My daughter's last diary before she leaves for the U.S. As she says:
Last Blog Diary directly from Palestine & Israel for awhile, learning from champions of popular resistance and everyday people for whom existence is resistance, all of them confined by walls and checkpoints that I get to leave behind.
She's on the left, short black hair in a red top, next to the adorable little girl. Of course, she also is an adorable little girl, isn't she? 5'1" short.
Where: Qalandia checkpoint, Bil’in
Who: AFSC delegation, Iyad Burnat’s family, Bil’in neighbors, checkpoint crossers, me
Tonight I will leave the Occupied Palestinian Territories through the Qalandia checkpoint, and then I will exit Israel through the Ben Gurion airport in Tel Aviv. I may encounter some interrogation and searching before boarding my plane back to the U.S. I may even encounter what Professor Mohammed Abu-Nimer from IFPB calls “VIP treatment;” security officers remaining with me up until my departure time and escorting me to the gate. Either way, Emily Siegel from IFPB assures me that I will get out. The Israeli government wants anyone, especially anyone critical of their policies, to get out. Since I’m an Ashkenazi Jewish girl, getting out will most likely be a simple matter of answering questions about where I went to Hebrew school and which Torah portion I chanted for my Bat Mitzvah (If I prove I’m Jewish enough, will they want me to return?).
The Monday before last I visit the Palestinian village of Bil’in with the AFSC Delegation, and I have the honor of staying in Iyad Burnat’s home for the night. Iyad is the leader of the popular resistance movement in Bil’in that has achieved rare media coverage and political success, relative to similar movements in other villages. Iyad’s gorgeous six year old daughter draws pictures of princesses in the back of my notebook as we screen video clips of the weekly unarmed demonstrations Bil’in families have led for 6.5 years to protest the Israeli separation barrier, built not on the Green line six kilometers away from their village, but fully inside their West Bank property. Though the IDF claims the usual justification of “security reasons” for this placement, it is clear that the true reason is to make room for the rapidly expanding Modi’in settlement just across the way. I abruptly recall that I stayed in a suburb of Modi’in with Israeli family friends my first two days in the region. I have a hard time believing I am anywhere remotely close to their paved roads, tree lined gardens, and urbanized community centers. Yet I realize that without the wall, I could be back at their doorstep within minutes.
Activists have captured on film the IDF’s weekly firing of tear gas, stun grenades, rubber bullets, sewage water, and live ammunition on the increasingly creative and international demonstrations throughout the years. I instinctually want to protect Iyad’s daughter from episodes that document particularly upsetting events, such as the murder of their friend Bassem, a nonviolent protester. But then I peer down at her focused eyes and busy hands. She is ignoring the jarring shouts emanating from the speakers, seemingly unperturbed, and I remember that she was born into these circumstances.
As the afternoon ages into evening, we hike to the torn farmland and displaced olive trees adjacent to Bil’in’s “success:” The portion of the wall that the Israeli Supreme Court ordered should be rerouted four years ago. The IDF has only moved this piece of the wall 500 meters back in recent weeks after continuing to repress persistent demonstrations. We scrunch up our noses at the odor of rank sewage water that refuses to diffuse after soldiers sprayed protestors a month ago. Iyad’s friend, Rani Burnat, paralyzed during a demonstration, holds a fussy baby on his lap with a semi-functional arm and rolls ahead of us in his wheelchair to the wall that still sits on the village’s land. Two IDF soldiers watch our every move from their perch atop it. The red rooftops and the construction cranes inside the settlement behind them fade as the sunsets.
Iyad’s wife feeds us a delicious dinner of barley soup, makloubeh, and salad later that night. Their son leads a couple of us to the rooftop to admire his pet pigeons. We smoke argileh (hookah) with his uncle and cousins and become Facebook friends. The next day we will go back to our hotel in Jerusalem, where they are not allowed to follow.
“We are not just struggling against the wall,” explains Iyad. “We are fighting for our freedom.”
Last Sunday, the night before the first day of Ramadan, the delegation is over and I am again traveling from Ramallah to Jerusalem. I will join two of my American Jewish friends from the delegation there, and we will take a bus to Haifa for a couple days of relaxation on the beach. There is more traffic than I expected, and when I exit Bus #18 to walk through Qalandia checkpoint, the “lucky” Palestinians who have permits to go to Jerusalem are crowded in groups at the only two aisles that seem to be operating. Harsh Hebrew phrases barked over the loudspeaker from unseen sources behind bars and glass precipitate mad group dashes from one aisle to another. After three people finally move through the revolving gate of one aisle, the IDF security inspector packs up and turns off the lights, ignoring the indignant shouts of two young men who remain behind while everyone else grumbles, throws hands in the air, and moves to the last aisle open.
Tension is palpable, and I am hypersensitive to the energy in the air because of my lack of language skills. When a young man begins to shout venomously at an older woman, ostensibly because she moved ahead of him in line, she retorts in a similar fashion. I’ve seen arguments break out before at the checkpoints, but never with so virulent a tone. Strangers and friends immediately intervene. An older man strokes the younger one’s chin as a chorus of “Halas, halas” (enough, enough) rings all around me. Another man begins giving a speech, throughout which the only word I can identify is “machsom,” Hebrew for checkpoint. I wonder if he is saying what I am thinking; that the real problem is clearly the occupation that restricts the right to mobility and strips everyday people of their dignity and patience, not whose turn in line it was.
But what do I know of the mounting frustration caused by spending at least four hours every day between home and work, work and home? Tonight I will exit Qalandia for the last time, until I choose to return. Tonight I can get out. I have my freedom.
-Diary by the talebearer
-Photos by IFPB Delegates
Living in the Washington, D.C. area, I've really felt the increase in restrictions since 9/11. The Army land (a research facility with a PX and playgrounds & sports fields) next to our neighborhood used to be a neighborhood resource -- their playground was our playground; we could take a walk through the woods of Rock Creek Park and join up to a less-traveled and lovely path along a small creek on Army land. Now it's fenced in and guarded, 24 hours a day.
The Capitol -- when I was a kid, we'd go to the Capitol at night (with visiting family when I was younger, with my friends when I was in high school) and walk up the steps on the west side to look out across the Mall at the museums, the Washington Monument, the reflecting pool, and the Lincoln Memorial. Now you'd get arrested if you tried to do that.
As a researcher, before 2001, I could drive into the NIH campus, park in the National Library of Medicine parking lot (if I got there early enough), and do my research for hours in that library. Now I wouldn't be allowed to drive past the gate without an employee id.
So I've felt bad at all that freedom gone, those innocent activities now no longer possible.
But reading this diary of my daughter's, I see what restricted freedom really looks like. How horrible it must be to have your life limited so severely. How infuriatingly unfair it must feel to watch as your land is taken away or destroyed. So, yes, these days I have to go through a scanner to get into the Museum of Natural History -- but I can leave my house when I wish, visit with friends next door, or across the city, or across the country, or across the world, and come back when I wish.