Palestine: Nakba – Catastrophe versus Independence

The 15^th May was Nakba Day in Palestine, a commemoration that has several different names. By the Palestinian people it is known as the ‘catastrophe’. By Israel, on the other hand, it is known as Independence Day.

So. Time for a history lesson. Waaaaay back in 1948, while the British were occupying Palestine (and once again my sincerest apologies for my country's complicity in this), it was decided that 'Palestine' should be declared 'Israel' – ignoring the slight problem of the people who actually lived there. So, to solve that problem, the Palestinian people were driven from their homes, their villages and their country (catastrophic!), in order to make place for this new country - Israel (independent!).

Most of these people thought that they were leaving for a couple of weeks. They didn't understand that this was for real - they thought that their homes and lives would be protected by their neighbouring countries, who would intervene to stop the invasion. That didn't work.

It is now 65 years later and the Palestinian people have not returned to their homes. 85% of the Palestinian population became refugees in 1948 – fleeing to the West Bank, to Gaza and to neighbouring countries like Jordan, Syria and Lebanon. Few remained. The catastrophe became known as such. 

People kept the key to their homes when they left, anticipating their swift return – these keys are now treasured possessions – holding memories and a heavy symbolism of the right of return.

So, Nakba Day commemorates the catastrophe and unites the Palestinian people, wherever they are. The right of the refugees to return is absolutely key to there being peace in Palestine. Until now, the they remain displaced or in the diaspora. They are not welcomed by Israel, who terribly conveniently, control all of the borders of Palestine.

Ooh, and there's another thing. If you happen to be Jewish, rather than Palestinian, you are immediately welcome in Israel – whether you are from the USA, Russia the UK or anywhere else, if you are Jewish, you can live here. There is a program for young Jewish people called Birthright tours – a trip to Israel paid for by the Israeli government, including flights, accommodation, food and transport – it’s aimed at strengthening links between Israel and the outside Jewish communities and at encouraging people to live in Israel. This open, warm invitation to Jewish people is in harsh juxtaposition to the complete lack of rights for Palestinian refugees.

Besides their continued treatment of the Palestinian people, the state of Israel also discriminates against many other groups – Tel Aviv is infamous for racism and discrimination against refugees, asylum seekers and immigrants (see pictures by activestills of anti-refugee demonstrations here – scroll through to see more). On a personal level, having recently been to the Israeli Ministry of Interior to ask them to extend my tourist visa, I was asked immediately if I was Jewish. When I said no I was told - before the woman had even looked at my passport – that tourists don't get visa extensions, unless they have a real good reason, like being Jewish. 

In summary, the Israeli government honour the right of people who have never stepped foot in the country before, to come and live in Israel, whilst completely denying the rights of the Palestinians that they expelled.

Ethnic cleansing, pure and simple. But the Palestinian people will take their rights back, whether Israel is willing to give them or not. The Catastrophe one day will transform into Independence.

Palestine: The Kids Aren't Alright - Part II

The past months I’ve spent in Palestine have been dominated by one issue – the arrest of children. Nearly every day I’ve spent in Hebron I’ve seen harassment of children, if not their detention or arrest by the Israeli military.

13 year old being arrested

I’m writing this now, knowing that my ISM comrades are waiting outside a school where a month ago 27 children were arrested, grabbed at random on their way to school. This morning some kids threw stones at the checkpoint; two army jeeps have been parked outside since that, taking photos of the children, looking like they’re preparing to make more arrests. (Ultimately they didn’t arrest anyone – they hassled several children, taking pictures and seemingly checking their hands for traces of stone dirt…?)

I don’t feel the need to defend the children’s actions as they throw stones at the checkpoint. I support the Palestinian right to resist a military occupation in whatever form they decide. But for anyone thinking that kids who threw stones at checkpoints should be arrested, you really need more context. These kids and their parents are harassed by the soldiers every day. They or their friends or their brothers or parents are arrested, detained, blindfolded, beaten.

The occupation is in their faces every minute of every day, their skyline dominated by watchtowers, their streets by checkpoints, the roofs of their homes with cameras, swivelling to watch them all the time. Soldiers and settlers swarm like ants through Hebron. So I agree with Israeli journalist Amira Hass who recently said “throwing stones is the birthright and duty of anyone subject to foreign rule. Throwing stones is an action as well as a metaphor of resistance.”

Add to this legitimate resistance the fact that the Israeli military don’t give a shit who they actually arrest. As long as someone’s in the jeep at the end of the day they’ll fabricate the charges as much as they like – something I know first hand, having been accused of throwing stones, throwing burning tyres and assaulting a soldier (hint, I didn’t do those things, rather I was beaten, gassed and shot at by the soldiers. Pretty sure they didn’t get punished for any of that.)

This is not punishment for a crime, this is to scare small children into being traumatised. I spoke recently with someone from Defence for Children International, who said that the soldiers are now really focused on majorly fucking up the children psychologically, in an attempt to cripple the next generation of resistance. (Okay, so he didn’t say “majorly fucking up” but that’s what he meant.)

So children are arrested regularly. I’ve just compiled the statistics from ISM, EAPPI and CPT (the three international human rights groups in Hebron) of child arrests – there were 66 arrests and detentions of children, aged 7 to 16, between 15^th February and 1^st May. And this is just those that we witnessed, sometimes coming across them at random – who knows how many more there have been.

12 year old being protected by his headteacher as soldiers tried to arrest him

On a related note, my friend Gustav is currently in Givon immigration detention, waiting to be deported – his crime? Well, according to the Israeli military and media he assaulted a soldier and tried to grab his gun. According to EVERYONE else, all he did was object to the arrest of two children, aged 11 and 12 (very restrainedly in my opinion…) Surely what anyone of conscience would do when they saw children being grabbed and manhandled by heavily armed soldiers?

                                         

So what really happened? Settler kids threw sticks at the Palestinian kids who were walking home from school. When the Palestinian kids shouted back, the settlers ran for the army – natch, they immediately came running to the defence of the settlers, grabbing the kids and chucking them against a wall. A crowd gathered, protesting against the arrest of the kids. The headteacher of the school was amazing – she managed to get one of the kids out of the army jeep, although he then got arrested again afterwards. Ultimately Gustav and the two kids were taken away.  

The video tells the story much better than I can. 

After they were arrested, Gustav was taken to a military base with the two kids. Although he was blindfolded, he knew the kids were nearby because he could hear them crying, screaming, begging to be let go.

Gustav’s now in prison and is planning to resist deportation - in protest that he has not been given any chance to defend himself (he wasn’t taken to court, he was taken directly for deportation, despite it being entirely evident that he did not commit any of the crimes he has been accused of) and in protest against the child arrests.

The kids were released later that day. They are our next-door neighbours…yesterday I watched them from the window – they were playing and laughing. I wonder if they are so calm at night-time when they’re alone, I wonder if they will ever be the same. I never thought about being arrested when I was 10, 11, 12. In fact, I can’t remember really thinking about anything particularly important at all.

During one of the last child arrest that I witnessed, we were attacked by settlers when we tried to intervene. The boy was 13 and was blindfolded and moved between several small checkpoint boxes. The settlers were concerned only that we, international activists, were present on “their” street – they didn’t spare a thought for the children.

We have a new brigade of soldiers in Hebron and I can only hope that they will not love arresting children as much as the last lot. I could write much more about this, but I find myself unable to think about it any more – it’s too much. And this is from someone who doesn’t even LIKE children particularly.

Palestine: Same game, different rules. 

So. In the last few days in Hebron, there have been a few minor inconsistencies in the Israeli authorities reaction to events and treatment of perpetrators of alleged crimes. And by minor I actually mean fucking massive.


I have drawn a beautiful flowchart to demonstrate the apparent decision making process in one particular scenario.

The number of child arrests in Hebron has massively increased over the last week or so. First I blogged about two children who were arrested at a demonstration...that wasn't enough for the Israeli army in Hebron. A few days later, another kid was arrested and held inside an even smaller checkpoint box, along with one soldier, with the door locked.

A day later, the soldiers laid traps around a school, while children were on their way in to school. The children were aged 7-15. Thirty of them were arrested, all on charges of throwing stones. (yeah, I'm sure they definitely recognised all thirty specific children. Hah.) See a B'tselem video of the kids being arrested below. They were beaten. As of last night, 10 are still in the police station.

On the very same day, settlers were accused of throwing rubbish onto Palestinian property (the rubbish in question was a whole load of manure-covered hay from their farm, not just a snotty tissue or a coke can or sommat.) When the Palestinians arrived to see this rubbish and complained, they had stones thrown at them by settler children, so they called the Israeli authorities, who have civil and military control of this part of Hebron. The soldiers arrived and immediately confiscated all of the ID cards of the Palestinians present for several hours, hassling and intimidating them whilst laughing and joking with the settlers. Nothing was done about the rubbish, nor the allegations of stone throwing.

Now I'm certainly not saying that I want the settler children arrested in the same brutal way that the Palestinian children were. I don't think anyone should be treated that way. But the Palestinians have no recourse to justice - the Israeli army will never be on their side, so they have nowhere to turn.

Next example of totally fair decisions: Shuhada Street has been blocked to Palestinians since the year 2000, when it was decided that for the "protection" of the 500 settlers living in illegal settlements in the centre of Hebron, the whole of the main Palestinian market street should be shut down. Shops were closed by military order, people were driven out of their homes.

On Wednesday, there was a demonstration on Shuhada Street. Activists wearing Obama (he's visiting currently) and Martin Luther King masks walked down the road, calling for civil rights and an end to apartheid. They were chanting "WE HAVE A DREAM" when settlers attacked the demonstration and the army arrived.

• Army response to Palestinians walking down the street? Attacks, one broken nose, punching, kicking, dragging, arrests. 

• Army response to Settlers attacking Palestinians? Attacks, one broken nose, punching, kicking, dragging, arrests...of Palestinians, naturally. Settlers are free to do whatever they like.

This post was inspired by Adalah's new database of discriminatory laws. They've compiled more than 50 laws which discriminate between Israelis and Palestinians, so really this is just a tiny glimpse of the bigger picture.

The playing field needs to be levelled, so that all the schoolchildren can get to play on it together, rather than half of them being arrested. 

Palestine: Terrorists? Or terrified?

Rabbit attack!

Today I watched a group of kids being chased by a giant rabbit…and then them chasing the rabbit in return. (Fiiine, shatter the illusion, it was a guy in a rabbit suit, next you’ll be telling me Father Christmas doesn’t exist either.) In the sunshine, there were drums, singing and laughter. A celebration of fun and childhood.

It felt a million miles from what I had seen the day before…people being chased by soldiers, stones being thrown at the army. Instead of drums, there were percussion grenades, rubber bullets and tear gas. Instead of singing and laughter, there were yells and screams.
Another demonstration by Palestinians in Hebron stemming from outrage at the killing of a man by Israeli soldiers in a nearby refugee camp the week before.

We were monitoring the situation, recording the soldiers consistently using excessive force, breaking into houses and invading Palestinian areas, in which they are supposed to have no jurisdiction under international law. The soldiers were repeatedly running after protesters, attempting to make arrests.



Soldiers taking a break leaning on blocks with "Open Shuhada Street" and "Welcome to Apartheid Street" slogans

Mid afternoon, from a side street I saw soldiers emerging - victorious! They had finally caught some of the ‘terrorists’ who were demonstrating in such an unruly way. Shocked, I saw that the people they were dragging were kids. Small kids.  

I was frozen momentarily... even though I KNOW that children are detained and interrogated regularly by the Israeli military, I hadn’t anticipated what it would actually look like. The kids were crying. They were scared.

It felt like a personification of the occupation – small child versus heavily armed soldiers.

They took the two kids, along with a Palestinian man who was also arrested, towards the portacabin which comprises the checkpoint between the Palestinian and Israeli controlled areas in Hebron. It’s a metal box only a few metres long, with a metal detector over each door. The three Palestinians were dragged inside by the soldiers and the door was shut behind them.

Another activist and I ran the long way around – not allowed to go through the checkpoint, due to its apparent secondary use as a detention centre. Gasping, on our arrival on the other side, we saw that the checkpoint box was completely closed. The children were still inside, with who knows how many soldiers.



You can see man with blindfold inside the checkpoint

The commander refused to let us see the children. They even went so far as denying that anyone was inside (unless they keep a secret portal to another world in the checkpoint, I suspect that they were indeed inside)…but when they opened the door a crack I saw someone blindfolded inside, surrounded by soldiers.

A half hour of tense waiting ensured, on-edge, my mind running over all the reports I have read about child detention - beatings, torture and mistreatment. Eventually, a jeep pulled up. The checkpoint door was opened and the arrested Palestinian man was brought out, his hands ziptied and his eyes blindfolded.

Shortly afterwards, one of the boys was pulled out, his hands also ziptied. He looked terrified and was crying, begging the soldiers to let him go. One of the soldiers was saying “Shou?” ("What?”) over and over to the kid, mocking his crying. Looking into the faces of the soldiers, I couldn’t believe what they were doing. They avoided my eyes and my questions. The second child was also bundled into the jeep - see video below of the arrests.
 

I could do nothing…surrounded by soldiers, there was nowhere to run, nothing to do to help them. The jeep drove away, bearing its load of terrified children. I had to take myself away from the situation and do some very deep breathing and slow counting before I reacted in a decidedly NOT non-violent way to the soldiers.

Following up the case with the International Committee of the Red Cross, they said that the children should be freed soon. But we still haven’t been able to get confirmation.

I know who I feel is 'terrorist' and who 'terrified' in this situation.

 

Oh, AND the fuckers shot me in the hip with a plastic coated steel bullet. UGH.

Palestine: Offering the olive branch...met with teargas...

Shamelessly taking credit for planting olive trees.

Farming is not necessarily what could be called my strong point (as claimed by Al Jazeera at 2.10 - bastards). Lucky then that when we were planting trees in Asira this week, there were only a couple of spades, leaving me to do important work such as observing, coordinating and supervising tree planting (aka sitting). Oh and soldier/settler watch, natch.

We were planting trees for Rachel Corrie, an ISMer who was killed in Gaza by the Israeli army ten years ago on Saturday, and to replace trees destroyed in previous years by the Israeli army or settlers - this happens every year and is devastating to Palestinian economy and culture, both of which are strongly based around the olive tree.

Commander ordering us to yallah.

Our presence on Palestinian owned land was, as usual, considered pesky by the army - they want that hillside all to themselves, having recently built a military tower on it (annexing more Palestinian land, of course). The commander, who arrived looking flash/ridiculous in wraparound sunglasses took it upon himself to tell us off and to get off his goddamn lawn.

He pointed out that of course, if the landowners applied through the appropriate channels, they would of course be granted permission, and of course, would be allowed to access their land without hindrance from the army.

Tell that to the shepherd who was beaten by soldiers and ordered off the exact same land the week before. He had permission to be there. The people of Asira know that that the outcome is the same whether they apply for permission or not. However, threatened with arrest or violence from the army, we decided to move down the hill and plant in an area slightly further down the hill. This – arbitrarily it seems – was deemed acceptable to the soldiers.

However, the settlers from nearby Yizhar did not seem satisfied with the compromise. So they decided to come and tell us off slightly more strictly - running down the hill, masked, they pelted stones at us by hand and with slingshots. Some of the Palestinians in our group ran to fend them off, trying to throw stones UP the hill at the attackers. I suspect none of those reached their targets.

Settlers from Yizhar arrive on the scene

It was then that the settler’s mates, the soldiers, then made a re-entry onto the scene, firing teargas and rubber bullets.

Of course, they targeted the real threat – olive tree planting farmers (and tree planting supervisors, such as myself). Luckily, this time no one was hurt, nor arrested and eventually the settlers and soldiers left, giving us a chance to admire the beauty of the Palestinian spring! Man, we sure look like a threat, I'd attack us too. Defs.

Palestine: Mohammed Asfour

Today I met David. David is a friendly chap who called out to a group of lost-looking ajnabiya (foreigners) in his village of Aboud and asked them “do you need help?” We were looking for a bathroom - with his Palestinian instinct for generosity, he instantly said “my house is your house, of course, please come in.”

We entered the house, asked constantly, do we want juice, water, tea, coffee, do we need anything else? David is smiling and laughing throughout. Then he asks us why we are in the village. For the funeral, we say.

“Oh. Yes.” David says, “Mohammed was my friend, we used to watch the football together.”

I didn’t know Mohammed, yet I still crumple inside at this reminder that until a very short time ago, Mohammed Asfour had been living and breathing. He was 23 years old.

The funeral procession snaking through Aboud

Until he was shot in the head with a rubber coated steel bullet in the head by an Israeli soldier two weeks ago, during a demonstration in solidarity with hunger striking Palestinian prisoners.

Until yesterday, he had been fighting for his life in an Israeli hospital. But he died.

Despite all of this, his friend David is being a most obliging host. He says that there will be clashes after the funeral. They won’t let the soldiers into the village, he says, but the shabab will most certainly go to meet them.

And we all know that the soldiers are there, looming over the funeral. How? Because we passed by them as we entered the village. The procession of Palestinian-flag adorned cars following Mohammed’s body from Ramallah had to avoid the jeeps on the road, as well as the heavily armed, ready-and-waiting soldiers, police and border police, staring at us as we went past. Adding insult to what was already a murderous injury.

Mohammed’s body was borne through the crowd, carried on the shoulders of his friends, who cried as they shouted and chanted…my heart, my blood, Mohammed, you are loved by God.

Before he is even in the ground, we hear tear gas being fired. The young men of the village move towards the entrance, towards the soldiers, towards the gas, towards the rubber-coated steel bullets that come streaming down the road at them continuously for the rest of the day. The gas is strong, people are choking and falling to the ground.

Bulldozers and skunk water truck loom over the village.

A bulldozer is driven into the village, destroying the roadblocks designed to stop the soldiers invading. It chomps through the burning tyres, the upturned skip, the many rocks. Then they send in the skunk truck, intending to spray us all with stinking water… the smell will linger for days outside people’s homes.

Eventually we leave, driving through the group of soldiers at the top of the hill – to go another way would take a lot longer, so we risk it. They continue shooting and we all duck down inside the car as we hear bangs around us. 

Driving past, escaping the funeral, I can see the faces of the soldiers. I can see soldiers eating snacks. These soldiers will go home and watch the football with their friends. Mohammed will not. I see the snipers lying on the ground, aiming their guns at young, angry men who are throwing stones at them, demanding that their occupiers get out of their village. 

Mohammed is the sixth Palestinian to be killed by Israeli army shooting this year alone. 

Palestine: Once more unto the blog, dear friends

So, I am reviving this blog, as I have today returned to occupied Palestine in order to continue working with the International Solidarity Movement (ISM).

Entering was surprisingly easy, and I was only asked what the purpose of my travel was, and where I was planning to travel to. My three month visa was immediately granted. Suckers.

Look out occupation.