Tuesday, November 9, 2010

Hope for Palestine, or Not

I am just back from Palestine where almost everyone told me that they have lost hope. I hadn’t been hearing that in the past years, so it was pretty depressing.

Then today in church the pastor said that to lose hope is to fail to honor those who have gone before us.

And tonight I talked with a Palestinian who lives here in Massachusetts, and he said that there hasn’t been any hope for Palestine since the Oslo Accords set the stage for unfettered Israeli expansion.

Hope for what? The hope that has been lost since my last visit in 2009 was for the international community to finally come through with pressure on Israel to stop building settlements so that there might be the possibility of negotiating an end to the occupation. But when Obama said “please stop”, and Israel said “no thank you”, that was the end. It became crystal clear that Israel was going to continue to do just as they pleased, and no power on earth was going to stop them.

As for honoring those who went before, those who have struggled for Palestinian liberation since 1948 or before, right up to the Turks who died on board the Mavi Mamara trying to reach Gaza, and including the olive farmers killed in their fields this season, and the Silwan resident shot by a settler in September as he was on his way to early morning prayers at the mosque, do their deaths require us to have hope in a falsehood called “the peace process?” Maybe we honor them more by looking facts in the face.

That’s what my Massachusetts Palestinian friend was saying. Any chance of Israel changing course has long since vanished. Israel was founded with a plan in place to take the whole of Palestine, and now they are armed not just with military weapons, and a nefarious set of regulations, but with a propaganda machine that reaches right into the U.S. Congress and media.

Catching up on my mail today, one article illustrates the hopeless situation facing Palestinians in their daily lives. The article is from an Associated Press journalist, Diaa Hadid, reporting from Jenin, West Bank, Palestine. She tells of the Helou family who are trapped in this city because Israel will not recognize their residency in the West Bank. The father and four of the children were born in Gaza and have Gazan IDs. The mother and four younger children were born in Jenin. If they try to travel outside Jenin with a Gaza ID, they will be deported to Gaza. If they were to return to Gaza even to visit they would lose their West Bank home. There are about 20,000 Palestinians in this same predicament. They cannot travel between the two parts of Palestine, and with Gaza IDs they are subject to “deportation” to Gaza. This is one of Israel’s tools for clearing the West Bank of Palestinians. There are hundreds of such tools.

I don’t want to lose hope for Palestine. I know a lot of fine and loving people in there, and I want them to have a life. But the facts on the ground, put there by Israel and sustained by the United States, look hopeless. So I turn to a poem by Wendell Berry called “Practice Resurrection”. It was in my “to read” pile of papers and turned up today. Here are some of the lines:

“So, friends, every day do something that won’t compute....
“Expect the end of the world. Laugh. Laughter is immeasurable.
    Be joyful though you have considered all the facts.....
“As soon as the generals and politicos can predict the motions of your mind, lose it.
    Leave it as a sign to mark the false trail, the way you didn’t go.”

His words shake my mind loose from the facts on the ground and allow me to find hope for Palestine in the unpredictable, in miracles, in the farmer’s inexhaustible love for his land. And maybe that's enough.

Tuesday, November 2, 2010

The West Bank Is Also Under Seige

Here is a family I know quite well, having been a guest in their house in Nablus many times, and having hosted the father and his youngest son in my house as well. It s Mohammed's family: his wife, Samar, his older son, Yazan, 23 and 15 year old Majed. ( The daughter, Raya, is married and out of the house.) Not only are we friends, but Mohammed and I are both involved in the struggle to free Palestine from the grip of Israel's occupation.

I respect Mohammed's perspective and values which are informed by more than 15 arrests and times in Israeli prisons simply for his involvement in grassroots organizing, and by his deep Muslim faith. Further, this family is an urban, professional family, both parents being university professors, and the children either with advanced degrees or aspiring to such. Thus their opinions on Palestine's present status and future prospects are important to record.

Mohammed believes that it will just take one incident to set off a violent revolt among Palestinians, and that spark will come from the action of Israeli settlers. Settler violence is on the rise in rural and urban areas alike. If the reaction becomes a full Intifada, it will be different from the others, but he can't forsee what shape it will take.

For years settlers have stolen the sacks of olives from farmers after they have completed a day of hard work to harvest them, or they have burned and cut the olive trees in order to deprive Palestinians from this vital crop. But this year Israeli settlers have added a new tactic to disrupt the olive harvest: they are coming into the olive groves at night and stealing the olives off the trees. When the farmers arrive in the early morning to start picking, they find the trees are bare of fruit. The settlers thus avoid direct confrontation with the farmers while provoking them with a poisonous surprise. The settlers also get around the arrangement that the Palestinians have managed to make with the Israeli army whereby farmers are given from one to four days to harvest without fear of settler interference. These arrangements do not allow enough time to complete the harvest nor to provide time for pruning trees and conditioning the soil. Under normal conditions, a farmer attends to his trees all year round.

In urban East Jerusalem, settlers have been steadily expanding their holdings, but now their armed "guards" are roaming through Palestinian neighborhoods at night and in September shot and killed a man on his way to early morning prayers. In the neighborhood of Sheik Jarrah, Palestinian families have been forcefully evicted from their homes of which they are the lawful owners, in order for settlers to move in. So far the reaction from Palestinians has been non-violent demonstrations, in which they are joined by outraged Israeli peace activists and by international supporters. However, with many more homes already targeted by settlers for take-over, one has to wonder how long the Palestinians' anger will remain corked.

Mohammed’s wife adds that the so-called peace talks won't give Palestinians their rights. "I am not optomistic," she says. " Israel doesn't want peace, so things will get worse." Maybe there will be another Intifada. She wants to see two states, and believes that many others want that solution also.

Yazin's anger at Israel simmers just below the surface. He was arrested on trumped up charges three years ago, tortured and imprisoned for 2 years. (As in most cases of arrest of young Palestinians, the charges were vague, the military trial unfair, and the sentencing arbitrary.) As a result, Yazin suffers from bleeding ulcers and "fire" in his lower legs where he was beaten, by inability to sleep and difficulty concentrating on his university studies. Mohammed says that his son's personality has been changed by the prison experience. He used to be gentle and generous; now he is moody, defiant and angry. I have little doubt that he suffers from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.

In answer to my questions about prospects for peace with Israel, Yazin said, " There is no Israel." I was puzzled by this statement and pressed him for an explanation. In essence, he said that Jews came to Palestine and took the land. It wasn't theirs before the state of Israel was formed, and it still isn't theirs. So there is no Israel-- only Palestine.

Yazin finds it hard to stay interested in his university major in Business Administration, which he was forced to suspend while in prison, because there is little prospect of finding work in Palestine when he graduates in 2 years. The occupation, with its goal of squeezing Palestinians out of Palestine, has destroyed the economy. Still, he is thinking ahead and wants to get his Masters in the U.S., and then go wherever he can find a good job.

I later asked Mohammed what Palestinians think of the Free Gaza flotilla movement. He said that they support it from the humanitarian point of view,, but want the international community to realize that the West Bank is also under siege, and that Gaza is not a separate entity. We must create interventions that address all parts of Palestine.

I wonder if we must think of an over-land caravan through Jordan to the Allenby Bridge crossing into the West Bank to coincide with the flotillas aimed at Gaza.