Guardian | There are many things about Palestine that are not easily seen from a
distance. The beauty of the land, for instance, is not at all obvious.
Scripture and travellers’ reports describe a harsh terrain of stone and
rocks, a place in which it is difficult to find water or to shelter from
the sun. Why would anyone want this land? But then you visit and you
understand the attenuated intensity of what you see. You get the sense
that there are no wasted gestures, that this is an economical landscape,
and that there is great beauty in this economy. The sky is full of
clouds that are like flecks of white paint. The olive trees, the leaves
of which have silvered undersides, are like an apparition. And even the
stones and rocks speak of history, of deep time, and of the consolation
that comes with all old places. This is a land of tombs, mountains and
mysterious valleys. All this one can only really see at close range.
Another thing one sees, obscured by distance but vivid up close, is
that the Israeli oppression of Palestinian people is not necessarily –
or at least not always – as crude as western media can make it seem. It
is in fact extremely refined, and involves a dizzying assemblage of laws
and bylaws, contracts, ancient documents, force, amendments, customs,
religion, conventions and sudden irrational moves, all mixed together
and imposed with the greatest care.
The impression this insistence on legality confers, from the Israeli
side, is of an infinitely patient due process that will eventually
pacify the enemy and guarantee security. The reality, from the
Palestinian side, is of a suffocating viciousness. The fate of
Palestinian Arabs since the nakba has been to be scattered and
oppressed by different means: in the West Bank, in Gaza, inside the 1948
borders, in Jerusalem, in refugee camps abroad, in Jordan, in the
distant diaspora. In all these places, Palestinians experience
restrictions on their freedom and on their movement. To be Palestinian
is to be hemmed in. Much of this is done by brute military force from
the Israeli Defence Forces – killing for which no later accounting is
possible – or on an individual basis in the secret chambers of the Shin
Bet. But a lot of it is done according to Israeli law, argued in and
approved by Israeli courts, and technically legal, even when the laws in
question are bad laws and in clear contravention of international
standards and conventions.
The reality is that, as a Palestinian Arab, in order to defend yourself
against the persecution you face, not only do you have to be an expert
in Israeli law, you also have to be a Jewish Israeli and have the force
of the Israeli state as your guarantor. You have to be what you are not,
what it is not possible for you to be, in order not to be slowly
strangled by the laws arrayed against you. In Israel,
there is no pretence that the opposing parties in these cases are equal
before the law; or, rather, such a pretence exists, but no one on
either side takes it seriously. This has certainly been the reality for
the Palestinian families living in Sheikh Jarrah whose homes, built
mostly in 1956, inhabited by three or four generations of people, are
being taken from them by legal means.
