khalilah sabra <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: In the Name of Allah, Most
Gracious, Most Merciful
Both Sides of the Occupation
After more than half of a century, the Israelis have looked at the
Palestinians and said, Look at what we have done for you. We let you have
portions of the West Bank and Gaza. We brought you Mahmoud Abbas and allowed
him to be appointed as your president. We gave you electricity and even let
some of your sons bake our bread in Jerusalem. We did all of these things and
yet there are riots and rock-throwing in the cities. And there is chaos. There
is hatred and violence. And there is resistance. Dont the Palestinian people
understand what we have tried to do? Why cant they be satisfied?
The Palestinians, on the other hand, say, That is great for Mahmoud Abbas,
who you made a president. And it is good that you allow for some electricity.
And it is a mercy for any poor man to have some work. But none of this has
changed our lives! For every one person you cried for, we cried for four. Our
children go to school under your soldiers guns. They are buried under the
bricks of your explosions and the brutality of occupation!
You say to us that we must obeys laws that are enforced on Arabs only and
that we must respect your democracy, when we are the victims of every
humiliation and depravation that the Israeli government would never accept for
a Jew? It is you who do not understand!
To understand means not to permit. If the Israeli governmentby way of
American supportchooses purposely not to understand, the violence will
continue to mount. For every action there will be a calculated reaction,
regardless of whats rational or who triggers the revenge. Without the intent
of democracy, there is no suitable language of communication. Without
communication, there is no true vision of peace. It is a mirage that no summit
or initiative can give reality to. The victims will continue to be the young
and the old, the Christian and the Muslim, the mother and the child. They will,
most of all, have been human beings whom others had needed and loved.
Both Israelis and Palestinians need to understand this more than anything
else: violence has not accomplished anything, nor has it created anything. No
martyrs aim has been settled by an assassins bullet or bomb. But what will
deepen the stain on the state of Israel is their blatant, vile treatment of
citizens like Fatima Al Ziq, from Gaza, who delivered her baby, Yusef, in Kfar
Saba Israeli hospital while handcuffed. This 40 year old mother of eight
children was taken into custody by the Israeli army on the Eretz Crossing on
May, 20, 2007, along with her niece. Until now Fatima has not been allowed to
have any visitation from family members, who have yet to see her baby. She
remains detained without any charges or trial.
So what is it we dont understand or see very clearly? Peace will be evolved
from the movement pushed by human activity, by those willing to commit their
minds and bodies to the task of denouncing war and insisting on peace.
The head of the Ministry of Census, Abdul-Nasser Farawna, said that his
ministry voiced several appeals to human rights groups and the International
Red Cross to intervene in this particular case and the case of other women who
have given birth to infants while incarcerated. It has been more than a year
and Fatima has not seen any of her other seven children since that time.
Treating any person this way is intolerable. Treating pregnant women this way
is unspeakable.
The Israeli government knows that there are several ways to kill a human
being before he or she is actually dead. One way is to separate a woman from
her children.
Does allowing for the state of Israel mean mastering the skills equal to a
Nazi government?
It is reported that a number of infants have been born in Israeli prisons
since the year 2000, and those children lived months and years in Israeli
detention facilities under conditions that will affect them for the rest of
their lives.
Perhaps you, like me, have gotten too soft and assuming, but I think that a
picture of a dead baby should trouble us more than it usually would, or that a
soldier holding a rifle to an old womans head should disrupt our dreaming
states.
If there are a people that exist in this world that might be used to this
sort of cruel destiny, it is the Palestinian people. They know more than any
human should ever know that what is given can be taken away, that what is
begged for can be refused, that what is earned cannot be necessarily kept, and
that what has been inherited from their family can be taken at any time. Savage
inequalities have been the shadow behind every step theyve made. References to
detention and camps emerge frequently in language used by those occupied. The
theme is being under siege. There is a sense of panic, say a man whose family
has lives in a refugee camp in Jenin for many years. But the physical fears
are not the most terrible. There is a sense of darkness and uneasiness. Guns
are always hammering at night. You never know what will come through the wall.
A peaceful nights sleep is impossible. You feel like you are being tortured.
Who are these people, if not symbols of mass dispossession of a kind not seen
since the years of the depression? What is their likely fate if this is their
plight in the middle of a world of previous unknown power and abundance?
These are pointless facts when world leaders do not listen. Even when this
political bottomless pit recently reached crisis proportions by an Israeli
imposed blockade preventing humanitarian supplies -- food, medicine, and fuel
needed to maintain Gaza's only power plant -- into the region. Its neighbors
looked upon the dehumanization of a million and a half people, and shrugged at
this collective punishment. Forget about that little farce of Hosni Mubarak and
his pathetic little charade of having a real humanitarian bone in his body. Who
did he think he was fooling with his little pretense? Certainly not the
thousands of Egyptians civilians rotting in the mildew of his own barbaric
prisons, tried under military tribunals for failing to obey the dictation of
dictator who has historically imposed his own collective punishment on the
miserable masses lost in their daily struggle to survive.
Shame on the man who, exactly like his Israeli counterpart, has never been
able to distinguish between justice and oppression.
You see, being a humanitarian is entirely about character. When you see a
president whose sole purpose has been to maintain his position of power by
political and economic repression, it naturally begs the question, why would
Hosni Munaafiq suddenly prove that he has a human pulse and that he actually
cares about the people on the other side of a wall he has reinforced throughout
long unbearable years? If you can answer that question, Ill eat a bowl of his
couscous. If history and truth have taught us anything, its that we are all
offered a choice between truth and treachery. Choose what you will but you can
never have both, and a species like Hosni does not do anything unless he gets
something in return and never ever because it is good in itself.
The ebb and flow of diplomatic concern must not apply only to politicians,
royal elites, or dictators. It should be applied to the people. It is the
people who have a job to do. As long as men are starving, with their children
unskilled and their crops demolished, the people have a part to play. As long
as nations are not equal and free- in their lives, in their beliefs, in their
dialogue and their understanding- it will be long before the people have a
humanitarian task to perform.
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