Israeli and Palestinian Women Find New Way to Challenge The Occupation
I will forgo my tendency for long introductions, and start with the actual news.
Okay, what is this all about?Ilana Hammerman is an Israeli literary translator, journalist and activist. In May she published a surprising and highly personal account of a special day in her life, to which the Haaretz translator gave the poetic name “If there is a heaven”, which we covered on this blog.
Sounds like fun, no? There’s a teeny problem. Aya is an Occupied West Bank Palestinian, and as such she is forbidden entry into Israel. Ilana had been down this road before (all emphases mine).
So this time around Ilana knew where her best chances lay: “smuggling” the girls dressed as Israeli teenagers, through an Israelis-only checkpoint. She did just that, and shares with the readers the signs encountered there.
And so it was. Ilana successfully “smuggled” her friends into Israel, and they all enjoyed one of the best days in their lives together. As described in detail in the article.Well, so what? Will a little gadfly’s symbolic protest act – no matter how wittily described – matter to anyone? I mean, the Occupation is chugging right along. The military backs the settlers; the government backs the military; the US government and AIPAC back the government; and Palestinian leaders either collaborate or are written off, or both. People, especially on the right, will either shrug or laugh at Ilana. Right?Wrong.
And as you might guess, in Israel the settlers usually have their way. So since the Israeli police and prosecution simply have nothing more pressing to deal with, there is now a criminal indictment against Hammerman.Hammerman, of course, broke the letter of the law intentionally. She wanted to point out that while Palestinians are barred entry into Israel, and their movement is severely restricted even inside the West Bank – Israelis travel freely not only inside Israel, but also all across the West Bank. In April in my home visit I did just that: rode with friends in a car deep into the West Bank, near Nablus. We could have gone to any settlement, no matter how remote (and some of them are quite remote), without having been stopped once.These severe restrictions have not always been the case for Palestinians. In 1972 Israel’s security minister, Moshe Dayan, issued a “General Movement Permit”, which formally integrated the economy of Israel-Palestine. Occupied Palestinians, like Israelis, were allowed to move throughout Israel-Palestine without permit, and also seek employment and engage in commerce.Rather than create a new reality, Dayan was merely reaffirming the reality that had existed on the ground since June 1967. The two economies integrated almost instantly. Since the integration was a grossly unequal one both politically and economically, the Israelis had far more to gain from the Palestinians’ amazingly skilled manual labor, their cheap produce, their captive consumer market and their natural resources. According to the gapminder.org charts, to this day the years 1967-1973 represent the largest annual jumps in Israeli per-capita GDP, both absolutely and in relative terms.This situation lasted as long as Israelis felt they were gaining from it. But with the eruption of the first Intifada in late 1987, the Palestinians ceased to be the conveniently docile “junior partner” in the deal. Over the next several years, as the Israeli public and political system grappled with the new reality and waffled about what to do, the military started squeezing away Palestinians’ freedom of movement. In 1991 on the eve of the Gulf War, the IDF issued a landmark decree: for the first time since 1972, a blanket closure was imposed on the West Bank and Gaza. The war ended with no incident from the side of the Palestinians, but closure has been the default ever since then.This teaches another key Israel-Palestine lesson: don’t listen to the words, watch the action on the ground. It is on the ground that the Occupation has been built; in Israeli rhetoric – both internally and for foreign consumption – it still does not really exist. The military is the sovereign in the Occupied Territories, and if the military decides to confine Palestinians “for security reasons”, then the talking heads won’t stand in its way. Each particular “security” decision along the slippery slope from 1987 to this decade might seem logical and defensible on its own. But the overall result – a regime which is essentially a system of open-air prisons – is ghastly and unacceptable on any level.Which, to return to our subject, is precisely why Ilana Hammerman chose to challenge it. In June she responded to her adversaries.
In an offline email, Ilana pointed out to me another glaring inconsistency. Every day, thousands of Palestinian laborers sneak into Israel or are actively smuggled by Israeli employers. Despite all efforts, Israeli economy cannot completely wean itself of Palestinian labor, so despite finger-pointing and eye-rolling, the authorities actually turn a blind eye towards this. Of course, militants and terror-act planners are the first to know about the current situation of all human-smuggling routes into Israel. Which means that the formal checkpoints, barriers, permit systems, etc., are mostly a means of oppressing ordinary people – not preventing terror.The freedom of movement is probably the most basic of human freedoms. It is not a coincidence that what we do with convicted criminals is put them in jail. If their profession so allows, they might still engage in it while confined; for example, a carpenter can continue doing carpentry work at the prison, a writer can continue writing in her cell. Quite often prisoners are also allowed to continue to express themselves, or pursue higher education. But they are not free. They are prisoners.Under “security” pretexts, Israel has been imprisoning an entire nation in its backyard, while – quite amazingly and with complete conviction – claiming to be a free society. This is what Ilana Hammerman is trying to remind the world. She is doing it in a very feminine way (if I may generalize) – via a celebration of life and a joining of hands.And she is not alone. As the statement above indicates, 11 Israelis have openly joined her in action. Ilana told me that dozens more, if not hundreds, are ready to do so too. On the Palestinian side, thousands or even more are willing to engage in this pure act of freedom.Please help spread the word. Among other things, join the Facebook group supporting this campaign of civil disobedience.(crossposted on Daily Kos)More Recent Articles
Israeli and Palestinian Women Find New Way to Challenge The Occupation |