Where’s the security in that?

By Khaled Diab

Shawan Jabarin, the general director of Al-Haq, a Palestinian human rights organisation, spoke to me about the human rights situation and prospects for the future.

He began by stressing the importance of people going out to see what’s going on on the ground and speaking to ordinary people “because they often have better and more sensible ideas than their leaders”.

He believes that 'security' is a catch-all used by Israeli politicians to justify their actions in the eyes of the Israeli public and the international community. "In el-Khalil and Ramallah, there is a lot of misery and hardship," he noted. "Events here are not isolated and temporary - they are part of a grander scheme."

He points to the severe restrictions on the movement of Palestinians, the economic hardship Israel has inflicted on the Territories and the wall it has built through the West Bank as indications of certain long-term policy objectives: to reduce the Palestinian population living in the West Bank by making life there increasingly unbearable and to grab the parts of the West Bank Israel would like to annex.

"Permits are, at first sight, for security purposes. But they are also used as a tool to frustrate, annoy and plant despair in the hearts of Palestinians," he posited. "The restrictions on movement not only hurt the economic well-being of the Palestinian population, but also hurt their family and social ties - for example, weddings are often cancelled because family and friends from other towns and villages cannot attend."

He also talked about the nearly 11,000 Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails, of which 120 are women and 300 are minors. Of these, around 700 are so-called administrative detainees, i.e. they are being held without charge.

"Occupation is not just a question of land possession but also controls every inch of people's lives."

Many Israelis I have spoken to argue that these measure are not part of any systematic policy, but are simply cobbled together responses to the Palestinian 'terror threat'. However, some Israelis do acknowledge that certain cynical political forces might be exploiting the fear and loathing to create certain realities on the ground while everyone's attention is focused on security.

A lot of Israelis find it hard, despite documented violations, to accept the fact that the army is not a benign force. "The IDF is the most moral force in the world," Anat proudly proclaimed several times. "It's just the occupation corrupts." Although it is certainly not the most immoral force in the world, not by a long stretch, I do not share such a high opinion of the Israeli military, although I can understand why Israelis do, since decent Israelis have to serve in the IDF and see any slur on it as a personal attack on them.

Rebranding the occupation

Shawan is sceptical about the wall Israel has constructed and questions how much security it could ever bring to Israel. "The wall is not a 'security fence', but a political boundary. In my opinion, the long-term objective is to keep the occupation in place without actually calling it an occupation. Israel wants the land but does not want the responsibility of the human population."

Quite a few Israelis I have spoken to see this as not contradictory. Security to them does not just mean stopping suicide bombers but also separating themselves from the Palestinians. They argue that the course the wall runs is not fair and it should be rerouted along the Green Line, but they also believe that the biggest settlement blocks in the West Bank should be annexed by Israel because evacuating them would be too difficult.

But given the fact that dismantling even small settlements is seen as 'politically costly' by Israelis, I wonder how successful any attempts to reroute the wall will be in Israel's factionalised political landscape. In addition, any unilateral solution, as the wall is, can only provide temporary respite, since it is carried out without the consent of the other party.

"Israeli leaders do not have the courage to work for peace... Israel is engaged in crisis management not crisis resolution," Shawan argues.

Even when viewed from the perspective of Israel's own self-interest, this policy is incredibly misguided, since Israel is perpetuating the occupation and making the prospects of the emergence of a future Palestinian seem increasingly implausible.

He says that the fragmented nature of a future Palestine and the lack of Palestinian sovereignty over borders and resources, "may lead to the quietening down of the conflict for a while but it will flare up again when its impracticality and unfeasibility become apparent".

And the worsening situation and despair may, he warns, push some Palestinian towards greater extremes than Hamas, such as Al Qaeda-style groups. "Our society used to be pragmatice and well-developed but the continued lack of hope may lead to greater extremism."

Utopic solution

In the more distant future, the ideal solution, according to Shawan's own personal opinion, "would be a single, secular democratic state on all of historic Palestine.. And, in the long term, I'm optimistic this state will emerge."

Such a state would be in everyone's interest, especially the Jews of Israel, he argues. "If Israel refuses to deal with equality and justice and stop the occupation, then if it ever weakens, a future war could destroy it. The best protection for the Jews is not might but justice."

But he does not realistically believe that this could happen directly. "First step could be a Palestinian state on the pre-1967 borders. Later, the two states could voluntarily build a closer union."

When questioned about the name of this future state, he responded: "They can call it Apeland for all I care. Its name is not important; its nature is."

He dismissed fears that Jews would become second-class citizens in such a state, which they fear would quickly become Islamicised. "Most Palestinians support the idea of a unified, secular state. The PLO, for example, in its charter called for the creation of a single state where Muslims, Christians and Jews live side by side in peace."

He admits that Hamas and other Islamist parties may not share this vision, but he believes that, in times of peace, they will be sidelined.

In order to allay Jewish fears, which given their history of persecution is understandable, he suggested the creation of a triangle of authority in this future binational state: an autonomous Jewish parliament, an autonomous Palestinian parliament and a joint federal parliament where the two meet.

"Of course, Palestinians do not share the identity fears of Israelis because they live in a region of other Arabs," Shawan acknowledged, which makes it easier for them to support the single-state solution.

©Khaled Diab. Text and images.

The refreshing taste of revolution in Ramallah

By Khaled Diab

On Friday morning, I set off to Ramallah. While I was waiting for the bus driver to return from Friday prayers, a group of young lads hit off a conversation with me.

They had got to Jerusalem by jumping out of the minibus just before the check point and taking back routes. On the journey back, there would be no problem because the Israeli military didn't really care who entered Ramallah.

Like so many other Palestinians I have come across, these younguns informed me eagerly that they loved Egypt and Egyptians - believing the celluloid myth that we are all friendly, kind-hearted, care for others and have a wicked and biting sense of humour.

In fact, travelling around this land has made me somewhat self-conscious because I seem to draw attention as if I were some kind of minor celebrity - nothing major, just someone who features in a crappy soap opera about a bitter, generations-old feud between two families: a rich and powerful one and its poor cousin.

The boys who worked at a shopping mall in Ramallah joked with me about their dead-end lives, smoking, Egypt and wanting to get out of Palestine. "Take me to Europe with you. Everything here is so messed up - the occupation is humiliating and the PA are pimps!" one of them maintained.

A do-good busy-body type standing near by decided to give them his Shekel/Dinar's worth. "How are we ever going to build a country, if every young person wants to get out and is going to bad mouth it?" he asked, although he was not actually interested in a reply.

I could not really blame the young men for wanting to flee the misery and madness around them - who wouldn't? In most of the Occupied Territories, if I recall the stats correctly, unemployment is running at over 50%, the majority of the population lives under or near the poverty line and they can barely move from one town to the next without an Israeli permit.

Just before I got on the bus, I got a message from Tom, my Belgian friend who lives and works in Ramallah for a Palestinian NGO, informing me that there had been a gun battle the previous night and the city was not only quiet because it was Friday but was also dead because of a curfew on shops and businesses.

When I arrived, Tom led me through Ramallah's semi-deserted streets. Most of the shops were shut, or had their shutters down but were working surreptitiously behind doors left ajar for their customers. The so-called 'strike' was apparently by order of the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigade. Tom suggested that we sit out the strike in his favourite cafe. En route, we chatted about his work and life in Ramallah.

Inside the cafe, we met a group of his NGO friends, such as Gareth, an Irish lawyer with Al Haq, a Palestinian human rights organisation, and Emma, a Palestinian-Brit with Save the Children.

First bottle up against the wall

With the cafes shutters down, it felt like we were in a kind of American prohibition and clandestinely drinking a toast to the revolution of Palestine's best beer. Al Taybeh, whose slogan is 'taste the revolution', is a quality local poison and a successful Palestinian export.

When I told one of the punters that many Israelis find it hard to believe that Palestinians drink alcohol, he retorted: "They'd better believe it. Israeli beer is so bad that even Israelis don't drink it. Our is good enough for us and good enough for export."

He said that the Israelis lived a few kilometres up the road yet they knew very little about the realities of Palestinian society. To him, this was proof of a willful ignorance - he believed Israelis would rather not know because that makes living with the occupation easier.

We sat around discussing Israeli abuses of human rights, the security wall, Tom's theory that an Egyptian pyramid could not have been possibly built in 20 years (at which point, we all got out our phone calculators to disprove him). Gareth provided us with access to his on-brain log of weird legal precedents under eccentric English common law.

The cafe's colourful Palestinian owner gave me his political punditry on everything from the Sykes-Picot agreement to the wall in Israel and now in Iraq. "Who are the Israelis trying to kid?" he asked eagerly, his eyes blazing with excitement. "The man who shot the policeman yesterday was a car smuggler. If criminals can get around the wall, do the Israelis really think it will keep out a determined killer? The wall is about land, not security."

©Khaled Diab. Text and photos.