Imaginary Worlds

Update #7: Imaginary Worlds
Date: Fri, 9 Apr 2010

Spring is evident in the warmer sun and longer days in Palestine, and I hope it is finding you as well.

I am celebrating a four-month extension to my visa, which permits me to continue working with ISM through August, and also reflecting on the astonishing scope of support and interest I have witnessed in my time here.

I strongly encourage everyone who receives these updates to consider ways of getting involved in anti-occupation/apartheid work. Involvement constitutes a broad range of activities.

Here are some ideas:

-- Self/group education: Books: The Lemon Tree, Sandy Tolan; Palestine: Peace, not Apartheid, Jimmy Carter; and An Israeli in Palestine, Jeff Halper. (Great places to start; there are an infinite number of books on the occupation)
Films: Occupation 101 and Peace, Propaganda and the Promised Land are available at freedocumentaries.org

Discussion groups centering around a book or film are great ways to raise awareness and brainstorm further actions.

-- Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions: bdsmovement.net

-- Write! To congresspersons and Obama, encouraging further pressure on Netanyahu regarding East Jerusalem settlements

To the New York Times regarding their article: www.nytimes.com/2010/04/07/world/middleeast/07westbank.html?hp, which surprisingly suggests Palestinians are just now turning to non-violent resistance. More information/talking points here:

-- Keep informed: News from Palestine can be found at maannews.net/eng/Default.aspx and palsolidarity.org


I've included a recent piece I've written about life here.

Be well, keep in touch, forward, and get involved!

Shukran


Imaginary Worlds

Last week a friend sent me two pictures of Coney Island. An open boardwalk stretching into a vast and blank horizon, and the vibrant red and yellow bars of a carnival ride spanning the sky like a cherry-flavored steel spider web.
Imaginary worlds. I can scarcely remember the feeling of crisp ocean air and an open horizon; freedom.

Jerusalem and Ramallah are 15 kilometers (9 miles) apart. The trip can take over two hours. A sometimes daily commute, the trek includes Qalandia checkpoint terminal. Imagine a version of hell in which sadistic 18-year-olds control an airport security station with the climate of a slaughterhouse and the aesthetics of a prison. Imagine Palestinians of all types—grandmothers with shopping bags, teenagers in groups, men late for work--held up pointlessly in steel cages as teenage girls laugh and chat behind bulletproof glass.
The recent high school graduates, charged with controlling access to Jerusalem, show up to work with both their M-16s and the particular ennui and fanged apathy that only teenagers possess. I have watched, feet aching, having stood motionless in a narrow metal chute for thirty minutes, as a girl aimlessly brushed her hair with such disinterest I thought the brush would fall from her hand. I have peeked in the window to see what’s holding up the line, only to notice that the person charged with operating the scanner has dozed off. I have watched, almost in tears, as elderly women fought each other in a panic to get through the turnstiles in time for Friday’s noontime prayers. Friday mornings are always excruciatingly slow; during rush hours frequently fewer lanes are open.

Today the lanes are segregated by gender. Men run the men’s lane with relative efficiency; ours is frozen in time. Robin gets through in about 15 minutes. My line hasn’t moved by the time he’s back on the 18 bus headed to Sheikh Jarrah for a meeting.
We think it’s possible that they were drunk this particular evening. Maybe they always are. The loudspeakers, which are usually utilized to screech incomprehensible commands, are torture devices tonight. Childish songs, gibberish and direct taunting of those in line reverberate through the empty cages of bulletproof glass and cement. As the men are processed routinely, our line stands captive to their taunts. Mothers with several children, teenagers dressed up for a night on the town, grandmothers hunched over canes, and me.

Generally, groups of three are let into the scanning area at a time. Bags are passed through an x-ray machine, people walk through a metal detector, and IDs are shown to the automatic-rifle-armed children behind the glass. West Bank Palestinians must have special permits, such as family visit, medical, religious or work. Some must give fingerprints every time they pass through, and many have a small time window they must return by or lose their permit status.
The West Bank is routinely placed under “closure”, barring nearly all permit holders from entering Jerusalem. Closure causes people with severe medical conditions to miss appointments, turns back women in labor, and prevents religious Palestinians from observing significant holidays. The 10-day Passover closure prevented Palestinian Christians from entering Jerusalem to observe Easter.

This evening, closure means a nearly-vacant terminal. What should have taken twenty minutes is stretching infinitely, as the lane barely creeps forward. A metal click every five minutes or so allows three to pass.
Suddenly, an announcement screeches over the loudspeaker. Everyone looks up, sighs, and turns around. The lane’s closed. We shuffle back out of the corral and down to the now-open one. The line’s disrupted. The women who have been here the longest are now at the back. I feel conscious of my American passport and let everyone cut. The metal gate clicks, and three pass through.

Thirty minutes of tedium later, the line closes and we’re back to the previous one. Twenty minutes after that, it’s time to switch lanes again. Some women try standing in the men’s lane; I join them. After fifteen minutes, the first woman reaches the window. She’s turned back, and we re-join the end of the massive women’s crowd again.
At this point I’ve been standing still for over 90 minutes, watching girls younger than me torture a group of patient women and children who just want to reach their destinations. The tears of boredom and indignation are welling up when I glance at the window beside me. Above the forgotten pita crusts and coke bottles resting on the sill, someone’s attached a weathered picture. Two inches square with fraying corners, a professional soccer player beams at us. He’s just scored a goal. Fists pumped in the air, the expression of weightless jubilation smeared across his face is bizarrely foreign. It should serve as a reminder of the Palestinian-caliber burdens we’re shouldering.

Instead I’m transfixed. Gazing into that tiny portal, the cold industrial despair fades away. His pure jubilation is a concept I can’t quite grasp, but it tugs me further from the numb bitterness that was fogging my senses. I remember childhood soccer games; the adrenaline of sport suspending all reality. I remember winning cross-country races, staggering across the line into the embrace of friends and family. I remember weightless exhausted jubilation. I remember when nothing else mattered.
Was that really me? This same person who’s about to scream and smash bulletproof glass with a plaster-cast-club?

For most Americans, Palestine is an imaginary world. I still can hardly believe the evil that surrounds us. It’s a bit surreal; to hear that a random 21-year-old girl was deliberately hit and killed by a settler driving down the road. Summar Said Radwan. Guilty of being Palestinian. It’s a bit surreal to stare down at the cast on my arm and realize that I was targeted by a soldier close enough to see my face; close enough to see that I was armed only with my bones. A perfectly fragile human being.
It’s a bit surreal to stand for ninety minutes at the mercy of a few drunk 18-year-olds contemplating all of these things, and then to realize with a start that outside of this “moral supercollider”, freedom exists.

It’s hard to imagine that boardwalk now; to imagine that world where people have casts from falling out of trees and the newspaper doesn’t announce another round of soldier-defended settler brutality every morning. I remember that place. It exists. Inshallah Palestine’s children will live to see it too; for now it is only an imaginary world.