From tear gas to maqluba
Feigning bravado and an
ambivalent sense of group confidence, our delegation sets off for the West Bank
village of Bil’in (see the documentary Five Broken Cameras), for the weekly
demonstration against the separation wall. There is no direct travel service on
Fridays, so this involves several taxis and lots of negotiation. A group of Palestinians from Ramallah
who hold annual conventions, (usually in someplace like Detroit), for all the
former inhabitants and descendants of the city, is celebrating in Ramallah this
year and they are unusually joyful, keeping their memories alive and grappling
with today’s ugly realities. One
uninitiated 20 something was shocked to learn that there are Palestinian
refugees, camps, and other inconveniences his protective and perhaps
traumatized parents had wished to avoid. Black flags and posters are everywhere
portraying a strong man breaking his chains over his head, in solidarity with
the prison hunger strikers that are very much on everyone’s minds. We hit one
massive traffic jam, a combo of a checkpoint and a wedding and an army of
frustrated testosterone driven drivers.
I think how much our
delegation has really been traveling in a bubble. We have had calls from a variety of frantic family members,
basically demanding, “Do you know where you are and what is happening
there????” Our next door neighbors, Syria, Iraq, and Lebanon are imploding in various
dangerous ways, the Israeli press and the Palestinian street are full of calls
to avenge the missing Yeshiva boys and as usual every Palestinian is a suspect. Every cab driver we talk to thinks this
whole episode is a ploy to give the IDF reservists some target practice before
the big post-Kerry bang. We have had almost no checkpoint delays, no anxious
humiliating interrogations (expect of course for our Palestinian leader, but
that is normal for her which just
shows how distorted normality is around here). We slept through the night house
raids, were too far away to hear the first Israeli raid in 14 years at Birzeit
University which involved rounding up (and emasculating) the university
security guards and confiscating flags, banners, and posters from the student
union, as well as searching the campus. And we live with our unconscious mostly
white American privilege, presumptions, and passports that allow us to walk the
streets of cities that our Palestinian hosts can only dream of. Why we are not hated is still unclear
to me, but the warmth and generosity is truly genuine.
So today we set off for
some blunt reality, an unarmed resistance march against the separation wall in
the town of Bil’in. Mohammed Khatib, one of the leaders of the organizing committee
wearing a tee shirt that says “Water and salt = dignity,” a reference to the
diet of the hunger strikers in Israeli jails, meets us at the entry to the town.
He explains that Bil’in has 2,000 inhabitants, and another 2,000 living
elsewhere, and 5,000 dunams of land. 3,500 was confiscated by the wall, 1,500
returned after a long struggle. Soon we are sitting under a tarp on plastic
chairs in his patio, sipping mint tea, and admiring his beautiful stone polished
home that he has poured years of work into creating. I see a modern kitchen, a sunken living room with a poster
of a young Arafat, and an amazing fireplace carved into an ancient dead olive
tree. His five-ish year old daughter coyly joins him, wearing a traditional
embroidered dress. Our cab driver joins us too, this is after all a grassroots
struggle.
The story of Bil’in is
the common tale of land confiscation, the building of a wall starting in 2004,
the massive growth of an expanding Jewish settlement, Modiin Illit, (later we
can see the cranes and high rises).
In 2005 the Palestinian villagers started to get creative, tying
themselves to their olive trees, placing themselves on the land in cages,
coffins, and shocking the Israeli soldiers with their nonviolent resistance. This drew media attention but no
changes on the ground. They built a caravan on the land taken by the
settlements (reminiscent of the right wing Jewish hill top youth that often
stake out claims before the official settlement is approved) which slowed the
construction; the IDF said that mobile homes are illegal (except of course for
Jews). So in one frenzied night, they built a fixed home with a door and
windows, to the appropriate specifications, and this stopped settlement growth
for one year. Ultimately the
Israeli construction company actually went bankrupt. (A victory for our side!) Then
the route of the wall was changed to return some of the Palestinian land and
the settlement construction resumed.
The Palestinians are still not allowed to work their land that they won
back, though they built a (truly shocking) brightly colored playground on it, (you
never know what these terrorists will do) so I am not yet calling this a victory,
especially since the battle is really about the end of the occupation.
Mohammed has a sense of
humor born of struggle. While much of the world was focused on the World Cup in
Brazil, (sorry sports fans), he helped organize a soccer match in front of the
Ofer Prison where prisoners are on a serious hunger strike. He was arrested a
day before an action to block highway 443 which cuts through the West Bank and
when the police asked him for information, he referred them to social media, (I
always worry that the FBI and Shin Bet just sit in their offices reading our
facebook posts). When they were
surprised by the action, he said, “There are no secrets, but there are
surprises.”
Today many will not be at
this march because there was a call to pray and march at Beitunya in support of
the Ofer prisoners. We set
off in a row of battered cars, a motley crew of muscular looking Palestinian
men with flags, press with large cameras and face masks, women of all
varieties, internationals, and Israelis, and parked under some olive
trees. After a short discussion on
safety (avoid getting bonked on the head by a tear gas canister, do not rub
your eyes, do not run, cover your face with a scarf-done! do not panic, tear
gas will not kill you, it will only make you feel like you are about to die,
your eyes will tear and your throat will burn, sniff an onion, an alcohol swab,
anything with a smell, and DO NOT walk down wind. The IDF only use rubber bullets when stones are thrown and
nobody dies from a stun grenade.) That seemed like a pretty long list to me,
but we set off. We began the march down the dusty, hot, rocky road, my brain
giving me fairly strong messages about getting the hell out of there ASAP and
my legs inspired by the struggle against a long list of historical injustices. My knees were sort of in between.
Before a stone could be
thrown, the tear gas started and was blown up the hill to the stragglers like
me, I cannot imagine how it felt at the front of the line. Europeans remarked
that this tear gas seemed much more powerful than they were used to and others
mentioned that Israelis are always field testing new weaponry. Great! I found myself a cluster of
olive trees and some other less than brave protestors, and tried to remember
the rules of engagement. There
were single canisters and then showers of canisters, the occasional stun gun
(very loud boom) and then rubber bullets.
I am told that the Jewish settlers on the other side of the wall, cheer
the soldiers on and play inspiring music while they do battle with the
dangerous terrorists on the other side who would like to plant their
vegetables, tend their olive olives and otherwise lead normal lives. If the
wind (and the tear gas of course) is blowing towards the settlers, (one can
only hope), then the IDF moves more quickly to rubber bullets. The settlers consider the blow back as
some sort of badge of courage in the fight for Zionist domination. (This I
confess is my own theory). I make
my way across the rocky field to where people even more frightened than I are
watching, when tear gas spirals through the air and lands 10 feet from me. This keeps happening, reminding me
again that there is actually no safe place and that the soldiers have been
known to come into the town and throw tear gas into people’s homes. Last week one child was shot with a
rubber bullet and injured. The important thing to remember about a rubber
bullet is that it is indeed a bullet. Such lovely people, these soldiers, “the most moral army in
the world.” Sometimes the hot
canisters start small brush fires in the dry grass.
The demonstrators feel
that the soldiers have been more vigorous due to all the tension around the
missing boys, (remember not a single stone was thrown), and the aggressive
incursions and arrests that are going on all over the West Bank. Everyone talks about how these weapons
are made in the US and that the solution to the conflict lies in changing the
policies of the US. Congress, are you listening? This is really important if
you can take time off from fundraising and getting ready to bomb the next
people in need of democracy!
The demonstration finally
winds down, although that burning feeling in the throat drags on for a while
and suddenly we find ourselves invited for lunch at another organizer’s house
where his wife just happens to have maqluba (remember that chicken and rice
dish from yesterday?) and salad for some 15 people, (she must shop at the Palestinian version of Costco). So we
gather around, eat to our hearts content, buy Palestinian embroidery from the
women’ cooperative, and struggle to make sense out of the insanity of
occupation, land grabs, racism, hatred, entitlement, military hardware, and the
power of determined resistance by ordinary people desperately trying to create
political change and to build the kind of lives that we take for granted.
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