On the very last day of my trip with Interfaith Peace-Builders, we met with Omar Barghouti, one of the founding members of the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel and a leading advocate of BDS (boycott, divestment and sanctions) as a nonviolent form of resistance against Israeli colonialism and apartheid.
I knew we were in for a treat because I've heard Omar speak before and he is teh awesome. Calm, logical, humane, amazingly articulate, often funny, angry but never hateful, he's just one of those people who manages to say ten inspiring things every time he opens his mouth.
We talked a lot about BDS and Omar said a lot of smart things, but there was one thing he said that really stuck with me. "If you're not resisting this system, it can kill you." He talked about his firm belief that resistance is liberating and empowering and sometimes the only means of maintaining your humanity under oppression.
This stuck with me because it fit with something I started thinking about in Gaza, where so many people had endured things that would seem to be unendurable. While I was there, something clicked in my head, about how sometimes resistance isn't so much a conscious choice but an instinctive survival mechanism. How sometimes it's the only way to hold on to your sanity in the face of so much pain. The only way to feel like you have some agency when your oppressor controls everything in your life down to when the lights go on and off.
Systems of oppression are not stable. They are governed by their own internal dynamics, which force both sides into confrontation whether they're prepared for it or not. Oppressors, unchecked, grow into bottomless pits of power-hungriness. No concession, no degree of passivity and submission and boot-licking is ever enough for them. If you give them an inch, they'll take everything you've got. At the same time, very few human beings can stand to be ground down indefinitely. Eventually one of two things will happen. Either they'll push you so hard against the wall that you have no choice but to fight back--resistance or death--or some particular injustice will just be too much to bear, snapping some deeply-buried tripwire of defiance that makes you explode in a spontaneous, instinctive act of rebellion.
Of course, in a system of oppression any resistance will be punished, and often punished with disproportionate and spectacular cruelty. It seems paradoxical that the thing that can free you will also make you suffer. But you must remember that something else happens when you fight back. All of a sudden you remember that you are a human being, with agency and choices and control over your actions. You stop being paralyzed by fear and remember that they don't control everything you do. When you're busy being compliant and obedient, all you feel is their power over you. But when you resist you start to feel your own.
Sunday, August 29, 2010
Tuesday, August 24, 2010
bil'in friday
Video coming soon. Stupid non-Mac-compatible camera.
The first day after the delegation is officially over is a Friday, and a few of us who are still around go out to the protest in Bil'in. The residents of Bil'in hold a weekly nonviolent demonstration to protest the confiscation of the village's agricultural land by the Apartheid Wall. While Bil'in is far from the only village that holds these nonviolent protests, they've been at it for over five years and have become one of the more famous.
We manage to find a cab driver with a big enough vehicle to fit all of us, but then realize he doesn't really know how to get there. This is not helped by the fact that many Palestinian towns and villages are not marked on Israeli road signs. Thank God someone has one of those handy maps we got from UN OCHA showing every road and movement obstruction in the West Bank! We arrive in plenty of time to meet the demonstration at the assembly point across from the Bil'in Popular Committee headquarters.
There are not too many internationals in the crowd today, but there is a good crew of Israelis. Israeli activists--mostly young anarchists, with a few old lefties mixed in--participate in this and many other of the Friday demonstrations every week. Of course the vast majority of the crowd is Palestinians, from Bil'in and other places in the West Bank. We see some folks we recognize from Nablus.
The march out of the village is spirited despite the ungodly heat. The aim of every week's demonstration is to march through the gate in the wall and onto Bil'in's village land. I don't know when they last made it through. The gate is at the end of a narrow path on top of a steep, rocky hill, giving the Israeli army the high ground, the most favorable position, and us the least.
Sometimes the soldiers hang back a little but this time they're ready to meet us, lined up in two rows in front of the gate, in full riot gear with tear gas launchers at the ready. It's hot and they want to get this over with quickly.
Because none of us have taken the nonviolent resistance training workshop offered by the Bil'in Popular Committee, we're advised to stay at the back of the demonstration. There's a bit of a stand-off, that tense pre-melee dance that goes on whenever the unarmed side is daring the armed side to attack. Some kids skitter up the scrubbly embankment near Bassem's grave and pick up rocks. Demonstration organizers are up at the front in a second, trying to convince the kids to put down the rocks. Many people consider rock-throwing, a tradition from the First Intifada, to be within the spectrum of nonviolent resistance when the other side has live ammunition, but they're still trying to stop them, determined the soldiers should not have any excuse even though they don't need one.
Meanwhile the front of the demonstration has pushed right up against the riot shields of the first line of soldiers. Many times there are internationals at the front of the demonstration but this week it's all Palestinians, which means the response is expected to be quick and harsh. After five years of confronting soldiers, these people aren't scared of shit. They're primed, on their toes, donning bandannas, keffiyahs and gas masks, waiting for the skirmish to begin. Some of the shebab are laughing at us, hanging out in the back, sending us friendly challenges to come up to the front with them. Other people are looking out for us, giving us advice as we're obviously newbies. Someone passes out cut onions, to counter tear gas inhalation. "Remember to look up," a young guy reminds us, gesturing at the sky. Tear gas canisters fly hundreds of meters, get scalding hot, and contain an explosive charge to disperse the gas. Even if you're not directly targeted you can be injured if one hits you or lands close by.
People have lots of tips, but there's only one instruction you really need to remember. "When they fire the tear gas, run."
And all of a sudden, they do. I have enough time to hear the person next to me say "Run," then all hell breaks loose. I can hear the sharp cracks of tear gas canisters going off somewhere behind me; I shoot a glance back toward the gate and see the area where the kids were gathering rocks is already thick with those sinister white trails of descending gas.
It turns out run means RUN and soon the majority of the crowd is sprinting up the path back toward the village. You have to be quick because sometimes the soldiers are right behind you. Young men from the front of the demonstration have already made it all the way to the back, some carrying their coughing, choking friends between them. How the hell did they run so fast? I guess if you do this every week for five years you get in pretty good shape. I am not in pretty good shape and it's taking all my concentration to keep moving without tripping, colliding with someone or passing out. It's so hot it's like running through soup. I'm secretly glad we stayed in the back because I don't think I could physically have run the distance from the front to safety. I can't imagine having the wherewithal to be directing the action or helping someone to safety right now; it's all I can do to take care of myself.
Another round of loud cracks--five, six, ten at a time. I look away from the path just long enough to see a bright white cloud of tear gas blooming on the ground just feet behind me. We must be several hundred meters away from the soldiers at this point. The wind is not in our favor, blowing all the gas back toward the village. I get one good waft of it--hot, acrid, stinging, burning the skin, eyes and throat. It seems harsher than the tear gas I've encountered at protests in the Americas. Maybe I've never been this close to it or maybe the Israelis have their own extra-evil mix. I remember to breathe through my keffiyah but one whiff is enough to give me a pack-a-day-smoker's rasp the rest of the way back to the village.
Some weeks there's more back-and-forth between the soldiers and the protesters, but this Friday when the intense heat makes fainting and respiratory problems more likely, the majority of protesters head back to the village after one round of confrontation. A few hard-core shebab stick it out by the gate, slinging rocks at the soldiers in the thick of the tear gas. No one's going to stop them once the gas starts flying.
Afterward we're all invited to Iyad Burnat's house for tea and recuperation. He looks gently amused by our sweat-soaked dishevelment. "That was mild!" he says with a grin. Sometimes the soldiers chase people all the way back into the village and fire tear gas into the houses. "My daughter knew the smell of tear gas when she was one month old," he says. He shows us a spent canister of the kind the army was firing today. This kind can travel 500 meters.
Iyad has that quintessential Palestinian mix of warmth, humor, stubbornness and dignity, always with a little bit of sadness underneath. Bassem's martyr poster hangs on the living room wall, along with a picture of a relative who's served eight years of a nine-year sentence in Israeli prison. Iyad discusses a new flanking maneuver they've been trying out to get around the soldiers and up to the gate. He talks about it like a military operation, which I guess it sort of is, except only one side is armed.
Iyad's wife brings out Bil'in handicrafts for sale and serves up cup after cup of sweet Palestinian mint tea. Meanwhile their kids pile into the living room, eager to entertain us. The girl can sing and one of the boys dances, a bundle of spastic energy. Iyad seems like he'd be a great dad, someone who'd raise his kids to be kind and always hold their heads up. I think about the fearful thoughts he must have sometimes, about how his kids will be made to pay for his being a leader of the resistance. At the same time it's so obvious that this is what he's fighting for. This is the only reason people who live here need to go out and face the soldiers week after week. And after I've caught my breath and drunk some tea, I'm ready to go back and do it again too.
The first day after the delegation is officially over is a Friday, and a few of us who are still around go out to the protest in Bil'in. The residents of Bil'in hold a weekly nonviolent demonstration to protest the confiscation of the village's agricultural land by the Apartheid Wall. While Bil'in is far from the only village that holds these nonviolent protests, they've been at it for over five years and have become one of the more famous.
We manage to find a cab driver with a big enough vehicle to fit all of us, but then realize he doesn't really know how to get there. This is not helped by the fact that many Palestinian towns and villages are not marked on Israeli road signs. Thank God someone has one of those handy maps we got from UN OCHA showing every road and movement obstruction in the West Bank! We arrive in plenty of time to meet the demonstration at the assembly point across from the Bil'in Popular Committee headquarters.
There are not too many internationals in the crowd today, but there is a good crew of Israelis. Israeli activists--mostly young anarchists, with a few old lefties mixed in--participate in this and many other of the Friday demonstrations every week. Of course the vast majority of the crowd is Palestinians, from Bil'in and other places in the West Bank. We see some folks we recognize from Nablus.
The march out of the village is spirited despite the ungodly heat. The aim of every week's demonstration is to march through the gate in the wall and onto Bil'in's village land. I don't know when they last made it through. The gate is at the end of a narrow path on top of a steep, rocky hill, giving the Israeli army the high ground, the most favorable position, and us the least.
Sometimes the soldiers hang back a little but this time they're ready to meet us, lined up in two rows in front of the gate, in full riot gear with tear gas launchers at the ready. It's hot and they want to get this over with quickly.
Because none of us have taken the nonviolent resistance training workshop offered by the Bil'in Popular Committee, we're advised to stay at the back of the demonstration. There's a bit of a stand-off, that tense pre-melee dance that goes on whenever the unarmed side is daring the armed side to attack. Some kids skitter up the scrubbly embankment near Bassem's grave and pick up rocks. Demonstration organizers are up at the front in a second, trying to convince the kids to put down the rocks. Many people consider rock-throwing, a tradition from the First Intifada, to be within the spectrum of nonviolent resistance when the other side has live ammunition, but they're still trying to stop them, determined the soldiers should not have any excuse even though they don't need one.
Meanwhile the front of the demonstration has pushed right up against the riot shields of the first line of soldiers. Many times there are internationals at the front of the demonstration but this week it's all Palestinians, which means the response is expected to be quick and harsh. After five years of confronting soldiers, these people aren't scared of shit. They're primed, on their toes, donning bandannas, keffiyahs and gas masks, waiting for the skirmish to begin. Some of the shebab are laughing at us, hanging out in the back, sending us friendly challenges to come up to the front with them. Other people are looking out for us, giving us advice as we're obviously newbies. Someone passes out cut onions, to counter tear gas inhalation. "Remember to look up," a young guy reminds us, gesturing at the sky. Tear gas canisters fly hundreds of meters, get scalding hot, and contain an explosive charge to disperse the gas. Even if you're not directly targeted you can be injured if one hits you or lands close by.
People have lots of tips, but there's only one instruction you really need to remember. "When they fire the tear gas, run."
And all of a sudden, they do. I have enough time to hear the person next to me say "Run," then all hell breaks loose. I can hear the sharp cracks of tear gas canisters going off somewhere behind me; I shoot a glance back toward the gate and see the area where the kids were gathering rocks is already thick with those sinister white trails of descending gas.
It turns out run means RUN and soon the majority of the crowd is sprinting up the path back toward the village. You have to be quick because sometimes the soldiers are right behind you. Young men from the front of the demonstration have already made it all the way to the back, some carrying their coughing, choking friends between them. How the hell did they run so fast? I guess if you do this every week for five years you get in pretty good shape. I am not in pretty good shape and it's taking all my concentration to keep moving without tripping, colliding with someone or passing out. It's so hot it's like running through soup. I'm secretly glad we stayed in the back because I don't think I could physically have run the distance from the front to safety. I can't imagine having the wherewithal to be directing the action or helping someone to safety right now; it's all I can do to take care of myself.
Another round of loud cracks--five, six, ten at a time. I look away from the path just long enough to see a bright white cloud of tear gas blooming on the ground just feet behind me. We must be several hundred meters away from the soldiers at this point. The wind is not in our favor, blowing all the gas back toward the village. I get one good waft of it--hot, acrid, stinging, burning the skin, eyes and throat. It seems harsher than the tear gas I've encountered at protests in the Americas. Maybe I've never been this close to it or maybe the Israelis have their own extra-evil mix. I remember to breathe through my keffiyah but one whiff is enough to give me a pack-a-day-smoker's rasp the rest of the way back to the village.
Some weeks there's more back-and-forth between the soldiers and the protesters, but this Friday when the intense heat makes fainting and respiratory problems more likely, the majority of protesters head back to the village after one round of confrontation. A few hard-core shebab stick it out by the gate, slinging rocks at the soldiers in the thick of the tear gas. No one's going to stop them once the gas starts flying.
Afterward we're all invited to Iyad Burnat's house for tea and recuperation. He looks gently amused by our sweat-soaked dishevelment. "That was mild!" he says with a grin. Sometimes the soldiers chase people all the way back into the village and fire tear gas into the houses. "My daughter knew the smell of tear gas when she was one month old," he says. He shows us a spent canister of the kind the army was firing today. This kind can travel 500 meters.
Iyad has that quintessential Palestinian mix of warmth, humor, stubbornness and dignity, always with a little bit of sadness underneath. Bassem's martyr poster hangs on the living room wall, along with a picture of a relative who's served eight years of a nine-year sentence in Israeli prison. Iyad discusses a new flanking maneuver they've been trying out to get around the soldiers and up to the gate. He talks about it like a military operation, which I guess it sort of is, except only one side is armed.
Iyad's wife brings out Bil'in handicrafts for sale and serves up cup after cup of sweet Palestinian mint tea. Meanwhile their kids pile into the living room, eager to entertain us. The girl can sing and one of the boys dances, a bundle of spastic energy. Iyad seems like he'd be a great dad, someone who'd raise his kids to be kind and always hold their heads up. I think about the fearful thoughts he must have sometimes, about how his kids will be made to pay for his being a leader of the resistance. At the same time it's so obvious that this is what he's fighting for. This is the only reason people who live here need to go out and face the soldiers week after week. And after I've caught my breath and drunk some tea, I'm ready to go back and do it again too.
Saturday, August 21, 2010
new look + new title
Blogger has made some new template designs that are very clean and easy to read, so I'm trying one out for a slightly more professional look.
I also decided I needed a new title for this blog, since I am no longer on the left coast and don't plan to return any time soon. I got a few suggestions (I thought my sister's idea of "Laura Left the Left Coast" was pretty funny) but in the end I decided simple was best. I think the new title also reflects the blog's evolution from its initial hey-I'm-moving-across-the-country roots to something that is mostly political in nature.
I haven't decided yet if I'm getting a new URL, because I hate it when someone does that and you have to change all your bookmarks. I'll keep you posted.
I also decided I needed a new title for this blog, since I am no longer on the left coast and don't plan to return any time soon. I got a few suggestions (I thought my sister's idea of "Laura Left the Left Coast" was pretty funny) but in the end I decided simple was best. I think the new title also reflects the blog's evolution from its initial hey-I'm-moving-across-the-country roots to something that is mostly political in nature.
I haven't decided yet if I'm getting a new URL, because I hate it when someone does that and you have to change all your bookmarks. I'll keep you posted.
Friday, August 20, 2010
what happens at the allenby bridge...if you're palestinian
Having dinner last night with some friends who'd read my blog, I joked that I'd met the Israeli Dolores Umbridge at the Allenby Bridge. "Yeah, I was waiting for her to make me write stuff in my own blood," I said. "If I were Palestinian, she would have."
Then, today, I remembered the story of young Gazan journalist Mohammed Omer. And suddenly it didn't seem like so much of a joke.
Then, today, I remembered the story of young Gazan journalist Mohammed Omer. And suddenly it didn't seem like so much of a joke.
Wednesday, August 18, 2010
was i targeted for refusing to get out of the palestinian line at the allenby bridge?
Pamela Olson, commenting on Mondoweiss, seems to think so, and I think I agree.
I've thought a lot about the initial interaction with Israeli security at the Allenby Bridge, the first passport check that set off the whole chain of events, particularly because it was my first meeting with Skinny Jeans, the woman who became my primary interrogator. Maybe I'm reading too much into little moments, but damn, I couldn't have written a better character introduction. The way she popped up right by my side, just minutes after I'd relented and gone over to the "tourist" line, meant that it's very possible she watched the whole interaction between me and the soldier who tried to pull me out of line. She might have been standing there the whole time and I didn't notice her because I was busy feeling so horrible about being forced back into my place of privilege in the tourist line. Actually at that exact moment I was concentrating most of my energy on not crying over how unjust and dehumanizing the whole border system is. Sympathy with Palestinians!!! I bet she could smell that shit like a bloodhound. I can almost imagine her muttering: "Oh, you want to go where your Palestinian friends go? We can arrange that."
Of course there is no way of knowing for sure if my being singled out was an act of random terror, blanket young-person profiling, or targeted cruelty. But knowing what I know of the IOF, I tend to lean toward "targeted cruelty." Was everything that happened the rest of the day just punishment for trying to stay with my newly-made Palestinian friends in the line they had to wait in? I wouldn't put it past them. Not when the punishment for holding a Turkish flag at a Flotilla protest is a crippling and potentially fatal injury. Not after the targeted destruction I saw in Gaza, the attacks on schools, hospitals, the main UN food warehouse, attacks that were unmistakably completely intentional.
One reason this explanation feels likely is that it fits with the Israeli M.O. of disproportionate response. Ten seconds of disobedience, unsuccessful and over something that's really purely symbolic? Five hours' harassment for you! Yup, that feels about disproportionate enough.
Pamela Olson makes a very good argument that the border is not the best place to be noncompliant, because they have a lot of power there. And this is the strategy I followed when I was traveling with other people who could be put at risk by my belligerent tendencies. But on my own, sometimes I just can't help it. I also think, they're the occupying power. They have a lot of power everywhere. And as the occupying power, they'll always set things up so that the spaces where you have direct contact with them are places where they're strong and you're weak. Borders, checkpoints, home invasions, patrolling soldiers--they're all just various choke points of the occupation. So if the border is not the space to be noncompliant, where is?
I realize there's another reason I like the targeted-response explanation over randomness. In a weird way, it puts the agency back in my hands. They're responding to me. They might appear to have all the power, but secretly I'm controlling the action. I did something to provoke them and they have to respond. And yes, I'm aware the consequences could have included deportation. But the idea that one minuscule act of noncompliance could bring this whole enormous system of repression lumbering into action--three interrogators, five hours of questioning, who knows how much energy and resources--is kind of funny, and also kind of empowering. The fact that the tiniest acts of resistance provoke such an insane response ultimately betrays their weakness and their fear of being challenged in any way.
Of course the point of disproportionate response is to terrify; to make the price for the smallest act of resistance so appallingly high that no one will dare challenge them. So it follows that the only way to defeat that repressive strategy is to keep resisting anyway, no matter what the price. Easier said than done, I know. Don't get me wrong--I know just how high the price can get. But that's the only way.
I've thought a lot about the initial interaction with Israeli security at the Allenby Bridge, the first passport check that set off the whole chain of events, particularly because it was my first meeting with Skinny Jeans, the woman who became my primary interrogator. Maybe I'm reading too much into little moments, but damn, I couldn't have written a better character introduction. The way she popped up right by my side, just minutes after I'd relented and gone over to the "tourist" line, meant that it's very possible she watched the whole interaction between me and the soldier who tried to pull me out of line. She might have been standing there the whole time and I didn't notice her because I was busy feeling so horrible about being forced back into my place of privilege in the tourist line. Actually at that exact moment I was concentrating most of my energy on not crying over how unjust and dehumanizing the whole border system is. Sympathy with Palestinians!!! I bet she could smell that shit like a bloodhound. I can almost imagine her muttering: "Oh, you want to go where your Palestinian friends go? We can arrange that."
Of course there is no way of knowing for sure if my being singled out was an act of random terror, blanket young-person profiling, or targeted cruelty. But knowing what I know of the IOF, I tend to lean toward "targeted cruelty." Was everything that happened the rest of the day just punishment for trying to stay with my newly-made Palestinian friends in the line they had to wait in? I wouldn't put it past them. Not when the punishment for holding a Turkish flag at a Flotilla protest is a crippling and potentially fatal injury. Not after the targeted destruction I saw in Gaza, the attacks on schools, hospitals, the main UN food warehouse, attacks that were unmistakably completely intentional.
One reason this explanation feels likely is that it fits with the Israeli M.O. of disproportionate response. Ten seconds of disobedience, unsuccessful and over something that's really purely symbolic? Five hours' harassment for you! Yup, that feels about disproportionate enough.
Pamela Olson makes a very good argument that the border is not the best place to be noncompliant, because they have a lot of power there. And this is the strategy I followed when I was traveling with other people who could be put at risk by my belligerent tendencies. But on my own, sometimes I just can't help it. I also think, they're the occupying power. They have a lot of power everywhere. And as the occupying power, they'll always set things up so that the spaces where you have direct contact with them are places where they're strong and you're weak. Borders, checkpoints, home invasions, patrolling soldiers--they're all just various choke points of the occupation. So if the border is not the space to be noncompliant, where is?
I realize there's another reason I like the targeted-response explanation over randomness. In a weird way, it puts the agency back in my hands. They're responding to me. They might appear to have all the power, but secretly I'm controlling the action. I did something to provoke them and they have to respond. And yes, I'm aware the consequences could have included deportation. But the idea that one minuscule act of noncompliance could bring this whole enormous system of repression lumbering into action--three interrogators, five hours of questioning, who knows how much energy and resources--is kind of funny, and also kind of empowering. The fact that the tiniest acts of resistance provoke such an insane response ultimately betrays their weakness and their fear of being challenged in any way.
Of course the point of disproportionate response is to terrify; to make the price for the smallest act of resistance so appallingly high that no one will dare challenge them. So it follows that the only way to defeat that repressive strategy is to keep resisting anyway, no matter what the price. Easier said than done, I know. Don't get me wrong--I know just how high the price can get. But that's the only way.
Tuesday, August 17, 2010
soldiers on buses
On the first day after the delegation is officially over, some of us who are staying on longer take Palestinian public transit back to Jerusalem from Ramallah. Our delegation tour bus with the yellow Israeli license plates has breezed through with barely a glance from the soldiers at Kalandia checkpoint. On the Palestinian bus a soldier with an M-16 comes on board to check every ID. When he turns to look at my traveling companions' passports his gun is inches from my face.
(We foreign passport holders still get off easy. We get to stay on the bus instead of having to get off and walk through the cattle-chute-subway-turnstile-metal-detector-bored-soldier maze of Kalandia on foot.)
You may know that active-duty soldiers ride public buses in Israel. In Haifa there are soldiers everywhere. Boy soldiers with M-16s bouncing casually on their hips like man-purses. Girl soldiers giggling and texting on their cell phones, wearing their army fatigues slightly customized like prep school uniforms. Boy and girl seem appropriate designations for them, since not a one looks over 20. They could be at summer camp.
I think how sick it is to put soldiers on public buses. How it's a way of normalizing the extreme militarization of Israeli society. How ludicrous it is for the Israeli government to shriek about Hamas mixing combatants with civilians in Gaza when they themselves do it every day.
When my Palestinian traveling companion and I get on one bus in Haifa, we both look around and realize there is not a single open seat that's not next to a soldier. We both instinctively stand.
(We foreign passport holders still get off easy. We get to stay on the bus instead of having to get off and walk through the cattle-chute-subway-turnstile-metal-detector-bored-soldier maze of Kalandia on foot.)
You may know that active-duty soldiers ride public buses in Israel. In Haifa there are soldiers everywhere. Boy soldiers with M-16s bouncing casually on their hips like man-purses. Girl soldiers giggling and texting on their cell phones, wearing their army fatigues slightly customized like prep school uniforms. Boy and girl seem appropriate designations for them, since not a one looks over 20. They could be at summer camp.
I think how sick it is to put soldiers on public buses. How it's a way of normalizing the extreme militarization of Israeli society. How ludicrous it is for the Israeli government to shriek about Hamas mixing combatants with civilians in Gaza when they themselves do it every day.
When my Palestinian traveling companion and I get on one bus in Haifa, we both look around and realize there is not a single open seat that's not next to a soldier. We both instinctively stand.
Saturday, August 14, 2010
at the allenby bridge
Update: This story has now been cross-posted on the wonderful blog Mondoweiss, where it has gotten some very insightful comments.
The Allenby/King Hussein Bridge over the Jordan River is the only border crossing between Jordan and Palestine/Israel that Palestinians with West Bank IDs are allowed to use. This means that although it's on the most direct route between Jerusalem and Amman, it's a maze of long lines, bureaucratic hassles and "security" obstacles, a headache at best and a nightmare at worst, just one more of the umpteen million ways the Israeli occupation makes life difficult for the Palestinians. So of course I wanted to go through it.
Crossing from Palestine/Israel to Jordan is a bit slow but nothing dramatic. But crossing back into Israel to catch my flight out of Ben Gurion Airport a few days later turns out to be a whole different experience.
I arrive on the Jordanian side of the border around 10am and get in a long, crowded line that appears to be all Palestinians. I've heard there is a "VIP" area for tourists but if the Palestinians have to wait in this line, I'm going to wait in this line.
Jordanian border officials are handing out forms that are only in Arabic. I quickly make a Palestinian line-friend, a young woman in a cute pink hijab who speaks English, who is able to find out from the border official that I don't need to fill out the form. She offers to help me through the border crossing process, but as soon as that happens an official comes over and tries to steer me out of the Palestinian line to the VIP area. Knowing I'm at the beginning of a long process, I reluctantly follow him, but I feel awful leaving the long line of Palestinian travelers for the tourist area, which is basically empty. I decide that the next time someone tries to segregate me from Palestinians, I'll try to refuse.
The Jordanian officials are friendly, at least with us tourists, and the exit process is pretty straightforward. By 11:30 I'm over the bridge and into the Israeli security terminal on the other side. Then the real fun begins.
It's crowded, noisy, kids everywhere, and the Israeli soldiers keep giving us arbitrary orders to back up, move here, move there. I'm waiting with a giant clump of Palestinians to get up to the first passport control station when there's a sudden commotion somewhere behind me. I can't really see what's going on, but the next thing I know all the Israeli soldiers are yelling "Yalla! Yalla! Yalla!" ["Let's go!" in Arabic] and herding us like cattle through the border control stations into the waiting area on the other side. I see a line of plainclothes dudes with M-16s go racing by toward the terminal entrance. It seems there's been some kind of security scare and the terminal's being locked down.
While I'm waiting with everyone else in the pen, surrounded by soldiers who of course are not telling us anything about what's going on, I make another line-friend, a young Palestinian guy who we'll call M. M instantly introduces me to his mother and six or seven brothers and sisters. I tell him all the places I've been--Jerusalem, Tel Aviv, Jaffa, Nablus, Bethlehem, Hebron. "You're so lucky," he says wistfully. He can't go to half those places without a permit. I want him to know I understand the injustice of this. "It's so unfair that I'm not Palestinian and I can go to all these places, while you grew up here and you can't," I tell him. "It's okay," he says. "Anyone who loves justice and freedom is Palestinian, so you're Palestinian too."
Eventually someone decides the security scare is over and we're all herded back through to the other side of passport control. Of course the queue is all mixed up now and anyone who was in line close to the windows has to go back to the beginning. "Sport," M mutters as the Israeli soldiers make us all squish back into a big clump together.
Soon thereafter someone decides there must be separate lines for men and women, even though no one has had a problem with everyone being mixed together before this. So everyone is shuffling around again. "Stay with my sisters," M advises. M's mom and four sisters have squashed themselves together like sardines using some kind of Palestinian line-waiting magic that I can't manage to emulate with my bulky backpack and messenger bag.
An Israeli soldier notices me, obviously the only white person in the Palestinian line, and demands I go to the tourist line. I try to refuse. "I'd rather stay with my friends." It's no go. I'm told in no uncertain terms to get out of the 200-person Palestinian line-clump and go over to passport window #1, which is marked "VIP" and has about five internationals waiting at it. I feel horrible, guilty and powerless. Haha. Little do I know my own adventure is just beginning.
Shortly after I get in this line, a woman approaches me and asks to see my passport. She's about my age, wearing skinny jeans and a frilly, kind of femmy shirt. It takes me a second to realize she's a plainclothes Israeli security officer. I didn't notice her before. For all I know she watched me refusing to get out of the Palestinian line and this is what made me suspicious enough for a passport check. Maybe the soldier told her to check me. Or maybe it was just random.
At the passport window I get some basic questions about what I was doing in Jordan and where I'm going in Israel. One of the border guards is from Haifa and I chat with her about what I should see there. They're not hostile, but at the end they keep my passport and give me a form to fill out. "Wait over there and someone will come talk with you," they say, which means I'm getting extra questioning. I'm not at all surprised; I expected to get some extra questioning. I go sit in the waiting area, which has a mix of internationals and Palestinians, and fill out the form. I think it's around 12:30pm at this point. I don't know how long this will take, so I take the chance to eat the roll I brought and drink some water.
There are lots of people waiting--families, old people, little kids. Some kids are waiting by themselves while their parents are being questioned. Directly across from me is a boy, maybe fourteen, who's watching his two younger sisters, one of whom is asleep. He keeps shifting her around carefully between his lap and his sister's, so patiently, waiting calmly while his mother or father is off being strip-searched and interrogated somewhere. I try to offer them some cookies but they don't want to take them.
Eventually Skinny Jeans, the woman from before, shows up and collects my form. I'm taken to a different waiting area, inside passport control--the one we were all herded into some hours ago. In this waiting area everyone except me is Palestinian.
More waiting. I can see the table where they search your bags. I watch a middle-aged man wearing a dishdasha stand at the table as they take every item out of the huge plastic bag he's carrying--unfolding all the clothes and dumping them in a pile, carelessly unwrapping things carefully wrapped.
Everyone in this waiting area knows we're all waiting to be interrogated, and there are little subtle winks and nods of solidarity. A woman who looks old enough to remember the Nakba lights up a cigarette right under the "No Smoking" sign. Good for her, I think. No smoking in an Israeli border terminal is just cruel.
While I'm waiting, I think how unbelievably grateful I am to myself that I took the time to find the DHL place in Amman and ship my computer with 1,000 photos from my trip and my notebook full of notes from all our meetings back to myself in the States. My still camera is safe; there are only pictures of Amman on there, but I heartily wish I had thrown my video camera into the DHL package as well, because it has video from the Friday protest in Bil'in. I take out the camera and consider deleting the video, then get defiant and decide they're not going to make me delete it out of fear. I have a right to have that video. It wasn't illegal for me to be there or to film that protest. Besides, I know I also have tons of political literature in my suitcase that they'll find if they search, so deleting the video is not going to save me from suspicion. I do take the battery out of the camera and leave it in a separate part of the bag. Not that this will stop them if they really want to find it, but I don't feel like making things easier for them.
Eventually Skinny Jeans reappears and I'm taken to that back room that exists in all Israeli border installations, the interrogation room. It's an office, just an office, one of several off a narrow, grungy hallway. It looks so ordinary, but the atmosphere is chilly. For the first of many times that day I think about everything I just learned about the Stasi. (Immediately before this trip, I spend a month researching what it was like to be a political prisoner in the former East Germany.) There are so many similarities I wonder if there's been some cross-training. Or maybe all repressive systems just converge to the same point if they last long enough.
"Put your bags on the table." I'm being spoken to only in commands. Skinny Jeans's demeanor has totally changed. We're on her turf now and she has to establish dominance right away. I don't know for sure that these people are Shabak, Israeli secret police, but it wouldn't surprise me. They sure act like secret police. They behave like people who spend their days making other people feel afraid and powerless.
"Do you have anything in your pockets?" I had put my phone in my pocket, hoping to hold onto it in case I was separated from my bags. "Turn it off, take out the battery and leave it in your bag." So, right away I'm being isolated and controlled. No contact with the outside world allowed. I'm not actually scared--I know the worst they can do to me is nothing compared to what they do to Palestinians. But it sure is creepy as hell. I can imagine Skinny Jeans doing this, and worse, to people with a lot less privilege, a lot more to lose, and a lot less hope of escape.
She directs me into her office and I sit down across the table from her. There's a redhead woman who sits down next to her, but doesn't ask any questions. I think maybe she's training. This is too weird. It's like I've walked into one of my own screenplays. This is a scene I would write, but now I'm in it.
"Where is your other passport?"
Uh-oh. This was not the first question I expected.
I have two passports. It is completely legal to have two valid US passports, but if you get a second one, it's only valid for two years. So anyone who bothers to check the expiration date can tell that I have another passport, which I didn't bring because it has a Gaza entry stamp on it from my trip there in May/June 2009.
"It's at home, in the US." You're not required to have both passports with you when you travel.
"Why do you have two passports?"
"I travel a lot; sometimes I need to send one off to get visas."
This is true, and is one of the reasons people get two passports. During the period I was in Germany, I had to send off my other passport to the Jordanian embassy to get my Jordan visa. But I can tell Skinny Jeans doesn't believe me.
"Have you been to Lebanon? Syria?" These I can answer confidently "no." "Gaza?" I knew that was coming. Here I have to roll the dice. Do they know I've been? If they do, and I lie, that will make things worse. If they don't, and I admit it, that won't exactly make things better. Although everyone whose advice I trust has advised against lying to Israeli border officials, everyone also knows that you can't exactly tell the whole truth, because people have been denied entry just for saying they're going to do charity work in the West Bank. It's no use knowing that I haven't done anything illegal under international, or even fucked-up Israeli, law. It's no use knowing that I haven't committed a crime--because in their minds, I have. Because any contact with Palestinians, any solidarity with Palestinians, any seeing-of-Palestinians-as-human-beings is a crime in their book, and therefore a security threat.
For better or worse, I decide to take the risk and say "no" to the Gaza question. I think I can always backpedal, play dumb and say something like, "Oh, I thought you meant on this trip." At this point I still have some hope that I can get out of this quickly by playing the ignorant tourist.
She goes through the sheet I filled out in the waiting area, which has lines for all my contact information. I've put down my parents' home number and my school email. "Write your cell phone number for me." I write it down--they have my cell phone sitting outside; it's not like they can't get it. "That's your school email. You must have another email." I really don't want to give Israeli security my email address. When I stall she turns up the hostility, using that barking, commanding, dominant tone of voice that all Israeli police state functionaries must learn in training. "Do you think this is a game? Don't you know why you're here? What do you think will happen to you if you don't cooperate with us?"
I write down my email address. It's a disgusting feeling, having to submit, even on a tiny thing like this. I know this is just a power game on her part--I'm on top and you're going to do what I say. I think about what this game must be like if you're Palestinian, when the Israeli side is backed up by physical violence and the prospect of a long prison sentence, when the information they want is much more serious than an email address, when it could mean someone's life. I think about how these games of dominance and submission are played out a thousand times every day all across the Occupied Territories, at checkpoints, in house raids, at permit offices, in detention centers--the micro level of oppression.
More questions. My parents' names--man, they love this one. Where did I go to school? What did I study? Have I ever studied Arabic? Somehow she can't believe I only studied history in undergrad. Who did I stay with in Jordan? What did I do there? What did I do before that, in Israel? Where did I go? I avoid mentioning any places in the West Bank. I say I was on a tour with Interfaith Peace Builders--she makes me write the name of the group on her notepad--and now I'm traveling on my own. For some reason this is very suspicious. Why did I go off on my own after the rest of the group left? Suspicious!!!
Some of the questions are really ridiculous. But whenever I question her questions, she gets angry and hostile. I think at one point she actually says "I'll ask the questions here!" just like in a bad cop movie.
"Do you have Twitter? Do you have Facebook?"
I'm caught off guard by this question and reflexively answer "No," before it occurs to me that this is a really dumb thing to lie about, because if they're asking they probably know; hell, they're probably already following me on Twitter. But all I can think is that if I say yes they'll ask me to log in, and I would refuse to do that, and that would be just as suspicious.
Then the political questions start. "Where is Bil'in?" I say it's in the West Bank. "Where?" "I don't know exactly--I couldn't point it out on a map." This is the truth--I've only been there by bus and taxi. Yelling commences: "Don't lie! You think we don't know when you're lying? We know!" The way she says lying, she makes it sound like I've killed babies, like it's the worst crime you can commit, lying to an Israeli border official. They don't actually ask me if I've been to Bil'in, so I don't say that I have, but I know they'll eventually check my camera and find the video. Oh well. I had the chance to delete it and I decided not to, so there's nothing I can do about it now.
"What do you know about Gaza?" I try to say some very general things. "What do you know about the Flotilla?" Again some general things about there being a clash and some people being killed; I try to sound as neutral about it as possible. "Who was killed?" "I think they were Turkish activists." "You think? You know. Try a little bit harder to remember." Holy shit. This is turning into a real interrogation. Skinny Jeans is on a major power trip. It's so surreal. Now I'm pretty sure I'm in trouble and I'm just trying not to dig the hole any deeper, not to directly contradict things I've already said, and most importantly, not to get anyone else in trouble along with me. But the problem is that once they suspect you of one thing, everything you say is suspect, so even if you're telling the truth they don't believe you. The other problem is that the more she shouts at me, the more I feel like digging my heels in and not telling them a damn thing. I figure I'm probably already screwed, so why the hell should I cooperate?
From an intelligence-gathering perspective, this is a really stupid strategy. If you're in the business of getting accurate intelligence, you need to be able to reliably separate truth from lies, and you need to give the person you're interrogating the confidence that if they tell the truth, you'll believe them and back off. Otherwise they have no incentive to do so. Skinny Jeans gets an epic fail on both these counts. Which reinforces my belief that the primary goal of what they're doing here is not intelligence-gathering--and certainly not "security"--but intimidation and punishment. In other words, state terror.
Skinny Jeans brings me back out to the reception area. There's another woman there; I'll call her Backup. They go through all my stuff. There's a couch in the waiting area and I must sit. It's low and I don't like that I can't really see what they're doing with my stuff. I experiment with standing up. "Sit down!" They take everything out of my messenger bag and my backpack. They unwrap every souvenir and go through every piece of paper. Everything is suspicious. Why do I have an Israel/Palestine guide book if I was on an organized tour? Apparently extra knowledge of the places I'm going is not allowed. Why do I have the Lonely Planet for the whole Middle East? Interest in other countries: not allowed. A flyer for alternative tours given by an Israeli? Suspicious! A note from a friend in Jordan? Suspicious!! A keychain in the shape of historic Palestine? VERY VERY SUSPICIOUS!!! Backup (holding up keychain): "What is this?!" Me: "It's a gift." "Who are you going to give it to?" "I haven't decided yet." "You don't just give this to anyone!" I have a keffiyah in one of my bags. "What's this?" Skinny Jeans says like she's just pulled out a crack vial. "It's a scarf." Fuck you, I think. It's a fucking scarf.
Skinny Jeans and Backup take me back out to the main part of the terminal and make me retrieve my suitcase that's gone through the x-ray machine. At the bag search table they take everything out of my suitcase with the same malicious abandon I saw them use on other people's stuff. I know they'll find the keffiyahs and Palestine flag bracelets I bought in Hebron and all the literature and posters I collected from our various meetings; I haven't tried to hide them. They're particularly aggressive about the material from the Civic Coalition for Defending Palestinians' Rights in Jerusalem, one of the groups that's supporting the Sheikh Jarrah families. "What is this?! A tourist doesn't have this kind of thing!" Once they unfurl the Boycott Israel poster I think the casual-tourist act is pretty much done for. "You knew we were going to question you and you prepared," Skinny Jeans says, again with such accusatory venom that it's almost a little bit funny. Well--I think but do not say--you are questioning me, so obviously the preparation was warranted.
"Put your stuff back in the suitcase." I take the time to fold every item of clothing, not rushing, not meeting her eyes. It was folded when she took it out; it's going to be folded when I put it back in.
Back to the interrogation room. Backup makes me put the battery back in my phone and turn it on. I notice the holder for the SIM card is loose and wonder if they've copied it. She starts going through my call records. "Who's this?" It's the local cell phone number of one of our delegation leaders. Then they find the local number of a friend from the US. "This is a Palestinian cell phone number! Who is this?! Where are they?!" Backup is really yelling, standing over me as I sit on the couch, being as intimidating as possible. For the first time I get really scared because I don't want this person to have any trouble with Israeli security. So I just keep repeating that I don't know where they are now. Now Backup and Skinny Jeans are going at me together. Skinny Jeans: "You're lying to us! Don't you know what can happen to you? We're not just talking about you're not getting in, we're talking about you're going to prison!" Skinny Jeans takes my phone, still camera, video camera, and every piece of paper from my bag and disappears down the hall with them. Backup yells: "You're not getting in! All we're figuring out now is what to do with you!" Then they make me sit in the hallway.
In the hallway I start going over everything I've said. I'm fucked, I think. They're going to deport me. First trip to Israel and I'm getting fucking deported, and probably banned for ten years for good measure. I shouldn't have lied. Why did I lie about fucking Twitter? That was really dumb. Maybe I should have dropped the whole casual-tourist act right away when they asked about my second passport, I think. But it's not that easy to switch tactics when you're under pressure. And I can't imagine things would have gone that much better for me if I'd led off with, "Yeah, I've been to the West Bank. Wanna see my video from Bil'in?"
In another part of my brain, I recognize that this is exactly what I'm supposed to be doing right now. This is that part of the interrogation, where they put you somewhere isolated and don't tell you what's going to happen to you next, where they let you stew and start second-guessing everything you've said and imagining the worst-case scenario. Which is exactly what I have been doing.
I tell myself over and over that they're just trying to intimidate me; that these are the consequences for standing with Palestinians and I knew that when I came here; that I'm a thousand times safer than any Palestinian who's been through these same rooms. I know they can't actually send me to prison. The worst they can do is detain me for a few days and then deport me. I don't want to be deported but there's nothing I can do about it now. I can't unsay anything I've said. I can't stop them from looking through the email and contacts on my phone. I can't control their actions. All I can control is what I say. I decide whatever is going to happen to me will happen and the most important thing at this point is not to implicate anyone else.
In the hallway with me are the man in the dishdasha, the one I saw having his bag searched, and a mother with two little boys. The man looks exhausted and sits hunched over. I think he might be praying. The woman gives me a pale smile. Her kids are fidgety and bored, but they don't cry. Palestinian kids learn about waiting early.
At one point a young, blonde female soldier comes into the hallway. She does a double-take when she sees me. "What are you doing here?" she asks. "Good question," I shoot back. But if I'd had more time to think about it, I would have looked at the man and the mother with her kids and asked, "What are any of us doing here?"
Waiting. The man goes in for questioning and comes back out; the woman goes in for questioning; I wait. It's around 4pm now and all I've eaten all day is some cereal at breakfast and that little roll. I'm starting to get dizzy with hunger. I'm not going to ask them for shit, but I know I have Oreos and water in my bag. Finally I get up and knock on the door of the interrogation room. Someone new answers it: a woman with bad skin and a dress that looks like it came from the Dress Barn. I tell Dress Barn I'd like to get my water from my bag. "You'll have to wait just one minute; there's a woman in there." I look past her and see a curtain has been pulled over the couch area, where my bags are. I realize the mother is being strip-searched in there.
I eat my Oreos and drink some water--not too much; I don't see a bathroom back here--and feel a bit better. I try to share the Oreos with the kids but they won't take them. After some time, Dress Barn comes out and says, "You can sit outside. You'll be more comfortable out there." I have to stifle a laugh at this one. But I'm not about to argue; outside there are bathrooms and other people.
Things are better in the outside waiting area. I begin to hold out a sliver of hope that I'm not going to be deported. I think that if they were going to deport me they'd want to control my movement the whole time and wouldn't let me out into the outside waiting area. But I don't let myself get too hopeful about anything yet. I recognize a Palestinian guy wearing a Germany World Cup jersey who's been there as long as I have. "Still here?" he says. He gives me that sardonic smile that says we're all in this together.
After a while Dress Barn comes out and sits down next to me in the waiting area. I realize she's playing the Good Cop in this little drama. "Tell me about your trip to Gaza," she says right up front. Okay, so they know about that. I tell her when it was, that I went with CODEPINK, that it was coordinated by UNRWA, that we met with youth organizations--all information that's publicly available. "What organizations did you meet with in Gaza?" Here I stop, partially because I'm too tired to think back through every group we met with, partially because on principle I just don't want to give them any information about Palestinians. "I'm not going to list every organization we met with," I say. If they really want to know they can read my damn blog.
"Things will be a lot better for you if you start telling us the truth. If you don't say anything, we're going to assume the worst." She's not very good at being the Good Cop.
After another while Skinny Jeans comes out and demands the battery for my video camera. I lie and say I shipped it back to the US with my computer. I know this won't hold up long but I just can't help being belligerent around her. She's so horrible, the kind of person I hate most of all, the kind of person who has to make everyone acknowledge their power. I bet she fucking loves this job. I have a bad habit of getting into fights with people like her. "I saw a battery in your bag. Go and get it and put it in." "Oh, maybe I have a backup," I say blithely.
She goes away but soon I'm brought back into her office. "Explain the video on your camera." No point in hiding anything now. "It's from Bil'in. I was there last Friday." "Did you participate in the demonstration?" "No, I just filmed it." "You walked along with the demonstration--you don't think that's participating?" "I just filmed it. There were other press people there." "Who did you go with?" "I took a taxi there." "What organization did you go with?" "No organization. I went by myself. Anyone can go there." "Who was with you?" "I'm not going to tell you who was with me," I say calmly. Oh, I like this so much better, just being up front about what I'm not going to tell them.
"What is ISM?" Ah. So we're on to this. "International Solidarity Movement," I tell her. "What do they do?" "They do nonviolent human rights work in support of the Palestinians." "How do you know that?" Seriously??? "I read their website. It's not a secret." "Are you here to work with ISM?" "No. I've never worked with ISM," I tell her, truthfully. Frankly it is really stupid of her to think this. If I'd already gotten into Israel with no problem through the airport, why would I leave and come back through one of the toughest borders? What does she think, that I went to Jordan for training or something? I'm not the PA.
Back on the couch. Backup comes out with my phone. "Who are the people in your phone?" "They're my friends." "Who do you know in ISM?" "I don't know anyone in ISM," I say. Of course I know loads of people who've worked with ISM in the past. She asks again, louder, as if asking louder will make me answer the question. "I don't know anyone in ISM."
More waiting in the outside waiting area. Soon Dress Barn comes back out to get me. She has a notepad in her hands and I know exactly what she's going to ask. She takes me back inside and we sit together on the couch. How interesting. The couch is a hostile space when they're standing over you and a "friendly" space when they're sitting next to you.
She puts the notepad in my lap. "I want you to write down all the names of people you know in ISM." I knew it! I look her straight in the eye and say, "Absolutely not." It feels awesome. I don't care if they deport me, I think. I'm not writing a single name on that piece of paper and there's nothing they can do to make me. I fucking win, assholes.
"What organizations are you part of?" Dress Barn asks. "I'm not part of any organizations," I say. For perhaps the first time in my political life, this is actually true. I'm not formally a member of anything right now. Dress Barn starts trying to psychoanalyze me. "You're kind of a loner, aren't you? How are you going to effect change all by yourself?" Perhaps she has actually forgotten that being a member of a political organization is not illegal in the US, the way it is in the Occupied Territories.
The only good thing about the interrogation area is that there's a water cooler--I do not trust the tap water here. I manage to fill up my water bottle before I'm sent back to the outside waiting area. Another long wait. It's getting late and I suspect that even if I get out of here, I won't make it onto the last bus to Haifa tonight as planned. But otherwise I'm feeling okay. Whatever happens now, I think I have conducted myself all right.
After a while a new person comes to get me. He's the first guy I've encountered, kind of chubby, with a noticeably friendlier demeanor. He brings me back into a different office, marked Ministry of the Interior. There's a huge Israeli flag on the wall.
He asks me where I've been and I go through the whole itinerary truthfully. It feels way less skeezy in here than in Skinny Jeans's lair, but I know I still need to be careful. He asks me about my plans for the rest of the trip. I tell the truth: that I have no plans to go to the West Bank, that I'm just going to Haifa and Tel Aviv, that I have a flight out of Ben Gurion Airport in two days' time. "Why did you lie to security about going to Bil'in?" he asks me. I decide honesty is best here too. "I thought if I told the truth you might deny me entry. You guys are very suspicious about anyone showing support for the Palestinians." "Yes, yes, they're very suspicious," he says--as if he's not part of the exact same system--then mutters something about Israel's security blah blah blah. "Anything else you want to tell me?" he asks at the end. Aha! I've got your number, Mr. Nice Guy. "No," I say.
At the end of it all, he tells me that the condition of my entry to Israel is that I sign a piece of paper saying I'm leaving in two days and I'm not allowed to go into "areas controlled by the Palestinian Authority," which is vague enough that it could mean anything from Area A to the whole West Bank. I have no problem signing--I am more than ready to get away from the Israeli police state in two days, and even more ready to get the hell out of this stupid border. As I'm signing the paper it occurs to me that I really am being let in. I'm not being deported, denied entry, or sent to jail. Which means all those threats Skinny Jeans and Backup were screaming at me just hours ago were completely, totally, 100% for intimidation purposes. Amazing.
Filling out the paperwork, making a copy, and getting my passport back--which should take all of five minutes--ends up taking close to an hour. I get some janky visa stamp with the "3 Months" crossed out and "Only Two Days" hand-written in. They've held me juuuust long enough that I'll definitely miss the last bus to Haifa. I wonder if they did this on purpose, but I'm happy for the chance to spend one last night in Jerusalem, which has begun to feel like my home. And of course I'm happy that after all this, I'm not being deported or denied entry after all.
It's 7:30pm when I finally get to leave the border. I've been in the Israeli terminal for about eight hours in total. I buy cold apple juice and nuts from a Palestinian vendor before getting into the waiting service taxi to Jerusalem. That apple juice is the best thing I've ever tasted. I don't even care that it's hot in the service, I'm just so happy to be out of that wretched border terminal.
We drive with the windows open through the Jordan Valley as the sun is setting. It's so beautiful I don't even want to take a picture; I couldn't capture it. The service takes me all the way to Damascus Gate, which is decked out with magical strings of blue-white lights for the start of Ramadan. It's so lovely and joyful I want to cry. The hostel is nearly full for Ramadan but they have a place for me. I get falafel on the street and sit alone on the hostel's cool, breezy roof deck to listen to the last call to prayer of the day echo out across the city. I can see the whole Old City and it's indescribably beautiful, lit up and full of life. It's like Jerusalem is welcoming me home. When some French tourists, newly arrived in Jerusalem, join me on the roof deck I say "Welcome" like it's my city. I feel like it is now. I feel like I've earned it.
Afterward I have some time to think about whether there's anything I could have done differently. Maybe I could have taken a different tack right at the beginning, admitted everywhere I'd been, admitted I'd been to Gaza. Would that have made it better or worse? Somehow I think once they take you to that back room they've already decided you're guilty, and it doesn't really matter what you say. That's how it goes in a system where everything but total abject submission to colonialism is criminalized. I think trying to modify your behavior to please the oppressor is always a losing battle. The only way to guarantee an interrogation-free passage is not to support the Palestinians, and I certainly wasn't going to do that.
In the end, I'm glad I had the experience. Israel tries to segregate everything, to create one experience for tourists that is nothing at all like what the Palestinians go through, and I'm glad I shook those borders a little. I also know my experience was mild compared to what Palestinians endure--just the merest brush with a system that they have to interact with every day--and that it's one thing to be able to fly away from that repressive system two days later and another thing entirely to have to live your whole life under it. And it just gives me that much more respect for the people who do live under it, who grow up, work, educate themselves, raise their kids, fight, resist just by living their lives in defiance of this system, refusing to surrender or be driven away. I'll share back rooms and border crossings with people like that any day.
The Allenby/King Hussein Bridge over the Jordan River is the only border crossing between Jordan and Palestine/Israel that Palestinians with West Bank IDs are allowed to use. This means that although it's on the most direct route between Jerusalem and Amman, it's a maze of long lines, bureaucratic hassles and "security" obstacles, a headache at best and a nightmare at worst, just one more of the umpteen million ways the Israeli occupation makes life difficult for the Palestinians. So of course I wanted to go through it.
Crossing from Palestine/Israel to Jordan is a bit slow but nothing dramatic. But crossing back into Israel to catch my flight out of Ben Gurion Airport a few days later turns out to be a whole different experience.
I arrive on the Jordanian side of the border around 10am and get in a long, crowded line that appears to be all Palestinians. I've heard there is a "VIP" area for tourists but if the Palestinians have to wait in this line, I'm going to wait in this line.
Jordanian border officials are handing out forms that are only in Arabic. I quickly make a Palestinian line-friend, a young woman in a cute pink hijab who speaks English, who is able to find out from the border official that I don't need to fill out the form. She offers to help me through the border crossing process, but as soon as that happens an official comes over and tries to steer me out of the Palestinian line to the VIP area. Knowing I'm at the beginning of a long process, I reluctantly follow him, but I feel awful leaving the long line of Palestinian travelers for the tourist area, which is basically empty. I decide that the next time someone tries to segregate me from Palestinians, I'll try to refuse.
The Jordanian officials are friendly, at least with us tourists, and the exit process is pretty straightforward. By 11:30 I'm over the bridge and into the Israeli security terminal on the other side. Then the real fun begins.
It's crowded, noisy, kids everywhere, and the Israeli soldiers keep giving us arbitrary orders to back up, move here, move there. I'm waiting with a giant clump of Palestinians to get up to the first passport control station when there's a sudden commotion somewhere behind me. I can't really see what's going on, but the next thing I know all the Israeli soldiers are yelling "Yalla! Yalla! Yalla!" ["Let's go!" in Arabic] and herding us like cattle through the border control stations into the waiting area on the other side. I see a line of plainclothes dudes with M-16s go racing by toward the terminal entrance. It seems there's been some kind of security scare and the terminal's being locked down.
While I'm waiting with everyone else in the pen, surrounded by soldiers who of course are not telling us anything about what's going on, I make another line-friend, a young Palestinian guy who we'll call M. M instantly introduces me to his mother and six or seven brothers and sisters. I tell him all the places I've been--Jerusalem, Tel Aviv, Jaffa, Nablus, Bethlehem, Hebron. "You're so lucky," he says wistfully. He can't go to half those places without a permit. I want him to know I understand the injustice of this. "It's so unfair that I'm not Palestinian and I can go to all these places, while you grew up here and you can't," I tell him. "It's okay," he says. "Anyone who loves justice and freedom is Palestinian, so you're Palestinian too."
Eventually someone decides the security scare is over and we're all herded back through to the other side of passport control. Of course the queue is all mixed up now and anyone who was in line close to the windows has to go back to the beginning. "Sport," M mutters as the Israeli soldiers make us all squish back into a big clump together.
Soon thereafter someone decides there must be separate lines for men and women, even though no one has had a problem with everyone being mixed together before this. So everyone is shuffling around again. "Stay with my sisters," M advises. M's mom and four sisters have squashed themselves together like sardines using some kind of Palestinian line-waiting magic that I can't manage to emulate with my bulky backpack and messenger bag.
An Israeli soldier notices me, obviously the only white person in the Palestinian line, and demands I go to the tourist line. I try to refuse. "I'd rather stay with my friends." It's no go. I'm told in no uncertain terms to get out of the 200-person Palestinian line-clump and go over to passport window #1, which is marked "VIP" and has about five internationals waiting at it. I feel horrible, guilty and powerless. Haha. Little do I know my own adventure is just beginning.
Shortly after I get in this line, a woman approaches me and asks to see my passport. She's about my age, wearing skinny jeans and a frilly, kind of femmy shirt. It takes me a second to realize she's a plainclothes Israeli security officer. I didn't notice her before. For all I know she watched me refusing to get out of the Palestinian line and this is what made me suspicious enough for a passport check. Maybe the soldier told her to check me. Or maybe it was just random.
At the passport window I get some basic questions about what I was doing in Jordan and where I'm going in Israel. One of the border guards is from Haifa and I chat with her about what I should see there. They're not hostile, but at the end they keep my passport and give me a form to fill out. "Wait over there and someone will come talk with you," they say, which means I'm getting extra questioning. I'm not at all surprised; I expected to get some extra questioning. I go sit in the waiting area, which has a mix of internationals and Palestinians, and fill out the form. I think it's around 12:30pm at this point. I don't know how long this will take, so I take the chance to eat the roll I brought and drink some water.
There are lots of people waiting--families, old people, little kids. Some kids are waiting by themselves while their parents are being questioned. Directly across from me is a boy, maybe fourteen, who's watching his two younger sisters, one of whom is asleep. He keeps shifting her around carefully between his lap and his sister's, so patiently, waiting calmly while his mother or father is off being strip-searched and interrogated somewhere. I try to offer them some cookies but they don't want to take them.
Eventually Skinny Jeans, the woman from before, shows up and collects my form. I'm taken to a different waiting area, inside passport control--the one we were all herded into some hours ago. In this waiting area everyone except me is Palestinian.
More waiting. I can see the table where they search your bags. I watch a middle-aged man wearing a dishdasha stand at the table as they take every item out of the huge plastic bag he's carrying--unfolding all the clothes and dumping them in a pile, carelessly unwrapping things carefully wrapped.
Everyone in this waiting area knows we're all waiting to be interrogated, and there are little subtle winks and nods of solidarity. A woman who looks old enough to remember the Nakba lights up a cigarette right under the "No Smoking" sign. Good for her, I think. No smoking in an Israeli border terminal is just cruel.
While I'm waiting, I think how unbelievably grateful I am to myself that I took the time to find the DHL place in Amman and ship my computer with 1,000 photos from my trip and my notebook full of notes from all our meetings back to myself in the States. My still camera is safe; there are only pictures of Amman on there, but I heartily wish I had thrown my video camera into the DHL package as well, because it has video from the Friday protest in Bil'in. I take out the camera and consider deleting the video, then get defiant and decide they're not going to make me delete it out of fear. I have a right to have that video. It wasn't illegal for me to be there or to film that protest. Besides, I know I also have tons of political literature in my suitcase that they'll find if they search, so deleting the video is not going to save me from suspicion. I do take the battery out of the camera and leave it in a separate part of the bag. Not that this will stop them if they really want to find it, but I don't feel like making things easier for them.
Eventually Skinny Jeans reappears and I'm taken to that back room that exists in all Israeli border installations, the interrogation room. It's an office, just an office, one of several off a narrow, grungy hallway. It looks so ordinary, but the atmosphere is chilly. For the first of many times that day I think about everything I just learned about the Stasi. (Immediately before this trip, I spend a month researching what it was like to be a political prisoner in the former East Germany.) There are so many similarities I wonder if there's been some cross-training. Or maybe all repressive systems just converge to the same point if they last long enough.
"Put your bags on the table." I'm being spoken to only in commands. Skinny Jeans's demeanor has totally changed. We're on her turf now and she has to establish dominance right away. I don't know for sure that these people are Shabak, Israeli secret police, but it wouldn't surprise me. They sure act like secret police. They behave like people who spend their days making other people feel afraid and powerless.
"Do you have anything in your pockets?" I had put my phone in my pocket, hoping to hold onto it in case I was separated from my bags. "Turn it off, take out the battery and leave it in your bag." So, right away I'm being isolated and controlled. No contact with the outside world allowed. I'm not actually scared--I know the worst they can do to me is nothing compared to what they do to Palestinians. But it sure is creepy as hell. I can imagine Skinny Jeans doing this, and worse, to people with a lot less privilege, a lot more to lose, and a lot less hope of escape.
She directs me into her office and I sit down across the table from her. There's a redhead woman who sits down next to her, but doesn't ask any questions. I think maybe she's training. This is too weird. It's like I've walked into one of my own screenplays. This is a scene I would write, but now I'm in it.
"Where is your other passport?"
Uh-oh. This was not the first question I expected.
I have two passports. It is completely legal to have two valid US passports, but if you get a second one, it's only valid for two years. So anyone who bothers to check the expiration date can tell that I have another passport, which I didn't bring because it has a Gaza entry stamp on it from my trip there in May/June 2009.
"It's at home, in the US." You're not required to have both passports with you when you travel.
"Why do you have two passports?"
"I travel a lot; sometimes I need to send one off to get visas."
This is true, and is one of the reasons people get two passports. During the period I was in Germany, I had to send off my other passport to the Jordanian embassy to get my Jordan visa. But I can tell Skinny Jeans doesn't believe me.
"Have you been to Lebanon? Syria?" These I can answer confidently "no." "Gaza?" I knew that was coming. Here I have to roll the dice. Do they know I've been? If they do, and I lie, that will make things worse. If they don't, and I admit it, that won't exactly make things better. Although everyone whose advice I trust has advised against lying to Israeli border officials, everyone also knows that you can't exactly tell the whole truth, because people have been denied entry just for saying they're going to do charity work in the West Bank. It's no use knowing that I haven't done anything illegal under international, or even fucked-up Israeli, law. It's no use knowing that I haven't committed a crime--because in their minds, I have. Because any contact with Palestinians, any solidarity with Palestinians, any seeing-of-Palestinians-as-human-beings is a crime in their book, and therefore a security threat.
For better or worse, I decide to take the risk and say "no" to the Gaza question. I think I can always backpedal, play dumb and say something like, "Oh, I thought you meant on this trip." At this point I still have some hope that I can get out of this quickly by playing the ignorant tourist.
She goes through the sheet I filled out in the waiting area, which has lines for all my contact information. I've put down my parents' home number and my school email. "Write your cell phone number for me." I write it down--they have my cell phone sitting outside; it's not like they can't get it. "That's your school email. You must have another email." I really don't want to give Israeli security my email address. When I stall she turns up the hostility, using that barking, commanding, dominant tone of voice that all Israeli police state functionaries must learn in training. "Do you think this is a game? Don't you know why you're here? What do you think will happen to you if you don't cooperate with us?"
I write down my email address. It's a disgusting feeling, having to submit, even on a tiny thing like this. I know this is just a power game on her part--I'm on top and you're going to do what I say. I think about what this game must be like if you're Palestinian, when the Israeli side is backed up by physical violence and the prospect of a long prison sentence, when the information they want is much more serious than an email address, when it could mean someone's life. I think about how these games of dominance and submission are played out a thousand times every day all across the Occupied Territories, at checkpoints, in house raids, at permit offices, in detention centers--the micro level of oppression.
More questions. My parents' names--man, they love this one. Where did I go to school? What did I study? Have I ever studied Arabic? Somehow she can't believe I only studied history in undergrad. Who did I stay with in Jordan? What did I do there? What did I do before that, in Israel? Where did I go? I avoid mentioning any places in the West Bank. I say I was on a tour with Interfaith Peace Builders--she makes me write the name of the group on her notepad--and now I'm traveling on my own. For some reason this is very suspicious. Why did I go off on my own after the rest of the group left? Suspicious!!!
Some of the questions are really ridiculous. But whenever I question her questions, she gets angry and hostile. I think at one point she actually says "I'll ask the questions here!" just like in a bad cop movie.
"Do you have Twitter? Do you have Facebook?"
I'm caught off guard by this question and reflexively answer "No," before it occurs to me that this is a really dumb thing to lie about, because if they're asking they probably know; hell, they're probably already following me on Twitter. But all I can think is that if I say yes they'll ask me to log in, and I would refuse to do that, and that would be just as suspicious.
Then the political questions start. "Where is Bil'in?" I say it's in the West Bank. "Where?" "I don't know exactly--I couldn't point it out on a map." This is the truth--I've only been there by bus and taxi. Yelling commences: "Don't lie! You think we don't know when you're lying? We know!" The way she says lying, she makes it sound like I've killed babies, like it's the worst crime you can commit, lying to an Israeli border official. They don't actually ask me if I've been to Bil'in, so I don't say that I have, but I know they'll eventually check my camera and find the video. Oh well. I had the chance to delete it and I decided not to, so there's nothing I can do about it now.
"What do you know about Gaza?" I try to say some very general things. "What do you know about the Flotilla?" Again some general things about there being a clash and some people being killed; I try to sound as neutral about it as possible. "Who was killed?" "I think they were Turkish activists." "You think? You know. Try a little bit harder to remember." Holy shit. This is turning into a real interrogation. Skinny Jeans is on a major power trip. It's so surreal. Now I'm pretty sure I'm in trouble and I'm just trying not to dig the hole any deeper, not to directly contradict things I've already said, and most importantly, not to get anyone else in trouble along with me. But the problem is that once they suspect you of one thing, everything you say is suspect, so even if you're telling the truth they don't believe you. The other problem is that the more she shouts at me, the more I feel like digging my heels in and not telling them a damn thing. I figure I'm probably already screwed, so why the hell should I cooperate?
From an intelligence-gathering perspective, this is a really stupid strategy. If you're in the business of getting accurate intelligence, you need to be able to reliably separate truth from lies, and you need to give the person you're interrogating the confidence that if they tell the truth, you'll believe them and back off. Otherwise they have no incentive to do so. Skinny Jeans gets an epic fail on both these counts. Which reinforces my belief that the primary goal of what they're doing here is not intelligence-gathering--and certainly not "security"--but intimidation and punishment. In other words, state terror.
Skinny Jeans brings me back out to the reception area. There's another woman there; I'll call her Backup. They go through all my stuff. There's a couch in the waiting area and I must sit. It's low and I don't like that I can't really see what they're doing with my stuff. I experiment with standing up. "Sit down!" They take everything out of my messenger bag and my backpack. They unwrap every souvenir and go through every piece of paper. Everything is suspicious. Why do I have an Israel/Palestine guide book if I was on an organized tour? Apparently extra knowledge of the places I'm going is not allowed. Why do I have the Lonely Planet for the whole Middle East? Interest in other countries: not allowed. A flyer for alternative tours given by an Israeli? Suspicious! A note from a friend in Jordan? Suspicious!! A keychain in the shape of historic Palestine? VERY VERY SUSPICIOUS!!! Backup (holding up keychain): "What is this?!" Me: "It's a gift." "Who are you going to give it to?" "I haven't decided yet." "You don't just give this to anyone!" I have a keffiyah in one of my bags. "What's this?" Skinny Jeans says like she's just pulled out a crack vial. "It's a scarf." Fuck you, I think. It's a fucking scarf.
Skinny Jeans and Backup take me back out to the main part of the terminal and make me retrieve my suitcase that's gone through the x-ray machine. At the bag search table they take everything out of my suitcase with the same malicious abandon I saw them use on other people's stuff. I know they'll find the keffiyahs and Palestine flag bracelets I bought in Hebron and all the literature and posters I collected from our various meetings; I haven't tried to hide them. They're particularly aggressive about the material from the Civic Coalition for Defending Palestinians' Rights in Jerusalem, one of the groups that's supporting the Sheikh Jarrah families. "What is this?! A tourist doesn't have this kind of thing!" Once they unfurl the Boycott Israel poster I think the casual-tourist act is pretty much done for. "You knew we were going to question you and you prepared," Skinny Jeans says, again with such accusatory venom that it's almost a little bit funny. Well--I think but do not say--you are questioning me, so obviously the preparation was warranted.
"Put your stuff back in the suitcase." I take the time to fold every item of clothing, not rushing, not meeting her eyes. It was folded when she took it out; it's going to be folded when I put it back in.
Back to the interrogation room. Backup makes me put the battery back in my phone and turn it on. I notice the holder for the SIM card is loose and wonder if they've copied it. She starts going through my call records. "Who's this?" It's the local cell phone number of one of our delegation leaders. Then they find the local number of a friend from the US. "This is a Palestinian cell phone number! Who is this?! Where are they?!" Backup is really yelling, standing over me as I sit on the couch, being as intimidating as possible. For the first time I get really scared because I don't want this person to have any trouble with Israeli security. So I just keep repeating that I don't know where they are now. Now Backup and Skinny Jeans are going at me together. Skinny Jeans: "You're lying to us! Don't you know what can happen to you? We're not just talking about you're not getting in, we're talking about you're going to prison!" Skinny Jeans takes my phone, still camera, video camera, and every piece of paper from my bag and disappears down the hall with them. Backup yells: "You're not getting in! All we're figuring out now is what to do with you!" Then they make me sit in the hallway.
In the hallway I start going over everything I've said. I'm fucked, I think. They're going to deport me. First trip to Israel and I'm getting fucking deported, and probably banned for ten years for good measure. I shouldn't have lied. Why did I lie about fucking Twitter? That was really dumb. Maybe I should have dropped the whole casual-tourist act right away when they asked about my second passport, I think. But it's not that easy to switch tactics when you're under pressure. And I can't imagine things would have gone that much better for me if I'd led off with, "Yeah, I've been to the West Bank. Wanna see my video from Bil'in?"
In another part of my brain, I recognize that this is exactly what I'm supposed to be doing right now. This is that part of the interrogation, where they put you somewhere isolated and don't tell you what's going to happen to you next, where they let you stew and start second-guessing everything you've said and imagining the worst-case scenario. Which is exactly what I have been doing.
I tell myself over and over that they're just trying to intimidate me; that these are the consequences for standing with Palestinians and I knew that when I came here; that I'm a thousand times safer than any Palestinian who's been through these same rooms. I know they can't actually send me to prison. The worst they can do is detain me for a few days and then deport me. I don't want to be deported but there's nothing I can do about it now. I can't unsay anything I've said. I can't stop them from looking through the email and contacts on my phone. I can't control their actions. All I can control is what I say. I decide whatever is going to happen to me will happen and the most important thing at this point is not to implicate anyone else.
In the hallway with me are the man in the dishdasha, the one I saw having his bag searched, and a mother with two little boys. The man looks exhausted and sits hunched over. I think he might be praying. The woman gives me a pale smile. Her kids are fidgety and bored, but they don't cry. Palestinian kids learn about waiting early.
At one point a young, blonde female soldier comes into the hallway. She does a double-take when she sees me. "What are you doing here?" she asks. "Good question," I shoot back. But if I'd had more time to think about it, I would have looked at the man and the mother with her kids and asked, "What are any of us doing here?"
Waiting. The man goes in for questioning and comes back out; the woman goes in for questioning; I wait. It's around 4pm now and all I've eaten all day is some cereal at breakfast and that little roll. I'm starting to get dizzy with hunger. I'm not going to ask them for shit, but I know I have Oreos and water in my bag. Finally I get up and knock on the door of the interrogation room. Someone new answers it: a woman with bad skin and a dress that looks like it came from the Dress Barn. I tell Dress Barn I'd like to get my water from my bag. "You'll have to wait just one minute; there's a woman in there." I look past her and see a curtain has been pulled over the couch area, where my bags are. I realize the mother is being strip-searched in there.
I eat my Oreos and drink some water--not too much; I don't see a bathroom back here--and feel a bit better. I try to share the Oreos with the kids but they won't take them. After some time, Dress Barn comes out and says, "You can sit outside. You'll be more comfortable out there." I have to stifle a laugh at this one. But I'm not about to argue; outside there are bathrooms and other people.
Things are better in the outside waiting area. I begin to hold out a sliver of hope that I'm not going to be deported. I think that if they were going to deport me they'd want to control my movement the whole time and wouldn't let me out into the outside waiting area. But I don't let myself get too hopeful about anything yet. I recognize a Palestinian guy wearing a Germany World Cup jersey who's been there as long as I have. "Still here?" he says. He gives me that sardonic smile that says we're all in this together.
After a while Dress Barn comes out and sits down next to me in the waiting area. I realize she's playing the Good Cop in this little drama. "Tell me about your trip to Gaza," she says right up front. Okay, so they know about that. I tell her when it was, that I went with CODEPINK, that it was coordinated by UNRWA, that we met with youth organizations--all information that's publicly available. "What organizations did you meet with in Gaza?" Here I stop, partially because I'm too tired to think back through every group we met with, partially because on principle I just don't want to give them any information about Palestinians. "I'm not going to list every organization we met with," I say. If they really want to know they can read my damn blog.
"Things will be a lot better for you if you start telling us the truth. If you don't say anything, we're going to assume the worst." She's not very good at being the Good Cop.
After another while Skinny Jeans comes out and demands the battery for my video camera. I lie and say I shipped it back to the US with my computer. I know this won't hold up long but I just can't help being belligerent around her. She's so horrible, the kind of person I hate most of all, the kind of person who has to make everyone acknowledge their power. I bet she fucking loves this job. I have a bad habit of getting into fights with people like her. "I saw a battery in your bag. Go and get it and put it in." "Oh, maybe I have a backup," I say blithely.
She goes away but soon I'm brought back into her office. "Explain the video on your camera." No point in hiding anything now. "It's from Bil'in. I was there last Friday." "Did you participate in the demonstration?" "No, I just filmed it." "You walked along with the demonstration--you don't think that's participating?" "I just filmed it. There were other press people there." "Who did you go with?" "I took a taxi there." "What organization did you go with?" "No organization. I went by myself. Anyone can go there." "Who was with you?" "I'm not going to tell you who was with me," I say calmly. Oh, I like this so much better, just being up front about what I'm not going to tell them.
"What is ISM?" Ah. So we're on to this. "International Solidarity Movement," I tell her. "What do they do?" "They do nonviolent human rights work in support of the Palestinians." "How do you know that?" Seriously??? "I read their website. It's not a secret." "Are you here to work with ISM?" "No. I've never worked with ISM," I tell her, truthfully. Frankly it is really stupid of her to think this. If I'd already gotten into Israel with no problem through the airport, why would I leave and come back through one of the toughest borders? What does she think, that I went to Jordan for training or something? I'm not the PA.
Back on the couch. Backup comes out with my phone. "Who are the people in your phone?" "They're my friends." "Who do you know in ISM?" "I don't know anyone in ISM," I say. Of course I know loads of people who've worked with ISM in the past. She asks again, louder, as if asking louder will make me answer the question. "I don't know anyone in ISM."
More waiting in the outside waiting area. Soon Dress Barn comes back out to get me. She has a notepad in her hands and I know exactly what she's going to ask. She takes me back inside and we sit together on the couch. How interesting. The couch is a hostile space when they're standing over you and a "friendly" space when they're sitting next to you.
She puts the notepad in my lap. "I want you to write down all the names of people you know in ISM." I knew it! I look her straight in the eye and say, "Absolutely not." It feels awesome. I don't care if they deport me, I think. I'm not writing a single name on that piece of paper and there's nothing they can do to make me. I fucking win, assholes.
"What organizations are you part of?" Dress Barn asks. "I'm not part of any organizations," I say. For perhaps the first time in my political life, this is actually true. I'm not formally a member of anything right now. Dress Barn starts trying to psychoanalyze me. "You're kind of a loner, aren't you? How are you going to effect change all by yourself?" Perhaps she has actually forgotten that being a member of a political organization is not illegal in the US, the way it is in the Occupied Territories.
The only good thing about the interrogation area is that there's a water cooler--I do not trust the tap water here. I manage to fill up my water bottle before I'm sent back to the outside waiting area. Another long wait. It's getting late and I suspect that even if I get out of here, I won't make it onto the last bus to Haifa tonight as planned. But otherwise I'm feeling okay. Whatever happens now, I think I have conducted myself all right.
After a while a new person comes to get me. He's the first guy I've encountered, kind of chubby, with a noticeably friendlier demeanor. He brings me back into a different office, marked Ministry of the Interior. There's a huge Israeli flag on the wall.
He asks me where I've been and I go through the whole itinerary truthfully. It feels way less skeezy in here than in Skinny Jeans's lair, but I know I still need to be careful. He asks me about my plans for the rest of the trip. I tell the truth: that I have no plans to go to the West Bank, that I'm just going to Haifa and Tel Aviv, that I have a flight out of Ben Gurion Airport in two days' time. "Why did you lie to security about going to Bil'in?" he asks me. I decide honesty is best here too. "I thought if I told the truth you might deny me entry. You guys are very suspicious about anyone showing support for the Palestinians." "Yes, yes, they're very suspicious," he says--as if he's not part of the exact same system--then mutters something about Israel's security blah blah blah. "Anything else you want to tell me?" he asks at the end. Aha! I've got your number, Mr. Nice Guy. "No," I say.
At the end of it all, he tells me that the condition of my entry to Israel is that I sign a piece of paper saying I'm leaving in two days and I'm not allowed to go into "areas controlled by the Palestinian Authority," which is vague enough that it could mean anything from Area A to the whole West Bank. I have no problem signing--I am more than ready to get away from the Israeli police state in two days, and even more ready to get the hell out of this stupid border. As I'm signing the paper it occurs to me that I really am being let in. I'm not being deported, denied entry, or sent to jail. Which means all those threats Skinny Jeans and Backup were screaming at me just hours ago were completely, totally, 100% for intimidation purposes. Amazing.
Filling out the paperwork, making a copy, and getting my passport back--which should take all of five minutes--ends up taking close to an hour. I get some janky visa stamp with the "3 Months" crossed out and "Only Two Days" hand-written in. They've held me juuuust long enough that I'll definitely miss the last bus to Haifa. I wonder if they did this on purpose, but I'm happy for the chance to spend one last night in Jerusalem, which has begun to feel like my home. And of course I'm happy that after all this, I'm not being deported or denied entry after all.
It's 7:30pm when I finally get to leave the border. I've been in the Israeli terminal for about eight hours in total. I buy cold apple juice and nuts from a Palestinian vendor before getting into the waiting service taxi to Jerusalem. That apple juice is the best thing I've ever tasted. I don't even care that it's hot in the service, I'm just so happy to be out of that wretched border terminal.
We drive with the windows open through the Jordan Valley as the sun is setting. It's so beautiful I don't even want to take a picture; I couldn't capture it. The service takes me all the way to Damascus Gate, which is decked out with magical strings of blue-white lights for the start of Ramadan. It's so lovely and joyful I want to cry. The hostel is nearly full for Ramadan but they have a place for me. I get falafel on the street and sit alone on the hostel's cool, breezy roof deck to listen to the last call to prayer of the day echo out across the city. I can see the whole Old City and it's indescribably beautiful, lit up and full of life. It's like Jerusalem is welcoming me home. When some French tourists, newly arrived in Jerusalem, join me on the roof deck I say "Welcome" like it's my city. I feel like it is now. I feel like I've earned it.
Afterward I have some time to think about whether there's anything I could have done differently. Maybe I could have taken a different tack right at the beginning, admitted everywhere I'd been, admitted I'd been to Gaza. Would that have made it better or worse? Somehow I think once they take you to that back room they've already decided you're guilty, and it doesn't really matter what you say. That's how it goes in a system where everything but total abject submission to colonialism is criminalized. I think trying to modify your behavior to please the oppressor is always a losing battle. The only way to guarantee an interrogation-free passage is not to support the Palestinians, and I certainly wasn't going to do that.
In the end, I'm glad I had the experience. Israel tries to segregate everything, to create one experience for tourists that is nothing at all like what the Palestinians go through, and I'm glad I shook those borders a little. I also know my experience was mild compared to what Palestinians endure--just the merest brush with a system that they have to interact with every day--and that it's one thing to be able to fly away from that repressive system two days later and another thing entirely to have to live your whole life under it. And it just gives me that much more respect for the people who do live under it, who grow up, work, educate themselves, raise their kids, fight, resist just by living their lives in defiance of this system, refusing to surrender or be driven away. I'll share back rooms and border crossings with people like that any day.
Monday, August 9, 2010
amman
The most important direction to give cab drivers in Amman is not "left" or "right," but "up." I don't think there's a single straight, flat road in the entire city. Imagine combining the haphazard urban planning of the developing world with a landscape to rival San Francisco's, and you have Amman.
Despite its roller-coaster topography, Amman is a chill city that might even feel a bit tame compared to the bustle of Cairo or the political intensity of Palestine. Or maybe I've just become used to uneven sidewalks, kamikaze cab drivers and walking calmly across multiple lanes of oncoming traffic. The only major nuisance is that everyone seems to advise against drinking the tap water.
Saturday, August 7, 2010
imagine a train
Imagine a train that runs from Beirut to Cairo. In between it passes through three bustling cities on the Mediterranean. Thriving cities surrounded by fertile fields and orchards. Ancient cities that have survived many conquerors. Cities where Christians, Muslims and Jews live together. These cities are called Haifa, Jaffa, and Gaza.
This isn't an imaginary train trip. During the British Mandate of Palestine you could take this trip on the Beirut-Cairo Railway.
Now Haifa has been ethnically cleansed. The city is still there but 90% of its indigenous population was forced out in 1948. Jaffa is crumbling, being swallowed up block by block by Tel Aviv's hideous sprawl, its residents scattered, its mosques turned into trendy restaurants and art galleries. Gaza is battered, besieged and starving. Beirut hasn't exactly gotten off easy either. The borders that cut through the route this train used to take are some of the hardest in the world.
Visiting Jaffa, the heart of historic Palestine, the strongest thing I feel is an incredible sense of loss. "People from all over the Middle East used to come to Jaffa to work," says our tour guide. "Now Palestinians have become cheap labor all over the Arab world." He describes how the Palestinians who refused to flee Jaffa after the Nakba were sealed into the Ajami neighborhood, surrounded by barbed wire and soldiers with dogs, while their land, sometimes only minutes away by foot, was confiscated by the new Israeli state.
It's not so easy to think of something edifying and inspiring to extract from such painful history. But this is why history is important: because if we can remember that rail line, we can imagine how it could be rebuilt, not by imperialists but by us, in a world with open borders. We can imagine how those cities could come alive again in a free Palestine.
This isn't an imaginary train trip. During the British Mandate of Palestine you could take this trip on the Beirut-Cairo Railway.
Now Haifa has been ethnically cleansed. The city is still there but 90% of its indigenous population was forced out in 1948. Jaffa is crumbling, being swallowed up block by block by Tel Aviv's hideous sprawl, its residents scattered, its mosques turned into trendy restaurants and art galleries. Gaza is battered, besieged and starving. Beirut hasn't exactly gotten off easy either. The borders that cut through the route this train used to take are some of the hardest in the world.
Visiting Jaffa, the heart of historic Palestine, the strongest thing I feel is an incredible sense of loss. "People from all over the Middle East used to come to Jaffa to work," says our tour guide. "Now Palestinians have become cheap labor all over the Arab world." He describes how the Palestinians who refused to flee Jaffa after the Nakba were sealed into the Ajami neighborhood, surrounded by barbed wire and soldiers with dogs, while their land, sometimes only minutes away by foot, was confiscated by the new Israeli state.
It's not so easy to think of something edifying and inspiring to extract from such painful history. But this is why history is important: because if we can remember that rail line, we can imagine how it could be rebuilt, not by imperialists but by us, in a world with open borders. We can imagine how those cities could come alive again in a free Palestine.
Tuesday, August 3, 2010
bil'in postscript
Remember Majde Burnat, son of Iyad, the kid who so confidently took us out to the wall and the protest point in Bil'in? He was arrested by the Israeli army yesterday along with two of his friends. All of them are fourteen years old.
People get arrested in Palestine all the time. But it's different when its someone you know. We met Majde, and we met his parents, and I can't imagine what they're feeling now. We sat in their house. We heard stories about how soldiers pick up kids from the village, detain, beat and terrorize them when they want names of people to arrest. We know these stories because Iyad told us. Except this time it's his son.
UPDATE 8/7/10: We visited Bil'in again yesterday and found out this Majde wasn't the kid we met, but his cousin. That's what happens when you have a big extended family with the same name. As far as anyone knows, all three kids are still in detention. So it doesn't make quite as dramatic a story. But it still fucking sucks.
People get arrested in Palestine all the time. But it's different when its someone you know. We met Majde, and we met his parents, and I can't imagine what they're feeling now. We sat in their house. We heard stories about how soldiers pick up kids from the village, detain, beat and terrorize them when they want names of people to arrest. We know these stories because Iyad told us. Except this time it's his son.
UPDATE 8/7/10: We visited Bil'in again yesterday and found out this Majde wasn't the kid we met, but his cousin. That's what happens when you have a big extended family with the same name. As far as anyone knows, all three kids are still in detention. So it doesn't make quite as dramatic a story. But it still fucking sucks.
open and closed
Nablus is open. The constricting ring of checkpoints that has squeezed the city since the beginning of the Second Intifada has finally been relaxed, as part of the carrot-and-stick policy Israel has applied to the West Bank and Gaza. It is the first time in many years IFPB has been able to bring a delegation here.
Nablus was a center of resistance in the early 2000s, and was hit frequently and hard by the Israeli army. There are tales of long curfews, whole families killed, people bleeding to death in their homes because ambulances were denied passage. The walls of the oft-besieged Old City are dotted with martyr posters, and bullet holes.
But today, Nablus is bursting with life. Shops are open. Pedestrians pack the streets. The staff at the Yasmin Hotel enthusiastically carry our bags up the numerous stairs before we can learn that they're taking the stairs because the electricity is off. It's as if everyone is grabbing as much life as they can after years of being under various degrees of siege.
That night in the hotel many of us are hanging out in the lobby. The hotel staff are watching Arabic music videos and all of a sudden, despite the incredible heat, some of them start dancing dabke, Palestinian folk dance. Then they are teaching us the steps. There are many quick changes of weight and most of us are horrible at it, but everyone is laughing a lot. At midnight in the blazing heat in the middle of a scarred city, we are having a crazy dabke dance party.
The contrast to Hebron two days later is a shock. Hebron is unique in the West Bank in that Israeli settlers have moved right into the city center. As a consequence, Hebron is divided into two zones: H1, which experiences the "normal" conditions of the occupation, and H2, which is on military lockdown. Here for the first time we hear F-16s--a lot of them--and see soldiers on the streets--a lot of them. There are gates and checkpoints within the city, walls closing off streets for no reason other than to make life miserable for the Palestinian residents, and some of the craziest settlers in the West Bank.
Thirty seconds into our tour we're stopped by a soldier who tells our Palestinian guide Issa that he's not allowed to take us down the street on which he lives. Later a car full of settlers drives by and someone gives us the finger. And we're experiencing only a small slice of what it's like to live here. On some streets settlers have moved into the upper floors of the buildings and throw garbage, bricks, anything you can imagine down on the Palestinians in the shops below.
The desperation in Hebron is palpable. We are followed everywhere by flocks of kids begging us to buy something, a bracelet, a trinket, anything, ten shekels, five shekels. The Old City of Hebron used to be busier than Jerusalem. Now it's a ghost town. On many streets not a single shop is open. Some were closed by direct military order, but the slow grind of occupation, closure, hostile soldiers, and fanatic settlers has done its work on many more.
Nablus and Hebron are two sides of the same coin. The situation in Hebron is just a concentrated form of what's going on all over the West Bank--the relentless drive to force Palestinians out. Everyone who lives in an open area remembers what closure is like, and in the back of everyone's mind is the fear of going back to that. Nablus is only open at Israel's whim. In this way the occupation constantly pressures people to lower their expectations, to be grateful for the most minimal things: the ability to buy food, to run a business, to go to school, to walk down a street. To get people so focused on daily survival that they forget about things like self-determination and equal rights. The fact that it hasn't worked yet--not everywhere, not completely--is a testament to Palestinians' resilience.
Nablus was a center of resistance in the early 2000s, and was hit frequently and hard by the Israeli army. There are tales of long curfews, whole families killed, people bleeding to death in their homes because ambulances were denied passage. The walls of the oft-besieged Old City are dotted with martyr posters, and bullet holes.
But today, Nablus is bursting with life. Shops are open. Pedestrians pack the streets. The staff at the Yasmin Hotel enthusiastically carry our bags up the numerous stairs before we can learn that they're taking the stairs because the electricity is off. It's as if everyone is grabbing as much life as they can after years of being under various degrees of siege.
That night in the hotel many of us are hanging out in the lobby. The hotel staff are watching Arabic music videos and all of a sudden, despite the incredible heat, some of them start dancing dabke, Palestinian folk dance. Then they are teaching us the steps. There are many quick changes of weight and most of us are horrible at it, but everyone is laughing a lot. At midnight in the blazing heat in the middle of a scarred city, we are having a crazy dabke dance party.
The contrast to Hebron two days later is a shock. Hebron is unique in the West Bank in that Israeli settlers have moved right into the city center. As a consequence, Hebron is divided into two zones: H1, which experiences the "normal" conditions of the occupation, and H2, which is on military lockdown. Here for the first time we hear F-16s--a lot of them--and see soldiers on the streets--a lot of them. There are gates and checkpoints within the city, walls closing off streets for no reason other than to make life miserable for the Palestinian residents, and some of the craziest settlers in the West Bank.
Thirty seconds into our tour we're stopped by a soldier who tells our Palestinian guide Issa that he's not allowed to take us down the street on which he lives. Later a car full of settlers drives by and someone gives us the finger. And we're experiencing only a small slice of what it's like to live here. On some streets settlers have moved into the upper floors of the buildings and throw garbage, bricks, anything you can imagine down on the Palestinians in the shops below.
The desperation in Hebron is palpable. We are followed everywhere by flocks of kids begging us to buy something, a bracelet, a trinket, anything, ten shekels, five shekels. The Old City of Hebron used to be busier than Jerusalem. Now it's a ghost town. On many streets not a single shop is open. Some were closed by direct military order, but the slow grind of occupation, closure, hostile soldiers, and fanatic settlers has done its work on many more.
Nablus and Hebron are two sides of the same coin. The situation in Hebron is just a concentrated form of what's going on all over the West Bank--the relentless drive to force Palestinians out. Everyone who lives in an open area remembers what closure is like, and in the back of everyone's mind is the fear of going back to that. Nablus is only open at Israel's whim. In this way the occupation constantly pressures people to lower their expectations, to be grateful for the most minimal things: the ability to buy food, to run a business, to go to school, to walk down a street. To get people so focused on daily survival that they forget about things like self-determination and equal rights. The fact that it hasn't worked yet--not everywhere, not completely--is a testament to Palestinians' resilience.
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