The other weekend I visited Jericho to escape the cold rain in Nablus and spend some time hiking in the mountains around the town. On my final day I hitch-hiked back to Nablus and easily picked up a lift that took me the whole way in about ten minutes. Not far on the road just outside the town I saw an ambulance on the junction up ahead, and some kids on bikes gathered. Then the car in front came to a sudden stop and we braked too. Two Israeli soldiers ran round the corner towards the junction firing their guns at the children, who scarpered up the road to our left. ‘Uh-oh’, said my lift, Tareq, ‘that’s real.’ He meant they were firing live rounds. The soldiers ran further on and one of the children picked up a rock to throw at him. We did a quick U-turn and got to a different route north by driving across a field. We didn’t speak much about the incident. I vaguely thought that it’s Friday, there are often clashes on a Friday.
As we continued through the fertile Jordan valley heading north Tareq pointed to the farmland on both sides of the road – ‘these are all Israeli farms’. He told me that this was one of the most fertile areas of Palestine, benefiting from the water of the Jordan and the rich soil. He told me it was all Palestinian land before, the Israelis took it all. We turned left off the main road heading to Nablus we went through a few Palestinian villages. We were chatting about Tareq and his wife’s five children, their business selling recycled paper and other things when we came to another sudden stop. Israeli soldiers next to us fired their guns up the road but we couldn’t see at what. Tareq looked to see if it was ok to continue and they waved us forward. Further up we saw some boys running off. Tareq said ‘why are they even here, [the soldiers] this is Area A, they’re not even allowed to be here!’ The West Bank is divided into three areas: A, B and C. This zoning system was agreed in the Oslo accords. Area A is full Palestinian Authority control and comprises only 18% of the West Bank’s land. B is joint Palestinian and Israeli control, and Area C is full Israeli control over security, law enforcement, planning and construction. Palestinians living in Area C find it almost impossible to get planning permission or building permits and are often subject to demolition or eviction orders. Most of the fertile Jordan Valley and Dead Sea is in Area C. When you drive near a city like Nablus or Jericho there is a sign that reads ‘you are now entering Area A, the entry is forbidden for Israeli citizens and may be dangerous.’ The army are also forbidden to enter Area A, but they do all the time. They go into the camps around Nablus more than once a week.
The zoning system sounds confusing. It’s basically a massive land grab where Israel is seizing all the best land in the West Bank, ‘cleansing’ it of Palestinians, and squeezing Area A in the hope that all Palestinians will one day leave Palestine. There’s a decent explanation of the settlement strategy here. One of the most galling things I’ve overheard here was by an Israeli tour guide at Joseph’s lookout, overlooking Nablus, and (I think) in Area B. He was pointing at Balata refugee camp in the valley below, and he said ‘see, the Palestinians are allowed to go to Israel whenever they want, but you couldn’t go down there to Balata camp because you’d be killed. They can go to Beer Sheeva whenever they want as long as they don’t blow themselves up. As long as they don’t have a knife.’ I was so shocked I didn’t intervene as I should have done. My friend walked away and cried. I should have told them that I have been to Balata camp many times and I was given free clementines, and the boys in the school thought I was Israeli and it was no big deal. I had people in Balata camp say ‘shalom’ to me. I should have said that Palestinians are not allowed by military law to carry weapons despite the incidents of settler violence against men, families and children (google ‘price tag’ attacks), and many settlers carry guns, are trained by private security companies, and are protected by one of the most powerful armies in the world when they go and burn down olive trees. I should have said all of that and it’s my only regret about being here.
As we drove away from the soldiers I asked Tareq, ‘why do they shoot at children?’ He told me about a recent chat he had with an Israeli army officer, who’d asked him, ‘why do the children throw stones at us? I don’t understand’. Tareq replied, ‘you come to our land, take our farms, take our water, take our crops, take our olive trees, take our souls, you’d take the air if you could, what do you expect us to give you back, flowers?’ He laughed as he told me he was especially scared about his big sun-roof, which had been smashed recently by an Israeli shell. I looked up ominously, but the rest of the journey passed seeing no more shooting, at children or anyone else. Tareq and his wife were so friendly and warm as is often the case with Palestinians. They gave me chocolate, coffee and offered me a place to stay if ever I was in Ramallah, where they live. They went out of their way at the end of the journey to drop me in Askar, not far to walk home. On the walk home I stopped in a kunafa shop (kunafa is a Nablus sweet) to use the toilet. When I came out the man gave me a huge plate of kunafa, and when I tried to pay he was adamant. Once again I felt warmth not only of the sweet kunafa but of typical Palestinian hospitality. At first I was taken aback by the amount of free stuff I was given most days, feeling like as a rich privileged traveller I don’t really need free stuff. But here people are quite offended if you try to pay for something they want to give you for free. There were the free clementines in Balata camp. I used to stop for coffee before my crazy class in Balata Boys’ School. Free every time. I was given free bananas most times I did my grocery shopping. I stopped to buy baklava on the way home from class with my translator. Also free. (There are more reasons I like Palestine than free fruit and sweets, but it doesn’t hurt.) This is all typical of Palestinian hospitality where guests are to be treated with absolute respect.
Of course there are many aspects of life here which I recognise are difficult or that I disagree with. The fact that many women aren’t allowed to ride bikes or go out in the evenings, or use the Turkish baths, or travel alone. In class today at the university I was talking with my students about Palestinian culture – things they like, things they don’t like. Some of the women said ‘there are some restrictions we don’t like’ and ‘some people are stuck in old ways of thinking.’ The two men in the class said, ‘no, that’s not true.’ Women feel the negative effects of patriarchy more than men, so I’m inclined to believe the women when they say they feel their society is restrictive. We were talking about hopes and goals for the future. One woman said ‘I hope to learn to ride a bicycle. And learn more about the Koran so I can understand my religion better, and approach it more as a personal choice, rather than just something I was brought up with. And I want to learn to play the violin.’ I asked if she could ride a bicycle in Palestine. ‘No, it’s not allowed.’ I’d be interested if someone could tell me more about where the Koran or the Hadiths forbid bicycle riding for women. Some women are trying to challenge this norm but it’s not easy. For example, this Palestinian journalist risked abuse and harassment to cycle across Gaza. Or this Iraqi artist who runs a cycling group in Baghdad for women to be able to cycle with some degree of safety and confidence. Or this Egyptian woman who will be the first to cycle solo around her country. She’ll have a support team, but hearing anecdotally about the harassment and abuse of cyclists in Egypt, that sounds like a good plan (see here and here, and also private conversations and also here for other countries) There’s also this women’s cycling team in Afghanistan. My view is that religion or tradition is used as an excuse for controlling women’s behaviour. Also there’s a cyclical reasoning that serves the patriarchy well: ‘women shouldn’t do that because of male abuse of women’. Well, why don’t men do something about male abuse of women so women can be allowed to do things? Anyway, I hope that my students can achieve all of their goals, and especially if they involve riding a bicycle.
As always I digress into feminism and cycling and challenging social norms… Back to Israel and why they shoot children. I’m still searching for the answer, and no-one’s been able to tell me that so far. If anyone’s still sitting on the fence about Israel and its occupation of the West Bank, then I’ll just give a brief outline of things that have happened since I’ve been here:
- A nine-year old girl from a village near Nablus died in an ambulance after Israeli soldiers prevented her passing through a checkpoint to go to hospital.
- Israeli soldiers pulled teenage girls from an ambulance and arrested them for unknown reasons.
- A 57 year old man from Nablus died in an Israeli prison where he was serving a 35 year sentence allegedly from being denied cancer treatment.
- A 13-year old girl is serving a four-month prison sentence for throwing stones at Israeli soldiers with guns.
- A 13-year old boy is serving a prison sentence in an Israeli military prison for throwing stones at soldiers with guns.
- A 16 year old girl recently received a six-year sentence in an Israeli military prison.
- 16 year old Ahed Tamimi was put in prison for slapping an Israeli soldier who’d shot various members of her family, including her 14 year old cousin earlier that day. She was unarmed, and she’s still in prison. An Israeli politician called for her to be jailed for life, and an Israeli journalist implied that she should be sexually assaulted as punishment.
- There are around 300 minors (under 18) and around 52 Palestinian women prisoners in the Israeli prison network.
- A man in a wheelchair with no legs, Ibrahim Abu Thuraya (he’d lost his legs in an Israeli assault on Gaza) was shot in the head by an Israeli sniper. He was peacefully protesting, holding a Palestinian flag.
- Palestinian poet Dareen Tatour was put in prison for writing a poem about resisting the illegal occupation of Palestine, and is still under house arrest.
- Settlers stormed a school near Nablus in December and set off tear gas.
- Palestinians in the West Bank live under Israeli military law, with a 99% conviction rate in military courts. In something called ‘discriminatory legal dualism’, settlers in the West Bank are tried under Israeli domestic law, with only 7% settler violence resulting in conviction.
- A few years ago a settler arson attack resulted in the death of an 18 month old toddler and her parents. Settlers were later filmed at a wedding party celebrating and cheering about the deaths. The attacker was charged with murder and has since been released, less than three years after the attack happened.
See here for further statistics collected by the UN on house demolitions, settler violence, clashes, restrictions on freedom of movement and other human rights abuses in the West Bank.
In a previous post I invited responses about why Israel abuses and detains minors, and now I want to know why they shoot at children. I’m still waiting for a response, but I’m hoping someone can fill me in. And why they build walls, and why they let children die at checkpoints, and why they are stealing the remaining land they didn’t steal in 1948. Or why they put poets and artists in prison. Although I already know the answer to that, and it’s that writers, poets or artists speak truth to power in a way that the unjust always fear. Ursula LeGuin died this week. She wrote a story about a perfect city called Omelas where everyone is happy and life is easy, but this prosperity depends upon a single child being detained and tortured in a dungeon. If the child is set free the city will fall. That’s what I think about when I think about Israel. Israel’s freedom is not worth this system of militarised horror that has been constructed all over the West Bank. The ones who walk away from Omelas are the ones who will truly know compassion and the value of freedom. We all need to walk away from the false utopia of the Israeli state, and end the strangling of the Palestinian child.
Feminist on a bike ride 
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