Anne Stephens Palestine Journal 3

Anne Stephens'
Palestine Journal 3

HERE IN RAMALLAH, FOR ONE MORE DAY, THE WORLD IS WATCHING [Posted by e-mail, November 12, 2004]

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the geographical summary

For more than a week, here in Ramallah, it was easy to imagine that the whole world was watching. Peering through the windshield of the car or taxi at the ‘important people’ who, though hard to identify, were coming and going through the gate of the Muqata (the walled compound where Yasir Arafat was confined prior to his last illness). Watching through the lenses of the multitude of TV camera men, listening to the voices of the Reuters TV reporters perched on the roof of the house belonging to the English teacher just across the road.

What were they watching for? Yasir Arafat, Chairman of the Palestinian Liberation Organization, leader and most authoritative representative of the Palestinian people for several generations, was not there. Everyone, including the residents of Ramallah, knew, since it had been on all the TV screens and in all the newspapers thereafter, that he was not in Ramallah, in the place where he had been virtually imprisoned for more than two years by the Israeli occupation. They knew that he was gravely ill, possibly dying, though that was hard to know for certain for many days.

Though Chairman Arafat was one of them, their most recognized and accepted leader for several decades, for the most part the people of Ramallah knew no more than all the others. The activities that pass for normalcy in this city continued as the week went by, day by day.

Ordinary people here in Ramallah, and for that matter in the whole of Palestine, live day by day. Day by day they depend, not on what goes on in the Muqata, where Arafat had met with the other men appointed or elected to speak and act for the Palestinians, but on the one thing that has always been at the core of Palestinian life. Their families.

It is hard for an American, unless, perhaps, one is a 1st or 2nd generation immigrant, to imagine the extent to which life centers on and depends on the family here in Palestine. There is so much uncertainty, so much unpredictability. Today’s Palestinians, the generation that was born just before or after the upheavals of the 1940’s and all those since, have never experienced security and predictability in their lives. And they don’t expect to. They are rarely consulted or given an open and direct voice in decision-making. (The last elections were in 1996 when the Palestinian Legislative Council was formed. New municipal elections have been announced for early in 2005, but little is certain.)

In the past eight weeks I have had the privilege of getting to know more deeply the lives and experiences of a few of the friends I have made here. They speak of the years when they were young—in the 1940’s and 50’s—of going off to college in Lebanon or Egypt, constantly worrying for their parents and siblings at home. They speak of the years of living abroad, most often in the U.S., of Florida, California, New York, Michigan and Illinois. Of the successful businesses, the professional accomplishments, the birth of children and the raising of young families. And always they speak of the distances that separated them from their parents, of the burden of concern for those remaining in Palestine as hopes for independence and freedom in their homeland gradually diminished. Of the aunts and uncles and cousins living in the many places of the Palestinian Diaspora in the Middle East and of the pain of loosing touch with them as they, too, are hemmed in, fenced in, walled off from each other.

And then the cycle repeated. Of children and grandchildren far away and the increasing difficulty of everyday life for so many. Of businesses and income disappearing, of fearing both the threat and actuality of violence and armed conflict. Of being imprisoned by armies, walls, and isolation as the Occupation has deepened and the world has become a place where they (and their children) are so often met with suspicion and fear. And of growing older, conscious of the passing of the decades.

Palestinians are very practiced at living with an uncertain and unpredictable future. It has many costs.

Over at the Muqata, around Arafat’s bedside in Paris, in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, in Washington, DC and in whatever place those people on whom the TV cameras are focused confer, plans and decisions were being discussed that will almost certainly profoundly affect the lives of Palestinians at home and abroad. Of far more importance than the question of where Chairman Arafat will be laid to rest, though this may be indicative of other decision-making, are the questions and answers that will fundamentally determine the lives of Palestinians, in their homeland and abroad, far into the future.

Will elections be held as scheduled? Will Palestinians of different factions, both the old and the new, the trusted and distrusted, find ways to work together to build a more stable, more representative government? Will the Israeli government and military and the many factions dividing the Israeli people give a bit of time and space to the Palestinians to put forward new leaders? Will there be renewed and increased efforts on both sides to establish a relationship that will serve the interests of both in finally accepting that both Palestinians and Israelis must learn to live together, sharing but not dominating this small bit of the Middle East? These are huge questions, the answers unclear.

Will it surprise you to know that there is one clear, unequivocal answer that Palestinians give to all these questions? What is clear, said over and over by Palestinians of all ages education, social station, economic resources, both Christian and Muslim—without exception—is that the United States will be considered responsible for whatever answers emerge. Palestinians consider U.S. military and foreign policies toward Israel to have opened the way to the most repressive, illegal (under international law) and damaging acts of the Israeli government since 2001. This includes the virtually unchallenged assassinations of Palestinian leadership at many levels. It also includes the strangling of the Palestinian economy that has impoverished perhaps 60% of Palestinians living in the West Bank and Gaza, and is the most significant result to date of the Wall of Fear (a phrase used by members of the Israeli Coalition Against Housing Demolition).

Soon I predict that the world will no longer be watching Ramallah—or Palestine. It will be watching the U.S. government to see whether or not its actions affect positive answers to the important questions being asked. Let’s hope that more and more U.S. citizens are watching too—if they desire peace and security and the same for their children.

I volunteered and was accepted in May to participate in the Ecumenical Accompaniment Program in Palestine and Israel (EAPPI), a program created and sponsored since fall, 2002, by the World Council of Churches. The U.S. sector is administered by Church World Service. The program sponsors "Christian volunteers to live and work in Palestine and Israel to accompany Palestinians and Israelis in their non-violent actions and advocacy efforts to end the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza" including the construction of the Wall on Palestinian territory. As you might assume, these volunteers pay their own travel and living expenses (at the same time receiving $400 a month allowances).

Should you wish to contribute to this direct action as a part of 'doing what we can', send a check to: