Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, October 2003, pages 42-43

Special Report

 

A Week in Palestine: A Pictorial

This past summer, Kate Daher spent two weeks in the occupied Palestinian territories on a fact-finding tour sponsored by Global Exchange. Her delegation traveled throughout the West Bank and Gaza Strip, met with a number of Israeli and Palestinian peace organizations, and toured Palestinian refugee camps, where they interviewed residents waiting for their right to return home.

"The one promise I made to the people of Palestine," said Kate, "is that I would give them voice by presenting their stories here in America." The following photos provide a brief glimpse of life "on the ground" in occupied Palestine.

1) JULY 14: The Al-Massade family stands outside their Red Crescent-donated tent in Beit Hannan, East Jerusalem, where they have lived since Israeli bulldozers destroyed their home a few days earlier. Although the father had sold his truck and his wife's jewelry to pay for the house, which was built on their own private land, he failed to pay the $65,000 the Israeli government demanded for a building permit. "What are we to do?" he asked the Global Exchange delegates. "We have no money left."

2) JULY 17: Rami Elhanan of Israeli-Palestinian Bereaved Families for Peace lectures to a group of international delegates in East Jerusalem. His daughter, Smadar, 14, was killed by a Palestinian suicide bomber on Sept. 9, 1997. "The most natural option was for me to hate," Rami says. "But then I started asking myself, how did this happen...What makes a man feel so helpless, so hopeless, that he'd kill my daughter?" Now a staunch advocate for Israeli-Palestinian peace, Elhanan insists that "Morally there is no difference between what happens to a pregnant woman at a checkpoint and what a suicide bomber does. My boys will never be humiliated at a checkpoint...I cannot judge [the suicide bomber]."

3) JULY 18: The walls of Dheisheh are painted with graffiti and plastered with posters and photographs of martyrs, such as Mohammed Ahmed Attalah, 14, who was shot in the head by a sniper while washing a car. His 13-year-old brother, pictured here next to a poster of Mohammmed, is now the breadwinner for their family of 13.

4) JULY 18: Naef Ramadan, who lives with his wife, seven children, daughter-in-law and grandchild under one roof in the Dheisheh refugee camp near Bethlehem, holds the key to his father's home in historical Palestine. More than 11,000 people live in Dheisheh, which has an area less than one-fifth of a square mile. "Palestine is the most miserable place on earth," says Naef, who, like his five sons, is unemployed. "We are dead, but breathing."

5) A Thousand Words: A section of Israel's apartheid wall in Gaza.

6) JULY 21: "Going into Gaza was one of the most chilling experiences of my life," Kate writes. "There should be a sign at the Erez checkpoint entrance that reads: WELCOME TO THE LARGEST PRISON IN THE WORLD, because that's how many Palestinians view this land. Bombed out and destroyed homes and factories, in complete ruin, met our eyes—as far as we could see for miles. Even with no curfew and a ceasefire in place, the beaches were off limits to children. And there are no playgrounds, only the left-over ruins of destroyed buildings where the kids hang from the twisted wreckage."

7) JULY 22: Khalil Bashir, headmaster of a German-financed school and father of eight, gives the delegates a tour of his Gaza home, the second and third floors of which are occupied by Israeli soldiers. At sunset each evening, when the soldiers descend to occupy the ground floor, the Bashir family close themselves in one room, where they sleep together. Here, Khalil points out shattered glass on his old bed, remnants of an April 28 incident in which settlers shot him through the window. The Bashirs have endured constant harassment aimed at forcing them out of their home, including the destruction by the Israeli army of their orange grove, olive trees, and 170 palm trees. "I cannot hate," Khalil says of the Israelis. "We are doomed to live together because we are all sons of Abraham. I want my children to enjoy life and I challenge them to let their children come and play with my children, anytime."

8) Some images are self-explanatory: A Palestinian woman climbs over one of many walls erected by Israel, this one in Jerusalem.

Kate Daher, the author and photographer, is a teacher in Pittsburgh, PA and a convener of the Pittsburgh Palestine Solidarity Committee <www.pghpsc.org>.Information on Global Exchange is available at their Web site: <www.globalexchange.org>.

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