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"Ramallah is not Palestine" by Sandy Tolan
From time to time, the
Palestine Center distributes
articles it believes will enhance understanding
of the Palestinian political
reality. The following article by Sandy Tolan
was
published in Middle East Online
on 7 April 2010. To view
this article online, please go to http://www.middle-east-online.com/ENGLISH/opinion/?id=38293.
"Ramallah is not Palestine"
By
Sandy Tolan
In Ramallah, on a sliver
of land inside the occupied West Bank, it’s
possible to imagine what Palestinian freedom
might feel like. Major Israeli roadblocks and
checkpoints are down or unmanned, allowing
drivers who used to be stalled, fuming, to
travel nearly unimpeded from Jericho, up the
ancient hills to Ramallah, and on to Nablus in
northern Palestine. Inside this fragment of a
fragment of land, the economy is picking up, as
shipments of soap, olive oil, vegetables, soft
drinks and even local beer move smoothly to
their West Bank destinations. Bloomberg has
noticed that the area shows an annual growth
rate of 7%.
Here, in the political and
commercial center of the West Bank, a relative
sense of ease and prosperity has emerged as new
shops and bars serve well-educated and
discerning customers. “World-class vibrant
beats in the evenings and fine-dining at all
times,” reads the Facebook page for Orjuwan, a
popular Ramallah lounge. “Preserving essential
ingredients of traditional Mediterranean
cuisine from Palestine and Italy, our classic
dishes are reinvented to gourmet standard in a
fine dining experience…”
Welcome to
Liberty Enclave, where residents experience a
taste of prosperity and rising quality of life
in this small but significant part of
Palestinian West Bank society. Unencumbered by
scores of roadblocks, or by delays caused by
the arbitrary decisions of teenaged soldiers,
these Palestinians can now enjoy a modicum of
freedom to move about and do business. The
partial lifting of the West Bank occupation,
helped partly by the US training and
professionalization of Palestinian security
forces, allows the Palestinian president
Mahmoud Abbas to cite measurable improvements
in the lives of some of his people -- and gives
Israel a rare chance to appear magnanimous
despite the condemnation over the Gaza war and
the Jerusalem settlements.
Yet the
improved conditions in this part of the West
Bank -- known as Area A, a creation of the Oslo
process in which Palestinians have been given
civil autonomy -- deepen the resentment of
other Palestinians who remain locked down in
Area C -- where Israel retains full control.
(Area C accounts for 60% of the West Bank.)
There is also anger at the Palestinian
leadership. This is not new. Nor is class-based
intra-Palestinian fury. In 1994, Gazans who had
sacrificed in the first intifada were furious
when their “liberators” arrived from Tunis to
govern from their villas and the back seats of
their black sedans. Now the resentment is
worsened by the disconnection between the
enclaves of Israeli-controlled liberation and
isolation, and few Palestinians bridge the
gap.
“I feel like I have schizophrenia,”
said Naela Khalil, a journalist who lives at
weekends with her family in the Balata refugee
camp near Nablus, but works in the Ramallah
office of the daily Al Ayyam. Khalil, who
recently documented PA human rights abuses
against Hamas activists in Palestinian jails,
was sipping a latte at Café de la Paix, another
addition to Ramallah’s comfortable café
culture. “The biggest problems among my friends
in Ramallah is how to lose weight,” she said.
“Biggest problem at Balata camp is how to stay
alive.” Khalil marvels at all the glass
buildings in Ramallah, built with a naïve
confidence that they will remain unshattered.
“People in the camps don’t even build a second
storey on their homes. Because they know what
it’s like to lose their house in one black
night.”
Anger boiled over during the
early days of Israel’s war on Gaza at the end
of 2008. “At New Year here in Ramallah, people
were partying in restaurants and drinking, but
in Gaza they were celebrating under Israeli
bombing,” Khalil remembered. “Only 50 or 60
came to the demonstration. There were two
security officers per demonstrator. So you feel
very important! VIP! This kind of sarcasm is
the last step before the anger
comes.”
More demonstrations were
organized at Ramallah’s Manara Square, and
Khalil covered them. “Every time people went to
the Manara for a demonstration, security forces
prevented them. They beat them and threw tear
gas. Prevented people from going to the
checkpoints. We are normal people and they came
to beat us. These things slowly add
up.”
In the farther reaches of Area C,
the reaction is less anger at the PA, more
indifference. In the South Hebron Hills, 30
miles away, yet light years from the
“world-class vibrant beat” of Ramallah, reality
is an urgent, inch-by-inch struggle with
Israeli settlers and soldiers over land, and
access to the hilly paths that connect
villagers to their homes and
schools.
“The settlers used to come with
dogs -- they would send the dogs out to attack
us,” said Manar, a schoolgirl from the South
Hebron Hills, which is firmly embedded in Area
C. She is 13, but looks 10. Like many
Palestinians in the area, Manar lives in a
village of tents and cave dwellings in the
South Hebron Hills. From there she walks two
hours to her school. A report by Christian
Peacemakers Teams, based in al-Tuwani village,
documents many incidents in which settlers,
often wearing hoods or masks, have stoned
children, beaten them, and stolen their
backpacks. (Stoning attacks have also been
documented by videos taken by villagers in the
area.) Besides the dogs, settlers have fired
eggs at Manar with slingshots. Because of the
attacks, the Israeli army is required to escort
the Palestinian children, but “sometimes they
don’t come on time” and Manar misses school for
fear of the settlers. “Sometimes they have
black hoods covering their faces. So it’s
really scary.”
As in much of Area C,
daily life for villagers is full of travel
restrictions, housing demolitions and
confiscations of land. Some now live full-time
in their sheep camps, since they fear that
abandoning them will result in permanent loss
of their lands. “If they lose any of their
land, they suffer -- they need every bit of
land to graze their flocks,” said Joshua Hough,
an American activist walking toward the school.
He lives part-time in al-Tuwani as part of
Christian Peacemaker Teams. “The land is
continuously being taken in little chunks. The
amount of land Palestinians have available to
them is becoming less and less every
year.”
The school was three steel frames
built on cement slabs, draped with canvas.
Local leaders spoke through a megaphone,
arguing for freedom of movement and access to
education. After the speeches, schoolteachers
began handing out free pencils. Manar and her
fellow students quickly crowded around,
reaching out their hands.
“Members of
the Palestinian Authority hardly ever come
here,” said Na’im al-Adarah, driving us back in
a battered pickup which has served as a
makeshift school bus. Once, he said, a man from
the Palestinian ministry of local affairs came
from Ramallah but refused to come in a PA
vehicle. “So we took him from Ramallah in our
cars, at our own expense.” The official was
appalled at the conditions he witnessed. “He
said this is the first time he knew that this
land [within the West Bank] is ours. A minister
like him is surprised that we have these areas?
I asked him ‘how can a minister like you not
know this? You’re the minister of local
government!’ It was like he didn’t know what
was happening in his own country.” Al-Adarah
squinted at the broken road through a cracked
windshield. “We’re forgotten,
unfortunately.”
For these Palestinians,
the semi-liberated enclave centered in Ramallah
is part of another country.
“Ramallah is
not Palestine,” said Muhammad Abdullah Ahmad
Wahdan. “It’s 5%. But 95% of Palestine
suffers.” We sat in the living room of his
concrete block home in Qalandia refugee camp
north of Jerusalem. Just a few minutes away lay
Ramallah, another country. Outside, Israel’s
separation barrier loomed above the camp like a
prison wall. There is talk that Israel will
reroute the wall through the middle of the
camp, and Wahdan says, given that this is Area
C, the Palestinian Authority (PA) would be
powerless to stop it. “This leadership has
given us nothing,” he said. “No work, no
homeland, no stability, no
security.”
Wahdan long ago dismissed the
dream that the PA could help him recover the
lands of citrus and olives that his family were
driven from during the creation of Israel six
decades ago. Now, after losing a son to the
struggle -- the young man was 19, and his wife
was pregnant; when a baby girl was born, the
family called her Palestine -- he is wary of
any more sacrifice for the Palestinian
leadership. As she served us refreshments,
Wahdan’s wife said that these are the people
who “put our kids under the cannon
fire.”
Wahdan said: “This particular
class of the bourgeoisie exploited the people
who fought the struggle. We did this for their
benefit. They were the ones who got something
out of it.” Wahdan’s 15-year-old grandson,
Anas, sitting under a large portrait of his
martyred uncle, added: “They wanted us, with no
weapons, to [make the] sacrifice. Their kids
have cars and villas, they own phone companies.
There’s no equality between someone like that
and someone like me, who lives in a house
that’s falling apart, and whose father may or
may not have enough money to bring bread or
have clothes.”
And if he and his friends
should voice their displeasure? “We’ll be told,
‘Well, you’re just refugee camp kids’,” said
Anas’s friend Munir. He wants to become an eye
doctor. “There’s nothing to do here, maybe play
games on the internet. There’s a military base
next to me here, and the checkpoint crossing
there, and the Israeli army comes in at night.
And maybe if you go and play games at the
internet place, you’re happy that you did
something for the day.” Refugee-camp teenagers
like these once fuelled the resistance to
occupation. Not now, said Munir: “All that
anger has been absorbed by depression.” Perhaps
some day, that anger will again rise. But for
now, said Anas: “People say ‘I’m exhausted, and
rocks will not liberate me’.”
Sandy Tolan is associate
professor at the Annenberg School for
Communication and Journalism at the University
of Southern California, and author of
The Lemon Tree: An Arab, a Jew, and the
Heart of the Middle East, Bloomsbury, London,
2006. This article was written with help from
Lubna
Takruri.
The
views
expressed in this article are those of the
authors and do not necessarily
reflect
those of The Jerusalem Fund.
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