Criminalizing Immigration & Militarizing Our Border with Mexico, Part II

From May 19 to 27 I was in Arizona and Nogales, Mexico to try to grasp what is happening to migrants since the U.S built a wall along parts of the border. The delegation of 17 U.S. citizens was led by School of the Americas Watch founder Fa. Roy Bourgeois.  We were hosted by BorderLinks in Tucson, AZ  which is part of a network of organizations working together to provide humanitarian aid to migrants and to change U.S. immigration policies that both criminalize the migrants and militarize our 2000 mile long border with Mexico.  Within the network we met with Southside Presbyterian Church in Tucson, No More Deaths, the Kino Border Initiative,  Casa Mariposa and Hogar de Esperanza y Paz (HEPAC) in Nogales, Mexico.  The people’s stories below are from some of the migrants I met.

Five thousand humans died crossing into the United States in the 13 years between 1998 and 2011- that is, remains were recovered  for that many.   In the Tucson area alone, 1,286 deaths were recorded since 2008.  First the Samaritans (2002) and then No More Deaths (2004) were founded  to prevent deaths in the desert.   They carry food, water and medicine to the  narrow trails  most frequently used by the “coyotes” who are guiding small groups of migrants  to a hopefully secure pick- up spot.  On a Wednesday, half of our group went with a No More Deaths (NMD) volunteer to carry gallon jugs of water to such a trail.  The footing was hazardous as little stones made the trail slippery. In some places we had to duck low to avoid tree branches, and thorny plants crowded the paths on both sides.   We had to scale a  10 foot vertical wall using small hand and toe holds.    Our destination was a small shrine under trees against a rock face, where migrants had left photos and small relics.  Along the way we also found a sock, a  t-shirt and a burlap sack such as are used to carry drugs. (more later) I kept trying to imagine walking this trail in the dark, as the migrants are forced to do.  It didn’t seem possible.

As for transporting drugs, some men are coerced into shouldering the large sacks of marijuana, others do it to reduce the $2500-3000 fee they owe the coyote.  One migrant told me that the coyotes are constantly high and thus don’t feel pain or cold.

NMD has started a new effort to prevent death and inability to keep up due to blisters.  They are assembling “Harm Reduction Kits” containing anti-blister creams, vials for water purification and a whistle.

      The group also helps to operate the comedor in Nogales, Mexico, which serves 2 hot meals a day to the recently deported, and gives every one of them two free phone calls to anywhere in the U.S., Mexico. or Central America.  In addition, they supply “Dignity Bags” to replace lost backpacks, and go to great lengths to try to retrieve the belongings that were confiscated by the Border Patrol when they were detained in the U.S.  Another part of their mission is to change the “war zone” policies of the U.S. and bring the plight of migrants to public attention.

     NMD volunteer Steve told us that when migrants are detained, their money is stored until their release.  Then it is returned to them in the form of a debit card that must be activated in the U.S., or as a bank check that costs 30% of its value to cash in a Mexican bank.  So, in effect, migrants are robbed by U.S. immigration officials.

    We met Cesar from Guatemala at Casa Mariposa, an intentional spiritual community that works with migrants and provides hospitality to some of them in their home. One of these is Cesar, a 26 year old Guatemalan who  has crossed into the U.S. 12 times and been detained and deported 9 times. The last time he was detained, he was granted a special ID that allows him to stay in the U.S. for one year but not to work.

     Cesar said 50% of his family in Guatemala was massacred, and he fears he would be tortured if he returned.  He is looking for another country where he can be safe, because he doesn’t trust that he won’t be deported again.  When someone asked him if he is angry, he responded, “I am not angry because God forgave me (through his son Jesus), so I must forgive those who massacred my family and jailed me. “

                 He told us about the conditions in ICE detention cells.  “First they put you in the ‘freezer’.  I was there for 15 days once.  You don’t have room to lie down. They give you a plastic cover, and you are very cold.  They throw some bread to the whole group and cold drinks.  The guards refused to speak in Spanish or turn their backs when you ask for something.  They wouldn’t hand him the key to his cell with their bare hand, even though everyone had been checked for AIDS and TB..  If you were sick, the only medicine was water.” 

          Cesar’s forgiveness is not my forgiveness.  Steve said two people die every day in the desert.  I now wear a medallion around my neck which bears the face of Antonia. She was crossing with her son to reunite with a daughter in the  States.   She fell behind and died.  There are 5100 children of migrants now in custody in the U.S., separated from their parents. 1500 of them are in child protective services around the country.  The rest are with relatives who have stepped forward to help.  But a relative is not this child’s mother or father.  204,000 parents of minor children have been deported in the 16 months between 2010 and 2012.

RAUL , an undocumented man who know of the pain of separation, threw himself under a Border Patrol jeep to prevent it from arresting the father of six children. He was arrested and deported, as was the father.

               In some communities immigrants are organizing Networks of Protection to be prepared in case of the deportation of  an undocumented parent.  They make detailed plans for the children, for pets, for a house or for a car that a spouse may need to get to work.

And what of the financial costs?

·      Immigration enforcement,  paying and equipping Border Patrol agents,  cost $17.9 billion in 2010, more than all the other Federal enforcement operations combined. 

·      The wall costs $3-11 million per mile. It is already over 500 miles long and many politicians are calling for extending it for the entire 2000 miles of our border with Mexico. 

·      Central Americans are flown home when they are deported at a cost of $12,500 per person. So far 76,216 have received this treatment 

·      Our profit-making prisons received $5.5 billion to house detained migrants since 2005. 

Operation Streamline – trying and sentencing 70 migrants a day in Tucson alone costs billions, and subsequent incarceration costs $688,800 per day.

And that is not all, but I stopped adding it up when I saw the figures reaching into the billions.  I figure none of us knows how much money one billion dollars is, except to say it is a lot, and most of us can think of better ways to spend it.

Criminalizing Immigration & Militarizing Our Border with Mexico - Part I

From May 19 to 27 I was in Arizona and Nogales, Mexico to try to grasp what is happening to migrants since the U.S built a wall along parts of the border. The delegation of 17 U.S. citizens was led by School of the Americas Watch founder Fa. Roy Bourgeois.  We were hosted by BorderLinks in Tucson, AZ  which is part of a network of organizations working together to provide humanitarian aid to migrants and to change U.S. immigration policies that both criminalize the migrants and militarize our 2000 mile long border with Mexico.  Within the network we met with Southside Presbyterian Church in Tucson, No More Deaths, the Kino Border Initiative,  Casa Mariposa and Hogar de Esperanza y Paz (HEPAC) in Nogales, Mexico.  The people’s stories below are from some of the migrants I met.

I want to tell you the stories, and the history, and the pain.  I want you to know how many dollars we are spending to  make the migrants – from Mexico, Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador into criminals or enemy non-combatants (my term).   I want to communicate how much human misery we are creating by our so-called immigration policies and practices.

Our border with Mexico is 2,000 miles long.   The wall and or or fence extends  between 580 and 700 miles of it.  The rest is either patrolled by Border Patrol agents or by electronics and drones.  It is a war zone, and the migrants crossing it are the enemy.

In the early 1990’s the U.S. established a policy to “solve the immigration problem” by “prevention through detention and voluntary removal”, whereby detained “illegals” were simply dropped on the Mexican side of the border.  Then we passed NAFTA and put up the wall – never saying the two were connected.  As migrants fled the consequences of NAFTA, our immigration policy  became a “consequence delivery system,”  i.e.  “you will pay dearly for trying to enter the U.S.  NAFTA (the North American Free Trade Agreement) was a knife to the heart of Mexico, and to stop the flood of migrants who had lost their means of survival – growing corn – the U.S. put up a wall.   (More on the effects of NAFTA to follow.)

The wall is 20 feet high, made of metal two by fours spaced a few inches apart so the Border Patrol can see if anyone is attempting to approach it from the other side.  At its base on the U.S. side, it is piled with rocks, in order to assure injury if someone climbed over and jumped down.   It is also equipped with surveillance cameras . In Arizona there are large gaps in the wall, precisely where it is the most dangerous to attempt to cross – the Sonora desert.  The wall designers either assumed no one would try to cross into the desert, or hoped they would cross there and die in the attempt.

Pepe  is 19.  He was just deported yesterday, so I met him on the Mexican side of Nogales at the “comedor”, the dining room run by volunteers with Kino and No More Deaths.  He is there to have the  hot meal supplied twice a day for the first three days after deportation. After that, he must have made a plan for where to go next, and make room for the unending flow of new deportees.  With worry on his face and in his voice, he said,  “I was in the desert for a month.  I had paid $3000 (to a coyote who usually promises safe passage within three days).  I saw a lot of people die.  I suffered a lot. People were falling down in front of me.  I won’t do it again.  I suffered too much.”

Also in the comedor were  about 8 women who were caught trying to get back to their U.S.- born children.  They had thought it would be easy to cross, as it had been before.  Now, if they try again and are caught in the Tucson area, they will be charged with a felony and be tried by Operation Streamline.  They will receive a prison sentence and possibly never see their children again.

    Operation Streamline is a special procedure is for people who were deported, crossed again and were caught a second time, which constitutes a felony. We observed the process in the U.S. District Court in Tucson on May 21^st.    62 men and 4 women filed into the room in shackles, with chains  joining their cuffed hands to their cuffed feet and also between their feet, so they could not take a normal step.  So right away we should see them as criminals.  They are seated in the other half of the courtroom from where we are, and some are in the jury box, because there is not enough space.   They are without exception brown-skinned. Some are from Guatemala, some from Honduras and El Salvador, and most from Mexico.  Their lawyers tell the judge the names of the 6-8 prisoners they are each representing.  That makes for about 8-9  lawyers.   The first batch of migrants, the only 4 women, are brought before the judge. The judge asks each one a series of questions.

                       Do you understand the charges against you?, translated into Spanish through earphones supplied by the court.  Each one answers, ”Yes, sir.”  Do you know you can remain silent?  Translated.  “Yes sir.”  If you have no money for an attorney, one can be appointed for you.  If you plead “guilty” the maximum sentence can be 6 months in jail and $5,000 fine plus a $10 court fee.  Do you understand?  “Yes sir.”  You have the right to call your own witnesses and to have a trial by jury.  If you give up these rights by pleading guilty, do you do so voluntarily?  “Yes sir”.   The court will dismiss the felony charge for entering the country illegally after having been deported if you plead guilty to a misdemeanor.  How do you plead?  “Guilty.”  The sentences are read : For woman number one- 150 days,  for woman number 2- 30 days, for woman number 3 – 30 days, for woman number 4 – 60 days.  Do you agree to your sentence?  “Yes sir.” 

I                      I made note of the date each woman had entered the U.S. “unauthorized”. They had been  in ICE jails (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) from 3 to 7 days each.  Now they would enter our regular, privatized prison system.   The 4 were lead out of the courtroom, right past where we were sitting, so we could see their faces.  Stoic.  It was 2:04 p.m.  The whole procedure for the women took less than half an hour.  Next the men were led forward in batches of 7, and the judge went through the same routine with each batch, with the same outcome – except that a few men asked the judge’s forgiveness for entering the country illegally.   One of the Honduran men had been in ICE detention since May 7th–- 14 days.  The sentences for this batch of men ranged from 105 days to 180 days.  Three men asked the judge if they could be incarcerated in the state of California because they have family there.  The judge agreed.  A touch of humanity.                      

                          By the 5^th batch of men I began to feel distracted.  I thought about eating ice cream instead of sitting here.  Then I thought about how four days ago I had been hiking with friends in the beautiful, dry and rocky mountains of northern Arizona while these men were  struggling through the desert, parched and tired, hoping for  some money to feed their families or to reunite with children and spouses, and getting arrested instead. I forgot about the ice cream.

                       Last batch – Once again a man said to the judge,  “Forgive me for entering your country illegally.”  He was not begging for a lighter sentence.  He meant it.  I wish he could hear us say, “Forgive us for ruining your life.”

                    P.S.    Prison sentences given out by Operation Streamline are to be carried out in U.S. jails.  Most of the time these are for-profit jails under  the Corrections Corporation of America (CCA) or GEO Group (which was Wackenhut).  CCA houses 60% of all  migrant detainees and they reserve 80% of their beds for migrants.  As you might imagine, these entities lobby for strict immigration detention policies.  CCA gets  $3,438 a month per detainee.   Our tax dollars are the source for that fee.  Interestingly, CCA and GEO don’t pay taxes.

Remember Guantanamo

To the Editor:   (of the Greenfield, MA paper: The Recorder)

     I write to remind readers that 166 Muslim men are still at Guantanamo Prison in Cuba, some for its full 11 years of operation.  In case you believe that they are “the worst of the worst” as the Bush administration claimed, you should know that over 600 men have already been released for lack of evidence, and more than half of these remaining  have been cleared for release by the Bush and/or Obama administrations.  However, they remain locked up, without ever seeing their families or friends, because our Congress will not allow them to come to American soil for any reason, and other countries are not willing to take on responsibility for a problem we have caused.

     Ali Hussein al-Shaaban from Syria, now 30, was arrested in Afghanistan in 2002 and has been in Guantanamo for 10½ years.  He was cleared for release years ago.  He is still alive, but one of his jailmates, Adnan Latif from Yemen, was found dead in his cell last September.  He too had been cleared for release -- 4 times -- by both administrations.  He had tried to commit suicide many times and told his lawyer that he had no hope.  His death is under investigation, but I think it is correct to say that detention at Guantanamo killed him.

     Indefinite detention of U.S. citizens was signed into U.S. law last December by the National Defense Authorization Act.   I think it is cruel and inhumane treatment.  We are becoming a nation of jailers.

Sherrill Hogen, Conway, MA

413-625-9959

Sherrill  is a member of Witness Against Torture and just completed a week-long fast at the annual vigil in Washington to close Guantanamo and end indefinite detention.  She has a blog: www.newsfromsherrill.blogspot.com

Can We Love Our Enemies

CAN WE LOVE OUR ENEMIES?

   

     I had the privilege of listening as my partner, Carl Doerner interviewed and filmed author/historian/theologian Jim Douglass.  The topic was: nonviolence confronting the power of violence.  I felt moved by Jim’s wisdom, his knowledge of history and his dedication to seeking and speaking the truth.  The following are my reflections on his words.

     Drawing from Thomas Merton, Jim uses the term “the unspeakable”, I think to refer to mankind’s power to quickly destroy a broad spectrum of life   He causes me to wonder what I would consider unspeakable:  the end of beauty on our planet Earth?  The use of nuclear weapons to incinerate people?  One man torturing another while he screams in pain or dies?  Stealing a people’s culture?  Rape?  We as a species are headed toward the unspeakable at breakneck speed.  How can we change direction?

     The key is in speaking the truth, but the forces pushing us toward the unspeakable want to keep the truth secret, because it is their lust for power that creates the unspeakable.  Thus they manipulate the media that we rely on for information. Jim quoted Orwell as saying, “Who controls the past controls the future; who controls the present controls the past." A sorry thought, given that our media is currently controlled by big corporations.  By this formula, our future is sealed, and we are pawns in a game we are supposed to lose.

     But we can refuse to play the game, or break the rules and actively defy the un-truths we are fed every day.  At the same time, which is  now, we must do as Gandhi advised, “Experiment with truth,” in order to create the new world we yearn for.   Such defiance is not without risk; in fact, its leaders will be targets as were JFK, MLK, RFK, and Malcom X, and we who follow them will be labeled enemies of the State.

     Does this sound dire?  It is.  But not without seeds of hope.  We are many and those who would like to control us are few.  We can prepare ourselves in order to take care of one another as the systems of control collapse.  Our first step is to “go where we don’t want to go “– deep into the ugly truth of who wants to maintain power, the methods they use, and why.

     There is power in knowing the truth and power in refusing to cooperate with the lethal game, and power in resisting –nonviolently.  Jim, a theologian, uses the biblical text, “Love your enemies.”  What does that mean?   It means stopping them from doing harm, as you would stop a friend from driving drunk.  It means believing that they too hold a piece of the truth. It means seeing them as fellow humans, who will be part of the Beloved Community that we will build together. 

     Events like 9/11 are “created” to justify a greater and greater concentration of power and to instill fear, while we who observed the tragedy with horror seek revenge or redemption without understanding the causes of such events.   We render ourselves powerless by our own ignorance.  For redemption to work, we must first know the truth of what happened, then find the humanity in the “enemy.”  But often we don’t want to know the truth, for example that people within the United States power structure might have had something to do with bringing down the Twin Towers. These men might be the enemy we need to understand and to stop and finally to forgive.

     What is it that allows the powerful to perpetrate such destruction?  Jim says they believe in using assassination to accomplish their goals.  To them, it is a legitimate tool, just like torture.  I had never thought of anyone believing in assassination. I just thought of it as a bad deed planned and carried outs by nefarious individuals.   To see it as a kind of sacrament – something  to use as needed, not to be ashamed of – is an important shift in my understanding.  In an awful way, it makes more sense.   I search my mind for a motive, and conclude that there are a group of people who will do anything in order to accumulate wealth at the least cost to themselves.

     What will happen when the current Empire falls, as all empires do?  Will it bring us all down with it, because we have not known how to confront it with the truth, nor build the structures we need to sustain a different world?

     Or will we be able, with grace, to risk  the consequences of resistance and to unite our efforts towards saving the planet, its resources, its peoples and its creatures?  Will we build a new society based on love, not fear and the weapons fear requires?  

Gaza Is Not Just About Gaza

     The tragedy of Israel bombing Gaza is not just about Gaza.  It is about the militarization of Israel, the U.S. and, by extension, the rest of the world, a process that goes on behind a cloud of lies and deceptions that are repeated in our mainstream media.

      Gaza is an example of how the media is part of and protects the interests of the 1%.  Israel’s aggression against Gaza is portrayed as Israel’s need to defend itself. We are not told what the Israeli military did to provoke a militant response from Hamas.  And we are not even supposed to imagine that Palestinians have a right to defend themselves too.  Because we do not hear about Israel’s long-range  Zionist goal of eliminating Arabs from the land between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean, we lack a context for understanding what is happening in Gaza,

      We are supposed to see Israel as the victim. That way we will not know that this invasion of Gaza was being planned for months.  Nor will we look at what Israel is doing daily in the West Bank and East Jerusalem to steal the land, destroy the trees, demolish the homes, imprison the youth and cut the supply of water. We will not understand that we taxpayers are paying for the bombs that fall on Gaza, the Caterpillar bulldozers that are retrofitted to demolish Palestinian homes,  the drones that pick out the targets in Gaza, because the U.S. gives Israel $3 billion a year in military/economic aid --  the largest aid package in the world. We need to ask ourselves why, and question this use of our resources.

In addition, Gaza is the victim of the flourishing arms industry and trading in arms by many countries, including Israel and the U.S. (read author Victor Thorn), and the need to keep testing new war toys.  The siege and war on Gaza are part of the trend towards global militarization and away from democratization, as  powerful elites attempt to hold on to power.

We who oppose war and want sustainable communities, must work hard to counter what is happening to Gaza and connect that issue with other issues of destruction and oppression.   Here are a few of those issues.

     Outsourcing jobs to countries with cheaper labor also means allowing poor working conditions. Two deadly fires last weekend in Bangladeshi clothing factories that supply Walmart and other U.S. stores are a case in point.  When those workers demand their rights, Bangladeshi police will need more weapons to control them.

     Our financial crisis has caused unemployment and home foreclosures in the U.S. (and in Europe), and the measures taken by banks and our government do not create jobs and save homes, but benefit the 1% while throwing more and more people out of work and home.  How is it possible to rebuild our economy  if people have no jobs?

     We are a society that is generally afraid of people who look different from ourselves. Such fear is encouraged by a growing private prison industry  that joins with racist politicians to fill their facilities with mostly young mostly Black men,  with the result that the Black community is deprived of their youth and all their potential, including their voting rights.  Similarly, the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency (ICE) promotes fear of immigrants, snatches them from their families and incarcerates  them in abusive conditions, sometimes for months, before deporting them.  Their stories rarely make the news.

     The Bush Administration re-opened Guantanamo Prison, off shore and out of reach in Cuba, where we could secretly torture and abuse men suspected of being terrorists, and where the Obama Administration still holds 161 men, defending their indefinite detention without trial.  Obama also authorizes the use of  targeted assassination of suspected terrorists  thus eliminating  any possibility of capture, arrest and trial.    Does this match with American laws and values?

In 1949, the USA founded the School of the Americas, which still operates today under a new name so as to try to hide its misdeeds.  Now called WHINSEC, it is located within an American army base in the state of Georgia.  Its sole purpose is to train military and police from Latin American countries in “counter-insurgency” tactics. Its graduates have been involved in almost every incidence of torturing, disappearing and murdering citizens who protest what their government is doing.  Typically the victims are labor leaders, teachers, intellectuals, students and advocates for the poor.  How is such programmed brutality kept out of our sight so that many of us have never heard of the School of the Americas/WHINSEC?

     The Keystone XL Pipeline is to be built clear across the United States, from Canada to the Gulf of Mexico to bring petroleum extracted from tar sand deposits in the North.  Good jobs?  Necessary fuel? Corporate profits?  Many people in the path of this pipeline are protesting it day and night, because the pipeline will cost millions of dollars to build, will run dangerously close to a major aquifer, and go through pristine prairie lands which are habitat for many species.  It might leak, as is frequently the case with petroleum pipelines. Extracting petroleum from tar sands requires enormous amounts of water, draining the common water table, and the used water, now full of chemicals leaches back into the water table. Do we know how much of this fuel is needed by our military, which consumes about 20 million gallons of fuel a day? (Barry Sanders)  Do we citizens need this fuel to support our lifestyles?

     In Central America poor countries are being sued by multi-national corporations for trying to curtail mining which (as with tar sands mining) is draining their fresh water supplies and killing off animals and plants that depend on the now polluted rivers.  Company militias have murdered or disappeared farmer-activists who are organizing to close these mines.  How did companies get this much lethal power?

     A militarized world is not a democratic world.  The destructive behaviors of corporations and governments create enemies among  the people they oppress. Thus the oppressors need more weapons to control restive populations.  And they need the media to keep us, the 99%, confused and uninformed.  But if we want a voice in how our communities and our world will operate, we must get involved.

The Cleansing of East Jerusalem and Prospects for Statehood for Palestine

On September 2, settlers from an East Jerusalem settlement* called Ma'ale Zeitim, one largely funded by U.S. billionaire Irving Moskovitz, took over one of the rooms in a Palestinian home in the neighborhood of Ras al-Amud. They came to the door of the house, forced their way in and stayed, backed up by a contingent of Israeli police, and supported by an Israeli court decision in their favor. The settlers claim that this property was owned by Jews before 1948, and therefore they are taking back what is theirs. Once installed in part of the family's home, they put a barbed wire fence through the middle of the family yard.



Ras al-Amud neighorhood lies below Jewish cemetery on opposite hillside.

*Settlement:. a colony of Jews in houses built on Palestinian land, illegal by international law, but supported and protected by Israeli law.

If this one-room occupation follows the pattern of the 2009 settler/government supported actions in another East Jerusalem neighborhood (Sheik Jarrah), the righteous settlers will end up evicting the Palestinian family, which will then be homeless and without any recourse to compensation. (See Just Vision's documentary film, "My Neighborhood." ) But compensation is not the issue. The issue is this: thousands of Palestinians owned homes and property in West Jerusalem before 1948, but they cannot use the Israeli courts to lay claim to them, much less expect police escorts to help them access those homes and forcefully evict the inhabitants.

This is the meaning of apartheid -- separate and unequal laws for different groups based on ethnicity.

Settler guard post on Pal roof in Old City




Israeli flag on settler apartment in the Old City of East Jerusalem



 When I recently toured East Jerusalem with ICAHD (The Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions) I saw the spiffy settlement apartment buildings plunked down on stolen properties and supplied with playgrounds, sidewalks, parking lots and street lights, next to Palestinian homes where residents, without sidewalks and playgrounds, are forced to burn their garbage alongside broken roads and in empty lots because of the lack of municipal services for which they pay ample taxes.** In contrast to the protected settlerments, 27,000 of the Palestinian homes in this part of the city have demolition orders from Israel. To the inhabitants of these homes, waiting for the bulldozers to come probably feels somewhat like having a star of David painted on your house in Germany in the 1930's. You know you are in trouble, but you don't know when that trouble will come.

**Palestinians are one third of the population of Jerusalem (East and West), but pay 40% of the total taxes and receive in services and schools 10% of the municipal budget.)

Will statehood solve these problems for Palestine? Two states? One state? An apartheid state? Everyone concerned with this isue in the States and here has begun to debate this question. What should a future Palestine look like, and how to get there? I draw my information from Palestinian activists- academics, community organizers and labor unionists -- who are well informed and are the ones whose efforts will shape the changes in the years ahead.

Majdi, one of the great guides for the group I brought to Palestine this year, declared that the main issue to be addressed is that of the refugees' right to return to their original homes and leave the miserable refugee camps. But in the meantime, while they wait for a political solution, the conditions in the refugee camps must be improved, to provide the basic conditions for a decent life. According to Majdi, neglecting these needs is making the camps "factories of violence," because young people do not see any hope for a better life. If they have two states, that means the end to the Right of Return, because refugees will be forced to reside in the Palestinian state instead of allowing them to go to their original villages which are mostly inside Israel.

However, many agree that creating a State of Palestine, with open borders, might be Step One towards the preferred outcome of one state joining the two peoples in this small area between the Mediterranean and the Jordan River. In the opinion of Isam,(see last photo) a middle class engineer, in whose garden we were enjoying the traditional sweets and coffee of the Al-Adha holiday, there cannot be one state until there has been a ten year period without violence from either side. Until then, "We can't live (in one state) with people who are trying to kill us."



Qalqilia checkpoint for workers



"Trying to kill us" takes a miriad of forms that entwine with daily life in a Kafka-esk way. An example is in the city of Qalqilia, which is right on the Green Line, the supposed border between Israel and the West Bank. Its 50,000 residents were once considered moderates but have become extremists thanks to the Separation Wall that Israel has built to enclose and imprison the whole city. There are a few openings in the wall that are checkpoints, manned by Blackwater-style security contractors. In order for 3,000 workers and farmers to get to their work on the other side of the wall in the morning, they have to line up at the checkpoint, starting at 2:00 a.m..



Sleuth hatches in the Wall around Qalqilia



Our group's visit to Qalqilia to see the effects of the wall included a view of huge hatches in the wall to allow for Qalqilia's wastewater to flow into Israel for treatment, according to agreements signed when the Green Line was drawn in 1949. Before there was a wall, the wastewater simply moved along a sleuth in the desired direction. Once the wall was built, and the hatches installed, Israel had control over the flow of the wastewater by opening or closing the hatches. In 2005 when heavy rains came, Israel closed the hatches, causing the water to back up and flood the whole city, wastewater and all.

At another gate in this wall around Qalqilia we encountered a man with a small tractor full of citrus trees. He was waiting for the "agricultural gate" to open so he could pass - with his Israeli-issued permit - to deliver the trees to a Palestinian trying to continue his nursery business in spite of the wall. The gate is supposed to open three times a day, at 7:00, 1:00 and 5:00, but only to those who have obtained a permit. For Americans it would be like needing to apply for a visa to get from your house to your own garden or to your neighbor's or to the town nearest to where you live, or to the local hospital or school.


Citrus trees waiting at the checkpoint



Israeli permit needed to cross checkpoint



But I was starting to write about one state, two states or an apartheid state. I think you can see that what exists now is the apartheid state, and the facts on the ground prove that this is the state that Israel wants, even while claiming to be a democratic state beseiged by terrorists who must be walled in or walled out. You might also see that two states are not possible as long as the settlements are allowed to stay in place on Palestinian land. The placement and size of the settlements, plus their connecting roads, plus the various military infrastructures and designated "green areas" leave only 8.7% of the West Bank in Palestinian hands, and this tiny amount is chopped up into little pieces that do not touch each other.

`Mohammed, a professor and organizer, has always believed that the goal should be for one democratic state for Jews and Palestinians (Muslim and Christian). If the settlers wanted to stay and abide by the rule of one set of laws for all, fine. If they wanted to leave, Palestinians could use the housing. There would no longer be a Jewish state, but a state where Jews would have equal rights with other citizens.

I asked Mohammed how he focuses his activism toward achieving one state.   Aside from teaching all whom he has regular contact with -- his university students and colleagues and the community served by the Palestinian House of Friendship which he founded in 1994-- about how a democracy works and the importance of being involved in one's community, and apart from promoting elections at the university, municipal and national levels, he also works outside the system to ceate a grassroots, unaffiliated network of like-minded people. The main challenge is to break through the power of the ruling party, Fatah, which is supported by the U.S. and Israel as a more or less compliant partner in the moribund "peace process."  The municipal elections that just took place across the West Bank were a measure of general disaffection with Fatah, which controls the Palestinian Authority (PA).  Many votes were won by the Left and Independent candidates.  As Mohammed told us, "We have the minds and determination. What we need is good management."

Other challenges to achieving statehood are the separation between the West Bank and Gaza, both politcally and geographically,  the lack of infrastructure for economic development, and restrictions impossed by the Israeli military occupation.

Sam Bahour, a Palestinian capitalist who surprised me with his astute analysis and advocacy for Palestinian rights, said in a lecture I attended last week, that the word "occupation" really does not apply anymore, since it implies a temporary situation and not this 45 year old one. He sees the solution as evolving from a "nation-state solution to a civil rights solution." Palestinians will never accept living in a Jewish State, but if everyone's civil rights are respected, Jews and Palestinians can live together. He places hope in the grassroots, not in the U.S., the E.U., nor in the PA (Palestinian Authority), which he sees as functioning only as an outsourcer of Israeli products.


Me, Mohammed, Isam, Madiha & daughter

 When I addressed my questions about the one state-two state solution to two other Palestinian intellectuals, Mazin and Sammeh, they both answered by talking about Zionism - a word that either confounds or irritates many people in the U.S. But not to talk about Zionism is to obscure the core of the problem. Zionism wants a Jewish state between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea wihout the presence of non-Jews. Mazin said that statehood is not an issue between two negotiating parties (Israel and Palestine), but an issue of Zionism, which denies the human rights of Palestinians. It is a colonial ideology, initiated in the 19th century when colonizing was the name of the global game, and it includes the ethnic cleansing of the indigenous population which had been multi-cultural, multi-ethnic and multi-religious. Mazin also believes that Zionism "has run its course", as indicated by the shift in popular opinion in the States away from uncritical acceptance of all that Israel does.

I had dinner last night in the home of Sammieh, professor of political science at Bir Zeit University. He said that it is "the nature of Zionism" that determines what kind of state is possible. If there were two states, it would mean the expulsion of the Arab/Palestinian populatiion from inside Israel, because Israel wants a purely Jewish state, and would expell its Arabs to live in the Palestinian state. On the other hand, one state is not possible because that would require both peoples to accept one another, and Zionist Israel does not want to accept non-Jews. "We do not have a problem with Jews; they have a problem with us. They do not want to live with us, they want to control us. Therefore, Zionism must change its nature. Israelis must learn to accept the Other." Zionism's non-acceptance will cause a bloody confrontation, said Sammeh. It is Palestinians' job to convince the Israeli people that they must change. ( Sammieh referred me to the work of the Israeli author Israel Shahak who has written about Zionism in "Jewish Religion, Jewish History.")

While this issue of statehood is being debated in lecture halls and study groups, it is being decided by the Zionist-imposed facts on the ground in Palestine, epitomized by the theft of a single room in Ras al-Amud. The situation is both laden with details and at the same time simple. While one people is depriving another of basic human rights, freedom of movement, and dignity, we have an apartheid state. It must be dismantled by all possible non-violent methods beginning with the rejection of Zionism.













AIPAC, Palestine and Iran

Outside Convention Center the night of AIPAC's closing plenary

AIPAC, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, just had its annual convention in Washington, D.C.  It was attended by 13,000 people, including 400 of our elected Congress people.  President Obama addressed the attendees to praise Israel, as was expected, and to make his case for delaying an attack on Iran.  He did not mention Palestine  and Israel’s continuing occupation and rape of their land.

I was outside the convention, with a few hundred other protestors, to remind AIPAC and the President that Palestine exists, under Israeli occupation, and to say no to AIPAC’s  loud and frantic call for war on Iran.   AIPAC is powerful, maybe even more powerful than the president of the United States, it has no use for Palestinians, and it wants a war on Iran. 

AIPAC says it is speaking for Israel’s interests, and that whatever Israel wants, Israel should have. If Israel wants to continue to steal land from Palestinians in order to expand Israel, it should take as much land as it wants and ignore international law and human rights issues.   And if Israel wants a war on Iran, it should have a war, and the U.S. should help to fight it, over and above the $3 billion a year military aid package Israel already receives from us. 

Let us be clear that when AIPAC says “Israel”, it means the right-wing, hard-line political and military leadership – not the people of Israel, who have no more voice in what their government is doing than 99% of American people have in what our government is doing.   In fact, I contend that  AIPAC  does not have  your interests, my interests nor Israel’s interests in mind.  Its narrow mission is to benefit a very small (1% ?) , already powerful elite both here and in Israel that is using its vast economic resources to achieve its own agenda.

One agenda item is to use the weapons we sell Israel to bomb Gaza, demolish homes and water cisterns in the West Bank, patrol the checkpoints, and in every way possible try to drive Palestinians away in order to fulfill the Zionist project of  possessing  the entire historic Palestine for Jews. U.S. support of this agenda has cost us our moral authority in the Muslim world.

Another of AIPAC’s agendas is war on Iran.  But, do we Americans want another war, whether on Iran, or Syria, or Somalia, or anywhere?  Or is the price too high?  We are already paying for wars in Iraq and Afghanistan with our state budget cuts to schools, libraries, roads, bridges., and all of our social services.  We are paying with deaths and traumatization of our military personnel.   We are paying, as well, with our guilty consciences over the thousands, even millions of civilian casualties.  And the Planet is paying with the rarely-mentioned pollution of land and water caused by war.  Do we want more of the same? 

Are we going to be fooled by the fear-mongering that the war-profiteers and the media dish out?  Or might we start thinking for ourselves about the costs of war and whether  war will make us any safer?  I am scared when AIPAC uses its lobbying power to push for war, and I am only slightly comforted by the full page ad in the March 5 NYTimes, signed by 5 U.S. Generals, and three other ranking military and intelligence officers.  It states in part: “Military action at this stage is not only unnecessary, it is dangerous—for the United States and for Israel.  We urge you (Mr. President) to resist the pressure for a war of choice with Iran.”

There are many reasons not to attack Iran. One that catches my attention is the  probability of nuclear contamination if a bomb strikes one of the facilities where Iran says they are  building a nuclear power plant.

President Obama told AIPAC this week that, so far, Iran has not decided to build a nuclear weapon, and until he understands otherwise, he will pursue  the route of negotiations and sanctions.  But AIPAC wants war, not negotiations.  We must tell the President and Congress that AIPAC does not speak for us.  A war of choice is a bad choice, but it may come soon if we don’t speak up to prevent it.

   

 (Written as a commentary for the Greenfield, MA newspaper, "The Recorder")