When I decided to
write a piece for HopeDance, I didn't want to write another article
cataloging the many horrors and outrages I saw inflicted on the
Palestinian people by a vicious, massive, American-funded Israeli
occupation force. Not because it isn't important. I thought to write
something different because there are other stories out there, stories
that have not been covered, stories that are far more controversial
than Israeli war crimes.
For two and a half weeks in April and early May I traveled throughout
Israel and the Occupied Territories. My activities ranged from Jenin
in the north, to Gaza in the south, east to Hebron, and dozens of
other cities and towns in between. Before ultimately being captured
by the Israeli army and deported on May 4 for bringing food and
supplies to the captives in the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem,
I met many people, heard many stories, and saw many terrible things
in the Occupied Territories-- I also came to one shocking realization,
one that contradicts much of what the media leads us to believe
about the region: peace for the Palestinian people is easily achievable,
requiring but one, simple action-- that the Israelis pull out of
the West Bank and Gaza.
A pullout would mean the removal of the illegal settlements and
settlers that have always been used as military enclaves dedicated
to terrorizing and killing Palestinians unlucky enough to live nearby.
It would also mean that Israel remove the military checkpoints that
have always been used to harass and frustrate Palestinians and smother
their economy. It would mean they must dismantle their criminal
water-pumping stations that direct the overwhelming majority of
the West Bank and Gaza's precious water resources to a small handful
of Israelis. It would mean that they stop dumping pollutants, trash,
and sewage in Palestinian areas. Also, they must cease invading
Palestinian areas at will, targeting and destroying civilian infrastructure,
and murdering those who bravely resist the aggression or merely
get in the way, labeling them as "terrorists."
When many people, particularly Americans, are called on to consider
the prospects and possibilities for peace in Israel and the Occupied
Territories, their minds begin filling with all sorts of more or
less vague notions and ideas about the many impediments to peace
that result from the peculiar situation in the Middle East.
Many of the common 'impediments to peace' are notions based in
cultural ignorance and misperceptions of history, perpetuated by
biased and bad media coverage, and reinforced over time. For instance,
we hear time and again mentioned, especially after suicide bombings,
that what is happening there is a religious war, a conflict of religion,
a conflict between religions. No doubt some people on both sides
engage the crisis in a religious way. But these people are merely
the fringe, the vast and overwhelming majority of them being militant
Israeli settlers.
The overwhelming number of people-- on the Palestinian side in
any case-- see the struggle as nothing more than a struggle against
occupation, a struggle for freedom, dignity, and autonomy. Among
the many freedoms and dignities being sought by the Palestinians
is the freedom and dignity to worship; but to understand the resistance
to Israeli occupation in this light is to apply a myopic reductionism
that completely misreads the struggle. The struggle is about freedom
from arbitrary aggression and Israeli control.
The simple act of pulling out of the Occupied Territories would
result in peace for the Palestinian people. I say peace for the
Palestinian people, rather than peace for the Israel and Palestine,
in part to dispel the myth that there is a Palestinian and Israeli
conflict. The Israelis in Israel enjoy peace and have enjoyed peace,
but for the occasional military reserve duty that calls them away
from the beaches and shopping malls. As for the suicide bombers,
they don't represent the Palestinian people any more than Terry
McVie [Timothy McVey?] represents all Americans who criticize their
government, and to suggest differently would be an uninformed generalization.
It is the Palestinians alone who are forced to suffer the miseries
and destruction of war, victims as they are of persistent and brutal
occupation and aggression.
The common use of the word "conflict" in regard to the
relations between the Palestinians and Israel suggests a sort of
parity of forces and of aggression where nothing could be farther
from the truth. In practical terms, all of the aggression, all of
the force belongs to the Israelis, and all the suffering and deprivation
belong to the Palestinians. The Israelis already have peace on their
terms; it is only the Palestinians who suffer the absence of peace.
Israel is the fourth most well-armed military on the planet, equipped
with modern American-made tanks, helicopters, guns, missiles, fighter
aircraft, and small arms, none of which are spared when there are
Arab families to evict, and Palestinian towns to attack.
On the other side, there can hardly be imagined a more defenseless
target than the Palestinians. They are essentially a society almost
exclusively made up of civilians. Any respectable rebel group in
South America, Africa, and Asia is likely to be better armed than
the whole of Palestine. The Palestinians have no gunboats, no tanks,
no heavy artillery, or helicopters, or airplanes, etc. They don't
even have airports anymore. Instead, they are armed with crappy
Kalashnikov rifles, which often fail to operate, and some homemade
bombs that are far more likely to kill their desperate handlers
than a designated target.
Peace for the Palestinians is wholly in the hands of the Israelis,
as it has always been. This is why the Palestinians continue to
die before the Israeli tanks and helicopters that occupy them: because
if they didn't continue to die, Israel would go before the world
and say, "look, no one is dying, there is peace in Palestine!"
If they didn't continue to prove to the world by their deaths that
there is no peace, the world would say that the Palestinians have
agreed to a settlement that permits Israel to tyrannize them, steal
their water, and continue to occupy what little remains of their
land.
Another commonly registered "obstacle to peace" says
that whenever Palestinians gain a concession from the Israelis it
is only a prelude to increasing further demands. Hardly anything
would be more of a fabrication and lie than this. From the very
beginning of the so-called "peace process" the Palestinians
never received so much as an inch from which they could demand the
proverbial mile more.
During 40 years of occupation, the Palestinians have given up more
and more of their claims in hope of achieving autonomy and freedom
from Israeli aggression. With the Oslo Accords of the early 1990s
they gave up nearly everything, but for the West Bank and Gaza.
Nevertheless, in the years after Oslo, Israel in loathsome, criminal
bad faith, significantly increased settlement building and social
and financial incentives for settlers, stealing more and more of
what little land the Palestinians had ultimately been forced to
accept at Oslo in hope of peace.
The so-called peace process of the 1990s has been the process of
Israel stealing bits and pieces from the little that remains in
the Palestinians' pot at every step of the way. And, "in the
process," reducing them to such a miserable state that they
will ultimately accept whatever mere pittance remains of that to
which they originally agreed.
Now, ten years after Oslo, the Palestinians have nothing more to
give up in the struggle for peace than their lives; and, just as
was done with Palestinian land, the Israelis have shown that they
are willing to take. Does the world expect the Palestinians to become
refugees again, moving from camps in the West Bank and Gaza to camps
in perhaps Jordan and Egypt? I don't think so. I hope not. And anybody
who thinks they should is a despicable racist, or an ignoramus who
requires the counseling and assistance of concerned and better informed
friends.
The wants of the Palestinians are extremely simple, and with every
year the brutal Israeli policies seem successful at forcing the
Palestinians to accept less, in hope of saving their children from
the early graves that have always been the main concession offered
by Israel. But, to anyone who has traveled through the area, it
becomes clear that the Palestinians cannot and will not give up
any more land, or dignity, or autonomy. The only thing left they
can give up is their lives.
All that Israel has to give up for the sake of peace for Palestinians
is what the international community and the United Nations has always
said it must rightfully give up; the illegally and brutally occupied
territories of the West Bank and Gaza.
Although the Palestinians are not easily moved by fear, they have
been forced to accept the little that they now do because of a practical
fear; a fear of what the future holds if they do not attain some
measure of autonomy and sovereignty soon. Palestinians need only
flip over the New Israeli Shekel (the legal currency in Israel and
the Occupied Territories) 10-agorot piece: beneath a seven-branched
candelabra and the emblem of the State of Israel is an unexplained
amorphous shape that nearly fills the side of the coin. While the
website of the Bank of Israel describes the iconography of all Israeli
coins in detail, it somehow neglects to explain this particular
shape; though the candelabra, emblem, and script are all explained.
What does this shape represent you might ask? I'm sure Palestinians
have.
Beneath the candelabra and the symbol of the State of Israel is
a geographical representation of Greater Judea, which stretches
in the mind of the super-Zionist beholder from the Red Sea and Egypt
in the West, across Jordan to the Euphrates in the East, north through
Lebanon and Syria, south through Saudi Arabia and Iraq. (Oh yes,
and the West bank and Gaza are there, too). By the way, the 10-agorot
piece, introduced on September 4, 1985, is the most recent addition
to Israel's coin currency.
Hopefully the world will make Israel stop before then.
Jeff Kingham is a central coast resident who
went to Israel and the Occupied Territories in April. While there
he helped document Israeli atrocities and worked with various groups
supporting and bringing aid to the besieged Palestinians. Along
with 12 other international he was apprehended by the Israeli Defense
Forces in Bethlehem and deported in early May. He is available for
interviews and speaking engagements and can be reached at jeffatthefarm@hotmail.com.
