It is dry, it is hot. Black string bikinis descend the small steps meeting black flapping swimming trunks. They look naked thanks to the black mud. Both bodies entirely black, only the feet remain white. Salt easily penetrates the skin, making it soft and filled with wellbeing. The water is salty. I protect my eyes, protect myself. I feel that I am constantly protecting myself. Protecting myself from inner conflicts. Protecting myself from myself, from my own anxiety, my prejudices, stories, childhood, education, manipulation, songs, sermons… I’m filled with strong emotions when I look towards that powerful mountain, the mountain near the Holy City. Protecting myself from what I see, from what I feel, from what I hear. Eat a salad by the Dead Sea. I’m near, but far from, the conflict, the war. Carry a barrier, a mental barrier. Over there, there is war; here, there is peace. Peace behind a mud mask. We float around like corks in this Shangri-la on the shores of the Dead Sea. A sea that is disappearing and which will soon really be a dead sea, a sea without water, only salt. Take a shower; leave Shangri-la, the string bikinis, the flapping black swimming trunks, all the water pipes, lifeguards and happy children. Quickly transported from East to West over the mountain. Pass through a checkpoint without stopping (driving a diplomatic car) and within two hours I am sitting on the Mediterranean drinking chilled white wine. Sitting by the Mediterranean Shangri-la among fortunate children, fortunate couples newly in love, looking out over the sea that slowly goes to sleep. The sun ebbs to the horizon and the children build sandcastles. I made a quick trip through Palestinian lands. Two hours from East to West. I exist in the same way as all Israelis, tourists, and most diplomats. Don’t need to see, hear, taste or feel. Palestine is felt for only a few minutes. No soldier stopped me, no wall, no struggle, no dead, no hospital, no Palestinian families, no discussions, no rifles pointed at me. Lunch at the Dead Sea, a chilled glass of white wine by the Mediterranean. In between were Palestinian lands I never saw. Are they really there? Or have they disappeared like a shadow under an olive tree? Just something we read about but never have to confront. We read about them in the daily news to understand, to be able to take part in discussions. But I never need to see them, be part of them, or taste them. Tonight, I’m going through the latest political reports. Reading about Rafah, about the wall, about new settlements, about Jimmy Carter, about the economy, about the killings, about suicide bombers, about the children, about Gaza. I have to read the latest reports. It’s important, important to be able to take part in the discussions, to show that I am aware, that I understand. To be balanced, I must know. Mats Svensson can be reached at isbjorn2001@hotmail.com (This article was originally published in CounterPunch.org and is republished by PalestineChronicle.com with permission from the author).
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By: Amira Hass
Date: 27/05/2013
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Slain Bedouin girls' mother, a victim of Israeli-Palestinian bureaucracy
Abir Dandis, the mother of the two girls who were murdered in the Negev town of Al-Fura’a last week, couldn't find a police officer to listen to her warnings, neither in Arad nor in Ma’ale Adumim. Both police stations operate in areas where Israel wants to gather the Bedouin into permanent communities, against their will, in order to clear more land for Jewish communities. The dismissive treatment Dandis received shows how the Bedouin are considered simply to be lawbreakers by their very nature. But as a resident of the West Bank asking for help for her daughters, whose father was Israeli, Dandis faced the legal-bureaucratic maze created by the Oslo Accords. The Palestinian police is not allowed to arrest Israeli civilians. It must hand suspects over to the Israel Police. The Palestinian police complain that in cases of Israelis suspected of committing crimes against Palestinian residents, the Israel Police tend not to investigate or prosecute them. In addition, the town of Al-Azaria, where Dandis lives, is in Area B, under Palestinian civilian authority and Israeli security authority. According to the testimony of Palestinian residents, neither the IDF nor the Israel Police has any interest in internal Palestinian crime even though they have both the authority and the obligation to act in Area B. The Palestinian police are limited in what it can do in Area B. Bringing in reinforcements or carrying weapons in emergency situations requires coordination with, and obtaining permission from, the IDF. If Dandis fears that the man who murdered her daughters is going to attack her as well, she has plenty of reason to fear that she will not receive appropriate, immediate police protection from either the Israelis or the Palestinians. Dandis told Jack Khoury of Haaretz that the Ma’ale Adumim police referred her to the Palestinian Civil Affairs Coordination and Liaison Committee. Theoretically, this committee (which is subordinate to the Civil Affairs Ministry) is the logical place to go for such matters. Its parallel agency in Israel is the Civilian Liaison Committee (which is part of the Coordination and Liaison Administration - a part of the Civil Administration under the Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories). In their meetings, they are supposed to discuss matters such as settlers’ complaints about the high volume of the loudspeakers at mosques or Palestinians’ complaints about attacks by settlers. But the Palestinians see the Liaison Committee as a place to submit requests for permission to travel to Israel, and get the impression that its clerks do not have much power when faced with their Israeli counterparts. In any case, the coordination process is cumbersome and long. The Palestinian police has a family welfare unit, and activists in Palestinian women’s organizations say that in recent years, its performance has improved. But, as stated, it has no authority over Israeli civilians and residents. Several non-governmental women’s groups also operate in the West Bank and in East Jerusalem, and women in similar situations approach them for help. The manager of one such organization told Haaretz that Dandis also fell victim to this confusing duplication of procedures and laws. Had Dandis approached her, she said, she would have referred her to Adalah, the Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel, which has expertise in navigating Israel’s laws and authorities.
By: Phoebe Greenwood
Date: 27/05/2013
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John Kerry unveils plan to boost Palestinian economy
John Kerry revealed his long-awaited plan for peace in the Middle East on Sunday, hinging on a $4bn (£2.6bn) investment in the Palestinian private sector. The US secretary of state, speaking at the World Economic Forum on the Jordanian shores of the Dead Sea, told an audience including Israeli president Shimon Peres and Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas that an independent Palestinian economy is essential to achieving a sustainable peace. Speaking under the conference banner "Breaking the Impasse", Kerry announced a plan that he promised would be "bigger, bolder and more ambitious" than anything since the Oslo accords, more than 20 years ago. Tony Blair is to lead a group of private sector leaders in devising a plan to release the Palestinian economy from its dependence on international donors. The initial findings of Blair's taskforce, Kerry boasted, were "stunning", predicting a 50% increase in Palestinian GDP over three years, a cut of two-thirds in unemployment rates and almost double the Palestinian median wage. Currently, 40% of the Palestinian economy is supplied by donor aid. Kerry assured Abbas that the economic plan was not a substitute for a political solution, which remains the US's "top priority". Peres, who had taken the stage just minutes before, also issued a personal plea to his Palestinian counterpart to return to the negotiations. "Let me say to my dear friend President Abbas," Peres said, "Should we really dance around the table? Lets sit together. You'll be surprised how much can be achieved in open, direct and organised meetings."
By: Jillian Kestler-D'Amours
Date: 27/05/2013
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Isolation Devastates East Jerusalem Economy
Thick locks hug the front gates of shuttered shops, now covered in graffiti and dust from lack of use. Only a handful of customers pass along the dimly lit road, sometimes stopping to check the ripeness of fruits and vegetables, or ordering meat in near-empty butcher shops. “All the shops are closed. I’m the only one open. This used to be the best place,” said 64-year-old Mustafa Sunocret, selling vegetables out of a small storefront in the marketplace near his family’s home in the Muslim quarter of Jerusalem’s Old City. Amidst the brightly coloured scarves, clothes and carpets, ceramic pottery and religious souvenirs filling the shops of Jerusalem’s historic Old City, Palestinian merchants are struggling to keep their businesses alive. Faced with worsening health problems, Sunocret told IPS that he cannot work outside of the Old City, even as the cost of maintaining his shop, with high electricity, water and municipal tax bills to pay, weighs on him. “I only have this shop,” he said. “There is no other work. I’m tired.” Abed Ajloni, the owner of an antiques shop in the Old City, owes the Jerusalem municipality 250,000 Israeli shekels (68,300 U.S. dollars) in taxes. He told IPS that almost every day, the city’s tax collectors come into the Old City, accompanied by Israeli police and soldiers, to pressure people there to pay. “It feels like they’re coming again to occupy the city, with the soldiers and police,” Ajloni, who has owned the same shop for 35 years, told IPS. “But where can I go? What can I do? All my life I was in this place.” He added, “Does Jerusalem belong to us, or to someone else? Who’s responsible for Jerusalem? Who?” Illegal annexation Israel occupied East Jerusalem, including the Old City, in 1967. In July 1980, it passed a law stating that “Jerusalem, complete and united, is the capital of Israel”. But Israel’s annexation of East Jerusalem and subsequent application of Israeli laws over the entire city remain unrecognised by the international community. Under international law, East Jerusalem is considered occupied territory – along with the West Bank, Gaza Strip and Syrian Golan Heights – and Palestinian residents of the city are protected under the Fourth Geneva Convention. Jerusalem has historically been the economic, political and cultural centre of life for the entire Palestinian population. But after decades languishing under destructive Israeli policies meant to isolate the city from the rest of the Occupied Territories and a lack of municipal services and investment, East Jerusalem has slipped into a state of poverty and neglect. “After some 45 years of occupation, Arab Jerusalemites suffer from political and cultural schizophrenia, simultaneously connected with and isolated from their two hinterlands: Ramallah and the West Bank to their east, West Jerusalem and Israel to the west,” the International Crisis Group recently wrote. Israeli restrictions on planning and building, home demolitions, lack of investment in education and jobs, construction of an eight-foot-high separation barrier between and around Palestinian neighbourhoods and the creation of a permit system to enter Jerusalem have all contributed to the city’s isolation. Formal Palestinian political groups have also been banned from the city, and between 2001-2009, Israel closed an estimated 26 organisations, including the former Palestinian Liberation Organisation headquarters in Jerusalem, the Orient House and the Jerusalem Chamber of Commerce. Extreme poverty Israel’s policies have also led to higher prices for basic goods and services and forced many Palestinian business owners to close shop and move to Ramallah or other Palestinian neighbourhoods on the other side of the wall. Many Palestinian Jerusalemites also prefer to do their shopping in the West Bank, or in West Jerusalem, where prices are lower. While Palestinians constitute 39 percent of the city’s population today, almost 80 percent of East Jerusalem residents, including 85 percent of children, live below the poverty line. “How could you develop [an] economy if you don’t control your resources? How could you develop [an] economy if you don’t have any control of your borders?” said Zakaria Odeh, director of the Civic Coalition for Palestinian Rights in Jerusalem, of “this kind of fragmentation, checkpoints, closure”. “Without freedom of movement of goods and human beings, how could you develop an economy?” he asked. “You can’t talk about independent economy in Jerusalem or the West Bank or in all of Palestine without a political solution. We don’t have a Palestinian economy; we have economic activities. That’s all we have,” Odeh told IPS. Israel’s separation barrier alone, according to a new report by the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTD), has caused a direct loss of over one billion dollars to Palestinians in Jerusalem, and continues to incur 200 million dollars per year in lost opportunities. Israel’s severing and control over the Jerusalem-Jericho road – the historical trade route that connected Jerusalem to the rest of the West Bank and Middle East – has also contributed to the city’s economic downturn. Separation of Jerusalem from West Bank Before the First Intifada (Arabic for “uprising”) began in the late 1980s, East Jerusalem contributed approximately 14 to 15 percent of the gross domestic product (GDP) in the Occupied Palestinian territories (OPT). By 2000, that number had dropped to less than eight percent; in 2010, the East Jerusalem economy, compared to the rest of the OPT, was estimated at only seven percent. “Economic separation resulted in the contraction in the relative size of the East Jerusalem economy, its detachment from the remaining OPT and the gradual redirection of East Jerusalem employment towards the Israeli labour market,” the U.N. report found. Decades ago, Israel adopted a policy to maintain a so-called “demographic balance” in Jerusalem and attempt to limit Palestinian residents of the city to 26.5 percent or less of the total population. To maintain this composition, Israel built numerous Jewish-Israeli settlements inside and in a ring around Jerusalem and changed the municipal boundaries to encompass Jewish neighbourhoods while excluding Palestinian ones. It is now estimated that 90,000 Palestinians holding Jerusalem residency rights live on the other side of the separation barrier and must cross through Israeli checkpoints in order to reach Jerusalem for school, medical treatment, work, and other services. “Israel is using all kinds of tools to push the Palestinians to leave; sometimes they are visible, and sometimes invisible tools,” explained Ziad al-Hammouri, director of the Jerusalem Centre for Social and Economic Rights (JCSER). Al-Hammouri told IPS that at least 25 percent of the 1,000 Palestinian shops in the Old City were closed in recent years as a result of high municipal taxes and a lack of customers. “Taxation is an invisible tool…as dangerous as revoking ID cards and demolishing houses,” he said. “Israel will use this as pressure and as a tool in the future to confiscate these shops and properties.”
By the Same Author
Date: 29/10/2008
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Eyes on the Wall, Gaza 2004 and Political Guilt 2008
It has been two months since the launch of the book, International Assistance to the Palestinians after Oslo: Political Guilt and Wasted Money. The book is a summary of Anne Le More’s PhD on development aid to Palestine after Oslo. A common response to the book is that Anne is not writing anything new, that we have been conscious and today have knowledge of what her PhD came to be about. What if it is so. What if we know, have all the knowledge and still don’t act. If that is indeed the case I would still have wanted to be able to say that I didn’t know what was going on when I was last here. Be able to look you in the eyes and say that I was unaware and ignorant. But unfortunately that was not the case. I was myself part of what Anne Le More writes. I had the local responsibility for Swedish development aid during a short period, 2004-2005. From that time, I have two photographs of two women. They are sisters-in-law and slept the night to the eleventh of September 2004 with their families in a house in Jabalya, in northern Gaza. At the beginning, the women constitute part of two larger photos with a demolished house in the background. With the passing of time, I have changed the photos, cropped them and today only the eyes remain. Eyes with a clear message. The photos were taken in Jabalya refugee camp in Gaza on 12th September 2004. During the morning I had been in Beit Hanun, a few kilometers from Jabalya Camp. In a gigantic area, all the houses had been demolished and all the olive trees chopped down. Solely a two-storey house remained. The soldiers had just occupied the house. The families had been forced to leave, the elderly, the women, the children, the family providers. They didn’t have time to bring anything with them, had been forced to leave furniture, photographs and toys behind. The house was occupied by young soldiers. For a short while, the house became a military center with a view over the whole destroyed area. On the second floor, on the roof terrace, the young soldier, the sniper, lies down on a mattress. Quietly and calmly he waits. His colleague plays music, comes over with a cup of coffee. An elderly man returns to his house. The man wants to collect some private things the family did not manage to bring with them. In his hand, he holds a long cane, and on the cane he has tied a white flag. The man lifts the white flag high so that everyone can see. The young soldier, just over twenty years old, with sniper training as his best merit, leans against the edge and aims. He aims for a long time, and shoots the man through the hand, the flag falls to the ground. The soldier will never forget. It will become an occurrence that remains in the deepest part of him, which perhaps makes it difficult for the soldier to ever sleep a full night again. The story also follows me when I reach Jabalya refugee camp a few hours later. It was calm in the camp when I arrived. It was very quiet, no crying, no screaming. A woman with a black shawl approaches me and gives me half a green apple. A woman, a wife, a mother. Behind her a demolished house. I ask if I can take a picture. She nods. She smiles into the camera. She has not given up. Another woman in a green shawl comes shortly afterwards. She does not see me, she does not see anyone. She stands completely silent with sad, empty eyes. I ask if I can take a photo. The interpreter says that I can. I did not hear her confirm. Two women, two sisters-in-law with two families. The women personify the conflict. A woman who has a demolished house and who is unconquered while another woman, in the same house, who will need external support. Two women were forced to leave their houses in a refugee camp for a room in another refugee camp. Just like many others on the Gaza Strip, they were victims in a much larger battle that was taking place far away from Gaza’s narrow gates. The international community has for a long time accepted that Gaza was on its way of permanenting its status as the world’s most isolated refugee camp. But isolated refugee camps are an expensive story. The costs were covered either directly through the UN system or indirectly via the Palestinian Authority in Ramallah. Somebody also paid to strengthen the military forces around and in Gaza. Compared to other difficult areas like the Sudan, large sums in the form of Dollars and Euros were transferred during my short time in Palestine. In the meantime, more and more Palestinians reiterated that they first hoped for political support, then money. Two women, one no longer believes in the international community, does not believe in the Palestinian leadership, does not believe in the family, does not believe in herself. The other is convinced that the help is nowhere to be found except in herself. Anne Le More’s PhD describes the political guilt borne by the international community. A guilt that has come to mean that we collectively have been unable to attack the fundamental reasons for the conflict. To challenge these reasons would involve confronting the history of the conflict and the international community’s participation in it, as well as emphasising the legitimate rights and suffering of both peoples. Anne’s fundamental approach means that each actor who participates in influencing and changing the situation has to take a clear stance in regard to the Palestinian refugees, Jerusalem, the establishment of a border between Israel and Palestine, the settlements and the security arrangements. If I understand Anne correctly, she means that it is only when we are prepared to call a spade a spade and then act accordingly that we have the right to participate in the process with a certain degree of dignity. The two women, whose eyes hang on my wall, are part of this process. They are constantly sitting in the front stalls. Their grandparents and their children have probably also followed or still do follow the game, the international game. They see what happened or is happening. The refugee status became permanent, a house became a room. The border to the world around is today very clear. Today everything is closed and inaccesible, over land, over water as well as through the air. The number of settlers in Palestine has never been as high as today. Admittedly, the 7000 on the Gaza Strip are gone but that did not help the West Bank which got thousands of additional settlers since 2005. When I read Anne’s book, I get a clear feeling of not having anything of which to be proud. I agree with the people who say that when you get a book like this in your hand, it does not say anything new. But what is new for me is that I can with clear precision see what I was part of and which role I played. I can also clearly see what my standpoint led to. That feels unique because it means that all my co-actors and I have today received a textbook which should make us examine what we recently did but also what we are doing today. It’s time for some sort of justice. I have to continue believing in that. I also believe that the two women, if they heard about the book by Anne Le More, would tell us to read the book very carefully. That it of course should be an appendix to every country’s development cooperation strategy with Palestine. The women would probably also encourage us to discuss the book at our internal meetings at the consulates, foreign affairs and the EU. Perhaps they would also call the Ministry of Planning in Ramallah and ask them to invite the international community to a two-day conference with Anne Le More as the main speaker.
Date: 25/10/2008
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Short Film Sequences at a Checkpoint
I had seen it before, a few days earlier. I had seen it on my way into one of the many homelands of the 21st century. I saw the woman who wasn’t let into the city Nablus, to go to the hospital with her sick child. I saw the woman who wasn’t allowed home to her village after giving birth to a little girl; saw the man on crutches being sent back to the city by frightened young boys and terror-struck young girls with automatic weapons and security equipment. It was when the pianist on the cinema screen started playing to save himself from what he didn’t know. When I saw the wall being built, how thousands and thousands of families were pushed together in cramped houses, when I heard the voices from the past in the big cinema speakers and, at the same time, the screams of despair from today, from the present that I am now a part of. That’s when I left, and then I had to go outside and cry. The things I saw on the screen and heard through the speakers, the things that weren’t real, that were acted out by the best and most expensive actors suddenly came close. I understood that it had happened, but that it’s in some small way also happening right now, and that I’m a part of it through my silence and my dissociation. I watch, write, take photographs, mediate and try to understand. Day after day, I go through something that I have partly seen before. Everything is mingled. I try to think back and remember when I have seen it before, but it is just glimpses from my own past, from films, conversations and theatre productions. At the Market Theatre in Johannesburg, soldiers tread on the stage in high boots, smash doors to pieces and destroy houses. A bleeding woman is giving birth on the stage floor. The husband is taken away; there are screams, beatings, collaborators getting burning tires around their necks, humiliation. Then I stayed. Then it was a part of history, a history that I was trying to understand and that I wasn’t a part of. Then it had happened a long time ago, then it was easy to watch to understand, then I didn’t have to leave. Now the film sequences are coming back, they are shown on BBC and CNN. In Chile, the black glasses have been thrown away and he failed to get immunity. In southern Africa, two former enemies sit around the negotiating table and plan a common future. The tall man, who is not yet out of prison, speaks to those in power and that leads to a shift of power. They understood that ‘the other’ couldn’t be defeated. And I dream about new films, films describing how the lost country is reestablished, how walls are taken down and sold as souvenirs. And I see the woman going into “sniper alley” at Eretz, a mother visiting her son who is in prison on the Israeli side. When she comes back she tells me about cold speaker voices, soldiers in concrete bunkers, dogs to close, automatic weapons pointed at her body, soldiers laughing, and humiliation. I never saw the end of the film, The Pianist. I don’t know what happened, if there was a happy ending for the pianist or if he died together with the other millions murdered people. I also don’t know what happened to the woman giving birth, the woman who wanted to go home to her husband, the man on crutches. I don’t know what will happen to the soldiers; the girl and boy who stopped them. But the soldier at Eretz, who I have never written about before, said that he had been there seven months and that he was going to stay a long time. ”I will stay if I can stay sane, look around,” he said,”it’s all crazy.” I think he will make it. He will hand over to his successor in a few years’ time; he will have personal experiences that will make him a complete human being. I believe he will be somebody who never will be silenced. I am meeting him in a couple of weeks, when he’s on leave. He has promised to tell me a story.
Date: 09/10/2008
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The Dance of the Cranes in Jerusalem
Woke up early. Had had a strange dream. Got up and looked out the window. Foggy, could hardly see the house on the other side of the street. Far away, within myself, I heard the shrill, strong, desolate sounds, the sounds of calling cranes. Together with my brother I had gone to Hornborgarsjön in the middle of Sweden. Early spring morning, had arrived during the night. Had slept a few hours in the car, in the dream we were in the car, Renault 4L, in a hiding spot in the forest. Unclear dream, but then it begins to grow light, the fog remains across the plain and when it lifts we see black silhouettes in the distance. With the lake in the background we see thousands of cranes, munching on potatoes. We put up our tube binoculars, point the long lenses and see how the cranes begin to dance. In the dream I hear their high calls, that’s when I wake up. Last night I was at a reception, cocktail party or why not call it a diplomatic get-together. Diplomats meeting after the summer, diplomats, like the migratory birds, the cranes, returning to their permanent playgrounds. Repetition, everything is repeated, as if nothing has happened in the meantime. Every year when we went to Hornborgarsjön I was struck by a feeling of unreality. That these gigantic birds kept returning. Kept carrying out these enormous journeys across the continents to collectively land on this partly desolate place, land to eat potatoes and carry out the mating of the spring. High above they fly over a continuously changing landscape, which has been struck by war, which has led to peace and again war followed by new peace agreements. But the cranes are completely unaffected, return with great stubbornness, to meet each year, meet to dance in the early morning. What have they seen? What do they have to tell? They come from different places and within themselves they have something drummed into them that we find difficult to understand. Date of departure, direction, distance and landing spot. And last night I saw another type of migratory birds meet. We also danced and carried out the yearly ritual. We are well educated, from the large universities with many languages and experiences in our baggage which would make most jealous or at least minimised. On the cards that I get in my hand I understand that we have studied international relations, peace and conflict, Arabic, international diplomacy. PhD seems to be the most common title. And while we dance, move in the room in a prescribed and studied way, a conversation is held about histories, stories. Anecdotes are lifted into the dance and become truths and are taken from person to person. The stories change but we are unaffected. During our absence, holiday, some houses have been demolished. Five children have been made homeless, three children homeless, four children homeless. The children stood on the side and saw when the Caterpillar chopped down their house. They tried to run towards the house, tried to pick up a forgotten toy, but were stopped by young Israelis, soldiers. What had represented generations of saving was crushed in 13 minutes. In some cases the home was exploded. When the dust lay to rest the child sees only a pile of sand. As if they would have received a gift, a playground from the occupation power. An old man in the hospital, a handicapped old man imprisoned. The man I met before he was imprisoned was silent. Seemed depressed, sad, dejected. His wife, on the other hand, a wife that had also become old, tirelessly tells their story. The story of how they had occupied half of the house. The distance between the two doors only a couple of meters. They are not friends living next door, no, they are occupants, occupants protected by soldiers. The woman who still had the energy to tell, tells how the occupants use the small open spot in front of their door for parties. Never asked whether it suited, never apologized. As we sit and converse with the elderly woman the door opens and a young civil man passes by, holding an automatic weapon in his hand. Pass us as if we did not exist, showing no signs of seeing us even though he slowly walks amongst us sitting on our white plastic chairs. The cranes, no, the diplomats dance, whispering in each others’ ears, whispering as if about secrets. Secrets that become secret reports, as if there was anything that was secret in Jerusalem. Everything that is being said and told has already been noted. Everything is accessible on the internet, B’Tselem, Breaking the Silence, or most easily in the daily newspaper Haaretz. Did not think very much about it during the evening. Have suffered through hundreds of evenings like this one. It is in some way my life, my calling or task. Part of my role. No, it was when I woke up after having dreamt about the thousands of cranes that I began to see myself as a migratory bird. Flying high above, flying over the large course of events. Protected, protected. Land when I know that it is safe, concealed in the fog. Meet my own, converse and dance. Never need to take a risk. Do not risk my health, do not risk my career, just make sure that my pension points improve. When the fog lifts and reality comes too close I can fly on or lock myself up and write a secret report. Mats Svensson is a Swedish former diplomat. He contributed this article to PalestineChronicle.com.
Date: 29/09/2008
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The Red and White Bird in Gaza
The young girl from Gaza tells me how she yearns for the red and white bird. It used to come every morning to the little veranda where her mother served a breakfast of bread, tea, water and fruit when the weather was good. Each morning her father left to look for work in Gaza City, and sometimes he was successful. Most of the time he came home late at night. She used to throw out a few seeds or breadcrumbs to the red and white bird. It came every morning at the same time, as if it had its own clock. They used to have breakfast together. The girl talks about the time before that day in 2004, when everything disappeared. That was the day when one of the many wars ended. Before then, Israeli soldiers had passed by every day in their big metal boxes. She could see them clattering by when she drank her morning tea. Behind the thick grey steel sat the young soldiers. On these days, she would remain at home rather than going to school. They were all scared of the uncertainty and of the unknown. They often heard them in the distance, the sound of big machines with their heavy engines, the roar of rockets, the rattling of machine guns. They were afraid that the machines would come too close, that the sounds would come up to them and stop, and that the machines would turn their jaws directly at them. It was on these days that the red and white bird would not appear. The adults used to sit in the evenings and whisper about what they had seen or heard that day. Everyone dreamed of the day when everything would be quiet, no more machine gun fire and no clattering of heavy metal. The girl longed to go back to school. In the middle of the cold refugee room, with a few possessions piled in one corner, she sits and tells her story. She speaks in a calm and quiet voice as she spreads a rug on the cold cement floor and helps her little sister with her math lessons. She speaks slowly, as if she wants to be sure that every word is true, no exaggeration and nothing left out. Back then, they had a house with a veranda and a red and white bird. She shared a room with her little sister. Now the whole family is squeezed into a small room without a veranda and without a bird that comes to visit. On the morning of the last day of the war, the soldiers stopped their heavy metal box and aimed the long cannon barrel at the house. That was the morning they didn’t just pass by. The girl will never forget it. She saw how they went by the house and slowly turned back, and in their wake followed four bulldozers. Daddy had already gone looking for work. They were surrounded by tanks carrying soldiers and heavy, specially built bulldozers. The houses were emptied of women, men and children. The soldiers were screaming, and so were the women and children. The soldiers only gave them a moment. She forgets how long, but it wasn’t long enough. “I don’t understand,” she says. “I don’t understand. They just came, as if they were passing by our houses. Then they stopped. Someone called out. A soldier approached and asked us to leave our houses, leave them at once. We could bring a few things, but most of our possessions were left behind. The time was too short, everyone was just running around. We wanted to go into the house while it was falling down. The sound of your house being destroyed is terrible.” A few days before two innocent Israeli children had been killed in Israel by a Qassam missile. Two children playing under an olive tree became part of a constant war of attrition, and penitence day is here. Youngsters are ordered into hundred of tanks, later to become almost two hundred tanks. Sons and daughters contact their parents and their boyfriends or girlfriends before they crawl into the cramped steel containers. Within a few minutes they reach their destination: the Jabalya camp in the northern part of Gaza. Almost two hundred tanks, steel against people, steel against soft skin, heavy artillery against effective firework. A grenade hits. Five are killed, and three of them were children. Within minutes the tanks take the lead with three children to two. But inside the cramped space the young men embark on a long journey, a journey filled with nightmares, of silence, of not wanting to talk about it, of wanting to forget what can never be forgotten. A journey that will change, break down and recreate the promised land. How can he break the silence? The steel containers pulled out on October 16, 2004. The result was more than 130 casualties, many of them children. The number of destroyed houses hasn’t been counted. Someone should spend some time listening and recording peoples’ shattered dreams. Someone should document this. They couldn’t take much with them; most was buried under the roof. The walls collapsed as if they were made of cardboard. The four bulldozers broke quickly through the walls. She saw how her bed and her little chest of drawers disappeared in the rubble. When the third wall fell, the heavy cement roof fell with it. Backwards and forwards they went and didn’t leave anything of use behind. The garden had been redesigned to sand and the houses into rubble. When the soldiers and workers were finished with their morning shift, the only thing visible was the roof, which looked like a hard slide. I saw when a little girl tried to move a block of cement and pull her bag out from underneath. A women looked out over all the dreams that had been turned into sand, I saw the sorrow and the strength in her eyes, when I sunk into the sand dunes and she fell to her knees. Young men gathered around a game of backgammon, a few children used the collapsed roof as a slide. What is it I saw? What is normal and what is abnormal after days and nights of bombardment, tanks and Apache helicopters. It all seemed to be a raining camp for young soldiers. Randomly selected houses and families. Somewhere underneath was the veranda where she sat every morning and ate the breakfast her mother prepared. Even on that morning her mother had given her tea and the girl had fed the red and white bird for the last time. Mats Svensson is Swedish and a former diplomat. He contributed this article to PalestineChronicle.com. (This article was originally published in VOX - a Christian Voice – a Human Concern; Issue No. 41.)
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