Much has happened in the past week, but I’ve also had a bit of time in the house. I’m realizing that my first week here demonstrating and getting tear gassed every day was not typical. I knew that, of course, but I had forgotten. Not that this week was any more typical, just more varied.
Last Friday I took a day off, not only from demonstrations in Palestine, but from the West Bank altogether. I went to Tel Aviv’s gay pride parade, where the theme was apparently the same as it has been for years: family ("we want to get married, too"). That’s all fine and good, but I much preferred the Black Laundry contingency with which I marched. They wore all black and carried large black triangular signs saying, "Occupation is not a family value" and "Transgender, not transfer." I particularly appreciated their flyer, which explained why they were there in English, Arabic, Russian, and Hebrew:
"Because of all the families who lost their loved ones. Because of the families left homeless by the destruction of Rafah. Because of the families facing poverty and the loss of welfare and health in Israel and Palestine. Because parenthood in Israel is a tool in a demographic war. Because women are used to (pro)create cannon fodder for a military government. Because we want space for families that are not built on straight models in the service of the state."
You can see my pictures of the event online, but I have no pictures of the 'Queerifada' party held that night. I wasn't there, and even if I had been, it's likely the cops who raided the party would have stolen my camera. That's right, this is where the fascism part of my e-mail begins (to clarify, I'm using the word 'fascism' because my Israeli friends keep insisting that's the only appropriate word for what’s happening in Israel right now - although some of them also say 'police state' or 'Nazi state'). Apparently, two noise cops came into the party sometime around 3 am. They looked at the flyers that were on the tables, and after noticing they were political (and specifically anti-authoritarian and anti-occupation), they called for backup. Dozens of police officers apparently showed up and started violently pushing their way through the crowd with clubs. They beat and arrested several people (some of whom they arrested from their hospital beds after having beat them). My friends who were there were in shock the next morning. They hadn’t realized how much of a police state Israel had become, they told me.
Unfortunately, the day didn't get much better. We left for A Ram, a Palestinian village near Jerusalem that is being drastically affected by the Wall. The concrete slabs of wall are currently laid out along the road, pending an 'ok' by the government or courts to continue building in that area. Thousands of people gathered in A Ram on Saturday - Israelis, Palestinians, and internationals. We planned to march to Qalandiya, one of the largest and worst checkpoints that serves as a crossroads for most West Bank travel. Palestinians from Ramallah would meet us on the other side of Qalandiya. This was the plan, but things rarely go as planned.
People on our side began to march, and were immediately turned around by army or police (I wasn't in the front so I'm not sure exactly why we decided to take a different route). We marched another way, and the first 10 minutes of protest were peaceful and colorful: a marching band of Palestinian youth, Israelis with signs against the occupation, journalists running alongside with their cameras. Suddenly, the army showed up en masse at the top of the hill overlooking the road, and began to fire tear gas against the buildings. The crowd scattered and people took cover in stores and homes on side streets. I won't report the details of the ensuing confusion, because in certain ways it is similar to what I've written about village protests in the past couple weeks. The crazy thing to me was not that I was facing tear gas and sound bombs, but that I was facing those weapons in the middle of a busy intersection with hundreds of Israelis. Some Palestinian taxis continued to drive through, many of the stores remained open, and meanwhile there was a war happening in the middle of the road. At one point I saw a large white police truck drive through the intersection. I asked an Israeli activist about it, and she said, "You haven't seen that before? It's the water cannon." These trucks shoot water at high speeds to try to clear the road of people. Some say it's sewage water. Luckily it didn't hit me, so I can't confirm or deny that.
When all was said and done, the border police had beat up and arrested several people (mostly Israelis, including one journalist from Yediot Achronot, Israel's largest newspaper). The army had shot dozens of rounds of tear gas, sounds bombs, light bombs, rubber bullets, water streams, and possibly live ammunition. An hour later, life was back to normal in the intersection and at the nearby checkpoints. The fact that the situation didn't seem to faze people scares me just as much as what happened that afternoon. Because Jewish Israelis were involved, the 'incident' is being looked into by Israeli courts and organizations, but it's clear that the army and police are taking more liberties these days, even with the populations they claim to protect.
Now let us fast forward a week. We are back in the West Bank, at a village called Kafr Al Labad in the Tulkarem region. This village of 4,000 people has roadblocks preventing them from entering or leaving their village both from the west and from the south. The village's well is outside the western roadblock, making it extremely difficult to live, agriculturally and otherwise. So the village decides to act.
Yesterday I participated in my first roadblock removal, and my first tangibly successful action since I've been here. About 200 villagers (men, women, and children) marched to the western roadblock, accompanied by at least 30 internationals and Israelis. People began to dig and push rocks as the internationals looked out for the army. A few minutes later, the bulldozer showed up, carrying about 6 or 7 men in its crane. The men jumped out, the digging began, and the mood of the crowd became more jubilant and less worried with each moment that the army didn't come.
In the following 2 hours, the village managed to remove all the roadblocks to the west and south of their village. The first cars, horses, donkeys and tractors that rode through received huge rounds of applause, and spirits were high as we returned to the village for a feast that villagers had prepared for us (a feast that they called 'light food' - probably because they didn't grill any fresh meat and instead served homemade bread, cheese, and vegetables from their land).
One of the internationals, a woman from New York who came with the "Women of a Certain Age" delegation (they wear their 'WCA 2004' hats everywhere they go), phoned WBAI (New York's Pacifica radio station). They said they had to call her back, so she handed the phone to an English-speaking Palestinian as she looked for her number. Suddenly, they broke through their regular programming to put Mohammad on the air, and he gave an impromptu interview for the people of New York as we all stood by the cleared roadblock in Kafr Al Labad. Small world. And, thankfully, a world in which we have the tools to communicate with each other. If only we used them a bit more effectively. Thank you for engaging in this communication.
Wishing more pride and roadblock removal, and less fascism, to you all,
Hannah
