The best way for a peace activist to see Palestine is to feel what life is like under Israeli occupation

By Dennis DuVall

 
Courier, ccun.org, January 23, 2010
                      

"All the people live in their countries, but Palestine is living in our hearts." Safi (Ramallah)
 
 
The best way for a peace activist to see Palestine is to feel what life is like under occupation.  In one week I met  many Palestinians, every one kind and gracious, who simply wanted a visitor from Amryka to see "how it is here." 
 
Riding north from Jerusalem a fellow passenger pointed to numerous Israeli settlements on the hills around Nablus, only a few of the 300 illegal Jewish settlements dotting the West Bank.  The colonies were gated with nice new roads and big white houses, in contrast to the dusty Arab villages below.  This colonization began following the decision made by Israel in 1975 to keep Palestinian land occupied after the 1967 war.  The main obstacle to peace talks, President Obama demanded a total cessation of settlements when he was elected, but today 3000 settlement apartments are under construction.
 
Farther north In Jenin,  my friend Nassir took me for an evening stroll to the Jenin Refugee Camp that somehow still survives after the "Jenin Massacre," a major Israeli military offensive in 2002.  The center of night life was a large empty hall, except for two pool tables where a dozen teenage boys were shooting 8-ball.  After a lot of teasing and joking at my expense (and losing badly at pool), two of the boys insisted on taking me somewhere. I followed them up a few dark streets to a large well-lighted cemetary where the grave markers were all uniformly new.  The boys" mood became solumn as they pointed out five individual graves, their brothers killed in the 2002 battle of Jenin.
 
A small ray of hope in Jenin is the Freedom Theater, an international project to help Jenin's children to express their fears and anger through art, photography and drama.  The Theater's history is tragically intertwined with the armed resistance the Islamic Jihad in the battle of Jenin and the subject of the film "Arna's Children."
 
Returning to Jerusalem, the street through Ramallah parallels the separation wall decorated with grafiti like "Built With Racism" and "One Wall, Two Jails," and a ten-foot portrait of Abu Amar (Yassir Arafat), the PLO leader's countenance remembered on countless posters throughtout Palestine.  In one felafal shop a poster featured Nasser, Arafat and Che Guevara, heros to the Palestinian resistance.  Posters abound of visages of Palestinians killed in various military clashes, such as three recent casualties of Israeli bombing north of Jenin.
 
Entering Occupied Jerusalem, my first introduction to an Israeli checkpoint was very different from watching a film of what Palestinians endure every day.  The reality of being with a large group of local people being herded like cattle through a chute was a memorable yet degrading experience.  This daily humiliation takes Palestinians an extra 1-2 hours to go to work or to school making life as difficult as possible.  Indeed, a man in the crowd called out -I assumed for my benefit- "We are suffering!" Leaving the checkpoint a sign in Hebrew, Arabic and English reads "Have a Safe and Pleasant Day."
 
On Friday -Palestine's Sunday and demonstration day- my friend Samer took me to Bil'in near Ramallah where local people have been protesting for 5 years against the Israeli separation wall.  Here the wall juts into Palestinian land inside the Green Line (the 1967 border), carving out an enclave for what is now a large Jewish colony.  Every Friday local people are joined by Israelis, internationals and numerous media in a colorful nonviolent protest march from the town to the wall.  Along the way loud booms announce the arrival of the tear gas cannisters that continues for 2 hours; dodging tear gas cannisters, retreating, returning, more tear gas.  Ten Israeli IDF soldiers appear and try to take away a Palestinian protester, but are engulfed by 30 other protesters who free the man and chant "Shame!"  "Shame!"  until the IDF soldiers leave.
 
David, an Israeli  from Jaffa says he is "disgusted" with Israel and believes Israel should return to Palestine all land it has illegally confiscated and pay Palestinians for 40 years of their losses.  He adds that "America must stop paying for Israel's occupation."
 
A common perception in Palestine is that Israel and America are one and the same.  Palestinians cannot understand how the American people can let Israel treat Palestinians the way it does.  So many times I have heard the question,"Don't Americans know how it is here?"  What Palestinians cannot appreciate is that Israel has a weapon many times more powerful than its nuclear arsenal.  This weapon is the charge of antisemitism:  Anyone who criticizes the Jewish state is hostile toward Jews.  But it is Zionism, not antisemitism, that Americans should be concerned about. 
 
Zionism is the notion that Israel has an historic right to all of Palestine, "from the Nile to the Euphrates."  Today Zionism is Israel's policy of colonization, racial discrimination and harsh military domination.  Zionism is clearly racist in denying Palestinians their basic human rights.  In South Africa this was callled apartheid and  is why the South African delegation was a key participant in the recent Gaza Freedom March in Cairo, Egypt.
 
Israeli apartheid can be seen today in East Jerusalem.  In the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood of East Jerusalem is a house on Ibn Jubair Street with Israeli flags strung  along the roof.  This house was occupied by Israeli settlers and its Palestinian residents forcibly evicted into the street.  A few hours a day they still sit in a chair under a tree across the street and, with international supporters, watch over the house in which they used to live.  Here is also a place of weekly protest demonstations against the illegal house seizures taking place now in East Jerusalem. 
 
In any peace settlement, Palestinians want East Jerusalem, which is predominently Palestinian, as the capitol of a future Palestinian state, but Israel annexed East Jerusalem after the 1967 war and claims all of the city as its "eternal" capitol.  As illegal land confiscations and construction on 3000 settlement apartments continues in the West Bank, the Israeli colonization of East Jerusalem is also going ahead with the building of 692 new apartments in three East Jerusalem neighborhoods.
 
I now feel much more strongly that the United States must re-examine its relationship with Israel and stop financing Israel's apartheid system.  It is not antisemitism to criticize Israel's policy of racial discrimination toward Palestinians and illegal confiscations of Palestinian land.  It is not antisemitism to demand that the American government stop sending our tax dollars to Israel until Israel recognizes the legal and human rights of Palestinians. Only then can America  show the Arab world that Amryka really does care about justice for the Palestinians.  And only then will America take the first real step toward peace in the Middle East.
 
 
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Leaving Palestine tomorrow I know that Palestine is poor and expensive, unemployment is 40%, and the majority of the population is 18 and under.  I also still believe that a secular and democratic state is a just solution for the Israelis and Palestinians.  If this seems too impossible, remember that South Africa demonstrated to the world that it is possible for a war-torn society to overcome a racist system and live together in a bi-national state.  Inshallah. 
 
Dennis DuVall
Occupied Jerusalem 

* This article was written specially to the Courier of Arizona before George Karsa submitted it for publication at ccun.org.