Ten years ago, I spent my 21st birthday
in Palestine. It was a fairly perfect
scenario. In the UK, you traditionally
reach adulthood at 21. You are presented
with a symbolic key. I was presented
with a shocking realisation: what I saw on the news was not true. What I read in the papers was not true. There was a disgraceful sociocide happening
in the world and I would not have known about it had I not been there and seen
it
Today’s article takes you through what I saw, what
life is like under occupation for Palestinians and that for peace to reign, freedom
must ring across the Occupied Territories of Palestine. We must call the so
called Israel-Palestine conflict what it really is….a systematic, cruel and
cynical demolition of one society by another.
The Context is Decisive
An action cannot and should not be judged merely
in and of itself. The context in which
an action happens defines it, almost entirely.
A punch to the face looks quite different when it is a man punching his
wife, or a rape victim punching her rapist.
The context is decisive.
So, when someone says Hamas are firing hundreds of
rockets into Israel – does Israel not have the right to defend itself? The question is sort of meaningless without
the context. One could as easily ask –
Israel has blockaded 1.7 million people (based purely on their race) into a 24
mile long, 5 mile wide strip of land, it won’t let them out, it controls the
air, sea and land borders, it refuses to allow enough food, water and medical
supplies in, or good out to the extent that a humanitarian crisis point has
been reached – do those people have the right to attempt to break out?
I’m not going to detail the history for you here,
as it is written elsewhere but you should know, so do look here.
Seeing For Yourself
When I was approaching my 21st birthday,
a group of socialist students at my University held a talk. They had been in Ramallah on the West Bank in
April 2002. They spoke about an Intifada and Oppression and Massacres.
I’d heard almost nothing
about this issue before. I couldn’t have
pointed to Israel on a map. They showed
tanks rolling through residential streets, exploding cars, acres of flattened
homes and mile long queues of human beings in the beating sun at military checkpoints
while young men and women with guns randomly pushed, shoved and arrested
them. I could not believe my eyes. At the end of the talk, they announced a
delegation would be going to the Occupied Territories in June and asked people
to register their interest.
Weeks later, I was on a plane with a group of
other students, heading to Israel.
“
The West Bank: What? They’re Just Like Us!
Al Manara Square, Ramallah, 2008 (c) Scriptonite
This sounds so entirely naïve now, but I think it’s
important to tell the truth of one’s experience even at the risk of looking
rather foolish in retrospect. My first realisation on
getting into Ramallah was – hang on, this isn’t a sand pit! I had clearly been given the impression that
this was some sort of ‘backward’ place full of crazy savages, best kept away
from the civilised world. I want to say
clearly here, it doesn’t today make a difference to me if an oppressed person
talks like me, thinks how I think about the world, or has the same access to
technology as me. But the thing that struck
me as a 20 year old was ‘But…these are just regular human beings like me’. There were cinemas, coffee shops, the odd bar
(dancing late into the night at Stones Bar in Ramallah remains one of the best
nights of my life). There were schools,
human rights organisations, medical centres, theatres. There was a society. A clear, unmistakable society. These people weren’t running around frothing
at the mouth killing each other. They
were just going about their lives. But
their lives were limited. Their lives
were limited by an Occupation by the world’s fourth most powerful military.
Witness to Devastation
Over the week we visited many Palestinian
towns.
Warehouse destroyed in Nablus Old Town
Nablus, a beautiful old town with
parts that make you feel like you are walking through the bible. We didn’t have to look far to see the damage
left by the Israeli Defensive Forces (IDF). We visited a house which had been
demolished. The warnings had come when
the Father of the family had gone across the street to his brothers to share
some supplies. He had watched as a shell
razed his family home to the ground, with four generations inside. Not one member of the family inside the house
had lived. We looked at the spot and I
saw my friend T cry for the first time, a she walked away from the scene unable
to tolerate the emotional overwhelm.
Boy sitting amonst ruins of Jenin, 2002
We
went to Jenin where basically the entire town had been flattened in April. It was different to watching it on the film I
had seen. You realise how utterly
strange it is to see only destruction for as far as you can see. The birds weren’t singing. One family, who were living in what was left
of the ground floor apartment (it had only three walls, the fourth exposed like
a studio set) took the time to tell us their story. First came the bombs, then came the tanks,
then the men of the town were asked to circle in the demolished centre, they
were handcuffed with these plastic ties the IDF use (like those you’d use on a
bag of peas) and the women & children were taken away elsewhere. Both groups thought they would never see the
other again. After several hours and
some symbolic shootings, all were released back into the devastated homes. The thing that struck me most was the quiet dignity
of the people moving through the dust and rubble, working together to
rebuild.
It struck me that I was in the site of a disaster. Hundreds of people had died in creating these piles of rubble. Too many to count, too many stories to retell. But it was not simply the people that were being killed.
I was stunned to see hospitals, schools, roads and
an airport destroyed. I realised that
what the IDF was committed to in the Occupied Territories, was not killing
terrorists, it was about killing a society.
It was about breaking down the institutions, facilities and people that
make up a society.
Watch a documentary on the Jenin Massacre here:
The Night the Sky Burned
Footage taken in Ramallah, 2002 (c) YouTube User: RamallahFirst
Our final night in Ramallah, we held a concert
with our friends. We each performed a
song or some little act. My friend T
taught me a song and we sang it together.
We smoked, we drank a little, and we rolled up into our sleeping bags
and thought about going home. All of a
sudden, we were woken up and told that the IDF were coming into Ramallah. We could stay there or we could distribute ourselves
among key buildings in the area to help prevent them being blown to bits. It was a no brainer for me. I ended up rotating between the Health
Ministry and a media building called the PARC building in Ramallah.
I cannot adequately describe the absolute horror
that ensued that night. The sky looked
as if it were on fire, and it sort of was.
The black sky was lit up by the sheer amount of munitions soaring
through it. IDF tanks went past shaking
the building to its foundations. The
windows rattled in their frames. The
sound landscape was full of whooshes, bangs, sirens, deep rumbling, thudding, and
popping.
One of our delegation disappeared into the
bathroom to throw up. I stood with T
looking out of the windows of the high PARC building at a skyline I had never
seen, a skyline of an invasion. We had
the idea to turn on the news so we could see it being reported. We went from news channel to news channel
among the English speaking channels, and nothing was happening. Then we got to the BBC, and a reporter based
in Jerusalem said ‘And it is a quiet night in Ramallah, with Israeli forces
returned to the city gates’. These words
have never left me. To be in the midst
of a fury I had never seen on TV, let alone in my own life, and realise that if
I had not been there, I would not have known it was happening. It was not that the situation in Ramallah was
not being reported, it was the fact that it was being misreported that angered
me most. I remember having an experience
close to internal combustion, just fury and disbelief spitting all over the
place.
We were given the choice the following morning to
go home via the British Consul, or stay. It was our due day to leave. About half the delegation left, but T and I
felt it would be, for us, the highest order of hypocrisy and cowardice to leave
then. We had come on a delegation to
show solidarity with the Palestinians, to better understand the situation on
the ground and report back to the UK.
So, what on earth were people doing leaving the moment the Israeli’s
invaded? Given it was now clear the BBC
were not going to letting people at home know what our taxes were being spent
on, it was on us to tell that story.
We stayed for a further ten days before we needed
to return to Britain. It was the best
and worst time of my life for a long time.
I met incredible people, I fell in love (let’s not go into that here!),
I travelled through beautiful landscape, I ate incredible food, I heard
stories, I felt at one with the world, I felt like I was becoming an
adult. I also genuinely thought I would
die at several points, in explosions, being shot at near a checkpoint, being
treated like a second class citizen in Israel, and seeing death.
A Duty to Report Back
Since then I have been back to the place several
times, sometimes for a month, sometimes for a few days. But it remains a special place for me, not
simply for some geo-political reason. It
is special because I count Palestinians among my friends, and I have been
inspired by Israelis working for peace in their own society where it is not seen
as cool or popular, but akin to treasonous.
In particular, I spent some time in Gaza. In Khan Younis, Jabaliyah camp and Gaza
City. Gaza is different. Ramallah and Gaza are about as different as
London and Gaza. Even then it was more
religiously observant than Ramallah, it was more conservative, it was an open
prison of 1.7 million Palestinians with its borders controlled by Israel. You even get a separate passport stamp when
you go into Gaza so you can’t lie about it when you get back to Ben Gurion
airport and try to leave. The one
constant was the quite incredible hospitality of the Palestinians, keeping us
safe, fed and sharing their stories.
One night on the beach, we were smoking hobbly
bobbly and talking into the night with a group of Palestinians and suddenly the
sky was full of a sound I’d never heard.
The only similar thing I’d heard was a NASA space launch, a deep
whooshing bassy sound so loud it made it impossible to speak as we couldn’t hear
each other. The sky was entirely black
but the sound came in from the sea and over our heads. Finally I heard what Nabeel was shouting in
my ear ‘Apache! Apache!’
People didn’t go running in all directions like in
the movies. We all simply looked up at
the sky in complete shock. Then a small blue-white
light appeared out of the guts of one of the Apache helicopters that we could
hear but not see, so it seemed simply to appear in the sky like a shooting
star. It made an arc in the sky, with
the apaches already out of range, there was utter silence. We watched the light in silence on the beach,
bodies turning in sync to see the light dip finally into the skyline. Uncomfortable seconds later, an explosion
shook the air and the skyline burned red. It wasn’t until the following morning
that we could get to the site and see a destroyed residential building, and a
new family bereft with their grief.
And Ever Was It Thus
The 'Apartheid' Wall which Israel has built around Palestinian towns and cities
Every day of every year since my 21st
birthday, the people I met have lived under that occupation. Their homes have been bulldozed by IDF
bulldozers to make way for Israeli settlements, their olive groves and farms
have been destroyed or simply stolen, their families remain segregated in
separate areas of the West Bank or Gaza Strip, each city and town of Palestine
has since been confined behind an Apartheid Wall. Israel has literally, in defiance of several
UN resolutions, built a wall around Palestinian cities. This wall is permeated in spots by inhuman
checkpoints, controlled by the IDF, that resemble the control gates in farms
used for cattle. A floor to ceiling
steel turnstile which people queue behind, present their credentials to a
camera and receive either a green light, or a red light. No human being is seen. It is, even as a visitor, knowing you are
going home, knowing that you are not the target, is the most dehumanising
experience.
Queue at Qalandiya Checkpoint, Ramallah, 2008 - (c) Scriptonite
So when I turn on the news and see people shooting
rockets out of Gaza. I think ‘That’s horrible,
but it is not irrational. It’s not
psychotic, mindless violence’. It is the
most rational thing in the world, in context.
You know how I know this? Because
if Israel has the right to defend itself from rockets, then Palestine has the
right to defend itself from occupation.
The solution is clear; it has been clear for
decades and is the stated policy of Israel, the US, Europe, The Arab League
(including Iran) and Hamas. A two state
solution based on the 1967 borders, a free Palestine. But not one day since 2001 has Palestine not
been under occupation. When ceasefires
are in place, which they have been for extended periods, Israel gets
peace. But Palestine doesn’t get
freedom. The bulldozers, the settlement
building, the farm destructions, the checkpoints, the wall, the blockade of
Gaza’s supply lines. These all
remain. There will be no peace, and there
cannot be peace, until the Israeli Occupation is over. To call for a cessation of arms, without a
cessation of the occupation is to call for order over justice. You cannot have peace without justice, because
oppressed people will simply not tolerate oppression, they will always seek to
overcome. The single best thing Israel
can do to secure its peace, is give justice to the Palestinians. Many on the ground in Israel realised this long
ago and work tirelessly to impact their government and their fellow
Israelis. The day their voice is heard
and heeded, is the day the end of this conflict begins.
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