I woke up this morning, got into my office, and was confronted by an email from Haaretz (the Israeli news daily) urging me to "stand with President Obama" after his "historic address" where he "made clear" that he is committed to a "leadership" role in reaching a two-state solution. While the "usual suspects" will likely rush to characterize the President's bold "insistence" that Israel meet its international obligations as the latest example of his unjust criticism of Israel, the email warns, Obama's "vigorous efforts," bravely and heroically forcing Israel to comply with its responsibilities, is actually "the single most pro-Israel thing an American President can do." Given that this characterization of the debate, based entirely on faulty assumptions about both Obama's and Bush's actions, has been echoed by a large portion of the world's major media outlets, I feel it is important to comment.
The important thing is the issues that are at stake here, and Obama's positions on them, not rhetoric and public relations bluster. We must remember that all that Obama has asked for is a settlement freeze. Right now, the dispute between Obama and Netanyahu is essentially over whether Israel has a right to build within the existing settlement blocks - Netanyahu has already put a freeze in place on building outside the blocks, much to the dismay of the Shas party.
Importantly, Obama says nothing about the settlements that already exist, and has thus implicitly recognized the legitimacy of the existence of blocks in the first place in accordance with US policy. As opposed to viewing the settlements as individual entities, each to be linked individually to Israel if they are to remain Israeli under a final settlement, they are combined into impermeable "blocks," or strips of land which are de facto annexed to Israel. These settlement blocks, including the dense network of bypass roads and system of electric fence, ALREADY divide the Palestinian West Bank into four totally isolated and non-contiguous cantons. Thus, simply freezing building within the blocks that are already acknowleged to exist will do little, if anything, to help the chances of a Palestinian state being created, or of Palestinian rights being recognized and respected.
Building outside the blocks was once an idea harbored and espoused only by the hard Israeli right, with the Labor Party's Allon Plan (formulated after the 1967 war and occupation of Palestinian territory) essentially resembling the current "settlement block" approach, carving the West Bank into isolated cantons; all that Netanyahu has frozen are settlements being constructed within these Palestinian cantons. These "non-block" settlements further divide the four large West Bank cantons into 23 separated islands of Palestinian territory, each fully controlled from the outside by Israel. Obama has not said a word about uprooting any portion of this infrastructure.
It's wonderful that Obama supports the two-state solution, but given the above it should be no surprise that he has declined to say where, when, or how. On what part of the West Bank and Gaza will this state be proclaimed? This question is especially pressing given that during the campaign Obama expressed his support for an "undivided" and Israeli-annexed Jerusalem, despite the fact that the World Court has ruled that Israel does not have one inch of sovereignty in Jerusalem (July 2004 ruling). This, of course, leaving aside the fact that the Israeli occupation has not relented in even the slightest way, with arrests and detentions as well as Israeli incursions and violence in Palestinian villages spiking in the West Bank and the usual routine of checkpoints and roadblocks continuing to make daily life unbearable for the 5 million people imprisoned in the West Bank and Gaza. This also without mentioning the increasingly-violent attacks by Israel's "subcontractor"(former Israeli Foreign Minister Shlomo Ben Ami, Scars of War, Wounds of Peace), the Palestinian Authority (lead by the US stooge Mahmoud Abbas) against elected representatives, spiritual leaders, and any other Palestinians who might dare to resist the occupation, or speak too loudly about the daily outrages against human dignity committed by the Israelis in the occupied territories.
To top it all off, even on this minor little point (freezing settlements), the tiniest and most insignificant of changes, Obama has refused to exert US pressure on Israel to comply. It's important to compare Obama to his predecessor here. While the George W. Bush administration went a bit beyond words in objecting to illegal Israeli settlement projects, namely, by withholding U.S. economic support for them, Obama administration officials have stated that such measures are "not under discussion," and that any pressures on Israel will be "largely symbolic," the New York Times reported (Helene Cooper, June 1). In fact, on each major element of policy towards Israel, from Hamas' inclusion in a democratically-representative unity government to the settlements, Obama has reiterated the Bush position essentially verbatim (see here if you don't believe me). The only detectable "change" is one of tone and rhetoric - in other words, marketing. Obama is indeed proving to be a better spokesman for the Bush policies than his predecessor.
In short, those of us who want peace had better stop passively and mindlessly "standing with Obama" as the euphoric, almost hysterical liberal American and Israeli press have and demand that the longstanding international consensus - endorsed by the entire world, including the UN General Assembly, the Arab League, the World Court, the Palestinian leadership (both Hamas and Fatah), but rejected unilaterally by the US and Israel.
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UPDATE:
I found this map (.pdf), from the UN Office for Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), which reveals plainly how the West Bank is divided in isolated cantons, separated from one another by the settlements, roadblocks, checkpoints, electric fences, the wall, the Jewish-only bypass roads, and Israeli "security zones." This is probably the best map out there of the circumstances on the ground today, as it reveals the cumulative effects of Israeli policy on the West Bank, including the impact of the "non-block" settlements and the so-called "illegal outposts," essentially settlements built without the official approval of the Israeli government (but which are mostly protected by the Israeli Army, and often if not usually given approval to become official settlements eventually). Definitely worth a look - I'll try to figure out how to make it into an image which I can post here.
Also worth looking at, below, is an approximation of what the Israelis were offering for a Palestinian "state" at Camp David in 2000. As you can plainly see, the lands on which this "state" would exist (the pink areas) are separated from one another by the large settlement blocks, which, like Obama, Clinton and Barak did not propose removing, but rather sought a Palestinian signature to legitimize their permanent annexation to Israel. As I mentioned, accepting the idea of settlement blocs means the complete dismemberment of the Palestinian West Bank, with or without Obama's "courageous" freeze on further building within the blocks. Believe it or not, this map actually paints an excessively rosy picture, since the outlying settlements (outside the blocs) and the roads which join them are depicted as being in Palestinian-controlled territory; today (as the above UN map shows) these areas are under full Israeli control, and subdivide the four main cantons (the four large pink areas) into much smaller fragments (click to enlarge).
Tuesday, June 9, 2009
Obama and the Peace Process: Quick Reactions
Friday, May 15, 2009
Interview with Steve on the Arab-Israeli Conflict
New interview, featured in several places on the net:
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Stephen Maher is a graduate student at the
Below is an interview with Maher, which takes a cursory look at the conflict, and recent developments in the region. It is designed to give those not too familiar with the conflict answers to basic questions.
Maher is interviewed by Michael Corcoran, a journalist who has written for the Boston Globe and the Nation, and a graduate student of international relations at the John McCormack Graduate School of Policy Studies at UMass Boston.
MC: Could you tell readers what brought you to
SM: I first went last summer for three months, when I took part in a workshop which tried to present as wide a spectrum of views on the conflict as it could. After the workshop, which lasted ten days, I did an internship at the Palestinian Legislative Council, which is the legislative arm of the Palestinian Authority, essentially an Israeli sub-contractor in its quest to annex large portions of the
The workshop and program had many problems, which we can get into, but what amazed me was how much you can learn by observing the situation as it unfolds and immersing yourself in the context of the subject of study. Suddenly, the "issue" you are researching ceases to be an "issue" at all, but rather the lives of your friends in a city in which you once lived. It is amazing how large a portion of what we see and hear everyday about the Palestinian struggle and the arab-Israeli conflict more broadly is refuted or corrected by spending time on the ground, talking to people, making friends, traveling the area, and learning what is going on by living the life of those you seek to understand, seeing the world through their eyes. Needless to say, it goes a long way.
My time working with the PLC over that summer taught me a lot about the functioning of the Palestinian Authority, the entity which is supposedly going to turn into the government of a future Palestinian state after some "interim period" of indefinite length, which we are presently in. From this experience I drew my thesis topic, which deals with the dependent, dysfunctional, and often counterproductive nature of Palestinian political institutions. When it came time to start researching, I really wanted to go back the
I was able to do much valuable research while I lived in Ramallah for four months. However I would like to believe that my reasons for going to the
MC: For those readers who are not very familiar with the circumstances in the Israel/Palestine, could you describe, generally, what is happening there?
SM: This is a huge question, and one that requires an equally substantial answer. However, I will try to put it as briefly as I can.
Since the mid-1970s, there has existed a broad international consensus for resolving the so-called Palestine-Israel conflict, commonly referred to as the "two-state solution." This solution is based on a simple quid-pro-quo: Israeli withdrawal from the territory it seized by force in 1967, and Palestinian recognition of
Israeli crimes against the Palestinians are so shocking, and so overt, that the only reasonable reaction is outrage and fury. Importantly, these crimes - most recently including the genocidal attack on Gaza - could not continue were it not for critical US support that Israel receives in all areas, unprecedented in the history of international affairs. According to a 2008 report by the Congressional Research Service, US aid to Israel is as high as $6.8 million per day. Meanwhile, the US shields Israeli policy from international criticism through its exercise of the crucial UN Security Council veto, used most recently to block for weeks a UN cease-fire which would have pressured Israel to stop its obscene slaughter of poor, defenseless Palestinian civilians in Gaza (killing 1500 out of a population of 1.5 million, mostly civilians). The savage attack included the use of white phosphorous, a horrific, indiscriminant chemical weapon which causes severe chemical burns to those who come into contact with it, on densely-populated refugee camps. The phosphorous used by the Israelis - along with the other weapons employed in the massacre - was manufactured and supplied by the United States.
Yet Israeli crimes are for more regular, and - though I shudder to use the term - routine than the occasional extermination of impoverished, defenseless refugees. Since 1967, Israel has embarked on a massive project of annexation in the West Bank, marked by the continuous theft of Palestinian land and resources through a variety of methods. The most noticeable, and newest, is the Apartheid / Annexation Wall (or "separation fence" as the Israelis misleadingly refer to it). While the border between Israel and the West Bank is only a little more than 300 km long, the wall is over 800 km in length, meaning that the wall snakes miles into Palestinian territory, taking the most valuable land and resources on the western, "Israeli" side, and turning Palestinian communities into dungeons, utterly impoverished with no resources or land to sustain themselves.
This enterprise is also advanced by the constant expansion of the illegal settlement colonies throughout the West Bank, which monopolize Palestinian resources and land with the full support of the Israeli state. These colonies are linked to each other and to major urban centers in Israel with a dense network of "bypass roads," designed to bypass Palestinian areas, and thus superimpose a new economic infrastructure which deliberately marginalizes and further impoverish Arab communities in the West Bank. All-in-all, this leaves Palestinian communities dispossessed of their land by the wall and settlements and encircled by the bypass roads, impoverished, and marginalized, separated into cantons, prison cells which are controlled from the outside by Israel.
MC: You mention the support of the U.S., which comes in the form of both large amounts of international aid, as you mentioned, and also public indifference or, in some cases outright support, for Israeli aggression. Since the U.S. plays such a vital role in this issue, what can Americans do, if anything, to oppose these policies? And is there a role for the labor movement?
SM: Actually while many observers, particularly the liberals, criticize the US for "looking the other way" while Israel commits violations of all sorts, this is hardly the case. Israel would not be able to continue its occupation and annexation project for a single day, nor sustain an assault of the kind we saw against Gaza, without critical US support. The United States quite literally subsidizes the whole enterprise, while shielding Israel from international pressure to alter its behavior. Therefore, the US is an active participant and in fact a vehement supporter of horrific Israeli crimes in the West Bank, Gaza, and elsewhere.
In my opinion Americans have a very important role in stopping Israeli atrocities. Since the American government is the primary enabler of Israeli crimes, popular organization in the United States is perhaps the most important key to changing the policy. This has to begin by spreading awareness and educating people about the nature of the crimes, which are largely ignored by the American media. If this crucial step - educating people - is not the first focus of activist work, then any criticism of Israel can be silenced (as it often is) by labeling critics anti-Semites. Such misuse of anti-semitism has been well documented by Norman Finkelstein, in his Beyond Chutzpah and The Holocaust Industry, both of which are excellent books and which should be read by anyone who is interested in these matters. If education doesn't take a primary role, it would be impossible to expect people to understand why such important actions as divestment and so on are reasonable and even necessary.
The role of the labor movement is to support these efforts, in solidarity with human beings who are undergoing tremendous hardship, including mass murder, at the hands of the US empire. Unfortunately, my limited experience with the radical labor movement in the United States has not been encouraging. While it is important to stay focused on the "workers good, bosses bad" mentality, the insistence on seeing the entire world through this prism is dogmatic and often counterproductive. It is understandable why socialists and anarchists would be hesitant to endorse nationalist movements, such as the Palestinian national struggle. However, in this case, where a people have been dispossessed at the hands of a Jewish nationalist movement, the Zionist movement, to refuse to stand in solidarity with the Palestinian national struggle in favor of adhering to leftist dogma is woefully misguided, and privileges the rights of the Jews, who have already achieved statehood, over the Arabs, who are subject to the occupation and overall domination of the Jewish collective. As Howard Zinn has said, "you can't be neutral on a moving train." If we refuse to stand with the Palestinians in their struggle for a state in the West Bank in Gaza, are we to say that their military rule by Israel should continue until all nation-states are abolished? The consequences of this attitude for self-determination, freedom, human rights, and democracy are tremendous. As an anarchist, I am no supporter of the state. However, as a believer in democracy and self-determination, and freedom from domination, dispossession, and mass murder at the hands of the American empire I find no alternative but to endorse the Palestinian national movement.
MC: What does the U.S. have to gain by supporting Israeli aggression, other than the wrath of much of the Arab world, and the international community more broadly?
SM: This is an interesting question, and actually gets to the heart of the way the American empire functions, all around the world. To illustrate, I think it would be helpful to look at another example. What does the US stand to gain from terrorizing desperately poor Nicaraguan peasants struggling for the most basic human rights, first by propping up the brutal Somoza dictatorship, then, once they have finally managed to overthrow him, tearing the country apart for a decade by funding, training, and even directly commanding Contra terrorists? After all, Nicaragua is a tiny, poor country. And it does not stop at Nicaragua. For approximately a decade, the US waged a horrific campaign of rape, slaughter, and destruction, which wrecked three countries, possibly beyond repair. Why? Why, during these years, was the largest embassy in the world in Honduras? Surely,not because Honduras was the most important country for any perceptible reason. Why has the US worked tirelessly for decades to strangle the economy of the small island of Cuba?
The answers to these questions can be found in internal US planning documents, and the principles they speak to are deeply embedded in any system of imperial domination. As US planners explain, Castro is a dangerous figure not because he posed any territorial or physical threat to the United States, but because the Cuban Revolution represented an example "successful defiance" of US policy. In short, the Cuban people had committed the cardinal sin: they had overthrown a US dictator, Batista, and replaced him with someone of their own choosing, Fidel Castro, who refused to follow US orders. As a result, they had to be starved, terrorized, invaded, intimidated, and so on until they accepted their Washington-designated role as subordinate beings and dutifully carried out our wishes. The threat is that if this defiance is permitted to succeed, it could invigorate copycats elsewhere to follow suit, and refuse to submit to their colonial masters, who are ostensibly on a mission to civilize the world's barbarian hordes.
In Nicaragua, the problem was similar. As an Oxfam report written by Diana Melrose put it, it represented "the threat of a good example" to US elites. In short, the poor majority in Nicaragua had managed to organize, and to fight successfully against the vicious Somoza regime for rights like healthcare, education, and a more fair distribution of wealth under the Sandinista government. The US then became committed to sabotaging the revolution, at tremendous human cost, through the use of blind terrorism. Like the Cuban Revolution, if the Nicaraguan Revolution succeeded, it would have taught others around the world that they do not have to follow American orders, they do not have to resign themselves to a wretched existence in their neocolonial shackles. It is possible to rise up, and it is possible to succeed in making a better life, or at least determining your own future. This logic is deeply engrained in the American imperial system, just as it was the British and others.
I have seen this threat at work in my travels, and can attest that planners in Washington are right to be concerned. Heroes in the struggle against imperialism from all over the world become examples, and role models in the fight for freedom and self-determination. For example, in Egypt, there is a square named for Simon Bolivar, complete with his statue. Bolivar, the Latin American leader who led that continent to its independence from Spanish colonialism, has inspired people a half a world and several generations away. In the Sabra and Chatilla refugee camps just outside Beirut, there hang large posters of the Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez. The downtrodden and dispossessed Palestinian refugees, like the wretchedly impoverished peoples elsewhere in the third world, are inspired by this man, who in their perception has stood up to Washington's global economic programs and allowed average, poor people, like them, to determine their own future with dignity, even if that means going against US dictates. These survival of these figures, the focus of much of Washington's ire, shows that the might US is not invincible after all, that there are ways its global dominance can be challenged and even defeated. This is the real threat.
In the Middle East, the major energy-producing region of the world, preventing the emergence of such a model is an especially critical goal. This is the reason that the US has historically backed the most reactionary, authoritarian governments in the region, who have assisted it in its goal of squashing the more progressive, or at least independent forces, such as the pan-Arabism of Nasser, or Qasim's Iraq. Should the Palestinians succeed in their national struggle against Israel, the message would ring loud and clear, sending shockwaves to all corners of the region and indeed the world: Israel is not invincible, as the Americans would like you to believe. The mighty empire can be defeated, it can fall; if you fight long and hard enough, you can prevail. The implications of this would be tremendous, as you could imagine.
On another level, the occupation and other aggressive policies often enable Israel to retain or acquire control of vital resources, such as water, which are scarce in the region, and running out rapidly. The 1967 war, for example, saw Israel conquer the water-rich (and strategically vital) Golan Heights from Syria, as well as capturing the fertile West Bank, whose water Israel now controls as well.
MC: Your explanation is quite different than the way U.S. officials put it; namely, that the special relationship between the two countries is a result of their mutual commitments to democracy. Is there any truth to this? Also, could you explain the concept of the "Israel lobby," as some call it, and what role, if any, does it play in shaping either U.S policy or the debate within the country?
SM: Naturally, the rhetoric coming out of centers of power is pure public relations, proclaiming "our" noble intentions and unwavering dedication to the highest ideals as the primary motive behind our policies around the world. Even a cursory look at the facts and a moment's thought could instantly reveal this to be the nonsense that it surely is. If commitment to democracy is the primary motive driving US relations, why is the most important US ally in the world Saudi Arabia? Why does the United States subsidize the cruel Egyptian dictatorship, fully supporting its efforts to stifle democracy in that country? If we seek to explain what makes US policy towards two countries different, it follows that we should try to identify what is different between those countries in the first place. So, for instance, to return to an example we just used, what is the difference between Venezuela and Colombia? Both have some degree of democracy (Venezuela much more so). But Uribe, the President of Colombia, follows US orders faithfully, while Chavez resists US regional designs. As a result, the Colombian government is the top recipient of US aid in the hemisphere, matching its distinction as its worst human rights violator, while Venezuela is vilified and bullied.
To take another example closer to the issue at hand, look at Iran and Saudi Arabia. Both are extreme, repressive fundamentalist regimes, although Iran is a great deal more democratic than Saudi Arabia (which is not saying much, to be sure). Why then is Iran placed under isolating, crippling sanctions while the Saudis are given billions of dollars in weapons contracts and so on? Leaving aside the actual merits of the charge, one could of course make the argument, as Washington does, that Iran supports so-called "terrorist groups" like Hezbollah. But that would still not explain the difference with Saudi Arabia, which has bankrolled radical Sunni groups all over the world for decades with the approval and consent of the US, including setting up the madrassas in Pakistan which spawned the Taliban, generously subsidizing the mujahadeen in Afghanistan which spawned part of what is now commonly referred to as "Al-Qaeda," and on and on. The difference is that Saudi Arabia has been a reliable US subordinate since its creation in 1932, while the Iranians overthrew a US-backed dictator in 1979, a sin for which, like the Cubans and Nicaraguans, they must be punished.
The Israel Lobby argument is tricky, and one which is often simply a veneer for anti-Semitism. First, we must understand that the so-called "Israel Lobby" is by no means exclusively or even predominantly Jewish, but rather is made up of large numbers of frothing-at-the-mouth radical Christian Evangelicals and others as well. The problem with the Walt and Mearsheimer argument, as I understand it, is that they radically understate the scope and power of the lobby. While the "lobby groups" that Walt and Mearsheimer have in mind can do things like get Congress to pass a resolution to move the US embassy to Jerusalem, it is the overall strategic relationship with Israel which guides US policy, not a small evil cadre of individuals in Washington. If the overall elite consensus was not of the view that the US relationship with Israel is of crucial importance, in order to terrorize the region into following US orders, then the Lobby would be out of business in days.
In the article (I have not read the book) their definition of the lobby is roughly those groups in society, which seek to bend public perception of the issue to engender support for Israel. To conduct a rational analysis, the next step after defining the group to be examined is to find out why such groups behave in such a way. The answer, as Chomsky and Herman, for example, have shown, is that they act in this way (in support of Israel) because the crimes Israel commits are in the interests of US elites. After all, the members of AIPAC do not write the editorials in the New York Times, which refuse to condemn Israel for its actions, or the articles which refuse to mention them. These tasks are performed by members of the intellectual elite, who would thus have to be included in Walt and Mearsheimer's definition of the "Lobby." Further inaccuracies are revealed when we observe that it is not just Israel who receives such freedom from criticism from the intellectual elite, but all US allies, or states acting in US interests. Should these crimes no longer serve these interests, they would meet with criticism, from these and other elite forums. Thus what Walt and Mearsheimer are observing is not the devious actions of small cadre, but rather the normal functioning of the uncritical US intellectual elite, who, like all such classes, mainly serve the purpose of "selling" state policy, formulated in the interests of elites, to the public.
Tuesday, March 31, 2009
Ramblings of a Wanderer Part III: Sabra and Shatila
When the first international journalists entered the camps in the days after the massacre, they were shocked at what they found. Corpses were strewn everywhere, many half-buried under the rubble from the heavy Israeli bombing which had preceded the slaughter, a bombing which has been compared to the horrific 2009 bombing of Gaza for its brutal and indiscriminant nature. As a result, much of the camp had been reduced to ruins and untold numbers killed before the Phalangists ever entered the camps, an important fact which you will not find any mention of in the new film "Waltz with Bashir," for one example. (In case it's not obvious, I did not take any of this first group of pictures. The rest are mine. -SM)
Since that time, Israel has stood in defiance of countless UN resolutions insisting that the cleansing was unjust, and that the refugees be permitted to return to their homes and to their land which their families had lived on for generations. As part of the Oslo "peace process," in reality a sickening fraud, the great Palestinian hero Yassir Arafat turned his back on the refugees, essentially giving up on the right of return, recognizing that Israel was "right" in 1948, and leaving his dispossessed people to their fates; with no Israeli acknowlegement of the awful, generations-long crime perpetrated against them, no compensation for what was done. Arafat appeared before the world as its now-repentant assailant, a man who had realized he had been wrong to struggle for Palestinian rights all these years, but had now seen the error of his ways, brought to "see the light," and thus permitted to participate in the disgusting display on the White House lawn in which he shook hands with his "friends," Bill Clinton and Yitzakh Rabin, themselves unrepentant mass murders of the people he was supposed to lead.
Unlike the blind optimism I felt in other camps I visited, there was a feeling of darkness all around. Perhaps it was all in my head, but I felt suspicious, almost hostile gazes focused on me from all sides, peering out of dark corners and throgh dirty windows. My skin crawled; I nervously snapped photos of my surroundings, without paying much attention to what I was photographing. Everything was so alien, so remote, that it seemed no matter what I took pictures of I would catch something of interest. I wanted to somehow capture the entirety of this place, to take it with me so I could open it later, when I was ready to absorb it; now I was in a state of shock and near terror, unable to understand or digest what was happening around me. Of course this was impossible; but I continued clicking away, hoping to get something worthwhile.
After we had walked down the main, busy street and emerged onto Beirut city streets on the other side, a large man on a small scooter stopped and asked us if we needed any help. "No," I quickly answered, already walking away before he introduced himself as an officer in the Lebanese army. "Be careful here," he said, a stern look in his eye, "it's not a safe area." We nodded to show him that we knew this, and he asked if we needed anything further. Ivy asked him where the Shatila camp was, since we had just walked through Sabra. He pointed us in the direction, and we thanked him as he drove off. Walking down the street to the adjoining Shatila camp, people nodded to us as we slunk by, some greeting us with a cheerful "Marhaba," others with a solmen "Salaamu Alaikum." As we approached the left turn which the soldier had indicated we should take, I looked up the street with trepidation. It was a narrow, back-alley kind of street which wound its way back into the camp. Before I could turn around to ask Ivy if she thought we should take this street, she was already ahead of me, her head dissapearing into the shadows of the small street. Somewhat apprehensively, I followed her.
On the other side, we encountered a small man who stopped us with a smile, and asked us where we were from in Arabic. "Amriki" we answered, indicated we were from the United States. The man had an ID badge, and seemed to be better dressed than the other men with whom he was conversing over coffee and sheesha, leading me to wonder if he was Palestinian. "Enta Filistiny?" I asked. He shook his head no, informing us that he worked with a Lebanese political party, and was there to help out with the work at the camp. We nodded our heads in approval as he stood up from his coffee, nodded to his companion, and motioned us to follow him. "Don't walk this far back," he said, "you could have problems; someone might rob you or hurt you," he said with caution. "Walk back up this way, and stay in the front of the camp," he pointed down another narrow street which we were to follow. Already jittery and nervous, none of this did anything to relax me.
As we walked down the narrow winding streets, waving and nodding hello to curious passersby, I tried to imagine what it must have felt like to be here with Israeli bombs raining down overhead, or with the vicious Phalangist militias roaming about, executing family and friends mercilessly; I could almost hear the screams and wails. It was unimaginable, it was inhuman. As it was, the camp had a thick air of deep collective trauma, it was as if we had somehow crossed through the looking glass into another world, a wretched, awful, irredeemable place. There is no way to put in words nor show with pictures the feeling in the air of the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps.Soon, we had made it back on to the main road from which we entered and I began to recognize my surroundings as we made our way out of the camp, back toward the city of Beirut, back toward the real world, the world I knew where I could think and breathe. I needed oxygen, I needed to think; I felt confused, angry, and more than a little frightened. I felt ashamed to be an American, embarrassed to be so wealthy. I felt that I was somehow responsible for all this, and that I somehow could and must make it right.
As we emerged from the camp and hailed a cab, I began to feel guilty that I had been so afraid. Perhaps I was merely afraid to face the wicked reality of the world and the awful position of so many in it, perhaps the hostility had been all in my mind (not that I could blame the residents of Sabra and Chatila camps if it was not). I turned to Ivy, and hugged her silently as I looked back at the camp from the streets of Beirut before climbing into the cab.
It wasn't until we were in the cab, with the ruins and slums of the camp fading behind us, that I really made sense of it all. Indeed, I was responsible, not just as a human being but as an American. My country is of prime importance to the continued suffering of the Palestinian people; it was the chief sponsor of the Sabra and Chatila attacks in 1982, just as it was in Gaza in 2009. Thus I am responsible, and furthermore, as a member of the most privileged group in the world, it is my obligation to do all I can to make this right, whatever small contribution that amounts to in the end. It is a thankless and lonely task to be sure, but it is the bare minimum which is required of me in view of my nationality and privilege. As Albert Camus put it in his classic The Plague, all that is needed to stop a horrible epidemic from consuming the entire community is "a little common decency." Just as Camus' heroes may not have been able to stop or even slow a plague, it was their duty to their fellow humans to try, even if that meant simply cleaning the streets, counting and burying corpses, and treating the symptoms of those certain to die. I knew as the cab drove us back to our hotel in Beirut's downtown Hamra district that I would spend a good portion of the rest of my life standing up to the plague of violence, oppression, suffering and injustice, no matter where in the world it was found. Like those facing an unstoppable plague, my efforts may not amount to much, as the forces at play are significantly beyond my command. The fact is, I simply have no other choice.
Sunday, March 1, 2009
Ramblings of a Wanderer - Part II
Once we were loaded into the cab, we set off on the highway toward central Beirut. Pointing out the window at a vast colony of crumbling, crowded buildings, some little more than piles of rubble, the driver said "Shi'a there," a simple sentence which we nonetheless had a difficult time understanding through his accent. It wasn't until he told us that it was one of the Hizballah-controlled neighborhoods of Beirut that we really understood what he was saying, and truly realized where we were. As we continued on the highway away from the airport, signs of warfare were everywhere. This had been the site of some of the heaviest fighting during the Israeli invasions in 1978 and 1982, and had no doubt seen combat during the 20-year occupation and subsequent incursions, including recently in 2006, leaving aside the brutal and bloody Lebanese civil war which lasted more than a decade. It was rare that we spotted a building that remained undamaged by large-caliber shells, or bear the marks of bombardment and gunfire. As we drove deeper into the city, we saw fewer signs of violence and less poverty, yet even there it was rare to find a building which did not have at least a few scars. The ride to the hotel passed silently as we absorbed our new surroundings, interrupted only by the cab driver occasionally offering his welcome. Before long, we had arrived at the hotel, paid the driver, and walked inside.
Click on the photos for hi-res versions!!!
The hotel was nice, considering the cheap rate, and was in a decent area of town. As we waited for our key and paid for the 4 nights we would be staying, we looked around at the gawdy 1970s-era furniture, gathered in a sort of living room style arrangement, complete with couches and a television. "Follow me," the woman working at the counter said, and lead us up a short staircase and into the most interesting elevator I have ever ridden. Rather than parting in the middle and opening mechanically, the door was simply on a hinge, as any normal door to a room or a home. Once inside, the door would close and you would select your floor, and the tiny elevator - no larger than a small closet - would begin to move. The truly interesting thing about this setup is that there is no door on the inside of the elevator; the hinged door is attached to the wall on each floor, so as the elevator moves the front is open, leaving the occupants to watch the floors and doors pass by in front of them. Once the elevator arrives at its destination, it is up to the passenger to open the door and step out. More than a few times Ivy and I remained in the elevator once it had stopped moving, waiting for the door to open, only to realize later that it was not going to open, laugh at ourselves, and step into the hall.We walked down the hallway behind the attendant to our room, which was a bit small, but comfortable. I was immediately enamoured by the balcony, from which the breeze gently blew through the open windows, the light curtains gently fluttering, followed by the now-shining afternoon sun. After ensuring that the television worked (there was no cable, but we were still able to receive Al Jazeera English), the attendant left us and Ivy decided that she would take a shower and perhaps a siesta before we went out for the night to explore the infamous Beirut nightlife. It didn't take long, and she reported the shower worked well, although it sprayed salt water which proved a bit discomforting until we became accustomed to it. She walked over to the window and lit a cigarette, gazing outside as an almost imperceptible smile crept across her lips, the sun pleasantly illuminating every feature of her face. The startling contrast between the shadowy room and the brightness of the outside, penetrating the darkness and ornamenting Ivy's gentle features created a placid, romantic, and almost dream-like scene. I felt so pleased at that moment that I could have exploded.
We layed down for a nap, awaking a few hours later in search of fun. We began by getting pizza and a bottle of wine at a place down the street where we could sit out on the sidewalk and absorb the ambience of busy downtown Beirut. The pizza was remarkably delicious - perhaps among the best I have ever had. After we finished, we moved on to a small bar across the street from our hotel, which we were alone at apart from what seemed like some kind of family gathering. Unsatisfied, yet undaunted, we pressed on. We got directions to downtown, where we assumed many of the restaraunts and bars must be, and set off on foot. Downtown had been one of the sights of the most intense conflict during the civil war, but it had been rebuilt (at tremendous cost) by the recently-assassinated President Rafiq Hariri in stunning nouveau-Ottoman style. It has a very different feel from the rest of Beirut, but the astonishing architecture, with its Ottoman arches and vivid yellow-browns, housing small cafes separated by stone streets closed to all but foot traffic, somehow does not feel out of place.
When we arrived, however, we found the place largely deserted, and mostly dark (the power goes out in Beirut with great regularity, so much so that by the time we left we barely noticed when walking through the city at night and it would suddeny become pitch dark for a few minutes). Nonetheless, many of the small cafes were open, and we took a seat at the first one we found. While we were sitting out on the street, the tables were covered by a tarpaulin roof and plastic sides, probably in reaction to the recent rain showers. As we sat down, we quickly discovered the cafe did not have any food, so we decided to order some sheesha and relax, after which we would try to find some food and head back to the hotel. Not long after our sheesha arrived, the sky broke out into a downpour, torrents of rain streaming from the sky onto the pavement just beyond the clear plastic sides. Soon, Ivy also noticed fairly large hailstones bouncing off the street as well, which struck the tarpaulin roof with loud thuds, causing us to raise our voices significantly in order to speak. We finished our sheesha, paid, and moved to the cafe directly next door which had a similar seating arrangement (temporary roof / siding with tables on the street) and ordered some lebneh, pita, and kebob while the rain, hail, thunder, and lighting battered the street outside. There was something charming and even exciting about this setting, but nonetheless it was good that it slowed a bit before we had to get up to go back to the hotel, allowing us to stay somewhat dry on our walk back. Disappointed but not dismayed, we vowed to try again the next night, and settled in for a much-deserved night's sleep.We did not get it. We were awoken the next morning at the crack of dawn by the shouting, hammering, drilling, sawing, and other loud activity typical of a construction site directly outside our window, just beyond the balcony. There was construction going on all across the city, rebuilding the parts that had been destroyed by the Israeli bombing in 2006, cleaning out dilapidated and destroyed structures and repairing those which were still viable. I walked out onto the balcony, and saw that there was a large team of workers already assembled there. After a few days, I was not as dismayed at the damaging effect of the construction on my own ability to get sleep as I was shocked by the hours that the laborers worked. They arrived everyday a little past 6 am, and continued all day, not going home until 7 pm or even later. Ivy soon joined me on the balcony to enjoy the morning air (as best we could), and lit a cigarette while we decided what we would do for the day. In the end, somehow I was tasked with searching through our Lonely Planet book for entertainment while she took a shower, and I soon identified an interesting place for breakfast and settled for a stroll through the city to get our bearings. She seemed agreeable once out of the shower, and so it was decided.
The breakfast place, which we had some trouble finding, was called Al Kahwa, and we ended up enjoying it so much that we eagerly returned each day and ordered the same meals, the Lebanese breakfast, and a cup of Turkish coffee. Right across from the American University Beirut, with large windows looking onto the street, the cafe had a laid-back feel which we both appreciated, and the food was simply excellent. The Lebanese breakfast consisted of two large pieces of pita-style bread, some Lebneh, eggs and potatoes mashed together, two stick-like pieces of fried cheese, and some fresh slices of tomatoes and cucumbers. It did not take long for us to settle into the routine of heading to Al Kahwa every day, always with the same order, so that when by the time we left we were greeted at the door with smiles and welcomes, and the food was brought out for us without the need to order.
We walked out of the restaurant toward the campus of American University Beirut (AUB) the architectural beauty of which lured us to explore a bit before proceeding toward the downtown area. After a short walk through the campus, we reemerged onto the street, and both of us were struck by the European feel of the city. It felt as if I had stepped out of the Middle East and into Belgium, or Prague. Most people sported western-style dress, and the society was clearly more liberal than what we were used to in other places in the Middle East. The hijab was rare; the abaya rarer still. Occasionally, we would see a man walking with a woman covered from head to toe in a black abaya, including over her face, and wonder what it must feel like to wear such an outfit in a place like this, where it was so uncommon, thus making it impossible to hide behind conformity.
Yet in the midst of this charming place, the signs of destruction from the Israeli attack and the civil war were omnipresent, and the wealth and pomp of the more developed Christian areas contrasted sharply with the poverty of the Islamic sections. The most beautiful old colonial houses which dot the city have fallen into disrepair, and are perhaps most revealing of Beirut's troubled past, their wounds and long history mirroring those of Lebanon and its diverse peoples and religions. For this reason, I was most fascinated by these homes, photographing them regularly and trying to listen as closely as I could to the story they told.
We continued our walk toward what we thought was the downtown area, but as we walked deeper into what was increasingly obviously the Islamic part of the city (nowhere near downtown) we stopped and asked directions of a woman passing by, who laughed and told us that we had walked in quite the wrong direction, and needed to hail a cab if we wanted to head downtown. We did so, and told the driver to stop once we saw the startlingly blue domes and soaring minarets of the Mohammed Al-Amin Mosque, which soars majestically over the downtown area. We approached the mosque and asked the attendant outside if it was ok for us to enter. "Men only," he answered. Ivy's dissapointment immediately showed on her face, and she threw me a spiteful look. "I hate you," she said jokingly, as she walked over to sit down on the steps of the mosque and light a cigarette to wait for me. "I'm sorry, I won't be long" I said as I entered the mosque.The beauty of the mosque was indescribable. Ornately decorated with old-style arabic script, chandeliers and large windows which allowed enough natural light to keep it remarkably bright inside, the high ceilings were crowned by a staggering, inimitable dome; which, perfectly lit by windows which run the circumference, seemingly glowed, revealing an astonishing and almost psychedelic array of colors and patterns. Al-Amin mosque might be one of the most beautiful buildings I have ever been in, and I immediately felt sorry that Ivy had to miss out. The mosque was practically empty since it was not prayer time, and so I was able to photograph the interior of the mosque undisturbed. Once I finished, I hurried back outside to where Ivy was waiting patiently and tried to tell her what it was like, but found myself unable to describe the heavenly elegance of the interior. As soon as I showed her the photos I had taken, her frustration at the chauvinism of Arab, and particularly Muslim, culture clearly grew, betrayed by the expression on her face as she looked over the photos.
I strongly reccomend clicking on the photos of the dome, below, to see the high-resolution versions!
We left the haram and walked around the corner, where there was an Orthodox church which, while beautiful and ornate, was dwarfed by the Al-Amin mosque which I had just walked out of. We decided to head back to the downtown area where we had been the previous night, to see if we could find a place to have a drink and relax. As we entered the downtown, seeing the lovely Ottoman-style architecture for the first time in daylight, the sun began to peek through the clouds and it suddenly became a very nice day. A host for one of the outdoor cafes, now stripped of their plastic siding yet with the temporary rooves still erected, encouraged us to sit down at the first place we came to, and we picked a table on the outside nearest the street to enjoy its charming ambience. Unfortunately, as we soon discovered, the place we had chosen did not offer alchohalic drinks, dashing my hopes of relaxing with a glass of wine, for which the nargila pipe and fruit juice cocktail which we ordered were a poor substitute.
After we sat for a bit, we decided to get up and get moving if we were to make it to the waterfront area, called Corniche, in time to catch the sunset over the Mediterranean. The closer we walked to the water, the more the damage from the Israeli bombing in 2006 was evident. Apart from one towering skyscraper that was completely bombed out, many of the smaller buildings around the waterfront were partially or totally destroyed, and the waterfront hotels that lined the shoreline were clearly either brand new or had been repaired in the two years since the bombing, and many of them were still being worked on. One thing was clear, however: Beirut was well on its way to bouncing back from the assault.
The effect of the Hizballah takeover of much of Beirut some seven months or so ago is still certainly being felt throughout the city, by contrast. The streets are carefully watched by large numbers of soldiers, accompanied by a fair allotment of tanks and other heavy artillery. I tried to photograph some of the tanks and other military equipment and personnel, but each time I was confronted by a soldier who forced me to delete the photos. It was, however, without question the most militarized situation I have ever been in outside of the Occupied Palestinian Territories.
It didn't take long at all for us to reach the lovely Corniche, where we strolled for a few hours down its wide promenade along the waterfront. True to her character, Ivy's eyes lit up exuberantly as soon as she saw the water, and a staircase leading down in front of the sea wall proved too much for her to resist. She descended the steps eagerly, in hopes of touching or maybe just being near the water. Realizing that this was a bad idea, I followed her to about the halfway point of the staircase, taking a few photos of the enchanting waterfront area while she ran ahead. Suddenly, I heard the loud woosh of a large wave followed by a shriek, and looked down from my camera just in time to see Ivy charging back to the staircase, soaking wet. I couldn't help but laugh, and, ever the good sport, she chimed right in, walked back onto the promenade and sat on the nearest bench to ring out her socks and light a cigarette.
Before long, we were walking again, walking down the Corniche in search of a nice place to eat with a view of the water. After walking a significant distance, up a steep hill past some army fortifications, we were confronted with Pigeon Rock, an extremely oddly shaped rock (like an upside-down "u," forming a kind of tunnel in its center). After pausing a moment to view this Lebanese landmark, we continued on until we found a place with a large outdoor patio overlooking the entire bay, including a great view of Pigeon Rock, aptly named "Bay Rock Cafe." We sat at a table near the water, ordered a bottle of wine, kicked back, and watched out over the bay as the sun began to decline behind Pigeon Rock, and the shimmering waters of the Mediterranean beyond. It was a beautiful end to a fabulous day.
The buzz from the day continued through the night, when we went to Gemayzeh Cafe, a small kitchen-style cafe across town which features live Arabic music every night. One man played the Oud, one the Tabla, and the whole place came alive to the music. People were dancing, cheering, laughing, clapping, drinking. I looked over at Ivy to see her face lit up with a smile, and couldn't help feeling the same. The band was great; I enjoyed myself thoroughly, had more than a few glasses of Almaza (Lebanese beer), and walked away with a feeling of deep satisfaction and contentment. After a long cab ride through the packed Lebanese streets (they are in total gridlock most of the day), Ivy passed out nearly as soon as we walked in the door. I laid in bed for awhile, thinking about life, the universe, and everything, and wondering what else this fabulous adventure had in store for us.
TO BE CONTINUED...
Saturday, February 28, 2009
Ramblings of a Wanderer - Part I
We left our Ramallah apartment at around 10 am, a bit of a late start for such an ambitious journey. To complete the first leg of the trip, getting out of Israel/Palestine via the Sheikh Hussein Bridge, we would need to cross the Israeli Apartheid/Annexation wall into Jerusalem. With all entries and exits into and out of Israel/Palestine controlled by the Israelis, and all arabs forced to use the Allenby Bridge (further south, near Jericho and on the eastern side of the wall), the Sheikh Hussein route, reserved for Jews and foreigners, seemed to be a more hassle-free choice. We walked through the center of town to the Ramallah bus station and found bus #18, a white van for the few arabs (mostly Jerusalem residents) who are allowed to cross the wall into Jerusalem, legally Palestinian territory but unilaterally annexed by Israel after they conquered it in 1967. At the Qalandia checkpoint, the main thruway from the eastern "Palestinian" side of the wall to the western "Israeli" side, the familiar routine was repeated without incident. The bus came to a halt, and all men under 45 got off the bus to walk through by foot (Palestinian men under 45 living on the eastern side of the wall are not permitted to cross the wall for any reason, barring very special and equally rare circumstances, so extra care is taken to ensure that those young males who do cross are searched with extra care - and as humiliatingly as possible). Meanwhile, soldiers well-armed with US-made M16 rifles board the bus to check the papers of those who remain, including Ivy and myself who are given special treatment as a result of our US passports (this is one of the most maddening aspects of visiting Palestine - a foreigner, like myself, has significantly more rights, privileges, and freedoms than those who have lived here for generations).
After the soldiers walked through the bus and checked everyone's papers, the bus was permitted to pass through the checkpoint to the western side where we parked and waited for the young men who had gotten off to pass through. So far, none of the ramped-up security I had expected to see on the day before the Israeli election had materialized, a stroke of luck which bade well for the prospects of completing the ambitious journey. It wasn't too long before the men filed back on to the bus and we were on our way into Jerusalem. It was only then that my fears were validated, as the bus was stopped by Israeli military police for additional inspection. This time it wasn't so easy. The soldiers entered the bus pompously, brusquely, and arrogantly, chests in the air, American rifles in hand, and demanded everyone's papers. When one of the soldiers arrived at the back of the bus and looked at Ivy and I, passports out for inspection, his face betrayed a disgust that foreigners, Americans, were riding with the enemy, sitting on a bus full of arabs. His cool, steely gaze sent shivers up and down my spine, before he turned away, replacing the sunglasses over his eyes and walking back toward the front of the bus to collect the papers from those on the other side of the aisle.
About halfway, he came to a man in his early thirties who meekly presented a green Palestinian ID card (as opposed to the blue Israeli "resident" card given to the arabs who reside in Jerusalem) and nervously looked at the ground. The soldier began aggressively interrogating the man, who nodded emphatically, but frantically produced papers, permits, and passes from all pockets indicating that he was a worker with the Red Cross on his way to a hospital within Israel on some official business. Yet the soldier was not satisfied, and took the man off the bus and back to the IDF Jeep while they made further inquiries. Ivy and I chatted anxiously, glancing out the window along with our fellow passengers to discover what the man's fate had been, how much longer we would have to wait. After another thirty or fourty minutes, the man reappeared on the bus, IDs of all the others in hand which he doled out, matching the pictures with faces while the bus drove the short distance remaining to the central arab bus station (merely a parking lot near the old city).
Next we needed to get to the main Jerusalem bus terminal, a large and very secure building in West Jerusalem (the Israeli portion), to catch a bus on which we would complete the three-hour journey to Beit Sha'an, very near to the border crossing to Jordan. The bus ride passed largely without incident, apart from the severe leg cramps resultant from the minuscule amount of leg room, leaving all of my 6 feet and 3 inches crammed into a space barely suitable for a toddler. As we drove further into rural Israel toward the Jordan valley, the villages smaller and poorer, I was struck by how militarized the countryside is. There were military bases everywhere, accompanied by soldiers and the obvious heavy equipment one would expect to see alongside. While much of the area was desert, there were sudden and pronounced areas of lush green fields, where the pallid desert had been transformed into an oasis of life and color. I couldn't help but remember the reasons for this - Israel has aggressively taken control of water resources in the Middle East, in particular those in historical Palestine (one of the main reasons behind the occupation of the West Bank and the Golan Heights). Their disproportionate consumption of those resources has permitted them to literally make the desert bloom, the twisted realization of the classic Zionist dream.
When we finally arrived in Beit Sha'an, a small town in the Jordan desert, we stopped to get what were some of the largest, most delicious, and best-earned fallafels I have ever eaten. In the restaraunt, we found a cab driver willing to take us to the border, just a few kilometers away, for fifty sheqels, and we grudgingly agreed. As we were relaying the neccesary information to the cab driver, another man walking by overheard the conversation, paused, and walked towards our table. "You go to Jordan?" he asked, to which we nodded. "Why?" he asked, "it is arab! You have to be careful with the Arabs," he said. We nodded politely, revealing nothing and certainly not about to enter into a political conversation in this venue, and got in the cab. We arrived at the border in a matter of moments, took our bags from the back of the cab, and walked into the terminal surrounded by Israeli soldiers and impatient and tired looking travelers.
We walked into the terminal, and approached the first window. We changed over our sheqelim for dinars, paid the 50 sheqel exit tax each, and advanced toward the passport control window. The problems began immediatley. Since we were planning on traveling to Syria and Lebanon, I had to ask the passport control officer at the airport upon our arrival in Israel in January not to stamp my passport; an Israeli stamp will surely keep one out of both of those two countries (and others), as they have no diplomatic relations with Israel in response to its outrageously aggressive behavior and regular comission of horrific and shocking crimes. Of course, not having the stamp immediately raises suspicions every time my passport is examined at a checkpoint or a border crossing, and I inevitably have to answer a slew of questions (sometimes for hours) and deal with an all-around hassle.Since she has to travel back and forth to Jerusalem every day, Ivy decided to get a second passport to make it easier to deal with the IDF at the checkpoints. One has an Israeli stamp, and the other can be used for travel to Lebanon, Syria, and anywhere else that an Israeli stamp would forbid entry. However, she only brought the passport without the Israeli stamp with her, to enter Lebanon and Syria, leaving the one with the Israeli stamp on it - the one with which she entered Israel - at home (per my advice, I should add; I thought it would be better that way in case she were searched when entering Lebanon or Syria, so they would not discover a passport with an Israeli stamp concealed and deny us both entry). This was a bad idea. They told us to wait while they made several phone calls to sort out the issue, and we sat on two small, uncomfortable seats in the side of the terminal. After 45 minutes or so, they finally told us we could go, and we proceeded out of the terminal to wait for a bus that would drive us across the bridge into Jordan (it is not permitted to walk the few meters across the tiny Hussein bridge for some reason). We waited another 20 minutes or so, then got on the bus, packed to the hilt with wildly shrieking Polish tourists, to make the five minute drive to the Jordanian side of the border. Ivy and I glanced at each other wearily, silently celebrating the crossing of border number two out of four - we were half way there.
On the Jordanian side, we waited in line for about 30 minutes (behind the gaggle of Polish tourists, whose cacauphonous sqwaking continued undisturbed) before we reached passport control, where we again had to request that our passports not be stamped. Since the crossing point that would have shown up on the stamp is the Sheikh Hussein Bridge, anyone in Syria or Lebanon looking at our passports would have known immediately that we crossed into Jordan from Israel, and would not allow us to enter. We asked if he could stamp a piece of paper instead, which he did. He told us we did not need the paper anymore once we left the terminal, but I decided we shold save them for just a little longer to be sure. We left the terminal within minutes and got in the nearest cab, which we requested drive us to the Syrian embassy in Amman where we would attempt to get visas to enter the diplomatically isolated country. As we drove from the cab station, the sun setting over the mountains in the distance and the sky darkening over crumbling desert slums around us, it came up in conversation with the driver that we were planning to travel through Syria to Beirut. He quickly pulled the cab over to the side of the road.
"You don't need a visa to enter Syria" he exclaimed, "you are American!" He picked up his cell phone, and began dialing frantically. After some time (perhaps 30 minutes) he seemed to have recieved a satisfactory answer. He floored the cab, pushing us back into our seats abruptly, and acclerated back onto the empty, dusky street. When we reached a fork a few meters down the road, indicating a left turn to head towards Amman, we went the opposite direction, towards a city called Irbid, and beyond it the Syrian border. Ivy and I looked at each other and grinned wide - this was going to be easier than we thought. Border three out of four was nearly conquered.
We finally arrived in Irbid, an unexpectedly large city, and it was nearly dark. The driver told us he had a friend who would take us all the way to Beirut that night, provided we paid him 100 American dollars. "Sounds like a deal," we indicated to him, and he pulled the cab to the side of the road and lit a cigarette while he made a few more phone calls. When his cigarette was finished, he put down the phone and got out of the cab, and said that he would be right back. He soon returned with fruit drinks for each of us and a man claiming to be his cousin, and sat back in the cab. We looked at each other silently, a necessity since we did not speak alot of arabic and he spoke barely any english. After what felt like an eternity - and several score more frantic sounding phone calls from the driver - we started moving again down one of the main roads off the traffic circle we had stopped on.
In a few minutes, we arrived at a parking lot, where we sat for another half hour - or maybe more, I had totally lost track, and by now it was pitch dark. Finally, the driver's friend showed up driving a black BMW and walked towards the cab, opened the passenger-side door, and got in. He asked to see our passports, which we produced, to ensure that there were no traces of travel to Israel that would cause us problems at the border. But there was a problem. He and the driver began arguing, frantically and heatedly discussing some topic for quite some time before the man finally stepped out of the cab. "I'm sorry," the cab driver said, "he cannot take you to Syria. You need a visa." I could feel Ivy sigh heavily from all the way across the long back seat of the cab. Our plan had failed. Miles away from Amman, in a strange, small city, we had no idea where to go or what to do. Luckily, the cab driver continued: "I'll drive you to Amman." It was time for plan B. He laboriously put the key back in the ignition, and we started off sluggishly down the road, back the direction we had come (at least a 45 minute drive) towards Amman. We arrived there several hours later, and asked the man to take us to a hotel. We were soon there, got some food, a bottle of wine, and settled in for the night. The driver agreed to meet us at 8 am to take us to the Syrian embassy where we would try to get visas to continue our drive into Syria.
In true Middle Eastern fashion, the driver arrived at 9:30 the next morning to bring us to the embassy. We went inside and waited while the driver spoke in arabic with the officer there. After what seemed like an intense conversation given the plain and uncomplicated nature of our request, he stepped away from the counter and walked back towards us. "You can't get a visa here," he said, "you need to get it at the Syrian embassy in the US." He indicated that I should approach the counter to speak to the woman and see for myself, which I did. The woman, face caked thick with makeup and red lipstick, told me that we could try to get one at the border, but that the chances were slim and we might have to wait for hours. I turned to the cab driver and asked him to take us to the airport. It was time for plan C - if we couldn't go through Syria, we would simply fly over it.
After getting lost several times along the way, we finally arrived at the airport in downtown Amman and approached an attendant standing outside the terminal to attempt to purchase tickets to Lebanon. To avoid trouble in Lebanon, we left the papers with the Jordanian stamps from the Hussein Bridge crossing with the cab driver, and said our goodbyes. For a few hundred dollars each, we found tickets to Lebanon leaving in less than an hour on Royal Jordanian airways, quickly purchased them, and headed toward the security area. After hussling through the security checks, x-ray scans, conveyor belts, and so on, we walked over to passport control. A sense of dread crept up my spine, as memories of our recent experiences flashed through my mind. We were not dissapointed this time, either. The man immediately began asking us why we did not have Jordanian entry stamps, and we tried to explain that we had been told to discard them before heading to Lebanon. After several frustrating attempts, he finally seemed to understand, but then began asking about Ivy's second passport. We answered his questions as best we could, but he asked us to sit and wait while he picked up the phone, periodically shouting over to us to confirm that we had indeed entered yesterday, over the Sheikh Hussein bridge. Each time, our answer was the same, but that did not stop him from asking us again and again, somehow expecting us to change our minds or come to some kind of last-minute realization that we had in fact been mistaken.
After what seemed like forever (yet again), we were cleared to proceed to the terminal, having been issued Jordanian entry stamps with the airport listed as the entry point. We hurried to the terminal, where the plane was already boarding, and hustled on. It seemed we were home free, and we settled in for the brief flight. Within moments, Ivy was passed out on my shoulder, and I turned up the Rolling Stones on my Ipod and relaxed for what felt like the first time in weeks.
As I looked out of the plane window, I noticed there was a vicious sandstorm blowing up outside, and I was unable to see more than a few feet beyond the window; even within that space visibility was minimal. The plane pulled onto the runway and began to accelerate, slowly leaving the ground in a few moments and climbing up into the sandy atmosphere. The winds were intense, and once off the ground all I could see was brown sand in all directions. The plane shook and pitched violently, dropping suddenly before regaining its trajectory and continuing its climb. It took around twenty minutes for us to break through the layer of sand and enter the clean blue air above the fray. For a nervous flier such as myself, it was a harrowing experience, yet Ivy somehow slept through the whole ordeal, waking up only after things had smoothed out and we were effortlessly gliding towards Beirut.
I relaxed on the brief flight, and before long we were informed that we were beginning the descent into Beirut's Rafiq Hariri airport. After we broke through the clouds, I could see the sharp, steely waters of the Mediterranean beneath us. As rough as the takeoff was, the landing seemed even worse. The whirling sandstorm in Jordan was now replaced by a thundering rainstorm, and the plane was again knocked from side to side, dropping suddenly as it decelerated in preparation for landing. We descended until the plane seemed perilously low to the water, which I could by then see was roiling, the inclement weather clearly provoking Poseidon's wrath. I clenched my fists and sat terrified, while Ivy sat with her head forward, wincing in pain at the pressure behind her ears which simply would not relent. I rubbed her back, and tried to comfort her, a pointless and helpless gesture. To make matters worse, the stewardess had insisted (per regulations, of course) that I turn off my Ipod for landing, thus depriving me of my sole source of comfort.
But at last we did land safely. I felt a mixture of relief and excitement as we disembarked from the plane and headed toward the airport. There was no line (and, for once, no trouble) at passport control, though it seemed like we had to present our passports a hundred times to a hundred different people, who quickly flipped through the pages, presumably looking for any indication that we had recently been in Israel. Of course, they found none, and each of them sent us on our way in short order. We followed the signs to the cab stand, and walked out of the airport through the automatic door, which magically opened like some portal to a new universe. We stood on the curb, cabs lined up outside and people bustling about in all directions, looked at each other and smiled as we took our first breaths of the fresh Beirut air and felt rejuvenated. We were finally here, and the real adventure was about to begin.
TO BE CONTINUED...
Tuesday, February 24, 2009
Back from my Travels
Hi all! I have returned to the West Bank last night from my two-week hiatus in Egypt and Lebanon. Expect a post today or tomorrow talking about what was quite an adventure, complete with harrowing experiences and the romance of idyllic orientalist imagery.
Sunday, February 8, 2009
The PLO Defends its Turf
Surprisingly to all, including Hamas, Hamas dominated the election, taking nearly 2/3 of the seats in the Parliament. This initiated a US/Fatah campaign to derail and obstruct the party from assuming any meaningful authority, culminating in the attempted US/Fatah coup in Gaza in June 2007, which was eventually foiled by Hamas, who drove the US proxies out of the strip. (This conflict was then cynically used by Fatah as an excuse to stage a coup in the West Bank, illegally installing Salam Fayyad as Prime Minister and essentially suspending the Parliament). In any event, the stunning electoral victory for Hamas showed to all that democratically reforming the PLO would be a dangerous proposition indeed. One of the main ways in which the Palestinians' dependent status is maintained is through the arrangements that came out of Oslo, which granted Israel complete control over Palestinain economic life, legitamized the settlements, and allowed it to freely advance its project of annexing large portions of the West Bank, which is being carved into isolated prison cells or "bantustans" - Sharon's word - all of which are controlled by Israel from the outside. Maintaining order among the prisoners was delegated by Israel to the new "Palestinian Authority," which conducts municipal affairs in about 8% of the West Bank, and acts as Israel's enforcer, responsible for suppressing any dissent to the continuing Israeli occupation and protecting Israeli control over most aspects of Palestinian life.
The major safeguard that all this can continue is the undemocratic nature of the PLO. At the beginning of the Oslo "peace process," which gave birth to the arrangement I have just briefly described, Israel decided that it would only negotiate with the PLO, the "sole legitamite representative of the Palestinian people." At the time, the weakening PLO, lead by the buffoonish Yassir Arafat, was willing to concede to any Israeli demands, such as allowing it to control water, keep the settlements, keep control over security, and enforce Israeli policy in exchange for Israel implanting it as the Palestinian leadership. Under the current PA President / PLO Chairman Abu Mazen (Mahmoud Abbas) this complacency continues. The demand placed on Hamas in order for them to be permitted to take part in the government again, and break the crippling siege on Gaza (ongoing since 1991), is that it recognize the PLO - an organization in which it is not permitted to take part - as the only legitamite representative of the Palestinians, and respect the agreements that body has signed (Oslo). It goes without saying that these agreements are wildly unpopular among Palestinians. If the PLO were to be reformed, and new elections were to be permitted with Hamas' participation, the Oslo arrangements would be placed in serious jeopardy as the PLO itself would reject them, and Israel would lack any real basis on the Palestinian side for their continued implementation. As a result, such reform has not taken place.
However, in the wake of Israel's horrific Gaza campaign (a group of American lawyers on an unofficial "fact-finding mission" recently “came to the conclusion that there have been violations of international laws and deliberate attacks on civilians"), after which Israeli forces were unable to enter major cities in Gaza, Hamas finds its position strengthened substantially. As leverage on the PLO, it made the aformentioned calls for an alternative body. My take on this is that it is merely a threat intended to pressure the PLO to include them - if Hamas did set up such an entity, the PLO would lose its legitimacy and be totally marginalized. In response to these calls, the PLO bussed in hundreds of demonstrators and militants from across the West Bank to demonstrate in Ramallah's Al-Manara square yesterday, an event at which I was present. It was obviously very well organized and carefully staged for the cameras. After being bussed in to Ramallah, the demonstrators gathered outside the square, out of view of the cameras, then marched in in unison, dramatically lead by men on horseback waving Fatah and PLO flags. Nowhere were there any flags of any factions besides Fatah.
To add to the trouble which the Oslo institutions find themselves in, Abu Mazen, the Palestinian President and Chairman on the PLO, has been totally discredited after the campaign. It became strikingly clear to everyone, while Israel butchered 1500 people in Gaza - over half of them under 18 years old - that Abu Mazen is at worst a collaborator, at best complicit with Israeli policy as he proved unwilling or unable to resist or really do much of anything during the nearly month-long attack. To make matters worse for Israel and its stooges at the Palestinian Authority, Abu Mazen's presidential term was meant to have ended on January 8, meaning he has been occupying the office illegally since that time. It is only a matter of time - depending on what happens with the current talks in Cairo between Israel, Egypt, the PA, and Hamas - until Hamas mounts some sort of challenge to his rule, either military or political. It is important to note as well that the only thing blocking the Hamas-dominated Parliament from meeting as it should is Abu Mazen. There is only one person who could possibly prevent Hamas from either taking over or leading to the destruction of the PA entirely - the long-imprisoned Marwan Barghouthi, viewed by many as a sort of Nelson Mandela in the making. He has good relations with both Fatah and Hamas, and has been a key architect in previous national unity agreements between Fatah and Hamas, such as that reached at Mecca in 2007.
Yet while many view him as the messiah Palestine awaits, an heir to the wildly popular Yassir Arafat, a few things bear remembering. Firstly, he is a member of the largely collaborationist Fatah party, the same to which Arafat belonged, the same to which Abu Mazen belongs, and the same which has been the primary beneficiary (among the Palestinians) of the Oslo arrangements, propped up by Israel to enforce its policies. He is, admittedly, a former member of the more radical wing of the party, the former commander of the militant Al Aqsa Brigades. However we should keep in mind that Abu Mazen and other among the most collaborationist Palestinian leaders have spent long periods of time in Israeli prisons, where they were groomed to be compliant and reliable leaders upon their release by Israel. There are many indications that this is exactly what has happened with Marwan Barghouti. For one, he has been given star treatment by Israel while in prison. For instance, he has been allowed to be tried in civilian courts, not the military tribunals that usually try the thousands of Palestinian political prisoners in Israeli prisons. He has also been permitted by Israel to run an extensive political operation from prison, conducting government activities and image-building public relations efforts, unique among the many political prisoners. As we have seen from the many Hamas and other enemy prisoners who have disappered into the Israeli prison system, not seen or heard from, there is no reason why Israel should allow Marwan to conduct such affairs unless it was preparing him to be the next leader of the PA / PLO.
Having allowed him to carefully cultivate his image from prison, Israel knows that if Marwan is released from jail he will immediately be catapulted to the leadership of the Palestinians, with their support of course. He is also the only member of Fatah who has a chance of keeping Hamas in check, and probably also the only Fatah leader who has any degree of popular legitimacy anymore. This is why, when I noticed the flags bearing the famous image of the handcuffed Marwan Bargouthi waving all around me at the carefully-staged demonstration, alongside those depicting Arafat, I came to suspect that Marwan could be released any day now, possibly in exchange for the captured Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit, whose release was one of the stated objectives for the bombing campaign. Olmert has said he wants to make a deal for Shalit before he leaves office, which would be a major victory for him and allow Israel to save some amount of face after its disastrous miscalculation in Gaza, during which it did not accomplish any of its major objectives - not only was Shalit not released, but Israeli soldiers were unable to topple Hamas, unable to enter major cities, unable to stop the rockets from being fired, and even unable to get Hamas to agree to sign a mild Egyptian-backed cease-fire, in the end unilaterally withdrawing once their time frame had run out (temporarily) with the inauguration of Obama. Meanwhile, Hamas emerged as stronger than ever, its popularity "soaring" according to recent poll by the Jerusalem Media and Communication Center. Releasing Marwan would thus be a win-win for Israel: shore up the rapdily-declining legitimacy of its proxy (the Palestinian Authority), thwart the calls by Hamas for inclusion in the PLO by bolstering its popular base (Marwan would be PLO chairman as well), and secure the release of Shalit so it has some basis on which it can say the Gaza operation was a success. Beyond that, it doesn't really seem they have any other choice.
Below are some photos from the demonstration. (Click on the images to enlarge them)
***UPDATE: This morning, the day after the demonstration, there are reports of the release of Marwan Bargouthi in exchange for the captured soldier, Gilad Shalit, confirming my suspicions. Interestingly, since Hamas is holding Shalit, they must have agreed to Bargouthi's release (obviously realizing the consequences), making it very likely that there will be some kind of unity government formed with Bargouthi at its head.
***UPDATE (2/24): While it seems that the reports of the release of Bargouthi were premature, such a move still seems likely. See this AP report from today.
Saturday, January 31, 2009
Injustice and Persecution in the Holy Land
Jerusalem is a city which I try to avoid visiting as often as possible. The fault line of every one of the religious, ethnic, and social conflicts in this troubled land, the tension is palpable everywhere you turn. Add to the mix a heaping dose of fanatical tourists bumbling around, maps in hand, Israeli soldiers, and generalized ignorance that it is in fact an occupied city, and perhaps once could understand why it is a difficult place to spend much time.
No Palestinian residents of the Occupied Territories (outside of Jerusalem) under age 45 are allowed to cross into the holy city for any reason, unless they live there. The Palestinians who live in Jerusalem, which is "occupied Palestinian territory" as the World Court ruled in July 2004, are not granted citizenship, but instead are given "resident" ID cards. Since it took the city by force in 1967, Israel has been steadily advancing its project of annexing the city, building government buildings there and implementing "Judaization" policies. Palestinians are driven from their homes, their property repossessed by the state of Israel, and Jews are encouraged to replace them. "New neighborhoods" - code for illegal Jewish settlement colonies within the city itself, pop up everywhere as a part of this program. The hope is that the character of the city will be permanently altered, to the point where the Palestinians will not be able to reclaim any significant part of the city in the course of the so-called "peace process" that has been going on for 20 years (in the course of which, it should be mentioned, Israel has yet to make a single concession).
With tensions high between Arabs and Jews after Israel's "savage" attack on Gaza (in the words of Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni) the Israeli military has been preventing even the Muslim residents of Jerusalem from entering the Al Aqsa mosque, the third holiest place in Islam, to attend Friday prayers. As a result, droves of Palestinian Muslims are forced to pray in the middle of the street outside of the Damascus gate of Jerusalem's famed Old City, in front of lines of often snickering Israeli soldiers blocking their entry. The sight moved both me and my traveling companion, Ivy, to tears.
The scene began with a sermon from the Imam, passionately shouting at the top of his lungs both from anger and the need to be heard outdoors with no amplification, Israeli soldiers looking on intently. The looks on the faces of those gathered there spoke volumes. People crowded around and listened intently to the passionate speech, a truly dramatic and heart-wrenching scene. Somehow they seemed used to it; they had mostly lived their whole lives as second class citizens, barely human, in a foreign land and society of which they could never be a part. Worse still, this foreign place, this alien society, was built on the ashes and ruins of the Arab society, their society, their home, their country, that once stood. Now they were conquered and cast aside as outsiders, prevented from even entering the mosque for an afternoon prayer.
(Click on the images to enlarge them).
After the sermon was over, the attendees stood up, and dragged their prayer mats, bits of cardboard, or whatever else they could find onto the street in front of the curb on which they had been sitting, right up to the feet of the soldiers and police in front of them, to get as close to the mosque and the gate of the old city as possible. They bowed their heads to the ground in striking unison; presenting a startling and moving image of a united front, they softly resisted and somehow silently vanquished the the line of police and soldiers that barred them from reaching the holy site. In a recognition of their defeat, the soldiers smiled snidely, snickering to each other as they watched the dramatic events unfold before them. It was passionate, it was emotional, and I simply broke down, trying to capture the moment in photos, my camera clicking wildly while tears streamed down my cheeks.
As I took photos, a soldier approached me, and in broken English said "you cannot take photos here." I smiled back at him. The IDF will often say such things, thinking they can intimidate some hapless tourist into moving along and ensuring that as few images of unfairness and injustice as possible make it back home on people's cameras. Yet I was not so naieve. "Fuck you," I said back to him, "this is the middle of the street. It is a public area. Of course I can take photos." I walked right past him, and continued clicking away, while he watched helplessly. To prove my point, I walked right up to a group of his comrades, laughing openly as the men prayed, and snapped a few photos of them.
As the assembly began to break up, those gathered for prayer gathering their belongings while the soldiers, still chuckling and smiling, dragged the barricades they had erected to the side, we slunk our way to the bus station in complete shock. It was right around the corner, and we boarded the bus, paid our fare, and sat in silence for a few minutes. When I again tried to speak, I could feel the tears welling up behind my eyes, trying to burst out. It was a long ride home.Wednesday, January 28, 2009
Video of Israeli Army Invading Nilin
The International Solidarity Movement, a courageous group of activists from around the world who travel to the Palestinian territories in order to help spread awareness of Israeli crimes and stand in solidarity with the Palestinian people, has just released this video of the Israeli Army invading the village of Nilin on January 21, the same event which I described in my piece "Dispatches From a Village Under Siege." Definitely worth watching, although it does not adequately capture the terror of the moment.
"The Story of Nilin" Slideshow
A slideshow of some photos (much better than mine) showing the protests at Nilin, the village I wrote about below.
