It is getting worse here. They have locked down the entire West Bank until after Yom Kippur. What that means practically is that our movement is restricted, and the movement of Palestinians even more so. More people have been arrested and killed, and we hear what sounds like tank fire every night.
The Israelis are doing this in retaliation for suicide bombings. Based on what I have experienced here, my feeling is that suicide bombings are more about suicide than bombing. If you understand it as a suicide, then you will have a clear picture of the situation of desperation and despair that Palestinians are living.
I am feeling angry about Western attitudes. The United States justified dropping nuclear weapons on Japan because of Pearl Harbor---along with fire-bombing Tokyo. We justify invading and occupying two countries after 9/11, killing thousands and torturing many. But we are shocked and appalled at a small number of violent resisters to murder, military occupation, land confiscation, home demolitions, torture, and mass detention? I don't get it.
Just to be clear: As I am sure you all know, I think the Palestinians would be far better served by mass nonviolent resistance in the style of Gandhi, King, and Mandela, and I wish they had the leadership that would take them there. I wish for the same nonviolent leadership in the United States.
On Tuesday we went to the small Palestinian village of Suseya at the invitation of farmers because they wanted to draw water from their well. In order to do that, they have to get a permit from the Israeli army, even though it is their own well on their own private land. In the past, even though they hold a permit, armed Israeli settlers from nearby have stopped them, so they wanted accompaniment.
The water-drawing went without incident, but while we were there we received a call from a nearby village. Israeli settlers were uprooting and dragging away olive trees from the village grove. The olive trees are their livelihood. By the time we got there, the settlers had taken away 40 trees, leaving the grove in ruins. We did manage to get it on Israeli radio, but too late to stop the settlers.
On the way home, we had to do our usual driving all over the place to find a way back into Hebron. We got dropped off at Beit Anun, a place where many come and go. We found the Israeli army there preventing Palestinians from crossing over to the blocked road into Hebron. They were letting people in, but one by one. The men were stopped; the women were let by. One man said to us, "I need a sex change operation. Then they would let me across. I am not a man anyway. If I were a man, I would not be in this situation."
Many Palestinians are now avoiding the roads and cutting through vineyards on the outskirts of Hebron to get in to the city. As we drive by, we can see lines of people snaking through the grapevines. The army does not stop this, proving that the whole thing is more about harassment than actual closure.
Yesterday we were returning from a visit and the cab took us to the only blocked road where there was no army truck. There were vegetable trucks parked on either side of the blockade, transferring their products from outside the city to trucks that could take them inside (see the photo above). The drivers were throwing heads of cauliflower at each other across the barrier.
We have passed a number of ambulances that were detained by Israeli soldiers. The villagers in Suseya tell us stories about trying to get to the hospital in an emergency. They are prevented by law from using the paved road to the nearby city because it is a settler road--Palestinians cannot drive on it. So the ambulance cannot come to them. They have to go to the hospital by donkey.
Have I mentioned the license plate system? Palestinians have green and white license plates, and those cars can't go on many roads (settler roads) and can't go into Jerusalem. Yellow and black license plates can go anywhere. These are for Israelis and the few Palestinians who have Jerusalem IDs. People also have ID cards with different colors, designating where one is allowed to move. This is a lot like the Soviet Union, the very system that many of these Jews escaped from for Israel.
Yesterday we visited two families who have home demolition orders because their land is located near an Israeli settlement. In both cases it is private land, owned by the people who live there. The Israeli army can just demolish homes on private land! One family has three small children. The father is the offspring of refugees from the 1948 occupation. He went to Saudia Arabia to earn enough money to come home to Palestine and buy land and a home for his family. Now he works as a hairdresser, although nobody in his community has any money, so they use the barter system. The mother has a university degree in computer science and speaks beautiful English, but she can't find work. They have lived with a demolition order for four years; they never know when the bulldozer will show up.
The other family is wealthier and has a big plot of land with grapes and fruit trees. But they have to get a permit to harvest their crops, and the army will only let them do it one day each week. They have 30 tons of grapes they can't harvest! But even if they could harvest them, they cannot sell them because of the West Bank closure. The market for them would be in Israel, and they can't get them through.
I hope I am giving you a sense of the despair and desperation here. The Palestinians are not the terrorists.
No comments:
Post a Comment