A fugitive in my own country
Rana Baker
 |
| Rana Baker) |
Erez faded away slowly behind us. A panicked search for my watan,
homeland, gripped me as I took in my first glimpses of Palestine. The
driver, having uncovered my unacquainted introspection of my country, quickly assumed the role of a tourist guide.
Tourist, I say, because this is the role I had to take up
in so many instances in order to be present in places I am ordinarily
not allowed to set foot in according to racist Israeli policies.
I say tourist too because I was unable to recognize
Palestine in European immigrants chatting on the phone as they
nonchalantly waited at bus stops, or in streets that were named after
Jewish "national heroes." Palestine did not come into being in Hebrew
ads splattered everywhere I looked around me.
Looking for traces
The foreignness of the landscape was most shocking when the
driver introduced Givat Shaul, a small village whose character is
predominantly right-wing, as the site of one of the most horrendous
massacres in Palestinian history. Part of Givat Shaul was Deir Yassin.
I looked around for traces of Arab presence, a graveyard
perhaps or a still-standing house, but all I could see were glamorous
cars and rabbis in long white beards and black suits leaning on canes as
they crossed from one side of an ever-modern road to the other. Deir
Yassin disappeared irrecoverably.
I sat back in my seat disappointed in a place I thought was
mine but, paradoxically, was unable to recognize. This was a new
geography beneath which lie layers of uprooted Palestinian life, a life
forever buried under a coercing façade of normalcy that brutally
disregards a people whose entire existence was wiped out.
The only structure I could identify with throughout the
ride from Erez to Jeeb checkpoint — a checkpoint on the outskirts of
Ramallah — was Deir al-Latrun, a nineteenth-century monastery southeast
of al-Ramla, another ethnically cleansed Palestinian city.
Deir al-Latrun stood on a hilltop overlooking Jerusalem,
its ancient vernacular features at odds with the forced Europeanization
of everything surrounding it. It was only then that I saw Palestine for
the first time as it exists in my grandmother’s recollections.
This momentary (re)connection with my identity relieves and
torments me each time I try to describe so wrenching an experience as
finally feeling "in place" twenty-two years after I was born, alas for
no longer than a fleeting moment.
Erased and excluded
Today, Latrun’s Arab history is completely erased
on the tourism section of the Israeli government website, an invitingly
delusional line on the upper left hand corner of which states: "Come
find the Israel in you." The same website makes reference to Jewish and
Christian sites in the country. Muslims and their sites are
unequivocally excluded.
Latrun grew smaller in the distance and I took my eyes off
it only when it became no longer visible. About an hour later, we
stopped at Jeeb, a VIP checkpoint separating "Israel" from "Judea and
Samaria"—the occupied West Bank.
I cannot remember how the soldier guarding the checkpoint
might have looked like or what he might have said or done. I was
perplexed by the stark contrast between what lay before the checkpoint,
where we had just been, and what was ahead of us, where we were going.
Stark contrast
"Israel," as I described, looks very European, its roads
paved, bus stops, benches and stunning gardens everywhere one looks. The
landscape there attests to generous supplies of water, electricity and
restless innovation and infrastructural development.
These breathtaking monuments immediately disappeared just
as we entered the "other side" of Jeeb and were suddenly replaced by
slums, dilapidated buildings, broken roads and boys playing in the
sand. "Apartheid" was the only word I saw fit.
We drove into Ramallah; here, at least, the familiarity of the "bubble" was manifested in five-star hotels, fancy cafes, and in Haras al Rais (presidential guards) who dotted the roads and stood in front of ministries and foreign offices like formidable walls.
Even though I was conscious of the westernized outlook of
Ramallah and heavy presence of the Palestinian Authority police, I still
loved the old terraced houses and could barely resist feeling "at home"
whenever I looked at them. At first sight, I could not fully comprehend
why friends in Ramallah deliriously called it a "bubble" more often
than "Ramallah."
Outside the "bubble"
This appallingly shallow view of mine was soon to be
reversed. It only required a trip outside Ramallah for me to confront
the realities Ramallah was so detached from, so unforgivably oblivious
of, and deliberately so.
In the coming paragraphs and next piece (or two), I am
going to refer to individuals I met and learned so much from only in
first or nicknames. I do this at their request and out of new awareness I
developed that the Palestinian Authority’s intelligence apparatus is
always lurking behind these incredibly courageous people, ready to
harass them.
About two hours after I arrived in the "bubble," Ziyaad and
Ahmad, two friends living in Jerusalem and Ramallah, respectively, were
pointing out colonies on hilltops around Ramallah. To my embarrassed
ignorance, I did not know how settlements actually looked like from afar
and so I thought them beautiful Palestinian houses on Ramallah
hilltops, only to be shown otherwise.
This incident would remain with me each time I was about to be fascinated by lighted clusters I saw from my hotel room.
"Shabab"
Ziyaad and Ahmad took two other friends and me for a trip
to Jericho and Bethlehem. In order for us to reach Jericho, we had to
pass by Qalandiya checkpoint, the site of clashes that extended for
three consecutive days following the murderous Israeli killing of three Palestinian youth in Qalandiya refugee camp on 26 August.
Everyone I met in the West Bank referred to the masked young men who throw stones at Israeli occupation forces as the shabab.
The way the term — which in classical Arabic means "young men" — is
used in the West Bank intrigued me as completely different from the way
it is used in Gaza; here, it’s commonly used to describe young men who
sit idly in cafés or watch football games.
When we passed by Qalandiya, clashes were just ending, tires were still burning, stones splattered across the area, and masked shabab in sleeveless undershirts and jeans were walking back home, or so it seemed. "Doesn’t it look like a war zone?" Ziyaad remarked.
Jericho
Jericho’s dry air marked my first encounter with the
Palestinian desert. The euphoria that swept me was toned down abruptly
when I learned that Bedouins there are threatened with expulsion, a Prawer Plan that does not "show up" in the media.
I saw the Dead Sea, but only from afar because we
Palestinians are forbidden from entering Israeli resorts. Despite
Ziyaad’s Israeli-licensed car, which we could have used to pretend to be
Israeli, the presence of two friends who wore headscarves was
guaranteed to get us in trouble, if not arrested, merely because we were
Arabs venturing into fancy Dead Sea resorts.
Upon entering Jericho, a checkpoint controlled and
maintained by the Palestinian Authority "welcomed" us. When the Israeli
army decides to arrest someone from the city, Ziyaad told us, the PA
police manning the checkpoint disappear from the scene hours before the
Israeli invasion occurs.
We left Jericho after sunset. I was totally shaken by a
beauty from which I had been deprived for years, feeling "in place " —
I, a native Palestinian, there on a permit issued by the Israeli
government.
A ghetto that Israel did not need
"Bypass road" and "apartheid" are two phrases I have always
used in my essays, but now, I found out, I really understood neither.
To this minute, I am still unable to comprehend how I so conveniently
assumed myself to have had a "sufficient" background knowledge when I
only fell into awkward silences as Ziyaad explained.
On our way to Bethlehem, we drove through Eizariyah, a
Jerusalem neighbourhood on the Palestinian side of the apartheid — I say
"apartheid" confidently now — wall. When the wall was built after the
second intifada, Eizariya was cut off from the rest of Jerusalem
because, it seems, Israel did not "need" it.
Most Palestinians living in Eizariya are bearers of blue
Jerusalem ID cards but because they are no longer considered to be
Jerusalem residents, they will eventually lose their residency status.
The Israeli authorities revoke
residency status of Jerusalemites when they have "left Israel and
settled in a country outside Israel." This "outside Israel" includes
residence in the West Bank, Gaza and undefined Jerusalem suburbs like
Eizariyah.
Today, Eizariyah is a Palestinian ghetto that is neither
under Israeli nor Palestinian Authority jurisdiction. It is a
marginalized neighborhood with zero or minimum municipal services, its
dilapidated structures and uncollected garbage clear evidence of its
underdeveloped status.
Just parallel to Eizariyah is Maaleh Adumim,
the biggest Israeli settlement around Jerusalem, glimmering with lights
and adorned with Stars of David at its entrance, trees around it, and
Israeli police offering protection. I switched my eyes between Maaleh
Adumim and Eizariyah, the contrast between both impossible overlook.
A road for us only, to Bethlehem
No direct roads for us to Bethlehem. So we took
the dark and terrifyingly steep bypass road, a road for Palestinians
only that USAID paid for. I remember a giant lorry in front of us, a
feeling of an imminent slide down taking over our thoughts as we
helplessly tried to surpass it. A soldier at a checkpoint beamed a
blinding flashlight in our direction, then, as if this is how it should
be, waved us through.
The serenity of Bethlehem’s Church of Nativity enveloped
me. Tourists were ubiquitous, there at their convenience, unlike me, a
fugitive in my own country tracked down by a consulate that wanted me in
the hotel "right away."
Although tempted, I refused to walk into souvenir shops lest I behave like a tourist, lest I not be "at home."
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