Friday, December 31, 2004

A Home of Our Own

December 31, 2004
"We're Still Waiting for a Home of Our Own
A View from Syria on the Palestinian Right to Return
By FARRAH HASSEN
"We travel in the chariots of the Psalms, sleep in the tents of the prophets, and are born again in the language of Gypsies/Ours is a country of words: Talk. Talk/Let me see an end to this journey."
Mahmoud Darwish, "We Travel Like All People," from Fewer Roses, 1986 The 21st Century began as a world filled with war and refugees, words that can deaden one's emotion. Occasional newspaper stories refer to refugee camps, the plight of refugees, and obscure issues like "the right of return." I, like most young people who become gradually insensitive to suffering when the words to describe it anesthetize rather than sensitize the reader, could not picture how refugees really lived, what their "camps" looked like and what the right of return actually meant.
Then I realized my own "right to return." I visited Syria, my father's birthplace, in 2003. It took a visit to a Palestinian refugee camp in Damascus to bring to my mind the agonized voice of the Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish-whose village of birth the Israeli Army destroyed in 1948: "we travel like everyone else, but we return to nothing" ("We Travel Like All People").
He captured the unresolved abyss of the weary-eyed, long-time inhabitants of Palestinian refugee camps scattered throughout the Middle East and their more energetic, but equally dejected offspring. I returned home to a place where generations of my family had retained the culture and traditions; indeed, it showed me that there was merit in striving to maintain a "Syrian-American" life.
It also dramatized the significance of Article 13 of the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the one that sanctions my freedom of movement. I admit this didn't cross my mind while I visited the ancient Roman ruins at Bosra, south of the Jordan border, or drove past the Aleppo home where my mother grew up. Then I visited the Jaramana refugee camp near Damascus, housing around 5,000 registered Palestinian refugees (of the total 500,000 that reside in Syria), mostly displaced after the 1948 and 1967 Arab-Israeli wars and some one thousand who fled southern Lebanon in 1982 following the Israeli invasion. Instantly, the euphoria associated with returning to Syria to meet new relatives, savor syrupy baklava and carry on a conversation in Arabic disintegrated into shame.
Shortly after I entered one of the country's ten official camps, an elderly Palestinian woman originally from Jericho reminded me of how I took for granted what for her epitomizes the core of human patience: "we're still waiting for a home of our own." Rows of decaying "homes" slightly larger than the size of office cubicles lined the streets, juxtaposed by the newly constructed roads and oncoming traffic traversing the camp. The flurry of young children playing tag, teenage boys riding rusty bicycles down the cramped streets and the commanding shriek of babies channeled some brightness into Jaramana, a camp otherwise dominated by the grayish hues of the stone edifices and smoke emanating from the burnt trash. An aging man with deep set, expressive eyes talked to me in front of his home.
His covered wife and three children surrounded him, framed by light and dark shadows that invoked a Rembrandt portrait. "I'm from Hebron," he informed me. "I haven't seen my brothers and sisters who had to stay behind since 1948. Other members of my family have already passed away." "How do you expect me to feel?" Mohammed snapped. He paused, lit up a cigarette and then widened his eyes. "This separation makes me feel very angry and bitter." Across the street, a middle-aged woman who wore a white hijab sat on the doorsteps of her residence to take advantage of the light breeze, a rare break from the sweltering July heat that felt exaggerated at the densely populated camp and that emphasized the prevailing scent of burnt trash, cigarettes and cooking oil. Her young daughter leaned against her and seemed pacified by the piece of candy that she quietly chewed.
The mother managed to muster some optimism about being a Palestinian refugee in Syria. "Here, we live fine, but we'd be more comfortable living in our own homes," she said, alluding to the fact that Palestinians in Syria are still able to enjoy more or less the same rights as other Syrians, including attending schools and universities, competing for the same jobs and owning businesses. Jaramana's residents, however, mainly find work as street sellers or in the informal sector, as drivers, cooks and domestic workers.
According to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA), which provides education, healthcare, social services and emergency aid, 1.3 million of the over 4 million registered Palestinian refugees still live in 59 recognized refugee camps across the Gaza Strip, West Bank, Jordan, Lebanon and Syria. In an early effort to respond to the Palestinian refugee crisis following the establishment of Israel, the UN General Assembly passed Resolution 194 on December 11, 1948-a day after the world body approved the Universal Declaration of Human Rights "as a common standard of achievement for all peoples and all nations."
Article 11 of Resolution 194, likened by one Jaramana man as "the heart of our legal defense" despite its repeated rejection by Israel, declared that the Palestinian refugees "wishing to return to their homesshould be permitted to do so at the earliest practicable date, and that compensation should be paid for the property of those choosing not to return and for loss of or damage to property." Supplementing GA Resolution 194 and carrying the force of law, Security Council Resolution 242 of November 22, 1967 reaffirmed "the necessityfor achieving a just settlement of the refugee problem" (Article 2b), although the political will to do so on the part of Israel, the US government and other Middle East peace brokers still remains elusive. "What's the use of having international law on our side when it's not upheld by the ruling powers?" questioned one man in his early 20s, wearing a traditional Islamic white robe and matching kufi (prayer cap).
A small group of elderly men gathered around this new face of the 21st Century Palestinian refugee, some nodding in agreement and others looking wistfully at the impassioned young man whose generation would inherit their decades-long struggles for justice. "I'm just as cynical about the Roadmap peace process that your president supports. Will it allow me to return back to Palestine?" he chuckled. Certainly, the majority of refugees I met that day viewed the latest Roadmap initiative backed by the so-called Quartet (U.S., UN, EU and Russia) as an empty effort, so long as their "right to return" remained left off of the negotiating table and reduced to a "final status issue"-as obscurely phrased in the 1993-94 Oslo Accords and the stagnant Roadmap agreement.
As I departed the camp, I asked Ibrahim, a gray-haired refugee from the 1967 war selling colossal-sized watermelons, if he had a message for President Bush. "I'd like Bush to examine the Palestinians' plight without spinning lies into truths and truths into lies. We are living in pain," he implored, raising his tired-looking hands into the air in vain. Less than a year after my Jaramana visit and realization of my "right to return," President George W. Bush turned a blind eye to the refugees' own dreams of returning back to their former homes and the international laws that protected their right, not to mention longstanding US policy.
He declared in an April 14, 2004 letter to Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, "a just, fair, and realistic framework for a solution to the Palestinian refugee issue as part of any final status agreement will need to be found through the establishment of a Palestinian state, and the settling of Palestinian refugees there, rather than in Israel." Complicating matters for Palestinian refugees, the continued Israeli settlements built throughout the West Bank and Gaza Strip in violation of the Oslo Accords and the construction of a 650 kilometer long wall-declared "contrary to international law" by the World Court in July 2004-deviating from Israel's 1967 Green Line border beg the same question that one despondent Jaramana refugee had contemplated, "in reality, would we ever return back to historic Palestine?" Indeed, upon completion of the wall itself, which Sharon has justified as a "means to assist in the war against terror," the Palestinian population in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, including around 1.5 million refugees, will live on only 12% of historic Palestine (Al Ahram, April 16, 2004). After PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat died on November 11, the Palestinian refugee issue made a brief return to the newspaper headlines.
On December 9, Palestinian Prime Minister Ahmed Qurei and the new PLO chairman and presidential candidate Mahmoud Abbas met with thousands of Palestinian refugees on a campaign-like visit to the Al-Rashidiah camp in southern Lebanon. Ahead of the January 9 Palestinian elections, Qurei reassured the crowd-who have no say in the upcoming election-that the post Arafat PLO leadership would "never abandon" their right to return, reported Agence France Presse. This rhetoric flew in the face of more serious words by Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon at a December 16 conference. Sharon, who has steadfastly refused to even open the right of return as an issue in the peace talks, nevertheless called 2005 "the year of a great historic opportunity" in the Middle East. Addressing the Palestinians, Sharon simply lied. "We do not want to rule over you, or to run over your lives," the 'man of peace' said as Israeli troops continue to occupy Palestine and run Palestinians' lives, such as by enforcing draconian checkpoints and according to the UN, demolishing at least 1,686 Palestinian homes in the Rafah refugee camp during the past four years.
Palestinian leaders cannot address the right of return issue by themselves. Indeed, Arafat bore responsibility for sacrificing the right of return by signing the 1993 Oslo Accords. The ink on that document speaks louder than words to the disheartened refugees at Jaramana and their counterparts. In September 2004, I again exercised my right to return to Syria. A middle-aged Palestinian man named Nabil, who worked as a driver for a well-to-do family, taught me how to use Damascus' tricky version of a public transportation system. Like the other Syrians that I met, he relied on humor to deal with the daily realities of life, which I needed while we waited on a street curb under an unforgiving sun for the white microbus (a small van) to arrive. "Does it normally take this long for the bus to arrive?" I wondered aloud, after waiting for what seemed like an eternity. "Remember, we're on Syrian time," he smiled. "The trick here is to be patient. Take it from me, I'm a Palestinian!" he joked, instantly reminding me of the Jaramana refugees that I had met a year earlier and their patient-defying wait to experience their own right to return.

Once we boarded the packed microbus, Nabil practiced the few words of English he knew to make us forget about the bumpy, stomach-churning ride through the mid-day traffic. "Welcome to Syria," he liked to declare, as the other passengers watched in amusement, followed up by "Have you questions?" When I reached my stop, I thanked Nabil for helping me become more "Syrian" in his adopted home and not willing to reconcile with the improbable, assured him that I'd show him around California if he ever visited. "Sure," he winked, "I'll take the first flight out from Palestine." Farrah Hassen, a Political Science graduate from Cal Poly Pomona University, was the associate producer of the 2004 documentary, "Syria: Between Iraq & And A Hard Place," with Saul Landau. She recently spent 2 months working for the United Nations Development Programme in Syria. She can be reached at: FHuisClos1944@aol.com 

Monday, December 27, 2004

Please Stop the Missiles

Life in Israeli settlements. First-hand report. Intifada keeps the battle going unabated No way for Israel to subdue Palestinians Please G-d: Stop the missiles! By David Wilder December 27, 2004


Where to start? Yesterday afternoon I attended a demonstration in the heart of Tel Aviv, joining hundreds of others protesting the continued bombardment of Gush Katif. In truth, we weren't protesting the attacks -- rather we were protesting the lack of reaction. The Israeli armed forces are doing nothing, absolutely nothing, to stop the Arab Kassam missile and mortar attacks on Gush Katif's 8,500 Jews.
Why? According to Gush Katif spokesman Eran Sternberg, not too long ago, Defense Minister Shaul Mufaz ordered Chief of Staff, General Moshe Ya'alon, "Don't hit back until after the palestinian elections (on Jan. 9th). In other words, the Israelis will just have to suffer for a while -- this is the cost of peace. At the demonstration I met Mrs. Debbie Rosen, ([ debihof@hofaza.org.il ] - 972-8-68408470) who is working with Eran and Dror Vanunu in the Gush Katif spokesperson's office. Interviewing her for today's show, I asked Debbie, a resident of Neve Dekalim, about the situation in Gush Katif. She told me that not too long ago, following another rocket attack against them, speaking with a senior officer in the area, she asked him why the army doesn't shoot back, in the same fashion that the Jews are attacked?
"Just like they shoot mortars at us, let's shoot mortars back at them." The officer looked at her, stunned, and replied, "What, shoot at them, just like that? It's not ethical to shoot mortars or missiles at innocent people." Debbie's response: "What about us -- aren't we innocent people too?"
The officer didn't answer -- he just looked at her and walked away. I also asked her to describe to our listeners what happens when a bomb falls on your house, or next to it. Debbie attempted, for a few minutes, to express in words the inexpressible. We parted ways, and a couple of hours I was back in Hebron. I came into the office to pull down some the pictures from the event, when my cell phone rang. It was Debbie. In a voice choked with emotion, she related to me the following account: "You asked me to describe how it feels when a mortar or a Kassam rocket hits.
Well, you just cannot imagine. Listen, tonight, while we were at the demonstration, there was a Bat-Mitzvah party for one of the girls here in Neve Dekalim. My daughter was there. The girls were outside in the yard when suddenly they saw an approaching missile. Running inside the house, well, they made it just in time. The missile exploded in the garden of that very same yard, where only seconds before, they had been playing." She added, "it's just like the boy who was playing basketball last week when a bomb exploded on the basketball court, very close to him." I sat, listening, not being able to speak. What can you say?
We decided that I'd call Debbie back in the morning and let her repeat the story again, so I could record it and play it on my weekly radio show, later today (www.israelnationalradio.com). Late last week there was a general meeting of activists from around the country, in Jerusalem. Initiated by the Yesha council, the meeting introduced the organization's new campaign to prevent the abandonment of Gush Katif and the northern Shomron.
The basic element of the program is a huge sit-down strike next to the Knesset, commencing next Tuesday. People from around the country will be asked to participate, irregardless of the rain and cold, and hopefully, the crowds will grow and grow, eventually reaching tens, if not hundreds of thousands of people. The goal: to convince the Knesset that the Israeli public will not accept expulsion of people from their homes, that the Israeli public will not accept abandonment of Eretz Yisrael to our enemies, that they -- our representatives in the Knesset, must vote against legislation called 'the pinui-pitzui(eviction-compensation) law" when it reaches the Knesset floor. MK Uri Ariel of the National Union party, speaking at the conference, claimed that the only way to stop the eviction is via the Knesset -- convincing them to vote against the law, and if necessary, bringing the issue to the people, either in the form of a national referendum, or regular elections.
According to Ariel, there is a very strong probability that Sharon will not receive his party's nomination for the premiership, and that the eviction plans will draw to a complete halt. Other ideas are springing up. I receive an email from a reader in the United States, who (rightly) claimed that the 'Wallerstein proclamation' petition (www.petitiononline.com/eretzyis/petition.html) is not enough, that action must be taken. He suggested organizing a general strike throughout Israel, either in conjunction with the Yesha council campaign, or separately.
Last night this person called me, and after some discussion, offered to try and organize such a strike. My own idea, sort of hidden within the petition, is very simple. Certainly I hope that the eviction plan will be thwarted long before Sharon attempts its implementation. However, should it come down to it, we are going to need hordes of people to stop the horror. We need thousands and thousands of people to drop what they're doing, board the planes, come over here, and do what has to be done. It's as simple as that. Simple, you ask? Simple? Work, family, etc etc -- how can we leave all and just?come over? So ask you . But I ask you -- what about Eretz Yisrael -- what comes first -- Eretz Yisrael, or work, or? etc?
Remember, we're not just talking about Gush Katif and the northern Shomron. We're talking about all of Judea and Samaria. We're talking about Hebron. We're talking about Jerusalem. We are talking about the fate of the Jewish people in Israel. So, what comes first? You tell me. Basically, what it comes down to, is that we are going to have to close down the country. Not everybody is going to be able to get to Gush Katif, or even close to Gush Katif. However, Israel isn't a one-road country -- I'm sure you understand what I mean. There are those who might recoil at such a suggestion. And to an extent I agree -- under normal circumstances. However, these are not normal circumstances.
This government, led by Ariel Sharon, is intentionally abandoning thousands of citizens, Israelis who serve in the army, citizens who pay taxes, citizens who are people, just like you and me -- to their fate, like sheep surrounded by wolves. Ariel Sharon, together with Mufaz and Ya'alon, have adopted a policy of 'live and let die' -- leave the Arabs alone, even at the price of Israeli lives. There is a difference between Arab blood and Jewish blood -- Arabs are, in the words of the above-mentioned officer, 'innocents.' The Israelis are 'settlers,' and we all know what that implies. Last night, speaking at the protest, Bentzi Liberman, secretary-general of the Yesha council said, 'if three mortars hit Tel Aviv, the army would spare no efforts. But when it comes to Gush Katif, nothing is done -- the people are abandoned.' After I had, more or less, finished writing this article, I had the second above-mentioned conversation with Debbie from Gush Katif.
As we were talking, I couldn't help but think: this morning the Israeli media is drenched with yesterday's disaster in India-Thailand. It really is an awful calamity, tens of thousands dead; hundreds of Israelis traveling in that part of the world are still missing. We hope and pray that they are all safe and well. But what I have trouble understanding is that daily, almost hourly, Israeli citizens here, in Israel, not in India, not in Thailand, but here, an hour from Tel Aviv, are facing enemy attacks, their lives are threatened and some lives are destroyed. Where is Israeli radio? -- where is Israeli television? -- where is public opinion? Fine, talk about India, but what about our back yard?
Debbie Rosen also told me about a woman whose home has come under direct enemy fire nine times. Do you have any idea what that does to a person? It has left this woman in permanent shell shock. Last night I came upon the Barat family from Kfar Darom. Hannah Barat was seriously injured during a terror attack and left paralyzed, living permanently in a wheelchair. Hannah is a very special person, and about a year ago gave birth to another child, a little boy, despite her disabilities. Her husband, Eliezer Barat, told me how, a few days ago, a rocket hit their home, destroying part of the roof. Thank G-d, no one was injured. But don't let anyone tell you that lightning doesn't strike twice. One final story. Debbie told me how her youngest son, in kindergarten, hearing thunder outside, told her, "Mommy, ask G-d to stop the mortars and missiles." The present administration can only be labeled as a 'memshelet shmad' -- a government of annihilation -- a government willing to sacrifice its own people -- and for what -- for what? For absolutely nothing. Please G-d -- stop the missiles.