For Israel an Inconvenient Truth

Mohammad Othman

On 22nd of this month, while returning from Norway, Mohammad Othman, a human right activist, was arrested by Israeli authorities at the Allenby Bridge Crossing -- the Jordan-Palestine border. He is now in Huwara prison, with no charges filed against him as yet. Mohammad had taken me around the Occupied West Bank, when I had visited Palestine this year, following the same route he had taken with Naomi Klein the day before. Moahammad’s arrest is not an isolated case. Muhammad Srour, an eyewitness at the UN Fact Finding Mission on Gaza was similarly arrested on his way back from Geneva.

They both join an estimated 11,000 Palestinians being held in Israeli prisons, a large number being held without any charge. The response to the report of the UN Gaza fact-finding mission is quite revealing – it is not the atrocities committed by Israeli Armed Forces on the hapless Gaza civilian population that bothers Israel – it is upset that such atrocities can no longer be sanitised by a compliant global media. That is why the need to silence the voices of a Mohammad Othman or a Muhammad Srour on the international stage.

It is difficult for us to imagine what is everyday life in Palestine. From the outside, it appears that Palestine is under self-government of a Palestinian Authority who controls the West Bank; the Wall is a security barrier erected on the borders of Israel. And the Settlements, though an irritant, are only a few pockets of Jewish population on the West Bank. This is the picture that the western media has created and what the majority in the West believe.
The reality is far different. The Palestinian Authority has formal police jurisdiction of only a small area of the West Bank – the Area categorised as A under the Oslo Act. Areas designated as B and C, are either partially or fully under Israeli control. The occupation is all pervasive and impacts all aspects of Palestinian life.

The first view that I had of the occupation was when we drove into Ramalla. We drove past a huge check-post – the Kalandya terminal – that separates Jerusalem from rest of the West Bank. All Palestinians coming in and out of Jerusalem have to go in a single file through the huge metal barriers. If you have a resident permit for Jerusalem, you can go in and come out; if you do not, you cannot enter Jerusalem. No exceptions. Even Mustafa Barghouti, a Presidential candidate and an internationally known name, cannot enter Jerusalem – even though he was born, studied and finished his medical training there.

The next shock we get is the view of the Wall. It is not on the Green line that separates Israel from the occupied territories. It cuts deep into the Occupied West Bank, through densely populated Palestinian neighbourhoods of major towns such as Jerusalem, Bethlehem and also encircles them. A look at its route on the map makes clear its purpose – it is not only to annexe parts of the West Bank but also a means of cutting up the West Bank into small pieces. The Wall, the Settler only roads and the fences around the 100 odd settlements ensures that the Palestinian population is fragmented, encircled and can be militarily controlled.

This brings us to the Settlements. I was aware that today, the Jewish settlers number around 400,000 to 500,000 and are an obvious hurdle to any peace being negotiated. What surprised me is how the settlements are located. They ring every major town on the West Bank and occupy the heights. The Settlements are not just Jewish enclaves: they provide the means to control the towns and countryside of the West Bank. Every major population centre is now hemmed in from all sides. The Settlements however can expand freely – they have access to the land denied to the Palestinians living in the towns.

Israel’s denial of Palestinian rights is not because it feels unsafe as it claims but essentially to grab as much land as it can. The problem it is creating for itself is that more of the West Bank it grabs, the more non-viable it makes the two state solution. And if that fails, Israel is looking to one single state containing Jewish and Palestinian populations in which the Palestinians would outnumber the Jewish. The only way this state can be Jewish is if it continues to be an apartheid state as South Africa was.

The picture presented in the Western media is that Palestine is a semi arid land, to which Israel brought technology and made fertile. The reality is that Palestine is one of the most beautiful places in the world – full of olive trees, some of them from even Roman times. The famous Jaffa oranges is the name that comes from the city of Jaffa from oranges were exported long before the Jewish Settlers arrived. The climate is Mediterranean – people complain of heat if the temperature crosses 30 degree C.

The Jewish population was a mere 2% of the Palestinian population at the turn of the century. Creating a Jewish state became a rallying call for the Zionist organisations only in the beginning of the twentieth century. It never was a major force in the Jewish communities before the holocaust. It was the holocaust and the collective guilt of the West that lead to the creation of Israel in what is universally accepted to be Arab lands. The West “absolved” itself of its guilt – by expropriating the Palestinians from their land.

Unfortunately, the collective guilt of the Western world can only cover Israel’s brutalities so far. A “free” holocaust card – since Jews had faced the holocaust they now have a “moral” right to enact one too – is unlikely to play to a sympathetic audience. As the world’s centre of gravity slips from the US and Europe, the charge of anti-Semitism being hurled towards any critic of Israel is likely to play less and less dividend. For Asians, Africans and Latin Americans, the occupied Palestine will always be seen for what it is – the last place in the world still under colonial oppression.

Netaneyahu and various other yahoos who currently run Israel are hoping that the world will forget the West Bank as they have forgotten Gaza and its continuing, inhuman siege. That they will get away with their continued occupation of the West Bank, which the Palestinians would finally abandon in despair. What they fail to grasp is that Palestinians are not going to leave their land again. Fatima um Hassan, who is leading the resistance to Israels' land grab in the village of al Ma’sara, has already lost one her sons to Israeli bullets, has another son in jail. She epitomises the will of the Palestinian people, “They can kill us, take away our children, rob our grandchildren of their childhood. But they cannot take our land. This is our birthright and we will live and die here”.