Keffiah, Stone and a Spit!

Francesca Borri From Ramallah for Il Fatto Quotidiano.

Translated and adapted by: Ahmed M. ELNAHAS – November 20^th 2014.

A child in Keffiah swinging a Sling launching Stones will never stop an occupation!! Everybody knows that.. The UN, USA, EU, Arab League, and the entire world.. They all know that, yet no one can or will do anything about it.. Because the occupation has armed itself with a much more sharp and a lot more sophisticated weapons: “Laws” and “Procedures”!

The basic idea in using these weapons is “Unpredictability”.. Just render your moves unpredictable and no one can prevent or stop them; so that apparently everything would seem normal. But here, in ‘this Palestine’, one can be arrested in any given moment and for whichever pretext. And that only would drive the Palestinians to isolate and shut themselves inside cities and localities.. Thus not only Gaza becomes separated from the West bank; but even Ramallah from Nablus from Hebron and from Jenin.. From Jerusalem!

Ever since Salam Fayyad, Premier in 2007, has decided that “it is useless to negotiate” and that “the only solution is to start rebuilding our ‘Independent State’ in order to apply afterwards for the UN recognition”; it became an easy thing acquiring a ‘Bank Loan’.. Everybody, almost, got a car, a house, a washing machine.. Some have started commerce and were able to own a shop.. And the ‘Occupation’ seemed inexistent. But enter any shop or supermarket to discover that ALL the displayed merchandise is 100% “MADE IN ISRAEL”! There is absolutely not a single Palestinian product offered.. Not even an egg!

Then try to have a walk about ‘Al Masyun’ area, where are the banks and offices, there you’ll face a wall behind which lies ‘Al Amari Refugee Camp’ where 10 thousand Palestinians ‘exist’ without water and without  electricity or services.. This is today’s Palestine.. Full of contradictions and complexities!

But let us try and be fair, because all of this is just the fulfilment not the failure of the Peace Process.. Of the Oslo Accords.. Whereas in 1993, in the name of a “Palestinian Progressive Self-Governance”; they have accorded the splitting of the West Bank into three areas: A, B and C; in their turn fragmented by the Israeli Settlements into seventy (70) smaller and isolated areas, completely disconnected from one another. Only ‘A’ zone seems to be controlled by the Palestinian Authority.. Area ‘B’ (Jerusalem) has been shattered by the wall and the disproportionate Arab houses and properties seizures.. While area ‘C’ (61% of the West Bank territory) is entirely under the control of Israel, and it is there that the real ‘battle’ roars.. In the rural areas.. “…because Israel aims at the West Bank lands, not those of Gaza. In August, Netanyahu took advantage of the war to approve and pass in secrecy one of the major land seizures ever.. Another 400 acres.. Soon we, the Palestinians, shall become the ‘Colonies’  in an all Israeli West Bank”! Said Moustafa Barghouty, one of the well noted Palestinian mediators.

The real problem is fundamentally ‘Economic’.. The rich aspect of Ramallah is an illusion veiling the full dependency of the Palestinian economy to Israel.. Israel controls everything, the borders, the infrastructures, the transports, the energy other than the most crucial resource: Water.. It forces a completely dependent Palestinian economy towards certain sectors to complement its own.

The West Bank’s poverty rate was 75%.. Gaza 80%.. East Jerusalem 78%!! “However”, explains the 31 year old Mohammad Matter, “the real drama reaches its climax when we know that: a) the Gaza Tunnels provide for the survival of the population, but they also supply their owners with at least a net income of US$ 100,000.- a month; b) in the past few weeks, it was all about splitting the millions of dollars dispensed for the reconstruction of what the war have destroyed; c) EU and USA are classifying a ‘Humanitarian Crisis’ what really is a sheer ‘Political Matter’; and d) both the EU and USA are continuing to rebuild what Israel destroys because 45% of their ‘Aids’ are spent in Israel”!

Also the Palestinians, same as their fellow Arab youngsters elsewhere of a crippled and frustrated Arab Spring; are completely crushed by a growing official corruption added to the uncertainty of their own future expectations.. While in the West Bank they officially think that reconstructing Palestine is ‘the’ priority, their youth are slowly joining with their cousins in Gaza to believe that fighting Israelis anywhere and by any mean is ‘the only valid’ priority.. To fight Israelis anywhere and anyhow, even with a spit! An affirmations to which a UN observer was reported saying “You spit and the other will bombard”.

If you go to Hebron (El Khalil), you’ll notice that 200 thousand Palestinians are hostages of 600 Israeli colonies.. Where Palestinians and Israelis walk side by side ignoring each other.. Israelis think that they ‘will’ erase out from the map any possible Palestinian State; and the Palestinians believe that a Unified State ‘will’ materialise, and given the demographic diversity, in 20 years it shall be a Palestinian majority state!

They walk side by side; each convinced that time is ‘his’ ally.. So there is no need to negotiate.. And that’s the only thing they have in common.

Pass On The Word.