I had always heard from my family that the reason my aunt, Mary Kawar, stayed in Acre in 1948 was because her youngest daughter, Amal, had contracted typhoid. However, 60 years later, I read a reference to a 1948 dispatch sent by the International Committee of the Red Cross from Palestine that described a sudden typhoid epidemic in Acre. It hinted at the likelihood that Jewish militias had poisoned the Acre water supply -- an early act of biological warfare in our region. It was then that I realized that my cousin's illness was not a singular event. I grew up hearing about what my own family lost in Jaffa, the coastal city from which Jewish militias drove them in 1948. There were occasional references to Deir Yassin -- where more than 100 unarmed Palestinian villagers were massacred -- and the role it played in the psychological war against the Palestinians, who fled fearing for their lives. But, after the Israeli occupation of the West Bank in 1967 I began to block out that earlier tragedy. My energy was consumed by activism against the Israeli settlement project in the West Bank, where I live. It was only after reading the newly published material by Israeli historians -- using the recently-opened Israeli archives -- that a new cycle of confrontation with Palestinian history began for me. I discovered how much of this history I had been suppressing. How skeptical I had become; how defensive against acknowledging many of these horrors that followed when, in 1948, the emerging state of Israel drove out more than 700,000 Palestinians to make way for a Jewish state. I had relieved myself from the full admission of the war crimes that my family and people had endured when we lost our homes and homeland, and when our previously-flourishing society was destroyed. That my parents did not tell me more is not surprising. The psychology of the defeated is not to speak out, but rather to blame themselves (not unlike what is now taking place in Palestinian society). In the case of my father, it was also to pick himself up and get on with his life. And I was trying to pursue a similar policy after Israel defeated us in 1967. This is not unlike the children of Holocaust survivors who become silent in the face of the atrocity. It is only those who make an industry of catastrophe who dramatize and sensationalize. But there is another reason for my new willingness to confront the crimes of the Nakba (Arabic for "catastrophe"), which is how Palestinians refer to the expulsion of 1948. It has to do with the failure of my struggle against the Israeli colonization of the West Bank. I was 16 in 1967 when the occupation began. I spent my adult years witnessing the transformation of my country from an exquisitely beautiful, pristine landscape to one dominated by hundreds of Jewish settlements, perched on hilltops like citadels, and fortified by barbed wire and walls. They fulfilled the promise that former Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon had made to his countrymen in the 1980s that "we are going to leave an entirely different map of the country that ... will be impossible to ignore." As I witnessed this transformation I became aware of Israel's attempt at changing the nature of the landscape to make it look more western just as had happened in Israel after the Nakba. The magnitude of the loss is immense and the consequences for our lives are devastating. As Palestinian inhabitants of the West Bank we have come to be confined in small enclaves surrounded by high walls and crisscrossed by gleaming black roads that, as non-Israelis, we are barred from using. Not all Israelis who live in nearby settlements controlling the bulk of Palestinian land have moved there out of ideological commitment. Many, though, would defend their action by arguing that if Israel yields to Palestinian claims to the West Bank, then what would prevent Palestinians from going further and claiming the same right to such Israeli cities as Jaffa and Haifa where they were living not long ago? It was after being repeatedly confronted with this argument that I became convinced that Israel's unwillingness to recognize the Nakba is integral to its continuation of illegal settlement in the occupied West Bank. The incessant building of more settlements in the 23 percent of Palestine left for us to establish our state can only mean that Israel does not recognize our existence as a nation entitled, like all other nations, to self determination. Otherwise how could they support a settlement policy that deprives us of our right to our land? By continuing its four-decade-old settlement policy Israel, is, in effect, seeking to make our lives so intolerable that we would be driven away from our land, albeit at a slower pace than was the case during the Nakba, 60 years ago. Raja Shehadeh is an attorney in Ramallah and author of Palestinian Walks: Notes on a Vanishing Palestinian Landscape, which won the Orwell Prize in Britain last month. It will be released in the United States in June.
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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: 28/07/2012
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Tales from The West Bank: Palestinian Raja Shehadeh Chronicles Life During Occupation
13 December 2009 I'm just back from a lovely day spent in Wadi Kelt, the ravine on the way between Jerusalem and Jericho. This is one of the few places in the West Bank where one can be sure of finding water even after the drought of the past eight months. Turned out we were not the only ones who had the idea of an outing there. Just after we put down our rucksacks and stretched out on the rock in the sun, a Palestinian family of nine arrived. They were disappointed to find us there but settled for the second best slab of rock on the opposite side of the pool. Their smaller group included two bearded men and two young women with hijab, another of undetermined age with the niqab and four children. We, on the other hand, were a mixed group of Palestinians and foreigners, photographers and teachers, all of whom live and work in the West Bank. As soon as I saw them I wondered how they had managed the rocky path without falling in the water. The women in our group invariably wore jeans and colourful shirts. I had been thinking as we passed the Israeli checkpoint of how clothes distinguish the various groups in our tiny land… the Israeli women soldiers wore tight khaki trousers with a low waist emphasising the contours of their hips, bedecked with mobile phones. They looked at us through their dark sunglasses giving us orders with their hands while exchanging flirty looks and sexual innuendos with the male soldiers with whom they conversed in loud Hebrew. To them we were mere specks on the terrain that belonged exclusively to them, where they could move us around with a flick of their small finger like pieces on a chequers board. From the way we looked and dressed, the sombre-looking family at the picnic must have suspected we were Israelis, but our fellow picnickers were within earshot and could easily hear us speaking Arabic. Unfortunately we did not do what would have been normal a few years ago, perhaps because we drew an imaginary line between us, with them, the suspected Islamists on the one side, and us seculars on the other, with the fresh water pond between. No one from our side either greeted them or went over to their side to invite them to join us on our side of the rock which was large enough to accommodate them as well. So a distance was established between us from the beginning, much wider than the natural divide, the small pool of water that separated us. 4 January 2010 Penny and I went today to Bethlehem to look at the work of Banksy, the British street artist, on the Annexation Wall there. This conflict and the methods Israel uses to repress Palestinians are producing responses in many parts of the world. Banksy is one artist – but not the only one – who has come to express his feelings about the situation using his wall as the canvas. We took the Walajeh Road heading f southwest on a circular route to Bethlehem which is directly south of Jerusalem, all in order to avoid the checkpoint between the two cities. We were stopped at the Walajeh checkpoint which I had heard also checks whether those crossing have paid their taxes to Israel, just to make life more complicated. But there was no big delay. The road meandered along the hills overlooking beautiful valleys with ancient villages spread around. One of these, Battir, which lies further east, is famous for its eggplants, and has one of the earliest examples of terraced agriculture. The planned route of the Annexation Wall will destroy these fields that have been cultivated for many centuries. So extensive would the loss be that in a rare case of coordinated action Israelis and Palestinians are working together to prevent the wall from being built there. As we drove through the narrow winding road skirting the beautiful hills overlooking the forested valley and listening to music, Penny and I reviewed the last decade. We found it replete with wars. We counted five that took place in our immediate region (which does not include Afghanistan), each more brutal than the last. 17 July Out with Alex and Maha who we hadn't seen for a while. Alex said that the last time he went through the Israeli airport they made him strip and did a thorough search, even looking between his toes. He had a scratch on his head and they removed the plaster to look under it. In his soft kind of way Alex then asked the young man conducting the search: "Why are you doing this?" The young man gave him the usual answer. "Orders and security." Still speaking gently Alex said: "For security there are machines to search the bags. Security cannot mean looking between my toes. I am as old as your father. Does it not embarrass you to do this?" The young man must have felt so bad that he ended up trying his best to help Alex, taking him through to the pilots' line for passport control so he would not have to wait. 19 July I took the shared taxi to the office this morning. Walking down from the last stop I saw that the Grand Hotel gate was open. It was a hot day. The air was totally still and the sunlight seemed to be beaming straight down in white-hot, stifling rays. The only cool shaded place in Ramallah would be under the trees in the large garden of this lonely place that has been closed for the past 28 years. I expected the main gate would be locked but I was surprised to find it open. Maybe there had been some emergency and they took Aida, the proprietor, now in her late eighties, to the hospital, omitting to close the gate. Should I go in? I did. Our old house was a few minutes' walk from the Grand Hotel, where my grandmother Julia used to spend most of her summer afternoons. I walked through the empty car park and into the driveway that circled around the oval garden. I hadn't done this for a long time. I was looking carefully to see what had become of the place; this is where I had played as a child, studied for my exams as an adolescent, and learned to love plants. It is the only part of Ramallah that has remained frozen in time. I could see that the garden was kept in top condition. Beneath the pine trees in the front garden were the asters that I remembered, the geraniums, and the chrysanthemums. What I did not remember were the amaryllis with their wide shiny green leaves spreading like a fan. Out of this profusion shot the most gorgeous bell-shaped flowers with variegated petals of orange, red and yellow, as exuberant and flamboyant as their owner, Aida, had once been, with her beautiful, intelligent blue eyes. In the 1960s she had opened the first nightclub in Ramallah. It was called the Casino. There the Palestinian and Jordanian middle class came to dance to the tunes of the live band Aida brought from Italy every summer. I walked across to see the state of the open-air dancefloor. A single chair, one of those old-style wicker chairs with the rounded brown armrests, stood forlornly on the bandstand. The perfectly round piste de danse in the centre of the Casino was still as I remembered it, light pink in colour with a smooth surface that now was covered by a thin scattering of pine needles. In one of the corners which used to be reserved for large groups, where wrought iron, pale green tables and chairs used to be set, there were five hens and a rooster. They remained solemnly in place, refusing to honour my presence. It was a sad, eerie scene. My young friends and I used to go to the rink in the afternoon and mimic the trumpeter as he bent backwards and forwards blowing on his instrument, and we would peek into the dressing rooms where the musicians disappeared between numbers. It was here that I saw my first trapeze show, my first belly-dancer, and my first magician. I never got to dance though. By the time I attained the age when it was proper in conservative Ramallah for a young man to go out in f the evening, the 1967 war had begun and the Israeli army had occupied the town – eventually making the hotel their headquarters. What terrible timing on my part. I was born at the height of my parents' miseries and impoverishment in 1951, barely three years after the Nakba [the Arabic word, meaning "catastrophe", used to describe the day after the anniversary of Israel's independence, in 1948, when hundreds of thousands of Palestinians fled their homes or were displaced]. The tension afflicting their life then affects me to this day. And this dancing rink closed just as I turned 16 and could have begun frequenting it, so I never got to dance and enjoy myself. I was stuck at home with a 24-hour curfew just when I needed to be out experiencing life. 21 July Just back from the Popular Arts dance show in the grounds of the new Ramallah Cultural Palace. Ramallah night-life is flourishing now that Israeli jeeps have stopped haunting the streets at night, making one think twice before leaving the house. With the extensive Palestinian police presence it has also become as unlikely to be accosted by armed civilians in the streets as it is to have one's car stolen. While our security forces have a troubling record, the local police are doing a good job of keeping law and order. Many more police cars, donated by some European country or other, patrol the streets. Policemen are generally well-behaved. They are now uniformed and equipped with radios. It was entirely different when Yasser Arafat was alive. He kept everything in flux, and disorder reigned. This helped create the impression that Palestinian society was corrupt and undeserving of a state. Who would want to live in constant fear of having his car stolen? Better build a wall that keeps out the hooligans and makes it possible for us to live in peace thought the Israelis. 24 October Yesterday we went for a walk with our friend the Palestinian photographer Bassam Almohor ending in the village of Ajoul. We passed by the area where the new Palestinian city of Rawabi is to be established. When there are over 100 villages around Ramallah what is the point of establishing a new one? Why not expand existing ones, keeping the development in line with the contours of the hills? By acquiring land, chopping off the tops of hills, destroying the landscape we are only mimicking the Israeli ways which for decades we have been criticising. We spoke to one landowner from Ajoul who doesn't like the new development and worries that they will end by destroying the spring from which he irrigates his small farm and grove. "We have lived next to the settlement for 40 years and have had no trouble from them. But these investors will destroy our life," he said. 1 December It appears from documents recently released by WikiLeaks that Israel wanted Hamas to take over in Gaza so it could wage a war on Gaza as a hostile state. Which is precisely what it did. A group of brave and honest former Israeli soldiers have formed a group called Breaking the Silence. This organisation has published testimonies by its members that reveal what they were made to do during their military service. In one such account the soldier describes how he forced a well-dressed man to leave his car when it was raining in order to humiliate him, and how glad his fellow soldiers were when he did this because until then he was acting kindly towards Palestinians. It was like an initiation rite which the soldier later seems to have regretted. Perhaps I was that Palestinian. 20 December I have just written to the people at the Khan, [state-sponsored] Theatre in Jerusalem to say that I refused their proposal to dramatise my book. Attempting to convince me to grant them the rights, they kept on repeating how important it was for their audience to see this play. I agreed and this is why I publish my books in Israel; but the fact of having the play performed in a state-sponsored theatre speaks for itself and constitutes a clear violation of the boycott which I firmly support. But this rejection has been more painful than I expected. It has brought home to me how far apart the two sides are. In the past I used to celebrate Seder at the homes of Israeli friends, and here I am rejecting this offer to have my work presented to an Israeli public. It was a dream when I wrote the book that I would be able to hold a mirror up to their faces. 29 January 2011 At long last there is hope. Lots of hope. Egypt has finally revolted. And a change in government would be a blow to Israel, which has so far been comfortably cushioned by the defeated regimes along its borders. We Palestinians have long been deprived of freedom but we have not been deprived of our dignity. It is different for Egyptians who are oppressed by one of their own, not a by a coloniser as we are. 3 May My return trip from the US, for a short but tiring book tour, was harrowing. For nine hours I was in a window seat with an obese man in the middle who used a CPAP (Continuous Positive Air Pressure) machine with tubes that made him look like an Indian elephant god. And before we landed, Continental made us watch an absurd film about Israel and its claim to be a continuously existing state from thousands of years ago. They showed Bethlehem, and the map and description were entirely consistent with Greater Israel. They are shameless. So there I was, ostensibly returning home, with the American airline carrying me there fully collaborating with Israel in brainwashing me and my fellow passengers into totally denying the existence of my country. What a welcome! 15 May, Nakba Day The Arab Spring has indeed emoboldened Arab Youth. Today thousands of Palestinian and Syrian youths marched from Syria to the border with the occupied Golan Heights. I was overwhelmed. There is no denying the young marchers' immense courage. Thousands of Palestinians whose parents had been forced out of their country in 1948, along with Syrians whose parents had been forced out of the Golan Heights in 1967, marched to the Syrian-Israeli border, waving Palestinian flags. When they reached the fence, the Golani Arabs on the other side called out: "Stop! Mine Fields!" But nothing could stop them – not the fence, not the danger of mines, not the Israeli guns. As they landed on occupied Golani soil, those on the Israeli side began repeating, "May God protect you!" No mines exploded; there were none. Everyone was stunned: for over four decades they had been deterred from crossing by what proved [to be] a flimsy wire fence and an area of combed earth, which was supposed to be planted with mines but seems to have had none. Israel and Syria had convinced everyone of the impregnability of this border when all along, as these youths discovered today, one could walk across unharmed. The psychological barrier had proved more effective than any explosives, and once it was overcome no barrier was left. This is the most important lesson of this Arab Spring. Without vision we can never get anywhere. This is the first step. Today I waited at the Kalandia crossing on my way back to Ramallah from Jerusalem. Driving past the high wall with the barbed wire which separates Arab homes and neighbourhoods from each other, I thought of that wire fence between Israel's Occupied Golan Heights and Syria. There a fence, here a formidable wall. 15 July Two weeks ago Tony Blair was quoted as saying that to ask Israel to give up Jerusalem is like asking Britain to give up Westminster to Germany. I think this alone should disqualify him from his post as the Quartet's special envoy to the Middle East. With Blair heading the Quartet and Dennis Rose leading the US team, the chances for a negotiated peace are nil. 18 September Just back from the annual Muwatin conference. For many years now the conference had to do with our own small world of Palestine. This has changed. This one is concerned with the effect on Palestine of the Arab Spring, and the effect of the Palestinian cause on the Arab states. So our horizons are widening and our links to the rest of the Arab world are waxing. 22 September Today the UN discusses Palestine's bid for UN recognition of full statehood, and schools are closed for the day off. A carnival atmosphere is in the streets. Penny went to the celebrations while I stayed at home. They looked better on television and in any case they were staged, mainly with TV in mind. 23 September Penny and I dutifully sat before the television screen to hear our leader give his speech to the UN General Assembly. So often during the speech we would experience cuts in the transmission. Abbas would start saying "a state in…" and the sound and the picture would go. And Penny would shout "but a state where?" It was reminiscent of the 1988 Arafat speech at the national council declaring a Palestinian national state, when the Israelis cut off electricity and we played Scrabble by candlelight. After Netanyahu finished delivering his speech I heard Penny calling me. She was sitting on the roof. "Come and join me," she said. "There are lovely clouds in the sky." I grabbed a sweater and climbed up. With the noise of the television off and my eyes cast on the sky I felt my head begin to clear. I could see stars shimmering and shining brightly then dimming when the clouds drifting over our planet veiled them. Lights from the coast shone in the distance but I didn't look at them. I looked straight up and was lost in the vastness of the universe, trying to clear my head, an essential exercise in this conflict which I am sure will continue to plague us for many more years to come. Postscript, 6 May 2012 Walking home today I passed the old Abu Rayya school. The building evokes painful memories. During the direct Israeli rule it served as the vehicle licensing department. Now it is nothing but a dirty, windswept, miserable place that only reminds people like me who have lived through the old regime of the miseries that used to take place there, with the military authorities using their power to extract favours and torment petitioners. The one saving grace of this place is the glorious almond tree in the courtyard that blossoms every winter without fail. From bare branches almost black in colour, it becomes covered with celebratory white blossoms adorned with a single pink spot at the base where the petal and stamen join. It holds on to these flimsy flowers resisting the strong wind of the cruel month of February with its persistent rain until the blossoms turn to fruit. Winter's gloom will eventually pass and the glorious spring that will follow will lighten our spirits and bring hope to our burdened present. Is there not enough heaviness in the world to favour the celebration of beauty with its promise of happiness? This is an extract from Raja Shehadeh's 'Occupation Diaries' (Profile Books), published on 2 August.
Date: 29/10/2008
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Hope for Palestine's Hills
A few months ago I was walking in the hills near the West Bank city of Ramallah where I live when I was stopped by an armed Jewish settler from the nearby Israeli settlement of Dolev. He interrogated me as to where I lived, what I was doing in the Ramallah hills and insisted on seeing my identification documents. When I gathered the courage to ask him who he was and what he was doing there, he answered: "Unlike you I live here." Then added: "I really live here." Ever since I heard these words from the settler I have wondered what his implied challenge meant. He had that glint in his eye as if he knew something that I did not. What could it be? It was a few months later that I found out. After stopping me the settler dialed the Israeli army by punching their number on his mobile phone. He seemed very friendly with them. They were his army and were there to protect him from me. They would respond to his call, not to mine. The hills were off limit to the Palestinian police. Technically, by walking in these hills without a permit from the Israeli military authorities I was breaking the law. The cocky settler lived in the settlement of Dolev on the hill just above the Palestinian village of Ayn Qenya, a seven-mile drive north of Ramallah. Established in 1979, most of Dolev's residents seemed to be working at the military headquarters northeast of Ramallah prior to the Oslo Accords. Thus, they had to cross Ramallah to get to and from work and to ensure that they didn't lose their way the Israeli military drew a yellow line in the middle of the road along the path they needed to follow. In October 1990, as they drove up along that line they shot at the lighted window of our house and just missed my wife. We kept the shrapnel as a momento mori. During the first Palestinian intifada a resident of Dolev, Yair Mendelson, was killed while driving back to the settlement. It was claimed that a Palestinian had shot at his car which then swerved around a sharp corner and veered into the valley. A short time after that incident, while walking in the area I found that a bulldozer was destroying the centuries-old terracing and uprooting olive trees. I thought it might be widening the road. Later I saw a large boulder on which the words "Yad Yair" were painted in Hebrew and propped up high above the road only two miles north of Ramallah. "Yad" in Hebrew means hand and also goal. A shrine had been constructed on land belonging to residents of Ramallah dedicated to the memory of the Israeli from Dolev. A short while afterwards the army established a post on that spot and a road barrier was constructed that stopped cars and pedestrians as I found out when I tried to cross on foot on my way back from one of my walks down that valley. This was inevitably followed by the expropriation of hundreds of acres of land reaching all the way up the hill close to the last homes north of Ramallah. The area was then surrounded by barbed wire curtailing the expansion of the town. Shortly afterwards hundreds of acres of land south of that post reaching to the last houses at the outskirts of Ramallah were expropriated by the army and surrounded by barbed wire. Our hills were being prepared for the establishment of yet another Jewish settlement. I had witnessed this process before in other parts of the West Bank. The period after the Oslo Accords were signed witnessed extensive Israeli settlement building, and the number of Jewish settlers more than doubled. However, successive Israeli governments showed no interest in establishing another Israeli settlement so close to Ramallah in the area of land they had earlier expropriated. It was likely that in a final peace agreement with the Palestinians such isolated settlements like Dolev would have to be evacuated. After Israel began building its "separation wall" in and along the West Bank in 2002, its declared route added to the suspicion of Dolev's settlers. With money from the United States they were able to establish 12 outposts north of Ramallah, most of which Israel itself deem to be illegal. Yad Yair was going to be another of these and the closest to Ramallah. I once asked a resident in the village of Ayn Qenya whether settlers pass through the village. "Yes, every morning, very early. Before sunrise they drive through towards Ramallah. They seem to have a place of worship and they stay there until morning then drive back," he replied. I wondered about this. I had been relieved that our hills were spared more settlement because there was no mention of Ramallah in the Bible and so a claim for possession based on religious grounds as was the case in Jerusalem and Hebron would not be possible. Could I have been wrong? It was only when journalists reported in mid-September on the Israeli army's battles with settlers at Yad Yair that I learned about the synagogue established there named after Yair Mendelson. It was then that I recalled that a much-visited shrine had been constructed near Hebron at the grave of Baruch Goldstein, who had murdered 29 Palestinian worshipers and wounded 125 at the Ibrahimi Mosque on 25 February 1994. I was relieved by the decisive action of the army on 18 September in bulldozing this fledgling settlement, illegal under existing Israel law, as well as international law. But the settlers have promised to return and the Israeli army, so effective in laying siege to Palestinians, is often willing to compromise with the settlers. For the past decade and a half, as I stood at the roof of my house in the morning enjoying the sunrise over the Ramallah hills, a few meters down the hill the Jewish settlers were watching the sun rise over the same hills and planning their next move to make them their own. My only hope that this latest threat to my future in Palestine would be thwarted arises from the financial crisis in the US. Without American funding from public and private sources, the hugely expensive settlement project in our hills would not have been possible in the first place. Better still without the damaging interference of groups of religious fanatics from abroad, Christian and Jewish, using their financial muscle to pervert the peace, the two nations, Israeli and Palestinian, living in the same territory may yet find a way to live together. Raja Shehadeh is the author of Palestinian Walks, Forays into a Vanishing Landscape which won the Orwell Prize for Political Writing.
Date: 28/07/2008
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Really Living Here
For the past four decades I have been a passionate walker. For much of this time the hills northeast of Ramallah, my favorite wandering ground, were largely empty of settlements and I could walk freely, without constraint. However, this situation changed dramatically after Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) signed the Oslo Accords in 1993 and 1995. Since then, settlement activity has reached unprecedented levels, spreading in many cases over lands that are privately owned by Palestinians. Overall, the population of West Bank settlements increased by at least 40 percent between the signing of the Oslo Accords and the outbreak of the second Palestinian intifada in September 2000. As the Israel-Palestine peace process flounders, aggressive behavior by Jewish settlers and their supporters in the Israeli army is making the countryside of the West Bank an increasingly dangerous place for Palestinians. Behind this development is the belief that there is no room in "Greater Israel" for the Palestinians. That it is either us or them. Tragic examples of this trend are plentiful: On 23 December 2007, 32-year-old Firas Kaskas, visiting Ramallah from his village near Bethlehem in order to see his brother-in-law's new house, just down the road from my own, was shot dead as he took an afternoon stroll in the Ramallah hills. Five months later, 20-year-old Rashad Khader was also killed, this time while hunting birds with a group of Palestinian friends. Drivers on the Ramallah-Tulkaram Road have reported several incidents of the stoning of their cars by settlers and in some instances shooting of live fire as well. Aware of the dangers now facing hikers like me, I have, of late, been careful to restrict my walks to tracks which avoid any contact with the settlements. Two recent incidents that I have experienced personally and which, I believe, illustrate what routine life is now like for us Palestinians in the occupied territories: The first occurred last month during a walk in the countryside near my home. I was walking with a BBC journalist who had come to interview me about my new book. We had reached the village of A'yn Qenya where we intended to end our expedition when we were stopped by two settlers from nearby Dolev in a car parked by the side of the road. The driver wore a knitted skullcap; next to him sat a younger man with the side locks worn by ultra-religious Jews. The driver rolled down his window and asked: "Who are you?" I thought he might have mistaken us for Israelis who had lost their way and needed assistance. To re-assure them I said: "I live near here." "What are you doing here?" "Taking a walk." "Where did you come from?" "Ramallah," I said and added, "just up the hill." My journalist companion held out his microphone towards the man. "You are recording me?" He asked defiantly. "I'm a journalist," the BBC man replied. "Show me your identity card," the settler demanded, pointing at me. There was a pause as we tried to figure our how to respond to the audacity of this civilian acting as an investigator. I leaned towards him and asked: "Who are you?" "I'm no one." "Do you have an identity card?" The settler changed tactics saying: "I don't need your card, I'm calling the army." And he proceeded to take out his mobile phone and begin to dial. "Why are you here?" I asked. He looked me in the eye: "I'm different from you," he said "I'm living here, really living here, not like you." The second incident took place just a week later. I was awakened in the early hours of the morning by my neighbor, Vera Tamari, an artist who lives by herself. She informed me that Israeli soldiers had just forced their way into her house in the middle of the night. Ignoring her protests, they had insisted on searching each and every room, questioning her about all sots of private matters, including photos of her nieces, and, most disturbingly drawing a detailed plan of her house. They then proceeded to do the same in every other house of the neighborhood that looked out on the Jewish settlements occupying the facing hills. There was no apology for this intrusion, nor any explanation. The soldiers stayed for some three hours and then left as quickly as they had arrived. Under the Oslo Accords, the Israeli army is prohibited from entering Ramallah, which is under the full territorial jurisdiction of the Palestinian Authority. The only exceptions allowed are instances when the army is in hot pursuit of people threatening life or property. Clearly this was not the case in their searching of my neighbor's house. The Israelis were deliberately violating an agreement signed with the PLO, presumably to help protect the nearby settlements -- settlements deliberately built to undermine peace and in violation of international and even Israeli law. For example, Talmon, northeast of Dolev, was established in 1989 on lands from the nearby Palestinian village of Janiyeh. Illegal itself under international law, it has given birth to Talmon B -- deliberately set up in 1992 to undermine peace negotiations and Talmon C -- violating Israeli commitments under the Oslo Accords not to build new settlements. In circumvention, both are described by settlers as "new neighborhoods." There is even a Talmon C West, an "outpost" illegal by Israeli law and government policy. Yet nothing has been done to remove at least twelve such illegal outposts in the Ramallah area, let alone the 40 percent of Israeli settlement acknowledged by the Israeli government to be on private Palestinian land. Such daily examples of grotesque asymmetry in applying the rule of law makes it increasingly difficult for many Palestinian to see law itself as a path to justice. Back to the settler who stopped me and the BBC reporter. I asked the settler what he meant when he said that, unlike me, "He really lived here" but he would not explain himself. Instead he rolled up his window and proceeded to summon the army on his cell phone. When we went to leave, he tried to block our way with his car. I knew that if we hung around until the army arrived we could easily be detained for hours. The soldiers would surely take the side of the settler against a Palestinian. And so I told my companion to join me in jumping on a minibus that was parked nearby and which would take us back to Ramallah. As I sat on the bus I reflected on another walk ruined and wondered when further restrictions on my life in the occupied West Bank would make it impossible for me "to really live here." Raja Shehadeh is a land rights lawyer who lives in Ramallah and is the author of Palestinian Walks: Forays into a Vanishing Landscape, which won the Orwell Prize for 2008. The book is published by Scribner.
Date: 22/05/2008
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Acknowledging the Tragedy
I had always heard from my family that the reason my aunt, Mary Kawar, stayed in Acre in 1948 was because her youngest daughter, Amal, had contracted typhoid. However, 60 years later, I read a reference to a 1948 dispatch sent by the International Committee of the Red Cross from Palestine that described a sudden typhoid epidemic in Acre. It hinted at the likelihood that Jewish militias had poisoned the Acre water supply -- an early act of biological warfare in our region. It was then that I realized that my cousin's illness was not a singular event. I grew up hearing about what my own family lost in Jaffa, the coastal city from which Jewish militias drove them in 1948. There were occasional references to Deir Yassin -- where more than 100 unarmed Palestinian villagers were massacred -- and the role it played in the psychological war against the Palestinians, who fled fearing for their lives. But, after the Israeli occupation of the West Bank in 1967 I began to block out that earlier tragedy. My energy was consumed by activism against the Israeli settlement project in the West Bank, where I live. It was only after reading the newly published material by Israeli historians -- using the recently-opened Israeli archives -- that a new cycle of confrontation with Palestinian history began for me. I discovered how much of this history I had been suppressing. How skeptical I had become; how defensive against acknowledging many of these horrors that followed when, in 1948, the emerging state of Israel drove out more than 700,000 Palestinians to make way for a Jewish state. I had relieved myself from the full admission of the war crimes that my family and people had endured when we lost our homes and homeland, and when our previously-flourishing society was destroyed. That my parents did not tell me more is not surprising. The psychology of the defeated is not to speak out, but rather to blame themselves (not unlike what is now taking place in Palestinian society). In the case of my father, it was also to pick himself up and get on with his life. And I was trying to pursue a similar policy after Israel defeated us in 1967. This is not unlike the children of Holocaust survivors who become silent in the face of the atrocity. It is only those who make an industry of catastrophe who dramatize and sensationalize. But there is another reason for my new willingness to confront the crimes of the Nakba (Arabic for "catastrophe"), which is how Palestinians refer to the expulsion of 1948. It has to do with the failure of my struggle against the Israeli colonization of the West Bank. I was 16 in 1967 when the occupation began. I spent my adult years witnessing the transformation of my country from an exquisitely beautiful, pristine landscape to one dominated by hundreds of Jewish settlements, perched on hilltops like citadels, and fortified by barbed wire and walls. They fulfilled the promise that former Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon had made to his countrymen in the 1980s that "we are going to leave an entirely different map of the country that ... will be impossible to ignore." As I witnessed this transformation I became aware of Israel's attempt at changing the nature of the landscape to make it look more western just as had happened in Israel after the Nakba. The magnitude of the loss is immense and the consequences for our lives are devastating. As Palestinian inhabitants of the West Bank we have come to be confined in small enclaves surrounded by high walls and crisscrossed by gleaming black roads that, as non-Israelis, we are barred from using. Not all Israelis who live in nearby settlements controlling the bulk of Palestinian land have moved there out of ideological commitment. Many, though, would defend their action by arguing that if Israel yields to Palestinian claims to the West Bank, then what would prevent Palestinians from going further and claiming the same right to such Israeli cities as Jaffa and Haifa where they were living not long ago? It was after being repeatedly confronted with this argument that I became convinced that Israel's unwillingness to recognize the Nakba is integral to its continuation of illegal settlement in the occupied West Bank. The incessant building of more settlements in the 23 percent of Palestine left for us to establish our state can only mean that Israel does not recognize our existence as a nation entitled, like all other nations, to self determination. Otherwise how could they support a settlement policy that deprives us of our right to our land? By continuing its four-decade-old settlement policy Israel, is, in effect, seeking to make our lives so intolerable that we would be driven away from our land, albeit at a slower pace than was the case during the Nakba, 60 years ago. Raja Shehadeh is an attorney in Ramallah and author of Palestinian Walks: Notes on a Vanishing Palestinian Landscape, which won the Orwell Prize in Britain last month. It will be released in the United States in June.
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