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“Oh
God, please tell Sharon to end the curfew by this
Saturday so I can go to school.” This is how
my secular, eight year old daughter, Areen, has put
herself to sleep for the last two weeks. Areen, like
so many others here, have turned to the divine powers
to intervene in ending the five-month Israeli military
curfew that is imposed on Palestinian cities, villages
and refugee camps in the West Bank. As post 9-11 global
diplomacy patiently deliberates about how to proceed
after the failure of the Oslo Peace Accords, Israel
is systematically destroying Palestinian livelihood,
and with it, any hopes for a future reconciliation
between the two peoples.
Israel’s
systematic destruction of everything Palestinian is
not new, at least not to the Palestinians who have
survived, thus far, decades of Israeli destruction.
What is disturbing, however, is that this destruction
is being done in full view of the world community.
To add insult to injury, the destruction of our lives
is openly discussed and agreed to by Israeli judicial
and political institutions.
Setting
aside the political assassinations, the military onslaught
that took place when Israel violated the Oslo Accords
by invading Palestinian-controlled areas, the F-16’s
and the 60-ton Merkava battle tanks that have rampaged
Palestinian cities for two years now, the thousands
of Palestinian civilians and some elected officials
that have been imprisoned without charge or trial,
the acres of olive groves that have been bulldozed,
the Israeli settlements that have never ever stopped
growing, setting aside all of this and much more,
I would like to focus on a less visible aspect of
this systematic Israeli destruction of Palestinian
livelihood.
It
is casually termed in an Israeli military euphemism
as curfew. It is better described as military curfew.
In a more legal, human rights terminology it is called
collective punishment, and as a pen-pal recently pointed
out to me, it is more accurately described to a western
audience as a lockdown. Call it what you will, the
continuous policy of forcing, at gunpoint and tank
barrel, 1.5 million Palestinians to remain in their
homes is one of the most sophisticated forms of violence
around, only to be outdone by the occupation itself.
Some
who attempt to justify Israeli occupation will say
curfew is much less brutal than other means the Israeli
army regularly uses, and thus should not be spoken
about in such harsh terms. For the sake of argument,
let me explain in a personal sense, especially to
my Israeli neighbors, what curfew does to individuals,
families, businesses, and schools. I will let each
reader reach their own conclusions on what the world
should expect from Palestinians, let alone Palestinian
refugees, in the coming years.
First,
an Israeli military curfew is not a limited curfew
that is sometimes applied to minors in various American
cities. When Israel applies a curfew upon Palestinians
it is total, comprehensive and unannounced. Businesses
close, schools dismiss, government offices lock their
doors, pharmacies are closed, and medical services
are, for all intent and purpose, inaccessible to the
public. How is this so? This total closure is accomplished
by Israeli jeeps, tanks and armored personnel carries
roaming the narrow Palestinian streets with loud speakers
notifying all, in an awful Arabic accent, to go home.
This announcement is regularly accompanied by rapid
machine gun fire in the air and the exploding of tear
gas canisters and stun grenades in the open markets
to make sure people get the message. If the closure
takes place in midday, within a maximum of sixty minutes
the city will turn into a ghost town. If the closure
is announced during early morning hours (5am-7am),
as has increasingly been the case, the city never
wakes up.
While
under curfew/lockdown families are confined to their
homes. With 50% of Palestinians living in households
averaging 7 persons, of which 91% of the households
live in overcrowded conditions -- more than 1 person
per room (source: www.pcbs.org)
-- parents and children alike become quickly agitated.
Add to this that after nearly two years of continuous
Israeli destruction, the Palestinian economy is in
severe recession and thousands of families are not
able to stockpile enough basic food stuffs to get
them through until the next lifting of the curfew.
Per capita real income declined by 12 percent for
year 2000 as a whole, and by a further 19 percent
in year 2001. Additionally, the share of the Palestinian
population now living below the poverty line (US$2
per person per day) is currently estimated at 45-50
percent (source: www.worldbank.org)! These
startling numbers don’t faze the Israeli leaders,
who continue to send their soldiers to wreak havoc
on our lives. Israelis, soldiers and citizens alike,
have come to the ludicrous belief that the more Palestinians
are battered the more Israeli cities and civilians
will be safe. It is a sad state of mind, just as sad
as thinking that bombing Iraq will promote U.S. interests
at home and abroad.
After
a day, or two, or three - or in the case of Nablus,
66 - of being locked down for 24-hours one’s
nerves become on edge. Physically, the lack of exercise
starts to set in and muscles become stiff. Even when
the curfew is lifted for a few hours one does not
have time to think about anything but stockpiling
food for the next lockdown and rushing to work in
an attempt to do a week’s tasks in 4 or 6 hours.
Personally, I have two slipped discs that require
me to regularly walk for exercise. For five months,
we have been imprisoned every evening by Israeli curfew
and thus walking the streets of Ramallah, absorbing
the summer’s cool night breeze, is condemned
to our memories. The physical price I pay is living
with a continuous electric current that flares down
the back of both of my legs and awaking many nights
to painful leg cramps. My two girls, Areen and Nadine,
2 years old, are starting to show the lack of exercise
in their physical build. My wife, Abeer, miraculously
is able to stay fit as she holds together our family
life by keeping up with the household chores, continuously
playing with our girls in order to keep their attention
off the occasional tank or jeep that comes rumbling
down our street, and rationing our supplies just in
case the intermittent lifting of the curfew is cancelled.
From
a business perspective the situation is extremely
bleak. Although we go through the motions of being
employed when curfew is lifted, deep down inside we
know better than to think we can sustain this pace
for much longer. The great majority of companies have
lost their business feasibilities and many have already
lost their ability to keep employees onboard. The
significant business concerns that remain active in
the economy do so out of a national duty to their
country and employees and with a progressively diminishing
hope that the end of occupation is near. For those
lucky enough to still have a job, the majority are
having curfew days deducted from their salaries. This
deduction amounts to workers getting paychecks that
are cut by 10-50%, depending on the month. An increasing
number of Palestinians who have the ability to do
so have chosen, or were forced, to leave Palestine
in search of employment elsewhere. In the beginning
of the Intifada, this was limited to individuals;
today entire companies are contemplating taking their
operations elsewhere. For those of us remaining home,
the natural aspiration of career-building has been
replaced by a slow recognition that we are rapidly
falling behind in our professions and may never be
able to get back on track - a daunting personal realization,
especially for those that have the luxury to leave.
For
students, the nerve-racking reality that schools and
universities will be disrupted for yet another year
is inexplicable. Throughout thirty-six years of Israeli
occupation, Palestinians prided themselves on having
one asset that not even the harshest policies of the
occupation could take away - their minds. Traditionally,
education was second only to family in Palestinian
life. Universities managed to hold classes and graduate
students throughout many year of crisis. Day-cares,
elementary schools and grade schools never faced conditions
that caused their prolonged closures or forced sustained
disruptions. But today, with the seemingly calm Israeli
policy of curfew, all of this has changed. As the
words of my daughter depict, even third-graders are
feeling the structural damage that is being caused
by the disruption of the educational system by the
curfews. To add additional complexities to the policy
of destruction, the curfews are accompanied by closures,
which separate every Palestinian population center
from the every other, thus putting Israeli military
roadblocks and checkpoints between students and their
school or university. Some villages have actually
had Israeli Caterpillar bulldozers dig up the roads
leading in and out of the village and replace them
with mounds of dirt. These Palestinian villages, for
the past 24 months, amount to open air prisons, worthy
of using the word lockdown instead of curfew. In short,
it is now common knowledge in Palestine that an entire
generation has been sentenced by Sharon to illiteracy,
or at best, ignorance.
Setting
aside the fear instilled in every household by yet
another Israeli military phenomenon of house-to-house
searches, which take place day and night while the
curfews are imposed, this is how we have lived for
the last five months. If my youngest daughter exemplifies
the effect of curfew on Palestinian children, then
her first set of words - “dabbabeh” (tank),
“naqelet jonnood” (personnel
carrier), “tayyara” (fighter jet) - portray
the challenge we face to rehabilitate an entire generation.
A ray of hope may be that she sometimes refers to
Israeli soldiers as, “Ammou” (uncle).
Those
of us that have not lost any family members to this
madness feel lucky. Those of us that still have all
of our utilities intact cannot complain. Those of
us that can claim to still be employed are thankful
to those investors that remain engaged in Palestine.
Those of us that are lucky, cannot complain and are
thankful are rapidly becoming a minority in Palestine.
Word
on the street has it that we will be under 24-hr curfew/lockdown
throughout the upcoming Jewish holidays. As my Israeli
neighbors prepare for their holiday season, I wonder
if they would join my daughter’s nightly prayer
for her school to open as scheduled. In the meantime,
we will continue to build our state between curfews.
Al-Bireh/Ramallah
August 28, 2002
•
Sam Bahour is a Palestinian-American businessman
living in the besieged Palestinian City of Al-Bireh
in the West Bank and can be reached at sbahour@palnet.com.
He is co-author of HOMELAND: Oral Histories of
Palestine and Palestinians (1994). To be added
to his mailing list, send an email with the word ‘subscribe’
in the subject.
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