In Palestine as I walked through the streets and markets, spoke with taxi drivers, shopkeepers, engineers, herbalists, and just about anyone who would talk to me with my odd mix of Yemeni/ Moroccan Arabic. Whether it was Jerusalem, the Palestinian cities of Nabblus, Bethlehem, and or other towns I could feel this spiritual malaise and despair. I can only imagine how this despair is in Gaza now, under lock and key by the Israeli government, and barely a word of protest from the international community. This spiritual malaise is something not always in words, it is the feel of a people who are asked to leave their homeland, who have witnessed the destruction of their homes, have the stories of their families driven from their homes, and have seen the Diaspora of the Jews now visited on the Palestinians. The more time I spent in Palestine and Israel, the more profoundly I felt my own sense of despair. The lush valleys from Galilee, the farms near Tel Aviv, the best pastures and the best land seized by Israel, while people in the Occupied Territories like Bethlehem are consigned to the poorest most arid land, and the water that is used to fertilized these fields are all owned by Israel. Then there is this 30 foot (8 Meter) high wall of Separation, I call the Wall of Shame, brutal ugly monstrous wall that separates Palestine: family from family and neighbor from neighbor. It is almost impossible to imagine a more insidious, cruel, Kafkaesque kind of prison. Palestinians imprisoned in their own land and four million plus Palestinians outside of Israel and West bank who cannot return driven from their home during one of the wars in Israel, civilians who were forced from their homes.
In Israel and Palestine, both in the expressed and the implied conversations, I heard and witnessed a culture and people that is being annihilated. Though there are success stories of people who have survived this Nakbah, the catastrophe since the l948 War of Occupation, overall it is a culture under siege, in as much as the children in the concentration camps of Treblinka drew pictures of a barbed wire future with butterflies and trees, this is also the vision I am getting of Palestine. Prisoners in their own land, free as long as they remain within the boundaries of their town, and if the Israeli government wants to reclaim more Palestinian land, as long as they meekly comply then there is no problem. When they speak up for their basic human rights, they’re branded as terrorists and imprisoned.
This physical destruction of a contiguous community and land has been variously described as Bantuization, Apartheid, Ethnic Cleansing, and even Genocide, and which can all can be effectively argued as true. Palestinians in the West Bank are locked into some thirteen ghettos, all roads are controlled by the Israeli army, checkpoints are frequent, and though as a Palestinian you are native to the land, you are now held prisoner, without passport, and even if you do get the chance to leave for study or medical help, there is no guarantee you can return.
Repeatedly as I traveled through the West Bank I saw more Israeli settlements expanding, however, they’re not really settlements, they’re cities. Settlement implies a newly colonized place with a quality of temporality. These are not temporary places they’re made of concrete and steel, with swimming pools, recreational facilities, schools, and taking over as much of their neighbor’s land as possible. These neighbor lands belong to Palestinians, but the Israel government and military have the prerogative to seize land at whim without judicial recourse. Consider this, you own a home with a bit of land, someone moves in and builds a house, drills for water, and when you complain they call the police. This is the maddening insane part of the Occupation. You have no rights, your land and home can be seized at any time, and you can be arrested without any civil rights. Routine reports of Palestinians youngsters arrested, kept in detention, without notification of their parents, and without a need to file charges. I saw and heard Israeli soldiers standing at the gates in Jerusalem, yelling and humiliating Palestinians youths, while other police around were smirking and laughing. A young Israeli soldier all of nineteen yelled at the young man, “What’s wrong with you? You don’t have your papers, they’re all wrong!” The young man said, “I live here, this is my street.” But to no avail, the police took him away. Five armed Israeli IDF soldiers with semi automatic rifles marched this young man to a police station. This is only the tip of the nightmare; the nightmare of the Occupation continues every moment and every day for Palestinians living in the West Bank.
As a child, I lived in Spain during the Franco era. I remember vividly the Guardia Civil on each street corner, armed with rifles, pistols, and sword: This was the world I had stepped into again. Most vividly was coming from Ramallah, the administrative capital of Palestine, to Jerusalem. All people, regardless of nationality had to get off the bus, proceed to a transit point, where there was a concrete and metal `bunker by a series of metal cages. The metal cages were about 6’ tall x 2 wide (2m x ½ m), they were about 15’ (5 m) feet long. There were two lines and once in the gate you could neither move forwards or backwards, the IDF soldiers were standing idle, they were not processing people. This was a cat and mouse game. They looked bored with their game. Periodically, they would allow a few to pass, but mostly you stood in the cage in a concrete room. The Palestinians next to me said nothing, their eyes downcast, they knew there was nothing they could do, their only hope was to say nothing, and hope to reach the other side. Bizarrely, a group of young soldiers was in the concrete bunker a few meters away behind a bulletproof glass, and one remained inside; when his friends left, he plugged in his earphones and began to play air-guitar through the window. It would almost be funny, but I had the eerie feeling of walking into a gas chamber while a guard was whistling a merry “Deutsch Land Uber Alles.” This is the daily humiliation of Palestinians. If you work in Israel and need to get in for work at 8 Am, people begin to line up as early as 2 AM, in order to make work on time. If you are ill and need to go to a hospital you still need to wait on line.
I was hoping before I left, that I would find that much of this was exaggeration, that perhaps this was a misunderstanding, that the Occupation was not as brutal as it seemed, and that Israel was a relatively benign and just state. After all that we have been through for thousands of years, we could only be just. No! This Occupation both of Gaza, the West Bank with its 30 foot (8 meter) high wall, institutionalized Apartheid, is a savage affront to humanity. It robs the dignity of both the Palestinians and Israelis.
I was always proud of my Jewish ancestry, our history, and our rising above adversity. We had a deep sense of righteousness and justice. We knew suffering and exile, and this history would be shinning moral example in the new land of Israel. But it hasn’t been. Israel and its policy of apartheid is shameful. Both people are imprisoned in this tragedy, the Israelis by the opprobrium of the international community, and the ultimate realization that with spending and investing up to 45% of its GNP on the military, it is in a no win situation. It can win the skirmish, but it cannot win the peace, no matter how much money they spend.
In the meantime, the despair is prominent, as Palestinians see their homes destroyed, their olive trees and fields uprooted by Israeli settlers and no legal recourse, more lands seized, and the basic human rights of liberty, due process, and a right to a future is denied. Justice for the Palestinians is the first step with a viable two state solution where a free and independent Palestine can exist, one that includes all of the area of the west bank from the time of the l967 war, a free Gaza, and ultimately the right to return for Palestinians. The quid pro quo is that the Palestinians have full control of their security and future, and Israel is able to live in peace.
NB: Several informative books on this subject are: Israel: Apartheid: A Beginner’s Guide by Ben White; Disappearing Palestine by Jonathan Cook; Peace Not Apartheid by Jimmy Carter.
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