Life in Occupied Palestine

Dahiat al-Barid, West Bank

'Yes - people live here.'

'This sewage system is the only means of school children crossing from one side of their town to the other. The school is located on this side of the barrier, and most of the children live on the other side.

The water is filthy, hazardous and utterly disgusting.'

'This Palestinian schoolboy is looking for soldiers before venturing out through the sewage system.

The day before this photo was taken a heavily pregnant woman was heard shrieking from within the tunnel.'

'A common site - in order to avoid this kind of destruction Palestinians are forced to ‘register’ their homes with the Israeli government. A lengthy and laborious process, the average wait time to get approval to ‘keep’ your land ranges from 2 months to 8 years. At any point in the application process, the house can be removed for failure to comply with registration procedures - as was the case with the home above.'

More photos here.

•  tips /nt

  by heathlander on Wed Apr 23, 2008 at 05:14:13 AM PDT

•  Murder by economic paralysis

  Caption from another picture on the site:

  The residents of Qalqilya (and the entire West Bank) cannot enter Jerusalem or any part of Israel unless they meet all three of the following criteria: 1) They are over the age of 45, 2) They are married and have at least 2 children, 3) They have never been in an Israeli prison.

  As over half the population of the West Bank is under the age of 17 and most older Palestinians have been detained at one time or another for a number of spurious reasons - these three criteria are almost impossible to meet - meaning most West Bank Palestinians have never (and will never) leave their camps, settlements, and West Bank towns.

  Truly it is the worst of both worlds.  The Palestinians lack their own state but the country which occupies their territory refuses to allow them to engage in the economy.  That's apartheid.

  These rules also create the incentive to marry and have children early, which only adds more mouths to feed and deepens the misery.

  by CA Libertarian on Wed Apr 23, 2008 at 05:24:31 AM PDT

  •  Yes,

    or as B'Tselem puts it:

    'Israel has created in the Occupied Territories a regime of separation based on discrimination, applying two separate systems of law in the same area and basing the rights of individuals on their nationality. This regime is the only one of its kind in the world, and is reminiscent of distasteful regimes from the past, such as the Apartheid regime in South Africa.

    Under this regime, Israel has stolen hundreds of thousands of dunam of land from the Palestinians. Israel has used this land to establish dozens of settlements in the West Bank and to populate them with hundreds of thousands of Israeli citizens. Israel prohibits the Palestinians as a group from entering and using these lands, and uses the settlements to justify numerous violations of the Palestinians' human rights, such as the right to housing, to earn a livelihood, and the right to freedom of movement. The drastic change that Israel has made in the map of the West Bank prevents any real possibility for the establishment of an independent, viable Palestinian state as part of the Palestinians' right to self-determination.'

    by heathlander on Wed Apr 23, 2008 at 05:32:15 AM PDT

•  Sad,sad truth.

  Thanks Heathlander.

  by Owllwoman on Wed Apr 23, 2008 at 05:26:34 AM PDT

  •  cheers

    Yes, it's sad - although it's more than that, I think. "Criminal" comes to mind, but even that doesn't quite capture it.

    by heathlander on Wed Apr 23, 2008 at 05:45:59 AM PDT

•  The Arab world

  wonders how we can claim any moral authority while we seem powerless, or indifferent to influencing positive change

  by Eiron on Wed Apr 23, 2008 at 05:49:52 AM PDT

  •  Not so much "powerless" or "indifferent"

    as openly complicit in the atrocities. Who raised support for and ensured compliance with the international sanctions regime that was imposed on the Palestinians as punishment for voting the wrong way? It wasn't Israel.

    I don't think the 'Arab world' is asking anymore about how we can claim "moral authority" - that idea is now so ludicrous that it's not even worth mentioning. More likely is that they're asking, "when will they leave us the fuck alone?"

    by heathlander on Wed Apr 23, 2008 at 05:58:52 AM PDT

  •  Meanwhile, the victims will be blamed

    Guess the usual suspects aren't out trolling the boards yet, blaming the Palestinian children for the sin of having been born under occupation, and busily tearing apart such pointless issues as whether we can use the word "apartheid" here.

    by CA Libertarian on Wed Apr 23, 2008 at 06:02:05 AM PDT

  •  The arab world..

    and moral authority regarding the Palestinians?  Not really two concepts that go together.  

    Listen every supporter of Israel on these boards is for the end of the settlement policy ASAP, maybe with 1 or 2 exceptions.  The vast majority of us are for changes in the course of the wall as well.  We just don't think Israel should have to concede everything up front before the islamists are obliged to concede anything.

    And as far as Palestinian towns being dumps..  you may as well take pictures of slums in Cairo or Damascus.  It's not like they're dumps for lack of aid money over the years.

    by unfounded on Wed Apr 23, 2008 at 09:21:54 PM PDT

    •  No they're dumps

      because of the occupation and because of Israel's network of roadblocks and checkpoints that often serve simply to protect the illegal settlements.

      "Listen every supporter of Israel on these boards is for the end of the settlement policy ASAP, maybe with 1 or 2 exceptions.  The vast majority of us are for changes in the course of the wall as well."

      Except that you're not, because every time it is raised you either come up with apologies for Israeli policy or you simply try to change the subject to something else. The settlements and the wall are illegal, and they must be dismantled immediately. There is no justification whatsoever for their existence, and they're making the lives of millions of Palestinians a living hell.

      by heathlander on Thu Apr 24, 2008 at 12:01:35 AM PDT

      •  Except we are,

        Just because we don't buy into your absolute demonization and mischaracterization of past peace efforts doesn't mean we think Israel is perfect or that they haven't ever done anything wrong.

        And, well, were those places ever anything BUT dumps?  No?  Like I said, how about Cairo, Damascus, Detroit for that matter?  Obviously the occupation hurts the economy but you can't blame everything wrong in the world on Israel.  If that 2nd intifada hadn't happened the Palestinians would still be in the situation they were in the 90s which wasn't freedom but was about 1/10th as stifling.  The wall wouldn't have evn been built if not for the daily suicide bombing in the first half of 2002.  Politics is an imperfect process, and aggressive actions by Hamas and Arafat before them at the turn of the millenium strengthen the Israeli hawks and weaken the doves.  That's life, if they pursued a win-win versus a zero sum capitulation by Israel, things would still not be perfect but there'd be a much better trajectory.

        by unfounded on Thu Apr 24, 2008 at 07:44:52 AM PDT

•  Of course...

  that's not all that's there in the West Bank.

  I made the same border crossing that the person who took these pictures made -- I can tell by the graffiti on the wall in his other pictures -- and while most of the scenery depicted is very much in evidence, I also took some pictures of some remarkably nice housing in the area, and even a huge new Best Buy store.

  Life in Occupied Palestine, in other words, shares this in common with life everywhere: there's better and there's worse.

  by Kagro X on Wed Apr 23, 2008 at 06:07:39 AM PDT

  •  Here it is

    

    This doesn't in any way obviate the abuses. But I thought it was important while I was there to take some pictures that would document, if only for myself, the fact that all Palestinians aren't living like primatives.

    Not because it "proves" that live in the occupied territories isn't awful in the hundreds of ways in which it's often portrayed. But rather because it reminds us in a different way that they're people, not just political objects.

    by Kagro X on Wed Apr 23, 2008 at 06:24:34 AM PDT

    •  "they're people, not just political objects"

      Yes, this is very important to remember. There are definitely better and worse areas in the West Bank - the suffering of the neighbourhood in the diary is particularly acute because of the (illegal) wall, which essentially cuts it in two. This is the situation for tens of thousands of Palestinians living in areas near to the wall on either side - life for many of those trapped in between the wall and the Green Line is virtually intolerable, and many have started to leave.

      Other places are worse off because of the location of checkpoints, or because - as in Hebron - fanatical settlers and the IDF work together to make their lives a living hell.

      And of course there's Gaza, which has plummeted to unprecedented humanitarian depths.

      For me, your photo just underscores the point I made above: the misery in the West Bank is entirely manufactured, the deliberate result of U.S./Israeli policy. This means, of course, that it can be reversed if we make the effort.

      by heathlander on Wed Apr 23, 2008 at 06:44:30 AM PDT

      •  And...

        that Palestinians themselves can and do work to reverse it, albeit in small ways, on their own.

        I think this is important to remember because when the portrayal is solely of impoverished Palestinians living in squalor and under the crushing burden of occupation, it plants the seeds of doubt as to whether they're capable of living any other way.

        Yes, they are. And many of them do.

        But amidst the passions of the crisis and the way it's often portrayed, it becomes easy to fall into the ethnocentric assumption that Palestinians (as we've been told so often about so many Arab nations) wouldn't be able to sustain a prosperous democracy even if one were handed to them.

        I don't think it undermines their cause at all, but rather bolsters it, to show that they also enjoy and want (at least in enough cases) nice shopping malls, comfortable apartments, satellite television, etc.

        You know, just like you and me. That's important to know. And if you were so inclined, it could even illustrate how much more pressing is the need to restore normalcy to lives that were once used to it, as opposed to throwing up one's hands and considering an open society's prosperity wasted on "primatives."

        by Kagro X on Wed Apr 23, 2008 at 06:53:56 AM PDT

        •  re.

          "I think this is important to remember because when the portrayal is solely of impoverished Palestinians living in squalor and under the crushing burden of occupation, it plants the seeds of doubt as to whether they're capable of living any other way."

          Does it? I doubt it, but in any event it's true that Palestinians may be able to, if they followed wiser policies, improve their lives somewhat even under the framework of a brutal military occupation.

          But not by a lot. The World Bank, the Red Cross, and UN and so have all stated that the West Bank simply cannot develop economically in the face of Israel's network of checkpoints and roadblocks. Palestinians will never be able to escape poverty and despair while remaining under occupation - this is why the Red Cross recently stated that aid was not enough, only a political solution will do (this is very unusual coming from the Red Cross, which usually avoids making political statements).

          Of course Palestinians are "capable" of living another way - the reason they aren't is the Israeli occupation.

          "wouldn't be able to sustain a prosperous democracy even if one were handed to them."

          To be honest, I've only heard this from people trying to defend the occupation. It goes something like: "The Palestinians could be living like Kings if they wanted to, but they're not because they simply can't cope with running their own affairs." Clearly this is ridiculous - we could all take lessons from the Palestinians in democracy, given that it was us who used force and collective punishment to subvert their democratic choice in January 2006.

          by heathlander on Wed Apr 23, 2008 at 07:05:43 AM PDT

          •  I hear it in other contexts.

            We occasionally hear it about Iraqis, for instance. As in, "These people have no democratic tradition. They don't know how to live in a free society."

            There's no doubt that the conditions of occupation make it impossible for Palestinians to develop a coherent political and economic infrastructure. There may well be other reasons that a withdrawal might later unmask. But to the extent that anyone's considering falling back on the dismissive excuse so often used about non-Western peoples of all kinds, the existence of quality housing stock and a very Western (if that's really a term that can describe consumerism) taste for a materially better life that's been created by Palestinian investment and business acumen should give pause, if not erase those doubts.

            by Kagro X on Wed Apr 23, 2008 at 07:18:47 AM PDT

            •  Yes, I've heard it used

              about Iraqis as well, again usually by people trying to justify aggression against them. As you point out, it's just racist garbage - Palestinians clearly don't want to have to crawl through a tunnel of shit to get to school. They don't want to have to depend on international food aid for survival. They don't want to have to die waiting for Israel to permit them access to medical treatment. They don't want, in short, to live in poverty under military occupation. The problem is that they don't have the means to force Israel to withdraw - that will have to come from outside.

              by heathlander on Wed Apr 23, 2008 at 07:25:17 AM PDT

              •  An overwhelming majority of Israelis favor with-

                withdrawal.  Alleviate the security concerns and they'll withdraw on their own.  Quit thinking of winning a zero-sum "victory" against the "oppressors" and start thinking win-win.  

                Just before the Lebanon war, Olmert was talking disengagement from the West Bank.  Then that and the Shalit thing happened, and it really screwed up the prospects for that kind of thing politically.  Here Israel was, taking fire from the two places they'd withdrawn from since 2000.  No wonder it became a lot harder to sell the idea of more withdrawal.

                There will always be pendulum swing in Israel and it'll always be 2 steps forward, 1 step back.  But this mentality of trying to get the rest of the world to bludgeon them into submission isn't the right way to help with the steps forward -- look at our own country in the run-up to Iraq, France's opposition helped sell it.  Same story anywhere with militants -- they are supported by opposing aggression.  Arafat walking away from Camp David in 2000 and then starting that intifada was directly responsible for putting Sharon in power, now there are 10x the restrictions on Palestinian life than there were pre-2000.

                The goal should be to de-escalate the rhetoric and demonization on both sides.

                by unfounded on Wed Apr 23, 2008 at 09:33:35 PM PDT

                •  They favour withdrawal

                  to the wall, which isn't enough. In any case "most Israelis" aren't setting policy - the Israeli government is and it is bent on expanding the occupation and expanding the settlements no matter what. The idea that this would all go away if the Palestinians stopped resisting is just nonsense, as is illustrated by the fact that Israel regularly intervenes precisely to ensure that the violence continues.

                  Olmert's "disengagement" was in fact a formalisation of long-held Israeli plans to annex the most valuable areas of the West Bank.

                  "Then that and the Shalit thing happened, and it really screwed up the prospects for that kind of thing politically."

                  The "Shalit thing" happened a day after two Palestinian civilians were abducted by Israel - an almost daily occurence that doesn't even make the news anymore. The capture of Shalit gave the government a pretext to extend policies it had already been following intended to topple the elected Hamas government, which was coming dangerously close to launching one of those feared Palestinian peace offensives.

                  "But this mentality of trying to get the rest of the world to bludgeon them into submission isn't the right way to help with the steps forward"

                  On the contrary - only when the occupation becomes too costly for Israel will it bring it to an end. Palestinians, try as they might, cannot inflict the kind of price Israel needs to pay in order to force it to withdraw. The U.S. can.

                  "Arafat walking away from Camp David in 2000 and then starting that intifada was directly responsible for putting Sharon in power,"

                  Oh, it wasn't like that and you know it. Camp David was a total farce and there were months between the end of the "talks" and the beginning of the second intifada, during which settlement expansion continued. The second intifada started out as basically a civil revolt, with stone throwings and the like - it was only after Israeli forces shot something like a million bullets and killed doxens of Palestinians that the Second Intifada became primarily a violent one.

                  "The goal should be to de-escalate the rhetoric and demonization on both sides."

                  No, the goal should be to force Israel to comply with the law and withdraw (or offer to withdraw, at least).

                  by heathlander on Thu Apr 24, 2008 at 12:22:12 AM PDT

                  •  Skimmed to your last sentence

                    Well I think the goal should be to force Palestine so comply with the law!

                    Now shout your sentence back at me one time and we can get some real progress.  As for calling Camp David a farce, that's just more demonization, Barak had already withdrawn from Lebanon and he was serious about withdrawing from 97% of the West Bank.

                    by unfounded on Thu Apr 24, 2008 at 07:14:40 AM PDT

        •  More importantly,

          (to add to my previous reply), whenever Palestinians step up resistance to the occupation Israel makes their lives even worse. So they're effectively faced with a choice of living a little bit more easily under apartheid or fighting for their freedom and being forced to live like vermin.

          It's a choice they shouldn't have to make, and that's why it is up to citizens of the U.S. and EU to force Israel to withdraw.

          by heathlander on Wed Apr 23, 2008 at 07:17:17 AM PDT

  •  So will you be writing a report

    about your field trip?

    by Rusty Pipes on Wed Apr 23, 2008 at 12:35:18 PM PDT

  •  What was the balance of the situation? Was there

    mostly new development, with only a few derelict houses, or mostly derelicts, with the occasional new building?

    Not that that's the point really (freedom and human rights are), but just wondering.  I've never been there.

    I'd also like to know, if anyone can answer, who built this building when Palestinians can't get permits to build simple houses?  Who owns this building? Was Palestinian labor used?  What was on this site a year ago?  What's to the right and the left?  etc. etc.

    Context is important.

    by Terra Mystica on Wed Apr 23, 2008 at 05:24:02 PM PDT

•  It's Beyond Shocking to Me

  How a group like the Israelis who so recently suffered the horrors of ethnic cleansing can turn around and commit the same kinds of crimes against another people.
  Zionists are just Nazis with a different name.

  There needs to be more support for One Voice, a Jewish/Arab group working for peace in the region.

  by The Deconstructionist on Wed Apr 23, 2008 at 06:17:18 AM PDT

  •  Oh oh - now, you've done it

    You've used the N word.  Prepare for the onslaught.

    Incidentally, there are 5 million Iraqi refugees and internally displaced persons.  This now places the humanitarian catastrophe of the 5-year Iraq war firmly in the same league as what has occurred over 6 decades with the Palestinians.

    by CA Libertarian on Wed Apr 23, 2008 at 06:24:35 AM PDT

    •  Nah.

      All we need to do is take the commenter's implicit advice. Ask One Voice to give us their official position on the use of "the N word."

      That would, in an honest debate, probably settle the question. Or at least delimit the invocation of One Voice's good offices as cover for its use.

      by Kagro X on Wed Apr 23, 2008 at 06:27:09 AM PDT

    •  "Zionists are just Nazis with a different name."

      This is clearly an exaggeration. I think it is completely valid (if politically unwise) to make comparisons between Zionism and Nazism, where appropriate, but they must be carefully qualified. To casually draw an equivalence between the two is simply not accurate.

      But there are definitely obvious parallels - the images of Israel's annexation wall, for example, clearly evoke the wall around the Warsaw Ghetto. I think Zahar's comparison in the Washington Post recently between the Gaza Strip and the Warsaw Ghetto was also very sensible. More generally, when you have a state systematically brutalising an entire society and treating people like untermenschen, of course it recalls Nazi Germany. There are, furthermore, ideological similarities between Zionism and Nazism, stemming from their shared roots in colonialism.

      by heathlander on Wed Apr 23, 2008 at 06:54:04 AM PDT

•  106 homes rebuilt, 17894 to go.

  The Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions.
  http://www.icahd.org/...

  Thanks for the diary.

  by Private Keepout on Wed Apr 23, 2008 at 06:24:26 AM PDT

  •  thanks /nt

    by heathlander on Wed Apr 23, 2008 at 07:06:18 AM PDT

•  Watch the Documentary

  Occupation 101 and say that life for the Palestinians isn't awful in hundreds of ways.  Check out the "Live from Palestine" diaries on electronicintifada.net. Trivializing the effect of occupation on the Palestinians won't change the facts. http://www.occupation101.com/

  by The Deconstructionist on Wed Apr 23, 2008 at 06:39:52 AM PDT

  •  Yes, that's a must-watch

    who's "trivializing", by the way?

    by heathlander on Wed Apr 23, 2008 at 07:07:38 AM PDT

  •  Thanks for the movie tip!

    Haven't heard about it yet. Have you seen it?

    Has anyone written a diary about it? Perhaps you can if you've seen it.

    by Assaf on Wed Apr 23, 2008 at 08:48:37 PM PDT

•  Thanks for the diary, heathlander! n/t

  by Rusty Pipes on Wed Apr 23, 2008 at 12:34:29 PM PDT

•  Good diary..

  ..and congrats on getting your ratings ability back!

  Cheers

  by sofia on Wed Apr 23, 2008 at 01:11:34 PM PDT

•  Thanks from me as well

  by Assaf on Wed Apr 23, 2008 at 08:45:15 PM PDT