Life Under Occupation

Today we travelled to Ramallah, a bustling and thriving Palestinian city inside the West Bank. We traveled past the separation wall and through “no man’s land”, a buffer zone between E. Jerusalem and the West Bank and on into Ramallah, passing the Qalandria refugee camp on the way. We had a very full day of meetings with a variety of Palestinians.

First we met with Omar Baghouti and Dr. Gabi Baramki, both with the Palestinian Campaign for Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PCABCI). Dr. Baramki is the retired president of Bisreit University, the premier university in Palestine. He spoke both from his professional experience as the president of a university, trying to run a university in an occupied country and from his personal experience as the son of a Palestinian refugee, whose home was taken by the Israelis in the 1967 war and turned into a museum, with no compensation to the family and no concept of any right of return on the part of that family. Under occupation, the university in Palestine has had a very hard time managing to stay open due to the various ways the Israelis have made it difficult if not impossible for professors and students to get to school. In some cases the Israelis have simply closed the school for periods of time, in others, they have de facto closed it by putting up such complicated and cumbersome and arbitrary roadblocks that neither the professors nor the students can get to school on time for classes and the school has to shut down. Omar Baghouti, a Palestinian who spent many years in the US, getting his undergraduate degree at Columbia, and Dr. Baramki spoke at some length about the way this terrible conflict plays out in academia. Baghouti stated bluntly that there are no “liberal” or “left wing” academics in Israel and, notwithstanding the Jewish value system in which education is revered, the Israelis have done everything to make the operation of the Palestinian university difficult and at times impossible. His organization polled all the academics in Israel shortly after the second Intifada in 2000 regarding the problems students and professors were having crossing the checkpoints to get to school. Many of them lived in E. Jerusalem, not far from Ramallah as the crow flies, but literally light years away once you throw in the ordeal of getting past checkpoints. When they tried to get the support of Israeli academics to institute a policy allowing university students and professors some kind of preferred status for getting through checkpoints, only 400 professors out of 9000 in the country expressed support.

Omar spoke at length about the policies of the Israeli government towards the Palestinians, making a strong case that what is happening is apartheid, plain and simple. The whole foundation of Israeli society as he sees it is based on racism, the privilege and preference for one group of people at the expense of another. He works for an organization that is trying to tackle the apartheid in Palestine much the same way that apartheid in South Africa was handled, by instituting boycotts, sanctions and divestiture. His organization is seeking the support of organizations around the world to boycott Israeli products, to divest from companies doing business in Israel and the imposition of sanctions to pressure the Israelis to begin to honor the human rights of the Palestinians in the occupied territories. The US Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation, which is a co-sponsor of this trip, is spearheading a boycott of Motorola products, since Motorola does a huge amount of business with Israel. The campaign is dubbed “Hang up on Motorola.” Omar exhorted us to participate in the boycott, to go to the website of his organization, www.PACBI.org to find lists of companies to boycott. As I listened to these two men, I heard a lot of frustration and pain, anger at the Israeli policies and no patience whatsoever with the Israeli party line about security concerns. Omar, who lived in the United States for 8 years, also stated quite bluntly that there is no freedom of the press in the US, that US media completely parrot the Israeli party line and never report accurately on what is really going on in Palestine. This was to be a theme echoed by everyone we met today. For me it is becoming the theme of this whole trip – US complicity in the human rights violations being carried out here by Israelis against Palestinians and complete distortion in US media when reporting on the conflict in the Middle East. Americans are basically clueless about what is really happening over here and both our government and our media make sure we don’t know the true story.

Next we met with a Palestinian American businessman, Sam Bahour. He was born and raised in Youngstown, Ohio and moved to Palestine as a young adult because he wanted to reconnect with his family roots and was concerned about the conditions over here for Palestinians. He basically reiterated what we have been hearing from everyone else about the human rights violations carried out by Israel against Palestinians, and as a businessman, the ridiculous number of obstacles, roadblocks (both literal and figurative) that he has to go through to conduct business here and his total disgust with the US where this conflict is concerned.

After lunch we went to Al Haq, a Human Rights activist organization that documents human rights abuses by Israeli and Palestinian authorities and engages in advocacy for Palestinians. We spoke with a young researcher in their office who is writing a paper on the extent to which current Israeli policies constitute a regime of apartheid, as defined in international law. It is a compelling argument and one that is being articulated by academics around the world (outside the US and Israel to be sure).

From there we went to a coffee shop where we had the wonderful experience of meeting with two young Palestinian women. Tala Abu Rahme, a Palestinian student, 24 years old, currently doing a Masters in Fine Arts at American University in Washington DC, an accomplished poet, and Sanabel Hassan, a 26 year old who works for human rights organizations in Palestine, a graduate of Bisreit University in Ramallah. These young women were eloquent in talking about their experiences growing up in Ramallah under Israeli occupation. Both have experienced the humiliation of the checkpoints – Sanabel told us that until two years ago her face was badly scarred from the tear gas an Israeli soldier sprayed on her when she was going through a checkpoint. She has also been used by Israeli soldiers as a “human shield” three times in her short life, standing between the soldiers and Palestinians as bullets whizzed past her face. Both of these girls have experienced a level of violence and humiliation at the hands of a hostile authority the likes of which students their age in the United States could not even imagine. In 2002, shortly after the Second Intifada began, the Israelis invaded Ramallah with tanks and guns and stayed in the city for 28 days during which time the Palestinian citizens were under house arrest 24 hours a day for 28 straight days. Tala was confined to her home with her family, unable to leave except for three hours a day every so often to get food, with Israeli tanks right outside their home and the sound of bombs exploding all around her neighborhood. Sanabel, whose family live close to the E. Jerusalem border, was unable to return home when the invasion began, and wound up spending that 28 days all alone in her student house, cut off from her family, without sufficient food, with no electricity and forced to fend for herself as she spent 28 days in a form of solitary confinement. Tala spoke of her experiences as a student in the US, and of the complete ignorance and insensitivity of American students who have absolutely no idea what her life in Palestine has been like nor any comprehension whatsoever about the Palestinian side of the conflict. She was very eloquent about her rage every time she goes through the checkpoint, and how she constantly tells herself to remember that those Israeli soldiers, who are all of 18 or 19 years old, are human beings and that she must never forget her humanity even as she finds them forgetting hers. We asked these girls about the arguments we heard from the Hebrew University students last night re this conflict and Tala in particular just exclaimed in disgust about the ignorance of these young Israelis who have no idea at all what the Palestinians are going through and no appreciation whatsoever of the privileged status that they enjoy in their own country and the world. She is a remarkable young woman – articulate, smart, funny, artistic, expressive, optimistic and determined not to let the forces of occupation rob her of her humanity and dignity, no matter how hard they try. It was sobering to listen to the experiences these girls and their families have lived with for so many years. In a lot of ways, an entire population is suffering from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and they don’t even know it.

Our last event of the day was going through the Qalandria checkpoint on foot. This checkpoint is at the border of East Jerusalem and the road leading to Ramallah, all of which is part of the West Bank. But E. Jerusalem is considered by the Israelis to be part of Israel and so those who have identity cards allowing them to enter are a privileged group. The Wall goes right through this area, cutting Palestinians off from other Palestinians, and making it difficult if not impossible for Palestinians to get to their jobs, or to doctor’s appointments and the like. The Qalandria checkpoint is one of the newest and most up to date checkpoints. When you enter, it looks like the entrance to a prison. You walk through a narrow passage, literally no wider that an average adult, with bars on both sides and a roof of metal bars/slats overhead. It is truly like walking through a cage. You then enter an area where there are a series of iron turnstiles that are electronically operated by Israeli soldiers on the other side of the turnstile, inside soundproof, bulletproof rooms. While waiting to go through the turnstile, you are closed in another prison like room, with metal bars for walls on all sides, penning people in like cattle. Those wanting to go through the checkpoint gather in crowds around these turnstiles which are operated by the guards, whom you cannot see, who only allow three people through at a time. When you get through the turnstile, you put your bags, belt, etc on the belt to go through the scanner like at an airport, you walk through the scanner, (again like at an airport) and put your identity document on the window for the guard to see. Palestinians all have identity cards and only certain kinds of cards permit access into E. Jerusalem. Those who don’t possess the right kind of card can apply for permission to pass on a particular day, but even that pass may not be honored. The checkpoints are supposed to be open at certain hours, but the Israelis will close various checkpoints with no warning, arbitrarily, forcing Palestinians to go miles to another one. If the guard feels so inclined he may detain a person at the checkpoint and interrogate them, holding them sometimes for hours. For us, the experience was painless. With American passports and visas, obviously tourists, the guards had no interest in delaying us at the checkpoint. But when we talked to Palestinians for whom crossing that checkpoint is a twice daily ritual, sometimes taking hours, making them late for work or school or causing them to miss medical appointments, we understood how completely abominable is this system. One member of our group later remarked, “that whole checkpoint has the architectural feel of Auschwitz.” Very true indeed. It was creepy and depressing. We were all so aware of our own privileged status, but heartbroken at the ordeal that these innocent Palestinian civilians deal with every day of their lives. And I could not help but think again, “those who have been abused become abusers” and that is what Israel is doing here. Those checkpoints are like the concentration camps of Europe. They rob Palestinians of human dignity, treat them like cattle or prisoners, make their lives impossible, complicated and stressful and send a constant message to the Palestinians that you are not equally human with us Israelis. It is truly a travesty.

We did have some time during the middle of the day to walk around Ramallah. I must say, it taxed my Manhattanite skills for navigating urban crowds! The streets are very narrow and the crowds are intense. Music blares from shops, merchants call out to passersby, people are coming and going in every direction and the streets are very narrow yet crowded with cars, trucks and buses. The smells and sounds and hustle bustle atmosphere is electric although somewhat exhausting! Ramallah is the most prosperous city in the West Bank and yet to Western eyes, it is dirty, run down looking, gritty, grimy and worn. And yet, despite its less than elegant appearance there is an energy and vitality that is inescapable. There is life and energy and excitement in the city and we found, as tourists, that the people in the city were very interested in welcoming us and engaging us in conversation. A number of women asked us where we were from and welcomed us to their city and wished us a good day. Street vendors bantered with us and we had a great time walking around and soaking up the local atmosphere. We all noticed how very different was the atmosphere from that in Jerusalem. More relaxed, more friendly, more engaging.

So, there was our day. Very full, very rich, really way too much to digest at once. So much to think about. So much to pray about. Pray for the peace of Jerusalem, says the psalmist. Amen.