1. Susanne Kempe. THE NORMALITY OF EVIL
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DISCLAIMER: The following report represents my individual experiences and opinions which do not necessarily reflect the positions of the International Solidarity Movement (ISM).

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THE NORMALITY OF EVIL


"What can we do? There is nothing we can do! We are at their mercy."

When asked about their daily lifes under Israeli occupation, this is the reply most of the Palestinians I met gave. I have been here in Palestine for more than one week now, but the humiliation and discrimination that the Palestinians have to suffer every day is immediatly to grasp.

The Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF) and opppression procedures monitor and register every movement of Palestinians. The perception we have in Europe is that controls of identities by the IOF particularly and Israeli interference into the Palestinian society generally only atakes place at the border between Israel and Palestine. Nothing could be further away from the reality on the ground. There is not a single place in the West Bank and Gaza Strip that is not controlled by Israeli authorities in some form. Military posts at which Palestinian's identity is checked and day to day harrassement and discrimination takes place are everywhere within the Occupied Territories.

I have been on a bus in East Jerusalem, which for the Palestinians is their capital, and had to pass a checkpoint. Officers of the Israeli Border Police that is known for its random brutality and humiliation of Palestinians entered the bus wearing their M16 in a very casual way playing with the rtigger. They took the blue identity cards from all Palestinians on the bus, but only had a cursory look at my and other International's passports. Just because I am white and my passport purple I am not asked any questions, do not get humiliated and can consider myself safe. This is racism in action.

At a normal police check in Europe the officers would study the passport, hand them back and that it is. But not so in Palestine where the Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF) has the fate of Palestinians in their hands and play with it a horrific and deadly game. The Border Police left the bus and ordered everybody to wait - for over an hour in unbearable heat. The personal details of all the Palestinians got written down, registered and checked via phone with higher military authorities. A couple of random names got shouted into the direction of the bus and some Palestinians left to be intorigated. Every day they have to justify their existence, their movement from A to B in their own land to a foreign occupying power. A collective people gets controlled, monitored and surpressed on a daily basis. After the intorigation the Border Police officers threw the belongings and identity cards of the Palestinians on the ground. They had to stoop and pick them up; a dog-like treatment that they have to endure everyday. There is no logic or pattern behind that discrimination, it can happen to everybody randomly.

I got to know a Palestinian farmer who owns some aubergine fields deep in the West Bank. He told me that, to his dispair, these are situated on the other side of an Israeli Army checkpoint. Sometimes he is lucky, the checkpoint is open. But more often than not, the checkpoint is closed - he cannot pass through, cannot access his land and harvest his aubergines which are rotting in the heat.

The Palestinians are a people without any right to their land. They do not enjoy any form of citizenship, neither of Israel nor of Palestine which is so far not recognised before international law. Citizenship which we in Europe can built upon to give us civil and political rights is refused to the Palestinians. They only have temorarily residential status in a land that they have lived in for hundreds of years. In addition to this lack of political and civil rights, basic human rights such as freedom of movement, assemblage and expression as granted to every human being by the UN charter are denied to them.

Israeli interference and penetration into Palestinian land and life has many faces. One of the most serious threats to the establishment of a coherent and proper Palestinian state -and the normal life of Palestinian communities- are the illegal Israeli settlements which reach deep into Palestinian land. Again, the European perception is that these are only located on the Israeli-Palestinian border and the expansion of the settlements was stopped with the Oslo Agreement (1993) as well as the Road Map (2003). And again, as thousands of Palestinian experiences testify, this impression is wrong. Palestinian land which is the foundation of survival for most of the people in this agriculture based society gets confiscated by the state of Israel, without warning, legal order or even compensation. Palestinians are deprived of their farm land, water resources and infrastructure. The Israeli settlements are connected to each other and the Israeli 'mother land' by exclusive highways which are surrounded by walls, fences and proteced by Israeli military as well as checkpoints. Palestinians are not allowed to use these roads unless they can provide a special permit. They often have to use minor roads and travel long distances to other Palestinian towns.

I was able to meet with the director of the Union of Palestinian Medical Relief Committees. He pointed out that it is a daily struggle to bring people in need for primary medical care to hospitals. He was telling me about this village which is 2 km away from Qalqilya (the town in the West Bank were I am staying at the moment) which is lucky enough to have a hospital. The doctor said that the ambulances have major problems passing checkpoints and driving long distances forced to drive around Israeli settlements and settler roads. For a distance of 2 km the doctors consider themselves lucky if they manage to reach the hospital in 50 minutes.

Illustrating the daily difficulties caused by the Israeli settlers, the president of a local Palestinian Farmers Union told me that the Israeli settlers, which see themselves confessingly as the outpost and defenders of Israel and are heavily armed, use to attack Palestinian farmers whilst harvesting their fields, stealing their olives and crops, killing their sheep and goats. Contrary to European belief, media coverage and the Israeli government's lies, the expansion of these settlements is not stopped; to the opposite, new settlements are planned, projected and built.

Most of the Israeli settlements are situated on top of mountains and hills overlooking in a 'big brother' style Palestinian villages. Last night I was walking through the rural outskirts of Qalqilya, it was a very mild night. I stood still, just taking in what I saw in front of my eyes. It sticks like a still photograph in my mind. In front of me was barbed wire surrounding Palestinian land. I saw three Israeli settlements at the horizon sitting on hilltops brightly lit. They are easy to identify as they do not have minarettes and mosques and contain very modern houses. Palm trees were standing to my right, the 'Palestinian' moon shining to my left in the night sky. For me this image mirrors the tragic reality of daily Palestinian life under Israeli occupation. A beautiful country, a lovely and hospital people being encircled, caged in, controlled and overpowered by a distant foreign power which brings so much misery to their lifes everyday.

The occupation, everyday discrimination and strangulation of the entire Palestinian people has psychological effects on the Palestinian society on a whole and individual lifes which can hardly be overestimated. Most of the Palestinians I talked to feel deprived of their historical home land and feel constantly threatend in the land -or more correctly put, the ghettos,- that they are left with. The wars of 1948 and 1967 ensured the illegal displacement of the Palestinian people, hundreds of thousands of people were forced from their land which still -after all these years- holds a sacred place in the collective memory of the society. Three generations have been suffering from the uprooting of their people, communities and culture.

Communication and linguistic understanding with Palestinians is sometimes not easy, but this does not matter. Their faces and gestures express more than words the sadness, depression and frustration they life their daily lifes with. I was talking to a Palestinian man in Qalqilia about my life in Germany and Britain. I showed him postcards from Wales and Aberystwyth. His eyes lit up when he saw the sea. He said proudly but sad at the same time: "We also have a sea! We have beautiful beaches and a wonderful ocean. But I can not go there and see it, feel the wind and the waves, smell the breeze. It is only 10 km away from here. But I have not seen it for over a decade." Behind the Israeli 'security system' - the 8 meters high concrete apartheid wall and complex fence and trench system - that entirely surround, encircle and strangulate Qalqilya I can see Tel Aviv on the horizon which lies at the Meditaranian Sea; land which has been historical Palestine.

All these impressions of the strangulation of the Oalilians by the apartheid wall and daily occupation, discrimination and humiliation and misery of the entire Palestinian people, my own witnessing and experiencing of military curfew, army invasions and 'special army treatment' - have an impact on me. I am constantly nerveous and stressed, I cannot find sleep, the consumption of cigarettes has increased dramatically.

It is difficult for me to end on a positive note. For me my stay here in the West Bank generally and in Qalqilya particuarly was depressing and eye-opening of what the reality of daily Palestinian life is like. But, amazingly, the Palestinians that I was lucky to meet still try to mentain some sense of normality in their lifes. Although they cannot ban the misery of occupation out of their minds and lifes, they cherish their little islands of peace.

A couple of nights ago, I was sitting with a crowd of Palestinians on a roof top of a house in Qalqilya, the illegal Israeli settlements surrounding the town where clearly visible on the hills. One of the men was a singer and was playing traditional Palestinian songs on his Arabic guitar the other men joining him and singing about their love for their beautiful land and, especially, women. Looking into the night sky, one Palestinian man said to me:

"Sharon can steal our land. But he cannot steal our laughter. He cannot steal the smile from our faces."

There is nothing more to add.

Susanne

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2.

The following article is prepared by myself Alexander Fitch and is based on my own experiences and observations travelling in the occupied West Bank. Written in Qalqilia 14 September 2003.


Maa'rouf Zahran is a busy man. As the major of Qalqilia, a ghetto town in the West Bank with a population of 39000, he has the unenviable task of trying to keep the civil administration running in extraordinarily difficult circumstances. Mr Zahran made time for us in his busy morning schedule inviting us to a meeting in the town hall where we sat in a pleasant air conditioned room and were served delicious sweet Arabic coffee. At the head of the room stood a collection of framed technical drawings of the problem facing Qalqilia and its people. Since August 15th 2003 Qalqilia has been completely encircled and enclosed as part of what Israel calls a 'security barrier', a project which aims quite literally to wall-in the Palestinian population. Originally envisaged by the Israeli Labor Party as a security zone running along the 'Green Line' marking the 1967 Israeli-Palestinian border, the project has taken a cynical new turn under the Israeli premier Ariel Sharron. Sharron's project has been internationally condemned and is described by the Israeli peace organisation Gush Shalom as a new Apartheid. Apartheid is the name given to a system of institutionalised racial segregation and discrimination in which one racial group dominates another systematically oppressing them. Apartheid is recognised by international treaties as a crime against humanity. Several acts used for the purposes of control and oppression are identified in the 1973 International Convention on Apartheid including the creation of ghettos, land confiscation, denial of freedom of movement and any means preventing the development of the oppressed group. Listening to Mr Zahran one got a clear image of Apartheid in action. One framed map showed the eight meter high wall running tight down the western side of the town and the three meter high security fence and patrol road which complete the encirclement. The wall and fence have been built on land confiscated without compensation from the towns population. Mr Zahran told us that 45% of local farmers land has been lost to the wall infrastructure or now lies on the wrong side of the fence. Originally the Israeli occupation administration said gates would be opened in the fence to the north and south of town morning and evening for fifteen minutes allowing farmers access to their land.In practice this has not been the case. As the mayor explained fifteen minutes is not long enough to check the identities of the 250 or so farmers wanting to pass through each gate anyway. The only official way in and out of Qalqilia is through a single Israeli checkpoint to the east of the town connecting it to the rest of the West Bank. The checkpoint is subject to the whims of the Israeli military who staff it and decide who may pass, who may not and how long someone must wait in the process. The checkpoint has been catastrophic for Qalqilia's economy. Before the wall an abundance of specialist businesses and low prices made the town the local trade hub attracting both Israelis and Palestinians from the surrounding district. Since enclosure 600 of the towns 1800 shops have gone out of business. Local producers, including many joint Palestinian - Israeli ventures have relocated to Israel or Jordan unable to count on a reliable supply of materials and with no guarantee of being able to export finished products. The weariness is clear in Mr Zahran's voice as he tells us unemployment now stands at a staggering 67% with 64%of the population living below the poverty line with an income less than fifty dollars a month for an average family of 6 to 8 persons. The dire economic situation means that the town now receives almost 10000 food parcels from the UN and NGOs. In an otherwise empty cafe we met members of a European Union funded employment project who were optimistic about their chances of tackling the problem although they did not tell us how. It is difficult to imagine any solution to the problem which does not start with the demolition of the wall. The social impact has been equally devastating with the divorce rate rising sharply, an increase in crime and the inevitable psychological effect on people living in this huge prison complex. The air of helplessness is in turn encouraging support for the political right and religious parties. Perhaps ominously for Israel it is also increasing the determination of some to fight back in the knowledge that they no longer have anything left to loose by doing so. Finally Mr Zahran turned to the issue of water which lies at the heart of Sharron's 'security barrier'. As in the Middle East generally water is a key strategic issue for Israel. Qalqilia stands on one of the West Bank' three main aquifers as such it also contains some of the best arable land which helps to explain the presence in the district of 23 illegal Israeli settlements housing some 54000 settlers. The route of the wall penetrates deep into the West Bank around Qalqilia annexing both land and water resources to Israel. The Qalqilia municipality is not allowed to supply cheap water to its own people, rather the people have to buy their own water back at an inflated price from an Israeli company with sole rights to extraction at a price double that Mr Zahran says it could be supplied for. In conclusion the mayor condemned the path of the wall but made the following point. While he finds the wall immoral he suggests that had it been built along the Green Line it would not have been such a big issue. If Israel wanted to construct a 'security barrier' behind which it could feel safe then it could have done so on Israeli land without disenfranchising Palestinians. The reality is different. As Mr Zahran stated it would be unacceptable for him to build a wall through his neighbours kitchen or garden, no one could accept such an invasion of their own home. However, this is effectively what Israel is doing in the West Bank. Israel is annexing the Palestinians kitchen sink and vegetable patch. The Israeli actions are illegal under international law, yet the international community is allowing Israel to get away with their crimes against humanity with barely any comment. The future for Mr Zahran's administration and Qalqilia is bleak. The town is being slowly strangled and drained, normal life is impossible under such conditions and that is exactly how the cynical minds behind the creation of Israeli Apartheid want it.

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