A young Palestinian woman is taunted by Israeli soldiers. Her headscarf is removed. Scissors are found in her purse. She is arrested on grounds of threatening to injure the soldiers and spends time in jail.
Molly Little, a Brown University senior majoring in English literature, spent several months in a West Bank city in 2005. While teaching English, she heard this young woman’s story firsthand.
Little shared her experiences with a small Whitefield gathering Monday evening, one of three talks she gave locally.
For Palestinians, the indigenous population living in the country in 1948 when the state of Israel was created, life is frustrating, humiliating, “unlivable,” she said.
Little also came to know a university student whose family cultivates land that is now shut behind a wall the Israeli government began constructing in 2002. Palestinians, most of whom are farmers, can access their land only with a government permit.
Little said she learned that the student’s father “has been in an Israeli prison for 10 years. He hasn’t been charged with any crime or seen a lawyer. His six-month detentions can be renewed at will.”
The American accompanied the young Palestinian to a checkpoint where he hoped to have his access permit renewed. “The soldier at the checkpoint refused to renew it. For ‘security reasons,’ he said.”
Little continued, “I learned this story is not unique. It happens over and over again. People are made to get permits and then they are denied these permits.”
The city of Qalqilya where Little stayed is enclosed by a 25-foot tall wall, twice as high as the Berlin wall. Creation of the wall “effectively annexed 95 percent of the 20 percent land left after 1948, when the population was totally expelled,” she said. “Some fled to Jordan, and were never allowed back.”
After Israel bombed a municipal building during the six-day war in 1967, it was never rebuilt because of a law prohibiting new construction. Little saw the rubbly ruins during her visit.
The wall, which Israel said it constructed to protect its people from Arab suicide bombers, is basically a cement barrier interspersed with trenches and shorter fence sections topped with razor wire. Little said she approached the fence once, out of curiosity, and poked at the wire. “In seconds an Israeli military jeep zoomed up and asked me what I was doing.”
The so-called segregation wall, some 450 miles in length, cuts Palestinians off from their land and also their water wells. Parts of it are built on Palestinian land so it’s a seizure of territory as well, Little commented. “To the people living there it’s an open air prison. The Hague has ruled it illegal. It’s so visually shocking.”
It’s hard “as an American,” Little added, “to begin to imagine its impact,” but for children especially the psychological impact has been heavy.
When the wall was constructed there was a local protest. Israeli soldiers threw tear gas canisters into a classroom, and two girls were hospitalized.
While discussing checkpoints, Little pointed out some are permanent, and some are “floating.”
“Some days the road may be open, the next day there might be a checkpoint there.” Even if you can get through, “it may take you four, five, or six hours. So the restriction of movement is unpredictable. Imagine if you couldn’t make any plans,” to go to the doctor, for example. It all depends “on the whim of the soldier at the checkpoint. You have no control over the situation.”
One situation Little found particularly upsetting involved an American from Detroit, serving as a soldier at a checkpoint. He stopped Palestinians who were hoping to sell their tomatoes. “He had more rights and power than the people whose grandparents had been born there and who were simply trying to take their farm produce to market,” she said.
Little and several of the 10 people listening to her PowerPoint presentation discussed a U.N. resolution that guarantees refugees the right to return to their homes.
“They’ve never been allowed to do so,” Little said. “Those who remain in their lands face daily humiliation and dispossession from Israel,” she said.
In the three months she was there, the city of Qalqilya suffered four attacks.
Outsiders may wonder why the Palestinians don’t demonstrate nonviolently, “the way we do,” said Little. “That was my stumbling block in understanding the issue when I was growing up.” But she found her answer when she took part in such a demonstration.
Israel closed the gate accessing land of a family she knew. A week passed and “they panicked. So they asked me and a few other internationals to march with them to the gate to ask the soldiers to open it.”
Negotiations were taking place, and then “suddenly, next I knew, the soldiers opened fire on the crowd with rubber-coated bullets that can kill you, and break bones. And then they were shooting canisters directly at people’s bodies.”
She also saw the soldiers shoot live ammunition into the crowd, and she took a photo of an Israeli grenade launcher marked with the words “property of U.S. government.”
A man at the Whitefield talk said, “This wouldn’t be possible without the tremendous military funding and other kinds of aid we send and pay for with our tax dollars.”
One woman observed that Israel’s actions amount to “ghettoization,” adding, “how ironic – of all people who should understand about ghettos!”
Little said the “most horrifying thing” is that annihilation of the Palestinians seems to be the intention. Graffiti written on the wall by Israeli settlers says, “Gas the Arabs.”
Another woman noted, “It’s appalling what humans do to each other. It’s not that Zionists are an evil breed of persons,” she added, referring to the ardent supporters who established and continue to champion the Israeli state.
She drew comparisons to the Europeans’ settlement of North America and the extirpation of Native Americans, whose remnant populations live today on reservations.
While a man in the group said he found it difficult to assign blame, a woman likened the conflict to an abusive relationship. There may be reasons for battering in the abuser’s background, she said, but it’s necessary to hold the abuser accountable.
It was pointed out that some Israeli conscientious objectors, known as “refuseniks,” won’t serve in the defense forces, and there is a peace movement in Israeli that deplores their country’s treatment of Palestinians.
Similarly, what is needed in the U.S., one Whitefield man suggested, is for Arab- Americans to get involved politically instead of “quietly keeping their heads down.”
Most agreed on the importance of educating people about the roots of the conflict and thanked Little for raising awareness.
Education led Little to her discoveries in the first place. She said while in high school she was involved in anti-war organizing, first around Afghanistan and then Iraq. “Other people said if you want to understand U.S. policy in the Middle East, you have to understand Israel and Palestine.”
Her time there “changed my life,” she said. “I realized how much the issue had been misrepresented to me even by people on the left, by Progressives. There was a silence around it. That’s why I’m so interested in it.”
Little distributed a list of possible actions from the Palestinian Center for Rapprochement Between People.
Titled “25 things to do for peace with justice in Palestine,” it includes contacting local media, contacting elected and other political leaders to urge an end to U.S. military aid to Israel, organizing and joining demonstrations at Israeli embassies, holding a teach-in or documentary film viewing, passing out fliers with facts and figures about Palestine and Gaza, visiting Palestine, supporting human rights groups and others working in Palestine, and building coalitions with other groups working for justice.
