As if we were all human beings
I met up with Dunya, and Hannah and the rest of the volunteers working at Birthright Replugged at a wonderful restaurant in Jerusalem.
60 kids from four different refugee organizations throughout the West Bank would be grouped together during the coming three days. They would be hanging out, playing, getting to know each other, socializing, be allowed to taste the freedom of being in the Mediterranean sea. They'd be granted a brief glimpse of a mirage, get to see the country that they only heard about, namely Palestine outside the camp, beyond the walls and soldiers, before returning to the West Bank.
As foreigners with Swedish and American and British passports we can do what their parents are not able to - take them through the network of roadblocks, and the matrix of control. It requires manipulation to get through the maze, and an air of swedishness/Yankeeness to walk that road, but these are things we have in abundance.
We were Palestinians from exile, Jews from the US, and Palestinians from different parts of the West Bank. Together we were going to make sure that the kids experience the next few days would be a memorable one.
We divided the refugee camps up between us, and went to pick up children from each camp. They were to be escorted to the monastery where the summer camp would be held.
My group went to the Balata camp outside of Nablus and so we were dropped off at Huwwara checkpoint, while the bus continued up to Jenin, in the northern West Bank, where they would pick up Jenin kids, and then return for us.
It was Chris, Heike, Rosie Ben and I.
We got off the bus, we walked past palestinian travelers crossing the roadblock and headed out to places beyond the confines of Nablus. As were they ordinary people.
We crossed Huwwara, in through those fucking metal bars that I hate. We took a taxi to Balata, located a few kilometres away from Huwwara.
Balata was swarming with children in the streets, we strode past the pictures of martyrs and the murals of Palestine that filled these walls and as we arrived Yaffa Cultural Center I was smiling.
There were the kids who would be accompaniying us. They were restless, anxious, excited, in complete spin. Running and shouting and utterly out of control. It was amazing.
We were to divide them into smaller groups and take them to Huwwara, past the first checkpoint and its first ring of fire.
Parental reprimands were handed out to kids unwilling to pay attention. Fathers demanding obedience and calm of teenagers who'd never been allowed to move outside of their camp. Mothers requiring matureness of the adult child who longed to try their wings outisde of these barbed wired confines.
This was a trip where age was the definitive
Some of the girls were obviously over the age of 16, but I had not the heart to turn them back. We spoke about everything they would be experiencing these coming days.
We split up into yellow crowded taxis and arrived to a checkpoint packed with people, and we placed ourselves in the queue for internationals, women, children and men older than 45 years.
It was hot, bodies pressed tightly against each other, line creeping forward.
Holding mothers green West Bank ID
Then, everything came to a halt! Something was going on in the front, the crowd grew increasingly inpatient.
A few minutes later, the madness begins.
A soldier shouted "Bomb Practice" the next one yelled "la wara, wara la" (go back, go back!)
And then with the brute force that only four armed soldiers can inflict against 120 Palestinians, we were to be subdued.
The orders were that we move backwards another 50 metres.
Moving when pinned in a crowd is impossible.
Anyone who has been to a rock concert will testify to that.
It's degrading. To be treated like cattle, forced back as if standing in a stable's pen, by a boy in a mans uniform. A boy that might as well be my little brother. I could not begin to imagine what the experience was like for the older women and men, who had patiently and with great dignity stood waiting in the queue for hours. I could not fathom what it was like to wait there, hoping to be able to pass and do their jobs on the other side of that checkpoint.
Waiting to be able to visit grandchildren,go to the hospital, go to town, to live the semblance of a life as though you're a human being.
My kids grew even more restless, frustrated and worried. They feared that the trip would be canceled, and that they'd be forced to return to the camp.
The boys in my group were strong, broad-shouldered semi-adults, with the cocky attitudes only teenagers can display. Now they began to worry.
"Hanin, they will send us back won't they" "What happens now Hanin", "Hanin what was it he said to us"
I do not answer - as I can not allow myself to answer them in Arabic.
My Arabic makes me "one of them" when I desperately need to maintain my status as a foreigner for the soldiers to respect Swedish passports. I need to distance myself from my Palestinian side at that moment, to be seen as a human.
Soldiers shouting, soldiers scorn, soldiers beating with rifle over our bodies, the heat from his gun burns my back, it races with the heat created by a scorchin sun, sweat dampens my skin, feet that trample mine increase the confusion, humiliation fills my itching skin, blends in with boys confusion and nervousness. Their camp leader's grief of not being able to protect teenagers who were promised freedom from prison. This prison that shrinks by the minute and mixes with the nitrogen of anger, sadness, humiliation. A blend that puts us all in danger, a mixture that penetrates the walls caging us in.
I speak politely in my polished English.
English that sounds with authority and calm, apolitical and free of threats, despite the soldiers' stare at anyone "Arab".
The scream in my throat quelled, my anger subdued, so that the children will not suffer for it. I convince myself to be quiet so that my rage does not risk their hours of freedom.
Soldiers' orders is the law here. It's to be viewed as divine as any god, or force of gravity and we are expected to obey willingly.
One of the soldiers looks at me with shame. He protected me from recieving any more beatings despite his female colleague who was more than willing to cover me with her rage.
I recognize her from last year, recalling an encounter we had at Qalandiya checkpoint, and I suspect that she recognizes me also, even though no words are exchanged on the matter.
We remain standing, and I decide to send away all the kids, from the front of the queue to the very back of it. I don't want them to risk any more battering.
I am left standing in the front, a strange alien phenomenon dressed in a bright yellow tunic. Speaking with the same suave tone of voice as if I am trying to enter a popular night club.
As if we are all humans beings.
Time races, Dunya, and the others have already come back from Jenin with their kids and now await us with impatience.
She wants to know what is happening, and behind me she hears the chaos, hears my diplomacy among the madness. She hears me convincing the Commander to let my kids go through the checkpoint. I tell him to let us walk in the car lane, passed the queing palestinian elders, the children, the workers. I'm filled with shame for what I've just done. As soon as I have his nod, I run towards impatient kids, let them line up one by one and walk towards the bus, towards imminent freedom, past the soldier who protected me from beatings.
One of the boys, a big burly young sweet miracle catches one of the soldiers' attention. He is suddenly accused of having glanced defiantly, a glance! against the uniformed boy.
I pretend madness, I reprimand and threaten mothers scoldings, and the defiant miracle is allowed to pass.
Finally all the kids are through, and their camp instructors draw a sigh of relief, and my heart resumes it beating.
I get on the bus, while burning tears make it impossible to open eyes, while my heart aches.
The rest of the trip is a haze.
Seated at the front of the bus I am quiet, as I let the others tell kids what to do next.
We pass a few more checkpoints, but now safely sitting in the bus, and at one point, we are almost turned back.
Finally, we reach Beit Jmal. An incredibly beautiful monastery, inhabited by a small number of Italian monks, one of whom has resided in Palestine since 1937.
Kids amazed at the surrounding forest, kids who cannot wait to get off the bus.
Kids running, kids playing, kids who do not believe their eyes when they see the magnificent green mountains that surround them, basketball courts, gardens and abundance of beauty.
Kids who do not want to sleep even though the clock is one AM, and then two, and three and four AM. Kids at summer camp.
As if they were human beings.
lördag 14 juni 2008
torsdag 12 juni 2008
Contact info, correct this time
The phone number I posted earlier is incorrect. The correct number has been changed in the previous post as well, but I'll write it here also, for maximum accuracy. 00 972 54 975 30 46. Not sure where I got the first number from. Probably too much shisha.
Love
Hanin
Love
Hanin
Saving Edward
I need to confess something to you, something that I am ashamed of admitting:
I've stolen a book!
The 24 hours I've spent in Yaffa, the calm contrasting the subversion within me, the houses renamed, the trees re-rooted. It all became unbearable.
Woody lives with three israelis in an apartment in Yaffa. In the midst of all the arty and kindof indy things scattered around the flat I come across a book, by the late palestinian author Edward Said, my personal hero.
Edward Said was one of the reasons for my wanting to come here in the first place, at 18. He kindly and humbly answered my letters upon that first return to sweden, at a time when I was shaken and in chaos, and his example and his voice continues to speak truth, and remains one filled with human nuance.
The book that catches my eye is not just any book, either, but Said's autobiography "Out of Place".
It's in the bookshelf, amid a countless number of other books, on herbs and medicines, and novels in hebrew.
I'm in Yaffa, a palestinian city slowly transformed to something else, in a slow and painful ethnic cleansing, Edward Saids autobiography is in front of me, wherein he describes in miniscule detail, the very same powers that came to dispossess him.
I took it. Stole it.
Not because I had not read it, or because I did not own a copy, but because I wanted to save Edward. I could not leave him there, in the book shelf, as I was getting ready to leave.
I admitted to Nora and Woody what I had done. They both laughed, but seemed to understand, although it did not releave my guilty conscience.
Edward is now placed in a plastic bag, at the bottom of my suitcase, gnawing at my guilty conscience, reminding me that theft is wrong, especially when it erases a story so desperately needed to be heard.
I've stolen a book!
The 24 hours I've spent in Yaffa, the calm contrasting the subversion within me, the houses renamed, the trees re-rooted. It all became unbearable.
Woody lives with three israelis in an apartment in Yaffa. In the midst of all the arty and kindof indy things scattered around the flat I come across a book, by the late palestinian author Edward Said, my personal hero.
Edward Said was one of the reasons for my wanting to come here in the first place, at 18. He kindly and humbly answered my letters upon that first return to sweden, at a time when I was shaken and in chaos, and his example and his voice continues to speak truth, and remains one filled with human nuance.
The book that catches my eye is not just any book, either, but Said's autobiography "Out of Place".
It's in the bookshelf, amid a countless number of other books, on herbs and medicines, and novels in hebrew.
I'm in Yaffa, a palestinian city slowly transformed to something else, in a slow and painful ethnic cleansing, Edward Saids autobiography is in front of me, wherein he describes in miniscule detail, the very same powers that came to dispossess him.
I took it. Stole it.
Not because I had not read it, or because I did not own a copy, but because I wanted to save Edward. I could not leave him there, in the book shelf, as I was getting ready to leave.
I admitted to Nora and Woody what I had done. They both laughed, but seemed to understand, although it did not releave my guilty conscience.
Edward is now placed in a plastic bag, at the bottom of my suitcase, gnawing at my guilty conscience, reminding me that theft is wrong, especially when it erases a story so desperately needed to be heard.
onsdag 11 juni 2008
Freedom is imminent
Nora Woody and I hang out at the beach.
The last time I was here was three years ago. Everything is different now.
Suheil and Mahmoud from DAM stop by. They are on their way to their tour in France and Italy, and we talk about the experiences we've had in Palestine so far.
Their music has been the soundtrack in my head these past few days. Their asking who the terrorist is, their bringing dreams to live, their reminding us all that we share a bond stronger than territorial borders and walls, their reminding me that justice is the most powerful dream of them all.
I share the happiness over their sucess, because it is a big old FUCK YOU in the face of self righteous israeli nationalism.
Every once in a while we run into the water to swim, but mostly we just hang out and talk, work on our tans, read and chill.
It could be any beach, anywhere in the world.
Me and my ability to fall asleep anywhere, Woody, pale and stubborn, refusing to put on sunscreen lotion. Nora with her stories.
But the only thing in my head is that land, beneath the stones. That all of this is Palestine, that I am here at their will, that history is denied and tucked away.
Woody lives in palestinian Yaffa, a city that after 60 years connot be defined by any border to Tel Aviv, unless you look at architecture, mosques, population. Then it is absolutely unique.
A few months ago Woody filmed a brutal attack by a number of israeli police men here, he filmed them beating a palestinian man, an israeli palestinian.
He told me that the only thing significantly different about this beating was that it was actually caught on tape, but that the news shows who were at first interested in the abuse declined as soon as they found out that the victim was an arab.
I buy a sandwich by the young men at the deli a few blocks down from the beach, who could all be my brothers. The brown faces, the wide eyes, the Yallas and Salamats and shoo yaanis. I carefully use arabic instead of english when making my order, as a reminder that we are all connected somehow.
Afterwards I cannot say whom I am trying to remind. Myself or them.
We go to Woody's smelly room, and decide to meet up with our old friend Hammoudi, from Balata.
Hammoudi is 6 foot tall, and hyperactive.
He moves as if someone is timing him, and his carefully sculptured beard makes him ever more noticeable. The sound he makes when he is happy makes Nora and I roll over with laughter. Something inbetween a laughter and an eruption. HoHaaaaaayyyyyh.
Hammoudi sneeks in and out of Israel a few times every week, staying until he gets tired.
He travels from his refugee camp in Balata, in the outskirts of Nablus, along with a dozen or so other young men from town, heading towards Israel.
For work, for family, or just to let the thoughts slip, so he wont have to worry about every day problems and routines.
What a normal 20 something guy from Sweden takes for granted can cost Hammoudi jailtime, a big fine or his life.
Hammoudis dad left the family when Hammoudi was 20 days old. At 23 he tells the story as if it is a fact he's come to terms with, and goes on to tell me that the first time he ever met the man who conceived him, he was 13 years old.
Hammoudis father lives and works in Israel, he has a new family now, and it seems to be common knowledge in Balata that Hammoudis father is a collaborator.
This goes to say that he works for or with the israeli intelligence, which is something of the most dishonerable thing a palestinian can do.
I know of a suspected collaborator in Nablus who was shot in both legs, 6 bullets in each leg, as a warning to others.
Bu Hammoudi is not his fathers son. He is a man who speaks of freedom as if it is something dangling infront of him, but still cannot be reached. He loves Israel because he is free here, as long as no one catches him, reports him to the police, or shoots him on his way to and from freedom.
What I love about Hammoudi is that he is not satisisfied with merely watching his dreams. He goes after them, seizes them, holds on to them for dear life.
He is engaged to a beautiful and talented british-pakistani woman, whom he met in the camp as she was there to help, and they plan to get married this summer.
He does as he pleases, on a whim, seemingly unhindered, like a whirl wind.
In many ways Hammoudi is freer than most people I know, as he actually knows the value of his freedom.
His hand is always clutched around his cell phone, seemingly in constant communication with everyone at the same time, and we decide right then and there to take a trip to Tiberias, in our rented car.
Taking up palestinians in your car is an offence in Israel. If caught, you face a fine , imprisonment or in our case deportation.
But Hammoudi and his friend Rizq are our friends, our hosts, despite their not being welcome here, in contrast to Woody Nora and I, because we happen to carry gringo passports filled with fancy stamps.
We drive from Yaffa to Haifa, with Nora behind the wheel, me in the front seat and the three guys in the back. Still with DAM as our only CD we find our way to Haifa. Whenever a police car is spotted, or an army jeep passed, my heart skips a beat, my brain flashes a thought.
We arrive to Haifa around 11 at night, and decide to go to Akka instead of Tiberias.
Akka is the ctiy to which merchant ships set course, when they wanted to access Palestine. As one of the oldest cities still inhabited, Akka flaunts her beautiful stone walls, the fortress meant to protect her from invaders.
We sit by the wall, Rizq, Hammoudi, Woody Nora and I.
Hammoudi talks alot, mostly about how much he loves the ocean and freedom. She talks to me, he says, and I smile, but do not laugh. We drink and talk and listen to music from the guys cell phones.
Freedom seems imminent.
The last time I was here was three years ago. Everything is different now.
Suheil and Mahmoud from DAM stop by. They are on their way to their tour in France and Italy, and we talk about the experiences we've had in Palestine so far.
Their music has been the soundtrack in my head these past few days. Their asking who the terrorist is, their bringing dreams to live, their reminding us all that we share a bond stronger than territorial borders and walls, their reminding me that justice is the most powerful dream of them all.
I share the happiness over their sucess, because it is a big old FUCK YOU in the face of self righteous israeli nationalism.
Every once in a while we run into the water to swim, but mostly we just hang out and talk, work on our tans, read and chill.
It could be any beach, anywhere in the world.
Me and my ability to fall asleep anywhere, Woody, pale and stubborn, refusing to put on sunscreen lotion. Nora with her stories.
But the only thing in my head is that land, beneath the stones. That all of this is Palestine, that I am here at their will, that history is denied and tucked away.
Woody lives in palestinian Yaffa, a city that after 60 years connot be defined by any border to Tel Aviv, unless you look at architecture, mosques, population. Then it is absolutely unique.
A few months ago Woody filmed a brutal attack by a number of israeli police men here, he filmed them beating a palestinian man, an israeli palestinian.
He told me that the only thing significantly different about this beating was that it was actually caught on tape, but that the news shows who were at first interested in the abuse declined as soon as they found out that the victim was an arab.
I buy a sandwich by the young men at the deli a few blocks down from the beach, who could all be my brothers. The brown faces, the wide eyes, the Yallas and Salamats and shoo yaanis. I carefully use arabic instead of english when making my order, as a reminder that we are all connected somehow.
Afterwards I cannot say whom I am trying to remind. Myself or them.
We go to Woody's smelly room, and decide to meet up with our old friend Hammoudi, from Balata.
Hammoudi is 6 foot tall, and hyperactive.
He moves as if someone is timing him, and his carefully sculptured beard makes him ever more noticeable. The sound he makes when he is happy makes Nora and I roll over with laughter. Something inbetween a laughter and an eruption. HoHaaaaaayyyyyh.
Hammoudi sneeks in and out of Israel a few times every week, staying until he gets tired.
He travels from his refugee camp in Balata, in the outskirts of Nablus, along with a dozen or so other young men from town, heading towards Israel.
For work, for family, or just to let the thoughts slip, so he wont have to worry about every day problems and routines.
What a normal 20 something guy from Sweden takes for granted can cost Hammoudi jailtime, a big fine or his life.
Hammoudis dad left the family when Hammoudi was 20 days old. At 23 he tells the story as if it is a fact he's come to terms with, and goes on to tell me that the first time he ever met the man who conceived him, he was 13 years old.
Hammoudis father lives and works in Israel, he has a new family now, and it seems to be common knowledge in Balata that Hammoudis father is a collaborator.
This goes to say that he works for or with the israeli intelligence, which is something of the most dishonerable thing a palestinian can do.
I know of a suspected collaborator in Nablus who was shot in both legs, 6 bullets in each leg, as a warning to others.
Bu Hammoudi is not his fathers son. He is a man who speaks of freedom as if it is something dangling infront of him, but still cannot be reached. He loves Israel because he is free here, as long as no one catches him, reports him to the police, or shoots him on his way to and from freedom.
What I love about Hammoudi is that he is not satisisfied with merely watching his dreams. He goes after them, seizes them, holds on to them for dear life.
He is engaged to a beautiful and talented british-pakistani woman, whom he met in the camp as she was there to help, and they plan to get married this summer.
He does as he pleases, on a whim, seemingly unhindered, like a whirl wind.
In many ways Hammoudi is freer than most people I know, as he actually knows the value of his freedom.
His hand is always clutched around his cell phone, seemingly in constant communication with everyone at the same time, and we decide right then and there to take a trip to Tiberias, in our rented car.
Taking up palestinians in your car is an offence in Israel. If caught, you face a fine , imprisonment or in our case deportation.
But Hammoudi and his friend Rizq are our friends, our hosts, despite their not being welcome here, in contrast to Woody Nora and I, because we happen to carry gringo passports filled with fancy stamps.
We drive from Yaffa to Haifa, with Nora behind the wheel, me in the front seat and the three guys in the back. Still with DAM as our only CD we find our way to Haifa. Whenever a police car is spotted, or an army jeep passed, my heart skips a beat, my brain flashes a thought.
We arrive to Haifa around 11 at night, and decide to go to Akka instead of Tiberias.
Akka is the ctiy to which merchant ships set course, when they wanted to access Palestine. As one of the oldest cities still inhabited, Akka flaunts her beautiful stone walls, the fortress meant to protect her from invaders.
We sit by the wall, Rizq, Hammoudi, Woody Nora and I.
Hammoudi talks alot, mostly about how much he loves the ocean and freedom. She talks to me, he says, and I smile, but do not laugh. We drink and talk and listen to music from the guys cell phones.
Freedom seems imminent.
tisdag 10 juni 2008
We left Bethlehem the morning after the wedding.
Nora and I had decided to rent a car and go around Yaffa for a day.
My friend Woody lives there, so we'd all hang out at the beach as well, something I had not done for three years.
Saturday morning meant shabat, which meant that the checkpoint was excruciating, as if someone was trying to pull a tooth using piano wires.
Soldiers dragging their feet, moping, bitching and moning a little extra, and we, the travellers would be expected to deal with their ugliness.
The old lady travelling in the bus with us had arthritis, and could not stand up during inspection. She received a scoulding by a soldier, who refused to address me in english.
I have nothing but hate for the way they treat palestinians as if they were subhuman.
This system is constructed in a way that relieves you, its subordinate of having to think when acting cruelly. Inhumanity is practice, routine, cruelty the order of the day, and any reaction to the system means putting the person reacting in his or her place, it does not require you or the structure you have been put there to defend to change.
This is a picture of checkpoint Qalandia, between Jerusalem and Ramallah, and was shot last winter, with the mandatory happy greeting, to further underline the absurdity of said checkpoint system.
So this is how the system works:
To be allowed to move outside for instance Bethlehem, you need to fall under one the following categories.
Either you needA) A blue ID-cards, stating that you are a palestinian residing in Jerusalem, B) a permission to move outside of your own city, a permission issued by the israeli military, should you for instance require medical treatment unavailable in the big, illequiped palestinian hospitals, or if you for one reason or another need to be in 48 (the palestinian name for israel), or C) you have obtained a work permit, this too issued by israel, approved by the israeli military after interrogation, and possibly in exchange for information to the intelligence service.
The only other possibility to moving freely about is if you are a citizen of another country, such as Sweden, or the US.
Permits are difficult, not to say impossible to obtain, should the israelis decide that you do not deserve one. The reasons for denying you such a permit are arbitrary, and are never stated. Matters of security they say, and it is sufficient.
As a swedish palestinian the difference between myself and my palestinian countrymen becomes ever more apparent, as technically, there is no difference.
I am as brown, I am as palestinian. But it is in class markers, in language, in clothes, in patterns of movement and in whether or not the person infront of the soldier can be treated badly without any repercussions.
The restriction of movement applies to israelis also, although with no harrassment.
Should you be an israeli citizen wanting to go into the palestinian territories, you are not allowed to by law. Your own government bans you from doing so, you are not allowed to be in the West bank unless you are either a colonizer a.k.a "settler" or a soldier.
If you are a colonizer you are free to move around the West bank on roads constructed exlusively to your benefit, on land stolen and confiscated from palestinians, but you are not to travel into a palestinian town or city. If you are a soldier you venture into the same towns and cities in order to arrest, kill, cause havoc during nightly raids or other malicious reasons. Anything else is not allowed.
We are seated in the bus as a round little female soldier with makeup like a crazy person, big earrings and a cell phone with music blasting out of the speakers makes her entry.
She begins to collect all of the IDs, without even a glance in our direction. Suddenly she peers through the window of the bus, and spots a male soldier colleague, and runs out screaming with an adolescent shrieking sound, as if she were a teenager out of control, like a little meatball on steroids.
They annoy me so much, largely due to the fact that aforementioned meatballs are in control of our days. My schedule, and everyone elses on that bus, is solely dependent on that ridiculous person. Whether or not we can make our doctors appointments, if we will make it to the wedding, being able to see friends, or going to a concert.
Being powerless so that some tool soldier girl can get her hook-up on.
After a useless wait for the soldier girl to regain control of her hormone levels, we are finally allowed to leave.
David Nora and I rent a car at Ben Gurion airport.
We get into it, listening to the only CD we've brought along, the palestinian hip hop group DAM. They're from Lidd, in Palestine, what is now Lod in Israel, and we hang out with Suheil and Mahmoud on the beach in Yaffa.
Sitting in the car, looking out the window, all I see is the land under the stones, the music ringing in my ears. Stolen land, stolen history, stolen nationality, Stolen.
Here are the lyrics to one of Dams tracks.
- Mali Huriye - I Don't Have Freedom
(Featuring Ala' Azam and Anat Ig'bariye)
Tamer:
We've been like this more than 50 years
Living as prisoners behind the bars of paragraphs
Of agreements that change nothing
We haven't seen any light, and if we peek between the bars
We see a blue sky and white clouds
In the center a star reminds me that I'm limited
But no, I'm strong, staying optimistic
You won't limit my hope by a wall of separation
And if this barrier comes between me and my land
I'll still be connected to Palestine
Like an embryo to the umbilical cord
My feet are the roots of the olive tree
Keep on prospering, fathering and renewing branches
Every branch
Grown for peace
Every branch
Under the pressure of occupation
Refusing to give up
So why don't I have freedom?
Because I refuse to live in slavery
Chorus:
Everywhere I go I see borders, imprisoning humanity
Why can't I be free like other children in this world?
Everywhere I go I see borders, imprisoning humanity
Why can't I be free like other children in this world?
Mahmoud:
We searched for peace between Generals
Until we all became war children
Asking for freedom from prisons that want us
With closed and blind eyes
Our eyes staring at the free children
Always keep on rolling to a better life
Our leaders only flavor their speeches
Opening their mouths but shutting out hope
We use power because of our weakness
So life will treat us gently
We saw that we don't rule our own destiny
So we tried to grasp it in our hands and it died
All we asked for was a breath
And what did we sacrifice for it?
Also a breath
So you tell me
Why can't I be free like other children in this world?
(chorus)
Suhell:
I don't want to live on my knees
I'd rather not die at all
I still see the Occupation
Reaching his hand
Not for peace, not for equality
Not to mend things between us
But to suffocate me
Here's another massacre
And a wall that's separating me myself and I
The U.S. has made it their 51st state
Cleaning the Middle East of its Indians
Hitting us then blaming us
But all the biggest armies in the world
Are weak against the hope of the children
(chorus)
Little girl reading a poem:
We want an angry generation
To plough the sky, to blow up history
To blow up our thoughts
We want a new generation
That does not forgive mistakes
That does not bend
We want a generation of giants
Nora and I had decided to rent a car and go around Yaffa for a day.
My friend Woody lives there, so we'd all hang out at the beach as well, something I had not done for three years.
Saturday morning meant shabat, which meant that the checkpoint was excruciating, as if someone was trying to pull a tooth using piano wires.
Soldiers dragging their feet, moping, bitching and moning a little extra, and we, the travellers would be expected to deal with their ugliness.
The old lady travelling in the bus with us had arthritis, and could not stand up during inspection. She received a scoulding by a soldier, who refused to address me in english.
I have nothing but hate for the way they treat palestinians as if they were subhuman.
This system is constructed in a way that relieves you, its subordinate of having to think when acting cruelly. Inhumanity is practice, routine, cruelty the order of the day, and any reaction to the system means putting the person reacting in his or her place, it does not require you or the structure you have been put there to defend to change.
This is a picture of checkpoint Qalandia, between Jerusalem and Ramallah, and was shot last winter, with the mandatory happy greeting, to further underline the absurdity of said checkpoint system.
So this is how the system works:
To be allowed to move outside for instance Bethlehem, you need to fall under one the following categories.
Either you needA) A blue ID-cards, stating that you are a palestinian residing in Jerusalem, B) a permission to move outside of your own city, a permission issued by the israeli military, should you for instance require medical treatment unavailable in the big, illequiped palestinian hospitals, or if you for one reason or another need to be in 48 (the palestinian name for israel), or C) you have obtained a work permit, this too issued by israel, approved by the israeli military after interrogation, and possibly in exchange for information to the intelligence service.
The only other possibility to moving freely about is if you are a citizen of another country, such as Sweden, or the US.
Permits are difficult, not to say impossible to obtain, should the israelis decide that you do not deserve one. The reasons for denying you such a permit are arbitrary, and are never stated. Matters of security they say, and it is sufficient.
As a swedish palestinian the difference between myself and my palestinian countrymen becomes ever more apparent, as technically, there is no difference.
I am as brown, I am as palestinian. But it is in class markers, in language, in clothes, in patterns of movement and in whether or not the person infront of the soldier can be treated badly without any repercussions.
The restriction of movement applies to israelis also, although with no harrassment.
Should you be an israeli citizen wanting to go into the palestinian territories, you are not allowed to by law. Your own government bans you from doing so, you are not allowed to be in the West bank unless you are either a colonizer a.k.a "settler" or a soldier.
If you are a colonizer you are free to move around the West bank on roads constructed exlusively to your benefit, on land stolen and confiscated from palestinians, but you are not to travel into a palestinian town or city. If you are a soldier you venture into the same towns and cities in order to arrest, kill, cause havoc during nightly raids or other malicious reasons. Anything else is not allowed.
We are seated in the bus as a round little female soldier with makeup like a crazy person, big earrings and a cell phone with music blasting out of the speakers makes her entry.
She begins to collect all of the IDs, without even a glance in our direction. Suddenly she peers through the window of the bus, and spots a male soldier colleague, and runs out screaming with an adolescent shrieking sound, as if she were a teenager out of control, like a little meatball on steroids.
They annoy me so much, largely due to the fact that aforementioned meatballs are in control of our days. My schedule, and everyone elses on that bus, is solely dependent on that ridiculous person. Whether or not we can make our doctors appointments, if we will make it to the wedding, being able to see friends, or going to a concert.
Being powerless so that some tool soldier girl can get her hook-up on.
After a useless wait for the soldier girl to regain control of her hormone levels, we are finally allowed to leave.
David Nora and I rent a car at Ben Gurion airport.
We get into it, listening to the only CD we've brought along, the palestinian hip hop group DAM. They're from Lidd, in Palestine, what is now Lod in Israel, and we hang out with Suheil and Mahmoud on the beach in Yaffa.
Sitting in the car, looking out the window, all I see is the land under the stones, the music ringing in my ears. Stolen land, stolen history, stolen nationality, Stolen.
Here are the lyrics to one of Dams tracks.
- Mali Huriye - I Don't Have Freedom
(Featuring Ala' Azam and Anat Ig'bariye)
Tamer:
We've been like this more than 50 years
Living as prisoners behind the bars of paragraphs
Of agreements that change nothing
We haven't seen any light, and if we peek between the bars
We see a blue sky and white clouds
In the center a star reminds me that I'm limited
But no, I'm strong, staying optimistic
You won't limit my hope by a wall of separation
And if this barrier comes between me and my land
I'll still be connected to Palestine
Like an embryo to the umbilical cord
My feet are the roots of the olive tree
Keep on prospering, fathering and renewing branches
Every branch
Grown for peace
Every branch
Under the pressure of occupation
Refusing to give up
So why don't I have freedom?
Because I refuse to live in slavery
Chorus:
Everywhere I go I see borders, imprisoning humanity
Why can't I be free like other children in this world?
Everywhere I go I see borders, imprisoning humanity
Why can't I be free like other children in this world?
Mahmoud:
We searched for peace between Generals
Until we all became war children
Asking for freedom from prisons that want us
With closed and blind eyes
Our eyes staring at the free children
Always keep on rolling to a better life
Our leaders only flavor their speeches
Opening their mouths but shutting out hope
We use power because of our weakness
So life will treat us gently
We saw that we don't rule our own destiny
So we tried to grasp it in our hands and it died
All we asked for was a breath
And what did we sacrifice for it?
Also a breath
So you tell me
Why can't I be free like other children in this world?
(chorus)
Suhell:
I don't want to live on my knees
I'd rather not die at all
I still see the Occupation
Reaching his hand
Not for peace, not for equality
Not to mend things between us
But to suffocate me
Here's another massacre
And a wall that's separating me myself and I
The U.S. has made it their 51st state
Cleaning the Middle East of its Indians
Hitting us then blaming us
But all the biggest armies in the world
Are weak against the hope of the children
(chorus)
Little girl reading a poem:
We want an angry generation
To plough the sky, to blow up history
To blow up our thoughts
We want a new generation
That does not forgive mistakes
That does not bend
We want a generation of giants
tisdag 3 juni 2008
Contacting me
My number during my time here is +972 54 9753046.
Feel free to call or message if you want to get in touch, cheer, debate or just send me a funny joke.
Also... The point of my being here writing is not just keeping the blog, but also getting stuff published in other forums and media back home. If you know anyone who should be interested in this I'd appreciate it if you told that person of the trip.
Feel free to call or message if you want to get in touch, cheer, debate or just send me a funny joke.
Also... The point of my being here writing is not just keeping the blog, but also getting stuff published in other forums and media back home. If you know anyone who should be interested in this I'd appreciate it if you told that person of the trip.
Love continues
Ahmad is a fantastic man.
He is one of my closest friends. An artist, a dreamer, an activist, an educator and an organizer.
A lot of the things that I have learned, everything from what Palestine is to what it means to struggle, I have learned thanks to him.
He has sown seeds in me that were allowed to grow for years before the result could be seen.
We were lovers for a while, but broke up for different reasons, but remained the closest of friends.
Later he was imprisoned, under so called administrative detention, a kind of legal limbo wherein Palestinians can be thrown in prison without having faced charges or a sentence in a court of law.
Ahmad spent two years in the prison of his oppressors, and was released on May 14th of last year, which also happens to be my birthday.
On Friday Ahmad got married to Sabreen, a wonderful, intelligent, soulful and strong Palestinian woman from Ramallah.
The wedding took place in Bethlehem, and hundreds of people, from all over Palestine and the world attended their wedding, to celebrate the two lovers.
It was hot, crowded and sweaty, as all of you who have attended a Palestinian wedding can imagine. Lots of people, crowded, children running around, and a crazy whirlwind of a dance taking place on the dance floor in the middle of the banquet hall.
I was joined by my friends, Oscar from Malmö, Nora and Woody from the states, All three wearing their nicest clothes.
Nora is also one amazing chick, the host and producer of the alternative grass-root oriented radiostation KPFA's show Flashpoints.
I was happy and bewildered.
Love is a force that Palestinians understand very well, one that the occupation cannot quench.
Being able to love and to dream, and to long with passion is something that palestinians have mastered to perfection.
Sabreen waited for Ahmad for two long years in order to be able to start a life together, beyond prison bars and torture, and now, one year later their declaration of love is stronger than any force of nature.
I handed over my present for the bride, a protective hand of Fatima in white gold, to be worn around her neck. On the dancefloor was Ziad, Daoud, Iyad, Ayed and Naim. All the friends who had spent time in and out of prison together were now assembled, dancing, drenched in sweat, happy.
Den kvällen iallafall kunde ockupationen inte rå på dem.
It was an evening that the occupation could not steal away from them.
He is one of my closest friends. An artist, a dreamer, an activist, an educator and an organizer.
A lot of the things that I have learned, everything from what Palestine is to what it means to struggle, I have learned thanks to him.
He has sown seeds in me that were allowed to grow for years before the result could be seen.
We were lovers for a while, but broke up for different reasons, but remained the closest of friends.
Later he was imprisoned, under so called administrative detention, a kind of legal limbo wherein Palestinians can be thrown in prison without having faced charges or a sentence in a court of law.
Ahmad spent two years in the prison of his oppressors, and was released on May 14th of last year, which also happens to be my birthday.
On Friday Ahmad got married to Sabreen, a wonderful, intelligent, soulful and strong Palestinian woman from Ramallah.
The wedding took place in Bethlehem, and hundreds of people, from all over Palestine and the world attended their wedding, to celebrate the two lovers.
It was hot, crowded and sweaty, as all of you who have attended a Palestinian wedding can imagine. Lots of people, crowded, children running around, and a crazy whirlwind of a dance taking place on the dance floor in the middle of the banquet hall.
I was joined by my friends, Oscar from Malmö, Nora and Woody from the states, All three wearing their nicest clothes.
Nora is also one amazing chick, the host and producer of the alternative grass-root oriented radiostation KPFA's show Flashpoints.
I was happy and bewildered.
Love is a force that Palestinians understand very well, one that the occupation cannot quench.
Being able to love and to dream, and to long with passion is something that palestinians have mastered to perfection.
Sabreen waited for Ahmad for two long years in order to be able to start a life together, beyond prison bars and torture, and now, one year later their declaration of love is stronger than any force of nature.
I handed over my present for the bride, a protective hand of Fatima in white gold, to be worn around her neck. On the dancefloor was Ziad, Daoud, Iyad, Ayed and Naim. All the friends who had spent time in and out of prison together were now assembled, dancing, drenched in sweat, happy.
Den kvällen iallafall kunde ockupationen inte rå på dem.
It was an evening that the occupation could not steal away from them.
måndag 2 juni 2008
Birthright
History is politics.
It's been this way since the beginning of time, and this is true for all countries.
But to Israelis and Palestinians history is not merely politics, but a ticking time bomb.
The ticking is obnoxiously loud and hollow, and cannot be ignored.
Israeli independence is palestinian dispossession.
Jewish settlements are colonizers. Israeli defence forces are occupation forces, and the palestinian right of return is an end to the exclusivity of the Jewish state.
What makes my blood boil the most is the word birthright.
There is a programme called Taglit, which means just that, Birthright.
On there website they have a banner with the words "Your adventure, Your birthright, Our gift".
The birthright boasted on the website is Jewish.
Jewish youths that are first time travellers to Israel will get a free ten day trip to the country, and a full programme of organized visits, activities, festivities and propaganda.
All this because they supposedly have a birthright to this land.
Every jew in the world is - according to this belief - entitled to the land that has been cleansed of its palestinian population.
I hate the thought of having to fly into Israel.
All of you who know me are well aware of this.
My terrible nervousness, the big lump in my throat, the looks I get that quickly turn away, refusing to meet mine. The way my daark hair and arabic features attract attention. The gaze turning into a stare when the security personell selects me for "random security screening".
I'm playing with the thought of writing a polite but assertive email to the friendly people at Ben Gurion Airport, asking them to rephrase the term "random security screening".
Because the process I am put through has nothing random about it.
Had it been random, there would have been a hypothetical chance of my being released from their grip.
Such a chance does not exist.
Therefore I suggest that they call it what it is: "Catch the Arabs – and their friends!"
I made the travel in my most skimpy dress.
All too inappropriate, all too bare, an emerald green, seductive and confusingly unpalestinian garment.
I cannot claim any birthright here, not at Ben gurion airport, especially not when explaining to the security staff the purpose of my visit. I tone down the palestinian, I emphasise the swedish, the shallow, the ecstatic, and the apolitical.
My dress, my lipgloss, my cute little sandals. Anything to compensate for my palestinian exterior, my palestinianness, my longing for the people and the land and the freedom for them both.
Some refreshing honesty is what I miss the most as I approach the visa booth in Tel Aviv.
The woman takes my passport, and without looking at it she asks where I am from. I answer in my most benevolent voice that she should look down, as she is afterall holding my passport. When she does not heed my call, I answer: Sweden.
Beside being placed back into the now so well known Arab room (for more information, see previous Trip to Gaza-blog) and being interrogated, I faced little difficulty.
This time it was not the Israelis that blev my mind, but my co-interrogated.
Opposite of me sat Nicholas. A trendy young american guy in an Indian silk coat, and a pink Taglit Tshirt with the word STAFF written all over it.
I hesitated for a few seconds, considering my options, before I said: "REALLY??? You're on the Birthright Programme"?
He looked a little confused before answering yes.
As I shook my head, he asked me what I thought of the programme, which got us talking.
The history presented by Taglit is a history emptied of all facts. A mythological tale of Divine promise, profecy fulfilled, purity and ideals of strength being victorious over the land.
His Birthrightprogramme sustains itself off of a continuous ethnic cleansing of this place, and as soon as we started talking, the tension was felt in the air.
This summer will be interesting. I'll soon reveal why.
Speaking of the Birthright Programme, I wrote a piece on the subject recently, and it is soon to be published at the Electronic Intifada, www.electronicintifada.net
Here it is
Birthright Re:plugged: The land beneath trees and stones
I'm approaching the gate at Tel Aviv airport, having just gotten off the plane from Sweden, when an advertisement catches my attention. It's a campaign for the Israeli bank Hapoalim, and above pictures of famous people and national symbols, they have written "The first...". So Monalisa is the First italian, The statue of liberty is the first american, and so on. By the end of the tunnel, there is a cactus, and above it, the words "The first Israeli".
The cactus, or the Sabra as is called in Hebrew as well as in Arabic, has come to symbolize the sprit of the first European jews to migrate to this land. It is the spirit around which the Israeli national identity has been centered, and the people who made up this first movement are consequently refered to as Sabra-jews. To this day, this is a compliment in Israel, to be resembled to one of these very special Jews.
Its supposed to brings to mind the rugged and seasoned adventurers, who after having escaped pogromes and exclusion made this place their home. They helped in building a small "We" in land that supposedly belonged to no one. The Sabras take pride in accomplishing every task, and by never wavering, they managed to build a home for a "people without land, on a land without people", as the Israeli myth has it.
In official Israeli history this land was empty, the needs and possibilities endless, and for the first time these dedicated Jews would succeed in building a land that would be a guarant for protection any and every Jew from further persecution.
The image of the sabra is still on my mind as I step off the landing platform, and approach the Israeli security woman who's job it is to seek out passengers with my very typical arabic appearance, my place of birth, and my name. She is the one who will be interrogating me in the hours that will follow.
Somewhere, in what used to be Palestine prior to 1948.
As I slowly ascend the mountain southwest of the israeli city of Haifa, something brings back the memory of that advertisement campaign.
The mountain I'm standing on is an Israeli national park. There are pine trees, large boulders spread out across the open plains below, and occasionally you'll find a sign in english and hebrew talking about the location and its history.
What catches my eye is the information missing about this place.
Not too far from there I find a large hedge of cactus, and I don't need a sign to tell me what used to be here before. It's all there, if you just know how to recognize the clues.
I'm walking with five children from the palestinian refugee camp of Jenin, located in the occupied West Bank.
With us is a man from a town not too far from here. His name is Mustafa, and he is a professional tour guide born and raised in Israel, by Palestinian parents. And the national park is what used to be the location of the village of Um al Zinat.
This also used to be the village where Amers grandparents lived.
Amer walks quietly as Mustafa tells us the story of Umm al Zinat, the village who's women were famous for their beauty, and who also rendered the highest dowrys in marriage. Equally famous was the village for the resistance and bravery which the men and women of the village displayed in fighting first the british occupation, as well as in attempting to defend the village against Jewish assailants in the fighting leading up to the 1948 expulsion.
The village has disappeared now, but it would be inaccurate to say "without a trace". For the traces are omnipresent, in the pomegranath trees still to be found standing here, despite that the houses that surrounded them have gone missing.
Here we find pieces of walls, hidden under the tall grass and shrubbery.
If one only chooses to acknowledge the traces of history, then history will step out and tell you a beautiful but sad story of Um al Zinat.
The children I am escorting make up a part of a group of 20 in total, and they are all here as participants of the Birthright Re:plugged programme.
All of them are between the ages of 12 and up to 16. None of the kids are allowed to be above 16, as that would naturally disqualify them from the opportunity to come.
That is the age when a palestinian child is issued an israeli identity card, and the card makes it virtually impossible to travel around the country without a permit.
They can be tracked to the Jenin refugee camp, and will then be denied passage through the military checkpoints surrounding the area.
Because of a loophole in the law, these children are here on a 36 hour long field trip, visiting their could have been homes.
These kids are the descendants of refugees expelled from their home villages in the 1948 Catastrophe, or the Nakbah as it is known in palestinian history. It was a disaster that turned the majority of the Palestinian people into stateless refugees,
The name Birthright has been taken from the Israeli pro-zionist Taglit-Birthright programme, designed to send Jews from the US, Canada and Europe on a 10 day visit to Israel. This trip is said to be the inalienable "birthright" of every Jew. There they will learn that the trip is a part of a prophecy being fulfilled. Israel as the one national home land for all Jews.
Hundreds of thousands of young Jews have been on these trips, and the main reason is to create a personal tie with Israel, and to make them into advocates and defenders of Israel in their home countries.
in 2004 the Birthright Unplugged programme was created by two American women of Jewish-American descent. Its purpose was just the opposite that of the Taglit.
Dunya Alwan and Hanna Mermelstein wanted to show these Birthright participants the real Israel, beyond the fancy malls and holocaust-museums.
So they took them to the West bank city of Hebron, to talk to palestinians who'd had their homes confiscated by fanatic settlers. They've taken the participants on field trips to the Aparthied Wall built solely on Palestinian land, and they've sat down with peace activists and human rights workers.
The second part of that programme has been to take Palestinian children from the occupied West Bank into Palestine of 1948, Israel proper.
The Palestinian children are -often for the first time- allowed to visit the lands from which their relatives were expelled . They are also given the opportunity to meet Palestinians with Israeli citizenships, as a way of tying these two realities of the Palestinian exodus together.
The latest trip had another added bonus, which was that three of the chaperons were Palestinians from exile, as two of us were Palestinians from Sweden, and the last one an American-Palestinian. Together with the kids of 1948, the Jenin kids, my two palestinian chaperon friends, and the rest of the chaperons being fiercly antizionist, Jewish human rights activists from the US we make up an amazing counterimage to this forgetfulness.
I walk around in what was descibed by the Swedish jewish author Goran Rosenberg as "the land beneath the stones".
And never has that land revealed itself so completely to me.
A lot of the times, the land beneath the stones has not even been buried. It was merely emptied, with the intoxicated arrongance of the conquestor.
The trails have therefore never been dispersed, the explanations barely covering the crimes, and the evidence left out as clearly today, 60 years later, as the day the perpetrations took place.
Another Israeli human rights organization commited to laying bare the land beneath the stones is Zochrot. Zochrot means memory in Hebrew, Zakira in Arabic, and it is within the confines of memory that the explosivity is to be found.
They put up road signs and street signs with the names of the palestinian cities and streets that once were, written in both arabic and hebrew.
They recreate narratives and places as remembered by the people who lived the expulsion and ethnic cleansing. They participate in these kinds of trips, with children from places like Jenin, to show the remains of memory, when "the rhetoric and rubble has been cleared" as the wonderful Palestinian-American poet Suheir Hammad wrote.
They will remind you of the perspective left out of the story, and question "historic facts" in a state where history is in itself sensitive politics.
One of my own first childhood memories is from the refugee camp Al Yarmouk in Damascus, Syria.
I remember resting my head on my paternal grandmothers Nazhas lap, as she cleaned out the beans she'd just bought at the market. I remember being sad about something, and crying.
The cold stone floor in an even colder refugee camp, with a father in a far away place, waging a battle I did not understand, and with whom I could not be.
More than anything I remember granny Nazhas comforting love, scented by vegetables and mint. She embraced me, and asked me gently to stop crying, persuaded me with the gem of her life.
Do not cry, habibti, Don't cry. If you promise to stop crying we will pack ourselves a bag, and take the first bus back to Safad, just you and me.
Safad is her hometown. From there my grandmother and thousands of other Palestinians were expelled in the early months of 1948, as a direct result of jewish militias attacks on the town in the Galilee. The city is no further than a day's travel from the refugee camp in which my grandmother spent the rest of her life, and where she also died, and where her children and grandchildren were born.
Neither my grandmother nor any other palestinian refugee is entitled to even visit the land from which they were expelled, and my own privilege is due to the fact that I carry a Swedish passport.
These days Safad has been thouroughly cleansed of its palestinian inhabitants, but the houses are intact, history rewritten.
My grandmothers words, of that bus resonate in me as I travel around in her homeland, under the approval of the very state that was formed as a consequence of her own expulsion.
I am one of several million palestinian children of the palestinian diaspora, and I am in awe over how vibrant a bond can be to the place where roots once were grounded.
Just off an Israeli high way, not too far from there
Ahmad, 15, and Mohammed 13 stand next to me, on a huge pile of gravel, looking out on the garbage dump stretched out before them.
It stretches across hill after hill, and is located in between two high ways.
We've lied our way passed Israeli soldiers and policemen to get this far, and to prevent these children from being stopped before they've reached their goal. We've climbed under barbed wired fences, and crossed thorny shrubs.
And now they're here.
In what was the boys grandparents village no less than 60 years ago, in the village of Bureyka. This is Mohammeds and Ahmads origin, this is their history.
Their grandparents were expelled and today live in the Jenin refugee camp in the West Bank. Thst is where they were both born, along with their parents generation.
But grandfather has managed to instill his grandchildren with the dreams that are still with him, 60 years later. His longing back to his village, his love for it, and his stories about what used to be is as real for Ahmad and Mohammed as anything else. Of course he's instilled in them the fact that this village was the most remarkable and beautiful place in all of Palestine, and the boys do not even seem to notice the dump they're in.
Their grandparents cannot come back, not even for a visit, but as Mohammed and Ahmad walk around the cypress tree, and look at the village underneath the stones, they talk to their grandfather on the mobile phone. Ahmad approaches a tree, and runs his fingers across scores in the bark. This, he tells me, are the names carved into the tree by grandfather before they were forced to flee. He carved it there so that there would be no doubt as to who's home this was.
I ask the youngest of the brothers, Mohammed, what he's feeling at the moment, and he tells me he is very happy.
His voice is strained, as if it is being forced out of his throat.
His amazingly brown eyes, with the longest eyelashes I've ever seen and the warmest face watch me carefully, and they are filled with grief that he dares not express. So I kneel next to him, and I ask him to close his eyes, and I repeat the question. How do you feel, and what do you see, sweety?
His voice changes, and he starts to talk:
I see a vegetable market, and my grandfather walking around it, as a young boy. This place is so beautiful, a lot more beautiful than the refugee camp.
Later he tells me: I'm both happy and sad, simultaneously.
Sad because I've now gotten to see where my family is from, and where I might have grown up if it had not been for the Jews, if my family had not been run out of here.
But I'm also happy, because atleast there is no one else living here. I'm happier knowing that this place is a dumping site, than I had been if it had been filled with Israeli houses.
He carries with him a plastic bag, where he carefully places the little clues he's found on the journey. Small pieces of evidence showing that his families village will never be forgotten. He looks aloof as he walks around in the dust that could have made up his home, had everything been different.
Before it is time to leave I see Mohammad walk past a sea of cactuses, the Sabras, and leaning forward, to pick off a beautiful sunflower.
I'm taking it to Jenin, he says, and I find myself wishing that I could add one picture to that Israeli ad. It would be a picture of Mohammed, holding his sunflower, and above it, I'd write "The first Palestinian"
It's been this way since the beginning of time, and this is true for all countries.
But to Israelis and Palestinians history is not merely politics, but a ticking time bomb.
The ticking is obnoxiously loud and hollow, and cannot be ignored.
Israeli independence is palestinian dispossession.
Jewish settlements are colonizers. Israeli defence forces are occupation forces, and the palestinian right of return is an end to the exclusivity of the Jewish state.
What makes my blood boil the most is the word birthright.
There is a programme called Taglit, which means just that, Birthright.
On there website they have a banner with the words "Your adventure, Your birthright, Our gift".
The birthright boasted on the website is Jewish.
Jewish youths that are first time travellers to Israel will get a free ten day trip to the country, and a full programme of organized visits, activities, festivities and propaganda.
All this because they supposedly have a birthright to this land.
Every jew in the world is - according to this belief - entitled to the land that has been cleansed of its palestinian population.
I hate the thought of having to fly into Israel.
All of you who know me are well aware of this.
My terrible nervousness, the big lump in my throat, the looks I get that quickly turn away, refusing to meet mine. The way my daark hair and arabic features attract attention. The gaze turning into a stare when the security personell selects me for "random security screening".
I'm playing with the thought of writing a polite but assertive email to the friendly people at Ben Gurion Airport, asking them to rephrase the term "random security screening".
Because the process I am put through has nothing random about it.
Had it been random, there would have been a hypothetical chance of my being released from their grip.
Such a chance does not exist.
Therefore I suggest that they call it what it is: "Catch the Arabs – and their friends!"
I made the travel in my most skimpy dress.
All too inappropriate, all too bare, an emerald green, seductive and confusingly unpalestinian garment.
I cannot claim any birthright here, not at Ben gurion airport, especially not when explaining to the security staff the purpose of my visit. I tone down the palestinian, I emphasise the swedish, the shallow, the ecstatic, and the apolitical.
My dress, my lipgloss, my cute little sandals. Anything to compensate for my palestinian exterior, my palestinianness, my longing for the people and the land and the freedom for them both.
Some refreshing honesty is what I miss the most as I approach the visa booth in Tel Aviv.
The woman takes my passport, and without looking at it she asks where I am from. I answer in my most benevolent voice that she should look down, as she is afterall holding my passport. When she does not heed my call, I answer: Sweden.
Beside being placed back into the now so well known Arab room (for more information, see previous Trip to Gaza-blog) and being interrogated, I faced little difficulty.
This time it was not the Israelis that blev my mind, but my co-interrogated.
Opposite of me sat Nicholas. A trendy young american guy in an Indian silk coat, and a pink Taglit Tshirt with the word STAFF written all over it.
I hesitated for a few seconds, considering my options, before I said: "REALLY??? You're on the Birthright Programme"?
He looked a little confused before answering yes.
As I shook my head, he asked me what I thought of the programme, which got us talking.
The history presented by Taglit is a history emptied of all facts. A mythological tale of Divine promise, profecy fulfilled, purity and ideals of strength being victorious over the land.
His Birthrightprogramme sustains itself off of a continuous ethnic cleansing of this place, and as soon as we started talking, the tension was felt in the air.
This summer will be interesting. I'll soon reveal why.
Speaking of the Birthright Programme, I wrote a piece on the subject recently, and it is soon to be published at the Electronic Intifada, www.electronicintifada.net
Here it is
Birthright Re:plugged: The land beneath trees and stones
I'm approaching the gate at Tel Aviv airport, having just gotten off the plane from Sweden, when an advertisement catches my attention. It's a campaign for the Israeli bank Hapoalim, and above pictures of famous people and national symbols, they have written "The first...". So Monalisa is the First italian, The statue of liberty is the first american, and so on. By the end of the tunnel, there is a cactus, and above it, the words "The first Israeli".
The cactus, or the Sabra as is called in Hebrew as well as in Arabic, has come to symbolize the sprit of the first European jews to migrate to this land. It is the spirit around which the Israeli national identity has been centered, and the people who made up this first movement are consequently refered to as Sabra-jews. To this day, this is a compliment in Israel, to be resembled to one of these very special Jews.
Its supposed to brings to mind the rugged and seasoned adventurers, who after having escaped pogromes and exclusion made this place their home. They helped in building a small "We" in land that supposedly belonged to no one. The Sabras take pride in accomplishing every task, and by never wavering, they managed to build a home for a "people without land, on a land without people", as the Israeli myth has it.
In official Israeli history this land was empty, the needs and possibilities endless, and for the first time these dedicated Jews would succeed in building a land that would be a guarant for protection any and every Jew from further persecution.
The image of the sabra is still on my mind as I step off the landing platform, and approach the Israeli security woman who's job it is to seek out passengers with my very typical arabic appearance, my place of birth, and my name. She is the one who will be interrogating me in the hours that will follow.
Somewhere, in what used to be Palestine prior to 1948.
As I slowly ascend the mountain southwest of the israeli city of Haifa, something brings back the memory of that advertisement campaign.
The mountain I'm standing on is an Israeli national park. There are pine trees, large boulders spread out across the open plains below, and occasionally you'll find a sign in english and hebrew talking about the location and its history.
What catches my eye is the information missing about this place.
Not too far from there I find a large hedge of cactus, and I don't need a sign to tell me what used to be here before. It's all there, if you just know how to recognize the clues.
I'm walking with five children from the palestinian refugee camp of Jenin, located in the occupied West Bank.
With us is a man from a town not too far from here. His name is Mustafa, and he is a professional tour guide born and raised in Israel, by Palestinian parents. And the national park is what used to be the location of the village of Um al Zinat.
This also used to be the village where Amers grandparents lived.
Amer walks quietly as Mustafa tells us the story of Umm al Zinat, the village who's women were famous for their beauty, and who also rendered the highest dowrys in marriage. Equally famous was the village for the resistance and bravery which the men and women of the village displayed in fighting first the british occupation, as well as in attempting to defend the village against Jewish assailants in the fighting leading up to the 1948 expulsion.
The village has disappeared now, but it would be inaccurate to say "without a trace". For the traces are omnipresent, in the pomegranath trees still to be found standing here, despite that the houses that surrounded them have gone missing.
Here we find pieces of walls, hidden under the tall grass and shrubbery.
If one only chooses to acknowledge the traces of history, then history will step out and tell you a beautiful but sad story of Um al Zinat.
The children I am escorting make up a part of a group of 20 in total, and they are all here as participants of the Birthright Re:plugged programme.
All of them are between the ages of 12 and up to 16. None of the kids are allowed to be above 16, as that would naturally disqualify them from the opportunity to come.
That is the age when a palestinian child is issued an israeli identity card, and the card makes it virtually impossible to travel around the country without a permit.
They can be tracked to the Jenin refugee camp, and will then be denied passage through the military checkpoints surrounding the area.
Because of a loophole in the law, these children are here on a 36 hour long field trip, visiting their could have been homes.
These kids are the descendants of refugees expelled from their home villages in the 1948 Catastrophe, or the Nakbah as it is known in palestinian history. It was a disaster that turned the majority of the Palestinian people into stateless refugees,
The name Birthright has been taken from the Israeli pro-zionist Taglit-Birthright programme, designed to send Jews from the US, Canada and Europe on a 10 day visit to Israel. This trip is said to be the inalienable "birthright" of every Jew. There they will learn that the trip is a part of a prophecy being fulfilled. Israel as the one national home land for all Jews.
Hundreds of thousands of young Jews have been on these trips, and the main reason is to create a personal tie with Israel, and to make them into advocates and defenders of Israel in their home countries.
in 2004 the Birthright Unplugged programme was created by two American women of Jewish-American descent. Its purpose was just the opposite that of the Taglit.
Dunya Alwan and Hanna Mermelstein wanted to show these Birthright participants the real Israel, beyond the fancy malls and holocaust-museums.
So they took them to the West bank city of Hebron, to talk to palestinians who'd had their homes confiscated by fanatic settlers. They've taken the participants on field trips to the Aparthied Wall built solely on Palestinian land, and they've sat down with peace activists and human rights workers.
The second part of that programme has been to take Palestinian children from the occupied West Bank into Palestine of 1948, Israel proper.
The Palestinian children are -often for the first time- allowed to visit the lands from which their relatives were expelled . They are also given the opportunity to meet Palestinians with Israeli citizenships, as a way of tying these two realities of the Palestinian exodus together.
The latest trip had another added bonus, which was that three of the chaperons were Palestinians from exile, as two of us were Palestinians from Sweden, and the last one an American-Palestinian. Together with the kids of 1948, the Jenin kids, my two palestinian chaperon friends, and the rest of the chaperons being fiercly antizionist, Jewish human rights activists from the US we make up an amazing counterimage to this forgetfulness.
I walk around in what was descibed by the Swedish jewish author Goran Rosenberg as "the land beneath the stones".
And never has that land revealed itself so completely to me.
A lot of the times, the land beneath the stones has not even been buried. It was merely emptied, with the intoxicated arrongance of the conquestor.
The trails have therefore never been dispersed, the explanations barely covering the crimes, and the evidence left out as clearly today, 60 years later, as the day the perpetrations took place.
Another Israeli human rights organization commited to laying bare the land beneath the stones is Zochrot. Zochrot means memory in Hebrew, Zakira in Arabic, and it is within the confines of memory that the explosivity is to be found.
They put up road signs and street signs with the names of the palestinian cities and streets that once were, written in both arabic and hebrew.
They recreate narratives and places as remembered by the people who lived the expulsion and ethnic cleansing. They participate in these kinds of trips, with children from places like Jenin, to show the remains of memory, when "the rhetoric and rubble has been cleared" as the wonderful Palestinian-American poet Suheir Hammad wrote.
They will remind you of the perspective left out of the story, and question "historic facts" in a state where history is in itself sensitive politics.
One of my own first childhood memories is from the refugee camp Al Yarmouk in Damascus, Syria.
I remember resting my head on my paternal grandmothers Nazhas lap, as she cleaned out the beans she'd just bought at the market. I remember being sad about something, and crying.
The cold stone floor in an even colder refugee camp, with a father in a far away place, waging a battle I did not understand, and with whom I could not be.
More than anything I remember granny Nazhas comforting love, scented by vegetables and mint. She embraced me, and asked me gently to stop crying, persuaded me with the gem of her life.
Do not cry, habibti, Don't cry. If you promise to stop crying we will pack ourselves a bag, and take the first bus back to Safad, just you and me.
Safad is her hometown. From there my grandmother and thousands of other Palestinians were expelled in the early months of 1948, as a direct result of jewish militias attacks on the town in the Galilee. The city is no further than a day's travel from the refugee camp in which my grandmother spent the rest of her life, and where she also died, and where her children and grandchildren were born.
Neither my grandmother nor any other palestinian refugee is entitled to even visit the land from which they were expelled, and my own privilege is due to the fact that I carry a Swedish passport.
These days Safad has been thouroughly cleansed of its palestinian inhabitants, but the houses are intact, history rewritten.
My grandmothers words, of that bus resonate in me as I travel around in her homeland, under the approval of the very state that was formed as a consequence of her own expulsion.
I am one of several million palestinian children of the palestinian diaspora, and I am in awe over how vibrant a bond can be to the place where roots once were grounded.
Just off an Israeli high way, not too far from there
Ahmad, 15, and Mohammed 13 stand next to me, on a huge pile of gravel, looking out on the garbage dump stretched out before them.
It stretches across hill after hill, and is located in between two high ways.
We've lied our way passed Israeli soldiers and policemen to get this far, and to prevent these children from being stopped before they've reached their goal. We've climbed under barbed wired fences, and crossed thorny shrubs.
And now they're here.
In what was the boys grandparents village no less than 60 years ago, in the village of Bureyka. This is Mohammeds and Ahmads origin, this is their history.
Their grandparents were expelled and today live in the Jenin refugee camp in the West Bank. Thst is where they were both born, along with their parents generation.
But grandfather has managed to instill his grandchildren with the dreams that are still with him, 60 years later. His longing back to his village, his love for it, and his stories about what used to be is as real for Ahmad and Mohammed as anything else. Of course he's instilled in them the fact that this village was the most remarkable and beautiful place in all of Palestine, and the boys do not even seem to notice the dump they're in.
Their grandparents cannot come back, not even for a visit, but as Mohammed and Ahmad walk around the cypress tree, and look at the village underneath the stones, they talk to their grandfather on the mobile phone. Ahmad approaches a tree, and runs his fingers across scores in the bark. This, he tells me, are the names carved into the tree by grandfather before they were forced to flee. He carved it there so that there would be no doubt as to who's home this was.
I ask the youngest of the brothers, Mohammed, what he's feeling at the moment, and he tells me he is very happy.
His voice is strained, as if it is being forced out of his throat.
His amazingly brown eyes, with the longest eyelashes I've ever seen and the warmest face watch me carefully, and they are filled with grief that he dares not express. So I kneel next to him, and I ask him to close his eyes, and I repeat the question. How do you feel, and what do you see, sweety?
His voice changes, and he starts to talk:
I see a vegetable market, and my grandfather walking around it, as a young boy. This place is so beautiful, a lot more beautiful than the refugee camp.
Later he tells me: I'm both happy and sad, simultaneously.
Sad because I've now gotten to see where my family is from, and where I might have grown up if it had not been for the Jews, if my family had not been run out of here.
But I'm also happy, because atleast there is no one else living here. I'm happier knowing that this place is a dumping site, than I had been if it had been filled with Israeli houses.
He carries with him a plastic bag, where he carefully places the little clues he's found on the journey. Small pieces of evidence showing that his families village will never be forgotten. He looks aloof as he walks around in the dust that could have made up his home, had everything been different.
Before it is time to leave I see Mohammad walk past a sea of cactuses, the Sabras, and leaning forward, to pick off a beautiful sunflower.
I'm taking it to Jenin, he says, and I find myself wishing that I could add one picture to that Israeli ad. It would be a picture of Mohammed, holding his sunflower, and above it, I'd write "The first Palestinian"
Countdown
I saw my mother yesterday.
We walked into town along with a new and wonderful friend, and we talked. As i glanced down on her I saw her face, and her smile, and I heard her laughter. I saw then so much in her that I see in myself, and right then and there I realized that the path I thought I had chosen was never really a choice.
It was a result of heritage and environment, to quote my friend Önder.
The heritage of my parents is pride, strength and stubbornness.
But also a result of everything they've gone through, and survived for myself and my brothers.
Every new trip is a challenge, every new trip takes me into an emotional hurricane that I cannot control. But it's also physical, in an environment that is to its nature oppressive and suffocates life.
This is the essence of occupation.
Suffocation of life, while making a life without obstacles an impossibility.
Against all this stands life as it is lived in Palestine.
Families gather and chit-chat, friends hold eachothers hands when walking down the streets of Ramallah or Nablus. My favourite boys run far away from the refugee camp one afternoon to pick mushrooms for us, and love happens is nourished and consumated despite everything.
This summer will be the best summer yet.
Despite the occupation and zionism I intend to show you Palestine.
As she is seen by me, and as she should be, if the oppression and degradation was not there.
This year will also be an experiment in my writing. Will let you know more soon.
We walked into town along with a new and wonderful friend, and we talked. As i glanced down on her I saw her face, and her smile, and I heard her laughter. I saw then so much in her that I see in myself, and right then and there I realized that the path I thought I had chosen was never really a choice.
It was a result of heritage and environment, to quote my friend Önder.
The heritage of my parents is pride, strength and stubbornness.
But also a result of everything they've gone through, and survived for myself and my brothers.
Every new trip is a challenge, every new trip takes me into an emotional hurricane that I cannot control. But it's also physical, in an environment that is to its nature oppressive and suffocates life.
This is the essence of occupation.
Suffocation of life, while making a life without obstacles an impossibility.
Against all this stands life as it is lived in Palestine.
Families gather and chit-chat, friends hold eachothers hands when walking down the streets of Ramallah or Nablus. My favourite boys run far away from the refugee camp one afternoon to pick mushrooms for us, and love happens is nourished and consumated despite everything.
This summer will be the best summer yet.
Despite the occupation and zionism I intend to show you Palestine.
As she is seen by me, and as she should be, if the oppression and degradation was not there.
This year will also be an experiment in my writing. Will let you know more soon.
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