Eyewitness to Occupation

This summer, NION member Ben Saifer travelled to Israel and Palestine. His blog of what he experienced there first hand speaks volumes about the reality of the occupation. Several of his posts are highlighted here, and can be read in full by clicking on the excerpts. In The absurdity of it all, the inherent systemic racism of the occupation comes into sharp focus:

The checkpoint compound itself was enclosed on either side by the Israeli "Separation Wall" which has been deemed illegal by the highest court in the world, the International Court of Justice. It is simultaneously a concrete manifestation and symbolic reminder of Israel's ongoing colonization of Palestine. Even as a Canadian who does not need to fear the Wall annexing my home, preventing me from attending school, or separating me from my community, I found it to be immensely intimidating.

In my short stay here, I have witnessed a great deal of absurdity: The settler roads that cut through the heart of illegally occupied Palestinian territory which Palestinians are not allowed to drive on...The illegal wall which cuts through Palestinian villages, splitting families in two, separating child from classroom, community from hospital, farmer from land...The settlers who immigrate to Israel from countries around the world and colonize Palestinian land to create Jewish only ‘settlements’

“You know about Israel’s occupation of Palestine?”

His response was striking for for its utter lack of irony…

In a compelling view of how time is stolen from Palestinians - especially children - by the occupation, The occupation of time provides a glimpse into the impact of the checkpoints on daily life in Palestine:

our bus stopped outside of the checkpoint separating Ramallah from Jeruslaem. The thought that these smiling children were about to enter this frightening structure just didn’t seem right.

“Internationals” like myself are given the option to stay on the bus and avoid the ugliness of the checkpoint, as it appears that only Palestinians should be humiliated when traveling throughout their own land.

I had been told that its best to pretend to know nothing of Palestine or Palestinians as such ideas are considered subversive. If the soldiers rifled through my bag and found the booklets I just received from Palestinian University students describing the “Right to Education” campaign, what would I say?

How frightening would this feeling be if I did not have my international privilege? If I was Palestinian?

I found myself unable to concentrate. I kept looking at these three children and wondering what they were thinking as they joined the frustrated mass behind these turnstiles? Or when they passed through the turnstile, only to have it abruptly stop before their father could do the same?

A couple of months ago a friend of mine told me that the occupation steals time from Palestinian society. As I experience the apartheid system of transportation here, albeit with the privilege of an ‘international’, I’m beginning to understand what she was referring to…

In Finding one's humanity in Nablus the need for solidarity with Palestinians becomes even clearer with the unjust humiliation they face in the context of military impunity:

They seemed to find some common humanity in me. They were smiling and joking, machine guns slung to their side, asking me where I was from.

"Weren't you scared of what would happen if they caught you" the cute young soldier with the big brown eyes said with a smile, a sly knowing smile, a smile that seemed to say we're on the same side.

I was leaving the Huwara checkpoint, outside of Nablus. This was the same checkpoint where a Palestinian university student had his arm broken by an angry soldier the day before. Before leaving, I met the student, his arm in a cast.

I had just spent much of the week in Nablus, a city overseen by a military base on a mountaintop, adjacent to the largest refugee camp in the West Bank, surrounded by checkpoints and settlements, where a foreign army enters every night to imprison, intimidate and kill (two were killed in a dorm room on my second night there).

Yet for me this overwhelming structure of violence was punctuated by the stories, the deeply personal tragedies which I heard every day from new friends, the stories which so deeply color the lives of this embattled community, the stories of the nameless and faceless 'collateral damage' here.

While in Nablus, I spend a lot of time with Professor Sa'ed Abu-Hijleh. When I ask Sa'ed how his father coped with his mother's murder by the Occupation Forces in 2002, he has few words:

"They met in a love story. The soldiers ended their love story. Right there"

With these words, Sa'ed points to the spot on the door where the broken glass is taped up. The shattered glass that has still not been replaced is the result of the fifteen bullets fired at his mother without warning while she was embroidering on the porch of her house. Being home at the time, Sa'ed was injured in the neck from the glass debris and his father from a ricochet bullet that grazed his skull

While in Nablus, I spend a lot of time with Professor Sa'ed Abu-Hijleh. When I ask Sa'ed how his father coped with his mother's murder by the Occupation Forces in 2002, he has few words:

"They met in a love story. The soldiers ended their love story. Right there"

With these words, Sa'ed points to the spot on the door where the broken glass is taped up. The shattered glass that has still not been replaced is the result of the fifteen bullets fired at his mother without warning while she was embroidering on the porch of her house. Being home at the time, Sa'ed was injured in the neck from the glass debris and his father from a ricochet bullet that grazed his skull

These are just a glimpse of the Apartheid system Palestinians are subjected to every day. To get involved in opposing the injustices of the occupation contact NION today.