Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, May 2003, pages 28, 86

Special Report

 

On the Eve of War, Palestinians Hold Their Breaths in Dread

 

By Samah Jabr

March 18, 2003: I watched President Bush announce last night his decision to go to war without United Nations approval and, just after that, the news from Baghdad declaring that President Saddam Hussain will not accept exile, and that there will be a war in the coming two days. The global popular protests, the international demonstrations and letter- and petition-writing campaigns could not prevent the hostilities of the American and British policymakers. Once again, public opinion has failed to change the policy of “might makes right.”

We, living in occupied Palestine, don’t know what to expect in the days and weeks to come. The Israeli government tells its people to prepare their sealed rooms and take out their gas masks, while the Palestinian Authority announces an emergency plan in case of a possible escalation of Israeli violence against Palestinians, as the media focused on Iraq. We hold our breath in dread for the Iraqis, as well as for ourselves and many others in the Middle East.

It is Friday and the whole family is at home. For lunch today we are having dry beans with tomato sauce: “a training for wartime,” as Mom describes it. My brother and I spent the morning storing dried and canned food, and filling bottles of drinking water for an emergency. We took the kids with us to the market to buy candles and batteries, should the electricity go off at any time. My nephews, not really aware of what is going on, insisted that we buy balloons. “Whenever you buy candles, you should buy balloons,” they say. Theirs is the rationale of kids who are assuming the best of the circumstances—a party, I suppose. Even some adults, like my light-hearted brother, have their special coping mechanisms. “Give me my supply of cigarettes, a big pack of nuts and playing cards,” he tells the shopkeeper. “It seems that we’ll be locked in our homes for awhile.”

The news of war adds to our bereavement for the actual and symbolic meaning of the cold-blooded murder last Sunday of Rachel Corrie, a 23-year-old American nonviolent activist. The horrifying death of the young woman, who was passively resisting an Israeli bulldozer aiming to demolish a Palestinian house in Rafah, Gaza, grips us painfully. Once again, it shows us a vivid and profound image of the defeat of life, values, compassion and peace in the path of a military machine.

Sadly, Rachel’s noble struggle, greatest sacrifice and cry for justice were ignored by her nation’s government and media roar on war on Iraq. American papers and TV channels refrained from printing her youthful, very Western-like picture as she was bravely standing in front of the Israeli bulldozer; instead, they printed a picture of her head covered by the hood of her pullover, giving a false impression of a woman wearing an Islamic veil of sorts. This purposeful media manipulation served to distance Rachel from the hearts and minds of her own people at a time when people are being categorized according to how they look.

Tomorrow I’ll take my suitcase and leave my family, not knowing when I’ll be back to Jerusalem. The Palestinian Health Ministry is implementing an emergency plan which requires doctors and medical staff employed at government hospitals to stay at their workplace 24 hours a day until this war is over. Will the Israelis demolish more Palestinian towns and villages while the world is watching the horrors in Iraq? Will the American/ Israeli war harm my family or me before we can reunite? Will U.S. policymakers draw borders between my home in Jerusalem and my workplace in Bethlehem, and will the Tantour convent become another Mandelbaum Gate before this emergency plan is over? Such are the weighty questions I’m taking along with my suitcase as I head to Bethlehem.

My parents don’t like the fact that I’m leaving tomorrow. They are full of ominous memories of war. My father tells us how he had to separate from his family and hide at a friend’s place for 18 days. My grandparents and extended family were frantically looking for him among the dead and injured. Mom was working in Kuwait and living in a foreign teachers’ hostel together with her Jordanian, Egyptian, Iraqi, Yemeni colleagues, and Kuwaiti teachers who lived too far from the city to commute daily, when the 1967 war took place. Mom bitterly recalls her memories of that war: “We were all unified in the pain of losing the rest of Palestine to the Israeli occupation. It was mass hysteria. People were running in the streets, weeping, crying and wailing. Every Arab was a Palestinian in pain and passion during that dark time.”

In addition to these still-painful memories, Mom says she feels like an Iraqi mother this evening.

We continue listening to the news accounts—transfixed in front of our TV screen:

“The attacks will be launched from American military bases in Kuwait, Qatar, Turkey and Saudi Arabia.”

“Jordan has allowed Israeli troops within its borders to ‘defend’ Jordan from any possible harm, and has warned its people from acting ‘stupidly’ against the national interests of their country.”

“Egypt has increased the restrictions on popular protests and demonstrations and is arresting any student union or guild representative who comes to the Ministry of Interior to request a license for a demonstration.”

Tonight we feel that the Western Empire has pointed a gun to our heads and is just waiting for the “right” moment to pull the trigger; and that our leaders are stabbing us in the back by facilitating the mission of the Western imperialists. Our national essence and very being is threatened by a ruthless Western colonization and occupational mechanisms targeting our intellectual identity, character, liberty and independence.

Tomorrow the action will start, and the greedy media, hungry for death counts, will reduce the human stories and the rich lives of many people into mere numbers. Like our people, Iraqis will fall standing while trying to protect their identity, liberty and their children’s rights in their land.

But what will the West’s invading young soldiers be dying for? Their empire’s greed for oil, might and control? Healing the emotional scars of Sept. 11? Restoring safety and security to America’s allies in the evil Israeli government? Whatever the motives of the generals and commander-in-chief, their soldiers will not be fighting for a homeland or a just cause, and thus cannot win a moral victory.

We have not forgotten last year’s battle of Jenin. The American gifts of advanced tanks, helicopters and machine-guns in the hands of the brutal Israeli forces were defeated by a handful of Palestinian fighters. Faithfully defending their miserable lives in the refugee camp, Palestinian fighters were able to cause painful losses on the Israeli side. Iraqis have much more to fight for, over and above the Palestinian fighter’s faith and just cause.

Though it will cause much devastation to the people of the Middle East, the war on Iraq will inevitably cause the “Western Empire” loss and shame. This war will eventually result in a much deeper crisis, and will trigger far more pervasive and fundamental fears and ideologies. The American public was in disbelief at the horrible human atrocities of Sept. 11, asking in bewilderment: “Why would anyone do this to us? Why do people hate us?”

For so long, Americans thought they were very popular around the globe, and that they were humanity’s prophets of “democracy and freedom.” It is time for the American public to work on their distorted picture of reality. For an “icebreaking” exercise, I ask Americans to step into the shoes of the Iraqi people and just imagine trying to sleep at night during an American air raid. Imagine the destruction of your house and the death of your four children. Think of your cherished wife being very sick, but the medicine she needs to relieve her pain being unavailable because of sanctions imposed by a foreign power. That very nation is causing you all this harm to provide cheaper gas for its people. How would you feel about it? Can you begin to understand why a few of these extremely devastated people will resort to violence, even terror, which always grows on the periphery of oppression?

The war on Iraq is a war against humanity and values. The West’s insanely expensive “shock and awe” not only will harm the nation it is hammering to death, but the poor, sick, starved, jobless, homeless people of the world equally will resent it. The millions in Africa, Asia, the Middle and Far East who are dying every day of hunger and preventable diseases, the millions around the world longing for education and prosperity, are being betrayed by this Western “civilization” that, instead of help and support, is investing in death and destruction.

As I go to bed tonight, my thoughts, prayers and hopes go to the people and the land of Iraq. The insanity and greed of the global autocracy that gives power to a few people over millions, making us all dissidents, is a sickness doctors like me cannot heal. I don’t know where this global autocracy is taking us, but more than likely it will be away from a life that is worth living.

Tomorrow I will go to work to try and help those I come in contact with and to provide them the attention and compassion so sadly missing from our world. My work is my small action against war and my symbolic contribution to peace. This is a dreadful time in history for us—and for those who are launching their war on us, as well. I am chagrined and deeply saddened. None of us are safe and none of us are free until human compassion overpowers weapons and involves us all.

Samah Jabr is a physician in her native city of Jerusalem. This article also appeared in the Palestine Times.

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