vendredi 12 novembre 2010, par La Rédaction
A Palestinian boy looks on at Israeli police officers during a weekly demonstration supporting Palestinians evicted from their homes in the east Jerusalem neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah, Friday, Nov. 12, 2010.
(AP Photo/Bernat Armangue)
Four years and going strong
The popular struggle in Ma’asara stops the fence of annexation
October 2006 saw the beginning of regular demonstrations against the fence in the South Bethlehem region: women and kids from the villages most harmed by the fence stood in front of bulldozers and stopped the construction, and Palestinians and Israelis joined hands in a popular non-violent struggle to defend the land and stop the settlements.
Now, after four years of constant popular resistance in the face of on going military oppression, violence and arrests, we unite in a larger demonstration than usual, and tell the occupation forces that our message still stands:
Nov 09, 2010 12:04 am | Hamde Abu Rahme
Today, November 9 at about 3:00 in the morning, the Israeli army entered the village of Bil’in. About 50 soldiers entered the village by jeep and foot. When they arrived at the two targeted houses, they ran and took positions outside while a number of soldiers entered the house.
At first the soldiers were hammering on the door of one house, demanding to see 30-year old Ashraf al-Khatib. It turned out they went to the wrong house. They then went to another house – forcing one of Ashraf’s brothers to show them where Ashraf lives. Soldiers then entered that house, and his brother’s family’s house, and again they woke up the family, asking for Ashraf al-Khatib. His brother, Haytham al-Khatib, is a journalist from the human right’s group B’tselem and was of the ones woken up by the army. Even though they entered a house where their target didn’t live, they stayed there for about one and a half hours, searching all the rooms.
Haytham al-Khatib told me about his 6-year-old son’s reaction to waking up to see dozens of soldiers in his house, “he asked me to close the door, because he didn’t want to see them.” Haytham himself was prevented when he wanted to record the raid in his family’s houses – the soldiers simply locked him in a room for more than an hour, away from his children and wife. The children in the houses are ages 1,5 and 8 years old, and this is not the first time they have seen their homes raided at night.
However, after 1.5 hours of searching for the target in three houses, two of which he doesn’t reside in, Ashraf al-Khatib was not found. Five weeks ago Ashraf was shot in his leg with live ammunition by an Israeli soldier during a demonstration in Bil’in. The bullet went through his leg, breaking the bone. Even though he was heavily injured and in major pain, the soldiers tried to arrest him. Luckily he was brought to safety, and then taken to a hospital for surgery by fellow protesters. Tonight the army decided to come and take him in front of his wife and 1.5 year old daughter instead.
The soldiers finally retreated from the targeted houses by foot, walking toward the military road that follows the illegal segregation fence in Bil’in, at about 4.30 AM. The village of Bil’in has suffered from frequent night raids over the last few years, and a number of villagers have been taken for interrogation and imprisoned for their non-violent resistance to the occupation and segregation wall on Bil’in’s land.
Action organised by Free Palestine in Zurich.
Nov 05, 2010 01:48 pm | Linah Alsaafin
Linah’s parents together in March, 2009Yesterday my mother crossed the Allenby bridge, from the West Bank to Jordan, to see my father in Amman. What makes this banal act unusual is that she had to wait almost a year to be finally granted permission to cross the border.
Last year my brother wrote about my family’s series of unfortunate events which began in August 2009 – how we went from being British citizens living in our homeland on my dad’s one year work renewable visas, to plain old brown Palestinians forced to accept our Israeli-issued identity cards in order to be classified as ‘legal’ residents, which resulted our own mini diaspora. My brother and father, both born in the Gaza strip, have Gaza identity cards which of course bans them from entering the West Bank, where we were living. My mother, despite being from the city of Albireh in the West Bank, was also inexplicably issued a Gaza ID, despite her owning her original West Bank ID. My younger brother and sister and I have West Bank ID’s, as we were registered under my mother’s original ID, further contributing to the confusion and idiotic regulations manned by the Israeli military. Subsequently, my father spent his time between Lebanon and Jordan, and my brother began new chapters of his life in Qatar and Virginia. They couldn’t come to us, and while my siblings and I could cross over to Amman (which served as our meeting point) my mother could not do the same.
The new astonishingly racist Israeli military order 1650 which was first used in April of this year only made matters worse. My mother was now regarded as an ‘infiltrator’. If caught in the West Bank, she could have faced up to seven years in prison or be deported back to Gaza. As her children, we would obviously follow her footsteps, because Zionism does not like the presumptuous notion of Palestinian families choosing where they want to live and raise their kids in their homeland. This past year has been terribly nerve-racking. Our emotions were taken on a non-stop rollercoaster ride-highs and lows and periods of blank insecurity.
My mother knew beforehand that her West Bank ID changed into a Gaza one and was already in contact with Gisha, the Israeli non-profit organization whose goal is to protect the rights of free movement of Palestinians, before calamity fell upon us in the shape of my father’s arrest at Erez checkpoint, where he had crossed many times before. Gisha then wanted to focus more on my father’s case and bring him back to the West Bank. That amounted to absolutely nothing, so in January, a month after my father was finally allowed to leave Gaza to work in Lebanon, my mother resumed contact. She wanted a piece of paper that would grant her access to the border crossing. After 11 months, her coordination paper finally came.
Waiting wasn’t easy. I had to deal with my parents’ unwanted and forced separation, and watched as my mother lost weight and woke up every day with puffy eyes. We’ve had skyping sessions with my father, which was such a bittersweet experience. My father had to go through his life without his wife or children with him, and sometimes this despairing emotion overwhelmed him. Of course we all kept in regular touch with each other-technology is beautiful in that way. I’ll never forget how we both broke down one time over the phone after I confessed that the only reason I was going through with university was because I knew how much joy and pride it would bring to him when I’d graduate, and how now it wouldn’t even matter because he wouldn’t be at my graduation. I felt like a kid with divorced parents, “Ok are you going to spend Eid with Baba or here?” It wasn’t fair to leave my mother all alone on holidays, and it wasn’t fair for my father to be all alone either. I hated it. I hated the law enforcers of Israel so much. I hated the collaborative PA regime, I hated the Zionists, I hated being torn apart in my mind, I hated how after living in England and the UAE and the USA, coming back to our homeland eventually was what resulted in our bleak estrangement.
My mother signed up for consecutive months in a gym and in a way, that was her catharsis. Every week she’d call Gisha to see where their progress was heading, and every single time she received the same answer: In a couple more weeks we’ll know for sure, next month, give it one more week, and another. Summer arrived, and with it more arising uncertainties. My father was having a really tough time coping by himself, and wanted us with him, permanently. My frustration grew. Transferring to another university that would post pone my graduation by up to two semesters? Pulling my sister out of her high school in her senior year to a different one? All of this, in our least favorite city in the world, Amman? It was too much. Selfishness wasn’t what I was going through, I managed to convince myself. I just couldn’t live in Amman. It’s another thing I hate. Then one day, we got into contact with a lawyer. This lawyer said that in exactly a month, give or take a week, he’ll have my mother’s correct West Bank ID with him. We were tentative. But a given timeline was better than a forever extended one. My mother chose to go with the lawyer, and suspended talks with Gisha. Unfortunately, this particular lawyer was the definitive kind with upholding standards. He called one Thursday in June, and told my mother that by Sunday the latest, she will finally have her West Bank ID. I had my friends over for a barbeque that day, and I had never felt so relieved, so happy when I heard the news. Sunday came and went. The next day, after calling him multiple times, he finally had the virtue of picking up and informing us that sorry, but there was nothing he could do. We were back to square one.
Talks were resumed with Gisha. Why was it taking so long? The coordination paper only takes a month to be issued! However, it took two months before the proper clerk in the PA told my mother that her coordination paper was rejected. She immediately got in touch with Gisha, who throughout this whole time were dealing with her ID problem, and they agreed to take over the coordination matter. They spoke in such a manner that led my mother to pack her suitcase. This was in August. The green suitcase was smack dab in the middle of her bedroom, and it was almost fully packed. She was hopeful that a breakthrough would come at last. She called my dad and asked him what he wanted from here, and she bought three kilos worth of roasted nuts. I watched as those bags went into the suitcase, then out again a few weeks later. Then some hack from the PA’s Ministry of Interior called to say that there was nothing they could do from their side to change the Gaza ID into a West Bank one. I couldn’t understand where my mother’s optimism was coming from.
Two weeks later, we finally received the long awaited news. The coordination paper was out, and the Israeli military finally, belatedly admitted that they made a mistake in her address in her ID. They issued a permit that would now make it ‘legal’ for her to live in the West Bank, for six months. During that time, her correct ID should hopefully be given to her.They would correct, and this is important-correct not change-the address from Gaza to the West Bank. Now we could all see my father and brother (when he manages to get a few days off from work) in Amman, back and forth, on holidays, occasions, whenever we want. The green suitcase now included fresh roasted nuts and my father’s books for his research work. My mother busied herself at a salon, and came back with a new hairstyle, eye liner, and a smile that was beautiful and young in nature. A year and 3 months apart, reunited again tonight.
Yesterday, I received a call from my parents. Hearing both of their voices, talking excitedly at the same time, in the same room was music to my ears. My sister and I wanted to know the full details-did you both cry? I bet you did! What was it like, seeing other? What did you first think of? Are you holding hands now? Does Mama look any different to you? What did she say about your bald spot? Yes, we’re doing ok, we have enough food for three days. Can’t wait until next week (Eid al-Adha break) where we can be together again!
Our case in general is not a unique one. Who could forget the student studying at Bethlehem University, with only three credits to graduate, being arrested at a checkpoint and deported to Gaza because of her insidious crime of not owning the proper ID card? Or the many husbands and wives torn apart from each other and their children? Israel is running amok with its proud Apartheid stance, and I strongly believe that BDS is the sure path to toe Israel’s line. Israel’s wretched controlling of Palestinians in the Occupied Territories is of course illegal and not an action fitting for its ‘democratic’ nature. With awareness there comes boycott, and with boycott there comes international pressure, and with international pressure, there comes the breakdown and elimination of the Apartheid and occupying laws that have ruled us with an iron fist for too long now. My family’s story is still not complete, as my older brother and father still cannot be granted access to the West Bank. It is especially difficult to be uprooted from your homeland once, imagine how it feels like to go through the process twice.
Justice for Palestine.
Linah Alsaafin is a third-year student at Birzeit University in the West Bank, where she is studying English Literature. She’s been living in Ramallah, West Bank since 2004, and despite being only 50 miles away from her grandparents and uncles in the Gaza Strip, she hasn’t seen them since 2005. Alsaafin was born in Cardiff, Wales, and was raised in England, the United States, and Palestine.
A recent reading of an old article written by the late Edward Said, the well-know Palestinian author, writer and cultural critic, revealed a rare meeting in Paris to discuss the core issues of the Palestine/Israel conflict. The participants were Israel’s rising ‘new’ historians at the time (professor Ilan Pappe, Benni Morris, Itamar Rabinowitch and Zeev Sternhell) and their Palestinian counterparts (Elie Sanbar, Nur Masalha and Said himself).
In the article, Edward Said noted that during the informal discussions which took place, the Israeli side (with the rare exception of professor Pappe) spoke of ‘the need for detachment, critical distance and reflective calm’, while the Palestinian was ‘much more urgent, more severe and even emotional in its insistence on the need for a new history’.
Said’s article touched on the core subject of the meeting: the need to look at the history of the Palestinian/Israeli conflict from the Palestinian point of view and to bring to the fore the events that lead to the 1948 Palestinian Nakba. Despite the attempt by some of the Israeli historians to admit that ‘an injustice’ may have been committed by the Israelis in 1948, the belief amongst most of them was that it was ‘a necessary conquest’. Only professor Pappe spoke with powerful eloquence delivering, in Said’s words, ‘an espousal of the Palestinian point of view and…[providing] the most iconoclastic and brilliant of the Israeli interventions’.
Yes, the Israelis in Paris said, they wanted peace, but, no, they did not inflict the Nakba of 1948 on the Palestinians.
Again, Edward Said wrote, with the exception of professor Pappe, the rest of the Israeli team members, showed a ‘profound contradiction, bordering on schizophrenia that informs their work’. They seemed to hesitate ‘when pushed hard by either Pappe or by the Palestinians’.
The Paris meeting took place in early May 1998. The Oslo euphoria was still in the air and (hold your breath) Benyamin Netanyahu was enjoying his first term as Israel’s Prime Minister (1996-1999). Under him, Israel held all the Palestinian territories occupied by force in 1948, 1949 and 1967 (and for those who need a reminder, that’s ALL of historic Palestine); it had the most formidable military power in the region; it dictated all the rules of occupation on an occupied civilian population in the OPT and it had the luxury of time and space at its disposal.
Slow forward seven years to May 2005, when George W Bush was claiming the mantle of yet another failed peace process (on the back of his criminal invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan) and Sharon was bulldozing his way through the Palestinian Territories with his Apartheid Wall. Professor Pappe wrote a devastatingly insightful article entitled: The Palestine Peace Process: Unlearned Lessons of History. This article echoed the failures of all the previous peace processes since Oslo, but, predictably, all later peace processes launched since his article was written. A lot of processes, it seems, and no peace.
In his article, professor Pappe, with the vision of a sharp historian, warned that ‘unless the US can now begin to pay attention to the lessons of history [read 1948], this new round of peace talks will not only end in failure, but the hopes currently aroused will turn once again into despair, fury and a renewed wave of violence and devastation’. We now know what happened to Bush and to his peace process.
Fast forward to the present day, November 2010, (twelve and a half years after the Paris meeting), and we have Benjamin Netanyahu again as Prime Minister, the illegal occupation of the OPT still continues with even more devastation across the whole landscape of Palestine, the Israeli military machine is pumped up by more nuclear arsenals and (hold your breath again) a new peace process launched by Barak Obama, the U.S President riding high (at the time of his election) on the biggest public support of any previous American president. Yet, no sooner had Obama’s peace process been launched than the quick sands of the Middle East began to swallow it without mercy. Across the Palestinian landscape, and especially in occupied East Jerusalem, more demolition of Palestinian homes, more confiscation of farms, olive groves and more outright property theft of private houses by right-wing Zionist settlers under the protection of Israeli law and its military machine take place as the international community watches helplessly.
What does this all show?
It confirms what we have always believed: that the Zionist project of occupying and holding on to all of historic Palestine was, is and continues to be the prime and sole objective of the Zionist leadership in Israel. For this to happen and in an effort to smooth the path infront of such a colonial juggernaut, Israeli media has been put to sleep and the Israeli military leadership was made the only news outlet spurting out the sanitized version of the news to an indifferent Israeli public.
Since the Paris meeting and since professor Pappe’s prophetic article, the only bright light shining out of Israel (and now out of the UK) remains professor Pappe’s consistent and brave call for a debate on the 1948 Nakba. The other ‘new historians’ who met in Paris, remain mysteriously silent and surprisingly elusive about this issue.
It is clear to the informed reader and observer of the Israeli/Palestinian conflict that nothing will move on any future process to achieve a just and lasting peace in historic Palestine unless the 1948 Nakba, the Return of the Palestinian Refugees and rule of International Law have been embraced and made the basis for the next peace process.
Finally, it is also clear that the Zionist leaders occupying the Israeli Knesset have now become aware that their colonial juggernaut is running out of fuel. So, in order to pump more colonial life into it, they have come up with the racist “Oath to the Jewish Nation”. Its twin tank has been filled with the illegal call to punish all those who commemorate the 1948 Nakba.
A new mirage or a new reality?
Antoine Raffoul
Coordinator
1948: LEST WE FORGET
http://www.1948.org.uk
|
|
 |
| It is true that I am ‘much, much more invested’ in ‘all of this’ than she is. |
By Susan Abulhawa*
I received a lovely letter from a reader who identified herself as a Jewish American. To preserve her anonymity, I’ll call her ‘Sally’. She wrote that she loved Mornings in Jenin, even though the historic backdrop of the narrative did not reconcile with what she learned about Israel growing up. It seemed a heartfelt letter and thus worthy of a similar response. I did not see Sally as a Zionist or even as a Jew. I saw her as a woman, a mother, and a fellow writer. So, I was delighted when she came to my panel debate with Alan Dershowitz at the Boston Book Festival, and when she asked if we could talk more after the event, I was happy to invite her to lunch with a group of friends. She was soft spoken, with a gentle demeanor and through the course of the table conversation, I realized that we also shared similar beliefs regarding some matters of spirituality.
Sally and I continued to correspond occasionally, both privately and with a group of people who were at lunch that day. Soon, she let me know that one of her friends was now questioning her own Zionist beliefs because of something she heard at her Temple. As a result, Sally’s friend had chosen a list of documentaries to watch. Naturally, I asked what those documentaries were and she sent a list of about 12 or so films that were made 1) to show how awful Arabs are, 2) to present rosy pictures of normalization of Israel’s illegal occupation of the West Bank and Gaza, 3) to show what Israel’s aggression against Lebanon was like from an Israeli paratrooper’s perspective!, or 4) to depict mixed Arab and Israeli towns as a paradise where everyone is equal.
I find that when people are truly searching to understand, they can find the right sources, especially in this information age. Likewise, when people are confronted with an uncomfortable reality that jars an existing belief, they can turn around and find what they need to prove that they were right all along. Reading the list that Sally sent to me, it was easy to see what category she fit into. Here is the response that I sent to Sally:
“If I were trying to get a better view of something, i’d at least look for ones made by third party sources who don’t have their own personal beef in the situation. Although with this list, she’ll be able to put her head back in the sand and say she did her research and it all proved she was right before.”
Sally’s response was immediate and indignant. I’ll spare you the full email, but suffice it to say that she was offended that I had “insulted” her dear friend, and she closed with this:
“I know you are much, much more invested in all of this than I and therefore more passionate than I, but please give me the benefit of the doubt before writing words that insult my friend. You may not realize it, but we are two people who will spread our knowledge with others and that can only help you. I am also getting ideas for my next book that can include this message as well.”
Let me start here: “I know you are much, much more invested in all of this than I and therefore more passionate than I.”
It is true that I am “much, much more invested” in “all of this” than she is. How much more? I’d say at least a few centuries more, several generations of grandparents more, many acres of family property more, and one shattered and dispossessed family more. And what is “all of this”? That would be my country. My history. My family. My countrymen. My only heritage and only inheritance. The place where I belong. The place to which I am not allowed to return because of my religion. “All of this” is a collection of refugee camps where people have lived their entire lives in destitution – honorable people, of nobility and peasantry alike, who have been stripped of everything for the sole crime of being born into their own skin.
Now: “but please give me the benefit of the doubt before writing words that insult my friend.”
As if it is not insulting to me that an American woman, with absolutely no ancestral, historic, cultural, or biological ties to the land, should announce to me that she needs to do more research to determine whether or not I indeed have a right to inherit my grandfather’s farm, reserving, of course, her own right to my grandfather’s farm.
But the most egregious insult is this: “You may not realize it, but we are two people who will spread our knowledge with others and that can only help you. I am also getting ideas for my next book that can include this message as well.”
I suppose she misunderstood my intentions in corresponding with her in the first place. Perhaps she thought I was trying to win her over, to “help [me]” spread the word. So let me make one thing very clear, to her and to anyone who isn’t sure if they should maintain that they are entitled to keep Palestine as their summer home away from their own home. You are standing on the wrong side of history. That’s why the ground feels shaky beneath your support of Israel. You are standing on the side of a military occupation that daily strips people of their belongings, of their livelihoods, of their dignity and cuts off the very food they eat, the water they drink. You are on the other side of Nelson Mandela’s legacy. The other side of every native people’s struggle for self-determination, for human rights and for basic human dignity. It is not for me that you educate yourself. It is for your own soul. For your own conscience. I am comfortable on solid ground. It is physically defenseless, but morally impenetrable ground. Whatever research you chose to do and what you choose to learn is for you and only for you. My correspondence was with you, as a woman I thought I could be friends with. I was not asking for your help. But one day you will be asked for something else. Perhaps your children or grandchildren will want you to explain what you did when Palestinians were being wiped off the map so you and every Jew around the world could have dual citizenship, a summer home, if you will, on top of my grandparent’s graves.
* Susan Abulhawa is the author of Mornings in Jenin, a Palestinian story. She contributed this article to PalestineChronicle.com.
band annie's Weblog 