Dear friends,
The word ‘trapped’ comes to mind quite often here, and I want to take a few moments to explore this feeling. I often hear people talk about the prison that is Palestine, and the very real fear that the Wall will turn it into even more of a prison. I feel it more intensely this time around, and I think the feeling of being trapped extends both inward and outward from that place of physical walls.
The idea for this e-mail came while I was crouched in a corner of a house in Deir Ballut the other day with about 25 other people, mostly children and a few women. We had been standing at the edge of the village after the main part of the demonstration had ended. We could see army jeeps in the distance, and occasionally they shot tear gas at groups of people who tried to walk through their land to get closer to where the bulldozers were working. Suddenly, a jeep came speeding down the road from inside the village. People started screaming and scattering every which way. The army threw sound bombs first, and many of us scurried into the closest house. This brings us to the crouching in the corner, where I looked around at the little kids who were crying and covering their ears, and I just thought, ‘We’re trapped.’ The sound bombs were unbelievably loud, and one glass in the middle of the room actually shattered. I was sure the army would throw sound bombs or gas into the house, or start shooting, but apparently they decided to target the people who didn’t make it inside and had scattered throughout the olive groves instead.
This physical trapping inside houses has been happening more and more recently, especially in Az Zawiya where the border police have been targeting internationals (although they’ve only been holding people for a few hours and not even officially arresting most of them). We find ourselves moving secretly from place to place, climbing over rocks and walls of locked schools and peeking from roofs to see where the soldiers and police are. It’s really like a scene from a bad movie, and it’s completely exhausting and sometimes quite frightening.
Trapped. It happens during the demonstrations as well. We walk in large groups towards the army, and their military strategy (or is it just force? Is brutal force a strategy?) often traps us. They can see us from further than we can see them, they are usually standing at a higher elevation than we are, and, not to be forgotten, they have heavy weaponry. They shoot gas and rubber bullets, they sometimes come from all directions, they drive around and do their best to provoke the boys into throwing stones. And sometimes the boys respond, and those of us on the streets are again trapped – trapped between David and Goliath, with both sides willing to use internationals as human shields. We try to step aside at these times, though not without fear for what will happen to the children. The kids’ stones are no match for the army’s guns, not to mention the fact that the land and villages are Palestinian, and the Israeli army has no right to be there in the first place. It’s hard to know what to do when the worldwide media justifies even murder if it’s seen as a response to stone-throwing, and the soldiers know this.
Does it make a difference to have internationals and journalists there watching? Perhaps not as much as it used to (we are not immune to IDF violence anymore), but I’m convinced there would have been people killed at these demonstrations in the past couple weeks had we (outsiders, cameras, a few white faces) not been there. Palestinians are trapped in their own skin, unable to escape the racism that leads soldiers to kill them and the world to ignore them or call them terrorists. Never have I been more acutely aware of the arbitrariness of birth than in the past couple weeks.
Trapped. I think it was Mustafa Barghouti who I heard say that the concept of negotiation between Israelis and Palestinians is like putting a tiger and a lamb in a room and telling them to negotiate. Year after year, day after day, Palestinians have been forced into political and human concessions that trap them further while shifting the debate in favor of Israel. The first and perhaps largest compromise was Palestinians’ acceptance of the state of Israel in 78% of historic Palestine (accepting the occupation of 1948 with the hope that it could end the occupation of 1967). Now Israel is building the Wall. The Palestinian response at first was, "Don’t build it," which then shifted for some people to, "Okay, build a wall, but build it on the 1967 border rather than inside Palestinian land." Now, as we stand in places like Iskaka and watch the path of the Wall, I hear Palestinians say, "If you want a Wall around Ariel [25 kilometers east of the 1967 border], build it a few hundred meters over so you don’t steal too much more of our land." Concession after concession. Trapped.
And of course, we are all trapped in our own hearts, minds, and experiences. I was having trouble sleeping last week, especially when I tried to nap after a demonstration. Every time I closed my eyes I saw soldiers and tear gas, and every sound I heard made me jump. I can’t even imagine what Palestinians must feel, and specifically how children deal with the fear. I also wonder whether Israeli soldiers have nightmares about what they’re doing, and if so, whether that comes from a place of physical fear or moral imperative. Do they think they have a right to stand in those fields and physically and forcefully prevent people from being on their own land?
There was an article in Ha’aretz (a major Israeli newspaper) a couple days ago that cited some frightening statistics. A recent poll shows that 64% of Israeli Jews believe that the Israeli government should encourage Israeli Arabs to emigrate. 45.3% actually say they support revoking Israeli Arabs’ right to vote and hold political office. If this isn’t a case of being trapped in one’s own mind, I don’t know what is. I say this not to absolve Israeli Jews of their responsibility to unlearn racism, but simply to recognize that we all set traps for ourselves that we find near impossible to escape.
It’s hard to think and feel our way out of all the traps the physical, emotional, political and ideological. This is only my first attempt at defining a few of the more obvious traps I’ve noticed in these two weeks. How to dismantle them? Well, that’ll have to wait until later. Shwaye shwaye, as they say here (slowly, step by step).
Wishing all kinds of freedom for all kinds of people,
Hannah
