Stop the Massacres!

I'm visiting my family in Dheisheh refugee camp. I'm on the phone with a friend (about 10 minutes ago), trying to figure out plans for the day, and discussing the case of a Palestinian man who was badly beaten by settlers last night and then arrested for being beaten. My host father walks by and said "55 people murdered in Lebanon, another massacre in Qana!"

I hear televisions going on in the neighborhood. I walk inside and sit down on the couch in front of images of dead children. It looks like the images I've seen of other massacres in the area, in Sabra and Shatila, even in Qana so many times. It looks exactly the same. Does it matter that this one happened from the air, that the Israelis are no longer killing quite as many people in on-the-ground combat because they're afraid of losing some of their own? Does it matter that someone pressed a button instead, demolished an entire building on top of its inhabitants. The number of dead will grow. 55 have been found so far. Many more are believed to be trapped under the rubble. Probably dead. If they're alive, they'll die soon, since neither rescue equipment nor ambulances are allowed on the roads. Israel will bomb anything that moves if it doesn't have a "safe passage" guarantee, which isn't easy to come by if you're talking about trying to save Lebanese civilians.

I can't believe we're letting these massacres happen again. In Lebanon, in Gaza, on a smaller scale in Nablus and Jenin this week. I see more press coverage of European and American citizens being evacuated from Lebanon than what is happening to the Lebanese who must stay. Israel has killed close to 1000 people in the past month (mostly in Lebanon and Gaza, almost entirely civilians). The response to this mass murder has been disproportionately tiny. About 50 Israelis have been killed, and that includes soldiers.

If my language is severe, it's because the situation is severe. I don't think it's possible to be more extremist than the situation itself. And to think that those with power (namely the US) are pushing for more and more death, that Condoleezza Rice is calling the murder of civilians the "birth pangs of the new Middle East"... it's disgusting! And to think the media is reporting this war as a war of self-defense on Israel's part. I can't even imagine how anyone would say that Lebanon started this war. Lebanon as a country is barely even involved in this war, and has been begging the world for a cease-fire. They've barely even responded to Israeli aggression. Hizbollah, yes, they've responded to massive bombing by firing rockets across the border. But Hizbollah is not the Lebanese government, is not the Lebanese people, and is not the target of the Israeli army. A vast majority of the hundreds and hundreds murdered in the past few weeks have been civilians. Israel's excuse: "There might be a Hizbollah fighter in your neighborhood, you chose the wrong place to live." Can you imagine an entire city being bombed because one criminal is suspected to be living in that city? There is one word only to explain the acceptance of this collective punishment: racism.

I don't know what else to say. Please don't accept the premises that CNN and BBC base their coverage on. This is pure and simple murder. And the US is the main supporter. Please do everything you can to protest what is happening. There is no risk you can take that is more than the risk each Lebanese person is taking simply by living in Lebanon today. There is no risk you can take that is more than the risk each Palestinian person is taking simply by living in Gaza today.

I'm still listening to the news coverage in the background. A very angry Lebanese man is screaming something about George Bush. I am embarrassed to be American.

-Hannah

P.S. If you're confused about sequence of events, this is a good timeline of what has happened daily in the current Israeli war on Lebanon: http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/35772526-C1A8-4599-868C-E513C4F29C9B.htm In general, I recommend the websites of Al Jazeera and Ha'aretz for detailed information about what is happening in this region.

Daily Pilgrimage

For photos relating to this report, see http://community.webshots.com/album/552434280awoKqs. Most of the photos are not mine.

1:45 am:

Najah knocks on the bedroom door. It’s time for the three of us to wake up. She’s probably slept for two hours at most, we’ve slept for about three. She’s dressed and ready to go, ready to begin her daily commute from Dheisheh refugee camp in Bethlehem to Jerusalem. A distance of six miles becomes immeasurable. I am reminded of dozens of West Bank Palestinian friends who have told me that we in the United States live closer to Jerusalem than they do.

Najah has worked at an old age home in West Jerusalem for thirteen years. The first seven years she was able to reach work with little difficulty. Then the second Intifada came, and with it came checkpoints, roadblocks, and a strengthening and enforcement of the system of permits and ID cards. So she began to leave earlier for work. Then came the Wall, first in little sections around Bethlehem, and now completed. Then sections of the Wall east of Jerusalem. And now she’s left with one opening in the Wall that is not yet complete. She says when it is complete she’ll find new ways to get to work, that it just may get even more difficult and expensive. I can’t imagine it getting much more difficult than the four hours of driving and walking that she does each day, but a lot of things here are unimaginable until they happen.

Najah usually leaves for work around 3:00 am, to arrive by 7:00 or 8:00. Because we are accompanying her, we leave instead at 2:00, because the first car we take needs to return to pick up the rest of the women Najah usually travels with.

2:00 am:
We walk out the door into the night, and get in the taxi that is waiting for us. We drive out of Dheisheh, out of Bethlehem, through a few more villages and then a massive valley, the circuitous route that West Bank Palestinians must take to go anywhere north these days, since they are not allowed in any part of Jerusalem, east or west.

2:25 am:
We arrive at “Container” checkpoint. One large truck full of goods is stopped in front of us. We don’t see any soldiers. They’re probably sleeping, we decide. We sit and wait.

2:40 am:
A number of shared taxis drive through from the other side of the checkpoint. It seems the soldiers have waved them forward. The truck in front of us goes through and we do too. The soldiers are inside a small building, laughing with each other. They barely glance our way as we drive past.

2:45 am:
We arrive at our first destination, the taxi drops us on the street and turns around to go back for the other women. Several vans are parked on the side of the road, waiting to fill up and then veer off the road onto an agricultural path through the village’s olive groves. According to Israel, this Palestinian village is half in the West Bank and half in Jerusalem.

A few drivers are hanging around. Most workers have not arrived yet. We sit and wait.

3:20 am:
A car full of women and men arrives and the car we’re waiting in quickly fills up. Older women bring heavy sacs of vegetables that they’ll sell in the market of Jerusalem’s old city. The people and vegetables pile in the car and we begin to drive a road that we’re told is impossible to drive in the winter. It’s bumpy, rocky, dirty, and steep, and simply does not stand up to rain.

3:30 am:
The car drops us in what seems to be the middle of the path, on the outskirts of the village’s houses. We begin to walk. The older women on their way to the market pile their vegetable sacs on their heads and walk just a few meters before stopping at a place where they say another taxi will eventually come for them. They can’t walk further with all their goods. The rest of us continue on our way, seven Palestinian women, one Palestinian man, and three internationals. We walk on the path for a minute or two, and suddenly the group turns and walks down the stairs onto somebody’s porch, then out through their yard, down more stairs, and so on. We silently weave in and out of people’s porches and gardens, avoiding the checkpoint that is directly above us. We can hear the call to prayer beginning from the mosques in the distance. Najah tells us this is the place that soldiers often throw tear gas and sound bombs at them, that we’re lucky it’s not happening to us today, probably because we’ve come a little earlier than usual.

We continue to walk, up and down on uneven paths in the dark. The women are sure of their steps, having done this walk so many times. The other internationals and I are less sure, and stay near the back, probably holding the group up slightly.

4:00 am:
After about a half hour of walking, we arrive at the main road, where soldiers tend to patrol. The women and man run across the street and towards a bus that is waiting, engine on. They jump on the bus and it starts to move. The woman in front of me is whispering, “Come on, get on, hurry, we’re moving.” Najah and my friends are still behind me, so I tell the woman I’m waiting for them. The bus begins up the street, and suddenly people are emerging from all directions. They are running onto the bus from behind each olive tree, each stone, each house along the road. Within the span of 100 meters or so, the bus goes from nearly empty to overflowing with people. It speeds off.

I turn around and walk back to Najah and the others. She walks over to a nearby house, goes through their gate, and sits on the couch on their porch. The army drives by and we duck. Najah borrows my phone and calls the first taxi driver to make sure the other women had been picked up, dropped off, and are on their way to the spot where we now waited. We sit and wait.

I ask Najah if the people whose yards we sneak through know about it. “Of course,” she says. “Sometimes they take us in when the army comes looking for us.” She tells us that the army threatens them with a fine of 10,000 shekels (more than 2,000 dollars) for harboring “Arabs without permits,” but they do it anyway.

We see jeep lights on a road below and Najah tells me it’s the “security road” next to the path of the Wall. We see more jeep lights coming our way, and again we duck. It is clear that the army is not trying very hard to catch people. There is nothing sneaky about their patrol. We spot them from a distance and hide if necessary, and they simply drive up and down the road every few minutes.

4:45 am:
Another bus leaves suddenly, completely empty when it starts moving and then quickly filling up with people emerging again from the trees. We have missed the bus. Two other buses wait, one large and one small. Najah decides to get in the bus, so as not to miss it when it leaves.

4:55 am:
A jeep is driving down the road. Najah gets out to run back to the house where we’ve been hiding, tells us to stay because we have passports and it won’t matter if the army sees us. The jeep stops at the larger bus in front of us. We can’t see what they’re doing.

5:00 am:
People begin to tentatively get on our bus, Najah comes back, and the bus starts to go, hoping to drive past the other bus and the jeep without being stopped. No such luck.

A soldier stops our bus and Najah quickly takes her ID out of her purse and hides it in her shirt. The soldier boards the bus and asks for IDs. There are only a few of us on the bus at that point. My friends and I have passports so we’re fine. Najah tells the soldier she left her ID at home. She doesn’t want it taken or her name recorded. The soldier tells her to get off the bus and go home. She gets off, and we start to get off with her. The soldier tells us we can stay. The people on the bus tell us we can stay. We wait a minute and then get off. We see Najah, and she says, “Get back on, hurry, I’m getting back on.” We’re perplexed, but we board the bus again, and she comes with us. She has just walked around the bus. The soldiers are still right there, right behind us. They choose not to notice.

The bus begins driving, and once again the people are running towards it from all directions. It becomes crowded, and people are yelling, “Go, quickly, let’s go!” “No, wait for those people who are running this way!” The bus drives slowly enough that most of the people who want to get on manage to do so. The door closes and we speed off.

5:15 am:
We arrive at Damascus Gate in Jerusalem without encountering any more checkpoints. We get off the bus and see the two older women with the vegetables arriving at the same time. Their taxi did come after all. They ask why we’re so late. Najah tells them we missed the first bus and had to wait.

A woman approaches us and greets me warmly, then turns to Najah and says, “I told her to get on the bus with me, I said ‘Come, daughter, let’s go’ but she didn’t come.” I smile and say, “I was waiting for Najah, I wanted to go with her, but thank you.” She turns to us and says, “I watch the news each night and I weep. Children are dying, Arabs and Jews, and I just weep.” We listen, I offer her the cake Najah bought us for the journey, she offers us the bread she just bought, and she continues:

“I am 70 years old and I have seen war all my life. In 1948 I was a young girl. My brother was four years old. My mother strapped him to her back, took my hand, and led us out of our village.”

She pauses. I ask her where she is from. Elar. A destroyed village very close to Bethlehem, where she now lives. I ask her name. Fatima.

5:30 am:
Najah tells us it’s time to go, to walk up the street to catch the Israeli bus to where she works. We say goodbye to Fatima and begin to walk.

Najah removes her hijab (Muslim head scarf) and replaces it with a Jewish head covering, to look instead like a religious Jewish woman.

5:40 am:
The bus comes and we get on, riding out of East Jerusalem and into West Jerusalem, though the buildings are all old Palestinian neighborhoods and thus virtually indistinguishable from each other except for the newly placed Hebrew signs in West Jerusalem.

5:50 am:
We get off the bus and we’re in the Bukhari neighborhood, a religious Jewish neighborhood right next to the even more famous religious Jewish neighborhood Mea Sharim. Najah tells us the Bukhari area used to be part of the Bab al Amoud (Damascus Gate) neighborhood of Jerusalem, before 1948. Part of the area is also the land and buildings of people from the village of Lifta.

We see a few Orthodox Jewish men on the street but it’s still too early for most. One market vendor is beginning to set up. Najah greets him and tells me that all the market vendors in the Bukhari neighborhood are Arab, and all the people who live here are Jewish.

She shows us the building where she works, but we don’t get too close because she says they won’t let us in and she doesn’t want to get in trouble. She shows us back to the bus because she has an hour before she needs to begin work, and thus an hour before she can even enter the building. We part ways and get on the bus back to Damascus Gate, where we will then take another bus to the West Jerusalem neighborhood where one of us lives.

6:30 am:
We have left the second bus and are walking towards the apartment where we’ll crash for a few hours. We are across the street from the apartment. I see Palestinian people and wonder if they live in this neighborhood or if they just work here. We are walking past a house and a Palestinian woman says hello. We look over and it’s Fatima, the 70 year old woman we have spent half of the morning with. She is washing the stairs of a building. “This is where I work,” she says. “This is where I live,” my friend says. Fatima will be washing the stairs of a couple buildings and then cleaning a third house before going back home. We invite her to come over after work. She thanks us and we part ways. We know she won’t come.

7:00 am:
We are inside the apartment. We change into pajamas and get into bed. Our work for the morning is over. Najah’s is just beginning.

Juha's nail

“We have in Arabic a story about Juha’s nail.”

This is how Issa began. Issa, one of my favorite people in Palestine, the person I go to when I’m feeling violent and angry because his presence is so powerfully actively peaceful. One of many nonviolent activists who have been severely affected by occupation, shot and paralyzed by the Israeli army five years ago while he was trying to help children in his village find safety in their homes.

We were discussing the current situation in Gaza and Lebanon, the future of Palestine/Israel, hopes and fears and dreams and solutions.

“We have in Arabic a story about Juha’s nail,” he told our group, and began with one of his many pearls of wisdom I’ve been privy to over the years:

Juha had a house. A man asked if he could buy the house, and Juha said, “Sure, I will sell you the entire house, except for one nail.” The man was a bit perplexed, but agreed. What difference could one nail make?

So the house was sold, Juha moved out, and the man and his family moved in. A few weeks went by, and the man heard a knock on his door. It was Juha, coming to visit his nail. This began to happen more and more, and when the man complained, Juha said, “This nail is mine, and I have the right to see it any time I want.” Juha came during the day, during the night, when the family was out, and when the man was sleeping with his wife.

One day Juha came to see his nail, and the man and his family stormed out of the house in frustration, saying, “Take your nail and take your house! I don’t want it!”

The story ended, and Issa waited a moment before continuing.

“We can’t have a partial solution,” he said. Israel cannot keep offering partial solutions to Palestinians, and in the meantime taking more and more from Palestinians.

The problem, as I see it, is even more insidious than this. The problem is that the “house” was not Israel’s to begin with. The house belonged to another family that was forcefully removed, mostly to the lawns of other houses. Those who remained in certain rooms of their house were beaten and broken so much that they agreed to let the new family keep the majority of the house. The new family agreed in theory but continued to knock down doors and build new ones, forcing the old family into tiny corners of their house. Every few years, the new family “generously” offered back one half of one bedroom, and another half another bedroom.

All the hallways and doors will of course always be under the control of the new family, for security reasons. The new family has guns, the old family cannot. Security reasons. The new family eats all the food, uses all the water, and arrests or kills anyone who questions this. Security reasons. The old family members are allowed to leave and not come back. They are not allowed to have visitors or new inhabitants. Security reasons.

It is not surprising that some Palestinians are starting to say to Israel, “Take your nail and take your house!” and storming out. It is not surprising that some choose to stay, remembering the initial takeover of their house and vowing not to disappear altogether. It is not surprising that some choose to defend themselves by force.

It is not surprising that some Palestinians responded to continuous Israeli attacks on civilians in Gaza by kidnapping a soldier. It is not surprising that Israel used this as an excuse to unleash a war against the Palestinian people and government. It is not surprising that the small amount of attention raised about Palestinian political prisoners inspired others to carry out similar actions, that Hizbollah is demanding the release of Lebanese prisoners from Israeli jails the way Hamas is demanding the release of Palestinian prisoners from Israeli jails. It is not surprising that Israel is destroying the infrastructure of Lebanon and bombing civilians. It is not surprising that they claim that Hizbollah missiles and rockets are manufactured in small villages and therefore the Lebanese population should carry the responsibility for the death of their people when Israel attacks indiscriminately.

It did surprise me, though it probably shouldn’t have, to hear that Israel dropped thousands of flyers on southern Lebanon warning people to leave their villages, and then fired directly on the trucks as they were fleeing north, killing entire families.

It did not surprise me to hear from a Palestinian friend in Haifa that she had to turn on Lebanese news to see any reports of Lebanese casualties, and that when she turned on CNN they were speaking only about Israel and from an Israeli perspective, ignoring the people of Gaza and Lebanon except when talking about the rockets and missiles that a few of them have responded to Israeli attacks with.

Racism is so entrenched in global policy and consciousness that many people don’t even question attacking an entire country as a response to the actions of a few people. When they try to question, to pass tame resolutions in the UN saying “Maybe Israel shouldn’t respond quite so drastically,” the US vetoes them. People here know this. They know that the United States and Israel are the pariahs of the world community, and they know why. They know that one day it’s going to come back and bite these countries in the ass. I imagine the whole world knows this, that most people are waiting patiently and others may take active steps toward this eventuality.

I don’t know how to turn this course around, I don’t know if it’s too late to do so. I do know that I will continue this work, continue to support those whose voices are silenced, and trust that if the tables are ever turned, I will be given refuge here in Palestine.

And meanwhile, the US and Israel continue to try to sell the world and Palestinians the houses they stole from them, except for one or two nails.