The Victims Of The Victims

November 2002

I have just returned from a fact-finding tour of the West Bank and Jerusalem. We were a small group, which included two church ministers, two Jews and a Moslem. The motive for the visit was our concern about the plight of Palestinians in Israel and The Occupied Territories. We visited a refugee camp, schools, a university, and a rehabilitation clinic, a school for the blind, and numerous human rights and church organisations. We also met the mayors of Bethlehem and Beit Sahur, who described the policies designed by the Israelis to ‘encourage’ Palestinians to leave.

It shocked us to learn how mainstream the comprehensive policy of transfer has become. We should not have been shocked. Already in 1885 Theodor Herzl, the architect of Zionism, had no doubt it would be necessary and he said so – “we shall try to spirit the penniless Arab population across the border” etc. David Ben Gurion at the 1937 Zionist congress repeated the message “Transfer is what will make possible a comprehensive Jewish settlement programme. Jewish power will increase our possibilities to carry out the transfer on a large scale”.

Given the sheer volume of information available on the history of Palestine and Israel – from Herzl’s time until the present day - it is surprising that Palestinians and Israelis have managed to sustain and promote widely different versions of events. A definitive history will eventually emerge, but time is a luxury the Palestinians no longer possess.

At the end of the nineteenth century Palestinians inhabited the whole of the land that runs from north of the northern shores of the Sea of Galilee to the Sinai desert and from the river Jordan in the east to the Mediterranean coast. Today they cling to the hope of regaining title to a viable, sovereign state in just 22% of that land, the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem - the so called Occupied Territories. A series of events, which began at the turn of the last century, were crystallised by the Balfour Declaration in 1917 and lead to the Arab Revolt in 1936, followed by the Nakba (the post Partition ‘catastrophe’) in 1948 - when Zionists embarked on the campaign to ‘transfer’ Palestinians into neighbouring countries - and a succession of wars thereafter; a catalogue of misery, and dispossession on a Wagnerian scale.

The people of Europe and the US seem to have shown little desire to acquaint themselves with the facts. Had they done so, the tragedies of the last fifty years, which continue unabated to this day, might have been averted. The combination of holocaust guilt, national strategic interests and the rise of the consumer society combined to blind us all. To be the victims of the victims is the Palestinians’ misfortune. They have been forced to play out their hand while Israel held the joker of European guilt. The Occupied Territories – all that remains of the once thriving community known as Palestine – is subject to the longest occupation by one country of another since the Second World War and is now the world’s largest prison camp.

The Occupied Territories are dotted with Israeli settlements. These ‘facts on the ground’ constitute 40% of the rump of historic Palestine. They are fortified villages and towns inhabited by settlers from the Jewish Diaspora – a right of return dispossessed Palestinians (some five million in total) have not been granted and one has to ask how it is that a Jew from Brooklyn should possess that right and a Palestinian does not.

We saw how settlements are strategically located. They control the hilltops, key junctions, and water resources. Border crossings and the borders themselves are also under Israel control. Roads and tunnels, exclusively for the use of Israelis, link the settler communities. In the last two years the US contributed $3 billion towards their construction - $3billion! On roads alone!

Evidence of major construction projects is visible everywhere. Settlement building continues inexorably and the day is approaching when these ‘facts on the ground’ will reach sufficient density to raise the question as to whether they will ever be dismantled and - by their presence – will prejudice the Palestinian aspiration of an independent and viable state. Given the demographics of Israel and the Occupied Territories, and the fact that Palestinians will shortly outnumber Israelis, a single unified state is not on the cards. The concept contradicts the central plank of Zionism, the establishment of a Jewish state in the Holy Land. So it is the Occupied Territories – those strips of land conquered by Israel in the1967 Six Day War – which hold centre stage. They are what stand between Palestinian identity and the dustbin of history.

The Al-Aqsa Intifada (uprising) has raged for two years. Two thousand Palestinians have died and forty thousand been injured. Seven hundred Israelis have also been killed. The majority of casualties on both sides are civilian. The Intifada arose out of the frustrations with the implementation – or lack of implementation – of the Oslo peace accords signed in 1993 and as a result of the collapse of the Camp David talks. The myth of the ‘generosity’ of Barak’s non-offer at Camp David, subsequently hyped by Israel, was given the lie by substantially improved outline arrangements at Taba, shortly before the collapse of the Labour government – a detail kept under wraps today by the Israelis. The ‘Swiss Cheese’ format for the future Palestinian State envisaged at Camp David – non-contiguous, economically unviable, and dependent on Israel – could never have been acceptable to Palestinians.

Assassination, massacre and illegal targeting of civilians on both sides, and the destruction of the civilian and cultural infrastructure in the Occupied Territories, continues - the Geneva Convention tossed aside and ignored. Today, over 50% of children in the Occupied Territories suffer from malnutrition, and unemployment exceeds 40%. Due to the Israeli lockdown the economy is dead.

It is hard to imagine what it must be like to be Palestinian and kept under curfew unable to feed the animals or tend the crops for weeks at a time, to be refused permission to leave your town for months even years, to be subject to random and repeated destructive house searches, endless delays and abuse at road blocks - humiliation on a daily basis. School closures and the undisciplined, unaccountable behaviour of the IDF (Israeli Defence Force) are the norm. What was also clear on our visit is that the role of women has changed. As men’s potential for participation in society has been eroded, women have stepped up to the plate. They are strong, determined and resolute, and they are making their voices heard.

During our visit I witnessed all of these injustices. I stood at Israeli roadblocks and checkpoints and watched the mindless aggression of the soldiers, their deliberately insulting behaviour and the studied torpor of their actions - procedures intended to enrage. I went to Beir Zeit University – the Palestinian university campus in Ramallah - and heard how four-year degree courses now take eight to complete. I saw how the IDF protects settlers, but provides no such protection for Palestinians. I saw pipes from a settler community spewing out sewage onto Palestinian land, polluting the ground and poisoning the olive trees. On a bus an IDF soldier told me “no I do not need to look at the passports, all I need is to look at the faces”!! I heard stories of mothers in labour turned back at roadblocks on their way to hospital. I was told how Palestinians at checkpoints, exhausted from standing in line in the heat, have had their food snatched from their hands and thrown to the dogs. I listened to numerous accounts of wanton destruction by tanks and bulldozers – how, with the barrel of its gun turned to the side, a tank can remove a parade of shop fronts without so much as changing a gear, how the huge, hydraulically operated spike at the rear of an armoured Caterpillar bulldozer will rip up the cables and pipes below the surface of a road. All this is done to demoralise and to undermine the dignity of the population and to reduce the viability of Palestinian society. It is designed to weaken their resolve and break their spirit. None of it is random. It is one facet of an over-arching plan to encourage population transfer from the land of their ancestors to Jordan, Syria, and Lebanon - anywhere - and for transfer to occur without the world noticing. During the last two years one hundred and fifty thousand Palestinians have thrown in the towel, packed their bags and moved away – many of them Christians.

Apart from rocketing, bombing and shelling, one of the most traumatic actions to be vested on Palestinians is the policy of house demolition. If a reason for the demolition is actually provided, it is usually couched in incomprehensible ‘legalese’. In the majority of cases the decision is irreversible. Most demolitions take place at night. In East Jerusalem alone some seven thousand are currently outstanding. Families receive no prior notification, the timing is random, and in no particular order (thereby keeping the occupants in suspense, sometimes for years) and no compensation is paid to the owners. The family is given fifteen minutes to gather their belongings before the bulldozer gets to work.

It is appropriate to mention that Palestinians are not free to buy land wherever they wish – even in the Occupied Territories – but when they do, they are required to purchase a building permit at $5000 per application. Often more than one application is needed before the permit is granted. Israelis are exempted from these permit requirements.

One evening my colleagues and I were invited by a Palestinian called Selim to a ‘break fast’ Ramadan meal at the home of one of his relatives in East Jerusalem – the Palestinian quarter. Selim and his family have had their home demolished on three occasions. They ended up in a tent, only to have that bulldozed too – yes, a tent, bulldozed! Can you imagine? Selim’s wife was so traumatised by the episode she has since been unable to speak.

As Yizhar Smilanski, an Israeli author wrote on 6 June 1988

How long does it take to demolish a house? It takes a year to build it. Sometimes a hundred years. And there are some houses that have always been there.

How long does it take to demolish a house? Less time than is spent thinking about whether it should have been demolished.

How much time is spent thinking about whether to demolish a house? Less time than the ring of the phone ordering the demolition.

One shove and its gone. A hole gapes in the familiar landscape and the family that had substance and a name and an address and human beings of all ages and relationships has, in the blink of an eye, become an example. At night no one sees where the destroyed family has gone. No one knows what they are doing now. And where they are sitting – in some corner, uprooted with their possessions, under heavens empty and heavy.
Is anything being noted down about them in some corner now?

In spite of all the injustices the Palestinian spirit remains intact. The extended family and the community are the glue, which holds the fabric of their society together. As Bishop Riah told us at a meeting in the cloisters of St Georges Cathedral, Jerusalem “If Israel intends to continue the push for transfer of the Palestinian population, they will have to provide a million body bags”. He, at least, has no doubt about their resolve.

‘Internationals’, mostly young people from around the world, have come to Palestine during the Intifada to bear witness, to act as human shields and to help in any way possible. Many of them work for NGOs (Non Governmental Organisations) and currently number around three thousand. Their work is vital, but almost as important is that when they return home, they inform the world as to what is going on. It is crucial to engage public opinion in the west, to inform and make people aware of what Zionism means for the Palestinian people. Only with heightened public awareness can pressure be brought to bear on governments, who support Israel’s policies in the Occupied Territories – in particular, the US. It is in the US that the majority of the Christian Right, and Christian Zionists live. They are fundamentalist religious organisations, who interpret the Old Testament literally, and coupled with the Jewish lobby constitute a powerful voting block. However, public opinion is mobilising and politicians – particularly in the US – will listen to that.

We must not forget that there are numerous Israelis, who work for humanitarian organisations, and do not go along with their government’s policies – and we met many. They do fantastic work supporting Palestinian rights, fighting house demolitions, raising funds for reconstruction, providing legal assistance for Palestinians free of charge, bearing witness at checkpoints, writing articles, addressing conferences and pressurising their government – organisations such as Bet-selem, Ta’aysh, Women in Black, and The Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions to name a few. It takes courage to do what they do in the current environment.

So what happens next? War with Iraq and an even harsher regime for the Palestinians while the eyes of the world are concentrated elsewhere? The outlook is bleak for sure, but it is not without hope. The new Islamic government in Turkey may alter the politics of the Middle East, popular support for Palestinians grows around the world, and George Bush won’t survive as President of the US forever. The dream of a Palestinian state lives on. And what is the alternative? For future generations of Israelis to carry the burden of guilt, to live out their lives in fear and, for Palestinians, despair to continue? Let us hope not.

Pray not for Arab or Jew, for Palestinian or Israeli, but rather for ourselves that we might not divide them in our prayers but keep them both together in our hearts.
A prayer by a Palestinian Christian anonymous