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Jenin: a town of wasted hopes

Nick Pretzlik | 23.01.2004 00:04 | Analysis | Anti-militarism | Repression

Eyewitness report from Jenin in Palestine by two British observers.

18 January 2004
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The Israeli policy of early release from jail for hardened criminals - in exchange for military service in the Occupied Territories - coupled with the racist attitudes embedded in Israeli army culture encourages
the cycle of violence, which ensures that prospects for peace in Palestine remain remote.

Jenin, a trading centre on the northern fringe of the West Bank, is a town of wasted hopes – the debris of destruction visible on every corner. The heavy rain of the past few days has left streets, ripped up by Israeli tanks, ankle deep in mud and potholes filled with water. A sullen sky sits above the houses like a shroud and drops of rainwater drip silently from lemons and tangerines dangling defiantly in the trees.
People’s faces, aged beyond their years by decades of occupation and oppression, look tired and ashen.

I spent last night in a house near the mosque in the refugee camp adjacent to the town. The family, whose home it is, has lost one close relative from three different generations to the guns of Israeli soldiers – a grandfather carrying a bag of flour shot on his way to market, a father torn apart by a hail of bullets in front of his family as he stepped from his house hands above his head and the eldest daughter struck in the chest by a sniper’s round as she stood
in the window of her home. Eleven years old, she bled to death on the living room floor.

The disproportionate violence, vested on Jenin since the Intifada began, has if anything made the townspeople more not less defiant. They know they have no escape from suffering and no alternative but to
continue with the struggle. Although young men with guns can still be seen slipping from hiding place to hiding place within the confines of the town, the fight has now gone underground. The days of open confrontation with Israeli soldiers is passed and in the future, while street traders and coffee salesmen hawk their wares, terror will also been on offer.

So much misery and death and all because of a 19th century colonial concept for an exclusive Jewish state. A concept already well beyond its sell-by date when conceived, it has become an anachronism on a catastrophic scale. In an increasingly inclusive world there is no room for such an aberration. Yet after fifty years of oppression Israel still fails to grasp this fact, as do those British politicians who talk blandly of ‘conflict resolution’ and ‘land for peace’ rather than deal with the problem of Zionism itself.
In 2004 how is it possible that Britain and the United States permit Israel to construct an apartheid wall, which will divide people from their land, relative from relative and create Palestinian ghettos on a vast scale? Do these countries’ leaders seriously believe that this hideous monument to American strategic interests will bring peace and security to Israel? Can they be that naïve? And are they really not able to appreciate just how enticing the water resources and fertile fields of the West Bank are to Israelis – that what Israel is embarked upon is nothing less than a land grab.

A short walk to the west of Jenin is the village of Burqeen. A narrow road snakes its way from the refugee camp between gnarled and wrinkled olive trees to a 6th century, dome roofed church standing at the centre of the community - a timely reminder that both communities are situated in the heart of the Holy Land. Sandwiched between Nazareth and Jerusalem, Burqeen church encompasses the grotto where Jesus healed ten lepers while making his way from Galilee to Samaria (Luke chapter 17, verse 11 of the Bible) and as I stood in the little churchyard looking back towards Jenin and Nazareth, I could not help but wonder how it is that Christians around the globe remain silent in the face of so much torment and destruction in the land where Christianity began.
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Nick Pretzlik

Comments

Hide the following 9 comments

The Palestinians suffering is self inflicted because they use terrorism

23.01.2004 10:53

The Palestinians suffering is self inflicted because they use terrorism against Israel and against innocent Israeli civilians including such brutal methods as suicide bombing in which ordinary men, women and children are ripped apart by human bombs. If all the Palestinian terrorist groups stopped their campaign against Israel there would be peace overnight and a return to normality for the Middle East.

solo


Can't be bothered....

23.01.2004 12:33

...to even argue this point with a troll like you. Fuck off, Solo.

Bendeus


Resort to disinformation

23.01.2004 13:11

Exactly - so many of the falsehoods used to prop up the Palestinian position cannot be defended under scrutiny. With uninformed people unable to defend their position they resort to outright lies, distortions and abuse. Unquestioning support of Palestinian terrorists and suicide bombers may be fashionable but its morally absurd.

Joe


zionist distortions?

23.01.2004 14:52

To be fair reporting the conditions that people live in is not "unconditional support for suicide bombers and terrorists". The vast majority of palestinians are nto terrorists so to punish them all for the acts of a minority is called collective punishment and is illeagal under the geneva convention. In fact the geneva convention says that collective punishment is "intimidation" and "terrorism".
In recent years three times more palestinians have died through the IDF (not to mention the economic and humanitarian crisis) than have died through suicide bombing. As a prgmatist i do not believe in token gestures and because of my beliefs as stated i do not support the killing of three people as retaliation for the killing of one person. I also do not think that it is right for americans that convert to judaism to move to israel become a settler this simply exasserbates the situation and is unnessasary as anti-semitism is not prominant in america. I also do not believe that "jews" are a race, christians are not a race so how is being a jew? There are arab jews, european jews, american jews - etc... just like their are kurdish muslims, turkish muslims, arab muslims - etc... and their are anglo-saxon christians, african christians, afro-american christians, hispanic christians - etc...
There are lots of different people and we all have to live on the same planet - think about it.

translator


Easy

23.01.2004 22:48

Its easy to prop up the Palestinian position if you need to. European colonists came to their land with the intention of setting up a State. Conflicts began, which eventually ended in the Israeli's taking land that belonged to the Palestinians, and had done for centuries. Wouldn't you fight back if someone took your land?
Tell me, do you think Nelson Mandela's struggle against the colonists in South Africa is unjustified? After all, they called him a terrorist once. Were the blacks in South Africa terrorists, yes or no?

Bring back Saladin


Except...

24.01.2004 01:22

Jews have lived in Israel for millennia. They were there long (eight centuries, if I remember rightly) before the Muslim Arab colonisation of the area.

Do people have a right to self-determination in their homeland, the land of their ancestors? Yes or no?

How do you explain the fact that many thousands of the people who currently call themselves 'Palestinians' have absolutely no connection to the land, through culture, ancestry or anything else?

I'm thinking, for example, of Yasser Arafat, who is - and this is indisputable - an Egyptian, who was born and raised in Cairo, is from an Egyptian family, and is as Palestinian as the Pyramids?

It's not as simple as 'no Jews have a right to be there' - they have an indisputable right under any condition you want to define.

That's before we even start on the millions of Jews who have been ethnically cleansed from Arab states over the past century.

Ross


er hello

24.01.2004 01:39

now folks, we are one, a spieces, living on a planet where the living systems that support all of life are in decline. In reality there is no such thing as a jew, christian, muslim, hindu, a brit, italian, thai etc. we have all been idoctrinated or inbred to believe a story put out by a ruling class, intended to control and divide us all and prevent the poor from killing the rich. religion and gangster capitalism is getting in the way of our need to come together and create a sustainable culture that respects life for what it is, precious and a mystery that is beyond our full understanding but that, if given a chance, can be enjoyed and explored with great joy and without fear of death. one love. namaste.

justa life


Except

24.01.2004 10:42

The Arabs have been in that land for over a millenia!!! Remember a little detail in history known as the crusades. It wasn't the crusaders versus the Jews of Israel, but against the Arabs of Palestine.
The Jews had been removed from that land by the Romans a millenia even before that.
Now, by your argument, I should be allowed to return to the ancient Saxon homelands, and set up a Saxon state in Germany.
'Many Palestinian's are not Palestinian'. Well, many are, and there are whole villages which were erased from the map, completely destroyed, which had existed for centuries.
'The land of your ancestors', Israel may be, though its not the only one. Many of the Ashkenazi Jews are descended from Turkish converts, who formed the Jewish kingdom of Khazaria. Most of the recent russian immigrants are simply converts, with no ancestral heritage to the land. I think its ridiculous argue who has claim to the land over bloodlinks over almost two thousand years old, in any case. The bloodlines have become so mixed up. Many of the Palestinians could be descendents of the ancient Canaanites and Philistines. In fact, the word Palestine is derived from Philistine. But its hardly relevant, because the blood is mixed with the various other Arab immigrants. Our blood is so mixed up, I'm sure I can claim Viking heritage if I try hard enough, and set up a Viking state in Denmark.

Jews had been living peacefully with Muslims in Palestine for many centuries; many had gradually returned over the centuries. It was when huge waves of European invaders came and took the land, fighting a ridiculously titled 'War of Liberation' which liberated the Palestinians from their ancestral lands, that these problems began. Now, I believe everyone should be allowed to live wherever they like. Certainly the Jews should be able to live in Palestine, just as I believe immigrants can come here to live in England. But the zionist project wasn't simply to immigrate. It was to form a Jewish state in Palestine, as permitted by Balfour. And rather than creating a situation in which Arabs and Jews live side by side as equals, it has created an apartheid state, and taken away the rights of millions of Palestinians.

This is the problem. Why a state, for crying out loud? We are entering a time when these national boundaries could have been done away with, as the whole world becomes ever closer to each other, through globalisation and technology. But globalisation and technology have been perverted for the benefit of the few, nationalism is resurgent, and the concept of universal brotherhood drifts further and further away, because people are just too greedy to give up ambitions of state and power.

Saxon state in Germany


i agree

24.01.2004 10:42

"Jews have lived in Israel for millennia. They were there long (eight centuries, if I remember rightly) before the Muslim Arab colonisation of the area"

I agree to an extent, *arab jews* have lived in palestine for a long long time but they have also lived in baghdad and damascus for a long long time, but to be fair european jews have not neither have american jews. Also if you looked in your history books you would find out that jews lived alongside arabs in the palestine area (formerly part of jordan) peacefully untill 1948 when israel was created. Some jews (mainly european jews) decided that they hated palestinians and wanted a purely "jewish" state (in actual fact the first prime minister was not even jewish). In reality it became an almost purely zionist state and totally sectarian against palestinians.

But in response to your comment i think you are making the mistake of making distinctions between arabs and arab jews, in almost every biological way they are pretty much the same. A european jew is geneticly closer to an anglo-saxon than they would be to an arab jew, in the same way an arab jew is closer linked to a palestinian than to a european jew. In my opinion it all makes a mockery of the racist argument that the "jewish race" have a right etc... etc... and it also makes a mackery that the "jewish race" are intruders etc... etc...

translator