Mink in Jerusalem - מינק בירושלים - مينك في القدس

Hasten to deliverance / מהרו ובואו אל הגאולה/ حي على الفلاح

2010-01-20T14:29:00.000-08:00

The wind is rocking this house boat, this tree house. It is coming from the sea, the great white sea, our mediterrenia. We are in Nveh Tsedek, or really Nveh Shalom, borderline people in borderline territory. The house is rocking and the rocking comforts.

In the mornings I hear the Muezzin from Jaffa, with a thin, pensive, and elongated tenor singing. His calling to prayer is the most beautiful I have ever heard.

Humiliation and the meaning of images: the Israel-Turkey connection

2010-01-17T12:23:00.000-08:00

Issues of aesthetics and represntation are always central to Middle Eastern politics, but usually these issues are not problematised publicly, in the official discourse. The recent operetta of public shaming between Israel and Turkey supplied such a rare occasion. I am here not interested so much in this actual pathetic episode as in its implications for a theory of representation.

The story goes as follows: the Israeli Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon called the Turkish ambassador to Jerusalem over an anti-Israeli Turkish TV series. The repriminad was delivered in front of reporters' cameras . The Deputy Foreign Minister pointed out to the media in Hebrew that there is no handshake; that the ambassador was seated on a low sofa, while his Israeli hosts were sitting on a higher chair; and that only the Israeli flag was on the table.

The scene was aired on TV the same evening, and Ayalon's comments could be heard loudly. Almost immediately Turkey expressed outrage and threatened to call the ambassador back unless an official apology is received from Israel. Ayalon quickly gave in. The whole episode, that was supposed to show Israel standing up to defend its honour, became a farce.

When interviewed, Ayalon first tried to distance himself from his comments: this was not about the "stage set" of the sofa, it was about the matters at stake, he said to Israeli channel 2. Later, he tried to blame the reporters: "I didn't think it was being recorded, and if it was - I didn't think it would be aired with sound."

And here's comes the interesting part:

My intention wasn't to humiliate, but to send a visual message. The ambassador didn't feel humiliated either - only once reporters started calling him. The picture was aimed at the Turks, to send them a message.

So, of course, the media are to blame, because they are the ones who broadcasted Ayalon's comments and made them into the message. While according to Ayalon, the picture itself was the message. That is to say, unlike Susan Sontag, Ayalon claims that pictures have meanings that are inherent to them, and require no further elaboration. No need for a label, no need for further text: the image says it all. The Turkish public would register the severity of the Israeli repriminad through the low sofa, the lack of a flag, etc, whether conciously or sub-consciously, and Israel's outrage will be communicated - within the frame.

Furthermore: the power of the image was detracted by the broadcasting of Ayalon's comments. Not only because they were superflous: but because the comments exposed the staging of the scene, denying it of its transparency. Rather than an image of pure meaning, it became a stage set, a theatrical ploy. The whole thing suddenly looked like bad makeup.

The problem is of course that it was Ayalon himself who manifested his mistrust in the power of images, by pointing out to the reporters the choreography of humilation: the important elements of the seating arrangement, the lack of flag etc. He obviously felt the need to explain, to elaborate. He planned an almost Ottoman scene of shaming a foreign ambassador in public, but he did not trust his own staging, his own directing. He had to tell them what it meant.

Ayalon, of course, denies: he tried to defend his theory of aesthetic representation (the image is the message) by insisting that his comments were not purely necessary for the understanding of the picture. The comments, he said, were nothing but a "comic relief".

Comic relief? A strange way to put it, and it entirely fails to convince, because Ayalon did not smile or laugh in the picture -was that not the whole point, to look sombre and angry. Comic relief? This strange expression only exposed once more the theatricallity of the scene, its "candid camera" quality, and the farce of trying to look like medieval despot when you a pathetic deputy Foreign Minister.

The penache for public humiliation is perhaps rediculous, but it does suggest certain resemblances between Ayalon and his boss, Lieberman, to Italian fascists.

But on a more general level, I think Ayalon's attempt in staging meaning and its complete failure is indicative of something important. Especially regarding the Israeli - Palestinian conflict, people tend to think that everything is already in the frame: they show you images, which tell the whole story, they say; and then they insist on explaining those images, never noticing that by explaining, they betray the failure of their own transparent argumenents.

Bilin guys do it again

2009-07-24T05:03:00.000-07:00

The following ad for a Israeli cell-phone operator created a lot of buzz. It shows Israeli soldiers playing ball with (invisible) Palestinians on the other side of the Wall. As many protested, basically it portrays the Wall as a border between (peace-loving but vigilant) Israelis and out-of-sight Palestinians, while in fact the Wall is well within the West Bank, dividing Palestinians from their families, jobs, fields etc - effectively, an instrument of land grab. The ad really plays to Israeli self-image of "we're the reasonable good guys just want to live in Peace" but also the Israeli wish not to see Arab faces for even one second.

Anyway, rather than pontificating about this ad or protesting against it, the guys from Bilin, the village in the West Bank fighting the theft of their lands through the Wall, did something much more clever: they played it out, and showed the occupation at work. - Notice the guy in the wheelchair trying to escape the teargas; he's from Bil'in, participates in all the demos, despite being shot at, arrested etc over the past few years.

Gaza: no where to go

2009-03-04T04:14:00.000-08:00

A short film on the Gaza situation from the animator of Waltz with Bashir, Yoni Goodman, made for Gisha - the Israeli NGO defending freedom of movement.

This effort stands in contrast to the disgraceful silence of Waltz with Bashir director, Ari Folman, on the Gaza war two months ago. (Folman expressed opposition to the war in a mild and meek manner, probably not to harm his chances to win an Academy Award).

Urban scars, an unfinished essay: Jaffa/Tel Aviv

2009-02-07T08:32:00.001-08:00

Urban scars, cutting deep into the flesh of the city. Lines of division which linger through the civic body, long after their political and social meaning was lost. Areas of inexplicable void within a thriving city. Areas that are constanly on the drawing tables of architects and city planners, who seek to redeem the past, to bring to a close whatever conflict there were, to move on, for fuck sake. The property value is huge. The return on investment promising. So why do they still stand empty and dead, like in Amsterdam’s former Jewish neighbourhood, lifeless even 65 years after the deportation? And why, even when they are filled with parks and monuments and museums – like in Berlin’s former no-man’s land do - they still feel empty, artificial, and wrong?

Cities are place of change, and change always means a struggle - violent or subtle - between men and women, rich and poor, black and white, one religious group against the other, indigenous residents and immigrants. The way the city accommodates its different constituencies, the possibilities it opens and closes before them, are never static. And change comes, through negotiation and conflict; bourgeois neighbourhoods turn into slums; seedy streets are gentrified into yuppielands; megalomaniac city planners draw lines of battlefields on city maps, marking boulevards, highways and high-rise buildings. Decay and development are inevitable and often involve pain. But I am talking about something else: about scars, about the visible marks of trauma that cuts deep and refuses to heal. Those strangely-lifeless quarters, moments in space where the rhythm of the urban fabric is broken, the music lost. Most often these scars are the legacy of wars and displacement.

Such is the scar that divides Tel Aviv from Jafa. Sixty years after the 1948 war, the no man's land between the two former sisters-rivals remains strangely empty. Where once were borderline neighbourhoods there are now parking grounds, a promenade, half demolished houses, a run-down industrial zone, and plenty of promises for regeneration and a better future. It is a void, like a sudden break in the conversation of the city. It is not a quiet area - busy roads lead traffic from here to there, from there to here, but hardly no-one lives in the middle, hardly no-one stops because there is nowhere to stop, no reason to stop. No, it is not a quiet area, yet still there is strange silence, the absence of those comforting sounds of urban life: loud human voices.

The former border between the two municipalities is still, to a large degree, the border between north and south, rich and poor, strong and weak, ruler and ruled. At the same time, the south is changing - whatever survived of Arab Jaffa and Jaffa's former Jewish neighbourhoods (Florentin, Neveh Shanan, Shapira). Gentrification, dispossession, an influx of migrant workers and refugees, residential developments and planning atrocities: "South Tel Aviv" is hot, as far as property developers are concerned. Yet the scar remains; it is evident in the roundabout ways which one has to follow in order to travel from Tel Aviv to Jaffa.

Tel Avivis would not typically think of their city as scarred by the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. If anything, Tel Aviv imagines itself as an anathema to the conflict; a place beyond cycle of violence and bigotry. A secular metropolis, on the shores of the Mediterreinia, looking westwards, to Europe, to New York. Often Tel Avivis are accused of being out of touch from the rest of Israel, far from suicide bombers or rocket attacks, they live in on their island of normality, between the long beach and cool bars, money and art. And Tel Aviv, celebrating its 100th birthday in 2009, is "the first Hebrew city", the city which was born from sand, a creation of urban modernity out of nothing. This is of course a myth, as right-wing settlers often like to remind Tel Aviv leftists, Tel Aviv university was built on the ruins of the Palestinian village Shaykh Muwanis, a Palestinian village whose population was made to leave in 1948. But Shaykh Muwanis, like other Arab villages in this area (Jamasin and Sumayl) were devoured whole by Tel Aviv; barely any traces can be seen of them today. Their obliteration enabled Tel Avivis to pretend that here there was no dispossession and destruction, only pioneer spirit, hard work and creative construction.

But Jaffa is another story altogther. For Jaffa is still there, however destroyed, however changed. For the Palestinians who live there, and for those who do not but still think of it as their hometown, Jaffa is still an open wound, an open question.

Tel Aviv is Jaffa's daughter, sister, and killer; Tel Aviv was born not, as the Hebrew song has it, "from the foam of waves' and clouds", but as a suburb of the country's biggest port town, Palestine's most cosmopolitan centre, its commercial and cultural capital. Soon the young suburb became a rival town, and then a rival port, until in 1948 the tension was decided through war and violence. And Jaffa lost, and its defeat was of biblical dimensions, as almost its entire population went into exile.

But I don't want to write about Jaffa or of Tel Aviv; I want to write about the dividing area between the two, about the scar that keeps them apart, long after that victory and that defeat. For the past five years I been have researching the history of this land before 1948, and I have been drawn especially to the areas of in-between, the borderline neighbourhoods, the uneasy sharing of urban space, and to the people in-between, those whose identification with one of the sides to the emerging conflict was fraught with difficulty and torment. I spent years looking at maps, reading the newspapers, and taking down notes from a long list of memoirs and diaries. It is no surprise, then, that I can see the destroyed neighbourhoods and houses; I hear the ghosts, I travel with them through streets which are no longer there, I know their stories by heart. And so I see the scar as if it was an open wound. I see the absence, I feel it deeply and most of all in those urban scars.

When you know Jaffa's former grandeur, it is impossible to miss the scar; it cries out. The void shouts out; the attempts to fill it seem inadequate and artificial. I show it to fellow Jewish Israelis. Look: the conflict is here, in front of you. Here is the story of dispossession, here is our ongoing trauma. Not only in Gaza, in Jerusalem, in the refugee camps, but here, in Tel Aviv's "Banana Beach": sixty years have passed and we have managed to destroy Jaffa's Manshiya neighbourhood, but not to build anything in its stead. Sixty years have passed and still have this strange gap within our city.

But what for me seems evident, is invisible for others. Where I see trauma, others see nothing; just an empty parking lot, just another urban wasteland. “What is there to see exactly? A rundown area? Isn't it the nature of cities? Some areas are good, some are bad, city planning can go wrong, and anyway, just wait a couple of more years, you'll see this area completely changed. You know, south Tel Aviv is becoming very fashionable these days.”

One of the problems in this conflict - perhaps also in others - is that people feel that the truth about it is evident. You just have to open you eyes. Just look and you will see for yourself. And so the partisans repeat what for them is obvious, and for others are clear inventions. The debate never gets anywhere. What is lost on the participants is their own point of view, the place they stand and from which they see. Others do not stand there; they have not heard the stories, read the histories. Therefore they can’t see. Nothing is ever evident: seeing is always mediated.

Trauma exists in the urban landscape only in the eyes of those who see it. And many do not see it; perhaps do not wish to see it. The problem for Jewish Israelis is that once you start seeing the scars, you’ll see them everywhere. It becomes a real obsession. Every forest is hiding a destroyed village, every history book an exercise in denial. So naturally most Israelis prefer not to see.

And still, in what way is the scar there? My answer is that if a historical trauma can provide a way to read ongoing urban divisions, then it is a good explanation, better then the uneven arbitrariness of urban development. The persistence of the former Jaffa-Tel Aviv border line as a line of division within the supposedly one city is difficult to deny. The challenge, therefore, is to see logic where others see a combination of unrelated developments. The challenge, furthermore, is to make visible the pain. Where one does not see the pain, out of ignorance or preference, it will be impossible to see the scar. Once you see the pain, you will see the scar.

Waltz with Bashir: Review

2008-12-04T16:44:00.000-08:00

Let me start by saying that the film, despite its many flaws, is brilliant. It caused me to sit on the edge of my seat hypnotised for some 90 minutes, and it made me cry. I am involved of course, coming from there, being closely familiar with the story and the circumstances, so I am perhaps not your average viewer. But I think it managed to turn what is essentially a documentary film into a mesmerising experience. What follows here is more a political response, rather than an appreciation of the film as a cinematic product (for a thoughtful film review see here).

The director Ari Folman said in interviews that he didn’t want to glorify war, and his film does a good job driving home the point that war is a terrible and messy affair, horrible even for those who survive it as “victors”. Yet at the same time there is some undeniable nostalgia at work: bitter sweetness captured best by the cheesy rock music accompanying the film. There is no way round it; being 20 is probably the most exciting time of your life, and the intensity of war just makes it more so. Probably all the Israelis I know look back at their army years with a mixture of disgust and nostalgia. Disgust – whether for political reasons, or much more likely, because almost no-one likes being in the military and taking orders (often from idiots). And nostalgia – because we all want to be 20 again.

Some critics (a few of them Israeli) condemned the film for being evasive on the question of responsibility to the massacres. I think this criticism is misguided. The film certainly leaves it to the viewers to decide on the question of responsibility and blame. But this is its strength. While some seem to believe that we need courtroom dramas, with conclusive verdicts, I tend to think that real life is murkier, with many shades between guilty and innocent.

Take Ron Ben-Yishai, the journalist who played a key role in reporting the massacre to the Israeli public. As is shown in the film, back in 1982 Ben Yishai "did the right thing", and tried to stop the massacre: he called Ariel Sharon directly and reported to him (Sharon was not surprised, and did nothing). His evidence was later crucial to remove Sharon from office. Not many people have the courage to step out of line in such situations in order to save life. But even viewers who know nothing about Ben Yishai will understand from the film that he was deeply embedded within the Israeli military, with close ties to the top officers. He had Sharon’s private number, and he referred to him and to other chief commanders by their first name. Ben Yishai was from the heart of the military establishment. He was not a critic of the war, he was a gang-ho war reporter. True, he had the courage, humanity and the sharp senses "to do the right thing", but he also supported a war whose overall price in human life was enormous for all sides.

So the desire to make clear that the Israeli army is “responsible”, if in second degree, to the massacre, seems to me pointless; that is, it is clear from the beginning of the film. And then what? How does it help us prevent the next massacre? In a way, Folman’s attempt to show the futility of war is more a step in the right direction than a frontal assault on “Israeli complicity”, which will perhaps leave some people with a more cathartic feeling, but does not solve much.

What I found disturbing was the film’s depiction of women: this is an almost all-male film, and women come into it mostly as objects of fantasy. The girlfriend, the dream woman that comes from the sea, the porn stars in a video cassette in a Beirut mansion; and finally, the wailing Palestinian women clout in black, to which I will return in a moment – they all remain alien and inaccessible; strange and fascinating objects of desire and fear. This is more problematic because war is repeatedly presented here as an story of male erotic failure, channelled into acts of violence. But Folman’s refusal to allow real women into the film leaves us in the same territory of juvenile male fantasy land. Despite all the awareness and irony manifested by the film regarding the destructiveness of men’s erotic desires and insecurities, the film still chooses to indulge in them, rather than to try and transcend them.

The film owes much to Vietnam films, such as Apocalypse Now and the Deer Hunter; even the scenery seems too tropical for Lebanon. And like Vietnam films, this is about the occupier, not the occupied. The issue is what war does to the Israeli soldiers, much more than what it does to the Lebanese or Palestinians. Now this in itself is not a problem in my view, because the film does not pretend to be anything else. Ultimately, this is Folman’s story, he tells it well, and it’s a story that deserves to be told. But towards the end of the film, when Folman tries to find out “what really happened there”, even then he still does not seek the point of view of the Palestinian victims, who remain nameless and voiceless throughout the whole film.

This really hit me in the face in the end of the film, when the animation makes way to documentary footage of women howling and crying in the refugee camp after the massacre. But there are no subtitles; for most of the viewers, Israelis, Europeans, Americans, their cries will remain undecipherable.

And what do the women say? It is not, as some viewers may guess, howls of grief and anger and mourning .Rather, they are screaming to the photographer: “Film! Film this! Where are all the Arab people?! Film this!” That is to say: they do not take the role that the film assigns to them - of passive victims, images of pure emotion - but rather they are cogent and active human beings, who are seeking to engage with the world, and are more than aware that photography is a political tool. And even in a state of anger and shock, they are able to fight back, with the very limited resources they have. In this light, Folman's decision to not to allow them a voice is even more troubling.

To come back to where I started: if Folman’s point was the futility and horror of war, then the film is probably effective. But for us in the Middle East – especially Israelis and Palestinians – this is not enough. Regardless of political opinions, almost everyone in Israel would agree that war is horrible – simply because almost everyone has been through it in some way or another. But what do you do about it? How do you stop the war? I don’t think there is an easy answer, certainly no clear road to “peace”, but I have come to believe that without facing the “enemy” and listening to her/him, no progress is possible. In Vietnam, the Americans could just walk away: shrug off their paranoia about communists taking over the world like domino, and walk away. And whatever traumas the Vietnamese were left with, did not really matter for Americans, because they were on the other side of the ocean. But in the Middle East walking away is not an option. Ignoring the other is not an option. Without the Palestinian viewpoint, we remain in a closed circuit: Israel, holocaust, Europe; Lebanon is not even a real place, only a site to act out and face the horror within us. But stopping the war would be impossible as long as we are locked in this circuit. We need to start listening.

The children of Sabra and Chatila live on: some of them may even be today in Palestine; others are probably in Europe. Reaching out to them and hearing their stories would be far more difficult, but if any attempt to deal with the trauma is serious, it has to be done.

But if anything, these flaws make the film more interesting. Go and watch it.

Early evening observations: Tel Aviv

2008-05-28T10:38:00.000-07:00

1. The wedding season is upon us. At least two couples encountered as you cycle down the boulevard, appropriately wrapped in white and black cellophane, made up, dressed up, they walk in front of the cameraman, who keeps shouting, directing every movement. The sister (best friend? bridesmaid?) tries to keep pace in high heels, some little smile of irony on her lips, perhaps, too short to tell: you're late already.

2. You notice tell-tales of gentrification behind the Shuk. A three-stage manoeuvre: first came the espresso bars, then the designer shops, now the car alarms.

3. Back from the Yemenite quarter, always walk up Rabbi Yisrael Najara street. Najara, Najara: I love this name so much, the j-and-r meeting on the tongue, tasty like tail-soup.

Matkot

2008-05-26T02:50:00.000-07:00

A 1947 film, "A portrait of Palestine", commissioned by the British Ministry of Information, ends with pictures of Tel Aviv beach; girls in swimsuits, playing "matkot" (beach paddleball). The narrator's tone is sober and ambivalent, the text is grand politics and history (...Jews claim Palestine as their ancient home... The Arabs have lived there for a thousand years... Palestine’s problem is whether these two kindred races can be reconciled to live and work together in peace...). Yet the images are optimism and sunshine: it's the beach, man. Surely something can be worked out. Now just sit back and watch the girls.

Much has changed since 1947 but Palestine's problem perhaps remained the same; and so, in some respects, did Tel Aviv's beach. It's still a good place to find some light-hearted optimism and to play matkot (u-tube). The shrill flight of the paddleball between racquets, the dull sound of the ball hitting the wood, this music is monotonous and hypnotic; the song of a leisured evening of a weekday, for those who have the time and are not in a hurry. Never a matkot player myself and always slightly worried about the direction of the ball, I distance myself from the players, watch their virtusity from afar, and then continue strolling southwards, as Jaffa turns pink.

The beach is long and sandy, usually clean and, except for weekends and holidays, never too crowded. There are some obvious drawbacks, like the ugly line of hotels guarding the seafront, or the hippies playing drums on Friday evenings. But it is such a great beach. Jaffa, towering above it and marking its southern end, provides the necessary contrasts; there are many of them.

My embrace of Tel Aviv's beach is never full and unreserved. I am a Jerusalemite, born on a mountain, unsure about long stretches that never end; too much skies, too much water. But leave aside pathos and identities. My real problem is different: it's the sand. I hate sand. In wrong moments for myself and the universe, dipping my toes deep into the sand can feel like scratching a wall with long nails. Just the thought of the yellow granular substance can make me close my fists, squint, and want to be elsewhere. But sand is soon everywhere, in my food, in my hair, in my clothes. When I let myself to be carried away with my sand-o-phobia I find the powdered soil blocking my thought process, my sentences end mid-air. It gives me the creeps. But then I relax, resume, and reconcile myself to the particles beneath my feet. It used to be much worse. I'm gradually learning to live with the stuff. There is a price to pay for sunsets.

2008-05-21T12:30:00.000-07:00

A roar comes out of the neighbour's window. They're watching the English cup and "we", that is the Jewish people, that is Israel, that is Avram Grant, that is Chelsea, just scored a goal. On the guardian website I read it's 1-1.

I must admit Avram Grant's appointment as Chelsea manager filled me with a stupid patriotic pride. And I don't even watch football. But then there was this game on the eve of Holocaust memorial day, where he wore the yellow star-of-david (the one jews had to wear under the nazis) as a homage to his dead relatives or something. The picture of him jumping up and down full of joy with the yellow badge on his arm - this should be put on online dictionaries under "Distasteful".

Update 1:00am: We lost. The Gentiles (Man united) won. Outside my window I hear someone throwing up.

the shuttle taxi

2008-05-21T01:30:00.000-07:00

On the shuttle taxi from Tel Aviv as usual a mixed crowd, four Jappanese people, a mother and a baby that looked Indian and spoke English, and an Ethiopean couple in their late 50s. As the minibus pulls away the couple take out invitation letters to a military ceremony, their son's graduation from some army course. They needed to be dropped off in the middle of the way, in Latrun, a big memorial site; they didn't really know where they were going. We were already on the Tel-Aviv Jerusalem highway.

I don't stop there, said the driver, there's no stop, its a highway. But we have to be there by ten, what shall we do, said the mother. Not my problem said the driver. I tried to intervene, saying there is an interchange in Latrun, it's no so difficult, you can get off the highway, drop them off, and then back on the road, it's not such a big detour. I'm not stopping, there's nowhere to stop, he reiterated, I drop you off near Jerusalem, you take a bus back, I don't care. The man turned to the woman, I told you so, you get on the taxi without asking first, he said in Hebrew, then continued in Ethiopean. She fell silent and turned her head away. The man continued his reproach in a subdued tone, proving again and again his retrospective wisdom. Between them I saw the bitter residues of a lifelong marriage, the helpless struggle with local ways which they do not fully understand.

The son called on the mobile phone; the father said Yonatan, where is this place we're going to, tell us where we have to go, switching between Hebrew and his native tongue. He passed the phone to the woman who first shrugged and refused to speak, then grabbed the phone, saying Yonatan my soul, we will be there, we are on the way.

They showed me the road directions they had, written in Hebrew which I was not sure they could read; a note in a rounded, childish handwriting, enumerating in an obscure language roads and buses. I realized they had left their home in the Galilee at 5.30 in the morning to get to the ceremony; now was 9.30, and they were going to be late. We were getting very near the interchange; I pointed it out to them. The woman pleaded the driver to stop. He shouted at them, I can't, there's police all over the place, if I stop I get a 1,000 Shekels fine, and then angrily pulled to the side of the road, and let them get off, as he turns to me, you told them there's a stop, there's no stop, people poke their noses into other people's business, and I have to pay the price.

Checkpoint

2008-05-20T00:53:00.000-07:00

My friends N. and L. are visiting here at the moment. They went to Ramallah yesterday, and coming back to Jerusalem, they had to go through the checkpoint. What she described in her email is the sort of experiences of which I am generally exempt because of my master-race Israeli passport:

Unfuckingbelievable experience at the Ramallah checkpoint into Jerusalem...I know it's nothing you don't know already but honestly, these checkpoints, they're like cattle-processing sheds. I had been determined all along not to get all sentimental and righteous and Guardian-reader about it, but really, it is totally dehumanising and humiliating, the whole set up.

And then we heard the way one of the guards was talking to this young mum with a baby, you didn't have to understand Hebrew to know that he was being really rude and aggressive, everyone in the queue was looking at each other, but in a pretty resigned way. Then the turnstile goes and some people go through (nice touch that you don't know if it's going to let you through or not - it just seems to stop randomly).

I go through, Luke's left behind. As soon as I came to the window and saw the guards, I knew they were off their tits. Two of them, one behind each window. I show my passport to one, he points to the other window. I go to the other window and show my passport, he points to the other window. They do this to me a couple of times, giggling the whole time in that really stoned way. Pretty humiliating.

Then one of them (the nastier looking one who was rude to the young mum), who is almost slipping off his chair he is so fucked, asks if I'm from Thailand. WTF? I tell him, no I'm English. He starts getting aggressive with me. You kind of expect rudeness or arrogance from officials in this kind of situation, at least, it's not so surprising when they act like cocks, but this was a bit frightening cos he was obviously not in his right mind - a second ago, he'd been laughing, now he's getting really agressive, and there's a gun there, I'm not used to seeing guns.

He starts shouting at me for my visa and I tell him I don't need one, I'm British. He's going on about a visa so then I realise what he means and I show him the stamp in my passport. Then he relaxes a bit and starts telling me I look Japanese.??? I only realised afterwards: you know when we came towards you at the airport, and you said you could really see the Chinese in me? Well I think he was so stoned, or tripping, that he could *really* see the Chinese (or Thai..or Japanese..) in me and it was freaking him out or something. Finally, he let me go.

(N's family comes from a mixed Asian background but you would have to be stoned and ignorant to think she is either Thai or Japanese)

The past is a foreign country - that never existed

2008-05-17T14:50:00.000-07:00

From Yahoo answers:

Resolved Question

Before the creation of Israel, was Palestine a recognized country?
Best Answer - Chosen by Voters
"No, there has never been a country called Palestine."

Here are some postcards from this never-never land:

The Palestine Archaeological Museum, a.k.a the Rockefeller Museum, opened in 1938 near the Old City of Jerusalem. Photographed on the week of Israel's 60th anniversary.

A poster to promote Tourism to Palestine, 1936. Designed by Franz Krausz, Jewish immigrant from Europe to Tel Aviv, for an advertising campaign aimed mainly at American Jews. Reclaimed in the 1990s by the Palestinian Authority.

2008-05-14T12:32:00.000-07:00

2008-05-14T02:28:00.000-07:00

If you really feel like throwing up, have a look at the website of the "Tomorrow" conference in Jerusalem, in which the Israeli president is hosting a large number of the world's biggest pigs. It feels like a scene from Animal Farm.

Look at them, with their suits and dresses, with their elegant bodyguards, these people who cashed on the destruction of our planet, who helped to make life on earth hell for millions of people, see how they smile.

Usually I am the first to say that most leaders, however disgusting, are not the real villains, our problems are much bigger than the set of idiots on stage. It's still true but a bit of populism never hurt anyone. Liars! Thieves! Murderers! Your day will come! Tomorrow!

And now, I'll go out to catch the sunset in Tel Aviv's pretentious boulevard.

Olmert is an honest man

2008-05-14T02:04:00.000-07:00

So says George W. Bush, who has just landed in Israel. With only a few months with Bush around, we should cherish these moments of light entertainment.

The latest Olmert story includes an American millioner and cash in unmarked envelopes (hundreds of thousands of dollars), directly into Olmert's hands. Why not? Cash in hand is the best, as every restraurant cleaner knows, and the more the merrier. Unlike former stories, this time the police have a strong card: Olmert's solicitor as a state witness. Somehow they got him to testify against his former client. The same day he decided to change loyalties, the solicitor was spotted by photographers standing in the middle of Tel Aviv-Jerusalem highway, completely lost. Crossing the lines can get you to dangerous places.

I like this picture.

Yes, Olmert is an honest man.

The first major Olmert scandal was in 1981, when he received an interest-free pay-when-you-have-the money US$ 50,000 'loan' from an obscure bank, whose archive strangely burnt down once the police investigation started. Since then he's done well, and there was a long list of dodgy deals in back rooms full of cigar smoke (corruption is never fun without the cigars). Olmert came clean so far of all accusations and indictments. He's good at this.

But Olmert is an honest man.

Try asking Israelis, and they will laugh in your face. Savvy, yes. Clever, perhaps. Cunning, no doubt. An honest man?

Anyway, it looks like this time they've got him.

Tel Aviv Snapshots

2008-05-09T03:00:00.001-07:00

Soundtrack
It's the sound of a violin orchestra, playing an upwards scale, long note after note, like in a murder mystery film, a crescendo whose climax is never reached. As usual with sounds, I cannot tell from where it is coming, but it repeats again and again, throughout the morning, the same sequence. Sitting in the balcony feels like a Fellini film.

Cat
He came with the flat, and his name is Fairuz. At first I was a bit taken aback by this naming of a grey male cat after the Arab world's ageing Diva, whose bell-sound voice singing 'the flower of cities' always comes to mind when I see Jerusalem's Old City after a long absence. His gender is wrong, I muttered when introduced.

But then I relaxed. We are all allowed some gender bending, and it is undeniable: his eyes are a very beautiful turquoise.

Tiles
The ceramic floor tiles are the jewel in the crown of this 1930s block of flats. Very typical of old Tel Aviv, they are neither Berlin modernism nor Levant Orientalism, but somehow fit both, that strange melange that is the spirit of this city. The tiles come in two types: mustard yellow with black lines, like tiger skin, and white-black-red-green geometric patterns in the long corridor, a beautiful vista stretching before those who keep their toilet door open as they sit to contemplate.

In the morning the sunshine comes through the kitchen window and warms a patch of tiles in front of the sink; the right moment to wash the dishes.

Dinner
We eat on small plastic table mats, to protect the wooden table from our olive-oil addiction. The usual resident of the flat bought these plastic mats in Nepal: one shows Katmandu sights, and the other features the royal family, King, Queen and three prnces, all slain in the 2001 palace attack defined in Wikipedia as a case of Fratricide, patricide, sororicide, regicide, matricide, mass murder, massacre, and suicide attack.

It is unnerving to put one's plate on murdered royals. Not even the Bolsheviks did that with Tsar Niccolai's family, I think. I find myself hyptonised by the concealed smile of her royal highness beautiful princess Shruti, and the uncanny innocence of her brother the boy prince Nirajan. Why we haven't put them away yet, this decor pieces of aristocratic horror, I do not quite know.

Decay
The kitchen's ceiling is disintegrating: little white pieces of paint and wall find their way to the stove, landing in our rice and lentils dishes, our chard and peppers stir-fry. I try to remember to keep the lid on; I like this decaying city, but not as part of my dinner.

For Tel Aviv, crumbling is a way of life. No matter how many layers of paint, how many plans of conservation and revival, the humid sea air will prevail. This is a city of fantasies, always have been - Art Deco orientalist palaces, Bauhous socialist blocks of flats, and nowadays millioners' tower blocks; but the moist breeze breathes salt on all of them, and Tel Aviv crumbles, immediately, continuously.

Jeursalem bus story

2008-05-08T01:39:00.000-07:00

I got on the number 8 bus near outside the Shuk, the fruit and veg market, opposite the Ottoman municipal hospital. As I sat down I was struck by the shouting of the woman behind me, talking on her mobile phone.

"She's crazy I tell that woman, just nuts, absolutely insane. She said that about me? Her brain is scratched. Wo-w0-wo-wo-wo, if I meet her in the street, I don't evny her, what I'm going to do to her, she won't like it, wait a minute, Driver, Driver, that's Shlomi, my neighbour, open the door."

The bus was standing at the red traffic lights, a chubby 15-year old with braces knocked sheepishly on the bus doors. "Driver, driver, open the door, it's Shlomi, he works in the Civil Guard, he checks busses for suicide bombers, open the door for him". The driver hesitated for a minute and then opened the doors. Little Shlomi really didn't look like a security expert and I wondered if the woman was making it up. She continued on the phone:

"Yes in the shuk, I bought meat, and parsley, and the new garlic with the red skin, and pittas, gonna make kebabs for tomorrow. Independence Day right? And that lemon cake. What do you mean you don't know it?" She raised her voice even more. "You're not normal, you. Never made it? you're not normal. It's easy and cheap to make."

" Wo-wo-wo, that woman" she returned to her nemesis "that piece of rubbish, to speak of me like that, if I see her in the street, I'm just going to ignore her, yes, not say hello even. No, better, I'm going to call her what she is, ungrateful, that dry-eggplant-face. I walked in the snow to buy cigarettes for her. Ungrateful." Suddenly there was a strange silence. It seemed the conversation was cut off. She looked back and called for Shlomi to come and sit by her.

"Shlomi, how are you doing, you see he opened the doors for you, I told him to open the doors for you, I told him you work in the Civil Guard, that you are checking busses, he opened the door because I told him".
I'm not doing that anymore, said Shlomi, now I'm guarding the entertainment events for Independence Day. Many events tonight, and yesterday I was guarding the Foreign Office event".

I started to see little Shlomi with new eyes. Who knows if Israel would have reached 60 if not for him.

"How much do they pay you?" she asked.
"I volunteer, I don't get paid".
What do you mean? That's bad, bad, Shlomi, you have to work for money, volunteering is nonsense".
But the Civil Guard are all volunteers, he said, almost apologizing.
"Rubbish!" she exclaimed. "Oh, a blind man, a blind man! He is boarding the bus, Shlomi, quick we have to give him our seat" and they both disappeared.

Also boarding the bus was a big woman who sat opposite me, and for the rest of the trip I could smell very strongly the odours of a dead chicken from her plastic bag.

nation and capital

2008-05-05T14:45:00.000-07:00

The plastic flag arrived as part of the weekend newspaper, courtesy of The Workers' Bank, the second largest bank in Israel . I opened the wrapping to see if they put their logo on the flag; they did, of course, albeit discretely, on the edge. Still noticeable. Of course, an advertisment capmaign is what it is, useless without brand characteristics.

The Workers' Bank was founded by the Zionist trade unions in Palestine in 1921, "to serve the interests of the Jewish working class". Jumping forward to 1983, the merry days of hyper-inflation, a bubbly stock exchange and the Lebanon War, the bank is nationalised by the government a minute before it goes bust. Fast forward again to the 1990s, the happier days of globalisation and the Oslo process, capitalism take 2, it is sold off to a Israeli-American billioner.

Money is the radical leveller that does away with all distinction, turns solid traditions to air and destroys borders, tells us Marx. But capitalism and nationalism, although ultimately at odds with one another, always found temporary living arrangements allowing mutual advantages. National trade barriers may be bad for business, but nationalist sentiments are good, as they provide many themes for hard-working copywriters. Patriotism sells.

The Workers' Bank flag is benign compared with the sticker issued by its main competitor - the National Bank - during the 2006 Lebanon War. "We Will Win" said the sticker, in the bank's recognisable corporate graphic style - good taste prvented them from putting their logo on it. Just imagine, "The Lebanon War - brought to you by Israel's leading bank, also offering you highly attractive loans". The sticker was distributed through the weekend papers a week after the war started. It borrowed its highly original moto from a speech by the prime minister.

These "we will win" stickers are very rare to come by now; they were peeled off cars' bumpers quickly after the war ended, when it became clear that we lost, or not really won, or were not really sure what winning meant in the first place. The bank, in any case, lost US$ 0.5 million on this advertisment fiasco. One should choose more carefully the right war to cheer.

2008-05-04T09:27:00.000-07:00

Today, in Tel Aviv's Karmel market, we were buying a small teapot to serve us in the coming month. The vendor packed it into a small box. 'Enjoy it' she said, 'and a happy holiday to you. It's a festival this week you know!' she said with a big smile. 'Our day of independence! Come on, translate for her' she said, as she realized F. can't speak Hebrew. 'Our festival!'.

She was the first person I met so far to express a simple, straightforward joy about this Independence Day. Not that you could be blind to the fact it's coming. There are flags everywhere, small plastic flags as giveaway presents in the newspapers, courtesy of Israel's leading bank, huge electric-lit flags on Tel Aviv's skyscrappers. It's Israel's 60th birthday. Haven't your heard? Bush, Sarkozy and Merkel are all coming to blow off the candles.

Yes it's hard to miss the orchestrated national jubiliation. As the city wears flags and posters, the radio and television bombs us with upbeat nostalgia. The celebration is a patriotic duty; and there is something antagonistic about it, an act of defiance of a long list of enemies, adverseries, and anyone who refuses to accept the complete rightousness of Israel and its most moral army in the world. Perhaps it is the nature of nationalistic holidays; perhaps it is worse here.

But this is what I liked about the vendor today, her joy seemed almost naive, and it was certainly not antagonistic, not directed against anyone. I don't know what's her personal story, but I know that for many people who immigrated here Israel was and still is - despite everything - a kind of a miracle that made their life possible. That they don't see that this independence meant the continuous and ongoing destruction of another people is a different matter.

The lepers hospital, Jerusalem

2007-08-12T06:30:00.001-07:00

Pomegranate

Capers
Prickly pair
Carob
Jesus Hifle (Jesus Cures)

I spent the 5th of June 2007, the fortieth anniversary to the 1967 war, in the Lepers Hospital in Jerusalem and the garden surrounding it. Built by German missionaries in the late 19th century, the hospital housed the lepers of Jerusalem, mostly Arabs and some Jews. The architect was the swiss Jerusalemite Konrad Schick. The head of the hospital was Dr. Tawfiq Kan'aan, a physician as well as pioneer anthropologist, author of Mohammedan saints and sanctuaries in Palestine (1927); and The Palestinian Arab house : its architecture and folklore (1933). Last year I found his letters in the Israeli State Archives: all of them in German, which I do not read. In 1948 he had to leave the hospital together with the Arab patients.

The building is still used today to treat people suffering from leprosy, although none of them lives there, and it is mainly empty. The entrance is from a side gate while the impressive facade is largely hidden.

I am thinking of applying for a residency there.

1967/2007: some comments (2)

2007-06-22T07:29:00.000-07:00

One State, Two Countries
We may live in what is effectively one state but it encompasses two countries. Palestine and Israel overlap geographically but mentally these are two different lands. Alquds and Yerushalaim may both be translated into English as Jerusalem but the two terms convey different memories and cultural meanings. In an important sense these are two different cities. And they will remain so for the foreseeable future, regardless of the political situation. This is a richness that we should embrace, not fear.

For too long maps have been used in this conflict as critical evidence in an ownership dispute. If my map was right than yours must be wrong; if your map included my territory than you must want to take my place. This two-dimensional view is flat and stupid. Real life have depth; and real places have more than one name. The atavistic desire to name and signpost in one correct official way, and to erase all other signposting, is a modern obsession which we can overcome.

So Yafa is a city in Palestine, just like Nablus and Haifa, and Hevron is a city in the land of Israel, just like Tel Aviv. Can we come to terms with such claims without feeling threatened?

The Political Framework is not everything
From the time I can remember, political debates concerning the future of Palestine/Israel focussed on the political ‘solution’. A Palestinian state or a Jordanian-Palestinian confederacy, border changes and territorial swaps, and the future of Jerusalem – these were the issues under discussion. But we should rid ourselves of the illusion that a political 'solution' - whatever form it may take - is sufficient to provide a closure for the conflict. There are issues which will not be decided by a political compromise, and are more important than the borders: from cultural memory of 1948 to the economic integration and separation between these unequal sides, from the control of land and water to access to work. I believe these issues explain why even when we were supposedly very close to finding a political “two-states” solution, it always escaped us, like a receding horizon. The economic future of Israelis and Palestinians, and the memory of the past are two core issues that cannot be “resolved”; they require ongoing engagement by both sides.

The Real Challenges are Different
Israelis and Palestinians have been spoiled for global attention: our daily dramas have occupied the world newspapers headlines for many years now. But probably not for long. In the coming decades we will find ourselves facing global challenges very different from the ones that have preoccupied people and politicians in the 20^th century. Our world is threatened by the ecological holocaust of climate change and environmental degradation; our civilisation will find itself struggling to survive on depleting energy and water resources. The way we live today is wholly unsustainable and will have to change, and we don’t have much time.

Perhaps the last reminder for our shared human condition was the 1927 earthquake which shook Palestine and left many dead. When the earth trembled 80 years ago it did not care to distinguish between Jews and Arabs. Similarly, the future disasters will involve all of us, and affect all of us: climate change does not stop at checkpoints, and without energy and water none of us could live.

Horrible as this 90-year conflict has been, it may well seem insignificant in comparison with the ecological devastation awaiting us.

1967/2007: some comments (1)

2007-06-20T08:26:00.000-07:00

This June marks forty years to the 1967 year, forty years of Israeli military occupation of the West Bank and Gaza. I will take this opportunity to make some comments on the conflict, and more especially around the issue of a political solution and the idea of "one state"; this is the first post of two or three. My thoughts were prompted by a very interesting interview of Laila al-Haddad with Ali Abu Nimah, author of One Country.

One State is not a “solution”, it’s the reality

There should be little doubt that the events in Gaza this month - whether seen as “liberation”, the result of a Palestinian “endemic terrorism”, a "military coup" or the logical consequences of years of a suffocating blockade and a refusal to accept the outcome of democratic elections - however they are portrayed, the Gaza developments make the prospects of a “two states solution”, and a sovereign Palestinian state alongside Israel, even more far fetched than before. In the coming weeks Israel will try to deny its responsibility to a territory it still very much controls. If this succeeds, the recipe may well be copied in the West Bank. But more likely is that the deteriorating situation will demonstrate the limitations of Israeli ‘disengagement’ as a political strategy, and that the territory of historical Palestine or Land of Israel - the land between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River - is still one integral unit, politically and economically. For the past forty years, this territory has been under the ultimate control of one sovereign power. This is a state of affairs which most commentators– regardless of their political persuasion - insisted on seeing as temporary. But as the years go by such view is becoming untenable.

The territory which Israelis and Palestinians think of as their country (whatever name they give it) was created as a political unit in 1920, its borders delimited by the British and French colonial powers. The 30 first years (1917-1948) under British rule created a strong sense of territorial/national identity among both indigenous Arab Palestinians and the largely newcomer Jewish community. The 19 years of partition – a short interval on a historical timeline stretching 85 years – came to an end in 1967 when the territory was again united under complete Israeli rule, and so it remained ever since. Even when, in 1993, a Palestinian Authority was given limited powers in some areas, its legal powers depended on the Israeli sovereign power, which continued to exert control on most aspects of life, from radio frequencies to the population register.

The partition of historical Palestine for 19 years, between 1948 and 1967, between Israel (controlling 78% of Mandatory Palestine), Egypt ruled Gaza and Jordanian ruled West Bank, was sufficient to create considerable differences between these areas. These differences are today maintained in the international attitude towards the 'occupied territories' and in the legal framework through which their population is denied of civil rights. And perhaps there was a time when the 1967 borders could have served to partition the territory to two nation states, Israel and Palestine. The number of Israelis and Palestinians who believe that this is still possible is now, I believe, becoming insignificant.

It is unclear if an independent Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza was ever a viable option. Forty years of Israeli occupation, in which the Palestinian territories have become enmeshed into Israel in manifold ways, certainly made it impossible: the total economic dependence of the West Bank and Gaza on Israel; the common perception, based on a shared memory of mandatory Palestine that the territory between the sea and the river is one whole (ask Israeli and Palestinian children to draw a map of Palestine or Israel – they will draw the same map, and it will not include the 67 borders); the presence of 500,000 Israeli settlers in the West Bank; the physical layout of settlements, roads and more recently the walls and barriers inside the West Bank; and above all, the failure of the Oslo process since 1993 to deliver its anticipated result, a Palestinian state alongside Israel – all these make the “two state solution” wishful thinking at best, a naïve attachment to the national idea. At worst, it represents the vested interest of Palestinian elites (now including Hamas) to retain the pretence of ‘independence’, and a Israeli refusal to acknowledge that Israel has become an Apartheid state, in which more than 40 percent of the population are denied of civil rights and live in dire poverty under military rule.

'One binational state' is therefore neither a desirable 'solution' nor a 'threat'; it is the reality, in which more than one generation was born and raised. Whatever differences in legal rights, freedom of movement and economic prospects between the different groups of population in the territory of mandatory Palestine, فلسطين פלשתינה (א"י) , they are all under the effective rule of one sovereign state; this situation is unlikely to change in the foreseeable future. It is time we face up to the consequences of this simple observation.

Bye Bye

2006-11-15T11:30:00.000-08:00

This visit is coming to an end.
From next week I am a London mink.

Rasta Jerusalem

2006-11-15T11:24:00.000-08:00

Abyssinian Street, Jerusalem

2006-11-14T07:58:00.000-08:00

Khaled Mashal (Hamas) said today: Hamas's participation in the elections was a 'vital experience disregarding the results', and that this 'experiment' established that the Palestinian Authority has 'no sovereignty and no sound foundations'.

Did they really need to be in power for 10 months to find this out? I could have told them that from the start.

This proves to my mind how irresponsible the Hamas have been. They did not plan to win the elections and when they did, they had no plan. It took them by surprise. As a result they had no strategy to deal with the Israeli/American/European boycot. It is just as if an libertarian prisoner would be elected to head the prisoners' association and then find out -to his great surprise - that the Prison's management is not cooperating anymore.

I think they were just very happy with the titles 'Prime Minister' and 'Minister' and found them really difficult to give up, even if in practice they had no power over anything.

2006-11-11T22:54:00.000-08:00

In my dream I learnt, by strange accident, that Kevin Spacey was the man behind the 9/11 attacks. Then I was part of an elaborate sting operation designed to catch him. I cannot quite remember what it entailed, apart from unsolicited sales calls. At some point - perhaps when he realized he had no way of escape - he kicked his pet-camel out of the window of his skyscraper penthouse. Then he followed suit. Spacey died almost instantly, but the poor creature, which had the skin of an alligator, writhed and wriggled for long minutes. I tried to help it by washing it with water. Then the water became a river, washing first the blood and soul of the beast, then its armoured skin, on its way to the ocean of consolation.

says it all

2006-11-11T15:41:00.000-08:00

SORRY

Once Again I'm posting a Haaretz caricuture, I just think they're good.

The Iraqi Market, Jerusalem

2006-11-09T10:14:00.000-08:00

The news of Rumsfeld's resignation was received with apathy in the Iraqi Market in Jerusalem.

Jerusalem Pride

2006-11-09T09:48:00.000-08:00

Jerusalem is not Soddom
Get Out of Here
Evil People
Haters of Israel

Jerusalem Pride is tomorrow. This is the fourth Pride; last year someone was stabbed, and this year the threats of violence - from the ultra orthodox community - are posted all around town. They had one saying 'Jews and Arabs against the March of Evil'. Yes homophobia creates strange bedfellows, bringing together Hamas, the Vatican, West Bank settlers and non-Zionist Hassidic Jews. Isn't it heartwarming to see that they can all put their differences aside for once.

The march was shifted from the original course around Nahlat Shiva (the seedy part of town in 1910-1920, but this is never mentioned in official histories) to a very short 500m 'march' to the University area. They are still threatening to cancel it - now because there is a threat of Palestinian retalliation to the bombing on Gaza, and the police say they need the troops elsewhere.

* * *
update: deal with the Orthdox:
Pride rally instead of March.
3,000 cops instead of 12,000
Rabbis call to avoid violence.

Gaza

2006-11-08T23:01:00.000-08:00

On Tuesday I went to a discussion on the situation in Gaza. I was going to give you funny snippets of the Israeli lefty scene but the latest Beit Hanun massacre (19 civilians killed yesterday) makes this unimportant.

The daily killing is the more visible side of what is going on in Gaza. At the same time there is a sustained attempt to make life there as hellish as possible for the population - but also just about bearable. Israel does not want a visible humanitarian disaster so it allows the UN to provide food (80% of the population depend on it). Three things from the discussion:

(*) After years of restrictions, the Gaza fishermen are now virtually prohibited to go out to sea at all. The implication is not only 3500 families with no supporter, but also dangerous lack of protein in local diet.

(*) The local gross product has shrunk by 25% during the last year. Since the population is growing, this (very roughly) means that standard of living fell by more than 25%. Reasons? mainly the closure of crossing points and inability to export, but also electricity shortages, as a result of the attack on the local plant which provided about half of Gaza's electricity.

(*) If there was any military reason to harm Gaza’s electricity (for example, to stop the production of rockets) Israel could have pressed on the OFF button. Israeli plants provide the other half of Gazan electricity. But pressing a button doesn't give you a good picture.

The attack on Gaza's power station was an act of reprisal and revenge, a collective punishment. Not only did it make life much harder in Gaza, it also no doubt killed people - by limiting elecrticity for hospitals, by making it very hard to refridgerate food. Like the people who died in the Rafah crossing waiting for the border to open, and unlike the dead from yesterday, these people are invisible. All you have is the picture of the destroyed power station: a 'clean' act ("no casulties") of state rage.

warzone tourism

2006-11-06T00:47:00.000-08:00

My visits always start with euphoria. Sudden exposure to high levels of sunlight and fabulous vegetables in the market prove to make me extremely happy. The simple things are so much better than in London: less pollution, better food, and a perfect climate. It's refreshing to be around Israelis: they are rude, friendly, lively, and being a visitor, things that would usually make me angry are just funny. Going out in Jerusalem, even more so in Tel Aviv, drinking bison vodka on a roof terrace near the sea, you would never guess a war raged here three months ago; and that a short drive away millions of people live under direct military occupation, or in the biggest prison on earth.

It usually takes me three to four weeks to swing back to reality, and then the encounter is ugly. Had I lived here, there would be networks of friends and work that would keep me going, linearities which I could follow. But as a visitor- the date of my departure is closing on me - I have just the glimpse of things here and now, and this glimpse is thoroughly depressing. To be sure, the war exacerbated things, but perhaps exposed some truths as well, about Israeli society. My own existence here relies critically on a detachment not only from the Israeli state but also from the Israeli army; yet because the military is interlocked so closely with daily life of many Israelis, this kind of detachment is extremely difficult to achieve.

Jaffa railway station 1920/2006

2006-11-05T10:40:00.000-08:00

curiosities

2006-11-05T10:21:00.000-08:00

on the bus the other day I saw a dreadlocked girl wearing the Israeli army uniform . Her dreads were carefully tied together on the top of her head. I was very surprised and wanted to ask her:
Does the army allow you to have dreads?
Do your dreads allow you to be in the army?
But I shyed away.

Knafeh: sweet and cheesy

2006-11-01T08:21:00.000-08:00

hardcore at the Rosa

2006-10-29T09:09:00.000-08:00

I started going there in my second year in university, usually after finishing long Programing assignments. For draught beer, they had the Palestinian Taybeh, and the Israeli Goldstar, both good lagers, but their draught Goldstar was divine, especially rich and tasty. Or maybe it was the pleasure of finally submitting those wretched c++ assignments.

It's there I learnt to appreciate Turmusim; heard Lee Morgan's hypnotising trumpet for the first time; and had a long conversation about Zionism in 1999, of which I remember little, except that I was still calling myself a Zionist, although I wasn't sure what it meant.

Going back was reassuring. I've changed in the last eight years, and so has the Rosa. Both of us have gone somewhat anarcho-punk, at least on a sentimental level. They were playing hardcore last week. The singer screamed and howled like a baby unhappy about its bedtime, and the guitars were soothing, melodic and precise. I looked outside to the empty streets of the Shuk and sighed. I don't find much room for optimism here but the guitarist's lyrical practicality suggested I am not looking hard enough.

'Strategic threat'

2006-10-26T14:18:00.000-07:00

"Lieberman vs. Ahmedinjad: cut it out now!" (from Haaretz)

The recent addition to the Israeli government is Avigdor Lieberman, who has been called 'the Israeli le-Pen'. Like many on the new European extreme-right, Liberman carefully and cleverly presents a complex face, championing 'liberal' issues like civil marriage (which does not exist here), while pursuing a deeply racist, xneophobic agenda. What makes it a bit different, in tone and language, is perhaps the fact that Lieberman, like most of constituency, is a Russian immigrant. His party is called 'Israel our Home' - clearly a point that he still feels needs making.

The newspapers say he is going to be the minister for 'Strategic Threats' which mean mainly Iran and its nuclear program. What this man knows about Iran is a good question, but not one that is asked here. Iran (here in Israel) is the ultimate bogey man, big scary headlines in black and red, with the word missiles, bomb or reactor in them. Ahmedinjad's is rapidly replacing the late Yasir Arafat as the Jewish People's ultimate nemesis, a modern-day Hitler and Pharoe. Yes we Jews need an enemy, preferably with some facial hair, that wants to destroy us all. It makes us sleep better at night.

It is fairly common here to come across ex-generals/politicians/'scholars' going on about 'Islamic tsunami' and other phrases to that effect; I think to myself why on earth should I waste time listening to these people who know nothing about Islam, let alone about Iranian society and culture. But analysis, explanation or even a carefully-presented arguments are deemed unnecessary. 'What more proofs do you need? Just listen to what he says!'

I have a feeling that Israel and the 'Zionist regime' play the same bogey-man role for Ahmedinjad and his mates, who need their own 'axis of evil'. Together the two sides tell their consitutenices horror-stories to give them nightmares.

Id al-fitr in al-Quds

2006-10-24T15:06:00.000-07:00

Spent this afternoon walking through the "Muslim Quarter" of the Old City. The strange holiday feeling, people seem outgoing/bored/having too much family to deal with/happy all at the same time. The kids are really into their toy guns: pistols and machine guns. They're 12 year old and less. I guess a 15 year old with a toy gun can create the wrong impression, and this can have severe implications, with border-patroll police all over the city.

I was interested to find out that the road that the Ottomans called 'Gate of the tribes road', and the British 'Our lady Mary road' is now 'Lions road' (hebrew) 'holy fighters (mujahidun) road' (arabic).

Grafitti Update

2006-10-16T02:30:00.000-07:00

Following the Lebanon War, everywhere you can find grafitti with the religious/nationalist slogan 'The Jewish nation is living' (this translation doesn't quite catch the fundamentalist spirit of the saying) in blue with the Star of David. These have been subverted sometimes, like here:

The Jewish People is living in a bad movie

Another war-related grafitti I found said:
Lebanon? That's SO eighties
I know some people might think it's bad taste, but I found it funny

Someone is spraying Tel Aviv with this combination of lightbulb + Know Hope

Tel Aviv

2006-10-13T15:00:00.000-07:00

A sticker on a van:
Excuse me!
Do you think God is happy about the way you dress?
Hey Jewish girl, dress modestly!

+ + +

Shoe-shop scene:
Man walks into the shop.
Man: 'Wow. I absolutely adore your shoes. I can't stop buying them'.
Owner: of course
Man: [points to the Crocks sandals he's wearing] what do you think of these?
Owner: [looks to the side, her face expressing extreme contempt] PCHEEEE.
Man: I know why you say that, because everybody has them. What they call 'the common Israeli' (grimaces). [Pause] But me, I live abroad! [triumphantly]

Commentary:
1. The dislike of 'the common Israeli' is indeed one of the traits of the common Israeli.
2. Five years of living abroad, and I have lost my grasp on Israeli social etiquette. I can't tell what is rude and what is just the Israeli way of being friendly, 'the pushy manner which is the Israeli idea of warmth'.

Carrying On

2006-10-08T01:54:00.000-07:00

A few years back, when I was working in the Israeli Television as a subtitles translator, one of my colleagues was called Zecharia. He was the Yiddish and Russian translator. Most of us were students, in our twenties; he was much older, and would treat work much more seriously, always showing up with a suit and tie. He had a grey moustache, golden teeth and a certain kind of an outdated central European chick.

He would always ask me: how are you?
I would say fine, and what about you Zecharia?
And he would pause for a moment, then look up, raise his head (you could tell that he cherished those moments) and say ceremoniously, emphasising the words:
We are carrying on.

something is lost

2006-10-07T15:50:00.000-07:00

Finally, the past is a different country

echoes of displacement

2006-10-06T16:51:00.000-07:00

I have not been here for 18 months; much of this time was spent in reading about Jerusalem of 1917, which became more and more vivid and real as I read memoirs dairies and books. Suddenly I am in Jerusalem 2006; I feel like a refugee going back home and finding that it has all changed, while landmarks are still there, something very basic is missing. I walk the city and I feel as if something is wrong, broken, unresolved; something is left without an answer, a problem with no solution, and that the construction work (much of it here) is covering up for a fundamental gap that has not been bridged. Something seems absent from the fabric of the city, something that would glue together its different elements into one network, the uneven, interruped continuouty of history. Yet all I see is bad patchwork.

Partly, this has to do with arriving during the holidays, when normal life is suspended. And I have not been to the market yet, it always manages to console me. Today I thought of going there. Instead, I found myself sitting in a flat that looked familiar (squat like), making decoration for the tabernacle shed and smoking a spliff with people I didn't really know. I should say that it was the nicest and most relaxing time I had since arrival. The decoration scheme was simple: a three coloured chain of paper rings.

Back

2006-10-05T15:56:00.000-07:00

Israel always starts in the queue to the check-in at a London airport. Somehow I always go during the holidays: Passover or - this time - the High Holidays, between Yom Kippur and Tabernacle (Sukkot). The flights are packed with ultra-orthodox families, with lots of kids, even more suitcases. The check-in takes forever.

The guy sitting next to me was an ultra-orthodox property developer from Stamford Hill. I couldn't resist the temptation and told him I squatted in the East End. 'Why?' he said. 'Because the building was empty and unused and I had no money to pay rent'. He gave me thumbs up, but then said seriously: 'yes I had squatters one time... but I threw their stuff to the street'. I was reading 'Berlin Chronicle', and I told him about Walter Benjamin's Kabbala influences. He wasn't impressed.

And now here. Traffic is worst then ever. Weather is beautiful. Personal life in a mess. And the stones... they're covering everything. And I've not even begun to face life or work.

Now that's it's over(?)

2006-08-18T16:00:00.000-07:00

1. Watching the Israeli society in the last six weeks felt, for me, like watching a close friend getting drunk and uncontrollably abusive. A provocation becomes a brawl; everybody gets hurt, including the drunk himself, the place is trashed beyond recognition, and the horrible truth is that there's not much you can do, just wait until it's over.
The U.S, which in similar situations in the past acted as the responsible adult friend of the adolescent bully - clearly biassed but cold-headed enough to stop it before it gets worse - was acting as a cheerleader, occasionally handing more vodka just to make it more fun.
And now, like always after a night of heavy drinking, comes the hangover. And judging by Israeli news websites, it seems like a pretty bad one.

2. What were the Israeli 'officer corps' (as Juan Cole reffered to them) thinking?
The same methods and techniques were used in 1994 (under Rabin) and 1996 (under Peres); those rounds of bombings started similarly with resolute statements and ended with a negotiated deal after much devastation but inability to defeat Hizbulla. This time we saw a much more brutal version of the same thing, only with a shambolic land invasion to top it up. Why did they think what failed twice would work now?

If the aim was to get the Lebanese Army to deploy on the border, then this was achieved (but remember that in 1992-2000 Hizbullah was operating from areas controlled by the Lebanese Army. It didn't bother them much. Hizbulla's decisions will be influenced more by political balance in Lebanon than anything else). But then the aim changed to 'defeating Hizbulla', a clear impossiblity.

How could the Israeli army recommend this operation, with no clear aims, and therefore with no chances of success? My only lame explanation is that generals think through military force; that's what they're paid to do. They are delighted to use their deadly toys when opportunity knocks. The problem starts when there is no-one to stop them

3. There are interesting parallels between the failed American Iraq enterprise and the failed Israeli war on Lebanon. In both places the problem was articulated as a 'bad' state: a rogue state in Iraq, and a state unable to live up to its international commitments in Lebanon. In both cases the solution was to use military force in order to create the old order of things: a world in which states are the only actors; a world of states playing within the (american-dominated) global order.

This shows how blind these policy-makers and generals are to today's world. An assault on the nation state will inevitably weaken it. In both cases the non-state actors emerged as real alternatives. Whatever losses Hizbullah has suffered, it stood up to the Israeli army. I think many people around the world will form their conclusions from this.

4. The optimistic side of me suggests that something good might come out of all this. The sense of shock and disillusionment in Israel can be a wake-up call: that excessive force and technological superiority do not solve problems; that the immediate preference for unilateral use of force rather than diplomatic channels does not lead very far.
My pessimistic side tells me a change is impossible as long as the Bush administration is in place.

Antebe / Lebanon

2006-08-05T03:25:00.001-07:00

I found it funny.

http://www.waleg.com/videos/archives/004532.html

2006-08-04T03:07:00.000-07:00

I find it impossible to write these days: words seem meaningless, and of little use. So I turn to other people's words. Ronit Matalon, my favourite Israeli writer, in Haaretz today:

A. from the store that sells building materials in my Tel Aviv neighborhood, stopped saying hello to me the morning after I spoke out against the war on television. We met at the usual street corner, at more or less the regular time, and A. turned his gaze forward or sideways, avoiding my eyes. We had never talked, A. and I, about “the situation,” or about anything else of substance. The soft, salient absence of content in our daily encounter and the measured, mutual, almost wordless, greeting created the cordial pact of a fraternity of acquaintances and neighbors that existed between us − a muted thread in the precious weave of the everyday.

This everyday cordial pact between A. and me, between every person and every A., is one of the elements that forcefully grabs the hyperactive kicking feet of the generalized concept of “homeland” and places it on some sort of ground, turns it into a non-generalized, concrete “home.” The two don’t always go together − “homeland” and “home” − and sometimes, indeed, they are mutually contradictory, especially when the homeland allies itself almost absolutely with a frothingly patriotic ”We’ll show them” sort of pride.

In times of controversial wars, this gap between the language of the “homeland” and the language of the “home” widens and becomes almost a gulf. At such a time, the “home,” it seems, must defend its existence in the face of the “homeland,” especially when the latter puts on its most militant show in the form of irresponsible, patriotic, sentimental talk − sentimentalism that is liable to justify and perhaps even foment crimes of various degrees.

Read the rest here.

ooops

2006-07-19T08:32:00.000-07:00

For a while I wondered how come I don't get any comments. I guessed it was because nobody reads. But just now I realized I have to press on the right tab. So my apologies to readers who sent comments - they're now published. Hope it didn't make you stop reading the blog.

two war comments

2006-07-19T06:48:00.000-07:00

The first point is more analysis, the second is on how I feel.

1. For a lot of people the whole middle east situation mashes into one big mess. I think that it's important to distinguish between Gaza and Lebanon. While the two situations may look the same - abducted soldiers, retaliiatory bombing - but there are considerable differences.

Fighting in Gaza has been continuous in the last few years, and did not stop after the Israeli 'disegnagement'. On the Lebanese front, the border has been largely quiet since 2000, Hizbullah has been actively prveneting other groups from launching attacks on Israel. This was a privelge it kept to itself, and in six years it launched some 6-7 attacks on Israeli troops - usually in very specific locations (Shaba farm, Rajjar), in an attempt to create contained escalations.

Gaza is still under effective Israeli control, and the West Bank is under direct military occupation. Unlike in Lebanon where since June 2000 there are no Lebanese living under Israeli occupation; Hizbulla claims Israel is still occupying a stretch of Lebanese land (the shaba farm) but according to the UN this is Syrian occupied territory. Syria has been silent on the issue, providing Hizbulla with a convinient excuse to keep up the 'resistance', and its para-military presence in Lebanon.

There are 3 Lebanese in Israeli prisons, compared to 9000 Palestinians.

And Lebanon is a soverign state with a functioning economy (at least until last week), unlike the 'Palestinian Authority' which has less power over Palestinians' lives and economy than your average municipality, and is not soveign in any meaningful way.

So while in Gaza the capture of the soldier is one episode in a long series of tit-for-tat, and it really is rediculous to ask 'who started', the Hizbulla operation last week was a clear provocation, an unprovoked attack on Israeli troops on the other side of the border.

And Hamas are not Hizbullah. Both are militant Islamic movements with wide grass-roots support. But Hizbullah can sit on the other side of the border and talk about the destruction of Israel as the only way. Yes it could take decades but they're not in a hurry, and they have no desire to negotiate with Israel. Hamas operate under Israeli occupation and
they can't afford this stoic stand, especially since coming to power. They have had to come to terms with Israel. Anyone reading Ismail Haniya's article last week could see that they came a long way from their official position of 'one Islamic state between the river and the sea'.

I feel a need to state these things because they are being mashed by the media, and for more than one agenda. Critics of Israel see it as one story: the crazy bully Israel bombing its neighbours for hardly any reason. Israel-supporters see it as one story: Israel being attacked by Arab terrorists who would never accept its right to live in peace.

I agree with neither. First, I think that attacks on military troops are not terror. Even when they are not justified. But similarly it's only reasonable to expect Israeli troops to defend themselves and react to such attacks. (This does not mean that any reaction is legitimate: targetting civilians is wrong - and I don't care if you call it 'infrastracture'; had Hizbulla bombed the Ben Gurion Airport it would have been considered a 'terror attack', no?)

Second, I see a difference between the resistance of the Palestinian people under occupation, to Hizbulla's unjustifyable provocation designed (I think) to assert its role in Lebanese and regional politics. It was a big gamble and a stupid one. Hizbulla pride themselves at being cool-headed and calculated, so they should have known better. When you tease an angry and wounded beast you should expect it to react violently.

2. I read of international support for the Israeli operation. They're talking about the decommissioning of Hizbullah, and an international peace force in the south as possible outcomes. This would not be a bad thing. So I start wondering: maybe I should rally behind the IDF like 99 percent of my compatriots? Maybe it's actually a great thing what they're doing? Maybe I should forget about the 300 dead Lebanses civilians (and counting)? Maybe I'm just a defeatist who since living for five years out of the country forgot 'the reality of the middle east' etc etc.

But then I see these pictures of cute girls in the Galilee writing on artillery shells (AP, via Niki). 'I've been waiting for this so long' says one grafitti, with a spelling mistake.

I have no interest to debate the strategic benefits or risks of the current Israeli operation. I have my doubts but they belong to a geo-political discourse which I am not keen on right now. I am far more concerened about people who teach their kids to write cheerful slogans on missiles. These pictures scare me much more than pictures of houses hit by rockets. Israeli society is strong enough to sustain rocket attacks. Is it strong enough to teach its children not to hate 'the other side'? Is it strong enough not to find joy in the act of killing? Is it strong enough to be able to find empathy - an obscene word in our part of the world - for victims other than 'its own'?

When one stops seeing the people on the other side as human beings, inevitably one will not see the atrocities committed in one's name. Then one can comfortably maintain one's self-rightousness and moral indignation. A very grim prospect, as far as I'm concerned.

Lebanon

2006-07-17T07:27:00.000-07:00

Exactly a week ago I received a package from Beirut with books I ordered from the Institute for Palestine Studies. It was the first two volumes of the Sakakini diaries. It seems a long time ago now. I hope the people who sent me the books are safe.

I read the secretary general of Hizbulla, Hasan Nasrallah, who always reminded me of the smug cheshire cat from Alice. As always, his speech is lucid and challenging, but this time it rings dangerously megalomaniac. He is describing the current conflict in grand heroic terms as 'the model' for the Arab world, and seems to believe that the psychological gains, for example the hit Israeli gunship, are well worth the devastation of his country. Nasrallah speaks of Hizbullah's 'restraint' in targeting civilian population, which, 'unfortunately' it had had to break, (eight railway workers killed yesterday), and threatens to hit the chemical industry near Haifa. My brother lives not far.

In Israel they speak too of 'restraint' which had claimed so far 160 civilian lives, not to mention thousands of refugees, and a bombed airport. 'It is important to minimize the targeting of Lebanese civilians' is a sentence one comes across often. 'Minimize' not so much because they're innocent human beings (after all, they're Lebanese, and THEY STARTED) but because too many pictures of dead children could prompt the international community to stop the Israeli bombing binge before its objectives are met. The problem is that the main objective seems to be the bombing binge itself, as well as 'teaching them a lesson' (no doubt, a clearly defined military objective). I read Israeli websites and find little but gang-ho, almost jubilation. It's revolting.

So I turn back to Khalil Sakakini's diaries. On the 4th of April 1920 he went to watch the Nabi Musa procession at Jaffa Gate. It soon became an anti-Jewish riot, the first in the history of Modern Palestine. Sakakini watched in dismay as a Jewish shoe-polisher near him was savagely beaten up by a Hebronite, and Jewish shop windows smashed. Sakakini, a staunch Arab nationalist and anti-Zionist, had many Jewish friends and students.

He walked away, he wrote, his soul digusted and depressed from the madness of the human race.

Writing about the Conflict

2006-07-11T10:44:00.000-07:00

After the publication of Raed and my article, a friend sent me an email:

'What about the chaos in the PA? The disintegration of Hamas? the Kasam rockets? Going into Israeli territory to abduct a soldier? Some minor, understated criticism of the Palestinians? Or are they really simply wonderful neighbours?...
I think that blaming only Israel for what is going on, like you do, is the easy option. The Israeli policy is no doubt horrible, but this does not absolve the other side from minimal responsibility to what is going on on their side. ... I don't think articles should always be balanced. But you can write an article against Israel and mention in the margins that the Palestinians should do something as well'.

These are legitimate questions. Are the Palestinians completely powerless? Are they not responsible to what is happening, in some way? Wasn't our analysis a little simplistic and one-sided?

I want use these questions to say something about the difficulty of writing about the conflict.

First, very briefly, my answer is: describing the Palestinians as mere passive victims of Israeli aggression would make no sense, for me. Clearly decisions taken by various Palestinian groups can affect the situation, whether they are reacting to Israeli policies or acting independantly. But the 'share of responsibility' should be determined within specific contexts. Looking at the Gaza situation (pull-out, siege, Hamas election, embargo, rockets, bombings, abduction etc) I would say that the actions - or lack of actions - on the part of the Palestinian Authority played an insignificant part; and that the decisive factor was, as we wrote in the article, a set of unilateral policies pursued by the Israeli government; that these policies over-determined the situation in a way that left very little room for other action.

But let's stop here and not go into details, because this is not my point.

Even if we agree with this analysis, there might be an emotional reason to frame things differently. Since many readers are emotionally involved, writing an article is not only a matter of reasoning; one has to consider the emotional effect of one's words, if one wants to be effective. That is: we could have, for example, condemned the rocket attacks on Israel in a clearer language. We didn't - but we also didn't condemn the bombing of civilians in Gaza, which claimed a much higher price in civilian lives. In my view both are symptoms, not causes, and 'calling to stop them' doesn't make much sense; what we need is a cease-fire, proper talks, etc etc. But we could have included such gestures - to signal that we are not 'one-sided'.

But this brings me exactly to my main point. What I read in my friend's reaction is the underlying belief in the two-sidedness of this conflict: Israelis on the one side, and Palestinians on the other, and both contribute in their own way to the disaster. So even if you criticize Israel - which my friend does frequently - you have to say something about Palestine. You need two for tango, don't you?

I long stopped thinking like this. You see: I took a tango class some while ago, and I realized you need far more than two for tango: you need an orchestra to play music (or a tape), you need other couples to not get in your way, but you need them to dance besides you, otherwise there's no point. And the way you dance, your steps and your rythem all depend on these factors, and on the 'rules' of tango. Without overstretching this metaphor, what I want to say is: there's far more than two sides in this story. The 'Israeli side'? Do you think me and the settlers are on the same side? Do you think me and the Israeli government are on the same side? Similarly, any analysis that talks about 'the Palestinians' as a tribe is meaningless. Who are you talking about? the Palestinian Authority? the Palestinian refugees? the Palestinian middle class? Palestinian women? Gazans?

What we tried to do in the article is not to say 'it's the Israelis fault!' but rather that the policies of the Israeli government are creating the situation, for which civilians on both sides suffer, and that the Israeli government holds the key to changing it. In other words: we tried to point to a specific element within the picture. But I suspect this would be lost on most of the Israeli audience, who have a very high level of identification with their State; more I suspect than any other people in the Middle East.

More and more I think that the most important task, when writing about the conflict, is to question these divisions of Israelis/Palestinians, us/them. For me, just the fact that an Iraqi-Palestinian and a Israeli can get together and write something like this is a proof that reality does not stop at the national divide. That lines of solidarity can be built across them.

* * *

Maybe more about this in the next few days. I strongly recommend reading Ismail Haniyeh's article at the Washington Post. It is very well written, and is genuinely interesting and thought-provoking. If I have some time I'll post some comments.

Gaza Escalation

2006-07-07T08:15:00.000-07:00

Raed Jarrar and myself have written a joint article on the Gaza escalation, 'A Unilateral Ride over the Edge', published by Foreign Policy in Focus. This is one paragraph from it:

"The Israeli Prime Minister, Mr. Olmert, had pledged to carry these unilateral policies further into the West Bank promising voters that Israel could win security through unilateral withdrawals, tough military means, and the enclosing of the Palestinians behind fences and walls. The fallacy of this promise has been exposed with the current fighting in Gaza. Israel has the military power to attack Palestine but such approach cannot bring security. Rockets can fly above fences and tunnels can be dug under walls. If chaos and despair reign on the one side of the fence, no one should expect security on the other side."

"As strong as the desire is--on both sides--to separate, what has happened in the last few months in and around the Gaza strip has demonstrated that separation is not an option: Palestinians and Israelis share the land, and whatever fences, walls, watchtowers, or rhetoric will not change this fact. Brutal force will not amend grievances and will not remove fears. It is re-engagement, not disengagement that is needed."

The End of the Palestinian Authority?

2006-07-04T17:24:00.000-07:00

It seems we are reaching the moment where we can talk of the fall of the Hamas government as a real possibility. This scenario will leave the Palestinian Authority hanging on the figure of President Mahmood Abbas; a burden too heavy for one man to carry. Without a functioning government, the entire PA edifice may collapse within weeks or months, probably amid spreading violence.
But stop a minute, and roll the clock back. Who has an interest in destroying the PA? At the moment - none of the main parties. Hamas were not elected to form a suicide-government, and it was not their intention to bring the whole thing down, but rather to prove that an Islamist government can rule and deliver a better life for the Palestinians. Fateh certainly have no interest in seeing the PA go - it's their project, since 1993, and they are heavily invested in it- most of the police/security are their people.

And believe it or not, the Israeli government has no interest in it either. Its unilateralist policies paradoxically depend on the existence of an internationally-recognized body on the other side of the wall. Otherwise, it will be more difficult to resist calls for international deployment (especially in Gaza). Through the Intifada years the PA has been keeping all the civilian infrastructure running - hospitals, water, electricity etc - with the help of European funding. If the PA goes, Israel is very likely to have to pay for these. Maybe not immediately, but a humanitarian crisis will soon force it to do so: this was shown by last week's events. After bombing the (U.S.- government-insured) Gaza power station, Israel is now being asked to supply the Palestinians with Israeli electricity. That's what I call smart.

So why is the Israeli Government pushing for this? I think it's a combination of hubris, short-sight, and the feeling that ultimately it has the complete backing of the U.S., no matter what. If this explanation is not convincing, let me try a parable, one I heard from Professor Sari Nuseiba (President of Al-Quds university) who gave a lecture here in London last year. When two men are wrestling, he said, and the stronger is holding the weaker to the ground, the man on top actually has less freedom of movement. He grips his opponent forcibly and dare not move, for he is afraid that any change or movement will lead to a reversal of the situation. Sometimes too much power is a weakness. This is how I see the current situation. Israel is locked within a set of policies which lead to a crisis, but it is too strong, and too entrenched to change course.

Some Palestinians think that, in the long run, they will be better off without the PA. In its 13 years it has been used by Israel as a subcontractor for the Israeli occupation, and as a scapegoat when things went out of control. Perhaps the PA dependence on Israel made it impossible for it to achieve the wishes of the Palestinian people. Some Palestinians say so openly and call to dismantle it. But they are, I think, a small minority. The majority would still want to make it work, despite the inherent flaws. Hamas participation in the elections is the best proof for this. And if the PA is gone, this may spell the end of the two-state solution.

For the last 13 years everybody has been playing according to the Oslo rules. Even when they called them dead and buried, the Oslo accords provided a framework which proved useful enough for the ruling groups on both sides to maintain. Perhaps we are reaching the end of this line. And again, perhaps not: the parties have a strong enough interest to pull back from the brink. But I am becoming more and more pessimistic: without any substantial pressure, either from the Israeli public or from the International community, I can't see Olmert making a U-turn and opening talks with Hamas. Whether he had planned to crush Hamas all along or he is being pushed to it by warmongers does not really matter in my view. But if the bombings and embargo continue, the PA will eventually go down - maybe not this time, but in the foreseeable future.

Palestinian Public Opinion

2006-04-26T03:10:00.000-07:00

A year ago I went to hear Dr. Khalil Shikaki speak at the Notre-Dame de France in Jerusalem (the first place in Jerusalem to have electricity, a hundred years ago... but this has nothing do with anything). I have long considered Shikaki to be one of the most intelligent and careful analysts of Palestinian public opionion; he is the head of the Palestinian Centre for Policy and Survey Research. The Centre conducts opinion polls in the West Bank and Gaza every few months; it's a joint project with Truman institute (Hebrew University) which runs similar polls in Israel.

They just published the latest poll, conducted a month ago, and it brings interesting results.

* Hamas popularity increased since the elections.

* Only about half the people explained Hamas's victory as relating to its Islamic agenda; the other half said it was about Fateh's corruption.

* The majority (59%) opposes recognition of Israel under pressure from Europe and the U.S.,
BUT evern greater majority (75%) wants Hamas to negotiate with Israel, and two thirds would support recognition of Israel as "the state for the Jewish people" under a two-state solution!!!

Does it sound a bit contradictory?
My take is that Palestinians feel that Hamas recognition of Israel is an 'asset' which should not be given easily, and certainly not under international pressure (I think there national pride is playing here). But this is not because they have turned their back on negotiations and will accept nothing less than the destruction of Israel. The overwhelming support for negotiation is clear.

Last week I predicted a third Intifada coming soon. Does this poll prove me wrong? perhaps. The poll did not ask about support for armed actions against Israel, so it's hard to know if it's going up or not. At any rate it really depends on what happens in the next months. And as Iyad Barghouti (head of Rammallah Human Rights Centre) said this week to Bitter Lemons, if anyone in Israel has any illusions that destroying the Hamas PA (through embargo/military action) will create a more favourable situation, they better think again.

2006-04-21T17:36:00.000-07:00

The suicide bombing this week at the Shawarma in south Tel Aviv claimed the usual set of victims: the security man, standing in the entrance; a taxi driver, stopping to grab something to eat; a Romanian immigrant worker; a man who covered his children with his body; and five others. The area is popular with suicide bombers; it's easier to get to, and not so much security, not like in the big malls. It's an area of pound-shops, fake-cds, cheap bargains and "massage parlors". A Hammas spokesperson called it 'self-defence' and this statement made even less sense than the IDF description of the shelling of Palestinian civilans as 'preventetive mesures'. How can a suicide bombing be 'self-defence'? more like 'self-attack'.

Haaretz says that there has been a dramatic increase in the number of suicide-bombing attempts in recent months. Various explanations are suggested: e.g. Fateh feel that they can go back to military actions, now that Hamas are in charge (but Fateh have not resumed suicide bombing yet); or 'orders' from Damascus, money from Iran, channeled to the Islamic Jihad, who were behind this attack. It's easy to point to outside elements, but I think that it's lame.

What Israeli 'security analysts' consistently fail to understand is that these operations require a high level of support and assistance. Probably not all involved know that it's for suicide bombing - and the where and when - but all the same they help, by giving a shelter, supplying food or whatever. These organizations are not regular armies: very few people make a living out of it. This is why they depend, very critically, on the attitude of of their societies to their actions. A lot of people need to help out. So if at the moment there are three times more attempts than last year, this means that something in Palestinian society has changed. The lull of the last 15 months is about to end.

I will stress that I am writing from London. Therefore I might be missing on some things, or getting the wrong picture. But seeing things from a distance helps sometimes, some things become clearer.

So I believe that we are on the eve of another Intifada in the West Bank. It can happen in a month or in six months. The question is what shape it will take, and what will be its focus. The worst would be a wave of suicide bombings - worst for Palestinians because it will only strengthen the unilateralist direction of Israel. But there are other options. It might be centred around the Wall, or Jerusalem. 'Popular Intifada' like the 1987 one, or the early stage of September 2000 - these demand great masses of people to risk themselves by confroting the Israeli Army. It usually takes a trigger (like the Sharon visit to the Haram) If the Hammas-led PA is brought to its knees, this might be it.

Comments policy

2006-04-15T13:50:00.000-07:00

I am hoping to use this blog as a weekly comment on Israel/Palestine situation. I am aware the topic attracts usually a lot of comments. So I want to express my comment policy clearly.

This blog is my website; it is not a discussion board. I think of it as extension of my home. Everybody is welcome to make comments, even more welcome to disagree with me. Please challenge my views. However you have to be polite; you are my guests. So no name-calling, no offensive tone please.

The other day I was called a “self-hating Jew” and compared to Jewish collaborators with the Nazis in Warsaw Ghetto. I suppose that if I ever intend to publish my views in public media (newspapers etc) I’ll have to put up with this kind of crap and learn not to get upset about it. Not here. I am keeping these comments as an example of what I mean by offensive.

I will delete any comments I don’t like. As one notice in Brixton says
This is our front door.
Piss on your own front door.

2006-04-12T07:32:00.000-07:00

It's been a bad week: the pictures of Tom Hurndall's in the Observor last week, and then the photos from Bayt Lahia. Those pictures touched my nerves in a very raw way and made me question the benefit of a detached analysis; the callousness of pretenting to understand the grand geo-political game, in which I am only an observor from afar. Pictures of senseless death are always difficult: you either shut yourself from them and carry on with your life, or you open yourself to the sorrow they bring. But then what?

My education has taught me to try to think of a bigger picture, to try to make sense, to suggest alternatives. This is what I do here. I'm not sure this has any use; I have no power over the situation.

* * *

What we see at present in the Gaza strip may only be the beginning. It is not long before militant factions will have longer-range rockets (katyushas) and then they will be able to launch them from any position they want. This, in turn, will mean that Israeli artillery fire will be used against heavily populated areas. A series of cease-fire agreements will be reached, and then always broken, both sides blaming each other.

This scenario should not surprise anyone; in a sense it was the desired effect of the Israeli withdrawl from the Gaza strip. As long as Israeli settlers and troops were there, means such as artillery and heavy bombing could not be used. Now they're out, Gaza is a fair game; the successful marketing of the pull-out means that international pressure on Israel is abated.
"We have full legitimization to apply considerable force when they continue to fire on our towns and villages. The Israeli public also understands this, as does the international arena. I don't see anyone in the world getting too upset about this," says a the Head of Operations in the Israeli Army to Haaretz today, in an especially obnoxious interview which demonstrates the narrow-mindedness of the Israeli Military.

Perhaps, in economic terms, it is cheaper to bomb the Palestinians from outside and sustain the rocket attacks; cheaper, that is, from keeping a direct occuption with Israeli troops. I don't know, and don't really care. What should be clear that further unilateral pull-out in the West Bank will create the same situation there.

This need not be. The Hamas government and the pragmatic majority in the Israeli parliament
provide a unique chance to reach an agreement on two-state solution that will be respected by solid majorities on both sides. Is it the last chance? I don't like to make such predictions. What I do know is that the destruction of Palestinian economy and administration will be a heavy blow for any such plans.

Recognition double-speak

2006-04-06T14:15:00.000-07:00

There is a lot of talk about Hamas refusal to recognize Israel at the moment: when would it do so, if, and on what terms, and what if not... all this is very much a double-speak; things are not what they seem. I'll try to explain why.

Hamas has never 'recognized Israel', and as far as I know its platform still calls for an Islamic state from the Jordan to the Mediterranean. However, by participating in the parliamentary elections, winning them, and forming the government, Hamas has given Israel a de-facto recognition that is far more important the any formal one. First, the legal basis for the Palestinian Authority is the Oslo accords, and a Palestinian (PLO at the time) recognition of Israel. Any attempt to change this basis will require Israeli or international approval. Second, on a more practical level, Israel retains complete control over the Palestinian territories: in the West Bank through direct military occupation, and in Gaza by controlling the air, water and borders. The Palestinian Authority, as Hamas leaders are now finding out, is a body which has the powers of a municipal authority. It has some control over civil matters (health, education), and a grotesequly inflated police force. But it has no sovereignty in any real sense of the word. Anything that you might think of as sovereignty: border control; population register; water and electricity - all depend, in one way or another, on Israel. In many ways, a Israeli non-commissioned-officer in a check-point in the West Bank has far more power over the life of Palestinians than Ismail Haniya, the new Palestinian PM.

These are the rules of Oslo, which form the legal basis of the Palestinian Authority, which Hamas is now running. And so far Hamas was careful not to repudiate Oslo. Palestinians elected Hamas for many reasons, but the desire to see full-scale confrontation with Israel was not one of them. If Hamas attempts any radical, unilateral changes to the terms of reference of Oslo, this may lead to such escalation.

The demand for 'recognition of Israel', which is voiced from Israel, Europe and the U.S. has several reasons. It can be seen as an attempt to coax Hamas into the Oslo game, to play the part Fateh has been playing for 13 years: first recognize Israel, then 'prove yourself' through implementing endless lists of demands, while Israel continues its unilateral policies (settlment, closures etc) without interference. Hamas is unlikely to play this part, for good reasons (see Alastair Crooke article on Laila's blog).

But as it comes from Israel, the demand for recognition is used to justify Israeli unilateral policies. For this purpose, Israeli politicians deliberately conflate recognition of Israel's existence, with recognizing Israel's historical right to be established - most Palestinians (in historical Palestine) would have no problems with the first, but will never agree to the second.

Another excuse for the boycott on Hamas is that it is a 'terrorist organization'. True, Hamas were the first to use the deplorable, hideous tactic of suicide bombing of civilian targets, in the early 1990s, but in the last Intifada Fateh has used it as well, and sadly it has become a legitimate military means in the eyes of most Palestinians (only to their detriment). There is no real difference between the Hamas and Fateh on moral ground. Only that Hamas has proved that it is much more able to abide by the cease-fire.

However, the Israeli demand for recognition is a double-edged sword. Embargo on Hamas-led PA will inevitably bring its demise, sooner rather than later. The PA budget relies heavily on European aid money. If Israel witholds the Palestinian tax money it collects (in the customs), and pressures Europe to stop the aid, then the PA cannot possibly go on for much longer: with 50% unemployment and more, Palestinian revenue from taxes is pitiful. I personally don't think Arab/Iranian aid is likely to bridge the gap. The end of the PA will be against Israeli interests, because it would force Israel to assume responsibility over, and pay for, health and education in the occupied territories. The present occupation deluxe state of things - a Israeli military occupation funded by European money - can continue only as long as the PA survives.

To sum up, both sides do not mean what they say. Hamas may be playing the card of recognition (it's the only card they've got), and pretending 'not to recognize Israel' but they know well that (a) by running the PA they de-facto recognize Israel and the Oslo accords and (b) if they are serious about making life better for Palestinians (which I think they are) they will have to come to terms with Israel.
And Israel may pretend to be advocating a total boycott of Hamas-run PA, but its biggest nightmare is that such boycott will succeed; if the PA collapses, this might spell the end of the 2-state solution, and Israelis' worst fear is a Palestinian call for one state, one man, one vote.

Where will this catch 22 lead to? I don't know. But I am afraid that this game of pretence will lead to an escalation that nobody actually wants.

The Israeli Elections: the view from London

2006-03-29T13:30:00.000-08:00

Olmert
It's a Thursday winter night, the late 1980s. Outside the Jerusalem Post Printers, sitting in a parked car, is a young Israel minister. He is waiting anxiously for his driver, whom he sent to get a copy of tomorrow's local paper of Jerusalem, where he knows there would be a big investigative story about him. A story about allegations of corruption. He has to know what they managed to find out, before the newspapers are delivered.
The man was Ehud Olmert, who yesterday won the Israeli elections. It was funny to read him in an interview in Ha'aretz a few days ago, describing how he worked diligently for years to pay his mortgate. He forgot to mention the interest-free 50,000 dollar loan he received from a small bank along the way. Strangely, all the bank's records were later destroyed by fire.
Olmert is widely seen as one of Israel's most corrupt politicians, although he always managed to avoid being charged in court. But like many corrupt men, he is also very pragmatic. When he was mayor of Jerusalem he played the nationalist right wing card. Later he underwent a change, and he is seen as the brains behind the Gaza pull-out. He is the first Israeli politician from the right wing to be voted into office on a clear pledge to withdraw most of the settlments in the West Bank.

Peretz
Amir Peretz, Labour's new leader, will most likely be Olmert's senior partner in government. Peretz has done over the past few months something quite unusual: he has repositioned his party and changed its social base and constituency. Laobur has ceased to be a workers' party many years ago, and for the last 30 years it represented the Israeli middle and upper-middle class. Many of them left the part now, detered by Peretz's "socialist" agenda and his Moroccon ethnic origin. But Labour managed to win new voters, from lower classes. It's a lot to do with ethnic politics. But Peretz's language does not fall into this trap: he speaks, unashamedly, about class, and calls himself a social-democrat.
Peretz spoke very little about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in these elections. But when he did, he spoke about negotiations, about the Geneva initiative, about peace. These are not popular catchphrases in Israel today. He speaks about common future, not hiding behind walls.
Peretz brings promise to Israeli politics. As a trade-union man, his outlook is radically different from the people who managed things so far: the generals and their businessmen friends.
It seems to me that Peretz is the only mainstream politician that doesn't speak in terms of ethnic separation and high walls. In this he differs from most members of his own party.

Unilaterilism
Sharon's government two largest projects - the wall in the West Bank, and the pull-out from Gaza - were both unilateral moves, supported by a Israeli majority, which since Camp David 2000 believes that negotiations with the Palestinians are a waste of time. Ironically, it would have been much more difficult to pull out from Gaza as part of negotiations. The brutal line taken by Sharon against the Palestinians allowed him to pull this one off; he didn't want to be seen as 'doing the Palestinians a favour'.
Interestingly, the same logic works on the other side. For the last year Hamas has decided to keep a unilaretal cease-fire, as part of its efforts to win power in the Palestinian Authority. Had Hamas negotiated with Israel over this, it would have been much harder to swallow for its hard-line supporters.
This led some commentators to suggest that unilateralism can actually lead to a better future: Israel would withdraw out of most of the West Bank, and Hamas would run its Palestinian state: not peace, but mutual agreement to ignore eachother.
This is an illusion. As we see in Gaza, unilateral withdrawl may improve some aspects of Palestinian life in the Occupide Territories, but in the mid-long term it's a recipe for disaster. Isolated pockets of Palestinian control will not provide the Palestinians with what they need: the very least is freedom of movement for people and trade, inside the Palestinian Territories and to the outside world.
With Sharon, brutal unilateralism was a way of life. His successors, it seems, are not so averse to the idea of negotiations. Whether they can rid themselves of the Israeli arrogant negotiation attitude since 1993 onwards, "take it or leave it", or turn their backs - not just on the 'crazy settlers' in remote outpost, but on the whole colonialist project in the West Bank - is a different matter.

The Future
The present point is one of risk and promise. The Hamas government, contrary to what some people believe, was not elected on a promise of escalating the conflict; if it did pursue escalation, it might be the end of the Palestinian Authority. I think Hamas understands that in order to improve life in the West Bank and Gaza, negotiations are imperative. Maybe they'll let Abu-Mazen do the work for them.
But it also seems that patience is running out in the West Bank. For the last 18 months or so the Intifada subsided, and polls have shown majorities against militray attacks against civilians in Israel, i.e. suicide bombings. While these never stopped completely, the mainstream factions - Hamas and Fateh - did not carry such attacks.
Israeli pressure on the Palestinian poluation, however, has not subsided. New rules make movement within the West Bank increasingly difficult, sometimes altogether impossible. The Wall continues to be built and in some ares is making people's life a hell. There has been an increase in Palestinian attacks on soldiers in checkpoints. It seems that if things do not improve soon, something is about to give.

My own prediction: a Israeli overture in the next couple of months - or - a third Intifida.

postscript

2006-01-12T07:50:00.000-08:00

What I didn't mention in my last post, and might turn out to be Sharon's most important legacy, is what he did just a few weeks before his stroke: his decision to split the Likud and start a new party, Kadima. Many considered it a one-man show, and it might still disintegrate - this is politics after all - but at the moment it looks posed to win the next elections. The new party is mainstream Israel: rightwing, deeply ethnocentric, but not zealously ideological. It does not have the fundemantilst elements of the Likud. It is far less attached to the West Bank settlments than the Likud, and is much more pragmatic. This move has 'corrected' the Israeli political map, since the Likud was too right wing for most of its voters, and Labour has failed to present a political alternative since 2000. The consistuency of the new party is a large section of the Israeli public, middle-class and secular or not very religious, who consider themselves centre or right wing. They supported the Gaza pull-out and most of them would back a peace agreement on the lines of the Clinton/Geneva proposal - if it ever came to it. With Sharon I am sure it would not have come to it. But I think that his successors will not be as averse to negotiation as he was. So in a sense, forming this new party and then leaving politics was perhaps Sharon's best service.

Don't get me wrong: I am far from being enthusiastic about this new party. And I don't share the view that the settlers are the problem. They are one aspect of the problem, often a very ugly aspect, but the problem is the occupation and the ethnocentric mentality which stand at the heart of this confict. The new party is a very good expression of this mentality.

I also dislike the focus on political agreement as an ultimate solution. A peace agreement would be a good start, but whatever form it takes, it would still leave behind many many issues unresolved. Some of these issues are symbolic and emotional, others are economic (the gap between the two economies could not be bigger).

Sharon's departure

2006-01-05T12:48:00.000-08:00

The headline of the Evening Standard, hand-painted on the advertisement boards outside shops, was Sharon's fight for Life - Latest. I've passed four of them this morning. Another Standard headline I saw was See Your Doctor at the Chemist. Well that's too late for some of us I guess.

In retrospect, it is amazing to think how Sharon's first, minor stroke (two weeks ago) was downplayed in the Israeli media. A 77-year old obese man runs for premiership, has a stroke, and nobody’s raising an eyebrow. On the contrary, he just did better at the polls. Last week Rosenblum wrote a funny article about it in Haaretz, "a stroke of good fortune". I think this says a lot about the desperate mood of the majority of Israelis, who opted to put their faith in this old man – who they knew to be corrupt, unpredictable, brutal, and undemocratic. But now, even if he survives the stroke, it is clear that he will not run again. (Some people suggested replacing him with Simon Peres - who's 82 year old! unlikely though).

Everybody’s talking about Sharon’s role as the patriarch – the old granddad; the fact that he was from the '48 generation, when Israel was established. But alongside his image as a seasoned politician, Sharon’s biggest asset was his ambiguity. He never explained what his goals are and where he’s going. His moderate-leaning supporters highlighted his comments on ‘painful concessions to be made’ and the pull-out from Gaza. More hardliners focussed on his unilateral approach and his relentless fight against the Palestinians.

Some people believed he was making the ground for a big dramatic overture after the elections; that this is the reason he left the Likkud. I personally doubt if Sharon knew where he was going himself. Sharon’s five years in office do not provide any indication that he was going to negotiate with the Palestinians. The last year, with the election of Mahmoud Abbas as Palestinian Presidentand the pullout from Gaza gave plenty of opportunities for negotiation (not necessarily for a full peace-deal, but even on short-term issues), but Sharon was not interested. And all his career – wherever he went, whatever he did – was based on a unilateral approach.

This, of course, suits the majority of Israelis, who became convinced after the collapse of Camp David in 2000 that a peace deal is impossible to reach. Rather than explaining the failure in concrete political or soci-economic terms, the common perception is that Palestinians are unwilling to accept Israeli existence, and that this has always been so and always will be. I see things differently but it’s a long story.

We will probably never know what Sharon aims were, so for me the question is irrelevant. What is his legacy though? What mark did his five years leave? I am not talking about his role in the first Likud government, 1977-1984, where he was very influential for the mass-scale settlment project and the Lebanon war.

In many ways Sharon’s policies did not differ from the ones before him. I know that in most of the world he has the image as a bloodthirsty warmonger, yet he was not more brutal than Barak in suppressing the Intifada. The assassinations, house demolitions, and targeting of civilians all happened under Labor. His support for the settlers in the West Bank was in line with Israeli policy for the last 25 years, and the restrictions on Palestinian movement started in 1991 – although they are just getting worse. All of these are of course bad enough but they are standard Israeli policy, the nature of the Israeli occupation, not Sharon’s individual contribution.

Two things can be seen as Sharon’s 2000-2005 legacy.

The first is the Separation Wall: this was not Sharon’s idea. He was forced to build it under popular pressure because of suicide bombing. He can be seen as responsible to the land-grab of about 10% of the West Bank, the consolidation of big Israeli settlments, and the anticipated destruction of Palestinian life in the Jerusalem suburbs. The Wall is extremely important and will have many consequences, yet again this was not his personal project: the Army and Security are heavily involved in this

His real contribution is the pull-out from Gaza. This is the only thing which I see as Sharon’s personal mark. There was no popular pressure to leave Gaza now. Yes, there was public support, but that’s a different thing. The Army were equivocal about it. It was his decision. No Israeli prime minister dared to confront settlers before. I think the fact that the pull-out went peacefully and with overwhelming support has done much to undermine the position of the settlers.

However, the stubborn unilateral approach was the downside. Whatever goodwill that this could have brought was squandered by the ‘f**k-you’ approach towards the Palestinians; not only before the pull-out (this is how I wrote about it in April) but also in the four months since. I find it ridiculous that some people see it as a Israeli ‘gesture’ or ‘concession’. It was all about ‘good riddance’. The feeling was of course mutual. But contrary to what Israelis would like to believe, Israel still controls Gaza in so many ways (electricity, telephone grid, access to imports/exports of practically everything, even the population registrar is in Israeli hands). Since the pullout, Israel did not show any signs of loosening the grip on Palestinian lives. It is doubtfull if the border-crossing to Egypt would have been opened without American pressure - it was stalled for months until a direct intervention of the US Secretary of State suddenly solved all the issues. (This didn't last long, as the anarchy in Gaza forced its closure). As far as I'm concerned, the results of the pull-out – the anarchy in Gaza, the rockets on Israel, and the rise of Hamas – are hardly surprising.

I’m not going to write about the future. I personally will be far from sorry to see him gone. Beyond other things, I think that Israeli politics was dependant on Sharon in a very unhealthy way. No other politician could get away just by being so ambiguous about his plans. No other man had so much power.

The last year saw the departure of the two patriarchs in Israel/Palestine, Arafat and Sharon. I think the biggest wish of both of them was to outlive the other. Well Sharon won, but not for long. Now both patriarchs have departed from the political life. The death of the father can sometimes force the children to grow up and take responsiblity. That would not be a bad outcome.

the end.. and a new beginning

2005-06-06T14:46:00.000-07:00

Spring time in Israel: a strange time to be there. Yes, everything green and blossoming: last lemons still on the trees and early figs are making an appearance (they will be ready in a month or two); occasional heatwaves, especially cruel in April, but most of the time it’s super lovely. The best time of the year. Yet spring is also a series of national festivals, and it’s hard to escape the Jewish/Israeli destiny – in the shape of nationalistic newspaper headlines, flags, and two minutes memorial sirens. Memory, national memory, is played loud during this time, in high-pitch tones. They descend one after the other: Passover; Holocaust Memorial Day, National Memorial Day (for soldiers and war casualties), and last, Independence Day. As someone who is getting more and more allergic to official state-sponsored Israeli history, all these festivals were becoming a bit too much for me.

But it was a good visit for me. Slowly, and sometimes painfully, I was trying to find a new place for myself there. Someone I could be. I can see myself going back, for a longer period, maybe for good.

I am back in London. In a new house. I will soon write all about it. Find me on my London blog.

Below you can find last pics from Jerusalem, a random collection, and a posting about Deir Yasin, which took me a long time to write.

2005-06-06T14:45:00.000-07:00

Piccadillly, the legendary music shop (shut down years ago)

2005-06-06T14:42:00.000-07:00

azura (a restaurant at the Shuk)

2005-06-06T14:36:00.000-07:00

no parking?
start cycling!

2005-06-06T14:35:00.001-07:00

Graffiti: Stencils are for losers

subvertising the wall

2005-06-06T14:35:00.000-07:00

This poster is a copy of Israeli army 'most wanted' posters. They were made by the activists supporting the people of Bil'in, which fight against the separation fence. It says: 'dangerous wanted persons acting against the separation fence and settlements built on their land' and shows five very cute kids participating in the demonstations. They were posted around Tel Aviv and Jerusalem for Israeli Independance Day.

2005-06-06T14:33:00.001-07:00

Dayla (Jerusalem social centre)

2005-06-06T14:33:00.000-07:00

red

2005-06-06T14:32:00.000-07:00

dayla

Deir Yasin

2005-05-19T09:42:00.000-07:00

I never knew where Deir Yasin was. I knew the name well: it is the village which was attacked and its people massacred by the Irgun, a Jewish militia, in April 1948. This story appears in any history of the conflict. Observers generally agree that the terrifying news of the massacre precipitated the flight of 700,000 Palestinians from their homes in towns and villages. As often with such places of History, the real Deir Yasin, a small village of stone houses and trees, soon became a symbol, an abstraction, a metaphor. From a tiny village with little importance (militarily, economically or otherwise) it became a legendary, mythological place. I always imagined it on a barren mountain top or tucked in secret valley, somewhere in the hills west of Jerusalem. So it was quite a surprise for me to find out that it’s actually located in what is now the Jerusalem ultra-orthodox neighbourhood of Givat Shaul. On the second week of my stay in Israel I went to the memorial service commemorating 57 years to the massacre.

Deir Yasin / Kfar Sha'ul

The Deir Yasin ceremony was organised by Zochrot, a Israeli group which attempts to tell the story of the Palestinian displacement of 1948. Zochrot do a range of activities: they arrange walks to the ruins of Palestinian villages, where people tell stories and memories; they put signs (in Arabic and Hebrew) which indicate the previous names and uses of buildings and places; they hold lectures and talks about the Nakba. The group is made of Jews and Palestinians; their activities are generally made for a Jewish audience, because the story of the disaster of 1948 is rarely told in Hebrew; the Israeli public – even its ‘leftist’ side – is usually defensive and hostile when it comes to 1948.

The service was held in a little garden, overlooking the valley. It was simple, straightforward, and extremely moving. A representative of the memory committee of the village talked about their wish to build a memorial museum for the victims. She talked about the dead, who were buried in a mass grave in the valley, and how this site should be respected ‘just like the Jews are respecting and commemorating their dead victims, from Europe’; Yad Va-Shem, the Israeli Holocaust Museum, is located on the other side of the valley, on Mount Herzl. Not far from it is the State cemetery, where soldiers and Zionist leaders are buried.

Many orthodox kids gathered around us during the ceremony. There were quite a few policemen there, in case it gets unpleasant (some events of Zochrot were attacked in the past). But nobody tried to interrupt the service. They stayed there, watching quietly, throughout the songs and the speeches.

Um Salah, an old woman who survived the massacre, slowly took her place on the stage, dressed in the traditional dress. She told her story, opening every sentence by saying ‘I pray for the Prophet’. She saw her young brother Musa, 14 years old, killed in front of her eyes; then she and her family were driven out of their homes and told to go to the Arab neighbourhoods of Jerusalem. ‘They attacked us in three in the morning’ she repeatedly said. ‘We never did any harm to them. We always had good relations with the Jews, we celebrated their festivals with them and they came to visit us on our festivals’. (Israeli historians agree that Deir Yasin was not a ‘hostile’ village; it had an agreement with the Jewish forces, but this did not prove to protect it.)

Her daughter, dressed in trousers and a head scarf, spoke briefly after her, in quick sentences. ‘I just want to say that I wish we could visit the houses of the village. Everybody wants to see the place where his parents came from, she said. We heard so many stories about it … it was very different then, when people lived in villages, there was a strong solidarity between them, in times of celebration and in times of mourning. Today everybody is running around caring only for themselves’.

Some of the houses of Deir Yasin are still standing. After the war the site was turned into a mental hospital for Holocaust survivors. Yes, a mental hospital for Holocaust survivors. Whoever came up with this idea must have had an especially sick sense of humour, or an aspiration to become an existentialist playwright. It is still a mental hospital today, and the original villagers and their families are not allowed to go inside.

The exact number of the victims is unclear, but estimates run between 110 and 140. 93 names are known. ‘Worse massacres happened in Palestine’ said the woman from the village memory committee, ‘but this one was important because of its devastating effect on the whole of Palestine’. ‘400 villages fled their homes after they heard of Deir Yasin’ said Um Salah.

At the end of the service, the 93 names of the victims were read out. One of the people who read the names was Mordechai Vanunu, the famous ex-nuclear prisoner. He had a nice Moroccon accent, pronouncing ‘Hejj’ with a ‘French’ j. Other readers had a strong and unpleasant Israeli accent; this was perhaps the only moment of discord for me.

Afterwards I want with my friend Yoav to look for the cemetery. We crossed the road and jumped over a stone fence. We found a few shattered bomb stones down the slope, beneath the almond trees. ‘Astonishing, to think that this is it…’ said Yoav ‘the open nerves of the conflict are here. And see how it looks: just a piece of land, indistinctive, with no sign that something ever happened here, just an old tombstone and a pile of stones.’

I picked some green almonds from the tree and tasted them. It’s been years since I tasted fresh almonds, since school trips I suppose. The taste filled my mouth: sour, slightly bitter, juicy and refreshing. The almond trees of Deir Yasin: I wondered if they were there before 1948.

Strangely, the service made me optimistic. It was full of good intentions, of good will. It was refreshing in its non-official spirit. If only Israelis would stop and listen, I thought. The Palestinian women who talked at the service did not talk in grand words and in great historical pathos. They talked about the tragedy of Deir Yasin, which no one disputes. They did not seek revenge; they did not come to claim back their land. They talked about reconciliation, and about making the cemetery into a memorial site, about building a museum, about visiting the site of the village. Who could deny these simple, sensible words?

But most Israelis don’t want to listen. Any discussion of the Palestinian tragedy is seen to undermine the existence of Israel. Any empathy for the displaced Palestinian is seen as a denial of the right of Israelis to live on this land. As if everything that was built in a hundred and twenty years since start of Zionism – the cities, the villages – is no more than castles in the sand that can easily be destroyed at any moment. As if someone could simply pull the carpet beneath our feet. And so, terrified by the precariousness of their existence, Israelis continue to build, more roads, more fences, more walls, more settlements. But all the layers of concrete and asphalt do not give Israelis a sense of security and stability; on the contrary. Perhaps it is the suppressed memory of the displacement of Palestinians which makes it impossible for us to feel at ease.

I don’t agree with everything Zochrot say and do, but I thought the service was touching and beautiful. And I think that both Israelis and Palestinians have to come to terms with what happened in 1948. There is no way round it, if we want to live together.

When I got to Tel Aviv that night, I noticed I lost a book by Primo Levi during the service. How annoying. Not only to lose the book, but to lose it there… I hate the way stories of the Holocaust in Europe and the history of Israeli/Palestine sometimes get entangled, I think it usually just complicates things. But as I found myself, it’s difficult to avoid it.

* * *

On Independence Day, I want back to Deir Yasin to take some pictures. As I parked outside the mental hospital, and was looking through my camera, a small orthodox boy came on his bike and stopped next to me. He had orange sticker saying ‘Supporting the Gaza settlers’.

Crazy people live inside there. He said. Why are taking pictures?

It used to be a arab village, many years ago.

Are you for the Gaza settlers? He asked me.

No. I said. He wasn't sure what to make of this. Are you… secular? He said the word as if it was a strange incurable disease.

Yes.

You know, I ride a bike too, I said.

‘So how come you’re in a car?’ He wasn’t stupid.

A friend of mine went on a holiday and I’m looking after her dog, so she left me her car as well.

What’s the name of the dog?

Pancha. What’s your name?

Yaacov.

Can I take your picture?

He nodded.

2005-05-17T06:59:00.000-07:00

From the back

2005-05-17T06:56:00.000-07:00

Palace Hotel

Empties of Jerusalem - 2 - Palace Hotel

2005-05-17T06:51:00.000-07:00

Rooms: hundreds! the windows are open so they must be full of pigeon shit

Access: jump the fence round the back, and then maybe you'll have to climb a bit...

History: built by the Supreme Moslem Council in the 1930s. A project superivsed by the Mufti Hajj Amin Alhusseini, but it was not very successful as a hotel. After 1948 was in the Jewish part of Jerusalem. It served the Minstry of Commerce, until they vacated two years ago.

Best for: historical squatting with political twist

Plans: will be renovated and made into a hotel again, dunno when

Possibly unfriendly neighbours: opposite a cop shop and 100m away from the American consulate.

2005-05-16T06:49:00.000-07:00

The photographs, which I found at the archive of Imperial War museum a year ago, were taken here, on this platform. They were on the train, about to leave; it was the early 1940s. If they were leaving for Jaffa, or travelling further, to Europe, I do not know. Something tells me it was an official farewell, not simply a day jouney. The pictures show a short and plump British official, wearing short sleeved uniform. His sportive manners seem awkward. His smile, beneath a thin moustach, seems affected: it does not succeed in its role, to stiffle this official situation with thick layer of normality. They look out of place, completely out of place, lost in sea. The old dying general. The priest. The mother, her two daughters, the little boy. Exiled nobility, now leaving Jerusalem. So painful is their reserve, they look not quite alive. Their expressions evoke neither pity nor compassion. Yet their eyes, looking deep into the eye of the camera, have the most uncanny effect. As if the whole world is out of place, and not just them. These photographs moved me so much.

Empties of Jerusalem - 1 - Jerusalem Train Station

2005-05-15T10:30:00.000-07:00

Rooms: Many. High ceilings. Very messy. Shattered glass, stones, junk.
Access: walk in from the back. All the windows broken. Just climb in.
History: Built 1890s, a local Jewish entrepeneur and a French railway company, connecting Jaffa and Jerusalem. 1946 Bombed by the Irgun - Jewish resistance/terrorist organization. Used by the Ottomans, the British, and the Israelis.
Empty Since: 1998, two years after the service to Jerusalem was cancelled.
Water, Lecky: Bring your own. Seriously, this is Israel... first thing they do is cut these off, and don't expect anybody to connect you.
Best for: squat parties.
Likely to last: 2 hours.

2005-05-15T10:28:00.002-07:00

Control room

2005-05-15T10:28:00.001-07:00

Jerusalem trains station

2005-05-15T10:28:00.000-07:00

please

2005-05-15T10:27:00.001-07:00

ticket office (suitable for gigs)

2005-05-15T10:27:00.000-07:00

Jerusalem train station

At the Pathological Institute

2005-05-15T10:12:00.000-07:00

"Hi, I called you a few days ago... about the slides from my liver biopsy, which I did here ten years ago. I've come to collect them". I'm standing half way through the door, with my bag on one shoulder.
"Sit down". It's more a command than a suggestion. I obey, feeling a bit embaraced for my lack of manners.
One hand covers her mouth, while she looks at the computer screen in dismay. "I.D number?"
On the desk, she finds a small box, containing a number of small thin glass plates. She takes a few of them out and looks at them, one by one, puzzled. Her head moves forward and backwards, as if she is a robin, about to snatch a tasty worm. On each slide there is a coloured blot, a stain, like a Rorcschach test. Is this really a piece of my liver there? or is it just printed someohow? I start to become suspicious. Perhaps it's not really my slides. Maybe it's not my liver. How can I tell? Now she holds them all in her hand, like a pack of cards, contemplating carefully before she lays down the trump.
From the corridor I hear someone saying. "It's a placenta. A placenta. Waiting in Mount Scopus".
She suddenly places them down on the table.
"OK. You'll have to go and pay the fee. Go out the corridor, past Fertilation, and you'll see the office. 221 Shekels I believe."
"Do they accept cards?"
"I think they like money in all forms".

When I come back she is wrapping the slides in a padded box. "Please return them to us if you can".
"I will, but in a few months. Are these really the original pieces of my liver?"
"Yes. Very thin slices, coloured and soaked in Parafin, and then embedded in the glass. Be careful not to break them. Where are you taking them to?"
"London. I live there at the moment."
She turns to me, anxious.
"But you said you'll return them.. Oh, please, please say you'll return them to us!"
I have no choice but to reassure her.

2005-05-13T12:58:00.000-07:00

One of the comments on Raed's blog gave a link to this Palestinian news website,
http://www.alwatanvoice.com. It's published from Gaza (in Arabic) and it's riveting... an uncensored lively discussion on all issues. Epecially fascinating is the debate on the transformation Hammas is going through. Hammas has changed its tone considerably in the last year (signalling some willingness to negotiate on a two state solution). This month they won the municipal elections. They are set to do well in the Parliamentry elections in summer, maybe even to win. Their popularity comes from their image as free from corruption, and also because Palestinians generally belive that Hammas actions are driving Israel out of Gaza.

The People of Shukba against the State of Israel

2005-05-09T13:40:00.000-07:00

When I wake up it's 8.30 already. 'Fuck, the hearing starts at 9... better get out of here ". I look for clean underwear but can't find one. Wel, I'll just have to go without. I put on my half-length trousers , long stripy socks, get on my bike and pedal up the hill to the Supreme Court.
I was supposed to go there with N. "On monday there's an important hearing about the fence... there going to discuss the Hague's verdict for the first time" he told me last week, when we met in Tel-Aviv. But he couldn't make it, so I decided to go by myself. Partly as a solidarity with my housemates in London, who are also going to court today, to fight the eviction; but mainly to see the occupation once more, from close sight: true, no tear gas and shock bombs here, just air-conditioning, suits and legal niceties, 'my honorable friend'. But behind these facades, the court room and the check point both belong to the same world. Without one, the other could not exist.
In the audience I recognize a Foreign Office spokesperson - he used to show up occasionall on the BBC, when I still watched, and speak in an especially obnoxious manner. "I want my daughter to be able to go to the Discoteque!" he once shouted at the interviewer, after a suicide bombing or a Israeli incursion, i can't remember.

The hearing starts with Judge Barak - the head of the Supreme Court - annoucing, in his thin and squeeky voice, that Judge Jubran (the only Palestinian judge) has disqualified himself, because his brother lives in A-Ram, which is about to be discussed today. A-Ram is a suburb of Jeursalem which will be cut off from the city after the completion of the wall.
The State presents an elaborate multimedia installation, showing the exact location of the fence in the villages Budrus and Shukba. 'And this is the north section, where we will have to move two olive trees, because other alternatives are not practical'. Beneath the polite language I think I can here the attorney grinding his teeth. I wonder if he's about to lose it and shout 'It's just two fucking trees for fuck sake get the bulldozers out there and get them out of my sight you supreme cunts!'; but he manges to keep his composure. Euphomisms fly in the room: 'this hill will have to be 'uncovered'' (that is, all the trees uprooted). 'We will provide a solution for the fig trees'. They keep reffering to the Wall as 'the barrier'; even the Supreme Judge get confused for a second and calls it 'the wall', but then he corrects himself: the fence. The Israeli writer David Grossman called this euphomistic occupation-speak 'the words' laundromat'.

After the break, I decide to stay outside a little longer. The next speaker is from a right-wing group 'Fence for Life' pushing for the wall to be built faster. Can't be bothered with that, I thought. But when I go in I found that this is actually the fun bit. The judges don't like him at all.

-The court should understand that these legal proceedings are impeding the construction of the fence....
-Are you saying we are the obstacle? can you prove this?
-Army officers told me that previos rulings have largely discouraged them...
-Are you suggesting that we issue a verdict of encouragment?
-Your honour, while the fence is not yet completed, anyone can cross the line, I am talking about buses blowing up...
-Plese do not try to scare the court.
-There are some quite nightmarish scenarios...
-Sir, if you suffer from nightmares, I suggest you consult a psychaitrist, and not waste our time. -I'm sorry, but I have to put forward the unpleasant truth. Thank you your honour. And can I be excused? ... if my presence is not needed anymore...
Judge Barak murmurs 'we let you argue your case, it's appropriate that you stay to hear the plaintiffs'.
Lesson no.1: don't say bad things about the court, or you'll have to stay after class.

I suddenly notice that almost all the people here - judges, lawyers, members of the public, Israelis, Palestinians, men, women - wear wedding rings. As if behind this disagreement, they all belong to one camp, a secret society of married people. I feel strange about not having one... The hearing continues.

Muhammad Dahle, the lawyer of the people of Shubka, provides the best speech of the day. He is incredibly sharp and witty. I can tell the judges like him; I think I can even see a sense of pride in their eyes, like a teacher being challenged by a favourite bright student. A Palestinian lawyer arguing in Hebrew, better than any Jewish Rabbi!
Lesson no. 2: Nothing makes the judges more happy than a Palestinian Lawyer using Talmudic expressions, in Aramaic. The Zionist dream come true.

At no point does Dahle or the plaintiffs ask the court to accept the Hague ruling; this is a lost case. They ask, however, to listen to the logic of the Hague ruling. Dahle keeps trying to remind the judges the bigger picture. "The State would like to atomize the whole issue of the fence and have us debating this stretch and this village... while we say a simple thing: this is a huge project, it involves billions of dollars, constructing a defence line 650 km in length - don't tell me it's a temporary measure. This is annexation de-facto of 9 percent of the West Bank - for years, if not for generations."
"Let me understand" interrupts him one of the judges "you're saying that the fence should not be built at all?"
"Personally, I am against borders, your honour."
"And more to the point?"
"The State can construct the fence on Israeli territory, if it wishes to do so. If the fence crosses into the occupied territories, the State has to prove that it is an utmost necessity, not simply a 'better route'.'

Later I call N. "How was it?" I tell him of my despaired impressions: on the one hand, the judges listen to the lies of the State about olive trees 'successfully replanted' and 'special gates for farmers'; on the other hand, they refuse to see this as annexation of occupied land, they refuse to see the logic behind things. "True, the supreme court always evaded the big questions" says N "the legality of the settlements, the application of the Geneva conventions... but don't slag these procedures off so quickly. The last ruling made them change the entire route south of Hebron, and it now passes on the 67 borders. And the State have to sweat hard for every olive tree they want to uproot. They gradually learn the hard way that they can't do whatever they want.'
'I think they could probably have gotten away with the whole thing' says N, 'With more or less land grabbed and trees uprooted. But the project will fall apart in Jerusalem. What they are about to do in Jerusalem is total madness. They are going to tear the city from its Palestinian suburbs in the west bank, and destroy the daily lives of tens of thousands of people. The fabric of the city is about to be torn in the most artificial and sensless way, in a matter of a few months. This is sheer maddness. And I don't think it's going to work.'

=-=-=

Bad news come from the other court hearing, the one in London: possession order granted forthwith. We are getting evicted. It's my seventh eviction in three years....

Bil'in video

2005-05-06T08:47:00.000-07:00

If you have a fast internet connection, take a look at http://stage.co.il/media/largefiles/eranvered475288.wmv
it's a short video on Bil'in, the wall and the demos. Including footage from the demo I participated in a week ago. should say again that i was not in the front so it didn't look as scary as it does on the film. With English subtitles. One thing you can see in the film is teargas grenades being shot in direct line at demonstrators from very close range - this is against army orders.

a sunny day

2005-05-05T10:26:00.000-07:00

I'm at the Jerusalem municipal archive. Reading through protocols of the Street Naming committee, 1945-1946. I have no choice but to hear holocaust stories: the Archive clerk is telling the delivery boy all the stories she saw last night on TV. It's holocaust memorial day. "And then they told them to take their clothes off..." I find it hard to concentrate on the dusty protocls. "And they didn't do any harm to anybody... and they just put them into the chambers..." concentrate. 3rd of January 1946. on the agenda: the reaming of streets in the old city.
Now they moved to discuss their payslips. "Are you getting paid for Indepandence day?"

The archive closed on 1pm. It's sunny and pleasant, so I decide to stroll round the Russian compound area and look for inscriptions on houses. I reached a building I've somehow never visited before. It used to be a guest house for Russian women pilgrims during the late 19th century. After 1918 the British turned it into Jerusalem's Central Prison. Today it's a museum, dedicated to the memory of Resistance Prisoners - that is, Zionists which were imprisoned by the British, and some of them were executed there.
The building is beautiful. And it's surprising how easy it was to turn a guest house into a prison: all they needed was to put doors and metal grills and that's it basically. But I guess the pilgrims also needed to be controlled in a sense - they were peasants and poor people, and the pilgramages were organized by the church and the royal court . I thought about Foucault's notions of architecture designed for discipline and suveirllance: from the prison's/guesthouse wide corridor it's easy to monitor all the seperate rooms.
In one of the museum's displays, under a big title 'The British limit Zionist Immigration' I found myself staring at the child from the Warsaw Ghetto, in life size. I've seen this photograph probably hundreds of times: it shows a small boy, probably six years old, wearing a coat and a beret; all terrified, he is holding his hands up in the air. It was taken when the survivors of Ghetto uprising surrendered themselves; soon after that they were sent to the death camps. The picture is so strong it never fails to affect me. I felt my stomach churn. I felt like somebody is pushing my buttons. Like someone is physically holding my heart and twisting it and would not let go. I felt angry, and powerless.
I'll say something which is perhaps obvious: to link this image of pure horror to the British policy on Jewish immigration to Palestine in the late 1930s is manipulative. There is nothing which links this boy, the liquidation of the Warsaw Ghetto, to what was happening in Palestine, in any immidiate way. The dead boy becomes a symbol, an icon. Jewish destiny, distilled and fetishised into one poor dead boy. And all of us, we are him, always: six year old, helpless, and holding our hands up. Always the victim.

To recognize that this is a manipulation does not mean it doesn't work. Of course it works. This is why I got so upset. In the case of my family, I know the facts very well: my grandmother (on my mother's side) was from Warsaw. She arrived here a few months before the war. Had she not received a visa, through fake marriage, she would have perished. Very simple. In her case, being zionist saved her life. But to take images of victims and turn them into illustrations, to the winning argument in a debate over Palestine, a debate most of them had no connection to... to use tragedy as a blank cheque, a justification for everything Israel ever did and will ever do; to perpetuate this feeling of victimhood through endless brainwashing...

Last year, on a late summer Thames beach party outside Royal Festival Hall, I bumped into J near the bonfire. A good looking Jewish boy from Melbourne, or Sydney, I can't remember. He was off his tits, and I could see the pills in his eyes, his pupils going all over the place.
And you... you're from Israel, he started, emotional and dreamy. Israel... you know, a world without Israel would be a totally different place, I would find it much more difficult to live. For me... Israel gives some meaning to this world.
Have you ever visited there? I asked him.
No, he said. One day I'll go.
He suddenly raised his eyes and looked at me: sorry, I don't know how you feel about things.
Listen, I said, I just want to let go.
He didn't get me. He thought I was talking about leaving Israel. "Sure, I understand, but you can do that only because Israel exists... you know, people usually don't think I'm Jewish, and what they say about Jews... it's scary. Antisemitism never disappered, it's there."
What I actually meant was that I want to let go of people like him. I don't want my country to be his insurance policy, his emergency shelter for when things go wrong, the place which helps him sleep better at night. I feel like I'm being used, like my only reason of being here is to provide some existential comfort to some middle-class kids who really lives very well, compared to 98% percent of the people on the planet. He needs a therapist, not a state in the Middle East waiting patiently for him to jump the boat (which will probably never happen).
How is it that a Jewish boy from Australia grows up with such fears and neurosis? I think that the memory of the holocaust, as it was shaped in late 20th century, created this notion of antisemitism as a Jewish destiny, a danger which is always lurking in the dark. From a concrete atrocity it became an existential trait of being Jewish. Of course antisemitism exists, on some level. But compare it - today - e.g. to racism against blacks... who is more likely to get discriminated against.

I continued walking through the corridors of the prison, through the open courtyard. A large group of soldiers in their basic training were sitting there, politely listening to the explanation. (in basic training, you can't affort not to be polite; their officers were standing nearby, leaning on the wall).
I saw a sign pointing to the gallows: I decided to give it a miss.

2005-05-04T12:25:00.000-07:00

Graffiti I saw today in Tel Aviv:

- You're all robots, only made of flesh

- melt suffering into pain

The started priting poems on the rubbish collecting trucks. Strange, no?

free range

2005-05-03T12:46:00.000-07:00

At the market today I stopped at the Health Food shop to get some eggs. It's a shop I like a lot, I still think of it as 'Cherry Blossom' although they renamed four years ago to the hideous 'nature-net'. Anyway I found the eggs at the fridge. And when I took one box out, I relized what was written on it: Organic Free Range Eggs from 'Hills of Eternity, Samaria'. I felt like throwing up. I quickly put them back and went outside. 'Hills of Eternity' are a settler outpost near Nablus. The settlers there are probably the worst in the occupied territories (although there's some hard competition). For some years now they have been terrorizing their Palestinian neighbours and any internationals or israeli activists who tried to help them (assault, murder, polluting their drinking water... see this article from Haaretz two years ago). Their leader is now a fugitve after even the IDF and the Courts decided to arrest him.
Beside the anecdote, there's a point I wanted to make. Many of the settler outposts are occupied by young settlers who are anti-authoritarian, hippie-new-agey-spiritual types, who talk a lot about the connection to nature and earth and so on, and they are the most hardcore racist bastards around. Eco-friendliness does not guarantee 'leftist' politics. Many of us share, to some degree, the rejection of oldstyle notions of modernist 'progress' (a naive belief in industry and science and o forth), but this rejection can be taken to very dark places.
Perhaps the link between 'nature' and reactionary politics is not new. Nazi supporters and sympathizers were a strange mixture of those who idealized nature and rural life, and those who worshiped modern industry and power in the shape of cars and tanks. But then at least it was easier to tell the difference. The Left was all for progress and industralization, dams and factory chimneys. Today it's more difficult to place ecological politics into left and right; indeed I'm not sure these terms are still valid.

2005-05-02T13:14:00.000-07:00

I found an interview with Jonathan Pollak, the Anarchist againt the Fence who was wounded at Bil'in two weeks ago (it didn't stop him going there last week). Sums things up about the wall and the Gaza pullout.

2005-05-02T13:00:00.000-07:00

I found a photograph of this advertisment from the 1930s. This is to prove that people here were always nutters, it's not recent:

THE GREAT MIRACLE OF PENMANSHIP'S WONDERS
Come and witness the unheard of miracle of penmanship! Hurry to visit the wonder
of wonders, exhibited at the Luna Parc, Levant Fair Tel Aviv."
SEE WHAT THE HUMANE SKILL HAS ATTAINED IN PENMANSHIP
== TWO WHOLE CHAPTER OF THE PSALMS, 300 LETTERS LEGIBLY ==
WRITTEN ON ONE SINGLE WHEAT GRAIN, and other miracles of excellent penmanship never seen until the present.
VISIT THE LUNA PARC. For 10 mils admission fee you will see the greatest miracle of penmanship the world did ever see."

Minks of the World, Unite!

2005-05-01T22:30:00.000-07:00

I'm not the only mink blogging. Unfortunately I have no idea the other mink writes about ... but i like the name.

Papers

2005-04-30T02:55:00.000-07:00

Lying on a bed, trembling. Noon time in South Tel Aviv. Images fly through my head: a face of a girl, with fake blond curly hair; 'permanent' hairstyle, they call it here. Her smile is the shape of a perfect crescent, too perfect. Is she human or is she a doll? I can't tell. But I can see she has no eyes, just mouth and ears. The centre of her face is blank. Her image appears in flushes. And now I see a graffiti in the shape of a girl's head, on a stone well in Jerusalem. Short haired, tomboy looking. I think I know her: it might be Esther.
A buzz in the background, coming and going. Like school bell, like an alarm clock, like heavy metalic breathing. Almond trees blossoming, shaken by wind and rain. But it's spring now, it's spring, I think: it doesn't make sense, the rain is gone. I see the blossom, pink and white, I feel the drops, tiny and beautiful, I shudder. I remember now: almond trees blossom in winter, as early as January. Somehow, I find this reassuring.

Late at night, S. calls me. 'can you talk?' 'I'm at my parents, call me in an hour at Arbel's' I say. Was there something urgent about her voice? I wasn't sure. I had this premonition a few days ago, and I was wrong.
An hour later I'm at Arbel's. She calls again.
'How was at your parents?' She asks.
'I feel a flake, I wanted to tell them about the demo yesterday and I couldn't. I kept imagining how they would react - I know they wouldn't take it well - and I just couldn't be bothered. Oh well. What's happening in London?
She hesitates for a couple of seconds.
'We got papers' she says 'sorry babes.'
Somehow I'm not surprised. But after three years of squatting, you can't be surprised.
'When's the court date?'
'9th of May. Pete's been to ASS and they said we have a good chance, because the papers are patched together quite badly. The ownership of the house is not clear, between Mr. Balahi and his son, and the mortgage company. So we might be lucky.'
I've been in this situation too many times to build hopes. I know it depends on the judge. 'Where is it?'
'Lambeth County Court.'
Memories of judge cox come to mind; it was two years ago.
'But hey - I decided not to think about it until May 9th, and you shouldn't either. No one here is stressing out. We can't leave now - we have to wait until the broad beans in the garden are ready. They're getting bigger everyday'.

Bil'in

2005-04-28T21:14:00.000-07:00

I saw the info about this demonstration on Ha'aretz website, in one of the readers comments. "Partnership, not separation: a demonstration at Bil'in, 28.4. Come and fight against the fence and the settlments which create an Appartheit system."
Another reader quickly replied: 'The fence is essential to Israeli security... 1000 israelis were killed in suicide bombings in the last four years. I hope the fence will be finished soon and that you and your lot will be put on its other side'.
True, Israelis who demonstrate against the Wall believe that separation is a bad idea, in general. And here they face a decisive Israeli consensus: most Israelis have no time for arguments about co-existance and integration. But the demonstrations are not about the principle of the wall; this fight is lost. The fight is focussed on the location of the Wall, its route, in places where it is cutting through villages with no justification.
'1600 people live in Bil'in. The Wall cuts through the village's lands, and more land was confiscated for the expanding settlements nearby. Together this will annex to Israel more than half of the village's lands (2300 dunams out of 4000) including all of their olive groves. The route of the Wall near Bil'in is very far from the '67 borders. It is built with the sole purpose of protecting the empty houses of the nearby settlement, soon to be populated.The villagers used to rely on employment in Israel, but since the second Intifada they went back to agriculture and live of their olive groves. Now their groves are confiscated.' In short, 1600 people are driven to either immigration or suicide. Even from a narrow perspective of Israeli self-interest, this is stupid and dangerous. If the wall - which is supposed to stop suicide bombers - drives thousands of people to utter desperation, then it will defeat its purpose. No walls can stop people who have nothing to live for.

I wanted to go the demo but felt a bit apprehensive. I've been reading about Bil'in on the Israeli Indymedia site. I knew that it's been violent there; the army has been brutal. People were injured (one of the infamous 'anarchists against the wall' had a tear gas canister shot at his head). I was afraid to get hurt, partly also I don't have medical insurance at the moment here - I lost my medical rights because I was too long out of the country. But this seemed a lame excuse. I decided to go.

The people assembled near the village mosque. 900 were Palestinians - men, women and children - and about a 100 Israelis - from Ta'ayush, Anarchists against the Fence, Gush Shalom and the Coalition of Women for peace; also a bunch of ISM Internationals. The Palestinian organisers asked the crowd not to throw stones at the soldiers. ''This is a peaceful rally. 'Narchists, please if our friends the Narchists can come to the front'; The reasons for this, I figured, is that the soldiers are less likely to shoot Israelis, and the Anarchists against the Wall are brave enough to be in the front (they have quite a militant and fearless reputation).

On the way, I was given an onion by a girl. 'This is for the tear gas'. 'What do I do with it?' 'Just breath it. You've never had tear gas?' 'No' I admitted. 'It's quite horrible for the first 30 seconds, you feel you can't breath, but don't worry, it goes away. Just don't rub your eyes.'
The crowd was walking and chanting slogans, as usual in Palestinian demos. Years ago, when I was working as a subtitles translator in the Israeli television, I used to get these chantings all the time for the news editions: the organiser shouts a two line slogan - in rhyme - and the crowd repeats it. (Many Israelis remember the one from the Gulf War which goes 'Ya Saddam, Ya habib, Shoot Shoot on Tel-Aviv'). This time the slogans were against the wall, against Sharon, and also against the Palestinian leaders negotiating with Israel 'No negotiation when the bulldozers work'.

We had reached the valley and could see the houses of the settlement, the road works of the wall and the bulldozers. We started descending into the valley, but didn't reach very far. Half a minute later the thuds started shocking the air, and tear gas bombs drew hazy lines of light above us. A group in the front managed to keep walking towards the works. I was in the middle, and like everyone around me, turned back and ran away from the gas. I could soon feel the itch overwhelming me. I looked for the onion and found that I lost it. I covered my face.

Later I found out that it was special forces - Israeli soldiers dressed as Palestinians - that started the commotion. 'Five guys, I never saw them in my life, holding stones and they started throwing them. I asked one of them what was his name and he said Mahmood. I said Mahmood what? he said 'Mahmood Mahmood'. He spoke Arabic with an accent. And then the soldiers started shooting'. The IDF later confirmed to Haaretz that Special Forces were throwing stones at the Israeli soldiers, but denied that they the ones who started it.

Once it started, it was difficult to stop it. All the kids took out their slingshots and were practicing their aim at the soldiers. Tear gas bombs were repeatedly thrown, one of them landed inside a house. The balance at the end of the day: 5 people arrested (3 Israelis, 2 palestinian for assaulting the special forces); about 10 injured, one of them a Israeli member of Parliament, from the ex-communist bloc. The injuries were caused by shock bombs, rubber bullets and salt bombs (which burn and itch quite badly).

For the report from Haaretz, MK Mohammed Barakeh being pushed by a soldier during a demonstration against the separation fence in the West Bank yesterday

The bulldozer kept working the whole time through. We didn't even manage to stop the works for half an hour.

As we were waiting for the taxis to take us back to the road to Jerusalem, I read a notice from the village 'Popular Resistance Committee'. They were asking all the people working in the construction of the nearby settlement to stop working there. And it is the sad reality that the settlements are being built - at least in part - by Palestinian workers. With the current rate of unemployment in the West Bank and Gaza - more than 50 percent - they don't have much choice. While the workers are really in dire situation, other people are making profits. The rumor is that the cement for the Wall is supplied by a company owned by the Palestinian prime minister, Abu 'Alla. I don't know if this is true or not.

The people of Bil'in have been demonstrating almost daily in the last few weeks. They are resolute and will not give up. Their chances to stop the works seem meagre. But they don't have much choice.

2005-04-28T20:10:00.000-07:00

tear gas

2005-04-28T20:09:00.000-07:00

Tear gas

2005-04-28T20:08:00.000-07:00

La lilgidar, No to the Fence (made from tear gas canisters)

2005-04-28T19:38:00.000-07:00

Works on Modi'in Ilit, the nearby settlment

2005-04-28T19:09:00.000-07:00

walking towards the works

2005-04-28T08:10:00.000-07:00

Bil'in

Haifa

2005-04-27T22:45:00.000-07:00

I went up to Haifa to see an exhibition of 1940s posters. It's part of my research; Shemen was one of the leading brands at the time in Palestine. They were quite clever in their advertising. "The only olive oil pressed under the Union Jack" was one of the slogans.

Later I went to visit T, S's best friend in Israel. Sitting in her tiny flat, I could see through the open front door the green slopes of Mount Carmel. She had made delicious rice, dahl and chapati for lunch; she served them with grated tomato. The view and the sunshine make me optimistic. We were talking about depression. I liked what she said.
'It's important to make the distinction between yourself and your state of being. It's a dark wave, ebbing inside you; a tide which is rising now but will flow out again, soon. If you try, you can watch it, observe it: it's not you, it's something going through you. And it will go away. You have to maintain your position on the face of the water, looking from above, so that you don't get carried away with it, so that you don't drown.'

View from T's garden

Passover at the Old City

2005-04-26T21:46:00.000-07:00

The old city of Jerusalem was packed with visitors; the Passover week is a national holiday. At the old city castle, I found my way to one of the cellars, where a model of the city is displayed.
It's a story for W.G.Sebald. A Hungarian from Bratislava named Stephan Illish, with majestic red beard and magician's look in his eyes, settled in Jerusalem in the 1860s. He started working at the Fransiscan Print shop, but then became obessesed with a project of building a model of Jerusalem. He consulted architects and geographers, and worked carefully, for years. The model was huge; it fills a whole room. It was first shown to the public in Europe at the Ottoman pavillion of the Vienna world exhibition, 1873. From there it went round Europe, until in 1880 the city of Geneve acquired it from donations, and put it on permanent display at the Salle de la Reformation; there it was admired by the public until the 1920s, at which point it was moved to a cellar and forgotten. In 1984 it was rediscovered by accident and sent back to Jerusalem, on loan.

Looking at the model, I realized again how many of the buildings that we usually think of as 'old Jerusalem' are actually from late 19th century.The Mt. Zion church, the Russian church of Gathsheman... and other buildings, many of them are located within the city walls. The real 'old jerusalem' is tiny in size; Jerusalm, or about 98 percent of it, is a city no older than Melbourne or New York. So many people write about the city's historic character, but most of this is just fake, the creation of modern fantasies: the British, the Jews and the Arabs all had their ideas about how this 'ancient and sacred' city should look, and they made it so. Crucial in this sense was the British Governor Storrs decree (1919) allowing only building in stone. No doubt there is beauty in stone houses but when a whole city is built of stone... I've started to think it's awful. It's not human, it's monumential; stone is hard, depressing and eye-straining. What is worse, it serves this discourse about the 'spirituality' of this city.

I was contemplating all this when an ultra ortodox man and his 5 year old daughter walked in.
Father: 'You see there, sweetie, that's where the temple used to be. And today there's a mosque there.
Girl: 'What is it?'
Father: 'A mosque, where the muslims pray.'
Girl: 'Poo'.
Father: 'Exactly. Now let's see the train model'.

The toy train model was in the next room. It was even bigger than the Jerusalem model. It consisted of a European toy city with its train station and middle class houses, train depots, a river. About 7 trains where constantly in motion; one of them I recognized as the ICE (Inter City Express, the german train). The kids went crazy. In the centre of the room was a huge mountain, with grass meadows and little cows were roaming its slopes. Of course, the mountain was needed for the tunnels (a toy train with no tunnels is no fun at all). This strange Bavarian fantasy was built by Josef Ferbourg, 'a train lover', especially for display in the cellars of a Jerusalem citadel.

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Outside the citadel, I bought a bagel from one of the stalls, only to be told off by two little religious (Jewish) girls. "He's eating bread!!!!"

most characteristic of the Passover holiday: the smell of burning, roasting meat from barbecues (manqals) in the public parks and gardens. In some parks, it's bbq per square meter. This time of year is not a good time for vegeterians to visit; in two weeks it will be Independence Day, which is the national festival of kebab.