Email Letters from Palestine October/November 2004

Email Letters from Palestine October/November 2004

by Samia A. Halaby

Arriving in Al Quds (Jerusalem)

Sunday October 10, 2004

Friends,

I am now in Al Quds, city of my birth, sitting with other Qudsis, feeling at home and happy. But it is a sad quiet dark town that I have come to. Of course the other half, the stolen half, is lit-up and alive with motion and wealth.

Crossing the bridge was different this time. I made record time from Amman to the Israeli part of the border. At the Israeli side we suddenly were told that the Israelis had once again identified a "suspicious suitcase." Every one had to be evacuated from the building. We were still on the bus which had to back-up leaving our suitcases strewn all over the roadway.

Others who were in line had to back up into a grassy area followed by a row of m16 toting Israeli soldiers. They sat in the hot sun. An old man begged to get in the shade repeatedly. A mother with a tiny baby gave it to a relative sitting in a shred of shade. Suddenly, an Israeli woman soldiers dashed towards her with a glass of water. I said to myself, oh what unusual humanity in the normally inhuman Israeli soldiers and settlers. I was extremely mistaken, of course. Instead of kindness, this soldier yelled at the mother that passing her baby on to another group sitting on the grass was "not allowed." Thus the mother retrieved her fretting baby while the woman soldier stood watching and drinking the cool glass of water, then walked back to her line of other soldiers also drinking the water that had just been passed to them only.

In Al Quds, I was told that identifying supposedly suspicious suitcases was a new game the Israelis play to increase fascist pressure.

Samia

The Wall Comes to Calandia

October 12, 2004

Friends,
The news from Palestine is so bad and the process of strangulation applied by Israel is so constant and murderous that one expects the worst. But I always find silent resistance, the natural tenacity of life, and the stubbornness of the Palestinians erasing my mental pictures of doom. Still yet, the disastrous applications of the Israelis take my breath away.

It has been 8 months since I last took the service to Calandia from AlQuds. As we drove, I saw a wall, the wall, running right down the middle of the road. Sometimes our bus drove on one side and sometimes on another. It was clearly incomplete but under construction. I could see that it would simply divide all the neighborhoods surrounding
this main artery into two. All the human connections across any main road running through a community will have to be abruptly severed. There is a disturbing sense of the death-wishes of the Israelis made visible in the body of this wall slicing right though Palestinian life -- a knife cutting the throat till the victim bleeds to death. This is why I call it the STRANGULATION WALL.

And even so, this segment of the wall is not as high as the parts that I saw surrounding Qalqilya. And here like elsewhere, Palestinian boys are clearly testing everything. Plastic soda bottles have been stuck into the cement holes of the wall, the end of each resembling the surreal sandworms of Dune. In some holed are stuck some bits of wood. There is little graffiti as yet, but there is dust and garbage and the remains of demolition. There are the abruptly cut shreds of residential roads ending in areas of destruction. There is frustration, and traffic jams and pedestrians without sidewalks trying to weave between the beeping cars with highly frustrated drivers. There is pain is in the very sounds of the street. Anger is on all the faces.

We reach Calandia after many many kilometers of this WALL OF
DESTRUCTION AND STRANGULATION. The many unfinished sections afford views and the opportunity, soon to end, to select which side to drive on. Things look much worse as we approach Calandia. The traffic, including taxi and bus pick-up areas are so thick that the crossing point is hidden completely. The new comer would not know where to go. Finally, after cautious weaving between trucks, busses, and private cars full of angry drivers, I arrive at the crossing. Now instead of walking like cattle through pathways surrounded by cement walls in order to reach the soldiers, we go through revolving doors and pens.

Departure out of the zone they call Jerusalem is easy, but managed through a wall of metal bars in which there are two revolving doors – like entering and leaving the subway. The difference is that you have no token (yet) to pay but a soldier with a gun to pass and many pill-boxes full of soldiers with guns eyeing you with ill intent.

Well that was not too bad passing out. But then came my return at night towards Al Quds. Now then, this is a different Calandia crossing. I am not going to our towns and villages on the way to Al Quds, no, I was entering their Awershalime and they were going to make all Palestinians pay dearly for their nativity to this land that they want to steel.

You approach in darkness carefully picking your steps as your eyes adjust. You hear the sound of voices, of masses of people. You approach, you see the crowd pressed, waiting in a funnel at the end of which is a revolving door. The revolving door is controlled by soldiers at tables stopping each person and searching their pockets, packets and purses. The funnel fills, the people press, fret, suffer, the children cry. I worry about the children more because it is very dark, and hard to see the short little children. I am glad they can cry. I see people are kind to each other but probably not always.

So my turn comes and I have not wanted to open my purse in the crush of the funnel and so I arrive at the table and begin to open my purse slowly. The soldier indicates that I should just pass by saying "tafaddali," an Arabic term of politeness. I automatically reply "shukran." Why did I do that? What in hell for would I accept this little twerp's politeness? Why would I say thank you? He had simply seen my middle class trappings and decided that I would not be a good victim.

Clearing this first hurdle I found myself in a cage. A CAGE! Yes, surrounded on all sides by iron bars. I had to walk the length of it to exit at the far corner. Directly in front of me was something that should be on the stage of a Broadway theatre. It was dark. Only two light bulbs illuminated my entire pathway through the Calandia crossing. One was on the soldier and his little table on which he searched the packets. The other was directly in front of me, directly over the head of a soldier.

This was a middle aged settler with salt-and-pepper mustache, frowsy, dressed as a soldier, sitting in a soldier box with a window and a window ledge on which he rested his gun. The light bulb directly over his head gave him a theatrical look. He was posing for the stream of suffering Palestinians departing the search table. His box just barely fit his body parts whose shapes betrayed decadence of though and life. On his face was a smile, frozen, a mask. He was enjoying himself, enjoying being looked at, unable to hide his smugness. Palestinians he enjoyed torturing were his audience and he performed for us. To see with such graphic power this face of Zionist reality, to appreciate its place in the history of fascism, and to tell about it is my privilege. His, the settler's, is the privilege of propping up his ego by enjoying torture.

But things do come to an end and I did get out of the cage and again try to walk my way through the damage. I see the wall just feet from the cage; I see the soldier tower that is built into it; I see the soot on all its side from burning garbage. The soup of destruction includes humans calling to offer their minimal wares for sale, the drivers seeking passengers, the people waiting for loved ones on the other side, and more -- one forgets.

But the smiling Israelis, I do not forget. It makes a big impression on me. I feel sad for them that their life's joy is so shallow. I saw a pair sauntering through the crowds at the border crossing, smiling to each other wanting people to look at them, conscious of the stares they do get, smiling to each other as though they belong to an elite club. Of course, as they saunter, they do look surprisingly out of place where everyone is trying to deal with fascist bureaucracy.
Samia

Laughter On the Way to Al Sider

October 14, 2004.

We are riding the very back seat of a small bus called GEMS, not a Ford van normal for the public cab called 'serveece' and smaller than a bus. "This 20 is for 4" I called as my 20 shekel bill was passed from hand to hand till it reached the driver. He wanted to know from whom, and I called back, “for the three of us and my neighbor.” The three of us being me and my two Japanese companions. Having handed me her bus fare to pass foreword, "We live next door to each other" declared the Palestinian woman sitting next to me. She was both amused and delighted. My translation of English parlence to Arabic amused her, yet she was delighted by the friendly implications.

We began to talk and our talk soon turned into laughter. Where are you from?
Is this one the eldest? These came in my old years! She looks very young. I have grown daughters with children of their own. My grandmother lived in a house like the one we are passing only one street down! Oh, it is all gone. The more we call on God for their destruction, the more they increase and establish themselves. They have killed our children, may God take their children. They are taken away our children's laughter, may God rob them of all joy. They have frustrated all our hopes, may God take away their dreams. We endure! We find ways to survive. Even the wall they jump over it.

Now the little smile comes, then the laughter. They jump over the wall! What? We laugh! The Israelis promised not to jail them if they would only tell them how they did it. How did they do it? A Wynch, the type you fix electric lines with. We laugh. Five sheckels per ride. We laugh harder. And going down? We laugh. Oh they jump. We laugh. Some have ropes with hooks. And we laugh more. Oh the best email I received was the Palestinian Olipic athletes. Olympic and email did not make sense. "We call it 'caricateaur,'" she says. Palestinian athletes practice for the high jump competition by flying over the wall. For the sprint they run from the Israeli soldiers. For the shot-put they catapult stones. We laugh. I talk to the child, who looks at me and says "may you die." After coaxing the child, we continue our talking and laughing.

Then suddenly a heave of pain rises from those riding the bus. We see that the Israeli army has a main road closed? We twist our necks to see. My Japanese friends are shoked, and my neighbor sighs with palpable pain. How will we get home? How will the next bus get through? How will I make my connection? Will I get home before ark? And the bus leaves all those making the connection on the side of the road uncertain, uncomfortable to be so near an Israeli military unit made up of several vehicles and many soldiers flinging guns.

As we drive away, I see in the faces of my gentle Japanese guests disbelief and outrage.

Samia

The First Day of Ramadan -- The Criminalization of Prayer

October 15, 2004

            Today I planned to go photograph a new discovery of the visual art of Al Quds. The Coptic Church in the old city is filled with two rows of mural on all of its walls executed in 1961 by a Palestinian artist who had experienced the Nakbe. A friend stopped me saying go run now or else you would be stuck in the crush of people going to pray the noon prayer at Al Aqsa. Not only is it Friday but also the first day of Ramadan. And oh, she added that the place will also be full of Israeli soldiers and police -- they will seem as many as the worshipers, she said.

            I abandoned my initial plan for the opportunity presenting itself.   The murals will wait for me. I marched down toward Bab Al Amoud (Damascus Gate) and noticed that already at 10 AM there were groups of people marching in one direction towards the Gate and thence to the Aqsa.

            Police were scattered everywhere, but in groups for protection. They were at every corner and ten other locations between corner and corner. Their numbers grew as I approached the Gate. They were inside the streets of the old city and in all its alleys, and at other gates. There were truck loads of soldiers two to three blocks away. All were armed and wearing bullet proof vests and they had helmets -- both police and soldiers. The Israelis were harassing youth, especially the men. I saw them searching bags and demanding identity cards. Their performance was extreme. There were also mounted police. There was a white balloon above like the old Goodyear ones, and there were helicopters.

It seems that the Muslim pious going to pray during an important religious day present a particular kind of emergency to the Zionist mind. This is definitely harassment, yet there is more in their faces and in the pattern that I saw.

I and all Palestinians that I saw walk between them like sand through a sieve. Most of us do not pay them much attention and pass as though they are not there. This was not easy to do as often one saw them in a row like a wall facing you, blocking your way, with only one to two feet of space between them, their gun barrels sweeping your clothing. Yet we walked through them and never stopped to check. I selected the narrowest paths between any two soldiers to pass through challenging their intentions. They would move aside just enough to let me through. A very old man, walking slowly uphill in the hot sun looked up at one of the soldiers in such formation and gave him a half smile -- the smile of the helpless like that of children.

The evening of that day, I went again to Bab Al Amoud so that my Japanese friends would see something of the old city. This was the second lucky thing today. Again, I witnessed the insanity of Zionist ill intent. As we approached the gate, a veritable river of conservative Jews in black kimonos and many differently shaped hats of fur followed by conservatively dressed women was streaming out of Bab Al Amoud. Many looked frightened and were rushing even though the way was full of Israeli police to protect them and to harass the Palestinians. The further inwards we walked, toward
the Austrian Hostel, the more we saw of them and the faster they moved.

I asked several shop-keeper where all the conservative Jews were coming from and they said from the Wailing Wall. It seems that to take the short way home from the Wailing Wall had been rejected in favor of the long way. The long way demanded much frightened walking through the Arab Quarter and an exit through Bab Al Amoud. In the West Bank and Ghazze (Gaza) we witness occupation through civilian .residence, here we witness occupation through religious practice.

I showed my friends the house that Sharon confiscated in the middle of the Arab neighborhood of the old city. He does not live in it yet it sits there with a huge Israeli flag hanging from it -- another clear symbol of Zionist ill intent. An embarrassment to Israel that is exceptionally good to show visitors.

As we turned to depart the old city, I noticed that masses of Palestinians were now streaming inward in the opposite direction of that of the Jews who were now growing fewer and rushing more hectically. It was a stream of Palestinian Muslims returning to the Aqsa for evening prayer.

RETURNING AS WE YEARN TO RETURN TO PALESTINE.

Samia

Valley of Fire

October 25, 2004

Friends,
            I am thirsty sitting here in the wrong corner of the 'serveece.' It is hot. The seat belt is tight, scratching my neck. I am sweating. The sun is beating down on me. I am hungry. My mind meanders searching various avenues of escape. Could I walk through the check point leaving my fellow Palestinians behind? Would I find a car on the other side? Could I pay a sum to a private car waiting in line on the other side of the dead closed closure point? Could I persuade someone to leave the line and turn around and take me to my destination?

            A dog, female, thin, bony, teats shaped by puppies sucking at them, walks in the sun searching for food and water. She looks worse than I feel. I immediately begin to think of the wounds left by attacking dogs on the body of the boy who was shot by Israelis. I think those Israelis, emotionally and mentally twisted by the torture they apply and enjoy, who set their dogs to attach the boy they wounded. I remember his father telling us the story at Aida refugee camp and the boy showing his many scars -- the boy
refusing to be interviewed because the bullet they shot in his brain left damage.

            It serves me right that at Calandia I accidentally took the 'serveece' without checking if it were going the road of the Arabs or the road of the 'ajaneb' (foreigners). I failed to check if the van had a white or a yellow license. Taking the road for Arabs means much more time and the added agony of another closure point. Then I think that let me see more fully what it is like to be fully tortured like other Palestinians. I am angry with myself for making this mistake which teaches me how little I still know of what life is like here in the West Bank for Palestinians living under Israeli occupation and fascism.

            So I wait and think shamefully of my desire to escape. Then suddenly the line begins to move slowly and we eventually arrive at the point where the soldiers are checking cars and pedestrians. What I see is a lot of soldiers sitting, relaxing on easy chairs around a table reading newspapers with cups and glasses in front of them. A few are checking cars lazily with not much concern or interest. It was all a game. Among the soldiers are settlers in their civilian dress and yamakas.

            A few days ago coming from the other end, a bus load of both Palestinians and foreigners, we were denied access through this closure point. The Palestinians had to get out and walk through on foot and wait for us foreigners who had to return and drive the the Valley of Fire a second time, exit through another closure point, and meet our friends at the appointed location. Now then these are no longer closure points but rather controlled gateways between various Bantustans.

            So now again, I drive into another West Bank Bantustan, again having gone through the hellish gateway applied by Israel and ride again through the Valley of Fire in order to reach Al Quds -- city of my birth.

Samia

Guns Pointed at Civilians

October 30, 2004

Friends,
            In my motion inside and between the Palestinian Bantustans created by Israel, I have often seen guns pointed at Palestinian civilians for no reason whatsoever. At the Calandia closure point, last night, I noted that two soldiers were checking the men leaving Ramallah on their way to Al Quds and its neighborhoods. One of them had his gun on a little tripod over a one meter cement block and it was pointed at the stream of men waiting to present their packages and ID cards for inspection by the other Israeli soldier. Of course it is important to mention again and again that this is an illegal occupation force imposing itself on the national soil of Palestine and illegally erecting closure point which would soon be controlled gates through the Strangulation Wall.

            Yesterday as our 'serveece' was passing through East Jerusalem, I saw a sight out of a nightmare. I twisted my neck and tried to remember the street so that I could return but failed to memorize well enough. Thus I can only describe what I saw etched deep in my visual memory. An Israeli soldier standing over a cement block that is inches above the head of the tallest in group of Palestinian young men and women dressed for an evening social event. They were standing at the garden gate of a typical stone home of Al Quds. The soldier was like a statue above them. They paid him not one bit of attention, yet he had a gun roving over them, pointing diagonally down at them, and his finger was on the trigger.

            Late at night three nights ago, I had my first experience of sudden fear. My heart jumped. Israeli soldiers regularly station themselves under a lovely olive tree at the sidewalk leading to the US embassy and to the YMCA and to many churches in the area. Suddenly one soldier lost his footing and uncontrollably fell. It was as though a lot of heavy metal and plastic gear hit the old stone sidewalk. The sounds are etched in emory. I
though that he would get up shooting, but he got up cursing in his Hebrew accented Arabic. "Brother of the prostitute," he yelled over and over again. This is a high insult to the honor of a Palestinian man but fortunately none were around. Only I and my very white hair, and I continued walking past them as normally as possible. I could see his total loss of dignity vis-à-vis both myself and his fellow soldier.

            Israeli presence among us is based on the gun and the advanced war technology ranging from missiles to helicopters, airplanes, and probably poison chemical and nuclear weapons -- all provided by the US government, the puppet in the hands of big corporations, international banking, and the military.

Samia

PEOPLE CONTROLE

November 13, 2004

Friends,

            This was written just over one week ago before the death of Yaser Arafat. Still, I would like to share it with you as the conclusion was written today.

            Hre I am again at the Allenby Bridge leaving Palestine again, submitting to Israeli government control again for which service I am paying 133 shekels not counting my US tax dollars supporting srael daily.

            I stand in the slow line waiting to have my ocuments examined by an Israeli official -- a young fmale dressed in military uniform -- I note the rudeness of the Israeli official next to her -- another female of similar trappings. As I note the rudeness, immediately the many Paletinian Arabs doing meanial work come to my attention -- sweeping the floor, cleaning the toilets, lugging the suitcases, etc. Their demeanor is submissive, quiet, obedient.

            I think of how as I was walking from the tax window to the passport-check window, ambling slowly, putting away my documents, I looked up and saw before me a settler with a resentful face examining me closely. And then came flooding memories of endless, Israeli-imposed borders, closures, roving checkpoints, observation cameras, police and soldiers stationed everywhere in all parts of civilian life, in doorways,
infront of stores. It is all about the separation of people into categories of privilege and no priviledge.

            The categories are the Israeli Jews, the Arabs, the foreigners. Separate mechanism of controle, separate roads, different ID cards, different offices, different services, different automobile licenses.

            On the Jordanian side, I see the same type of official in uniform. I see pictures of the now deceased former King Husein adjoining the picture of his half British son both in suits, both in 3/4 view. I look over in another direction and see the same pair again and again, and in one instance they are photos rendered into large velvet weavings. I note the red kuffiye of Husein and suddenly I remember King Kamehameha of Hawaii with his queen dressed in the clothes of European monarchs. I remember Kamehameha in his robe used as a highway sign directing US tourist to spots of beauty rightfully belonging to the
Hawaiian tribes. I see the abuse of 'ethnic' symbols and clearer yet is the capitalist formula of exploitation used by the IMPERIAL powers to suck the blood of oppressed nations -- their victims.

            And all this is not different from Arafat's famous kuffiye. It is not a period of resistance that has come to an end with his death but merely this one little exploitation of a symbol made honorable by the heroism of thousands of Palestinian freedom fighters.

Samia