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Knowing Becomes Understanding: 8 Days in Occupied Palestine
- by Christa Christaki, Australia -
How can I express both the heartbreak and happiness I feel since
spending eight days in occupied Palestine? How can I convey the
paradoxical emotions of anger and joy? How do I depict the ugliness and
the beauty? Talking about it to anyone who will listen has helped.
Discussing our shared experiences with my daughter has helped. Perhaps
writing about what I saw, heard, learnt and felt will help. I hope so.
I thought I was well prepared because I knew the history and was well
versed in the myriad of Agreements and International Laws that Israel
flouts daily. I knew that over one and a half million Palestinians were
violently expelled and permanently displaced from their towns, villages
and homes and that many are still living as refugees within and outside
their country.
No amount of reading, lectures or news coverage could have prepared be
for the bitter reality. Knowing is not the same as understanding. It
took just eight days of seeing and listening to begin to understand the
catastrophe that Palestine has suffered and that its people continue to
endure. It only took a few days to understand the profoundly racist
narrative and the blatant system of apartheid perpetrated by Israel. I
came to despise the ever present Wall, the most obvious symbol of
segregation. Even more insidious however is the strategic, systemic and
institutionalised discrimination exercised against Palestinians in all
spheres of their life - economic, political, legal, social and communal.
I could only conclude that Israel intentionally creates unliveable
conditions, violates human rights and overtly supports the illegal
settlement of Israelis on Palestinian land so that Palestinians will
give up and leave. As a taxi driver in Tel Aviv boasted "by the time you
return we would have got rid of every single Arab from our country."
Most distressing of all, understanding came from listening to the
stories of people who have experienced and continue to live with
unimaginable injustices and indignities. Seared in my memory is a house
in East Jerusalem where we sat under a loquat tree with a grandfather
and his granddaughter. The house is his but the family now lives in a
small flat behind the house. He quietly recounted the day, six years
ago, when five Israeli men forced his family, at gunpoint, from their
house. When he resisted, the Israeli army arrived. His 91 year old
mother was badly beaten, as was he. A large wooden board, emblazoned
with a Star of David, now stands at the entrance to his house. Court
case after court case has been unsuccessful .As we received his generous
hospitality, I understood that there are no controls and no
repercussions for Israelis stealing houses that do not belong to them.
Furthermore that this stealing is openly assisted by the Israeli army
and state.
Understanding came from seeing, with my own eyes, the harassment and
arrest of Palestinian teenagers for no reason other than to demonstrate
naked Israeli power. At the majestic Damascus Gate I watched as Israeli
soldiers descended from the grim watchtowers, a blight on this
magnificent ancient entry to Jerusalem, swooped on some teenagers and at
gunpoint took them away. These boys were sitting near us on the steps,
eating dinner. In that most heart rending of cities, Hebron, I again
watched helplessly as Israeli soldiers grabbed a teenage boy, threw him
harshly against a wall and roughly searched him. I knew that this is a
daily occurrence all over occupied Palestine, repeated many times over.
But the full horror has to be seen to be understood and believed.
The vibrancy of Bethlehem, Nablus, Ramallah and Jericho with their
exquisite old cities, bustling souqs and welcoming people was a
delightful surprise. My spirits plummeted however when confronted with
the disturbing realities of the Aida and Balata Refugee Camps where
generations of Palestinians have spent their lives. More than anything
in those eight days, the Refugee Camps brought into clear focus the
inherent immorality and hardship of occupation. This brief but intensely
personal experience also helped me to understand the resilience and
passion of a people who are living under the cruellest of circumstances.
Faced with the section of the apartheid Wall that runs through Aida, I
was moved by the messages of defiance and hope and the more recent
cultural and creative forms of resistance practiced in Aida.
Most poignant of all is the giant Key Of Return at the entrance to Aida ,
proudly declaring the right of return of refugees and their descendants
to their homes. My own ceramic Key Of Return hangs proudly in my
kitchen , a daily reminder of this vision and aspiration.
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