Report-back from Palestine : AZ IMC

The best way for a peace activist to see Palestine is to feel what life is like under occupation. In one week I met many Palestinians, every one kind and gracious, who simply wanted a visitor from 'Amryka' to see "how it is here."

Riding north from Jerusalem a fellow passenger pointed to numerous Israeli settlements on the hills around Nablus, only a few of the 300 illegal Jewish settlements dotting the West Bank. The colonies were gated with nice new roads and big white houses, in contrast to the dusty Arab villages below. This colonization began following the decision made by Israel in 1975 to keep Palestinian land occupied after the 1967 war. The main obstacle to peace talks, President Obama demanded a total cessation of settlements when he was elected, but today 3000 settlement apartments are under construction.

Farther north In Jenin, my friend Nassir took me for an evening stroll to the Jenin Refugee Camp that somehow still survives after the "Jenin Massacre," a major Israeli military offensive in 2002. The center of night life was a large empty hall, except for two pool tables where a dozen teenage boys were shooting 8-ball. After a lot of teasing and joking at my expense (and losing badly at pool), two of the boys insisted on taking me somewhere. I followed them up a few dark streets to a large well-lighted cemetary where the grave markers were all uniformly new. The boys' mood became solemn as they pointed out five individual graves, their brothers killed in the 2002 battle of Jenin.

A small ray of hope in Jenin is the Freedom Theater, an international project to help Jenin's children to express their fears and anger through art, photography and drama. The Theater's history is tragically intertwined with the armed resistance the Islamic Jihad in the battle of Jenin and the subject of the film "Arna's Children."

Returning to Jerusalem, the street through Ramallah parallels the separation wall decorated with grafiti like "Built With Racism" and "One Wall, Two Jails," and a ten-foot portrait of Abu Amar (Yassir Arafat), the PLO leader's countenance remembered on countless posters throughtout Palestine. In one felafal shop a poster featured Nasser, Arafat and Che Guevara, heros to the Palestinian resistance. Posters abound of visages of Palestinians killed in various military clashes, such as three recent casualties of Israeli bombing north of Jenin.

Entering Occupied Jerusalem, my first introduction to an Israeli checkpoint was very different from watching a film of what Palestinians endure every day. The reality of being with a large group of local people being herded like cattle through a chute was a memorable yet degrading experience. This daily humiliation takes Palestinians an extra 1-2 hours to go to work or to school making life as difficult as possible. Indeed, a man in the crowd called out -- I assumed for my benefit -- "We are suffering!" Leaving the checkpoint a sign in Hebrew, Arabic and English reads "Have a Safe and Pleasant Day."

On Friday -Palestine's Sunday and demonstration day- my friend Samer took me to Bil'in near Ramallah where local people have been protesting for 5 years against the Israeli separation wall. Here the wall juts into Palestinian land inside the Green Line (the 1967 border), carving out an enclave for what is now a large Jewish colony. Every Friday local people are joined by Israelis, internationals and numerous media in a colorful nonviolent protest march from the town to the wall. Along the way loud booms announce the arrival of the tear gas cannisters that continues for 2 hours; dodging tear gas cannisters, retreating, returning, more tear gas. Ten Israeli IDF soldiers appear and try to take away a Palestinian protester, but are engulfed by 30 other protesters who free the man and chant "Shame!" "Shame!" until the IDF soldiers leave.

David, an Israeli from Jaffa says he is "disgusted" with Israel and believes Israel should return to Palestine all land it has illegally confiscated and pay Palestinians for 40 years of their losses. He adds that "America must stop paying for Israel's occupation."

A common perception in Palestine is that Israel and America are one and the same. Palestinians cannot understand how the American people can let Israel treat Palestinians the way it does. So many times I have heard the question, "Don't Americans know how it is here?" What Palestinians cannot appreciate is that Israel has a weapon many times more powerful than its nuclear arsenal. This weapon is the charge of antisemitism: Anyone who criticizes the Jewish state is hostile toward Jews. But it is Zionism, not antisemitism, that Americans should be concerned about.

Zionism is the notion that Israel has an historic right to all of Palestine, "from the Nile to the Euphrates." Today Zionism is Israel's policy of colonization, racial discrimination and harsh military domination. Zionism is clearly racist in denying Palestinians their basic human rights. In South Africa this was callled apartheid and is why the South African delegation was a key participant in the recent Gaza Freedom March in Cairo, Egypt.

Israeli apartheid can be seen today in East Jerusalem. In the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood of East Jerusalem is a house on Ibn Jubair Street with Israeli flags strung along the roof. This house was occupied by Israeli settlers and its Palestinian residents forcibly evicted into the street. A few hours a day they still sit in a chair under a tree across the street and, with international supporters, watch over the house in which they used to live. Here is also a place of weekly protest demonstations against the illegal house seizures taking place now in East Jerusalem.

In any peace settlement, Palestinians want East Jerusalem, which is predominently Palestinian, as the capitol of a future Palestinian state, but Israel annexed East Jerusalem after the 1967 war and claims all of the city as its "eternal" capitol. As illegal land confiscations and construction on 3000 settlement apartments continues in the West Bank, the Israeli colonization of East Jerusalem is also going ahead with the building of 692 new apartments in three East Jerusalem neighborhoods.

I now feel much more strongly that the United States must re-examine its relationship with Israel and stop financing Israel's apartheid system. It is not antisemitism to criticize Israel's policy of racial discrimination toward Palestinians and illegal confiscations of Palestinian land. It is not anti-semitism to demand that the American government stop sending our tax dollars to Israel until Israel recognizes the legal and human rights of Palestinians. Only then can America show the Arab world that 'Amryka' really does care about justice for the Palestinians. And only then will America take the first real step toward peace in the Middle East.

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Leaving Palestine tomorrow I know that Palestine is poor and expensive, unemployment is 40%, and the majority of the population is 18 and under. I also still believe that a secular and democratic state is a just solution for the Israelis and Palestinians. If this seems too impossible, remember that South Africa demonstrated to the world that it is possible for a war-torn society to overcome a racist system and live together in a bi-national state. Inshallah.

Dennis DuVall
Occupied Jerusalem

Article by Tom Gross of the Wall Street Journal

It is difficult to turn on a TV or radio or pick up a newspaper these days, without finding some pundit or other deploring the dismal prospects for Israeli-Palestinian peace or the dreadful living conditions of the Palestinians. Even supposedly neutral news reporters regularly repeat this sad tale. "Very little is changing for the Palestinian people on the ground," I heard BBC World Service Cairo correspondent Christian Fraser tell listeners three times in a 45 minute period the other evening.

In fact nothing could be further from the truth. I had spent that day in the West Bank's largest city, Nablus. The city is bursting with energy, life and signs of prosperity, in a way I have not previously seen in many years of covering the region.

As I sat in the plush office of Ahmad Aweidah, the suave British-educated banker who heads the Palestinian Securities Exchange, he told me that the Nablus stock market was the second best-performing in the world so far in 2009, after Shanghai. (Aweidah's office looks directly across from the palatial residence of Palestinian billionaire Munib al-Masri, the wealthiest man in the West Bank.)

Later I met Bashir al-Shakah, director of Nablus's gleaming new cinema, where four of the latest Hollywood hits were playing that day. Most movies were sold out, he noted, proudly adding that the venue had already hosted a film festival since it opened in June.

.Wandering around downtown Nablus the shops and restaurants I saw were full. There were plenty of expensive cars on the streets. Indeed I counted considerably more BMWs and Mercedes than I've seen, for example, in downtown Jerusalem or Tel Aviv.

And perhaps most importantly of all, we had driven from Jerusalem to Nablus without going through any Israeli checkpoints. The government of Benjamin Netanyahu has removed them all since the Israeli security services (with the encouragement and support of President George W. Bush) were allowed, over recent years, to crush the intifada, restore security to the West Bank and set up the conditions for the economic boom that is now occurring. (There was one border post on the return leg of the journey, on the outskirts of Jerusalem, but the young female guard just waved me and the two Palestinians I was traveling with, through.)

The shops and restaurants were also full when I visited Hebron recently, and I was surprised to see villas comparable in size to those on the Cote d'Azur or Bel Air had sprung up on the hills around the city. Life is even better in Ramallah, where it is difficult to get a table in a good restaurant. New apartment buildings, banks, brokerage firms, luxury car dealerships and health clubs are to be seen. In Qalqilya, another West Bank city that was previously a hotbed of terrorists and bomb-makers, the first ever strawberry crop is being harvested in time to cash in on the lucrative Christmas markets in Europe. Local Palestinian farmers have been trained by Israeli agriculture experts and Israel supplied them with irrigation equipment and pesticides.

A new Palestinian city, Ruwabi, is to be built soon north of Ramallah. Last month, the Jewish National Fund, an Israeli charity, helped plant 3,000 tree seedlings for a forested area the Palestinian planners say they would like to develop on the edge of the new city. Israeli experts are also helping the Palestinians plan public parks and other civic amenities.

Outsiders are beginning to take note of the turnaround too. The official PLO Wafa news agency reported last week that the 3rd quarter of 2009 witnessed near-record tourism in the Palestinian Authority, with 135,939 overnight hotel stays in 89 hotels that are now open. Almost half the guests come from the U.S or Europe.

Palestinian economic growth so far this year—in a year dominated by economic crisis elsewhere—has been an impressive 7% according to the IMF, though Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayad, himself a former World Bank and IMF employee, says it is in fact 11%, partly helped along by strong economic performances in neighboring Israel.

In Gaza too, the shops and markets are crammed with food and goods. But while photos from last Friday's Palestine Today newspaper, for example, depict sumptuous Eid celebrations, these are not the pictures you are ever likely to see on the BBC or Le Monde or the New York Times. No, Gaza is not like a "concentration camp," nor is the "humanitarian crisis in Gaza is on the scale of Darfur," as British journalist Lauren Booth (who is also Tony Blair's sister-in-law) has said.

In June, the Washington Post's Jackson Diehl related how Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas had told him why he had turned down Ehud Olmert's offer last year to create a Palestinian state on 97% of the West Bank (with 3% of pre-1967 Israeli land being added to make up the shortfall). "In the West Bank we have a good reality," Abbas told Diehl. "The people are living a normal life," he added in a rare moment of candor to a Western journalist.

Nablus stock exchange head Ahmad Aweidah went further in explaining to me why there is no rush to declare statehood, saying ordinary Palestinians need the IDF to help protect them from Hamas, as their own security forces aren't ready to do so by themselves yet.

The truth is that an independent Palestine is now quietly being built, with Israeli assistance. So long as the Obama administration and European politicians don't clumsily meddle as they have in the past and make unrealistic demands for the process to be completed more quickly than it can be, I am confident the outcome will be a positive one. (The last time an American president—Bill Clinton in 2000—tried to hurry things along unrealistically, it merely resulted in blowing up in everybody's faces—literally—and set back hopes for peace by some years.)

Israelis and Palestinians may never agree on borders that will satisfy everyone. But that doesn't mean they won't live in peace. Not all Germans and French agree who should control Alsace Lorraine. Poles and Russians, Slovenes and Croats, Britons and Irish, and peoples all over the world, have border disputes. But that doesn't keep them from coexisting with one another. Nor—so long as partisan journalists and human rights groups don't mislead Western politicians into making bad decisions—will it prevent Israelis and Palestinians from doing so.

Mr. Gross is a Middle East analyst and former Jerusalem correspondent for the Sunday Telegraph.

The truth and this corespondent from the Ministry of Israeli Public affairs doesn't know what the truth is.
We are left to accept the heavy propaganda that never allows outside verification from outside disinterested parties while the siege continues to strangle the survivors of Operation Cast Lead, which Israel keeps wanting all of us to forget.
War crimes against their prisoner population, no amount of powered sugar or greasy wordsmithing will hide.

The truth is, this corespondent from the Ministry of Israeli Public affairs doesn't know what the truth is.
We are left to accept the heavy propaganda that never allows outside verification from outside disinterested parties while the siege continues to strangle the survivors of Operation Cast Lead, which Israel keeps wanting all of us to forget.
War crimes against their prisoner population, no amount of powered sugar or greasy wordsmithing will hide.

The International monetary Fund says the West Bank's economic growth is 7%. The Pa claims its 11%.
The west bank is doing just fine