Notes from the West Bank: Hope amid a life staring down the barrel of a gun

During a two-week-long academic fellowship to Palestine and Israel this May, I spent many evenings on the steps of the ancient Damascus gates in East Jerusalem. A lovely spot that evokes the full weight of history and civilisation in the Holy Land, it offered the perfect place from which to reflect upon our very intense days.

At the gate, there is also a checkpoint set up by Israel for random checks in areas that have a large Palestinian population. One evening, the soldiers pulled out a Palestinian boy, barely 10 or 11, for a random check mere seconds after I had passed through. His family watched helplessly as the soldiers roughly pulled up his shirt.

The boy’s frightened yet stoic face showed that he was not a stranger to this kind of violence. It is also at this gate that I first witnessed the committed Jewish peace activists who stand watch at various checkpoints to act as witnesses and speak up against the aggression of Israeli soldiers against Palestinians.

As horrific events began to unfold in Israel and Palestine last week, I yet again tried to make sense of the many experiences during my time in the region.

My trip to the Holy Land had many motivations.

In my father’s hometown of Kochi, I have often visited the 16th-century Paradesi Synagogue. I took pride in the fact that Jews, oppressed elsewhere, had found acceptance and refuge in one of the few places without a history of Jewish persecution. Moving to the US, I found deep affinity with Jewish friends. We bonded over a shared outsider status in the dominant Western Christian world and the sense of cultural, rather than religious attachment to traditions.

At the same time, I had grown up in the shadows of the post-colonial idealism of the Non-Aligned Movement that fostered an empathy for the Palestinians displaced and left stateless during the creation of the Israeli state in 1948.

My desire to try to understand this dichotomy and my academic work in gender and mobility in Palestine led to the fellowship. But such an endeavor is viewed with deep suspicion in the US, where a mere mention of the Palestinian condition had become near taboo even before this new tragedy. Before my trip I was hesitant even to mention the P word, at times simply saying that I was going to Israel. This enforced silence has perpetuated many misconceptions.

First, some basics. All Palestinians are not the same as the Hamas terrorist group that sparked off last week’s conflict. In fact, the majority of Palestinians live well away from Gaza, the small southern coastal area controlled by Hamas. They have no way to get to Gaza even if they wanted to. That is because they are mostly confined to East Jerusalem and the adjoining Occupied Territories known as the West Bank that lie to the north of Israel.

West Bankers and Gazans often have families in both places but are geographically separated at either end of Israel – which they cannot enter. Gazans have been shut in, unable to leave, since an Israeli blockade that began in 2007. Neither can visitors enter Gaza. That is why many have said that they are living in the world’s largest open-air prison.

The West Bank does not have actual nationhood status. It is a landlocked space with every entry and exit spot manned by Israeli checkpoints. Any movement of people or goods must be vetted by Israel. In fact, entering through Israel’s Ben Gurion airport, even visitors and academics like myself have to hide the fact that our destination is actually the West Bank. Else we risk hours of interrogation and often denial of entry altogether as experienced even by the noted scholar Noam Chomsky.

The West Bank is also not a contiguous space. In and around West Bank towns and villages are the Israeli settlements that have been recognised as illegal under several United Nations resolutions. These settlements splinter Palestinian lives, cutting off their land, separating and isolating the villages and towns.

The settlements present one of the visually distinct images I can recall from my trip. Palestinians have no independent water rights, so Palestinian homes are easily identified by a black or white water storage tank on the roof. Settlement homes on the other hand have prettier roofs since they have access to piped water from Israel.

Wherever there is a settlement, there is Israeli army presence and checkpoints that Palestinians have to cross nearly every day to go to work in the next town, to go to school or university, to visit their families in the very next village. Palestinians often must get out of their vehicles and walk across the security gates while visitors like me get to stay in their buses or cars. Often at the slightest or no provocation at all they may be identified for body searches or worse, violence and arrest.

Checkpoints are frequently shut for Jewish holidays and even unannounced closures and disruptions. Check points are mostly staffed by young Israeli army conscripts who remind me of my undergraduate students. They are easily distracted, with limited patience and the insecurities of people their age. Yet, they have disproportionate power, all of which predictably leads to unpredictable and unprovoked aggression. They also take unexplained breaks when the checkpoints close for no reason.

All the while, Palestinian lives are put on hold. At the universities we visited, professors and students often had no idea when or if they would reach their classes or be able to return home. A Palestinian professor I met described the relief that she and her husband felt on the days they were simply able to come back to their West Bank home after a day of work or school. There are many days when they spend the night in makeshift arrangements when checkpoint hurdles prevent them from returning.

Our group of visiting academics experienced this several times when sudden closures prevented us from going on our scheduled visits. At other times trips that should only take a half hour took us more than three hours given the slow movement through checkpoints. This was a few days for us but daily life for Palestinians.

There is a perception that Palestinians are constantly seeking violence and do not leave Israelis in peace. But in reality, Palestinians have nowhere to just be, to move freely and go about their lives unhindered.

Newer settlements keep cropping up, further encroaching and cutting off West Bank lands. The settlers tend to be religious extremists. The current right-wing government where some ministers have openly called for complete elimination of Palestinians has emboldened the settlers. They often create fear in neighbouring Palestinian villages, driving past nightly while firing guns and tear gas. Palestinian residents have no recourse. There is no Palestinian army they can turn to since the Palestinian Authority merely has a municipal governance role and can only operate under the sanction of Israel.

When Palestinian young men attempt to protect their villages from settler violence, they face arrests or even greater violence from the Israeli army that is there only to protect the settlers. Palestinians attempting to protest this violence end up in Israeli prisons, often without formal charges. Settlers and their supporters in the global diaspora often evoke the imagery of Palestinian children throwing stones. But as one professor said, throwing stones against the fully armed settlers with the backing of one of the most heavily armed armies in the world is merely a death wish, a suicidal mission from desperate young people who have no future under the occupation.

But even as extremism is gaining ground, Israeli peace activist groups have tried to counter them. For instance, a group of Israeli army veterans called Breaking the Silence, routinely speaks up about the inescapable cycles of violence the occupation brings to both Palestinian and Israeli lives. Even among the Jewish diaspora in the US, groups like Jewish Voices for Peace vehemently advocate for a solution to Palestinian displacement and statelessness.

Diaspora Jewish scholars are describing the current siege of Gaza, home to two million civilians, the majority of whom are children, as being akin to genocide. Yet these diverse voices are very nearly shut out of the mainstream western media. Several large protests organised by Jewish Voices of Peace in recent days have barely been covered in any mainstream media in the US.

Just like Israeli society, Palestinians also have varied views on their predicament. Some turn to militant groups like Hamas as offering the only hope out of decades of despair and displacement. Many others reject such sectarian extremism, affirm a secular Palestinian identity and despair that Hamas has hijacked their just struggle.

A very moving theme in many of my interactions was the great hope and solidarity that Palestinians derive from the histories of post-colonial struggles of other marginalised peoples. They spoke of being inspired by the Indian Independence movement, the Civil Rights movement in the US and the anti-apartheid movement in South Africa.

One Palestinian scholar mentioned that the writings of Malcom X helped him get through his time in an Israeli prison. Another young theatre artist mentioned being inspired and moved by the support he has received from Bangladeshi figures.

All the while, they wonder when their own burden of displacement and suffering will gain similar legitimacy.

Ramya M Vijaya is a Professor of Economics and Global Studies at Stockton University in New Jersey.