The author wishes to remain anonymous due to the risk of deportation as she, along with many others living in Palestine, struggles to live and work under occupation while denied visas or threatened, harassed, and interrogated throughout the process of seeking a visa.
I passed the first ten minutes of my journey to Hebron reading. I had brought with me Raja Shehadeh’s beautifully imaginative description of the land of Palestine. Palestinian Walks: Notes on a Vanishing Landscape with its honest political and historical commentary was a book I couldn’t put down. Beautifully written, I found myself risking car sickness until 10 minutes into the ride I knew I would vomit if I didn’t stop. No more reading for me. Instead, I let myself relax into my mind, remembering his descriptive passages which contrasted the exquisite land against the harsh construction of the settlements. I looked to my left at a village I had yet to learn the name of. I stared at this village every time I passed it, at least once a month for the last few years. On the side of the hill facing the street we drove down was an old village center with single story square houses on the top of which sat small domes. It was a charming view of a historical landscape. I refocused my eyes from the distant view to the more immediate and felt my gut tighten as my eyes took in the 10 foot tall wire fence that encircled the entire village. It wasn’t only around that village. I looked to the right and saw the “wall”—in this part it wasn’t a wall but a fence, two fences really in the center of which was a road, paved and on either side of which was a dirt path. I wondered if the pavement was new. I had never noticed it before—another sign of the permanence of the violent Israeli re-sculpting of the landscape.
Against this backdrop, or perhaps part of this backdrop, are the people who live on the land. Sometimes we forget the human cost of occupation, or due to the bias in media coverage, we focus on the Israeli human costs while failing to see the profound effects on daily Palestinian existence. The Goldstone Report, the document produced by a UN fact-finding mission led by South African Judge Richard Goldstone, offers 600 pages of reading about the human costs of the Israeli attacks on Gaza last December and January of 2008-2009. Perhaps I am short sighted, but against the current setting of growing international boycott of Israel, this Report sets the stage for honesty—a characteristic that has not been present in the dealings with this conflict or even the knowledge produced about it. To me, the Goldstone Report marked an opportunity for a global shift in the way Israel is understood and the way the question of Palestine is approached. It represented the possibility of justice.
It is easily predictable that Israel and its main ally the US would refuse to back the Report and even attempt to sabotage it. But when the Palestinian Authority (PA) announced its position in not backing the Report, Palestine, not to mention supporters of justice around the world, sat in shock. A message was issued by NGOs throughout Palestine, calling people to the streets to protest—to demand the PA represent the people. In my classroom, I asked students: who knew what the Goldstone Report was? One out of 50 raised her hand. In my office, I asked student who would take to the streets and raise their voices? None out of 20. Then one came. Let us call him Laith. I had always loved Laith and he knew we had a special relationship. He was a communist and had a beautiful mind and heart, particularly regarding politics. I asked Laith, would he go? He responded, “Go to what?” I dropped my head and held back the tears. There was only one student I knew at the university who I could expect would go, and he didn’t know what I was talking about. My heart broke and the hope I had clung to for so long disintegrated into a pile of ash. This one moment represented for me the voices in Palestine and how they had been silenced: whether from fear, from apathy, from the longevity of the occupation, from whatever reason—and there were plenty of reasons, people had lost their voices. I expressed this sadness to Laith and asked him, “How can I—a foreigner here in solidarity—take to the streets and raise my voice when you are not beside me shouting? How can I fight your battle without you? I cannot! I have given my life to justice in Palestine, but I am alone today and I cannot hold this battle any longer. Not one student is going. The union hasn’t announced this, nor the Student Council! The students close the campus for tuition increases, but when it is the future of their very lives, they are silent! What good is your education when you live as animals in a prison?!” I was angry and without hope. He said to me, “You must understand us.” And I responded, “I do. That is why I, too, am quitting.” And with that, he hung his head and walked out of my office.
20 minutes before the protest. I sat in a world of self-pity and despair. It may seem dramatic, but I had literally given 6 years to this battle, and committed my life to the fight for justice here, and I saw no hope when the people’s own government had sold them out again and again. Everything inside of me wanted to quit. I had never felt this; in six years I had clung to hope. I didn’t know what to do. Continue teaching today? Just go home with my hands up? But then a flame inside sparked and I stood up, grabbed my things and left my office. I didn’t care if I was the only person—though I knew there would be others, I just didn’t know how many—I would go. I didn’t care if it got me deported, imprisoned, anything…I would go. I knew I wasn’t really alone, but I felt so alone because the world in which I lived—the world of the university—was wholly and completely unaware and uninterested.
I walked out of the office, and sitting on the steps was Laith. He looked up and smiled at me, “You killed something in me. Your words really killed something inside,” he said. I walked up to him and squeezed his shoulder, “It’s okay Laith. I’m going anyway. It’s really okay.” His smile grew, “I’m going too. Let me ask my teachers!” And the flame inside became brighter. “Ask them? Laith, tell them! I’ll wait here.” A few minutes later he came out, his body tall and full of life. He beamed, “They encouraged me! They said, ‘Yes! Go!’” We walked through the campus, alone but proud. In the end, we were 25: twenty three students, one staff member and me, the only teacher—and a foreigner at that. Laith turned to me and said, “Tomorrow you will find me in the prison.” I told him, “I swear to you, if they take you, I won’t let go and they’ll take me with you.” He said he didn’t care. He would stand there knowing they would go after him but I was afraid for him.
Two days ago a friend told me a story. A boy was arrested at 15. He was political, on the left, and active. Most of his time between the age of 15 and 25 was spent in Israeli prisons. The PA gave his family money every month he was in prison. The family saved the money and when he was released at 25, they bought a color TV for their son as a gift. 10 years, his youth, gone to Israeli prisons. When asked what the word revolution means to him, he responded, “A color tv.”
