global soil

This piece can also be read in the September 2006 Issue of Punk Planet.

Standing at the window of my Gaza Strip apartment, having heard the Apache helicopter circle a time or two around the block, I watched it drop a missile, glowing red, two blocks away. It was just past dark, people were still in the street. I grew up in the United States, I can’t begin to count the number of Hollywood renditions of such an act I have watched on the big screen, but nothing prepares you to see a piece of machinery, manufactured in your own country, drop a bomb in the neighborhood where you are living. Earlier that day on the same street, I watched children play and women weave their way through the crowd with baskets of fresh herbs balanced on their heads.

Rachel Corrie, a skinny creative free spirit entered my life right after the twin towers came down on September 11th. She contacted me while looking for others to organize with in opposition to the bombing of Afghanistan. We organized a contingent made up of grey haired grannies, a peace scout troop of hippie kids, our hesitant friends and at the Continue reading →

By Serena and Rochelle

This article also appears in the December 2005 issue of Works in Progress.

Ten hours difference, some 6,800 miles away from Olympia, we are staying in the home of a Palestinian family in Rafah and it feels like an extension of our own families. We are part of a group of four, hopefully five soon, who have traveled to the Occupied Palestinian Territories as a delegation of the Olympia Rafah Sister City Project. After Rachel Corrie was killed, our hearts and minds were drawn to this place. We have come in the hopes of connecting with the community and creating lasting ties through tangible projects and cross cultural exchanges. Through the last two and a half years we have closely followed the news coming out of Rafah, educating ourselves on the political situation, and reading numerous perspectives on what is necessary for peace and justice.

Now that we have spent five weeks in the West Bank and Gaza, we are seeing all these realities on the ground. The power differential between Israel and Palestine is undeniable and international laws are clearly being broken, but none of this has prepared us for understanding people’s daily lives, the resistance of just living, surviving here. It is the daily invitations into family homes to chat and drink tea, talking about what fashion is like in America, being asked about how Americans perceive Palestinians, laughing together, playing with the children, which makes it almost incomprehensible that we are living amongst people who’s entire lives are dictated by the will of an outside force, the Israeli military and government. And that this is funded by the everyday lives of working American families.

Looking out over the balcony of the home where we are currently staying in Rafah, children walk home from school, parents shop, taxis rush by barely avoiding head-on collisions. People ride bikes and donkey carts pass by carrying anything you can imagine, food, building supplies, people. Beyond the intense poverty people face here (60% unemployment in the Gaza Strip) life feels normal in these moments.

The occupation is the slow strangulation of peoples lives. This is not an all out bloody battle field the way war is often perceived. Violence here comes not only in the form of F-16s and American made tanks, but poverty, an undrinkable water supply, a devastated economy, and daily acts of intimidation. It is a process of eradication with Israel holding all of the cards. In the territories there is the perpetual feeling that you are walking on a thin layer of ice, you never know when it is going to break, when you will fall through into the ice cold reality.

Look closer, submerged, you see what lies beyond the normality of everyday life. In our first month we spent time traveling and working in the West Bank with Palestinians and internationals non-violently resisting the occupation. Each experience we had was unique, yet threaded through them all was the constant reminder of the Israeli military occupations tight grip, controlling an entire population of 2.4 million people. This strangle-hold on life is so immense it has become integrated into society.

While in the Sulfeit region, we stayed with a family in the village of Dir Istya . That night we slept in their daughter’s room with every single free square inch on the floor taken up by girls and blankets, reminiscent of a middle school slumber party. The oldest daughter brushed and braided my hair and we danced to Arabic MTV style music. We stayed with this family because the Israeli military has been making regular visits in the middle of the night trying to arrest their 17 year old son for reasons unknown to them. His younger brother is already being held. Israel has a long history of detaining people without trial on secret evidence, some for over 5 years. The soldiers come in the night, pounding on the door, shooting into the air, climbing on the roof looking for him. He is not there, he rarely sleeps at home anymore knowing that any night they could come for him. It is hard to find any man in the West Bank who has not been detained at some point in his life. We slept there to document human rights abuses and ease the fears of the mother, whose health has been declining due to the stress of the situation.

Earlier in the week we spent time picking olives. Wandering up the hillside that surrounds the village of Salem, located outside of Nablus in the West Bank, we followed the oldest son through the olive grove as he led the donkey loaded with empty bags to their families trees. Being out in the fields under the hot sun in the dust was reminiscent of being at home picking blackberries or blue berries rather than accompanying a Palestinian family threatened by the violence of settlers. Settlers have cut down olive trees, burned them, stolen olives, attacked and even killed the local villagers in their groves. There is a history of settler violence through out the West Bank and Salem is no exception with the settlement Elon More situated just to the north of the village. For these reasons internationals have been asked to accompany Palestinians during the harvest in many areas of the West Bank.

In Gaza, where the settlers were recently forced to leave and the military re-deployed to the borders, air and sea, we have visited many places that hold the memory of daily violence, constant gunfire and raids. In Rafah, staying with the family who’s home Rachel died defending, Dr. Samir told us how through this time he found his strength in the eyes of his youngest daughter Eman. The strength required to stand confidently in front of his three beautiful children during the years of night after night tanks firing around and into their home. Although he was full of fear, he would stand showing none of it, even on nights when Israeli soldiers came into his home, forced him to gather his entire family in a corner of their living room and sit for hours held at gunpoint. One night, tanks firing all around them, Eman, who would usually cower and cry in this situation, entered the garden and began dancing. Eyes wide, he told us, one more year and his children would have gone crazy.

Five weeks in Palestine and it is clear that our government’s foreign policy in the Middle East is creating more hatred, more division, and more injustice on a global scale. In Rafah these divisions are clear, people look skeptically at us as we walk down the street. They ask us if our government sent us here. This work is difficult and US foreign policy only aids in making it more so. But this is why we are here, to challenge the roles they place on us. Terrorist, patriot, freedom fighter and on and on. We cannot let our government dictate the way people across the globe relate to each other. We must work to create a more holistic world view, one in which we struggle together, support each other and recognize that our liberation is tied to that of one another. Living here, the similarities of our daily lives are undeniable, we all need food, jobs, clean water and a roof over our heads. These things sound obvious but the media and our governmental policies dehumanize others. With two more months in Rafah remaining, we hope through this work, the people we meet, and the connections we make to create a sustainable relationship that will be fostered between people in both of our communities. We can only counter the negative actions of our government and the mistrust it breeds one by one. This is why we came here. We hope that our small effort will add to the ripples of solidarity already resonating throughout the world.

This article also appears in CounterPunch and in the January 2006 issue of Works in Progress.

Looking out over the Rafah skyline at dark from the roof of my apartment
building most families are sleeping. The flicker of a few late night TVs
can be seen through an occasional window. The street lights shine down on
the sidewalks, highlighting mounds of sand and scattered trash.
Laundry and the tattered edges of Palestinian flags blow gently in the
wind. Things are peaceful, mostly quiet with the sporadic calls of
roosters and donkeys.

The the slow rumble begins of the American made F16s overhead, not a
new sound, but tonight there are many and more consistent than usual.
The bright lights of flash grenades rip me from the occupation free
reality I have always known, reminding me I am in Rafah. The
experience is surreal. There have been mock air raids for intimidation
purposes every night over Gaza for the last few days as well as over 25
actual missiles dropped destroying major roads, agricultural lands and
a bridge. “Four access routes have been targeted in the northern Gaza
Strip by the air force,” an IDF spokesman said. “The routes have been
used by terrorists to reach areas from which they launch rockets and
mortar shells at Israeli targets.” These homemade rockets are highly
inaccurate, have a range of 10 kilometers and according to Israel
itself, pose no strategic threat. Yet these so called “routes” being
bombed are not used solely by the resistance fighters but are the roads
to schools, hospitals, homes and farms of the 1.4 million residents of
Gaza.

Last week I heard the sound of an Apache helicopter and stood to look
out the window because it sounded so close and seemed to be making
circles around the apartment. Glancing out the window I watched it drop
a missile that lit up red and disappeared behind the apartment building
across the street. It landed in a nearby neighborhood directly on a
car in the street killing a 20 year old resistance fighter who they
were aiming for. There was no trial, just an assassination. Ten
innocent civilians were injured including three children. This is just
one of many of these extra-judicial killings, clearly illegal by
international law, committed by Israel regularly.

I have been trying to write about these experiences for two weeks but have
been wordless in attempting to explain the immense gap between my
previous perception as understood by Hollywood movies and news accounts
and the reality, the feeling of watching a machine made by your country
drop a weapon into the community in which you are living. It is so
different when you know families in the neighborhood under attack, when
the store across the street where you usually shop is closed because
the night before someone in their family was killed. When a missile is
falling on the same neighborhood where earlier in the day you saw the
simple beauty of a small child carrying his younger brother on his back
through puddles, watched taxis swerve around a toothless old man
driving a donkey cart loaded with fresh tomatoes, and where you sat
with a family who insisted you eat more when you know they don’t have
enough food to feed themselves.

Collective punishment… “the punishing of a group of people for the
crime of a few or even of one. It is in direct contradiction to the
concept of due process, where each individual receives separate
treatment based on their individual circumstances as they relate to the
crime in question.” In my short time in Palestine I have witnessed
collective punishment by Israel through the mass arrests of young men
simply because of their age, the demolitions of hundreds of homes of
innocent families because of their location, the inability of all
Palestinians to move freely to school, to jobs, to see their family, to
get to the hospital, the destruction and confiscation of olive groves,
and now, the air strikes on neighborhoods and infrastructure. In Gaza
this week 3-month-old Maria Fikri Ekhrout, was injured by shrapnel to
the right eye and the skull when she was at home. She was only one of
many innocent civilians injured and this is “post-disengagement,” (more
accurately redeployment from the ground to air, border, and sea). The
windows of a large hospital were blown out. I am tired of listing
these atrocities, the words seem empty in contrast to the look in the
eyes of those who have suffered from them directly. How the list might
read differently if you too saw the old man praying on a small rug in
the rubble of his demolished home. These direct experiences lift the
long lists of human rights abuses off the page, giving them new
meaning, no longer just reaching the logical mind, but moving in to the
heart.

The Israeli military and the media provide no shortage of attempted
justifications for these acts of collective punishment, and it is the
responsibility of Israeli citizens and Americans who fund these actions
to demand that such attacks must stop. In short soundbytes, the media
attempts to portray Israel as only “defending itself” against
supposedly hate-filled Arabs. Once you are here on the ground this
rhetoric is absurd. Yes, there are individual Palestinians who are
firing rockets into Israel, suicide bombers who have killed innocent
Israelis, but forcing the entire population of Palestinians to suffer
daily will not bring peace. Bombing roads, killing Palestinian
children and leaving thousands of poor civilians without homes is not a
proper response. Anger is fed and more good hearted civilians become
extremists.

Repeatedly the media and Israel blame the Palestinian leadership for
their “inability to restore order, to stop ‘terrorist’ attacks and
control the situation.” But this denies the role of 38 years of
occupation and the systematic, strategic role Israel has played in
destroying the infrastructure of the PA. There is no question that a
lot of corruption exists within the Palestinian Authority, but they are
not to blame for the resistance. Without occupation there would be
nothing to resist. I hear the same logic from America in reference to
Iraq, justifying the collective punishment and the continued occupation
because without it, there will be chaos. That, like the PA, the new
Iraqi government can’t get things under control. It is a self
fullfilling prophesy. The military strategies of Israel and America
create the very chaos that “forces them to remain and take necessary
security measures.” In Palestine, while the Israel Occupation
continues, these security measures come in the form of a wall that
claims mass amounts of arable land and the majority of all water
resources. In Iraq, while the American occupation continues, billions
of dollars end up in the hands of American based corporations for
“reconstruction” and continued resource control.

The first morning after I witnessed an air strike, over tea with a
close family, I mentioned what I had seen in the night. The family
smiled at each other, “this is normal” the father told me, “no big
deal.” Right now the atrocities I am witnessing are nothing compared to
what they have seen, what they have lived through. Yet an end to the
collective punishment is no where in sight. Israeli defense officials
announced today the creation of a “no-go zone” 1.5 miles deep which
will run along the northern and eastern edges of Gaza enforced with
artillery, helicopter and gunboat fire. According to a senior official
in the Prime Minister’s Office, under this policy “anything that moved”
would be “fair game.” Gaza is only about 25 miles long and six miles
wide so this is a significant amount of land, much of it farmland.
They recently threatened to cut off electricity to Gaza following each
rocket attack. This policy is on hold due to pressure from human
rights groups pointing out that the hospital in Gaza is without
generators. Agriculture Minister Yisrael Katz, stated that “if the
options are that Israeli southern communities suffer rocket fire or
Gazans flee to Sinai under Israeli bombardment, I prefer the second
option.” Yesterday, in America, our congress approved an additional
600 million dollars to Israel to “fund joint security projects.”

The longer I am here and the more exposure I have to the experience of
life under occupation the more confused I become about the difference
between “terrorism” and the anti-terror policies of collective
punishment employed by Israel and the US. I feel frustration and
hopelessness for the future of the people I have come to know in the
last three months. Yet I still hold on to the hope in people to people
connection and know there is power in the simple act of listening and
sharing one anothers stories.

Hello from Rafah,

We have been in Gaza now for close to two weeks. The situation here is
very different on the ground than the West Bank and it has taken all this
time just to begin to wrap my head around the reality. Serena and I both
came down with an intense stomach flu and now I have a respiratory cold so
this has slowed us down a bit. The Nasrallah home Rachel died defending
housed two brothers and their families. The last e-mail we sent you about
getting in was at the home of the first brother, Khaled, who is renting an
apartment in Gaza. Now that we are living in Rafah, we have been staying
with the other brother, (Dr. Samir) also known as Abu Kareem, his wife Umm
Kareem and their three beautiful children. They have been incredibly
generous and have been escorting us everywhere as we figure out the lay of
the land and become known enough to be able to safely move around freely.
I have not been tucked in and taken care of so intently while sick since
being a child. Truly feels like an extension of my family.

So Gaza post-disengagement, what does this look like?
I am sure all of you saw some of the American media show of the Israeli
disengagement. So often the settlers were portrayed as victims. Yet these
8,500 settlers who made up .6% of the population lived on 15%
of the land, and were living in Gaza illegally by international law. Now
all that remains are some greenhouses and demolished remains of their
homes. Other than the occasional F16 in the sky, there is no physical
soldiers in the area. The media called it a withdrawal of Israeli
soldiers, Khaled calls it a redeployment. I think this is much more
accurate. Just a pull back to the borders, yet they still maintain
control of all entrances and exits, controlling and limiting the transfer
of goods, controlling all airspace, access to the Mediterranean sea,
controlling the drinking water, and the power resources. The occupation
clearly continues. I know thanks to our own Condy Rice, Rafah Crossing
into Egypt is slated to reopen soon, what form this really takes will make
a large difference to the future of Gaza. And whether or not it will
remain in its current state as an open air prison.

So it is a strange time, no Israeli troop presence except the occasional
bombing from above, and yet all of Rafah is left with signs of the
soldiers. Even in the governor of Rafahs office, as we listen to detail
after detail, figure after figure of the devastation Rafah has suffered at
the hands of the Israeli occupation in the last five years of the
intifada, my eyes wander to the gunshot holes in the window of his office.
This man, who is in charge of all civilian affairs, of taking care of his
people, even he was under attack. The vulnerability incomprehensible.

So throughout this last week we have been wandering through Rafah, taking
it all in, and even as aware as I have been of the atrocities of the last
few years I am still taken aback by all the signs of this oppression.
Tank marks in the streets, every home along the border riddled with bullet
holes, huge vast expanses of land that used to be homes, and most
tragically the human wounds, the unimaginable suffering that I can hardly
comprehend but experience daily in story after story.

Dr. Samir told me of the strength he found in the eyes of his youngest
daughter, to be able to stand confidently in front of his three beautiful
children through the years of night after night tanks firing around and
into their home. Although he was full of fear, he would stand showing
none of it, even on nights when soldiers came into his home, forced him to
gather his entire family in a corner of their living room and sit for
hours as an Israeli soldier held a gun pointed at them. One night, tanks
firing all around them, Eman, who would usually cower and cry in this
situation entered the garden and began dancing. Eyes wide, he told me,
one more year and his children would have gone crazy.

The next night, sitting over tea with another family on the border, we are
shown the bullet hole in the dresser mirror of the daughters room, where
now there is a plastic rose. In another child’s room the mother points
out a hole in the wall at pillow level, where oddly the day before they
had decided to rearrange the room and move the bed to another wall. The
hardest part of this experience was that the entire time the mother and
youngest daughter told these stories being translated for us
they were laughing hysterically. Incomprehensible to handle this fear,
this pain.

Rafah is plastered with a martyr poster of a baby killed during the
intifada. We walked by the cemetery with 431 new graves just from the last
five years of the intifada, over 150 of them children, yes children. This
in a town the same size as Thurston County, 100,000. Can you imagine? And
can you imagine as the ambulances went to retrieve these children that
they to were fired upon? Can you imagine if the homes of 14,000 of our
community members were demolished with no retribution by an occupying
force. Six mosques demolished, can you imagine our churches? And can you
imagine that we have funded and are still funding this nightmare? Allowed
for the trauma of close to a million children throughout the Occupied
Palestinian Territories? And for what? To stop terrorism? Something is
wrong with this picture.

So now, here we are, Americans wandering these streets meeting the people,
hoping that somehow, our smiles and compassion can prevent the growing
hatred of Americans. And we can tell these stories to you and hopefully
you to your friends so that as Americans we can keep an open heart to
Arabs and know that they are not all terrorists and that we are not being
told the truth about where our taxes are going. That our governments
foreign policy is creating more hatred, more division, more injustice and
for the sake of children all over the middle east, we must come together
and do more to change it.

There are many complexities to Rafah. And I have much more to share about
the growing Islamic fundamentalism and understanding the resistance but I
have been going on too long. Next week we have many meetings, with the
Mayor, municipality, children’s groups, womens centers. The kindness that
is expressed to us so unbelievable. And the opportunities to work
together unlimited.

Thanks for listening. More soon…

rochelle

Hello out there…

I have been here a week and a half now. Unlike my last trip here, I have been able to transition slowly to the change in culture and to really spend time with all the interesting people that are crossing my path while travelling. It has allowed for time to let the complexity of it all sink in and to figure out how best to get around without getting scammed by taxi drivers. I have become comfortable shopping, finding the best bread, freshest fruit and veggies, and determining which of the odd unidentifiable foods I enjoy. It is pomegranate season and there is fresh juice everywhere you go, so good.

It has also been wonderful to have a friend living here in West Jerusalem (where the majority of Israelis live in Jerusalem). Maya is going to Rabbinical school and she has given me a better perspective of the mentality in Israel that allows the occupation to continue. It is so odd to walk into West Jerusalem because all of a sudden you are in a Western culture, like a street in America except for signs of Judaism are everywhere. Maya took us to the largest Holocaust museum. I have had a lot of exposure to this history through school and having travelled to the Anne Frank House, Dachau, and Holocaust Museum in DC, yet it is always shocking to imagine that humanity can allowed it to happen. They had video screens throughout the museum where survivors told powerful firsthand stories. Understanding this history is so important for all of us, so that we don’t repeat such atrocities and yet, I could not help but think of some of the similarities to todays Palestinian situation. When we walked into the museum the first quote on the wall was something like “A country should not be judged only by what it does but also by what it tolerates.” Earlier today a 12 year old Palestinian girl was beaten by Israeli settlers on her way to school in front of human rights observers. The observers tried to escort her back to her home and then they were also attacked by the settlers. They called the Israeli police, and when they arrived they arrested the Palestinian girl and detained the observers. The museum ended without any reflection on today. Instead there was a celebration of the British mandate running across a screen calling for an Israeli state, without a single mention of the Palestinians that were about to lose their homes, land, villages, livelihoods. I know many Israelis today do not support the occupation and many are working in solidarity with Palestinians but it still is hard for me to understand how the occupation has come to be. I just feel like we as humans have this fatal flaw, when touched by tremendous suffering rather than having our heart fill with compassion and an inability to allow for others to have to suffer this same pain we end up perpetrating it. In the museum a video of an old jewish man described his cruelty in the camps, having suffered so much that he was harming others to take care of himself instead of standing together. Its so tragic.

Yesterday Serena and I went to a small village called Salim outside of Nablus in the West Bank. We had to go through two check points to get there, one of which we were almost not allowed through due to an Israeli soldier with an M16. We went to this village in order to pick olives with a Palestinian family with many organizations including Rabbis for Human Rights and ISM, the international solidarity movement. Last year during the olive harvest Israeli settlers* came down from a nearby settlement and killed two Salim villagers in their own olive grove. In the past few years settlers have destroyed hundreds of ancient olive trees by cutting them down or starting fires. It was a beautiful sunny day and the family was incredibly appreciative. Last week, Israeli soldiers set up a blockade to prevent the local villagers from accessing their groves, calling it a “closed military zone.” However due to the presence of internationals who approached the soldiers, the villagers were allowed in.

On our way back to Jerusalem we were in a service (a minivan style shared taxi) the sun set and the Ramadan fast was broken. Our driver pulled over and two passengers climbed out returning with juice and dates to share. Half an hour later we ran into a flying checkpoint (a checkpoint that is set up randomly on roads by the Israeli army without notice). Although those with Israeli license tags could pass freely we were stopped and ordered out of the vehicle. Standing on the side of the road they yelled at the Palestinian driver to go back to Nablus, checked our passports and searched the van. We were then ordered to get back in and were told to go back, that we could not continue to Ramallah. Our driver put it in reverse and parked on the side of the road about 50 meters back. We sat there for about twenty minutes until the soldiers waved us ahead. This time the soldier told our driver we could procede, unfortunately we could not understand what the soldier said but we heard “Americans” and “foreigners” and it seemed like we played a role in letting us pass. When we returned to the hostel we learned that there was a suicide bombing claimed by Islamic Jihad in an Israeli town killing 5 citizens in response to last weeks targeted assassinations of Islamic Jihad leaders in the Occupied Territories. Last night the Israeli military responded by bombing a bridge and roads in northern Gaza and announced further retaliation in northern Gaza and the northern West Bank is planned. And the collective punishment continues.

Being on the ground here so much of the story we are told repeatedly about this conflict falls apart. Like if the suicide bombers would stop the conflict would end. That ignores the destruction of the Palestinian economy, the daily acts of intimidation, the regular arrests without charge, detentions that can last for years, the inability for Palestinians to get permits to construct new homes for their growing families, the ID system and apartheid wall currently being built that keeps the Palestinians in Jerusalem from visiting their families in the West Bank or Gaza, and vice versa, all a result of the occupation. To analyze this conflict without looking at this larger picture denies, for me, the real root of Palestinian anger. I do not support their violent response but I also don’t know what their other opportunities to resist such tremendous injustices and human right violations are when our government continues to fund the occupation with out question and their non violent resistance is ignored internationally and often met with violence. I do not have the answers but hope that I can at least share a larger picture of the reality on the ground here.

Please don’t hesitate to respond with any questions or comments. Today we got word that we did in fact get a permit to enter Gaza, unfortunately all entry is shut due to Israeli raids. We will try to enter next week and are excited to continue the work of the sister city project.

with love and hope, rochelle

*For those of you who do not know there are 446,000 Israeli settlers who live with in the Occupied Palestinian Territories and East Jerusalem, may of which are ultra-orthodox jews. This is illegal under international law. The number of Jewish settlers in the occupied West Bank has grown by more than 9,000 so far in 2005, according to the Israeli interior ministry. There was a lot of media coverage during last summers evacuation of 7,500 settlers from Gaza and a few hundred from the West Bank however there tends to be very little media coverage of repeated settler violence against Palestinians including, beatings, shootings, poisoning sheep and water supplies, destroying olive trees, etc.