from the army and the people

Aug 31, 2007

Dear friends,

First a big thank you to all of you who responded to my last e-mail with news about your lives. I feel more grounded knowing you’re all out there in your own corners of the world as I am in mine.

Many of you have written asking what the word on the street is about Fatah and Hamas. I haven’t written about this not only because the internal split has inappropriately replaced all news of occupation in western media, but because I’m not hearing anything terribly new on this end. I have been writing for more than a year about most people’s disillusionment with the main two political parties and some people’s frustration that the smaller parties don’t work together more. I would say this is still the case, although unless asked, people tend to talk about this less than before, not more. For the most part people are simply trying to keep their lives together, to survive against all odds.

Of course no political developments go without analysis, and the recent buzz about renewed peace talks is no exception. Most of my friends and colleagues here are worried that the upcoming conference in Washington DC will either lead to another “generous offer” refused by Palestinian leadership, or perhaps worse, one accepted by Palestinian leadership. Israel is undergoing a massive road project to connect the settlements to each other and to Israel, while building tunnels for Palestinians,; the concept of territorial contiguity has been replaced by transportational contiguity. Olmert has promised never to give up the Jordan Valley, and all the numbers coming out of the Israeli side (“We’ll return 95% of the West Bank”) do not include East Jerusalem. Not to mention that whatever percentage Israel takes will include the most fertile land and water resources and all control over borders. As a good friend says, prisoners may occupy 95% of the prison, but does that mean they have control?

My Palestinian friends inside ’48 (Israel) are worried that the plan to give a new Palestinian state an “equivalent” of all West Bank areas occupied in 1967 will go through, and their current city of Um Il Fahm will be transferred to the West Bank and they will be stripped of their Israeli citizenship. They don’t mind Israeli rule, they say, they simply want equal rights, including the right to return to the village they were expelled from in 1948. Lajjun is only a few miles from their home, and each time we take a group there our host takes us to their old spring, cemetery, and the place where his old house used to be and now stands a forest planted by the Jewish National Fund. Kibbutz Megiddo is built on parts of their land now, and even Palestinians with Israeli citizenship are forbidden from returning to the place where they were born.

The best political analysis I’ve seen recently is also not new, but bitterly amusing. My 12-year-old host brother showed me a video on a cell phone last night. The background: The popular Lebanese singer Nancy Ajram has a video that plays constantly on music tv channels these days, called “Shater shater” (Clever, clever). In the video she is the teacher and a group of school children is sitting around listening to her and bobbing their heads obediently back and forth. She sings lines like, “If you listen to me and do as I say, shater shater…” Do you see where this may be going? The video my host brother showed me last night was a classroom with the American and Israeli flags hanging, and Condoleezza Rice as the teacher singing “Shater shater” to a group of head-bobbing Arab leaders, including Mahmoud Abbas, King Abdullah, Fouad Siniora, Hosni Mubarak and others.

Some of you asked me to write about the current manifestations of occupation in the West Bank, nonviolent resistance, and the role of art. Why do I group them all together? Because they continue, all of them, ever-present and occasionally inventive. I read every day of more people arrested and killed in Israeli army operations in Gaza, Nablus, Qalqilya, and Jenin. I’m sitting here writing this instead of attending any number of weekly Friday demonstrations against the wall and settlement expansion in villages near Ramallah, Bethlehem, and Khalil (Hebron). I think about my friends who are trying to keep art, music, and dance alive and growing among children (girls in particular) in spite of direct repression from the army as well as difficulties they face within their own villages. The internal struggle I see is not about Fatah and Hamas; it’s about the fabric of a society being threatened directly and indirectly by the effects of a persistent military occupation.

Yesterday I was stuck at the Container checkpoint for about 45 minutes. This is one of the major checkpoints Israeli leaders always talk about removing, because like many checkpoints, it is deep within the West Bank and there is absolutely no way to get anywhere near Israel by passing through it. Soldiers there only occasionally check people's IDs, and even rarer is a check of people’s bags or cars. Still, people are made to wait sometimes for hours at a time. Yesterday we waited for about 20-25 minutes in a line of cars approaching the checkpoint, while every few minutes the soldiers would wave forward another car without even a glance inside. After we passed through we were stuck for another 20-25 minutes in a checkpoint-related traffic jam caused by cars trying to pass each other on a too narrow road. The driver who was stopped in the other direction pointed to the mass of cars and asked, “Min il jaysh willa il naas?” (From the army or the people?). Part from the army, part from the people, our driver explained. But all caused by the checkpoint, I thought.

So the occupation is still at it, creating problems partially from the army and partially from the people. I don’t know which is more frustrating.

I’ll try to write again soon. Dunya and I will send our summer Birthright Unplugged communiqué out shortly. I will also ask a few Palestinian friends if there is anything they want to say to people in the US, so hopefully one of my next reports will include some Palestinian voices.

As always, please keep in touch.

Love from Dheisheh refugee camp in Bethlehem,
Hannah