Report from Ramallah: How Palestine is today
Israel/Palestine
Francesca Borri on July 9, 2015 27 Comments
Il Muro (the wall). (Photo: Andrea & Magda/Il Fatto Quotidiano)
Amid the shrubs you glimpse something black. You glimpse a rifle barrel. And
you get it. Out your taxi window you notice smoke on your right, but it’s not
the typical clearing of undergrowth burning in a distant field. It’s tear gas.
In the middle of the white cloud there are 13-year olds with slings and
keffiyehs. Slim. Fast.
No, this isn’t traffic, it’s clashes. But you are the only one who looks.
Everyone else is in their car, headphones on, texting.
“Step away!” your driver shouts—not to a soldier though, to a kid. Palestinians
honk. They are running out of patience. Their horns are saying, “Let’s go,
yalla. It’s late.”
On a new map printed of Ramallah this traffic jam/ youth v. army standoff is
pinged among the destinations tourists must see. In actuality the site is the
Wall, precisely where it buttresses Qalandia checkpoint. “Disheartening,” the
caption says, “yet fascinating,” because that’s what Ramallah is. The first
photo I took here, my very first day—it was 2007 then—was of a dusty child
drinking rain water from a tank. Now that tank has been replaced by a swimming
pool in the Mövenpick Hotel, $200 per night, Ramallah’s four-star
accommodations. Now this temporary capital city of Palestine is all cafés and
restaurants everywhere. It’s all shops, lights, flowers, asphalt sidewalks
pumping to the music of Justin Bieber from car stereos until dawn.
When Salam Fayyad was appointed prime minister amid the ruins of the Second
Intifada the same year I arrived, it was decided that negotiations between the
Palestinians and Israel no longer made sense. The only way out of the
occupation was to build a state, so the West Bank leadership said. Literally
brick by brick, build it, so that the new constructions would become the
high-rises of an eventual state recognized by the United Nations. Along with
the development boom everyone bought a house, a car, and a washing machine.
Everyone now owns a store, even if it’s only open for a few months before
closing and someone else opens the next clothing boutique. In Ramallah business
has replaced politics and you can live without feeling the military occupation
that lurks on all sides.
Indeed the glitz is deceptive. We are still 15 minutes away from Jerusalem, but
by car it takes two or there hours depending on the mood of the soldiers, and
only if you hold a permit of course. Because in between Ramallah and Jerusalem,
Qalandia checkpoint still hulks. There is still the Wall.
Please consider making a tax-deductible donation to Mondoweiss today.
At Qalandia the Israelis wear this fluorescent bib as if they are highway
maintenance workers. One of them kindly picks up a coin off the ground dropped
from the bag of an old lady. The number 18 bus that crosses between the two
territories is no longer a shabby minivan. It too has been upgraded since the
end of the Intifada to a bus with air-conditioning. It doesn’t leave from a
rutty area anymore, rather it departs from a proper station with lanes painted
on the street. Inside the bus, you pick up a wi-fi network on your smart phone.
The signpost says: Bus Stop Qalandia.
Because that’s how Ramallah is. Normal.
But then you enter any shop, any grocery store and everything is made in
Israel. There is nothing Palestinian here, not even a single orange. Then you
walk around al-Masyoun, the affluent neighborhood of banks, and glass and stone
office buildings. They are 15 stories high with a doormen in a uniform. Then
suddenly you are in one of Ramallah’s refugee camps, al-Amari, where 10,000
people live without water and electricity—these worn out homes tucked amid the
sticky alleys, these barefoot, threadbare children, with missing teeth, these
goats amid the trash rotting under the sun. You stop to take a few notes and
flies cover your hand. There are often casualties here. Israeli bullets. The
manhunt for vaguely defined “terrorists” is almost daily. Shops don’t close
anymore due to bereavement, they way they used to shutter during the second
Intifada. The portraits of martyrs have been replaced by posters of blonde kids
and American corn flakes.
Because that’s how Palestine is, today. Contradictory. Complex. And lost.
The occupation actually hasn’t changed. It hasn’t softened. Quite to the
contrary. If power—as Hannah Arendt said—is the opposite of violence, here
Israeli rule is stronger than ever. It doesn’t need guns anymore. It’s been
internalized. In Qalandia there are brawls regularly, although not to tear down
gates and gratings, but while forming an orderly line.
The world’s attention, understandably, is all for Gaza. All for the blood, the
rubble, the dead, the despair. Gaza has been under siege for eight years. There
is no longer even clean water, only sea water and salt water. To maintain the
blockade Israel employs weapons that are much more advanced than stockpiled
munitions, jets and tanks. Rather it has an arsenal of laws and procedures.
“There are less checkpoints than in the past, it’s true, and now anyway
searches and inspections are minimal,” Shir Hever explained, an economist who
studies the West Bank because of its odd prices. Hever found the cost of living
is 30% higher in the occupied Palestinian territory than Israel, even though
per capita income is 20% lower. The reason, transportation and administrative
burdens. Palestinians endure longer routes on highways because they must bypass
settlements when getting place to place. “It’s because of invisible barriers,”
Hever wrote, “The real aim is unpredictability. To make movement unpredictable,
something you can’t plan, not to prevent it—so that at a glance everything
looks normal. But then you can be stopped, you can be arrested at any time
under any pretext. And there is a push for Palestinians to stay within their
own city. It’s not only Gaza separated from the West Bank, but Ramallah
separated from Nablus, and from Hebron and Jenin, from Jerusalem. Because you
never know if you will finally arrive or not, and when. And so in the end you
give up. You stay at home.”
Within your own little world
Weapons can be new, brand new. Drones can roam the sky, but the strategy is
old. It’s always the same: it’s divide and conquer.
In order for the Palestinians to gradually achieve self-government, the Oslo
Accords split the West Bank in area A, B, and C. Even more, the geography is
further fragmented by settlements into around 120 disconnected Palestinian
islands. Only Area A is under the full control of the Palestinian Authority,
roughly 18% of the West Bank. Another 61% falls under Area C, within the full
control of Israel, and it is within this zone where the struggle is really
taking place. In rural areas the occupation is always already. Oslo changed
nothing for the Palestinians in these pastoral and remote regions.
“Israel aims to take the land of the West Bank, not the land of Gaza,”
Palestinian politician Mustafa Barghouti said, “It could annex the West Bank,
or more exactly, the cities of the West Bank, without jeopardizing its Jewish
majority. It could keep Ramallah, Nablus, the same as it is now keeps Haifa. In
a few years, we, the Palestinians, will be the settlers of an Israeli West
Bank.”
Jamal Jouma is 53 years old and he is one of the masterminds of the kind of
resistance born from the ashes, literally, 5,000 dead during the Second
Intifada. Palestinians like Jouma were tired of both leading political parties,
Hamas and Fatah. He took power from their hands and set up an activist network
of popular committees. Since then every Friday the West Bank has been dotted
with demonstrations against the Wall. Non-violent demonstrations.
“And for a while it’s been working. But in the end, we only achieved to tear
down a small slice of the Wall, to move another slice a hundred meters away.
Nothing more. The Wall is still standing, with its route, which is twice the
length of the border with Israel,” he Jourma said.
“It’s somehow a theater performance where everybody plays his own role,” Jouma
admitted. At noon, 20 or 30 kids march toward the Wall amid the cameras of 20
or 30 foreign activists. Ten minutes later tear gas canisters start to rain.
Kids and activists withdraw a few feet, then the cycle repeats. Eventually the
Israelis get tired. They turn to rubber bullets or live ammo. At this point the
demonstration is over. “But it’s not a surrender, actually. It’s not because of
a lack of interest. It’s because everything happens in a void of leadership.
And without a strategy, nobody is willing to take risks. To get killed for
nothing?” Jouma said.
Anyways, back in placid Ramallah it’s the usual summer. Fun and music and
barbecues on the rooftops. The only thing electric here is the advertising
screens. A digital billboard switches between a promotion for a sports car,
Nivea face cream, and a destitute child. “Give a dollar for Gaza,” it reads.
You buy the Nivea.
A version of this report was originally published in Italian on July 5, 2015 by
Il Fatto Quotidiano.
Report from Ramallah: How Palestine is today
Israel/Palestine
Francesca Borri on July 9, 2015 27 Comments
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Il Muro (the wall). (Photo: Andrea & Magda/Il Fatto Quotidiano)
Amid the shrubs you glimpse something black. You glimpse a rifle barrel. And
you get it. Out your taxi window you notice smoke on your right, but it’s not
the typical clearing of undergrowth burning in a distant field. It’s tear gas.
In the middle of the white cloud there are 13-year olds with slings and
keffiyehs. Slim. Fast.
No, this isn’t traffic, it’s clashes. But you are the only one who looks.
Everyone else is in their car, headphones on, texting.
“Step away!” your driver shouts—not to a soldier though, to a kid. Palestinians
honk. They are running out of patience. Their horns are saying, “Let’s go,
yalla. It’s late.”
On a new map printed of Ramallah this traffic jam/ youth v. army standoff is
pinged among the destinations tourists must see. In actuality the site is the
Wall, precisely where it buttresses Qalandia checkpoint. “Disheartening,” the
caption says, “yet fascinating,” because that’s what Ramallah is. The first
photo I took here, my very first day—it was 2007 then—was of a dusty child
drinking rain water from a tank. Now that tank has been replaced by a swimming
pool in the Mövenpick Hotel, $200 per night, Ramallah’s four-star
accommodations. Now this temporary capital city of Palestine is all cafés and
restaurants everywhere. It’s all shops, lights, flowers, asphalt sidewalks
pumping to the music of Justin Bieber from car stereos until dawn.
When Salam Fayyad was appointed prime minister amid the ruins of the Second
Intifada the same year I arrived, it was decided that negotiations between the
Palestinians and Israel no longer made sense. The only way out of the
occupation was to build a state, so the West Bank leadership said. Literally
brick by brick, build it, so that the new constructions would become the
high-rises of an eventual state recognized by the United Nations. Along with
the development boom everyone bought a house, a car, and a washing machine.
Everyone now owns a store, even if it’s only open for a few months before
closing and someone else opens the next clothing boutique. In Ramallah business
has replaced politics and you can live without feeling the military occupation
that lurks on all sides.
Indeed the glitz is deceptive. We are still 15 minutes away from Jerusalem, but
by car it takes two or there hours depending on the mood of the soldiers, and
only if you hold a permit of course. Because in between Ramallah and Jerusalem,
Qalandia checkpoint still hulks. There is still the Wall.
https://donatenow.networkforgood.org/1429849?code=siteorange
https://donatenow.networkforgood.org/1429849?code=siteorange
Please consider making a tax-deductible donation to Mondoweiss today.
At Qalandia the Israelis wear this fluorescent bib as if they are highway
maintenance workers. One of them kindly picks up a coin off the ground dropped
from the bag of an old lady. The number 18 bus that crosses between the two
territories is no longer a shabby minivan. It too has been upgraded since the
end of the Intifada to a bus with air-conditioning. It doesn’t leave from a
rutty area anymore, rather it departs from a proper station with lanes painted
on the street. Inside the bus, you pick up a wi-fi network on your smart phone.
The signpost says: Bus Stop Qalandia.
Because that’s how Ramallah is. Normal.
But then you enter any shop, any grocery store and everything is made in
Israel. There is nothing Palestinian here, not even a single orange. Then you
walk around al-Masyoun, the affluent neighborhood of banks, and glass and stone
office buildings. They are 15 stories high with a doormen in a uniform. Then
suddenly you are in one of Ramallah’s refugee camps, al-Amari, where 10,000
people live without water and electricity—these worn out homes tucked amid the
sticky alleys, these barefoot, threadbare children, with missing teeth, these
goats amid the trash rotting under the sun. You stop to take a few notes and
flies cover your hand. There are often casualties here. Israeli bullets. The
manhunt for vaguely defined “terrorists” is almost daily. Shops don’t close
anymore due to bereavement, they way they used to shutter during the second
Intifada. The portraits of martyrs have been replaced by posters of blonde kids
and American corn flakes.
Because that’s how Palestine is, today. Contradictory. Complex. And lost.
The occupation actually hasn’t changed. It hasn’t softened. Quite to the
contrary. If power—as Hannah Arendt said—is the opposite of violence, here
Israeli rule is stronger than ever. It doesn’t need guns anymore. It’s been
internalized. In Qalandia there are brawls regularly, although not to tear down
gates and gratings, but while forming an orderly line.
The world’s attention, understandably, is all for Gaza. All for the blood, the
rubble, the dead, the despair. Gaza has been under siege for eight years. There
is no longer even clean water, only sea water and salt water. To maintain the
blockade Israel employs weapons that are much more advanced than stockpiled
munitions, jets and tanks. Rather it has an arsenal of laws and procedures.
“There are less checkpoints than in the past, it’s true, and now anyway
searches and inspections are minimal,” Shir Hever explained, an economist who
studies the West Bank because of its odd prices. Hever found the cost of living
is 30% higher in the occupied Palestinian territory than Israel, even though
per capita income is 20% lower. The reason, transportation and administrative
burdens. Palestinians endure longer routes on highways because they must bypass
settlements when getting place to place. “It’s because of invisible barriers,”
Hever wrote, “The real aim is unpredictability. To make movement unpredictable,
something you can’t plan, not to prevent it—so that at a glance everything
looks normal. But then you can be stopped, you can be arrested at any time
under any pretext. And there is a push for Palestinians to stay within their
own city. It’s not only Gaza separated from the West Bank, but Ramallah
separated from Nablus, and from Hebron and Jenin, from Jerusalem. Because you
never know if you will finally arrive or not, and when. And so in the end you
give up. You stay at home.”
Within your own little world
Weapons can be new, brand new. Drones can roam the sky, but the strategy is
old. It’s always the same: it’s divide and conquer.
In order for the Palestinians to gradually achieve self-government, the Oslo
Accords split the West Bank in area A, B, and C. Even more, the geography is
further fragmented by settlements into around 120 disconnected Palestinian
islands. Only Area A is under the full control of the Palestinian Authority,
roughly 18% of the West Bank. Another 61% falls under Area C, within the full
control of Israel, and it is within this zone where the struggle is really
taking place. In rural areas the occupation is always already. Oslo changed
nothing for the Palestinians in these pastoral and remote regions.
“Israel aims to take the land of the West Bank, not the land of Gaza,”
Palestinian politician Mustafa Barghouti said, “It could annex the West Bank,
or more exactly, the cities of the West Bank, without jeopardizing its Jewish
majority. It could keep Ramallah, Nablus, the same as it is now keeps Haifa. In
a few years, we, the Palestinians, will be the settlers of an Israeli West
Bank.”
Jamal Jouma is 53 years old and he is one of the masterminds of the kind of
resistance born from the ashes, literally, 5,000 dead during the Second
Intifada. Palestinians like Jouma were tired of both leading political parties,
Hamas and Fatah. He took power from their hands and set up an activist network
of popular committees. Since then every Friday the West Bank has been dotted
with demonstrations against the Wall. Non-violent demonstrations.
“And for a while it’s been working. But in the end, we only achieved to tear
down a small slice of the Wall, to move another slice a hundred meters away.
Nothing more. The Wall is still standing, with its route, which is twice the
length of the border with Israel,” he Jourma said.
“It’s somehow a theater performance where everybody plays his own role,” Jouma
admitted. At noon, 20 or 30 kids march toward the Wall amid the cameras of 20
or 30 foreign activists. Ten minutes later tear gas canisters start to rain.
Kids and activists withdraw a few feet, then the cycle repeats. Eventually the
Israelis get tired. They turn to rubber bullets or live ammo. At this point the
demonstration is over. “But it’s not a surrender, actually. It’s not because of
a lack of interest. It’s because everything happens in a void of leadership.
And without a strategy, nobody is willing to take risks. To get killed for
nothing?” Jouma said.
Anyways, back in placid Ramallah it’s the usual summer. Fun and music and
barbecues on the rooftops. The only thing electric here is the advertising
screens. A digital billboard switches between a promotion for a sports car,
Nivea face cream, and a destitute child. “Give a dollar for Gaza,” it reads.
You buy the Nivea.
A version of this report was originally published in Italian on July 5, 2015 by
Il Fatto Quotidiano.
