"If this occupation is not terrorism, then I don't know what is."
First person narrative illustrates daily resistance
I received this a couple of days ago, but waited for the author's permission to post it. She is young and brave. I am older and more cautious. To that end, I will only give her name as "K" until and unless she insists I do otherwise.
Here is her post:
April 10, 2005
For someone who loves to write, I am sitting at this computer without the words to express what is happening here in Occupied Palestine. No metaphors. No imagery. No heart tugging stories. Just the visceral, gut-wrenching knowledge that we cannot continue to live our lives as we do while this continues in our name and with our tax dollars.
I have tasted tear gas this week, but it is nothing compared to the very small taste of occupation that we have experienced this week. If this occupation is not terrorism then I don't know what is. This is something that I feel deep in my stomach.
Back home I have often felt the press of the boot on our collective back these past few years, but in comparison to the oppression here, it feels like a bedroom slipper. There is always something sudden, unexpected, inexplicable happening here. The guns, the boots, the unabashed use of force.
Always the waiting for something to happen.
H did a good job of recounting the events of the demonstration in Bi'lin last Friday. This is a small (pop. Approximately 2000), simple village that is being threatened by the serpentine wall. While I could write about the economic and aesthetic consequences of this land theft, I feel compelled to tell my friends about the immediate consequences for these kind people who dare to protest the theft of their land and livelihood.
Yes, the Israeli military did use tear gas, sound bombs, rubber bullets, and rubber-coated steel bullets against the villagers last Friday.
Yes, they did indeed approach a family with children and internationals at a distance of fifteen feet, assume an attack position and heave two percussion grenades at us, terrorizing the beautiful children who only seconds before were offering us tea.
Yes, they did overturn garbage cans in the village while continuing their assault on the protesters after chasing them back into the village.
And yes, they were not content to terrorize the village and then call it a day.
That evening in the middle of the night, soldiers came into the town and entered the home of an elderly couple in their pursuit of the young men who earlier in the day dared to threaten the world's fourth-largest military with stones. With no one to arrest, the soldiers trashed the couple's home.
A checkpoint was also set up in the road approaching this rural village where cars are being stopped by soldiers who are trying to apprehend young men whose pictures they had taken at the demonstration. At night we wait for more retribution.
And yet the villagers resist.
One of most important aspects of this resistance is the villagers' refusal to succumb to the Israeli government's desire to break their spirits. Life goes on and we have been grateful for the opportunity to spend time with the people of the village in their homes and in their backyard gardens.
Yesterday was an especially important day for T, E, and me. One of our friends in the village invited us to spend the afternoon at the Bi'lin Intermediate Mixed School where close to 400 children from the village, grades 1 - 12, attend school. As a teacher, I was moved by the intelligent, serious discussions we had with the students we met in a 10th grade current events class and a 9th grade English class. The students have a full and challenging curriculum that they follow and school goes on daily despite the military presence, the arrests, the terror of this occupation.
After school was dismissed large groups of girls gathered around us in the playground and shared their experiences and dreams. In nearly flawless English, they discussed their desires to become teachers and doctors. Earlier their principal spoke with us of the difficulties of providing a normal education for the village children during these "hard days" and of the post-traumatic stress that affects these young
people.
It was very hard to leave these bright, animated students and we
were delighted when the top student in the school invited us to her home for coffee.
In typical Palestinian fashion, her mother welcomed us and before long several family members and women from the village joined us for discussion. Their life is hard and their stories need to be told. They told us that there is little work for the men and that going on day-to-day is very hard.
One of the brothers who joined us is a college student who, like most young Palestinian men, has known the inside of Israeli jails. As a wife, a mother, a teacher, my heart breaks. In ways that I did not understand before, I see that simple things like going to school and preparing meals constitute resistance. It is good for us women to spend time with the girls and women in the village. They have made us feel so welcome. At night I ask myself how well I would do as a mom if each night I were waiting for the sound of boots. If each day I sent my son out the door I would have to do so with the knowledge that his return would not be guaranteed. If I would have to watch my daughters' dreams be dashed by a system governed by checkpoints and the gun.
Today we joined a demonstration in the village of Deir Sharaf just outside of Nablus where Israel has been dumping its garbage and where chemicals from a fairly-new plant outside the dump are affecting the trees and vegetation. We joined people from the village as well as several other internationals and Israeli activists in a quiet march to the dump and then returned to the village for a glass of soda. Although the dump is on Palestinian land in a magnificent
cavern that the municipality would like to develop as a tourist spot, a
nearby settlement is actually making money off the dump, charging for the right to dump.
Demonstrations here are important, but we must do much more at home. We have blood on our hands.
