Why? Nick Pretzlik January 2003 During my stay in Palestine the only people to shoot at me were Israeli soldiers. The only person to threaten me was an Israeli Jew. Strange - it is supposed to be the Palestinians who are the villains of the piece. Rain greeted my arrival at Ben Gurion airport; sheets of it and this continued without respite for two days. Then, as if at the push of a button, the clouds parted, the gloom lifted, and the sun appeared. It has stayed that way ever since. If only events on the ground could change so rapidly. Palestinians must be the most misrepresented people on earth. Ejected from the land of their ancestors, seven and a half million now reside in the Occupied Territories (the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem) and in Lebanon, Syria and Jordan. Many survive in squalid refugee camps, some of them are there since their country was partitioned in 1947, others since the 1967 war. One million remain in Israel itself, second-class citizens in a Jewish state. News from Palestine is 'managed', sifted and refined by the Israelis. The public at large, even the Israeli public, have been kept unaware of what has been going on, of the scale of the disaster and injustice vested on the Palestinian people. The truth is now emerging and, albeit at the twenty-third hour, public opinion is changing - not in Israel yet - but in the wider world. For many Israelis the old slogans still apply - "the Occupied Territories are a war zone", "Palestinians missed their chance at Camp David" (a classic example of Israeli positive spin on an inequitable deal) and "Palestinians are terrorists who hate Israel". Travelling around the West Bank and down into Gaza I have yet to meet a single foreign journalist apart from one Reuters photographer and a number of Middle Eastern camera teams covering cultural events. There are a few committed souls doing their free-lancing best, but getting their stories published in mass circulation newspapers or accepted by television outlets is almost impossible. If a semi-retired business man like me, fifty seven years old and not speaking Arabic, can find families to stay with in refugee camps, such as Dheishe to the south of Bethlehem and Khan Yuni in the Gaza Strip, why aren't 'pukka' journalists doing the same? Are they not interested in the lives of Dheishe's twelve thousand inhabitants? It is Palestine's third largest camp and dates back to 1948. Are they not concerned at the camp's 84% unemployed level, at the misery of lives lived without hope in barely humane conditions, about the regular IDF (Israeli Defence Force) incursions, random shootings and house demolitions? To see the sea at Gaza on a sunny winter's afternoon is a magical experience. The join between beach and sea is so sharp and so true it seems to have been cut with a knife. The green of the waves at the water's edge merging into deepest blue, the sweeping arc of a cloudless sky, the softness of the light all combine to provoke a surge of adrenalin and to make the heart beat faster at such a tantalising glimpse of another world. How can it be that the camps in Gaza no longer attract interest? At least one Palestinian was killed and several wounded every night that I was in Khan Yunis - shot from perimeter towers like ducks on a pond or killed in their beds by random shelling. From eleven at night until four in the morning shooting continued uninterrupted. Wouldn't the world be interested to hear about the latest Israeli watchtower design? A brilliantly simple concept, it is a world-beater. Take the largest sky crane available, attach a basket - effectively an armoured platform - by cable to a hook on the end of the crane's extendable arm and hoist the basket one hundred feet into the air. Make a couple of snipers comfortable, give them plenty of ammo and a plateful of sandwiches and, hey presto, you have mobility and efficiency and boy can you stir things up. "Stirring things up" is really the point. So much of IDF policy is designed to disrupt Palestinian's lives, in short to play mind games. When life is unpredictable and dangerous it wears people down and diminishes their resolve. Closures and curfews too can have that effect especially if they are 'managed'. Bethlehem, for example, has been under curfew for six out of the last twelve months and during that time the application of curfew has been purposefully chaotic - four days curfew, one day open, three days curfew, three hours open, five days curfew, two days open and so on; whether to open or close always determined at very short notice. How do schools cope with that? How do hospitals and their staff cope with that? How do Hospital patients deal with that? Well sometimes they die - needlessly - and sometimes mothers give birth by the side of the road in front of the Israeli checkpoint. If alongside these 'games' the infrastructure of a community is eradicated - underground cabling and pipes ripped up, municipal buildings, police offices, public records offices, theatres all are destroyed - people's resolve will be undermined. That resolve may be further weakened when children are involved - families in Palestine often have eight or ten offspring - especially if parents have to watch their kids being traumatised by daily violence. One in five Palestinian children now suffer from chronic or acute malnutrition, a statistic on a par with the Republic of Chad in Central Africa. In the Gaza Strip unemployment is at 80%. Elsewhere in the Occupied Territories things are not much better and yet Palestinians are not leaving. Their resolve remains strong, their traditions, their values, their humour and their gentleness remain intact. Is this not a story in itself? Why is it not being told? In December the month before I came here, seventy-five Palestinians were killed including fourteen children under eighteen. If my experience is anything to go by January looks like being no less. Why is that not being reported? Why are we informed exclusively about suicide bombings when individual Palestinians are no longer able to tolerate the daily abuse, the humiliations and the erosion of dignity, have witnessed relatives shot or beaten, have been ejected from their homes in the middle of the night and stood helplessly by while their houses were destroyed? What must it feel like to endure the absence of work - not just for five years, not even for ten years, but for a lifetime? Israel holds all the necessary levers to control economic life in the Occupied Territories. It is also a disproportionate consumer of water - water being an increasingly rare commodity. The average Israeli family uses six times the amount used by a Palestinian family. Water consumed by Palestinians is first extracted by Israel from Palestinian wells and aquifers, and then is sold back to Palestinians at prices they cannot afford. Water is also used as a weapon; the supply can be turned on and off at any time. Prices for services in the Occupied Territories - power and fuel for example - are higher than in Israel although per capita income is a fraction of the money earned by Israelis. Why are Palestinians being so brutally treated? Is it to make their lives so insufferable that they pack their bags and leave? Yes. Is it the inevitable result of the Zionist goal of an exclusively Jewish state (politically at least)? Yes. Does racism play a role in Israeli behaviour? Yes. Have the abused become abusers? Yes. Military might is able to maintain the status quo; of that there is no doubt. But, future generations of Jews will not thank their parents and grandparents for what they are doing. It is future generations who will have to shoulder the blame and bear the guilt. And so also will the offspring of people around the world who know what is happening and choose to remain silent. ___________________________________________ "Whoops" Nick Pretzlik Palestine 21 January 2003 Only once before have I eaten a breakfast as good as the breakfast in Abu Ahmed's coffee shop in Qalqilya and that was five years ago in Yemen. Abu Ahmed's is not a fancy place; quite the reverse. It is where men gather to smoke a sheesha (hubble bubble), play cards, backgammon and draughts. They sit and talk and sip coffee or sweet Arab tea infused with sage. It is out of bounds for women. Since the Intifada (struggle) began two years ago and Israel blocked movement in and out of the town, unemployment has risen to 70%. 'Goods' may be imported, but not people, and nothing and no one - without special permission - is allowed to leave. Men have ample time to smoke and to chat. Like the majority of people in Qalqilya, Abu Ahmed is effectively bankrupt. However, families pool their resources and somehow they manage. Although life is not how it used to be, people haven't forgotten how to live. My breakfast was prepared personally by Abu Ahmed. He made the foull (bean paste), and the humous with the freshly pressed olive oil. The green olives were this season's crop. The chopped cucumbers and tomatoes were also local. The falafels, spicy with peppers and onions and sprinkled with sesame came from next door, as did the warm Arab bread. The aromatic coffee tasted delicately of cardamom. With food like that - and providing the Israelis do not shoot them - is it any wonder that Palestinians live so long? What a town of contrasts this is. As I walked to the end of a side street to see the 'apartheid' wall - a vast concrete structure which will eventually encircle the town and separate it from Israeli settlements nearby - I was passed by the butane gas cylinder salesman's van blaring out 'knick, knack, paddy wack, give a dog a bone', as if for all the world life was normal and cheerful. Moments later, having rounded the corner, I was confronted by the wall, the watchtowers, gun emplacements and razor wire. Wanting to take some photographs, I removed my passport from my pocket, held it high and moved into the middle of the road. I walked forward slowly, half expecting a sound grenade to land at my feet or warning shots to be fired. There was also the 'whoops' factor to be considered. Whoops accidents are a regular occurrence in Palestine - "whoops I didn't see that house clipped by my tank", "whoops my finger slipped. I did not mean to shoot him". Happily on this occasion there were no whoops. I walked to within twenty metres of the wall before a voice from the watchtower called out, "Stop. Who are you? What are you doing?" "English", I shouted back. "UN visitor to the UNRWA hospital in town." Silence. I stood immobile. "What do you want?" shouted the voice. "Photographs" I cried. "OK English" came the reply. Relieved, I snapped away, then retraced my steps. If I was Palestinian, I would now be dead. What a place! Forty thousand Palestinians incarcerated. Their surrounding farmland confiscated, their water wells and aquifers annexed, and businesses and factories closed. In two years an average family income with two male earners has fallen from US $ 2000 monthly to $ 60. To cap it all the Israelis have built a sewage plant and a rubbish dump next to the wall - one hundred metres from the edge of town. With Tel Aviv just twelve kilometres away there is no shortage of either. Astonishingly Palestinian resolve has never been stronger. Traditionally for a Palestinian to sell his land or the family home is to dishonour himself and his family; to do so would make them social pariahs. Nobody is selling today. Nobody is even thinking of selling. Why should they? It is their land after all. American politicians of both Houses are in thrall to the Christian Zionists and to the American Israeli Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC). As a result Palestinians receive more support in Israel's Knesset than they do in the US Senate or in the House of Representatives. President Franklin must be turning in his grave. Public opinion is crucial to the Palestinian issue. Our politicians listen to us voters. If we raise our voices Members of Parliament and US Senators will prick up their ears. The unreasonable influence of organisations like AIPAC must be reduced. It cannot be right that the Palestinians in the Occupied Territories suffer because of the vested interests of minority groups of the world's one superpower. BARBARIANS AT THE GATES Nick Pretzlik in East Jerusalem 25 May 2004 Zionism is in intensive care - dependent on the oxygen of support from the Jewish Diaspora and drip fed funds by the United States. Given the human and financial toll, it is legitimate to query whether the apparent purpose of Zionism today - to satisfy the Jewish sense of belonging and the wackier elements of the Christian Right - is worth the price. Are the pain and suffering and the political blowback of doing the bidding of these two groups and a handful of settlers worth the decimation of the indigenous Palestinian population, as well as the loss of Jewish lives? Why do Israeli Jews put themselves through all this? Why do they ignore the obvious alternative - a dynamic, secular state incorporating Jews and Palestinians with equal rights for all? Why do they insist on clinging to the concept of Zionism - a concept, which should have been buried along with the other nineteenth century colonial adventures? Ten days ago I traveled south from Jenin to Jerusalem down the fertile funnel of the Jordan Valley - parched, rocky hills on my left, indistinct in the heat filled haze, and mountains to my right, dazzling bright in direct, early summer sunlight. I should have been inspired. I was not. Instead I was ashamed - ashamed that Britain with its Balfour Declaration of 1917 is the architect of Palestine's misfortune, ashamed that even now - when Palestinian suffering is apparent to the world - Britain does so little to help. It felt wrong that I - a Brit - could slip comfortably away from Jenin, at a time of my choosing, while the victims of Balfour remain incarcerated. The day before my departure, one man was killed and another wounded in a targeted killing. No warning roar from an approaching tank's engine, and no ominous clink of heavy metal tracks, just an Israeli assassin's bullet fired from an apparently innocuous Palestinian truck piled high with boxes of chickens. One more day in Jenin. We forget how sophisticated Palestinians are. The demonisation process has continued for so long that we no longer remember they possessed, until recently, the best educational system in the Middle East. Cultured, clever and skilled, these are the people the Israelis are attempting to return to the stone age. The Palestinian refuge is religion and the clerics are taking advantage. Israeli occupation and oppression encourages fundamentalism and Israel should be the first to remember how dangerous that is. After all, it was Israel, who funded Hamas in its early stages. The aim then was to divide and fragment Arafat's Fatah power base by introducing a new dynamic into the arena. Israel surely cannot wish to repeat that mistake. While Islamic ardor is being fanned by the actions of the state, the Jewish authorities have embarked on a process of rearranging their relationship with the Christian churches. In an article published in the Christian Science Monitor, Jane Lampman quotes an official at the Latin Patriarchate, who says "all indications point to the fact that the church is slowly being strangled". The comment is given weight by reports that the Israeli government has withheld visas for dozens of religious workers and is in the process of reviewing the charitable status of various groups. In spite of official protestations to the contrary, it seems likely that the action is coordinated and systematic and that the objective is to make life difficult for Christian institutions. Later on Jane Lampman provides another telling quote; this time from the Rev. David Jaeger, a representative of the Holy See. He says "In the Catholic world there is a growing view that Israel has deliberately framed a policy to hurt the church". Anecdotal evidence, however, indicates that evangelical churches are excluded from this policy. Why? What reasons would the Israeli government have for behaving in such a way? The answer is that the traditional churches are viewed by officialdom to be sympathetic to Palestinians, whereas the evangelical institutions are often fervently pro Israel and supportive of Zionist policies. The smothering of criticism from religious quarters, the racism increasingly engrained in Israeli society, and the fascism apparent in Likud government policies are indications of the way the future is being shaped. The Zionist dream of Greater Israel may be on life support, but it is not yet dead. The Iraq war is part of a process. It is an Israeli war and others are planned to follow. The time has come for the world to wake up - the Barbarians are already at the gates. -- 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 out hearts.