Palestinians want to be left alone to build their state and their lives in peace

IDF tanks face the PA compound in Ramallah during Operation Defensive Shield, 2002, the largest military operation in the West Bank since the 1967 Six-Day War.

Adah Kay died on 12 November 2014 (see obituary here). Back in May 2002 Adah, recently moved to Ramallah, returned to England and gave a talk at a Palestine Solidarity meeting in London, one of a number of similar presentations she gave to draw attention to the horrific realities of the recent Israeli invasion and occupation of the West Bank. We’re pleased to publish her notes for the PSC talk, with materials she drew on and selected from to convey the reality of that moment of the occupation. These notes were never revised for publication but even in unedited form tell us so much about Adah herself and of the realities she was trying grasp and convey in all their raw immediacy.

My experience living in Ramallah

Transcript of a talk Adah Kay gave to the PSC on May 8th, 2002

Thanks for inviting me to talk here tonight.

1. Introduction

It is now 3 weeks since I returned from a month in Ramallah. I was visiting my husband who is living in Ramallah for 6 months studying Arabic prior to us both going to live and work in the PA for a year in the autumn.

I am a British Jew. I was brought up in a Zionist tradition but rejected this nearly 40 years ago. I am now an anti-Zionist. I speak a rusty Hebrew and spent periods of time in Israel as I was growing up.

My brief tonight is to give an eyewitness account of my experience in Ramallah during its re-invasion in March and April. Although my focus is to provide a testimony based on what I saw, I hope some of my thinking about the issues will emerge.

When I left Ramallah it was still under this latest invasion and total curfew. I gave my first talk only a few days after my return when I felt very raw, emotional and wired up with my experience.

Since my return although the IDF has withdrawn from inside Ramallah they can and do return at will. The inquiry into Jenin has failed to materialise, the siege in Bethlehem has still not been resolved, the IDF is still very much in control in the West Bank, political leaders in the international community seem paralysed unable to make decisions and the violence on both sides continues. Today we are still hearing news of the aftermath of further attacks in Rishon LeZion and Haifa and wait to hear what Israel’s response will be knowing that it has the covert if not overt support of the USA.

The situation has thus moved on in terms of specific events unfolding each day but the broader scenario remains unchanged. And try as I might to be ‘balanced’ my wider analysis has been confirmed if not strengthened since my return and is the backcloth for this talk. So in preface I need to set out my stall:

• I am a Jew, which in terms of this conflict raises acute dilemmas especially for those of us who also oppose all forms of oppression, discrimination and injustice. So it is crucial for us to dissociate our Jewish identity (however we express it) from support for Jewish nationalism and Zionism.

In terms of this conflict my position is that:

• Israel’s special relationship with the USA (the one global superpower) remains paramount to the US strategic objectives in the region
• There remains a glaring lack of any international legal framework to guarantee security, a political or economic resolution to the issues
• Israel continues its intransigent policies of repression, violence andhuman rights violations amounting now to what one commentator dubbed ‘sociocide ‘ an attack on all the nascent Palestinian institutions in addition to a war against a civilian population.
• In this Israel is backed by the US, using the fight against terror (ism) and its appropriation of the fear of anti-Semitism, to justify its continued denial of Palestinian rights to an independent self determined state and nationhood.

2. Why I went to Ramallah/ Palestine

– Why now. For the past 35 years both Tom (my husband) and I have opposed Israel’s continuing occupation, have at times been politically engaged especially immediately after 1967, and have always followed issues from here.

– Increasingly since PA was formed we felt that wanted to go there to see if we could make some contribution. Perhaps this is a romantic illusion but personal expressions of solidarity reflecting a human and political commitment seem important at any stage in life.

– In preparation Tom decided to go and learn Arabic there and to set up work for next year and I followed a MSc in ME politics at SOAS whilst continuing my day work here.- I went to visit Tom and set up my work for next year.

3. In Jerusalem initially

In early March Jerusalem felt under siege itself having experienced a succession of suicide bombers, which had curtailed much public life. The mood on the street was nervous and public opinion and newspapers seemed fairly solidly for strong action against the PA. Indeed while we were in Jerusalem, there was a 3-day reoccupation of Ramallah which was surrounded by tanks and under curfew. Speaking to friends and reading Ha’aretz daily I got another Israeli perspective which was for withdrawal to the 67 borders and there were some actions by peace activists. But in general people they felt under attack as civilians.

Even at that stage ‘the terror’ – codename for suicide bombers had somehow been translated into the root problem. It became the justification for Israel’s continuing occupation, creeping land confiscation and colonisation through settlement building. So the symptom had become translated into the cause.

In an e-mail to my networks I wrote
‘The Israelis are fearful. Of course they want peace and an end to violence but it seems that very few are prepared to give up the idea of security upheld by military violence as the only viable solution’.

4. In Ramallah

We arrived back in Ramallah on 19th March. The contrasts were stark like moving from first to third world within such small distances. Jerusalem, is a city with a largely western feel with neat housing, green gardens and parks, full of shops now seeming to focus on health foods and with growing numbers of people from SE Asia and former Soviet Union rather than Palestinians in the service sector.

In contrast as soon as we entered the PA the roads were potholed the streets were shabby. Many recently constructed shops, offices and hotels were empty – a sign of initial economic revival fuelled by international aid, but now a sign of complete economic collapse. Few cars were on the roads and there were no buses as the only way to travel between towns and villages via the frequent checkpoints is either by individual taxi or the shared ‘service’ either cars or small vans.

5. Checkpoints 

From the outset I was shocked to the core with disbelief at the IDF’s behaviour towards the Palestinians. My first encounter was crossing the Qalandia checkpoint from Jerusalem. Soldiers were sitting in tanks with guns trained on the queues of people being herded behind barriers, waiting to be ‘called forward’ to show papers. The process of travelling is complete madness. Every journey is extended maybe 5 times. Each time a checkpoint is reached you have to leave one vehicle, stand in line to go through the checkpoint with the IDF looking at identification (which can take anything from 15mins to an hour if it is bad) and walk along a dusty potholed road negotiating boulders and barriers to next transport point. People in wheelchairs have to be carried. So a journey to Jerusalem from Ramallah which should take 30 mins never takes less than an hour.

In an e-mail after my first crossing I wrote

…the reality on the ground is that Israelis are treating Palestinians as animals. I witnessed this at 2 checkpoints. Young Israeli soldiers shouting at Palestinians quietly queuing up to cross, herding us behind barricades – or the soldier who pushed the barrel of his gun in the face of a young woman screaming at her never to try to cross again when she showed the wrong document. Or the images you must have seen of Palestinian men and young boys rounded up from the camps – some even had numbers stamped on their arms (what does that remind you of) and kept for hours with no food or medical attention’.

Ramallah itself felt familiarly dusty and Arab (we have travelled a lot in the region) friendly, safe but very subdued. We were warmly welcomed back by Tom’s neighbours. We lived simply in a large flat part of a block of 4 apartments next door to another 2 apartments surrounded by a yard set back from the road. This was to prove crucial when the reoccupation began.

The weather was unseasonably cold. People were still using heaters and travelling through checkpoints in the rain and wind was uncomfortable.

I found it easy to make contacts with Bir Zeit and other institutions where I was met with unfailing generosity of time, courtesy and interest as I gathered information for a piece of research on ‘The right of return’ from Israeli and Palestinian perspectives – in Ramallah, Bethlehem and BZU. Access to information and people was easy. Any trepidation I might have felt about living and working there was unfounded – ‘internationals’ as we are called are positively welcomed.

The International Parliament of writers visited during this period and we went to an inspiring, jam packed evening at the Kasbah theatre including Oud music and sketches as well as the writers themselves reading their work. It was an extraordinary demonstration of how lively cultural life is in Ramallah and I saw this again and again in those early days.

However during the week of 25th March with the suicide bombing in Netanyia things became decidedly edgy. Everyone felt there would be serious Israeli reprisals. By the Thursday morning foreign nationals were being advised to leave and the university and other institutions were closing early. The news on the street was that Israel would be taking action on the Friday. At that stage, we made a conscious decision to stay and with everyone else rushed to shops to stock up.

On Thursday night we went to bed quite early but were woken by flashes of light across the sky and big booming noises. We thought this was the ‘invasion’ got up and dressed – waiting trying to get news from the TV. I remember being quite calm and as we waited watching a film of Julia Roberts in Mongolia! Eventually it became clear that it was a thunderstorm so feeling somewhat sheepish we went back to bed. But by then we did hear tanks and gunfire and knew it was happening.

6. The Reoccupation 

On Friday 29th we were woken up by the revving of tanks to find them buzzing around the roads and gunfire. Having experienced the previous 3-day re- invasion people knew it would be total curfew. Everyone was scared to go out and the Mukata, Arafat’s compound was totally surrounded.

At that stage we were still able to creep up the road to our local shop where the two young men running it, were terrified but opened up if people rang to say they were coming. The 2nd time I ventured to the shop I saw a man lying in the street shot in the leg. I had to wait for a few minutes before returning home as there was a lot of sniper activity. This was to be the first of a number of shootings we directly witnessed. There was incessant sniping and shooting which rapidly became our norm.

Our community

We lived in a little community of 5 households. Four were Palestinian and two including ours also had internationals. We were so much more fortunate than many others because we were able to move around our yard.

For the 18 days that I spent under total curfew our community became an extraordinary experience. We all got to know each other incredibly well – houses had no front doors – people wandered in and out using whichever TV had the best reception for news. Dependence on news was vital and will return to this. Three of our households cooked and ate together every night. The 5 households pooled resources and shared everything we needed. Clothes and bedding materialised as other Japanese journalist friends turned up on the first day, gas was shared, and telephones if lines were cut. When 3 flats had no electricity for 3 days, we ran a cable from the fourth for basic light and computers. Before curfew lifts we got ourselves organised with fantastic shopping lists and divided up the tasks – the 2 control freaks including me to the grocery, someone for milk, someone to the market, someone for wine and other essential goodies such as crisps and chocolate, some for meat etc. etc. We had amazing meals – I learnt a range of dishes and every time my neighbour R baked break or stuffed cabbage leaves or L made cakes or succulent liver, I was in there. I have made friends for life.

The generosity of our Palestinian friends was boundless – indeed I had to be careful not to admire anything because then it was pressed on me.

I noted my feelings at the early stage of curfew/re-invasion which were a strange mixture:
– I was glad if one could say that – that we had decided to stay as even at the level of our little developing compound community it seemed to make a difference
– I experienced a strange limbo like feeling of time suspended. It was impossible to couldn’t concentrate on anything apart from what was going on, interpreting sounds (where did that boom come from), wondering what was happening in the Mukata, what would the Israelis do next, how long would they stay. But there was also a focus on the intense minutiae of daily life – food – sharing and needing to conserve
– Anger and outrage as we started to really witness the full force of the Israeli reoccupation – there were 300 tanks were in Ramallah. We saw the IDF breaking into buildings next and near to us and literally smashing through doors and walls. The soldiers buttressed into their armoured vehicles which seemed to travel in threes (APCs, tanks and jeeps or to park in 3-4s along roads) were helmeted and with guns always at the ready. Their confidence, arrogance and total disrespect to the Palestinians intially was horrifying.
– The bizarre counter symbolism of religion – the Netanya bombing took place on the eve of Pesach – the reoccupation of Ramallah on a Friday the Muslim Sabbath.
– Wondering what the rest of the world was doing – not understanding how people could stand by. Thinking it would be a replay of the Gulf War or Afghanistan as people watched theatre war on their TVs every evening.
– Wondering what my neighbours would think if they knew we were Jewish – at this stage we had only told a handful of trusted Palestinian friends and colleagues, and the IDF didn’t know. In fact when we ‘came out’ this was no issue at all.
– Accommodating to the fact that we were in a war situation, with tanks and continuous gunfire and explosions. People were being shot but initially there were no ambulance sirens. Is this real?
– I didn’t feel scared – and at that stage I think this was because it was the Israelis who after all I knew from my childhood we share so much – they couldn’t really be serious – or could they?

I am now going to shift gear a bit and focus a bit on a number of themes and impressions of this occupation and what we did during it.

7. The Impact of the Occupation

Curfew

Curfew was total – 24 hours a day everyone was holed up in their homes. We didn’t have young children and shared looking after the older people in our group. We could at least move around between the two buildings and in the yard if we took care there were no soldiers or snipers around.

Communication lines – phone and electricity were of the essence.

Telephones were cut sporadically as the IDF either entered exchanges or shot up lines. In addition the IDF seemed able to target specific phones. Was it a coincidence that the 3 of our 6 households without phones on the crucial last weekend of Powell’s visit were those involved in some kind of journalistic activity?

Electricity cuts routine
We experienced at least 4 during my 18 days under curfew, one lasting 3 days after the first curfew lift. Apart from inconveniences like no light, or hot water more crucially we couldn’t use e-mail or watch TV. Another subtle form of privation.

Water

The pumping stations were also damaged and we went onto well water early on. In many other parts of Ramallah where people had no wells, water shortage was a real issue.

Dependence on getting news

We were isolated – if we heard a bomb or shooting we developed antennae to try to suss out where it was coming from and had to wait 40 or so minutes if it was big explosion to hear on the TV what and where it was. From our back balcony we constantly kept an eye out to see where the tanks were and witnessed numerous explosions (buildings being shelled) around the Mukata, the town centre near us, to the back of our building where security forces and political party buildings were and just over the ridge opposite our building.

We relied totally on hearing news on BBC World Service, watching it on TV when we could get reception, telephone and e mail networking to find out what was going. Increasing we became involved in trying to get news out as we experienced with incredulity the seeming frozen inaction of the world to what was going on. After the shock and adaptation of the initial days, two of our households became involved in getting news out – photos, articles, radio interviews and mailing our networks. We sent out verified accounts of what was happening but we also received much useful and supportive information from abroad, which we circulated locally thanks to PSC and WIB in particular.

The mood every day was different depending on the news – and how people in our community were feeling. But even at that stage there was a sense of great emotional exhaustion as the news from mainly AlJezeera but also from Israel, BBC and CNN unfolded on the screen. Fighting, wounded and dead from different cities and the camps, grieving Israelis after each suicide bombing – strange visions of Arafat in candle light in the Mukata – men bound and being marched away. It was gruelling and distressing but the collage of images seemed deliberately calculated to fuel patriotism on both sides.

The importance of mass demonstrations of solidarity

AlJezeera was our mainstay and tirelessly got out information but also showed scenes of mass demonstrations in Arab countries initially and then from other parts of the world including in particular Berlin and Brussels. I remember rethinking my somewhat jaded view of the value of demonstrations as I saw what a morale boost this was. But this TV theatre which also focused on more extreme chants and slogans from some of the Arab countries raised questions for us and many of our Palestinian friends and neighbours who did not ascribe to this in any way at all.

The disjoint between mass popular demonstrations of people on the streets supporting the Palestinians was in dramatic contrasts to the pictures of robed and unrobed Arab leaders holding civilised meetings with the Americans as they trouped around the region. Increasingly our hopes in international diplomacy if we ever had any, waned. Was popular protest the only remaining way to exercise our views?

The importance of verified accounts

I was incredibly impressed with how people in various Palestinian institutions and organisations were frantically busy from their homes when under curfew recording what was happening – and will come back to this. We too did our bit as Tom’s diaries went on the BBC website and we got involved in doing interviews, reporting incidents of shootings and in one case a neighbour’s death.

Because we were so isolated and news was coming in from everywhere there were increasing concerns in the early days about certain eye witness accounts that were circulated on networks. Quickly journalists and Palestinian monitoring organisations moved to ensure that only verified information was ‘published’ rather than vague reports of Israeli massacres in Ramallah. (I suppose at this stage I ought to voice my discomfort with the title of this evening. Massacres have still to be proved, there was no massacre in Ramallah – but there are atrocities and human rights violations enough without that allegation). The fact that there were painstaking attempts in Ramallah early on to provide grounded evidence of killings and extensive damage wreaked by the IDF, was to prove vital later on as reports began to come in from events in Nablus and later in Jenin.

Foreign reporters were under total curfew too and most were outside the centre in hotels so our accounts from inside helped to build up a picture about what was happening.

The IDF and the impact of their reoccupation

We had quite a bit of close contact with IDF during curfew as our area was of some interest. They were constantly searching and re-searching buildings for people and arms caches. On one occasion a platoon of 12 came to our yard and smashed up the basement store of the second building. They stayed an hour or so and were implacably confident and arrogant as we tried to argue with them. They never searched our flat but I negotiated with them that if they searched our neighbours I would go with them as people were petrified.

On another occasion a tank broke down outside and we and an Israeli journalist friend who was staying between curfews talked to them They were incredibly insolent to start with but when their officer learnt who the Israeli journalist was they actually came back to apologise.

From that time on (about day 5 into the curfew), we came out as Jews and I felt free to talk to the IDF in my somewhat halting Hebrew at every possible opportunity. I was the perplexed Jewish granny trying to understand how they could treat the Palestinians so arrogantly, inhumanely. I questioned them about why they acted like a superior race, was this what their grandparents and my parent had fought for, how their actions could possibly help Israel’s future in the region, why were they buying into what the army was doing? I think I became known as that mad English Jewish woman who talks at the soldiers. They mostly blanked but did respond sometimes – ‘ this is terror’ , we are doing this to make Israel safe for our children’. My hope is that in the joking about me afterwards – something might have stuck.

Physical damage to infrastructure and buildings

During the first curfew, reports were building up of systematic house searches. In the student hostel housing male students next to us, everyone was herded into one flat in an apartment building without food or water. Reports of this came in from other areas. Institutions and private houses were used as army billets, offices were wrecked, computers were smashed , medical facilities were broken into and vandalised. Hospitals were entered and staff used as human shields, private homes were abused and looted. By now we have much more documented information about the scale of this ‘sociocide’ – the wanton vandalism, disregard and disrespect for everything and everyone Palestinian in addition to killings and in some instances murder.

These were not isolated incidents. A consistent picture was emerging of:

– human rights violations (I had direct evidence of this from a friend who worked throughout the reoccupation driving an ambulance. During the first curfew they were not allowed to pick up any wounded – and dead people only after a few days. Their role an important one – was however limited to delivering food and medication and only later getting people to hospitals).
– utter contempt and disregard for private property including many reported instances of looting and theft of individuals property and money and disrespect in people’s homes
– and above all the wrecking of all so many institutions, offices and shopping malls

Until the lifting of the first curfew these were reports – it was only when we actually got out into the city that we could see the extent of the real damage.

Curfews were lifted after initially 5 days and then every 3 or so days. The first curfew lift was on a grey, windy, rainy afternoon. When we ventured out, the IDF was still taking pot shots at groups of young men and as we wandered up the road to Al Manara the devastation we saw was truly shocking.

We saw road barriers strewn in the roads, the fronts of certain shops caved in. One near us was a liquor store with clear evidence of looting. We saw cars crushed on the roadside and pavements. (our neighbour’s car was reversed over back and forth by a tank when parked on a pavement for sport). We saw cars upended used as roadblocks. As we walked through the town we saw every car on the road with their doors and boots open. We saw shopping malls completely wrecked – lifts shelled, children and clothes shops with all contents smashed an strewn about. The road surfaces were completely wrecked from tanks and armoured vehicles racing around – and they were poor to start with. Telegraph poles and street lamps askew, trees were uprooted. The city looked as if it had been hit by a hurricane.

People wandered around in a shocked daze rushing to stock up – it was quiet and heart rending.

The IDF behaviour during curfews

During the first 2 curfew lifts the IDF behaved with great arrogance.
– It was never clear when the curfew would be lifted. Different versions of timing circulated and on the second curfew at 1pm – when people started to go out at the announced time they were met with gunfire. A judicious phone call to an Israeli MP helped sort that one out, but it was shocking and frightening.
– The tanks were in force right the way through the town, blocking access to certain roads and the soldiers were implacably hostile and arrogant at at times shooting in the air. It felt very menacing and again extremely frightening.
– On the third curfew the IDF set off sound bombs and tear gas canisters in the middle of the curfew, at 3pm sending everyone into a real panic. That was the one time I lost my cool and in an isolated Al Manara square (as by then everyone had moved off) just screamed at them. By that time the IDF had apparently received some PR training and listened politely.

The destruction of institutions

There are now substantially verified reports of the systematic destruction of public buildings, the entering of various ministries and key NGOs taking or smashing computers and records and the destruction of medical facilities. I can only speak for what I saw – the complete vandalism of the Optometric Centre run by the United Palestinian Medical Relief Committee

When the curfews were lifted Tom and I tended to go around photographing and noting as much of the damage as we could. On the second curfew lift, we came across this medical centre occupying two floors of a larger office building. The front doors were smashed in and inside walls were smashed through for entry rather than using the doors. Medical equipment was systematically smashed, computers, papers strewn about, spectacles piled up on the floor – yet on the same floor a beauty salon was left untouched. This was a precious, lovingly built up facility presumably funded with foreign aid – it was totally unusable.

This and other similar acts of destruction including breaking into the Sakakini cultural centre, the Ministry of Education where all records were destroyed, many NGOs and other ministries seem targeted at destroying the very fabric of Palestinian life.

My conclusions and feelings

– What I witnessed there was not an equal contest – I experienced one of the most sophisticated and best equipped armies in the world attacking a mainly civilian population
– This continuing onslaught has been carried out by an army which seems to have total disregard for any international and humanitarian law or protocols
– The re-invasion as well as my experience before it especially at checkpoints seems calculated to impose as much humiliation and discomfort on a civilian population as is possible

The physical damage wrought to institutions and organisations appears directed at destroying the fledgling framework for a future independent state built up over the past 8 years

All the Palestinians I spoke to want to be left alone to quietly build their state get on with life and indeed have a life. By the time I left they were distraught, emotionally drained and had had enough. But they wanted to live in peace with Israel.

Although generalisations are superficial all the Palestinians I met were very friendly, interested, peaceful, forbearing, humorous and above all with reserves of patience and ‘steadfastness’ in living their lives under totally impossible constraints

I feel anger and acute sadness at how the world seemed to stand by and at our stupidity in thinking that somehow the USA’s intervention this time might break with their nearly 100 year old special relationship with the Zionists. Waiting first for Zinni and then for Powell, in the event was a naïve misplaced hope.

I feel shame as a Jew at Sharon’s short sighted expansionist dreams, outrage at his crudely populist arguments harnessing the war against terror and fear of antisemitism to justify his draconian policies. Finally I feel both shame and extreme sadness as I witnessed the brutalisation of Israeli youth through their army experience in the PA.

For me there is a simple solution to the current round of violence – Israel should end its occupation now. However as Robert Fisk predicts (8.5.02) in the Independent, the international community may well need to impose some solution to bring an end to this war, including foreign armies to guarantee security on both sides and the eventual realisation of a Palestinian state.

My hope is that this will take place within a robust framework of international law, which is binding and holds all parties to account.

My greatest fear is that the recent invasion has so embittered both sides that building bridges becomes even more difficult. That is why events such as these in the diaspora displaying how different groups can work together assume such great importance.