the trip,he suspectedNorth Korea had performed urani-um enrichment,but estimated thatthe country would only have adozen centrifuges.He ended upseeing 2,000.“It literally blew my mind,”Hecker said.However,he emphasized thatthis was not a discovery,as it hasbeen portrayed in the press,butrather the culmination of six yearsof relationship building.Hecker has visited North Koreaevery year since 2004.“It wasn’t a shot in the dark thatwe discovered;it came from six pre-vious visits,”he said.“We had pavedthe way with them.They trusted usto tell the truth,to report those ob-servations truthfully.And we did.”Hecker also showed picturesfrom his previous visits—a girlstanding by a kiosk,adults walkingdown the street carrying cellphones—in hopes of dispellingcommon misconceptions aboutNorth Korea.Hecker indicated that the realthreat behind North Korea’s nu-clear program isn’t necessarily anuclear attack,but an accidentalmishap or the export of this tech-nology to another country.Instead of pushing for com-plete denuclearization of theNorth,an approach the U.S.hastaken in the past,he suggestedthat we work to improve our rela-tionship with the country througha plan he called “three no’s for oneyes.”During his visits,Hecker be-lieved North Korea would agreeto not build any more bombs,notimprove any of the bombs theycurrently have and not export anymore nuclear technology.In re-turn,the U.S.would be obligatedto address the fundamental inse-curities in the country.“Unless we understand NorthKorea more broadly,and not justthrough the typical U.S.nuclearlenses,then we are never going tobe able to roll back and solve theNorth Korea nuclear program,”hesaid.But Hecker saw hope for abright future.This hope,he said,came in the form of a boy wearing abaseball cap turned backwards.“He’s probably about 11 yearsold,”Hecker said.“Do you thinkwhen he’s 21 years old they aregoing to keep him from everythinglike they are people from now?There’s no way.”Even though yesterday’s eventwas held in a dorm,there was still astrong showing of non-students.“I must say in the five years I’vebeen here at Stanford,it seemed tobe that the students keep gettingyounger every year,”Hecker said.“I must say,tonight is a bit of an ex-ception.”The lecture series will contin-ue next Tuesday when BartonBernstein,professor emeritus of history,will discuss the meaningof the Cuban Missile Crisis in theFlorence Moore lounge at 7:30p.m.
Contact Kurt Chirbas at kchirbas@ stanford.edu.
HECKER
Continued from front page
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Wednesday,February 16,2011
 The Stanford Daily
Board ofTrusteesapprove new construction
By THE DAILY NEWS STAFF
The Board of Trustees approvedproposals for construction of the Jilland John Freidenrich Center forTranslational Research,the designof the West Campus RecreationCenter and the expansion of Stan-ford Auxiliary Library III (SAL3) attheir Feb.7-8 meeting.The Freidenrich Center willhouse work that turns new discover-ies into treatments for patients,espe-cially clinical trials in cancer treat-ment,and will be the center of theSchool of Medicine’s work in trans-lational research.These new treat-ments will be done together withStanford Hospital & Clinics and Lu-cile Packard Children’s Hospital.The new building will be locatedat the intersection of Welch Roadand Durand Way and is slated toopen Aug.2012.The West Campus RecreationCenter cleared the second phase of the approval process with theBoard’s design approval.The centerwill be similar in design and size tothe Arrillaga Center for Sports andRecreation,measuring 75,000square feet and costing $35.5 mil-lion.The design includes basketballcourts,lockers,showers and fitness,wellness and recreation spaces.Itwill also include a 50-meter swim-ming pool to replace the Roble Gympool.Following project approvalfrom the Board in April and con-struction approval in June,construc-tion is planned to begin this summerand conclude in September 2012.SAL3,a climate-controlled stor-age facility located in Livermore,will double its storage capacity from3 million volumes to 6 million vol-umes under this new plan.The proj-ect will cost $14.8 million.SAL3stores library materials for the Uni-versity library system and servesboth the main campus and HopkinsMarine Station Library.Construction is expected to beginin fall 2011 and finish in the fall of 2012,pending the project’s designapproval in April and its combinedproject and construction approval inJune.
 — Ivy Nguyen
Scholars receiveSloan Fellowships
By THE DAILY NEWS STAFF
The Alfred P.Sloan Foundationchose six Stanford scientists andscholars for its Research Fellow-ships.Manuel Amador,Sean Hart-noll,Seema Jayachandran,Fei-FeiLi,Michael Ostrovsky and NancyRuonan Zhang are among the 118Sloan awardees.They each ob-tained $50,000 in unrestricted re-search grants,which will be usedover the next two years.Among the recipients are threeStanford economists.Amador is anassistant professor of economicsand specializes in macroeconomicsand international economics.Jay-achandran,assistant professor of economics,focuses developmenteconomics.Ostrovsky,B.A.S.‘99 isan associate professor of economicsat the Graduate School of Business.Fei-Fei Li,assistant professor of computer science,runs the Stan-ford Vision Lab.Zhang,B.S.‘01,M.S.‘01,Ph.D ‘05 is assistant pro-fessor of statistics who studies ge-nomic variation using high-densitySNP chips and sequencing experi-ments.Hartnoll,assistant professorof physics,researches general rela-tivity,string theory,field theory andcondensed matter theory.The Sloan Research Fellow-ships were created in 1955 to sup-port the research efforts of promis-ing academics.According to theSloan Foundation website,Fellowsare “at an early stage of their re-search careers”and boast “inde-pendent research accomplish-ments.”
 — An Le Nguyen
Correction
In “Stanford alumnus winsGrammy,”The Daily incorrectlystated that Christopher Tin wasnominated for a second Grammyfor Best Classical CrossoverAlbum.In fact,he won the award.
NEWS BRIEFS
Movie Magic
IANGARCIA-DOTY/The Stanford Daily
 Art history professor Kristine Samuelson watches as one of her clips is shownat the Clayman Institute. Samuelson showed clips from two of her earlier works and a work in progress from her new film at her winter salon Tuesday.
 job opportunities once they leave.”As students graduate,the finan-cial aid office offers them an in-per-son meeting to discuss loan pro-grams and repayment options andprovides an online counseling tool.“[We do] a lot of work to pre-vent students from going into de-fault,”Edwards said.“They havethe option of always coming back tous to talk about it.”Students who do default are typ-ically “having very difficult eco-nomic situations,”Cooper said.“They may not have finished theirdegree,”she added.“This doesn’thappen to very many students,but afew who drop out and want to doother things...get out of sync withthe student world and repayment.”Defaulting on loans makes it dif-ficult to qualify for credit in the fu-ture.On the flipside,if studentskeep up with their payments,theycan build a good credit history.“It’s the only loan you can getwhen you are 18-years-old andhave no credit history at all that willhappily give you $5,000,”sheadded.
Kurt Chirbas contributed to this re- port.Contact Tyler Brown at tbbrown@ stanford.edu.
LOANS
Continued from front page
“We hoped,as the sophomoreclass presidents,to provide an op-portunity for students to initiatethat conversation,”he added.“Thathas been the impetus for iDeclareWeek and that’s what has been driv-ing us.”“It’s really just supposed to en-able sophomores with the resourcesthey need to make a good choice indeclaring a major,”said Jason Lu-patkin ‘13,a member of the classcabinet.Hegde said the number of soph-omores who have declared theirmajor has not declined this year.Butthe last five years saw a fairly highpercentage of sophomores finishingtheir second year without havingdeclared a major,he noted.“We would like for students toreally have opportunities to [de-clare] earlier,so they can begin gain-ing the depth that they need withintheir department,”he said.“Thathas been the focus of this Universi-ty,in trying to structure a means forstudents to really get after their de-partments early.”Last night’s dinner seated eightstudents and one faculty member atevery table,a move that aimed tofoster an open discussion on a widerange of topics not necessarily tiedto choosing or declaring a major.The 150 available spots were gone45 minutes after registrationopened.The personal stories of both thespeakers and the faculty membersat the tables appeared to resonatethe most with students.“We sought to bring in facultywho could connect with students ona personal level and faculty whowere very accomplished withintheir field,”Hedge said.“We reallywant to get to the individual behindthe face and the name.”Harry Elam,vice provost for un-dergraduate education,deliveredthe first address of the evening,building on the theme of turning ac-ademic passions into a major,ratherthan letting career prospects or out-side influences dictate the declara-tion process.“The task of declaring a major isone that should be approached...not so much in terms of what you’llbe doing down the line in your ca-reer...[but] what you’re interestedin,and what’s going to grab you andwhat’s going to excite you in whatyou’re doing now at Stanford,”hesaid.Elam went on to relate his ownundergraduate experience at Har-vard,saying he chose his major insocial studies for the “wrong rea-sons.”He explained he had original-ly been determined to go to lawschool,but discovered a passion fordrama during his senior year andwent on to get a doctoral degree indrama.Rice’s keynote address touchedon similar ideas,eschewing careerprospects or parents’ desires infavor of finding and following one’strue academic calling.She also dis-cussed the importance of interac-tion between the students and facul-ty,and encouraged students to seekout faculty members in pursuit of their academic goals.“I hope that,in this four years,you will worry less about what jobyou are going to get when you getout of here...and that you willtake these four years to make surethat you have found your passion,”she said.“Because once you havefound your passion,nothing is everthe same.”Rice detailed how she enteredcollege as a concert pianist,abrupt-ly changing her academic focus inher junior year.She told the atten-dees how she went through a num-ber of classes before taking a classtaught by an expert on the SovietUnion.Inspired by that experience,she went on to major in interna-tional relations with a focus on So-viet affairs.“For those of you that have al-ready declared majors,that’s terrific—maybe that means you havefound a passion,”she said.“In anycase,I hope you keep looking,be-cause sometimes,your passion findsyou,rather than the other wayaround.”
Contact Kabir Sawnhey at ksawn-hey@stanford.edu.
IDECLARE
Continued from front page
 
 The Stanford Daily
Wednesday,February 16,2011
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EATURES
housing,has been working to gath-er feedback on the proposedchanges since the beginning of theschool year.“We had several town hall meet-ings and met with ASSU leadershipduring autumn quarter to get feed-back on this topic,”Whitney wrotein an e-mail to The Daily.“Weadded these questions to the surveyto gather input from a broader au-dience.”The questions were part of theannual housing survey,which alsoasked students questions about thequality of the services provided intheir residences.A total of 3,922graduate and undergraduate stu-dents completed the housing sur-vey.Only respondents who had par-ticipated in the Draw—currentsophomores,juniors and seniors—were asked to answer the questionabout the in-house draw.Of those,900 filled out responses to the ques-tions,and slightly more than half of that number favored changing thein-house draw.Students seemed split in theiropinions about the potentialchange.Irteza Binte-Farid ‘13,aToyon resident,said she supportedthe possibility of doing room selec-tion online.Binte-Farid’s main complaintabout the in-house draw processwas the large amount of time someresidents took to choose theirrooms.Some residents,she said,chose their rooms more slowly be-cause they were unfamiliar with theprocess,delaying the entire processfor other residents.“I think it would be less compli-cated than the current system,forsure,”Binte-Farid said.“It would bemore streamlined if it’s online.”Others,however,were skepticalof any improvement the new sys-tem could bring.“It could be better,but I feel likeyou’d spend just as much timedoing that one because you’d belooking at all the rooms online,”Toyon Resident Assistant (RA)Wesley Dunnagan ‘12 said.“I don’t think I would like thatbetter,”he added.Whitney also noted a conflict be-tween the request for changing theprocess and some of the students’responses to additional questionsabout the in-house draw.“The survey indicated that stu-dents value the in-house drawmeetings as an opportunity to se-lect roommates,meet others fromthe house and become familiar withspecific room spaces in the house,”Whitney said.Binte-Farid expressed ambiva-lent feelings about transitioning toan online,in-house Draw.“There is something to be saidabout meeting your new neighborsface to face,”she said.“So maybe if they compensated for that by hav-ing other gatherings or something,then that would be fun.”Though this year’s Draw will notinclude a process through whichstudents can select their rooms on-line,Whitney said that option maybe available in the future.In themeantime,ResEd will continue toresearch how it can improve theDraw process.“We will continue to work to-gether to consider what parts of thecurrent Housing and ResidentialEducation processes to keep andwhat might be improved [and] con-nected differently,”Whitney said.
Contact Ivy Nguyen at iknguyen@ stanford.edu.
DRAW
Continued from front page
tion released about students who re-quest special fees refunds.The Senate also passed a billamending the rules of order of theConstitutional Council Tuesday.Council member Mateo Wilmott ‘11stressed that,prior to Tuesday’s bill,very little guiding structure existedto direct the Constitutional Councilin hearing cases.“It was chaotic,really,”he said.All members of the Constitution-al Council stayed at Tuesday’s meet-ing to participate in the discussion of a bill on previous notice to “moreproperly define the role of theASSU solicitors general.”Solicitor general Adam Adler ‘12described the bill as similar to that toamend the rules of order of the Con-stitutional Council—as a mecha-nism to make filing cases concerningactions by the ASSU easier for theaverage student.Members of the ConstitutionalCouncil said the bill oversteps itbounds.Samir Siddhanti ‘12 likened thebill to “a group of lawyers defininghow a courtroom is run.”Both bodies,at the suggestion of the senators,agreed to meet in thecoming week to reach a compro-mise.The Appropriations Committee,after receiving nominations,mo-tioned for the Senate to give the “fi-nancial officer of the year”award toVan Anh Tran ‘13,financial officer of the Stanford Asian American Stu-dents’ Association (SAASA).Ap-propriations Chair Rafael Vazquezpraised Tran’s work and the Senateagreed unanimously to grant her theaward.Cardona announced at Tuesday’smeeting that her State of the Associ-ation Address will take place at 6p.m.on Tuesday,March 8.Amid the discussion about elect-ing a new Senate chair and deputychair and subsequent shifting of re-sponsibility,it was announced thatCarolyn Simmons ‘13 and BenJensen ‘12 will be spending springquarter abroad,in Santiago andBerlin,respectively.They will be thelast senators to spend a quarterabroad while in office,due to legisla-tion passed last year prohibitingstudy abroad for senators beginningnext year.Advocacy committee chairRobin Perani ‘13 is organizing forand encouraging all of the senatorsto get tested for STIs at Vaden onFriday afternoon,as a model for theentire student body.“We’re doing it for the wholeStanford community,”Perani said.Showly Wang ‘13 also came by toencourage the senators to attend theVagina Monologues.As promised,she gave members of the Appropri-ations Committee free tickets to ex-press her appreciation.All funding bills for the eveningwere passed.
Contact Margaret Rawson at marawson@stanford.edu.
SENATE
Continued from front page
“We’re doing itfor the wholeStanfordcommunity.”
—
ROBINPERANI ‘13,
senator 
By AMY JULIA HARRIS
DESK EDITOR
I
n April of 2006,Palestinian bloggerLaila El-Haddad was reveling in arare moment of tranquility as shelooked out of her apartment windowat the civilians milling around a localpark across the street,enjoy-ing a quiet afternoon in thecalm Gaza sun.“There was nochaos,uncertainty and vio-lence that grip our lives,”shewrote.“For a few moments,things seemed normal.”Then the missiles explod-ed.Shells rained down on thepark and civilians no longermilled,but fled for their lives.That abrupt turn of eventsdidn’t surprise El-Haddad—“It was just another GazaFriday,”she wrote in her newbook,“Gaza Mom:Palestine,Politics,Par-enting and Everything In Between.”Blogger and pundit Laila El-Haddad,her hair covered with a blue and whitehijab,engaged a small group of Stanfordstudents in a talk about the Gaza Strip thatalternated between anger,frustration andsadness about the political state of the 25mile war-torn stretch of land along theMediterranean Sea.“What often happens in the case of Gazais that the personal gets displaced by thepolitical,”said El-Haddad,describing herefforts to bridge that gap in “Gaza Mom.”“Palestinians are pess-optimists.How doyou understand a situation that is ever-changing,where surviving itself is just anact of resistance?”The Gaza Strip,which borders Egypt onthe southwest and Israel on the south,eastand north,has been at the epicenter of thedecades-long Palestinian-Israeli conflict.Forthe 1.7 million civilians and refugees whocall the violence-splattered occupied territo-ry home,political disillusionment and bor-der snafus are a part of every-day life.El-Haddad was born in Gaza and grewup in the Arabian Gulf,coming to the Unit-ed States for college and then graduateschool.She returned to Gaza asa stringer for the Aljazeera Eng-lish website where she coveredthe Gaza disengagement in2005 and Palestin-ian parliamentaryelections in 2006.She and her hus-band,who is aPalestinianrefugee,are cur-rently living in theUnited Stateswith their twochildren,unableto return to orvisit Gaza due tothe Israeli siege.They,like thousands of othersof Palestinians are “languish-ing in legal limbo,”El-Haddadsaid.“As Palestinians we spendso much time waiting forsomething—for a war tostart,for a permit to be ap-proved,for a border to becrossed,”she said.“I wantedto contribute to the Palestinian narrative.”After wrestling with whether her ownstory was cause enough to begin a blog—“what right did I have to speak? I didn’t re-ally have it that bad”—El-Haddad begansharing her first-hand experiences online toshow the “harrowing manifestations of oc-cupation.”Several of those experiences focused hertalk,such as the Palestinian civilian effectsof Israel and Egypt’s blockade of the move-ment of goods and people in and out of Gaza,saying that despite media reportingof a humanitarian food crisis,the sanctionsrepresented a “siege of freedoms,not thesiege of food.”Israel increased its sanctionsand restricted access in Gaza in 2007,afterthe Islamic po-litical-militantgroup Hamas won thePalestinian 2006 elections.“For us,it’s a matter of freedom,”she said.“We want to be able to live nor-mal lives and not have our lives dys-func-tionalized.”She got defensive with the audienceafter fielding questions about what obliga-tion Israelis have to Palestinians in the firstplace and the underlying motivations forclosing borders in the Gaza strip.“There are always preconditions placedon Palestinians and there are none on Is-raelis,”she said,prompting a series of heat-ed follow-up questions by the audience.“There is a great illusion that if one wereto open the borders that Palestinians willrun out of Gaza with knives and attack thefirst Israelis they see.But if you talk toPalestinians who have had children killedby Israel and born the brunt of the occupa-tion,they say,I don’t care about that.If youask them if theybear Israelis hardfeelings,they say,no,we would welcomethem into our house.”When asked about whata viable endgame for the Is-raeli-Palestinian conflict wouldbe,El-Haddad was unequivocal.“A one-state solution that is dem-ocratic with rights for all is where it’sheaded whether people like it or not,”she said.“If Israel were to open the bor-ders,people would have no problem co-existing.”
The talk was organized by Students Con- fronting Apartheid by Israel,a student-runorganization that has pressed for Stanford’sdivestment from Israel.El-Haddad stoppedat Stanford as part of her two-week booktour of California and Washington. Amy Julia Harris at harrisaj@stanford.edu.
Gazans stripped
Laila El-Haddad
“For us,it’s a matteroffreedom.We wantto be able to livenormal lives and nothave our livesdys-functionalized”
Author recounts personal and political problems in Gaza
 ANASTASIA YEE/The Stanford Daily
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