I've written the following before: "Every time my wife and I leave Palestine and Israel--when our visas are about to run out--we hope that things won't get worse, while we are gone but sadly we know they will.
And, sure enough, they do.
Similarly, when we come back to Palestine we hope that things won't get worse once we return to the territories; but sadly we know they will.
And they do.
Our current cycle of coming back to Palestine, going out, and then coming back again began in early December. After three months we left in early March on a quickee speaking tour of the UK, and-- instead of going all the way home to Alabama after that--we returned instead to Bethlehem and Hebron just as March was ending. Usually we stay away longer than that. But despite the short hiatus, the situation darkened considerably during those brief three weeks.
But--as I had written in reports even before I left for England--the daily micro struggles in and around Hebron in which CPT took part or at least witnessed continued to add up to minus progress toward achieving Palestinian freedom and alleviating the debilitating and diminishing effects of the occupation. And this state of desperate affairs, echoed in every corner of the shrinking Palestinian West Bank map, added up to escalating macro distress and pervasive chronic despair throughout the Occupied Territories.
For instance many kilometers to the north of Hebron evidence of the tightening Israeli (U. S. enabled) noose around Palestine continued to be exemplified by not only the ongoing nonstop cancer-like absorption of West Bank farmlands and homesteads lands lying inside Israeli military security zone "C" but also by the steady incorporation of Palestinian property lying clearly inside the boundaries of Palestinian cities and towns comprising zones "A" and "B." These too became part of the expanding Israeli land mass lying west of the ever-lengthening "annexation" wall/fence.
The dynamically developing map of this newly emerging contiguous "greater" Israel continued to be defined by each new acre of Palestinian land covered over by the "annexation" wall/fence. Conversely the barrier's unilaterally ordained (and--to a shameful degree--unilaterally U. S. enabled) path also perversely identified the latest discontiguous limits of the inexorably shrinking map of a "lesser" Palestine.
As a result, for every acre of Palestinian territory that ended up on the "wrong" side of the "annexation" wall/fence, the ratio of Palestinian suffering increased and continued to increase proportionally. For instance, Palestinians and internationals hopefully trying to get through a major checkpoint blocking the old Hebron road leading into Bethlehem from the north watched helplessly (and still are watching) as a nearby major earth- moving project took and continues to take shape.
What they saw and are still seeing and are powerless to stop is a wide path being leveled on confiscated Palestinian land on top of which a new section of the "annexation" wall/fence is going to be built. When finished, it will separate a northern Bethlehem neighborhood from the municipality and at least double the size of the unilaterally expropriated area around Rachel's tomb, which Israel annexed to Jerusalem a few years ago.
Meanwhile, the twenty-nine foot high concrete "annexation" wall slicing through Abu Dis in the East Jerusalem area, cut off Al- Quds University from students and faculty living inside the city. Due to the well-known Palestinian will to learn and teach, the obscene barrier created the always inconvenient and sometimes perilous situation of people being compelled to find ways to sneak from one side of the wall to the other in order to pursue their education or academic livelihood.
The "annexation" wall through Abu Dis snakes south past the University and up to the top of a nearby high hill, where it separates homes on the western Palestinian side from unbuilt up Palestinian areas on the eastern side. Besides limiting growth, the hilltop portion of the "annexation" wall created another and piteously unique problem for villagers living in its shadow. "Now," one depressed villager told me, "the sun sets at 2:30."
Another villager standing nearby overhearing his neighbor's sad commentary added, "Now the Israelis have put a curfew on the sun."
With respect to curfews and also given my view that every day in almost every way the quality of Palestinian life under the occupation is worsening, it may seem contradictory to report that ever since late fall the imposition of curfews has just about stopped; but that is not a contradiction. There, is, I believe, a reason for this seeming inconsistency; and it's not a good one.
The Sharon led government is winning the ideological and political struggle to defeat the notion of--as well as the actuality of--any kind of logistically feasible and territorially viable Palestinian state; and Sharon and Defense Minister Mofaz know it. They know it, because--except for suicide bombings and occasional guerilla attacks, which are not succeeding in loosening the tightening Israeli grip on more and more Palestinian territory--massive organized indigenous nonviolent resistance, which was a characteristic of the first uprising (Intifada I), is 1) very rare these days, 2) sadly lacking in energy, and 3) usually tragically short lived. I emphasize "tragically" because it is an historic fact that the first Intifada was succeeding until it was hijacked by the shell game that became the Oslo I and Oslo II "piece" process.
Sis and I experienced evidence of Palestinian weariness and a flagging will to resist assertively but nonviolently shortly after our return from the U.K. (a couple of weeks after the assassination of Sheik Yassin). We were shopping around noontime at one of the busiest commercial intersections in the center of Bethlehem. Suddenly shopkeepers began hurriedly, anxiously, and unaccountably to close down.
What was going on?
Then we became aware of a masked Palestinian youth dashing from shop to shop yelling something at the proprietors as he raced by. They merchants immediately began slamming shut the heavy metal doors to their shops.
But not completely.
We noticed each shopkeeper peeping furtively out through the still partially open doors of his store, intently eyeing the masked youth as he moved down the street. We asked one storeowner what was happening. He answered, "We are being told to strike because the Israelis killed someone today."
But then he did something that took us completely by surprise. As soon as the masked youth had disappeared from view, he opened up again. The same thing happened next door and so on down the complete length of the street. Not a single shop stayed shut.
I had seen that same scenario acted out many times before during Israeli Army imposed curfews in Hebron but then the refusal to stay shut was in defiance of an occupation-imposed curfew. As soldiers moved down Hebron's main street ordering shops to close, proprietors, especially of grocery stories and bakeries, who seemed to have a sixth sense about how tough the soldiers were going to be about staying closed, watched their progress down the street through a crack in the door. Then they would open again up as soon as the soldiers moved out of sight.
Back then, the look on the face of the Hebron shopkeepers was one of glee over the success of their small but nevertheless prideful and certainly spunky act of resistance. But in Bethlehem the look on the face of the shopkeeper to whom we had been talking as he opened his shop back up seemed to be one of embarrassment and perhaps chagrin at being seen by internationals to be putting business before resistance.
Another reason why the Israelis know they are winning is because they rarely bother to even impose curfews any more. That's because the they have learned that their tight military blockades (called "closures") of the entrances to even the smallest Palestinian hamlets are working just as well if not better than the curfews ever did at keeping the lid on. The closures, which take a lot of soldier power to enforce, keep the Palestinians hemmed in and tied down by the simple act of 1) tightly restricting vehicle traffic between villages, towns, and cities and 2) from time to time by suddenly launching heavily armed raids into those areas after dark in order to round up alleged terrorists and demolish homes.
The result, one discouraged Palestinian activist told me when I visited Nablus in early January, is that "The streets belong to Palestine during the day, but to Israel at night. So sometimes I think it better not to get up."