Insights on the struggle of the Palestinian people

Above are photos taken at the protest action led by Bagong Alyansang Makabayan in front of the Israeli embassy in Makati last January 6. It is part of the worldwide condemnation of Israel’s offensive at the Gaza Strip, now killing more than 500 Palestinians. There is a short but highly informative post on Malcolm Guy’s blog entitled Israel- an imperialist outpost in oil country. Below, meanwhile, are passages I copied from the book Guerillas: Journeys in the Insurgent World by journalist Jon Lee Anderson. They describe the struggle of the Palestinian people and are extremely well-written as well.

On the birth of the intifada:

The events of the uprising were themselves strangely mythical: First, like a Palestinian Icarus, a lone guerilla flew on a hang glider into Israel from Southern Lebanon. Upon landing, he took on an Israeli military camp, killing six soldiers before he was gunned down. The incident captured the imagination of Palestinians throughout the Occupied Territories; Israel’s vaunted border security had been punctured, and the notion of Palestinian resistance was given new life by a singular act of heroism.

There were also confirmed reports that an Israeli sentry who could’ve stopped the attacker had instead run away in a cowardly panic. Along with the feeling of elation that the attack generated among Palestinians, this suggested that the Israelis’ legendary bravery was only a myth, just as their supposedly impregnable defenses had been. Maybe they were really afraid of the Palestinians.

One event followed another. Next, in broad daylight, an Israeli Jew was stabbed to death by an Arab in the rabble of Palestine Square, in downtown Gaza City. This sectarian murder was an act of deliberate provocation. Within days, retribution seemed to come, in the form of an accident: An Israeli military truck driving along Gaza’s crowded roads careened out of control and killed four workers standing at the roadside. But, with Palestinians always ready to believe the worst, the rumor quickly spread that the crash was no accident but a premeditated Israeli reprisal for the stabbing. Rioting broke out in Jabaliya camp, where the four men had lived, and the intifada was born.

The unrest spread quickly. Within days, it established itself as ritual throughout the Occupied Territories and inside Israel itself. Each day, shabbab, wearing their checkered kaffiyehs over their faces like masks, took to the streets to taunt the fully armed soldiers of the Israeli Defense Force. Invariably, someone was killed, as the soldiers fired on the youths with tear gas and live ammunition, or beat them senseless with wooden batons.

The Israelis tried to subdue the unrest by every possible means. Soldiers were ordered to break the bones of rioters they caught, and many did so. New prison camps were set up, where thousands of Palestinians were detained for months, without trial, in harsh conditions. Now it became a terrorist offense to throw a Molotov cocktail; offender’s homes were blown up by Israeli demolition experts.

Other collective-punishment tactics attempted to hurt the Palestinians economically, and included sealing off Gaza for days at a time. This prevented the tens of thousands of Gazans dependent upon menial jobs inside Israel from reaching their places of work. Another routine punishment was to impose domestic-confinement curfews on entire communities, forcing people to stay inside their cramped homes for prolonged periods, sometimes for days on end.

These Draconian measures did little to quell the disturbances, and seemed only to justify the Palestinians’ desire for confrontation. With few exceptions, the shabbab’s weapons were non-lethal; they soon saw that if they bore the brunt of the casualties, the ensuing publicity strengthened their cause. The list of “martyrs” grew longer, and the Palestinians gained widespread public sympathy as the victims in an unequal David-and-Goliath struggle. For the first time in years, they shed the terrorist tag they had borne as a result of the PLO’s armed activities.

And then, a quite romantic bit on the psyche of the Palestinians:

Without a physical environment of their own in which to chart their progress as a people, the Palestinian refugees instead take pride in their ability to suffer. Proud of their capacity to endure pain, they earn self-confidence in acts that arouse further retribution from their enemy. The adrenaline-filled battles of the intifada release the pent-up frustration, rage, and testosterone of the shabbab and fuel the paradoxical belief that, even if at the close of the day they are worse off than when it started, they are doing something to change the way things are. The Palestinians believe that in the end their suffering will be rewarded. Like hit-and-run victims lying at the roadside, they hope that the humane instincts of a passerby will stop their hemmoraging before it is too late. But in the meantime, they continue to dart in front of cars, competing with one another, daring the traffic to run them down.

In many homes portrait photographs of young men hang high on the walls, like icons. Usually, the photos are of a martyred or imprisoned son—something to be proud of because it proves that the family has done its bit for the Palestinian cause. They are also a reminder of the persistent nature of the struggle. Outside one home in Breij sits a derelict truck that belonges to a man killed years before by Israelis. His parents refused to sell it or even move it; over the years, the truck has become a part of the street. Rusting and sprouting weeds, it is a Breij landmark, the monument to a community martyr. And inside the house, the dead man’s aged parents have kept his room exactly as it was on the day he died.

It is sad to see images of maimed children and other civilians hog the headlines so early into the year. But is also rather uplifting to see images of well-attended and highly agitated protests from different countries. I am hoping that as bombs explode all over Gaza so will seeds of understanding in public consciousness about the true nature of the conflict, and that news coverage will not be reduced to senselessness.