Politics from Above

I'm linking you to Tamira (my wife's) blog, HomeFree, (http://tamira-homefree.blogspot.com) for the daily news, another perspective and what and where we've been. In order not to have you read repetitive information, consider this blog more of a musing, perspectives of the everyday, the politics and the inside of my head in a place that I have called both home and have disavowed time and again.

It is both Olive Harvest season and the end of Sukkot, not surprisingly another 'crossover' time in which Israeli Jews and Palestinians have much in common and nothing in agreement. Sukkot celebrates both harvest and the end of the 'reading cycle' of the Torah. As part of the 'celebration' Jews are encouraged to venerate the olive tree, the symbol of peace and of course the most common native tree in the land. Simultaneously, it is real harvest time, not symbolic, for Palestinians who rely on olives for trade, commerce, and food for the coming year. But when the settlers march down from their hilltop fortresses to congregate in the olive groves, they are also there to confront their Palestinian foes on whose land their own trees stand.

Then there are the young and old Israelis who have joined several groups that have vowed not be like their settler cousins or the apathetic Israeli who either claims to not know what is happening or the ones who simply don't care. These few Israelis get on buses from around the country and go to help Palestinian farmers collect the olives from their land. But fights ensue, the army and police come and it usually ends-up with the Palestinians having to leave their own lands 'to keep the peace' as it did yesterday on one such harvest.

The settlers of Otni'el came down from the hills in their sanctimonious white cloth of 'purity' and their submachine guns. We were armed with buckets for olives, women, children and older men. While the settlers yelled and shoved some Palestinians who were trying to collect olives, others in the group picked as quickly as they could. But it seemed futile, the settlers threatened with their machine guns and ran-down Palestinians who crossed the road to try and gather from some of their trees. The army arrived with even more guns, the police arrived and a piece of paper declaring the Palestinian lands as a 'closed military zone' decided everyone's fate. Once more, Palestinians were 'escorted' off their land, leaving their trees behind, the olives to fall to the ground and to rot. What income will that farmer have this year?

Let's try to understand what a 'closed military zone' in fact means. I encountered these areas several times when I was making my film here several years ago. Here is what it means practically: It is not an areas with military activity, secrets, bases, or the like. It is an area that the military sanctions closed or open at whim depending on whether they can/want to patrol a difficult and contentious place. These places are often Palestinian land (there is no disputing that by the military) that is subject to incursions, invasions, harrasment and destruction by settlers. It is then declared a 'problem area' and 'closed'.

Recently, Barak, the minister responsible for the Israel Defense Forces, was chastised for ignoring the increased violence of the settlers. He responded by dutifully speaking out of both sides of his mouth: He said that he would deploy more army troops to keep the agressive settlers from harming Palestinan farmers BUT, and here's the other mouth side, one cannot expect the army to be in all possible harvest sites. I guess despite the five jeeps and two police cars that arrived to our harvest yesterday, somehow they could not manage to allow the Palestinians to do their harvesting and instead declared the area a 'closed military zone'.

I've only been here three weeks and while it may appear calmer to those of you who depend on the media for information, it is an enraging and desperate quagmire. It deepens daily as the controls and restrictions become commonplace. The road system of bypasses that tunnel under Palestinian villages or blast by behind walls of concrete, all allow Israelis to no longer see the daily realities of Palestine life under Occupation. It has given rise to widespread ignorance and worse, little interest.

I want to begin and end this day's blog with my contention that never have the two peoples been so far apart nor have they known so little about one another. Ignorance = fear. The terror in the eyes of Israelis when they see a group of young Palestinian men walk by reminds me of white suburbunites locking their doors as they pass black people in the inner cities of America. Welcome to Israel 2008.