Update #9: On the deathbed of the village

Tuesday, May 11, 2010

Dear friends,

The weather has clicked irrationally from an unseasonable chill to oppressive heat nearly overnight. It seems that summer is here.

Abductions of Palestinians continue, non-violent demonstrators and some boys and men taken in night raids. This week, over forty were seized from across the West Bank. This includes an eleven-year-old boy grabbed by a plainclothes police officer near the end of An Nabi Saleh’s weekly demonstration. Those taken face years in prison without charge—Israeli military law permits “administrative detention” for 6 month periods, which can be renewed indefinitely. While being “detained”, victims face interrogation, torture and inhumane living conditions consistent with any other fascist state.

In other news, recent x-rays of my arm show a bone which is reluctantly but finally healing correctly. Alhemdulilleh.

I have attached an essay written about our recent action in a village near Jerusalem. More photos of this and other actions in al Walaja can be seen here.

Thanks,

Ellen



On the deathbed of the village

There’s a part of my brain that becomes aimlessly diverted in critical moments; perhaps an evolutionary feature that’s run its course. For example, wild oregano grows abundantly in al Walaja. As we are chased by soldiers through the forest, the pungent smell of Italian cooking is enough to distract my brain from the task at hand (not getting arrested until we’re actually at the bulldozer). Instead I’m imagining that we’re running across a life-size crime scene pizza with crumbly rocks and pine trees as toppings.

The pizza daydreams vanish when we reach the edge of the embankment and stare out over a massive swath of dust. To our right, the D10 Caterpillar behemoth burps greasy black indigestion out of its two-story-high smokestack. To our left, an angry mob of soldiers and media advance, guns and cameras close at hand. Behind us, soldiers. Overhead, morning sun and a military helicopter. Yalla!

We slide down the embankment and into the path of D10, holding hands in some sort of perverse staredown. The engine shuts off, and we cozy up next to the blade, linking arms and legs. The dust is inches deep, and fine as corn starch. Three weeks ago this powder was fertile soil, supporting olive groves as for centuries prior. Al Walaja is a farming community. When the bulldozers drive out of this village for the final time, they will leave behind a massive concrete wall which tidily surrounds the village on all sides, severing it from all of the farmland which sustains life here. Two guarded gates will permit limited access to the village.

A D10 bulldozer is an invention, like nuclear weaponry, which can only bring destruction. A mistake. The blade is much taller than I am, and shiny steel. The size of this thing cannot possibly be exaggerated. It is hyperbole. It is the size of a small house. Literally. I now understand that Rachel Corrie wasn’t crushed by construction machinery, but rather a by massive mechanized monster; something humans were never supposed to have imagined.

Wide-angle lenses and M-16s glint in morning sun as we knot ourselves more tightly together. The dust kicks up, and we cough and choke as Mr. Army Man in Charge informs us we have five minutes to leave, or face forcible expulsion and arrest. My knees sink deeper into the dust and we collectively chuckle; it’s understood that “five minutes” translates to somewhere between 90 seconds and two minutes.

With flawless precision that would put Phoenix traffic cops to shame, soldiers classify us by race and move in. The Palestinian villagers who we joined in blocking the mighty D10 are beaten ruthlessly while we watch, trapped and unable to help, from our positions in front of the beast’s giant blade. To my left, a man’s head is being forced into the soil. A soldier pushes his hand against the man’s nose, and all I can do is watch and promise myself I’ll tell someone else about the look in his eyes. I glance away, and instead see a trapped face in front of me. Soldiers pry his eyes open, and spray the canned fire inside. Just weeks ago, this was an olive grove. Now the lifeless soil absorbs the blood of its villagers.

After they’ve broken the bones of the Palestinians, we remain huddled in the bulldozer’s shadow. Our arms wrapped tightly together, everybody takes a few dusty and peppery deep breaths, bracing for the next moment. We know how it will happen. How they will surround us and bear down, ripping limbs apart as cameras whir into motion and we let ourselves go limp, heavy, dead. The screams of the others will fade as the soldiers drag us through the dust. I will try to think outside of the adrenaline. I will bitterly announce “we are being non-violent” over the shouting, reminding nobody in particular that everything about Palestine is without reason; as if some Celestial score-keeper might possibly be reminded of the barbarism of every day here; as if the cameras which surround us could actually capture the surreal injustice which I now understand is truly impossible to internalize.

I will lie in the cemetery of the olive grove, one wrist being tightly clenched by a man in a bullet-proof vest. The morning sun reflects off the dusty expanse, blindingly powerful. I will peer upwards into the light, trying to read this man’s expression for any clue. Trying to find some proof that, like the choking dust I am resting in, this person’s conscience once supported fragile life; once harbored and nurtured something beautiful. I will slow my frenetic heart, fast at work hammering nails of self-preservation into my brain, and inquire, although woefully inadequate, something like, “Have you ever wondered what you’re destroying?”, or “Do you have children?”. I will listen attentively for some clenching of my outstretched arm or a sharp jerk through the dust that tells me he heard. Some clue about the heart still pounding behind the armor of Apartheid; some hope that the deathbed of this village can still birth life.

The slabs of concrete will tower over al Walaja like the tombstones that they are, spelling the death of a village which has slowly been bleeding out since 1948. A sparkly-toothed American reporter interviews me while we crouch in front of the blade. He wants to know about “new peace talks”. In twenty seconds there’s nothing to be said. No way to describe the silent, perpetual violence of every second of Apartheid. No words to explain the systematic tightening of Israeli control, as suffocating as the dust we are covered in. Israel has offered only violence since 1948.

There are two the things Americans need to know; two things I wish I had told Mr. Sparkle Tooth: First, there will be no “peace talks”. Only political diversions and more violence, until this “conflict” is seen as what it really is—an Apartheid. There is only one aggressor here; there is only one side dispersing non-violent resistance with billy clubs. Second, al Walaja smells of oregano. Know what you destroy.

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