Going
Nowhere: The Real Road Map
For Palestinians
By
Daniel Jacob Quinn
writing
from northern West Bank
Electronic
Intifada
20 July, 2003
Roula
and I left Jerusalem early this morning to go to Nablus to see some
PCRF cases. It should be a 45 minute drive. Four hours later, we were
still several miles outside of Nablus. There were 5 checkpoints between
the Qalandia checkpoint and Nablus - each more barbaric and degrading
than the next. We shared a service taxi (which seats 7, plus the driver)
from Qalandia. Roula struck up a conversation with really nice man from
Nablus, Abu Anais, who has a wife and seven children. He had gone to
Jerusalem for a temporary job and was going home with a bag full of
gifts for his wife and kids.
Roula told him we
were trying to see Ahmad Hammami, a 2 year old Palestinian boy for whom
the Palestine Children's Relief Fund coordinated free heart surgery
at Washington DC's Children's Hospital this past February. Abu Anais
said not to worry, that he would help us find the family (we didn't
have an actual address, only a general neighborhood in Nablus... but
he knew of Beit Hammami ("the Hammami household"). He also
told us that if we could not find Ahmad and his family, or if we were
delayed in any way, that we would be welcome to stay with him and his
family. This is typical Palestinian hospitality and kindess to strangers
that never makes the headlines.
Then we hit the
next checkpoint. Israeli soldiers with armored jeeps blocked the road
and were forcing all vehicles to stop. We were 5th in line. All of the
vehicles in front of us -- one medical supply van, a truck filled with
bales of hay, a passenger car, and another service taxi -- were forced
to turn back. When the soldiers motioned us forward, he peered into
the car, saw 7 men and 1 woman and told everyone to get out. He took
our passports and the other guys' ID's - color coded, orange or green.
This helps the soldiers decide who to single out for the most humiliating
treatment.
We were forced to
wait standing under an unforgiving sun in the scorching heat. One of
the gunmen tried to speak to us in Arabic -- a trap -- but Roula and
I responded that we needed him to speak English. We truly did. If Roula
revealed that she spoke Arabic -- with Lebanon stamped on her US passport
as place of birth -- who knows what would have happened. This 18-year
boy with a big gun and a small conscience smirked the entire time at
us as he sat in the shade of his vehicle while our papers were reviewed
by one of the other gunmen. He finally came over and said we needed
to go back. No explanations. No understanding of our situation. No desire
to care. A heart of stone as hard as Pharoah.
The cab driver was
not easily turned back. We turned off the main road onto an unpaved
dirt road. I looked ahead at the rocky passage that seemed to go directly
up the mountain. I was reminded of the passage from the book of Psalms:
"I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills from whence cometh mine
help." Of course, I'm a selective chooser of verses because the
same Psalm goes on to say "the sun shall not burn thee by day"
-- and today's experience did little to help the sunburn I got waiting
the 6 hours in the desert outside of Jericho on Sunday!
After 2 more checkpoints
-- or was it three, as they become a blur -- we reached the final one
before the main Huwarrwa checkpoint, notorious for its treatment of
Palestinians as well as international visitors. And there we waited
for an hour while they held Roula's and my passports. Our cab driver
was reluctant to leave us, but we told him we could not let him wait
with a cab full of these good men on our account -- men who shared with
us gum, water, and humor. As Abu Anais said, "We laugh to keep
from crying. What kind of life is this? Well, it is our life. So we
laugh."
So our mission to
Nablus failed. We had to turn back towards Jerusalem. The driver took
us as far as Bir Zeit, the seat of the great Palestinian center of learning,
Bir Zeit University. The town and university are cut off from Ramallah
by a checkpoint and road closure. The sea of humanity on either side
of the closure was overwhelming: Pregnant women carrying their bags
and small children... Old men with canes trying to navigate their way
across the boulders and concrete squares that the Israeli gunmen decorate
as dice. Truly, this is a game for them and a crapshoot for the Palestinians.
Who can say if they will reach their homes? their children? their jobs?
their classes? their appointments with the doctor?
All of this in the
name of security? All of this humiliation and disruption? All of these
instruments of apartheid and racism? All of these efforts to ethnically
cleanse Palestine of its people? And all of this bought and paid for
by billions of American tax dollars every year.
For Roula, this
is her first real experience dealing directly with the occupation forces.
And as a Palestinian witness to the crimes being committed against her
own people while the world does nothing, it hit her hard. As much as
I write, there really are no words to describe it. No pictures, no video
footage. Nothing can communicate the truth about the barbaric acts of
the Israeli military and government. One has to walk the dusty roads
between checkpoints and climb the hills in a beat-up car for themselves
to truly understand what's going on here. And as much as I lift up mine
eyes unto the hills, I see no help for this catastrophic situation.
When will justice be served? How long O Lord?
The reason Roula
and I had to turn back before seeing Ahmad and his family was that I
had a late afternoon meeting here in Ramallah regarding the new counseling
project for Palestinian NGOs. Ironically, the meeting with the Jerusalem
Legal Aid and Human Rights Center. Legal obligations and human rights
have no place in official Israeli vocabulary. The director of the agency
is from the West Bank. Because of Israel's Apartheid system, he can't
go to Jerusalem. It's an abominable situation and every American should
be outraged that our tax money supports this oppressive regime.
Daniel Quinn is a licensed clinical social worker with a local public
school system. Last summer, he lived and worked for 2 months in the
Gaza Strip and the West Bank, volunteering as a clinical consultant
with the Palestine Children's Relief Fund.