Finally, after several years of wanting to go to Gaza, Dunya and I managed to spend two days there under the auspices of election observation. It didn’t take very long for Dunya to observe that the elections in Gaza City were far cleaner than those in Ohio in 2004, where she was working at the time. Lack of democracy is not Palestine’s problem – the democracy here is more thriving than I’ve seen anywhere else. So our two-day trip consisted of about a half hour of “election observation” amidst many hours of traveling around, talking with people, and photographing everything we saw. I know the West Bank well enough at this point that nothing seems particularly new. But from the moment we arrived at Erez crossing, I began to photograph the buildings, the corridors, the Israeli police dogs, the wall surrounding the Gaza Strip that looks very much like the wall being built now throughout the West Bank.
We stayed in Gaza City with Khaled Nasrallah and his family, one of the two families who had been living in the house in Rafah that Rachel Corrie was killed in front of in March 2003. The bulldozer that killed her did not demolish the Nasrallah’s home that day, but within a year the army completed the task and the family was left homeless. They now live in an apartment in Gaza City while a new house is being built for them in Deir Balah. Most of the people in Gaza who have been displaced by home demolition in the past few years have been displaced at least once before – in 1948 – and some of them more than once. They’ve lived in a constant state of terror for the past five years, and according to some, it only got worse after the “disengagement”. Israeli shelling and other destruction from the air is not entirely uncommon, not to mention the sonic booms that only started since the settlers have left. A 9-year-old girl was shot and killed by the Israeli army on Thursday in Gaza, somewhere near a border with Israel. Probably just a few miles from where we were. Someone from the Gaza Community Mental Health Programme told us that they have seen no particular change in their work since the “disengagement”, whereas a man at the Gaza International Airport explained a building’s construction by saying, “In the days of the occupation, the Israelis instructed us to build this building so they can observe the border. Now there’s no occupation, so the building is for us.”
The Gaza International Airport is really something else. Or not, but that’s what makes it so remarkable. It looks like any other airport, only with more beautiful design than many. And it is deserted. And the control towers have been bombed by Israeli Apaches. And the runways have been bulldozed every couple hundred meters. According to security at the airport, the only employees currently working there, the airport opened in 2000, and was forced by Israel to close early in 2001. Israel still forbids Palestinians from even beginning to reconstruct the runway. Palestinian Airlines only flies now between Egypt and Amman, and they only have two functioning airplanes. Our host is an accountant for the airline.
And then there’s Rafah. The row of houses along the border of Gaza and Egypt (which arbitrarily divided the community of Rafah in half when the border lines were drawn), are shot up thousands and thousands of times. That is, the houses that are still standing. More of them are in rubble. But the bullet holes through the windows, doors, walls… it looks more like war than anything I’ve ever seen. Our hosts who were displaced from Rafah and now live in Gaza City described to us some of the terror of their last year or two in Rafah: never knowing which rooms were safe to be in, Israeli bullets flying through their windows at all hours, the young daughters waking up in the middle of the night and screaming. The girls are still affected, their mother Samah told us, but only the oldest, now five years old, remembers a specific story from Rafah. The family had been sleeping in the garden because it was safer than the house. At one point they were all at slightly different places, someone in the garden, someone in the house, someone on the stairs. The shooting started, and young Mariam remembers the bullets flying towards their house, hitting a tree, and watching a guava fall off a tree and hit her father on the head. Her mother told the story laughing, saying “alhamdulillah” – thank god we weren’t hurt any more than we were. She was in the hospital giving birth to her third daughter when their house was finally demolished. Thank god, she said, that nobody was in the house. The things to be thankful for in Gaza are incomprehensible to me.
Hope looks different, too, as Dunya pointed out during our visit to the former settlements. We had hired a driver for the day to take us around. At every turn he explained that the Israelis used to be here, and here, and here. This is where this person was killed, this is a school that was bombed, this is an old checkpoint. And then we entered the old settlement of Netzarim. I’m not sure what I was expecting, but I wasn’t expecting a scene that superficially looked remarkably similar to me to demolished Palestinian homes. The Israelis are good at destroying things, we joked to each other. They destroy Palestinian homes, and they also destroyed the settlers’ homes (and left a huge mess) upon leaving Gaza. And this is hope, I suppose. Can rubble be hopeful?
Speaking of surprise, Gaza City is bustling. We arrived our first evening, met the family, ate dinner, and then Khaled asked, “Do you want to walk around the city?” We were shocked that he would go out at night, especially with two female internationals, but it was completely normal to him. And indeed, the shops were open, everyone was buying ice cream at the local ice cream parlor, last minute campaigning was subtly happening (campaigning is banned for 24 hours before election day, but nobody can be prevented from driving their cars, vegetable trucks, or donkeys around the streets with party flags on them). Apparently Gaza City is the Ramallah of Gaza, a thriving city where poverty is somewhat less apparent than other parts of Gaza. We asked if this is recent, since the disengagement. No, he told us, in Gaza City people have always just gone about their lives, sometimes dodging bullets and shells, but continuing with their lives.
Gaza is beautiful. I’ve heard statistics about it being the most crowded place on earth, so I wasn’t prepared for the open space, the parks of palm trees, the plazas with monuments and wide roads that are pedestrian friendly. But of course, by contrast, while driving south along the road with a beautiful beach and the Mediterranean to the right, we would look left and see refugee camps that look more like I expected refugee camps to look before first coming to Palestine. The camps I’m used to in the West Bank have slightly narrower streets than cities and villages, and a few more visible signs of poverty, but much of the refugee issue is somewhat unseen if just driving by. Some of these camps in Gaza are different, and with their tiny buildings and narrowest of streets they certainly look like they could be described as the most crowded places on earth.
The little bit of election observing we did was exciting, if only to see the incredible amount of civic engagement. In fact, you couldn’t be in Palestine and not be doing some sort of “election observing” during these past couple weeks, when all anyone has been talking about has been politics. I realize that I come from an American context where civic engagement is among the lowest in the world, so it excites me to be somewhere where even with such difficulty living under occupation, at least 75% of eligible voters voted. There is, of course, the knowledge in the back of my head that Israel is holding 8,000 Palestinian political prisoners who can’t vote from Israeli prisons, that the Israeli government only permitted 6% of Palestinian residents of East Jerusalem to vote in the Palestinian elections, and that the 2/3 of the Palestinian population that lives outside of Palestine, mostly as refugees, do not have any say in who will be representing them and potentially negotiating away their right to return to their land. Not that negotiations will be happening any time soon here, since Israel refuses to negotiate with a Hamas that doesn’t disarm. I wish Hamas would refuse to negotiate with an Israel that doesn’t disarm. Maybe Hamas has already said something to this effect. I don’t know, I haven’t been reading much of the news. Mostly I have just been talking to Palestinian people, people who are shocked, excited, worried, and curious about what their future may bring. Hamas won on a platform of “change and reform” that mostly focused on ending corruption within the Palestinian Authority and bringing economic development to Palestine. Apparently they did not focus either on religion or resistance against Israel, probably realizing that these two points would get them less popular support from the Palestinian people. And indeed, they received in votes what people say is twice the amount of popular support they actually have. So there is shock. Some hope in the possibility of change, but concern about the opinion of the international community, and specifically the end or slowing down of cash flow from Western governments.
The most common joke I’ve heard made in the past couple days, if it can be called a joke, is that I’ll have to start covering myself fully. A man joked today that he’s already starting to grow his beard. I was in Dheisheh refugee camp yesterday where the kids were discussing the election, and the teenage girls unanimously decided they would never wear hijab, even if Hamas legislated it. One of the boys we were working with told us he didn’t want to eat any sweets that we had brought for our meeting, because Hamas won. We had a vote on the title of the exhibit that we’re putting together with the children about the trips we took them on, with suggestions like “Life Within Two Days,” “New Life”, and “Destroyed Villages”. At the end of the voting one of the kids said, “Hamas won!” So there is a lot of light joking about the situation, while everyone waits to see if Fatah will agree to work with Hamas or not, whether the government will have enough support to maintain control over the people, what their relationship with the outside world will be, and whether religious law will or will not come into place in some form.
Either way, as I’m reminded daily here, there is still occupation. I was able to meet my friend Fatima’s mother in Rafah, who hasn’t seen her daughter since 1997 because people in Gaza can’t get out and people in the West Bank can’t get to Gaza. A 20-year-old man we spent some time with in Gaza did not go an hour without saying, “Take me with you to the West Bank.” He’s never been there. Our crossing out of Gaza showed us firsthand for the first time what can only be described as indentured servitude. Thousands of Palestinian workers – those lucky enough to have permits – were standing shoulder to shoulder, waiting for hours to be allowed to cross back home to Gaza after a long day at work in the fields or building construction. They would go home for an hour or two to sleep, and come back to the border at midnight to wait until 6 am to cross back through again.
So the occupation and injustice goes on in all of Palestine, regardless of its status. In Gaza, in the West Bank, and in Israel, Palestinians do not have equal rights. Someone tried to convince us yesterday that while Palestinians inside Israel don’t have equal rights, at least they have some rights. Unequal rights are not rights, Dunya pointed out. It’s a concept that seems to escape many people in this context, people who in other contexts would agree and would be fighting for justice.
I know the Gaza “disengagement” caused people around the world to start thinking that occupation is over and everything is okay. I hope the Hamas win does not cause even fewer people to work for justice here. I haven’t been reading newspapers and I don’t know what you’re being told. But I’m pretty confident that I can advise you to be skeptical of both words and images that come out of this place these days. I doubt the mainstream media has suddenly decided to start telling the truth in the past two days. So question, question, question, and know that Palestine still needs all the support it can get.
Friday, January 27, 2006
Monday, January 16, 2006
Freedom of Movement
I’ve been traveling for the past two weeks with groups of people who enjoy more privilege here than perhaps any other group – American Jews. We can relatively easily pass through walls, fences, gates, checkpoints, “terminals” and other obstacles, moving from Jerusalem to Bethlehem to Ramallah to Haifa and back to Jerusalem without a second thought. Unless we think. Unless we call our Palestinian friends on the phone and try to explain what we’re doing. Unless they ask us, “Where are you?” and we debate whether to lie or to tell them we’re in their capital city that they haven’t been able to reach for the past 5 years.
Last week my host family was looking at some of Dunya’s pictures of the terminal and the Wall, and my 11-year-old host brother looked at one photo and asked, “That’s the Wall?” “You haven’t seen it?” I asked incredulously. “Once or twice,” was the reply, “but not recently.” Freedom of movement is so limited that people who don’t have the permits to leave their ghetto have no reason to even approach its walls.
A couple days ago I asked the IWPS landlord if he is still able to drive to work in Salfit from Hares, a village separated from Salfit by the settlement of Ariel and roadblocks and checkpoints. For now, he told me, he can drive there, but the checkpoint at Zatara is being made bigger. I said, “Yes, I know, it will be like the new checkpoints at Bethlehem and Kalandia.” “No,” he said, “the Bethlehem checkpoint is easy to get through.” Instantly I realized that he hasn’t seen the new terminals, because he isn’t allowed on one side of each of them. So he goes around the long way, through a huge valley that steers clear of Jerusalem, and ends up back in Bethlehem, in order to attend a conference on nonviolence. And the checkpoint in the valley, he says, isn’t so bad. He’s a well-connected man with ties to the Palestinian government, and still I know more about the institutionalization of the checkpoint structures than he does, at least on the physical level of having seen and experienced them. If you separate an entire population into small disconnected enclaves, it makes it difficult for people to organize against the magnitude of the system. This is not a new concept for the Israeli government. This is not coincidental.
And then there’s the less visible, or, for internationals like myself, invisible. I’ve been traveling north and south and all over the place for the past two weeks, and I found out only two days ago that nobody from the northern West Bank has been allowed south of Zatara checkpoint (in the center of the northern West Bank) for the past several weeks. 800,000 people in Jenin, Tulkarem, and Nablus cannot travel to Ramallah because of this Israeli closure. People like me can travel without knowing this, because our taxi drivers from Ramallah or Jerusalem can come north and bring us south. We never have to know, but the same is not true of my Israeli friend who is married to a Palestinian from Nablus. They were traveling back from Nablus to Ramallah after Eid Al-Adha, one of the biggest Muslim holidays of the year, and they split at the checkpoint so my friend could come meet our group in Ramallah while her husband twisted and turned through unpaved dirt roads to try to get home without being turned back at checkpoints. Or another man I know from Jenin who works at a human rights organization in Ramallah. He had gone home for the holiday, and it took him more than 5 hours to return to Ramallah after the holiday. It should have taken about 2 hours, and that’s already taking into account the separation of land and roads due to settlement expansion. I asked him about his father, who I know is sick, and he told me the family has moved him to a hospital in Jericho, though none of them live there, because it’s the only place that different family members can go check up on him without too much hassle.
The division of the West Bank into tiny disconnected cantons is the most recent method of separation the Israeli government has employed, beginning in 1967 and intensifying continuously until today. But I’ve also been especially conscious these weeks of the more existential separation that still haunts people to this day – the loss of 78% of Palestine in 1948, the expulsion of more than two thirds of the Palestinian population, and the separation of families that have never been reunited. I’m not sure I’ve ever met a Palestinian who is able to have regular family get-togethers. Some of them are in the West Bank or Gaza, some in Lebanon, some in Syria, some in Jordan, Bahrain, Dubai, Russia, Venezuela, London, Montreal, Chicago, Houston… Everywhere but together.
I’ve been especially conscious of this dispersion these past weeks because Dunya and I are beginning a new project today that I wish wholeheartedly we had no reason to do. We will try to take kids from a refugee camp to their holy sites in Jerusalem, to the sea in Yaffa, and to the villages that their grandparents fled in 1948. We wish they could just go with their parents and grandparents, that they could visit the land, picnic on the land, build a new house on the land if that’s what they chose to do. But they have no choice. So we will go with them for a short visit, though it breaks my heart when people in the older generations ask us to call them on the phone from the villages so we can describe what we see and they can tell us where we are, what houses used to stand there, where the children used to play. It breaks my heart when we talk about the project to other Palestinian friends and they ask if we can do the same with their children. It breaks my heart when I tell a 17-year-old friend about the project and she says, “I wish I were younger so I could come… But I’m not sure if I wish I were a refugee.” She just wants to come to the beach. Just to see the sea.
A Jewish Israeli friend gave us the contact of somebody from one of the villages we plan to visit who has Israeli citizenship and lives in Israel as an internally displaced person. As an Israeli citizen, he can accompany us to the village. We had only his first name and told my host family, who is organizing this program with us. My host mother, who is from the same village, decided to call. She dialed, he answered, and without even saying her name she told him she’s from his village, and asked him his family’s name. It took about 30 seconds for them to realize that they are cousins. Cousins who have never met, never spoken to each other, never known of the other’s existence. And they live about 30 miles apart. She was excited, and I heard her tell the story to two more people that evening. I got swept up in the excitement too, at first. “This is so cool,” I said to Dunya. “This is so sad,” she replied. The cousins spoke for a few minutes and then hung up. They didn’t exchange information or invitations. There was no indication that they would speak again. Is it the size of the families or the depth of the separation? Is it too painful to constantly be reminded of how many more people would be part of your circle if it weren’t for the circumstances forced upon you? Or maybe they will be in touch again, maybe they just figured I had the phone numbers to be able to connect them if they wanted that in the future. Sometimes my work with refugees, my work connecting Palestinians on either side of the Green Line, feels like a sloppy symbolic attempt to sew back together what my people have torn apart. Sometimes if feels like repentance. Except it’s not about me, and most Palestinians don't particularly care about my identity as a Jew or as an American. It’s about power and trying to dismantle it. It’s about injustice and trying to fix it. It’s about my 17-year-old friend’s response to a question last week about what message Americans can take back to the U.S. from Palestine. “Revolution,” she said. “If all the people in the world overthrow all the governments in the world, we’ll have no problem living with each other in peace.”
In the spirit of revolution,
Hannah
Last week my host family was looking at some of Dunya’s pictures of the terminal and the Wall, and my 11-year-old host brother looked at one photo and asked, “That’s the Wall?” “You haven’t seen it?” I asked incredulously. “Once or twice,” was the reply, “but not recently.” Freedom of movement is so limited that people who don’t have the permits to leave their ghetto have no reason to even approach its walls.
A couple days ago I asked the IWPS landlord if he is still able to drive to work in Salfit from Hares, a village separated from Salfit by the settlement of Ariel and roadblocks and checkpoints. For now, he told me, he can drive there, but the checkpoint at Zatara is being made bigger. I said, “Yes, I know, it will be like the new checkpoints at Bethlehem and Kalandia.” “No,” he said, “the Bethlehem checkpoint is easy to get through.” Instantly I realized that he hasn’t seen the new terminals, because he isn’t allowed on one side of each of them. So he goes around the long way, through a huge valley that steers clear of Jerusalem, and ends up back in Bethlehem, in order to attend a conference on nonviolence. And the checkpoint in the valley, he says, isn’t so bad. He’s a well-connected man with ties to the Palestinian government, and still I know more about the institutionalization of the checkpoint structures than he does, at least on the physical level of having seen and experienced them. If you separate an entire population into small disconnected enclaves, it makes it difficult for people to organize against the magnitude of the system. This is not a new concept for the Israeli government. This is not coincidental.
And then there’s the less visible, or, for internationals like myself, invisible. I’ve been traveling north and south and all over the place for the past two weeks, and I found out only two days ago that nobody from the northern West Bank has been allowed south of Zatara checkpoint (in the center of the northern West Bank) for the past several weeks. 800,000 people in Jenin, Tulkarem, and Nablus cannot travel to Ramallah because of this Israeli closure. People like me can travel without knowing this, because our taxi drivers from Ramallah or Jerusalem can come north and bring us south. We never have to know, but the same is not true of my Israeli friend who is married to a Palestinian from Nablus. They were traveling back from Nablus to Ramallah after Eid Al-Adha, one of the biggest Muslim holidays of the year, and they split at the checkpoint so my friend could come meet our group in Ramallah while her husband twisted and turned through unpaved dirt roads to try to get home without being turned back at checkpoints. Or another man I know from Jenin who works at a human rights organization in Ramallah. He had gone home for the holiday, and it took him more than 5 hours to return to Ramallah after the holiday. It should have taken about 2 hours, and that’s already taking into account the separation of land and roads due to settlement expansion. I asked him about his father, who I know is sick, and he told me the family has moved him to a hospital in Jericho, though none of them live there, because it’s the only place that different family members can go check up on him without too much hassle.
The division of the West Bank into tiny disconnected cantons is the most recent method of separation the Israeli government has employed, beginning in 1967 and intensifying continuously until today. But I’ve also been especially conscious these weeks of the more existential separation that still haunts people to this day – the loss of 78% of Palestine in 1948, the expulsion of more than two thirds of the Palestinian population, and the separation of families that have never been reunited. I’m not sure I’ve ever met a Palestinian who is able to have regular family get-togethers. Some of them are in the West Bank or Gaza, some in Lebanon, some in Syria, some in Jordan, Bahrain, Dubai, Russia, Venezuela, London, Montreal, Chicago, Houston… Everywhere but together.
I’ve been especially conscious of this dispersion these past weeks because Dunya and I are beginning a new project today that I wish wholeheartedly we had no reason to do. We will try to take kids from a refugee camp to their holy sites in Jerusalem, to the sea in Yaffa, and to the villages that their grandparents fled in 1948. We wish they could just go with their parents and grandparents, that they could visit the land, picnic on the land, build a new house on the land if that’s what they chose to do. But they have no choice. So we will go with them for a short visit, though it breaks my heart when people in the older generations ask us to call them on the phone from the villages so we can describe what we see and they can tell us where we are, what houses used to stand there, where the children used to play. It breaks my heart when we talk about the project to other Palestinian friends and they ask if we can do the same with their children. It breaks my heart when I tell a 17-year-old friend about the project and she says, “I wish I were younger so I could come… But I’m not sure if I wish I were a refugee.” She just wants to come to the beach. Just to see the sea.
A Jewish Israeli friend gave us the contact of somebody from one of the villages we plan to visit who has Israeli citizenship and lives in Israel as an internally displaced person. As an Israeli citizen, he can accompany us to the village. We had only his first name and told my host family, who is organizing this program with us. My host mother, who is from the same village, decided to call. She dialed, he answered, and without even saying her name she told him she’s from his village, and asked him his family’s name. It took about 30 seconds for them to realize that they are cousins. Cousins who have never met, never spoken to each other, never known of the other’s existence. And they live about 30 miles apart. She was excited, and I heard her tell the story to two more people that evening. I got swept up in the excitement too, at first. “This is so cool,” I said to Dunya. “This is so sad,” she replied. The cousins spoke for a few minutes and then hung up. They didn’t exchange information or invitations. There was no indication that they would speak again. Is it the size of the families or the depth of the separation? Is it too painful to constantly be reminded of how many more people would be part of your circle if it weren’t for the circumstances forced upon you? Or maybe they will be in touch again, maybe they just figured I had the phone numbers to be able to connect them if they wanted that in the future. Sometimes my work with refugees, my work connecting Palestinians on either side of the Green Line, feels like a sloppy symbolic attempt to sew back together what my people have torn apart. Sometimes if feels like repentance. Except it’s not about me, and most Palestinians don't particularly care about my identity as a Jew or as an American. It’s about power and trying to dismantle it. It’s about injustice and trying to fix it. It’s about my 17-year-old friend’s response to a question last week about what message Americans can take back to the U.S. from Palestine. “Revolution,” she said. “If all the people in the world overthrow all the governments in the world, we’ll have no problem living with each other in peace.”
In the spirit of revolution,
Hannah
Sunday, January 01, 2006
Welcome to Palestine?
I’ve been here for 4 days, and I’ve already been through 2 of the newly opened “terminals” that have replaced the “checkpoints” at the entrances to Bethlehem and Ramallah. I don’t know what language to use for these. They seem more like prisons to me than anything else. My host mother in Dheisheh camp (Bethlehem) asked me if I’d seen it. I told her I just passed through it, and it’s like a prison. “No,” she said, “it’s like the airport.” “The airport is like a prison,” I responded, but that’s not entirely accurate for for many people. I asked my host father if he’s seen it and he said, “Get me a permit, then I’ll go see it.” Because of course, no matter how badly people are treated at these terminal-prisons, the people who are there are mostly the lucky ones who have permits to go through, or Jerusalem ID cards.
I know it’s clichéd to say that the Wall is turning Palestine into even more of a prison, but this was the first time I’d seen the Wall completely closed around the entrance to Bethlehem. There’s an enormous metal door that can be opened and closed at the whim of the Israeli army, with a huge sign next to it saying in English, Hebrew, and finally Arabic, “Go in peace.” Underneath is written “Israeli Ministry of Tourism.” This is in an area separating Palestinian area from Palestinian area. West Bank on both sides. Entirely controlled by Israel.
And it’s the same at Kalandia. Palestinian areas on either side, entirely controlled by Israel. I don’t know which sign is more offensive, the Bethlehem one or the one at Kalandia that says in three languages “The hope of us all.” Next to this is a drawing of a tree, with the word “security” written in Arabic on the trunk, and each of the branches saying (in Arabic) things like “education,” “culture,”and “prosperity.” “Israeli Ministry of Tourism” was missing from this one, probably because Ramallah does not receive as many tourists as Bethlehem, especially at this time of year.
Passing back through Kalandia from Ramallah to Jerusalem last night was one of the most disturbing checkpoint experiences I’ve had. It was certainly the worst I’ve ever been treated personally. From entering to exiting the “terminal,” you are enclosed between metal doors, turnstyles, and windows, so at each moment you are essentially trapped in a different part until a soldier decides to let you through. Everything is done electronically. The soldiers sit behind bulletproof glass and bark orders through loudspeakers. No face to face human interaction anymore. The girl (and yes, these soldiers look like girls and boys) barking orders at people last night was particularly unkind, When it came time for me, I placed my things on the newly installed conveyor belt and walked through the metal detector, like I saw the people before me doing. I held up my passport and the soldier ignored me and started yelling at me in Arabic. I couldn’t understand everything she said and I told her that (or tried to, although there seemed to be no mechanism for people to speak to her, only the other way around), and finally she yelled in English, “Put all your things on the belt!” I did so, then walked through, held my passport up, picked up my stuff, and got ready to leave. She said nothing to me, but began to yell at a man in front of me who was holding a small baby. She yelled at him in Hebrew to come back, and then he called me over and said it was because I hadn’t given her my passport, which she hadn’t told me to do. There are times when I ignore soldiers’ authority because I believe they should have none, but this was not one of those times. I had never been through this contraption before and did not want to hold up the people behind me, but I really didn’t know what I was supposed to do. She began screaming at me in Hebrew when I went back, I told her I didn’t understand, and then she said in Hebrew, “Fine, I’ll speak in English! Give me your passport!” I put the passport down in the tiny hole, she took it, and the man with the baby told me she was saying “Fuck you” and other nice things to me in Hebrew. I got my passport back and she began to bark orders at others again, pressing the magic button to open the next turnstyle for me to exit. I walked out disgusted, with the man and his family watching to make sure I was okay.
I wanted to throw up. Or any number of other things I shouldn’t write here. I don’t know why I keep being surprised. Or maybe that’s not quite it. Maybe it’s just completely disgusted. And angry. I’ve been working in Palestine for just over 2 years, and I’ve seen the street next to Kalandia go from a street to the Wall to the terminal. I was here 5 months ago and it looked so different. And meanwhile I’m working for long-term change and leading groups around the West Bank for American Jewish people to learn about the situation and maybe change some of their understanding and maybe tell some others about that and… what about the here and now? As always, time is on Israel’s side. Palestinians cannot afford to wait. And yet what can they do? I watched all the young Palestinian men joking around inside the terminal as they waited to be yelled at in Hebrew and maybe let through, and I wondered, as I often do here, where all the anger goes.
I hope I never get so used to this that it doesn’t enrage me.
I start with the groups today. I didn’t have a lot of time to write this and have no time to edit it, and I also apologize that I have no pictures to share with you. I’ll try to be in touch again soon, perhaps after this first group leaves next week.
I welcome personal e-mails.
Happy new year to those for whom this is a new year – let’s hope it brings more justice than the last one.
-Hannah
I know it’s clichéd to say that the Wall is turning Palestine into even more of a prison, but this was the first time I’d seen the Wall completely closed around the entrance to Bethlehem. There’s an enormous metal door that can be opened and closed at the whim of the Israeli army, with a huge sign next to it saying in English, Hebrew, and finally Arabic, “Go in peace.” Underneath is written “Israeli Ministry of Tourism.” This is in an area separating Palestinian area from Palestinian area. West Bank on both sides. Entirely controlled by Israel.
And it’s the same at Kalandia. Palestinian areas on either side, entirely controlled by Israel. I don’t know which sign is more offensive, the Bethlehem one or the one at Kalandia that says in three languages “The hope of us all.” Next to this is a drawing of a tree, with the word “security” written in Arabic on the trunk, and each of the branches saying (in Arabic) things like “education,” “culture,”and “prosperity.” “Israeli Ministry of Tourism” was missing from this one, probably because Ramallah does not receive as many tourists as Bethlehem, especially at this time of year.
Passing back through Kalandia from Ramallah to Jerusalem last night was one of the most disturbing checkpoint experiences I’ve had. It was certainly the worst I’ve ever been treated personally. From entering to exiting the “terminal,” you are enclosed between metal doors, turnstyles, and windows, so at each moment you are essentially trapped in a different part until a soldier decides to let you through. Everything is done electronically. The soldiers sit behind bulletproof glass and bark orders through loudspeakers. No face to face human interaction anymore. The girl (and yes, these soldiers look like girls and boys) barking orders at people last night was particularly unkind, When it came time for me, I placed my things on the newly installed conveyor belt and walked through the metal detector, like I saw the people before me doing. I held up my passport and the soldier ignored me and started yelling at me in Arabic. I couldn’t understand everything she said and I told her that (or tried to, although there seemed to be no mechanism for people to speak to her, only the other way around), and finally she yelled in English, “Put all your things on the belt!” I did so, then walked through, held my passport up, picked up my stuff, and got ready to leave. She said nothing to me, but began to yell at a man in front of me who was holding a small baby. She yelled at him in Hebrew to come back, and then he called me over and said it was because I hadn’t given her my passport, which she hadn’t told me to do. There are times when I ignore soldiers’ authority because I believe they should have none, but this was not one of those times. I had never been through this contraption before and did not want to hold up the people behind me, but I really didn’t know what I was supposed to do. She began screaming at me in Hebrew when I went back, I told her I didn’t understand, and then she said in Hebrew, “Fine, I’ll speak in English! Give me your passport!” I put the passport down in the tiny hole, she took it, and the man with the baby told me she was saying “Fuck you” and other nice things to me in Hebrew. I got my passport back and she began to bark orders at others again, pressing the magic button to open the next turnstyle for me to exit. I walked out disgusted, with the man and his family watching to make sure I was okay.
I wanted to throw up. Or any number of other things I shouldn’t write here. I don’t know why I keep being surprised. Or maybe that’s not quite it. Maybe it’s just completely disgusted. And angry. I’ve been working in Palestine for just over 2 years, and I’ve seen the street next to Kalandia go from a street to the Wall to the terminal. I was here 5 months ago and it looked so different. And meanwhile I’m working for long-term change and leading groups around the West Bank for American Jewish people to learn about the situation and maybe change some of their understanding and maybe tell some others about that and… what about the here and now? As always, time is on Israel’s side. Palestinians cannot afford to wait. And yet what can they do? I watched all the young Palestinian men joking around inside the terminal as they waited to be yelled at in Hebrew and maybe let through, and I wondered, as I often do here, where all the anger goes.
I hope I never get so used to this that it doesn’t enrage me.
I start with the groups today. I didn’t have a lot of time to write this and have no time to edit it, and I also apologize that I have no pictures to share with you. I’ll try to be in touch again soon, perhaps after this first group leaves next week.
I welcome personal e-mails.
Happy new year to those for whom this is a new year – let’s hope it brings more justice than the last one.
-Hannah
Thursday, August 04, 2005
Back in the U.S. of A.
Dear friends,
I promised you another letter so here it is. The paradox, of course, is that I’m only able to sit down and write after having recovered from the initial shock of being back in the US, which probably would have lent itself to deeper reflections. The sunburn on my nose that I got at Huwara checkpoint last week is nearly faded, and I’m finally sleeping through the night and not waking up at 5 in the morning thinking it’s the middle of the day. Palestine is more or less out of my system. The separation – the break – needs to happen or I could go insane. So much, and so little, depends on where on this globe I choose to position myself. And I have that choice. I can fly out of occupation and all my Palestinian friends are left to struggle to live their daily lives. I’m not sure how best to deal with this, and of course the bigger question is not how I’m going to cope but rather how we have created and maintained a world in which such disparity in living exists and is taken for granted… and how we’re going to change that.
So I’m back in the United States, and I’m noticing the grandiosity of things, even down to the nature around us. The trees are so big, I think upon looking around, walking around, driving around. So big, and yet still they seem to be built into the building structures and not the other way around. In Palestine the houses are planted into the land – you can just look around and see people’s connection to the land in the way they build. Here (at least in the suburbs of Philadelphia) everything is compartmentalized. I don’t even know the names of the trees, other than maple and pine. I don’t know what fruit they give, if any. I miss the olive trees, the fig trees, the almond trees of Palestine. Even as they continue to be uprooted and destroyed and stolen, especially as they continue to be uprooted and destroyed and stolen.
It seems Jewish fundamentalism has reached new levels. Not only has the state – through settlers – stolen the land, but now the settlers act violently, and threaten more violence, in an attempt to maintain control over that stolen land. They claim a connection to the land even as they destroy it. Now that I’m back in the US, I can’t report to you about life as I experience or witness it in the West Bank, a life that is being totally ignored as any media in the area focuses exclusively on the Gaza disengagement plan. But I can relay news I’ve read in the past days. Today a settler who is active in the Kach movement (a Jewish terrorist group that is outlawed even in Israel, although the government continues to fund their settlements in the West Bank) opened fire on a busload of Palestinian citizens of Israel in the Druze village of Shfaram (inside Israel). He killed four, including the bus driver, before being killed himself. I read the story on the Ha’aretz website, as well as dozens of comments calling for the Jewish terrorist’s home to be demolished, or for curfew to be instated in his settlement of Tapuach, or any number of other collective punishment measures. These suggestions, of course, are made tongue-in-cheek. In actuality he will simply be considered a crazy person, like Baruch Goldstein was – an outsider, not representative of Jews or Israelis.
Yesterday an article reported that a significant number of teenage boys from Gaza settlements have threatened to drown themselves in the sea as a mass suicide if the disengagement plan goes forward. An act wrought with symbolism, of course, and maybe a lesson for Jews: It’s not the Palestinians who are going to throw us into the sea; we’re doing it ourselves. When I started my Palestine work a couple years ago, this was perhaps what compelled me most: I saw that we were “throwing ourselves into the sea” – basically, the soul of the Jewish people was at stake. While I still believe that is true, I no longer prioritize the soul of the oppressor over the physical existence of the oppressed. They are linked, of course. My work hopefully benefits both. But now when I think about my work I think about my Palestinian friends, their lives, their loved ones lost to death and prison, their land lost to settlements and the Wall. This is human existence we’re talking about, nothing more and nothing less.
And so I continue, and try to come up with new and better ways to change the ever-worsening situation in Palestine. I’m trying to figure out how to be most effective, especially on this side of the ocean. I’ll plug into economic-based campaigns like BootCAT (trying to get Caterpillar to stop manufacturing bulldozers for the Israeli army) and the divestment campaign. I’ll try to arrange for speaking tours for Palestinians and Israelis. And I’ll continue to speak and show pictures myself. If you’re interested in hosting me or hosting other speakers this Fall, please drop me a line. I’ll be away most of August and back in September, hopefully in the Boston area through December, but happy to travel elsewhere as well.
So be in touch.
Love Hannah
I promised you another letter so here it is. The paradox, of course, is that I’m only able to sit down and write after having recovered from the initial shock of being back in the US, which probably would have lent itself to deeper reflections. The sunburn on my nose that I got at Huwara checkpoint last week is nearly faded, and I’m finally sleeping through the night and not waking up at 5 in the morning thinking it’s the middle of the day. Palestine is more or less out of my system. The separation – the break – needs to happen or I could go insane. So much, and so little, depends on where on this globe I choose to position myself. And I have that choice. I can fly out of occupation and all my Palestinian friends are left to struggle to live their daily lives. I’m not sure how best to deal with this, and of course the bigger question is not how I’m going to cope but rather how we have created and maintained a world in which such disparity in living exists and is taken for granted… and how we’re going to change that.
So I’m back in the United States, and I’m noticing the grandiosity of things, even down to the nature around us. The trees are so big, I think upon looking around, walking around, driving around. So big, and yet still they seem to be built into the building structures and not the other way around. In Palestine the houses are planted into the land – you can just look around and see people’s connection to the land in the way they build. Here (at least in the suburbs of Philadelphia) everything is compartmentalized. I don’t even know the names of the trees, other than maple and pine. I don’t know what fruit they give, if any. I miss the olive trees, the fig trees, the almond trees of Palestine. Even as they continue to be uprooted and destroyed and stolen, especially as they continue to be uprooted and destroyed and stolen.
It seems Jewish fundamentalism has reached new levels. Not only has the state – through settlers – stolen the land, but now the settlers act violently, and threaten more violence, in an attempt to maintain control over that stolen land. They claim a connection to the land even as they destroy it. Now that I’m back in the US, I can’t report to you about life as I experience or witness it in the West Bank, a life that is being totally ignored as any media in the area focuses exclusively on the Gaza disengagement plan. But I can relay news I’ve read in the past days. Today a settler who is active in the Kach movement (a Jewish terrorist group that is outlawed even in Israel, although the government continues to fund their settlements in the West Bank) opened fire on a busload of Palestinian citizens of Israel in the Druze village of Shfaram (inside Israel). He killed four, including the bus driver, before being killed himself. I read the story on the Ha’aretz website, as well as dozens of comments calling for the Jewish terrorist’s home to be demolished, or for curfew to be instated in his settlement of Tapuach, or any number of other collective punishment measures. These suggestions, of course, are made tongue-in-cheek. In actuality he will simply be considered a crazy person, like Baruch Goldstein was – an outsider, not representative of Jews or Israelis.
Yesterday an article reported that a significant number of teenage boys from Gaza settlements have threatened to drown themselves in the sea as a mass suicide if the disengagement plan goes forward. An act wrought with symbolism, of course, and maybe a lesson for Jews: It’s not the Palestinians who are going to throw us into the sea; we’re doing it ourselves. When I started my Palestine work a couple years ago, this was perhaps what compelled me most: I saw that we were “throwing ourselves into the sea” – basically, the soul of the Jewish people was at stake. While I still believe that is true, I no longer prioritize the soul of the oppressor over the physical existence of the oppressed. They are linked, of course. My work hopefully benefits both. But now when I think about my work I think about my Palestinian friends, their lives, their loved ones lost to death and prison, their land lost to settlements and the Wall. This is human existence we’re talking about, nothing more and nothing less.
And so I continue, and try to come up with new and better ways to change the ever-worsening situation in Palestine. I’m trying to figure out how to be most effective, especially on this side of the ocean. I’ll plug into economic-based campaigns like BootCAT (trying to get Caterpillar to stop manufacturing bulldozers for the Israeli army) and the divestment campaign. I’ll try to arrange for speaking tours for Palestinians and Israelis. And I’ll continue to speak and show pictures myself. If you’re interested in hosting me or hosting other speakers this Fall, please drop me a line. I’ll be away most of August and back in September, hopefully in the Boston area through December, but happy to travel elsewhere as well.
So be in touch.
Love Hannah
Thursday, July 28, 2005
My Exit
Dear friends,
I'm back in the U.S. My bags are not, but I am. I just read at least 20 e-mails with articles about what's going on in the West Bank and Gaza right now. Most of it is sad and enraging, some of it is hopeful and defiant. There are too many things for me to try to share any of them with you, so this is just a short check-in about my exit. I've been taking notes on other things to share with you about my last couple weeks (sorry I haven't written) but that will have to wait.
For now: The shared taxi picked me up at 4:45 am, and we proceded to drive around much of East Jerusalem and seemingly half the West Bank picking up settlers to take them to the airport. The Nesher taxis specifically drive people to and from Jerusalem. Since Israel keeps expanding its definition of "Jerusalem", it was not all that surprising that I found myself in the middle of the district of Ramallah watching the Palestinian villages pass by as people sat in the car with their orange ribbons signifying opposition to the Gaza disengagement plan. A woman in my car started talking to the driver. My Hebrew isn't great anymore, but from what I could make out, she was saying she was on her way to the airport to meet 2 full plane loads of American Jews who were making "aliyah" (moving to Israel under a racist policy that allows all Jews full citizenship rights in Israel, and denies that same right to everyone else, especially Palestinian refugees who are the only group that actually should enjoy the "right of return" in Palestine, according to international law). An orthodox man in the front seat said to the driver, "Why do they keep bringing outsiders in? This should be a place for Jews." "You don't understand," said the driver, "these are Jews. All the Americans who come are Jews. The Americans aren't the problem, it's the Arabs who are trying to say this is their country who are the problem." I wanted to throw up. Or to punch a hole through the window. I think I need to work on my anger, especially as I'm going to be spending time with USers now, and not Palestinians.
In any case, I arrived at the airport at 6:00 for my 8:00 flight. I made it through the first random pre-bag-checking questioning with no problems. ("What are you doing here?" "Traveling, visiting friends." "Have you been here before?" "Yes, a few times." "Doing what?" "Traveling, a couple programs with Habonim Dror, etc." And that's the clincher - As disgusting as it is, a Zionist past can get you through that part of the airport just fine.)
I arrived at passport control around 7:00, the woman typed my name into the system, and immediately called the police. I spent much of the next hour waiting around and following people from room to room. They didn't seem to have any interest in speaking with me, although a couple times I heard them ask each other to "make sure Arabs didn't give her anything." They took me to a back room and I got the strip search that my friends of Arab descent have been known to get in the past. They paid extra attention to the seams of my clothing. I wonder if they really think that Palestinian weaponry is sophisticated enough to fit in the seams of clothing (I recently found out that one of the reasons Palestinians don't blow up the Wall or buildings is that they don't have the bombs to do it - it's just not a population that has much access to real weapons). In any case, finally the head of security came in and said, "We've pulled your bags off the plane, and we have to keep your carry-on too. We need to check your stuff and your plane won't wait for you, so you can go now without your bags or you can wait here for 8 hours and go with your bags if the next flight has room for you." I remembered my friend who recently left without her stuff and had much of it robbed by airport security (including a couple thousand Euros), but I also had no interest in hanging out with security officials for at least 8 hours (probably longer, since I think all flights are overbooked these days). My bags were also out of my sight anyway (I never saw them), so I didn't see how I could prevent robbing either way. And finally, it did seem to me that they were more interested in checking for bombs in the seams of bags and clothing than in any materials I had or information I could give them (I think they're more interested in long chats and interrogation on the way in than the way out). The only thing I was reluctant to leave was my unchecked carry-on bag with my laptop in it. But in the end, I did leave it behind. They asked if there's anything I really need with me. I took out my purse, my water bottle, a book, and my glasses case. They took everything aside and a minute later brought me my purse and my book. My water bottle and glasses case could not come with me. They ran me to the plane, where I got a sympathetic look from the British Airways employees, who seemed to think Israeli "security" measures are as ridiculous as I think. And this was my exit from the god-forsaken holy land.
I'm hoping my bags come today. I'm still a bit worried about my carry-on (computer, cds, etc.), of which there is no record. I can't leave you all with this as my final message, so I'll write again within the next week or so. I'll be working on a number of projects this Fall, and am still interested in speaking, and also very interested in organizing speaking tours for Palestinians (and maybe Israelis as well). So let me know if you're interested in any of this.
Looking forward to hearing from many of you soon.
Love Hannah
I'm back in the U.S. My bags are not, but I am. I just read at least 20 e-mails with articles about what's going on in the West Bank and Gaza right now. Most of it is sad and enraging, some of it is hopeful and defiant. There are too many things for me to try to share any of them with you, so this is just a short check-in about my exit. I've been taking notes on other things to share with you about my last couple weeks (sorry I haven't written) but that will have to wait.
For now: The shared taxi picked me up at 4:45 am, and we proceded to drive around much of East Jerusalem and seemingly half the West Bank picking up settlers to take them to the airport. The Nesher taxis specifically drive people to and from Jerusalem. Since Israel keeps expanding its definition of "Jerusalem", it was not all that surprising that I found myself in the middle of the district of Ramallah watching the Palestinian villages pass by as people sat in the car with their orange ribbons signifying opposition to the Gaza disengagement plan. A woman in my car started talking to the driver. My Hebrew isn't great anymore, but from what I could make out, she was saying she was on her way to the airport to meet 2 full plane loads of American Jews who were making "aliyah" (moving to Israel under a racist policy that allows all Jews full citizenship rights in Israel, and denies that same right to everyone else, especially Palestinian refugees who are the only group that actually should enjoy the "right of return" in Palestine, according to international law). An orthodox man in the front seat said to the driver, "Why do they keep bringing outsiders in? This should be a place for Jews." "You don't understand," said the driver, "these are Jews. All the Americans who come are Jews. The Americans aren't the problem, it's the Arabs who are trying to say this is their country who are the problem." I wanted to throw up. Or to punch a hole through the window. I think I need to work on my anger, especially as I'm going to be spending time with USers now, and not Palestinians.
In any case, I arrived at the airport at 6:00 for my 8:00 flight. I made it through the first random pre-bag-checking questioning with no problems. ("What are you doing here?" "Traveling, visiting friends." "Have you been here before?" "Yes, a few times." "Doing what?" "Traveling, a couple programs with Habonim Dror, etc." And that's the clincher - As disgusting as it is, a Zionist past can get you through that part of the airport just fine.)
I arrived at passport control around 7:00, the woman typed my name into the system, and immediately called the police. I spent much of the next hour waiting around and following people from room to room. They didn't seem to have any interest in speaking with me, although a couple times I heard them ask each other to "make sure Arabs didn't give her anything." They took me to a back room and I got the strip search that my friends of Arab descent have been known to get in the past. They paid extra attention to the seams of my clothing. I wonder if they really think that Palestinian weaponry is sophisticated enough to fit in the seams of clothing (I recently found out that one of the reasons Palestinians don't blow up the Wall or buildings is that they don't have the bombs to do it - it's just not a population that has much access to real weapons). In any case, finally the head of security came in and said, "We've pulled your bags off the plane, and we have to keep your carry-on too. We need to check your stuff and your plane won't wait for you, so you can go now without your bags or you can wait here for 8 hours and go with your bags if the next flight has room for you." I remembered my friend who recently left without her stuff and had much of it robbed by airport security (including a couple thousand Euros), but I also had no interest in hanging out with security officials for at least 8 hours (probably longer, since I think all flights are overbooked these days). My bags were also out of my sight anyway (I never saw them), so I didn't see how I could prevent robbing either way. And finally, it did seem to me that they were more interested in checking for bombs in the seams of bags and clothing than in any materials I had or information I could give them (I think they're more interested in long chats and interrogation on the way in than the way out). The only thing I was reluctant to leave was my unchecked carry-on bag with my laptop in it. But in the end, I did leave it behind. They asked if there's anything I really need with me. I took out my purse, my water bottle, a book, and my glasses case. They took everything aside and a minute later brought me my purse and my book. My water bottle and glasses case could not come with me. They ran me to the plane, where I got a sympathetic look from the British Airways employees, who seemed to think Israeli "security" measures are as ridiculous as I think. And this was my exit from the god-forsaken holy land.
I'm hoping my bags come today. I'm still a bit worried about my carry-on (computer, cds, etc.), of which there is no record. I can't leave you all with this as my final message, so I'll write again within the next week or so. I'll be working on a number of projects this Fall, and am still interested in speaking, and also very interested in organizing speaking tours for Palestinians (and maybe Israelis as well). So let me know if you're interested in any of this.
Looking forward to hearing from many of you soon.
Love Hannah
Thursday, July 14, 2005
Happening Again
Dear friends,
The Israeli army has invaded the villages in the Salfit region every night for the past week, breaking glass, arresting men, beating women, shooting holes in framed verses of the Koran. My friends who are still at IWPS have seen all this, but I have not. Below I’ve written about experiences I have personally had, about topics and thoughts that have been particularly haunting me this week.
With as much love as I can muster up, Hannah
“This happened. And it could happen again.”
Houses demolished, villages unrecognized, not given water infrastructure or electricity or rights to their own land. The army had raided the village, had destroyed everything. And every person affected was an Israeli citizen. This particular story comes from a video filmed over 10 years ago, but the situation is the same today. Palestinians with Israeli citizenship do not have the same rights as Jews. Internally displaced refugees remain unrecognized in the communities they have tried to build after being denied the internationally recognized right to return to their original land. There is nothing complicated about the situation. There is nothing complicated about most of what happens here. “Complicated” is a word people use to excuse human rights abuses. “Complicated” is a word people use so they can be openly racist in thought and action, with no repercussions. After all, the Jews were victims once.
“This happened. And it could happen again.”
We visit Saffourieh, one of the largest Palestinian villages before 1948, one of the few that was actually bombed from the air. The village was then surrounded on three sides by Zionist militant groups, leaving the northern route open – and people took it, escaping to Lebanon and Syria. There is now a Moshav called Tzipori that sits on top of the destroyed village, along with 7 other Jewish settlements.
Our tour guide is from Saffourieh, which is to say his family is from Saffourieh, his father an infant in 1948 when his family fled. His dream is to move back and farm the land. Since he can’t, he does small projects, finding village remains and weeding around the cemetery so at least history doesn’t forget the village’s dead. He leaves work early to accommodate the schedules of a group of North American Jews, so he can share his story and show us the land.
And the pictures.
One picture from 1945 of a hill filled with hundreds of houses, a small castle sitting at the top. The castle remains, and the rest of the hill is now a pine forest, as foreign to this land as the American Jews who grew up paying for the trees quarter by quarter in our weekly tzedakah collection at synagogue. The trees a way to cover up any evidence of the thriving community that existed before. “How can the Jews remember 2000 years," asked a nakba survivor who spoke with us, “and expect us to forget 50 or 60?”
“This happened. And it could happen again.”
On a wall in the old city of Hebron, on a street that used to be the market and has been shut down by soldiers and settlers over the years, we find graffiti written in Hebrew, directed towards the Palestinians whose homes and shops are being defiled. “What’s the difference between an Arab and a trampoline?” it asks. And answers: “On a trampoline you jump without shoes.” I saw it last year, and again last week. It has chipped away slightly, but is still readable. From our group comes a question: “Why don’t Palestinians cover this up?” From our tour guide, a response: “If I had my say I’d frame it.” At that the questioner becomes emotional: “In the U.S. if we saw something like that on a wall we would cover it up. Why don’t you cover it up? Why don’t you paint over it and move on?”
Paint over it and move on? Paint over it and move on?! Is it really the responsibility of the oppressed to ignore what is happening to them so that members of the oppressor group can feel fine about themselves as long as they’re not the ones with the paint on their hands? Is it the responsibility of Iraqis to forget the American occupation, of people of color to forget hundreds of years of racism that continue to this day, of women to forget rape, of GLBTQ people to forget hate crimes perpetrated against them?
Sixty years after the Nazi Holocaust, Jews and others from around the world continue to visit the concentration camps and death camps and to study the structures of the Nazi regime. In Hebron, people are being driven out of their homes and jobs TODAY, Palestinian children being stoned as they try to get to their schools TODAY, Jewish stars scrawled across their shops TODAY (coming from Jews, this time; as a show of power, this time), racist graffiti becomes a tangible mark of what is happening TODAY. How could we ever dare to demand that the oppressed forget their oppression even as they are living it?
We remember because we need to, we remember so that when we see these structures emerging, as they have over and over again throughout history and around the world, we can stop the oppression. Must we wait until there are death camps before making any comparisons? Is comparison simply an intellectual exercise, or is it a human tool we can use to stop ourselves from hurting each other?
“This happened. And it could happen again.”
The Israeli army has invaded the villages in the Salfit region every night for the past week, breaking glass, arresting men, beating women, shooting holes in framed verses of the Koran. My friends who are still at IWPS have seen all this, but I have not. Below I’ve written about experiences I have personally had, about topics and thoughts that have been particularly haunting me this week.
With as much love as I can muster up, Hannah
“This happened. And it could happen again.”
Houses demolished, villages unrecognized, not given water infrastructure or electricity or rights to their own land. The army had raided the village, had destroyed everything. And every person affected was an Israeli citizen. This particular story comes from a video filmed over 10 years ago, but the situation is the same today. Palestinians with Israeli citizenship do not have the same rights as Jews. Internally displaced refugees remain unrecognized in the communities they have tried to build after being denied the internationally recognized right to return to their original land. There is nothing complicated about the situation. There is nothing complicated about most of what happens here. “Complicated” is a word people use to excuse human rights abuses. “Complicated” is a word people use so they can be openly racist in thought and action, with no repercussions. After all, the Jews were victims once.
“This happened. And it could happen again.”
We visit Saffourieh, one of the largest Palestinian villages before 1948, one of the few that was actually bombed from the air. The village was then surrounded on three sides by Zionist militant groups, leaving the northern route open – and people took it, escaping to Lebanon and Syria. There is now a Moshav called Tzipori that sits on top of the destroyed village, along with 7 other Jewish settlements.
Our tour guide is from Saffourieh, which is to say his family is from Saffourieh, his father an infant in 1948 when his family fled. His dream is to move back and farm the land. Since he can’t, he does small projects, finding village remains and weeding around the cemetery so at least history doesn’t forget the village’s dead. He leaves work early to accommodate the schedules of a group of North American Jews, so he can share his story and show us the land.
And the pictures.
One picture from 1945 of a hill filled with hundreds of houses, a small castle sitting at the top. The castle remains, and the rest of the hill is now a pine forest, as foreign to this land as the American Jews who grew up paying for the trees quarter by quarter in our weekly tzedakah collection at synagogue. The trees a way to cover up any evidence of the thriving community that existed before. “How can the Jews remember 2000 years," asked a nakba survivor who spoke with us, “and expect us to forget 50 or 60?”
“This happened. And it could happen again.”
On a wall in the old city of Hebron, on a street that used to be the market and has been shut down by soldiers and settlers over the years, we find graffiti written in Hebrew, directed towards the Palestinians whose homes and shops are being defiled. “What’s the difference between an Arab and a trampoline?” it asks. And answers: “On a trampoline you jump without shoes.” I saw it last year, and again last week. It has chipped away slightly, but is still readable. From our group comes a question: “Why don’t Palestinians cover this up?” From our tour guide, a response: “If I had my say I’d frame it.” At that the questioner becomes emotional: “In the U.S. if we saw something like that on a wall we would cover it up. Why don’t you cover it up? Why don’t you paint over it and move on?”
Paint over it and move on? Paint over it and move on?! Is it really the responsibility of the oppressed to ignore what is happening to them so that members of the oppressor group can feel fine about themselves as long as they’re not the ones with the paint on their hands? Is it the responsibility of Iraqis to forget the American occupation, of people of color to forget hundreds of years of racism that continue to this day, of women to forget rape, of GLBTQ people to forget hate crimes perpetrated against them?
Sixty years after the Nazi Holocaust, Jews and others from around the world continue to visit the concentration camps and death camps and to study the structures of the Nazi regime. In Hebron, people are being driven out of their homes and jobs TODAY, Palestinian children being stoned as they try to get to their schools TODAY, Jewish stars scrawled across their shops TODAY (coming from Jews, this time; as a show of power, this time), racist graffiti becomes a tangible mark of what is happening TODAY. How could we ever dare to demand that the oppressed forget their oppression even as they are living it?
We remember because we need to, we remember so that when we see these structures emerging, as they have over and over again throughout history and around the world, we can stop the oppression. Must we wait until there are death camps before making any comparisons? Is comparison simply an intellectual exercise, or is it a human tool we can use to stop ourselves from hurting each other?
“This happened. And it could happen again.”
Friday, June 24, 2005
Breathtakingly Beautiful
It's a beautiful evening. Even a little chilly, which is quite welcome these days. I'm in Jerusalem, partly relaxing and partly preparing for delegations I'll be leading in the coming weeks. I like the Old City of Jerusalem. I like the stones, I like guessing how many hundreds or thousands of years they've been in their current configurations, how many different people have passed through and lived in these buildings. I like the narrow alleys, and the small openings that hide huge buildings, underground structures, and expansive rooftops. I like the bustling Palestinian market all around Damascus Gate, the grass and trees just next to the gate, the people of all ages sitting together, sprawled out in the shade on hot sunny days.
I don't like the Israeli soldiers and border police who patrol the streets, sit on the steps of the Austrian Hospice, set up barriers outside Damascus Gate to block Muslims from coming to pray. I don't like the college-aged Americans and army-aged Israelis who parade around in tiny tank tops and miniskirts with no awareness of cultural sensitivity. I don't like the Israeli flags strewn across rooftops in the Muslim Quarter of the city. I don't like the religious Jews who march through the city as if it's theirs, who read obituaries of Palestinians and then occupy their houses as soon as they die. I don't like that I project this settler identity onto every black-hatted Jew I see, even though many of them are not settlers in that same sense of the word; many are probably just coming into the Old City to visit, or to pray. I don't like that the political situation makes me unable to appreciate any kind of visible Jewish presence, even just walking down the streets, in any part of occupied or annexed East Jerusalem, including the Old City.
I don't like the look I get when I tell my West Bank friends that I'm coming to Al Quds (Jerusalem). I don't like the guilt I feel for easily being able to travel to the holiest city in the country, when my Muslim friends for whom it would mean so much more are not allowed to go. Sometimes I don't even tell them where I'm going; sometimes I say I'm going to Ramallah, because for me it's the same, and for them it is not.
I don't like the orange ribbons on all the cars around here, expressing solidarity with Jewish settlers of Gush Katif and opposition to evacuating them from Gaza. I don't like the blue and white ribbons that have come in response, supporting the "disengagement" as the patriotic thing to do. I don't like that I sit in Jerusalem and see these ribbons about Gaza and get a phone call that there is curfew in Hares. I don't like that I know this, as well as everything else that happens in the West Bank these days, will go completely ignored by the world, and I don't like that I myself feel almost nothing when I hear the word "curfew," that my response is automatic: if I were there, I would go out and check on the situation, but since I'm not, I hang up the pone and continue my walk.
Sometimes it's nice to be here in Jerusalem, and sometimes I just want to get out, back to the villages, back to a life that in some ways has become comfortable for me. I was in Deir Ballut last week, just visiting friends. I took a taxi over there just after sunset. The twists and turns through the hills, the dirt road surrounded by thousands of olive trees, the almost full moon shining in an almost dark sky - it was all so breathtakingly beautiful. This is how Palestine could be, I thought, appreciating for the first time the bumpy half-hour long ride that would take 10 minutes if Palestinians could pass through the Qarawa roadblock and the Deir Ballut checkpoint.
I love entering Deir Ballut, driving through some of the most lush fields in Palestine, towards the always welcoming village. I arrived at my friend Reem's house, and her husband told me she was out. At the store, confirmed the kids. As always, I marveled over the difference between Deir Ballut and other nearby villages, like Hares. In Deir Ballut, women go out on their own after dark, have wedding parties outside with dancing, singing, and drumming, and have a tendency to refuse all marriage proposals until they're finished university. Or at least this is true of the girls and women I know. Oh, and in Deir Ballut the kids don't point and stare and whisper, "ajnabiye" (foreigner) or yell, "sawrini!" (take my picture).
I'm going to miss this place. I'll miss my friends in Deir Ballut, who tell me "women are free here" and I'll miss my friends in Hares who tell me it's not appropriate for women to go out, that they're not strong enough to defend themselves. I may even miss the blonde kids up the street who throw stones at us out of boredom or amusement, and who occasionally try to physically remove our cameras from our bags to take pictures of themselves.
I'm still in Palestine for another month, but I'll be on the road the whole time with three different groups that I'll have the pleasure of introducing Palestine to. I'm not sure if or when I'll find time to write, so don't worry if you don't hear from me for a while. Jaber's trial is on Monday (he's the one who had meningitis and was arrested at Huwara checkpoint a couple months ago), and I'm going to try to go, so perhaps that will inspire a report. But no promises.
Until next time,
Hannah
I don't like the Israeli soldiers and border police who patrol the streets, sit on the steps of the Austrian Hospice, set up barriers outside Damascus Gate to block Muslims from coming to pray. I don't like the college-aged Americans and army-aged Israelis who parade around in tiny tank tops and miniskirts with no awareness of cultural sensitivity. I don't like the Israeli flags strewn across rooftops in the Muslim Quarter of the city. I don't like the religious Jews who march through the city as if it's theirs, who read obituaries of Palestinians and then occupy their houses as soon as they die. I don't like that I project this settler identity onto every black-hatted Jew I see, even though many of them are not settlers in that same sense of the word; many are probably just coming into the Old City to visit, or to pray. I don't like that the political situation makes me unable to appreciate any kind of visible Jewish presence, even just walking down the streets, in any part of occupied or annexed East Jerusalem, including the Old City.
I don't like the look I get when I tell my West Bank friends that I'm coming to Al Quds (Jerusalem). I don't like the guilt I feel for easily being able to travel to the holiest city in the country, when my Muslim friends for whom it would mean so much more are not allowed to go. Sometimes I don't even tell them where I'm going; sometimes I say I'm going to Ramallah, because for me it's the same, and for them it is not.
I don't like the orange ribbons on all the cars around here, expressing solidarity with Jewish settlers of Gush Katif and opposition to evacuating them from Gaza. I don't like the blue and white ribbons that have come in response, supporting the "disengagement" as the patriotic thing to do. I don't like that I sit in Jerusalem and see these ribbons about Gaza and get a phone call that there is curfew in Hares. I don't like that I know this, as well as everything else that happens in the West Bank these days, will go completely ignored by the world, and I don't like that I myself feel almost nothing when I hear the word "curfew," that my response is automatic: if I were there, I would go out and check on the situation, but since I'm not, I hang up the pone and continue my walk.
Sometimes it's nice to be here in Jerusalem, and sometimes I just want to get out, back to the villages, back to a life that in some ways has become comfortable for me. I was in Deir Ballut last week, just visiting friends. I took a taxi over there just after sunset. The twists and turns through the hills, the dirt road surrounded by thousands of olive trees, the almost full moon shining in an almost dark sky - it was all so breathtakingly beautiful. This is how Palestine could be, I thought, appreciating for the first time the bumpy half-hour long ride that would take 10 minutes if Palestinians could pass through the Qarawa roadblock and the Deir Ballut checkpoint.
I love entering Deir Ballut, driving through some of the most lush fields in Palestine, towards the always welcoming village. I arrived at my friend Reem's house, and her husband told me she was out. At the store, confirmed the kids. As always, I marveled over the difference between Deir Ballut and other nearby villages, like Hares. In Deir Ballut, women go out on their own after dark, have wedding parties outside with dancing, singing, and drumming, and have a tendency to refuse all marriage proposals until they're finished university. Or at least this is true of the girls and women I know. Oh, and in Deir Ballut the kids don't point and stare and whisper, "ajnabiye" (foreigner) or yell, "sawrini!" (take my picture).
I'm going to miss this place. I'll miss my friends in Deir Ballut, who tell me "women are free here" and I'll miss my friends in Hares who tell me it's not appropriate for women to go out, that they're not strong enough to defend themselves. I may even miss the blonde kids up the street who throw stones at us out of boredom or amusement, and who occasionally try to physically remove our cameras from our bags to take pictures of themselves.
I'm still in Palestine for another month, but I'll be on the road the whole time with three different groups that I'll have the pleasure of introducing Palestine to. I'm not sure if or when I'll find time to write, so don't worry if you don't hear from me for a while. Jaber's trial is on Monday (he's the one who had meningitis and was arrested at Huwara checkpoint a couple months ago), and I'm going to try to go, so perhaps that will inspire a report. But no promises.
Until next time,
Hannah
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