As Israeli has most likely re-elected a war criminal by the time you read this, and one who has vowed to continue his war crimes, the future of the Palestinian population has never looked so bleak. If Bush invades Iraq, the prospect of ‘transfer’, the Israeli term for ethnic cleansing becomes a real one for hundreds of thousands of people. Israelis can vote, while Palestinians are locked down into a full 24hr curfew until it is over, and even then the partial curfews, the checkpoints, roadblocks and arbitrary detentions will prevent them from being able to do anything so luxurious as vote.


*********************************************************************


‘What can we do?.’

This is the question I was asked countless times by people in the West Bank over the last three months. There was a suppressed rage. A silent fatalism. An expectation that the future will be worse than the past. A dismissive tone at my cheery assertation that I was there to help.

‘What can we do?.’

I had no answer. They had been defending them selves for decades from a violent force that sought to destroy them. They had been massacred, suppressed, occupied, starved, tortured, brutalised, and terrorised. They had done everything and more that I would have done in their place. They were not doing anything wrong. There was not anything they had missed.

‘Where do they want us to go? Down?’

Commentators regularly lay blame on Arafat, or Islamists like Hamas for the condition of the Palestinian people. They suggest that if only the people would see, if only they would stop the fanatics, if only they would be peaceful, then perhaps things could move forward. But the reality I found by being there for three months is that they see everything. They are well informed. Hamas is the result of a Western racism and cultural colonisation of the Arab world. ‘Sharon created Hamas,’ a Palestinian villager told me. I asked him where Hamas stood in the political spectrum, and he told me that they were to the far, far, far, right and perhaps a little bit further still. We laughed about it, the extremity of it.

If only they would stop sending their children out to kill themselves. This, another lie. No mother or father has done that. Instead these parents have been robbed of their children by the power of despair. By the effect of death as the sole messge that seems to be heard by the world. No-one listens to stories of Palestinian life. It is only their deaths that are heard of. That is why, young men will explode themselves. They know their voice will be heard. There is nothing more important than the land for them. In this culture it is the very last thing they would give up, before their lives, over their bodies. Palestinians have already offered to give up 88% percent of that land, but Israel wants it all.

That depth of feeling is what drives young men to be that exploding body. The Tel Aviv bombers did not tell their mothers where they were going that morning. The two of them kissed their mothers goodbye in their houses two kilometres apart on the hillside of Nablus, and said, ‘you are the best mother I could ever have. Pray for me.’ Both used the same words. Both kissed their mother the same way. Then they were gone. They exploded themselves within one minute of each other in central Tel Aviv a few hours later. They had been friends since they were small children. I visited the families the next day with volunteers of the International Solidarity Movement. They had asked us to come to protect them against possible reprisals by the army. The double operation had claimed more Israeli lives than any for six months. The whole of Nablus, 180,00 people were expecting a bloody revenge. But the family expected it more than any of them. The atmosphere was silent. People would come, pay their respects and go again. There were none of the usual offers of tea, coffee or food. Without the bodies there would be no funeral. The Israeli authorities would hold onto the bodies, perhaps indefinitely. A day later, on an Israeli internet site, I saw a photograph of the bomb site. An Israeli police forensic man in rubber gloves and white overalls was holding up the decapitated head of one of the boys by the hair for photographs. He had lifted it out of a cardboard box for the photographer. You could see the boys face clearly, his profile somehow intact, his eyes closed. The police officer held it like a trophy. He held it up for the press. He was grinning proudly.

The mothers will not just lose their sons. Usually, the army come and arrest the brothers, then they demolish the house and make the rest of the family homeless. Collective punishment The ISM volunteers are still there as I write this, several weeks later. As yet the forth largest army in the world has not acted against them, most likely this is not just because of a few unarmed internationals being present in the house, but also the proximity of the Israeli elections.

‘What can we do?’

When I ask myself this question, when I ask what I as a citizen of the UK can do, there are so many more answers. I realise have more power. They who want to do so much can do very little. We, who have done so little, can do so much. We don’t need to be the United Nations. They do nothing anyway. We, ourselves have real power to help the Palestinians, to help them feel more hope than despair. Enough perhaps for them not to die in order to be listened to.

Ceri Gibbons
 cvg96@aber.ac.uk
 http://www.palsolidarity.org
 http://www.ism-london.org