Every time my wife, Sis, and I leave Palestine, we think the situation couldn't get any worse while we are gone. But it does! And when we come back, we think that it couldn't get any worse while we are here again. But it does!
And this time was no exception, despite Israel's Ariel Sharon-inspired retreat from Gaza. Even though he and his legions of fellow travelers described it as "disengagement," retreat is what it has been: a retreat to better enable an increased tactical military domination of the West Bank and a continuation of the government's strategic absorption into territorial Israel more and more of that larger, ideologically and therefore more politically pertinent area of Palestine. In the 1980's Sharon was one of the Israeli leaders who tried to finesse the view that "Jordan is Palestine"…not the West Bank. If he and the others had succeeded in promoting this view an ideological neo-Naqba might well have been fomented during which West Bank Palestinians would have been forced across the border, leaving a much more demographically pure Jewish area in its wake. But the late King Hussein one of whose most vital personal goals was to protect the family business - running Jordan - halted that possibility when he renounced Jordanian claims to the West Bank. He countered the "Jordan is Palestine" assertion with the unspoken but clearly understood message to the Israeli ruling establishment that the West Bank and Gaza - not Jordan - was and would be Palestine.
So following King Hussein's geopolitical retreat, pragmatic geopolitical realists in Israel - soldiers, academics and politicians, some of whom wore at least two of those hats at the same time - began floating the idea that "Gaza is Palestine." The idea had an ephemeral vogue and then was heard no more. But like many computer programs this idea kept on running quietly in the background. Now updated by economic and military realities along with a persistent political need and will to absorb as much of the West Bank into Israel as possible…unilaterally, Gaza is indeed - at least de facto - becoming Palestine.
What kind of Palestine? Despite the fact that the settlers have been forcibly evicted by their own army, Gaza/Palestine is still under occupation by the army. And if and when the soldiers do leave as currently scheduled to happen the middle of this month, the last one to leave definitely will not turn out those bright amber lights shining into the "strip" from the many military observation points strategically placed along its perimeter. When that last soldier does leave, although I don't expect he or she to throw away the key; I do have a vision of a recalcitrant child being told to stand in the corner face to the wall and not come out until told to.
This is the reality that Sis and I are encountering as we settle in for our current stay in the West Bank. It's a reality that doesn't square entirely with what is being reported and assessed back home by major press organization not only in the United States but elsewhere in the west. Earlier this year I was in Stockholm for the premier of a stunning film "Human beings are stars. You can't turn them all off." It's about the horrors and evils of the occupation by a greatly respected Swedish film human rights documentary maker, Maj Wechselmann, who is also a survivor of the Nazi genocide. My visit was sponsored by the Olav Palme Institute, which meant that I could stay on for a few days and take part in several public meetings and seminars staged in connection with the documentary's powerful factual anti-occupation theme.
At the very first meeting I was paired with a well known Swedish television overseas correspondent. Speaking first he asserted that the "cease fire" negotiated at Sharm al Sheik in February along with Sharon's planned "disengagement" from Gaza were very tangible signs of hope -- the first such signs in several years. The "peace process," he opined, is now back on track and peace "is" a genuine possibility.
Really!!!
Really???
When he was done, I scrapped my remarks, and said instead. "I know I am a guest in your country, but I must be blunt because of the seriousness of the situation in Palestine and as a result in Israel. There's a saying back home that has to do with "not seeing the forest because of the trees. So the previous remarks notwithstanding, my experience tells me that what you have just heard is the trees. Now let me talk to you about the forest." And what I told then next has not changed:
The forest is the occupation. Children and adults in the West Bank are regularly being killed by Israeli soldiers, and are being physically assaulted, abused and killed by settlers. Then I repeated my From The Inside Looking Out mantra - a contemporary philippic: the peace process all along has been a "piece" process which actually has been gathering steam since the first Oslo agreement. It has only been a peace process if you mean peace without territorial justice and political parity for the Palestinians. Even in Israel these days many commentators (even those on the so-called left) don't have the nerve (or Chutzpah) to call what is going on a peace process but only a process that may end up eventually in producing something called a "final status agreement." They don't even call it a "negotiated" final status agreement but simply an agreement that it seems to me clearly would be the result of a series of territorial eroding unilateral actions that will simply require some Palestinian puppet leader to sign on a dotted line. That dotted line would provide a kind of de jure legitimacy to a truncated discontiguous West Bank that in theory might sit well with the "free world," although undoubtedly not with the nonviolent Palestinian man or woman in the street (and certainly the violent extremist factions). Neither would it sit well with essentially marginalized nonviolent yet nevertheless still activist Israelis who have been trying for years to turn back Israeli's mini-imperial tide.
If that were not - generally speaking - the case then the "piece process" would not be continuing apace in Hebron. Which it is.
Just before we returned the middle of August, the Israeli army installed heavy metal doors, which can be padlocked, across the five remaining access points into the Old City. Now it is possible within moments of an alert for the army and border police to lock in the entire population still living or working there while at the same time keeping anyone else from coming in. The resulting isolation would be just as tight as the so-called liberated folks in Gaza still have to endure. However, the provocation for tightening "security" is ideologically and logically hard to argue against because of recent incidents involving lone Palestinians attacking and sometime wounding - most often with knives -soldiers or border police stationed in the Ibrahimi Mosque area.
So, just this week the army upgraded its security apparatus at the Dubboya Street checkpoint leading to the settlements in and adjacent to Tel Rumeida. The replacement is astonishingly more sophisticated than any security measures being installed at major airports in the west. The former raised sheet metal blockhouse which straddled Dubboya Street funneled pedestrian traffic past armed sentries into two streams: one headed into the area around the west end of the blockhouse and the other headed out around its east end. Now it has been replaced with an about thirty foot long by about ten feet wide prefabricated structure sheathed daintily with tinny faux traditional Hebron stone siding. Except for about a one meter wide gap at the east end the new structure completely blocks the street. But that lone potential transit point in or out is frequently blocked.
When that happens, people trying to pass through must enter and exit through side by side security-locks located inside the new structure - one for incoming the other for outgoing foot traffic. The only way to get in and out is through remotely controlled electronically activated sliding doors operated by a sentry seated inside behind a protective transparent partition adjacent to the locks. Only after being successfully scrutinized is a person allowed to depart through a similar door on the other side of the lock. Hand bags and other parcels are placed in a tray that can be observed and examined as the person passes though and under an electronic sensing device so familiar these days to people entering buildings and airport boarding areas all over the planet. In addition soldier sentries outside the building are equipped with weapon sensing wands.
When the new building was craned into place earlier this week, the Beit Romano check point was the only access to the Old City that had not been upgraded this year. But two days later that changed when a large white mobile unit was driven into the small plaza leading from the checkpoint Into the Old City. When its side doors were slid open a very large x-ray type scanning device like those used to check bags at airports was revealed. Packages and other items can be fed into it for surveillance from either side. Then shortly before dark, the van was driven off, leaving all of us left behind to wonder if it would be back the next day or if something more permanent can be expected to be installed there anytime soon.