“Bethlehem Diary” Screening Followed by Discussion of Illegal Jewish Settlements

By Jane Adas

On Feb. 6, in Madison, New Jersey, Drew University’s Middle East Studies Program presented “Between the Scylla of Occupation and the Charybdis of Settlements: Palestinian Life on the West Bank.” The program began with a screening of Antonia Caccia’s new video documentary, “Bethlehem Diary,” which graphically depicts the difficulties Palestinians endure living under economic siege and military closure.

Dr. Riad Nasser, professor of sociology at Fairleigh Dickinson University, led a discussion following the video. A Palestinian citizen of Israel, he worked for the Israeli Broadcasting Service before moving to the U.S. and becoming an academic.

According to Dr. Nasser, the video did not address two major issues: settlers and collective punishment. He explained that 200,000 settlers live in the West Bank, excluding Jerusalem, among 2 million Palestinians. In the Gaza Strip, home to more than a million Palestinians, he added, the 6,000 Jewish settlers there control 25 percent of the land and 40 percent of the water. Settlement construction, along with new by-pass roads, actually accelerated throughout the Oslo process, he noted. As many of the units remain empty, he said, the purpose of the building boom can only have been to capture more land.

Beyond being illegal, Nasser told the audience, settlers violate all norms of conduct. They organize their own militias, move freely through Palestinian villages burning produce and shooting at residents, and are not brought to justice. In addition to generous Israeli government subsidies, he said, settlers are supported by money from their supporters in the U.S. and elsewhere.

To Palestinians, Nasser said, it makes little difference whether the settlers’ motivations are religious, nationalistic, or economic: they all constitute a trauma. Among the many forms of collective punishment Israel imposes on Palestinians, Nasser singled out the demolition of homes. To date during the current intifada, he stated, the Israeli military has demolished more than 250 homes, leaving thousands of Palestinians homeless. Israel’s excuse, he said, is either that the homes are being used by snipers or have been built without permits. Even as an Israeli citizen, Nasser said his own house is illegal because he was never able to obtain a permit. He could think of no other colonial power that had such a policy.

Barbara Nimri Aziz Describes “Facts on the Ground”

Shortly after returning from a six-week tour of the Middle East, Barbara Nimri Aziz, the producer and host of “Tahrir: Voices of the Arab & Muslim Community,” broadcast weekly on Pacifica Radio, spoke Jan. 25 at a meeting of the Council on American-Islamic Relations-New York about “Facts on the Ground: Living Under Israeli Occupation.”

Aziz said she found less respect for and more frustration with the U.S. among Arabs than formerly, along with more cynical attitudes toward the press. American media rarely mention the occupation, Aziz noted. Instead, she said, in keeping with Israel’s line, their substitute for the real intifada is Arafat, who is held responsible for any Israeli ever killed or feeling insecure. She described the mainstream U.S. press as being too preoccupied with itself and America’s own targeted civilians to notice Palestinians trapped in their homes and growing poorer each day.

In the West Bank, Aziz said she learned what it feels like to live among tanks. She compared them to an unpredictable new species of animal in the neighborhood that could crush you. Tanks can be heard long before they come into view, she said. No normal response is possible, Aziz told the audience: You can’t dialogue with them, since no humans are visible, and it’s useless to throw things at them. Psychologically they have a paralyzing effect.

Nevertheless, she continued, people are getting used to the presence of tanks. Aziz said she is beginning to understand the fearlessness of Palestinians and why they never ask “why?”—as in “Why do you block the road? Demand my permit? Demolish my greenhouse?” The occupation is the imposition of pure power and authority, Aziz explained, which does not need to answer “why.”

Mai Masri’s “Frontiers of Dreams and Fears”

Mai Masri intended her latest film, “Frontiers of Dreams and Fears,” to be a sequel to her 1998 “Children of Shatila.” Two circumstances, however, changed the theme of her film to that of individuals connecting across borders. Masri discovered that children in Beirut’s Shatila refugee camp and in Dheisheh refugee camp in Bethlehem were in Internet communication with each other; and her first day of filming, May 25, 2000, coincided with Israel’s hasty withdrawal from Lebanon.

Masri filmed hundreds of Palestinians converging on both sides of the chain-link fence separating Lebanon and Israel, meeting family members for the first time in 52 years. The images are powerful: people holding photos and calling out names; giving gifts to strangers; touching through the barbed wire; crying and laughing, dancing and singing. For most on the Lebanese side, it was their first glimpse of Palestine. And on the other side were Israeli soldiers, still trying to impose their authority.

It was at the border that Masri first met Manar, a 14-year-old girl from Dheisheh. When Manar was born, her father was in prison. Now she is a member of the Ibdaa dance troop. “As I was dancing for my land, I felt I was freeing something,” she old Masri.

Manar’s Internet pen pal is Mona, a 12-year-old girl from Shatila. Her father, a teacher, died of a heart attack when Mona was two. In the film, Mona says, “I wish I were a bird to fly to my own country. This camp is like a birdcage.”

Mona’s family is from Safouria, now within Israel. She asked Manar to visit the village and photograph it. No houses remain: “To hide the truth, they planted trees.” But Manar writes Mona, “Your village is beautiful.”

Masri filmed in Dheisheh in November, at the beginning of the intifada. Manar told the filmmaker, “I’ve changed a lot.” Her school is in a war zone, Israeli fighter jets and attack helicopters scream overhead, and she is unable to sleep. “Emotionally I’m a mess. There is so much pressure, I feel I will explode.”

Mona returns to the border fence, now fortified and inaccessible from the Israeli side. The film shows hands on one side of a barbed-wire barrier.

“Frontiers of Dreams and Fears,” Masri’s eighth film, already has won numerous awards in Lebanon, Egypt and Tokyo. It was produced in association with the Independent Television Service and was shown in February on a Los Angeles PBS station. The New York screening was held Jan. 23 at New York University. The video is available from Americans for Middle East Understanding, and can be ordered online at <www.ameu.org> or by telephoning (212) 870-2053. All proceeds from the sale of the video are donated to scholarship funds for Shatila and Dheisheh refugee camps.

Phyllis Bennis Speaks at Princeton

Phyllis Bennis, speaking Jan. 20 at Princeton University on “U.S. Foreign Policy After Sept. 11,” received simultaneously a standing ovation and a few loud boos. It was an apt demonstration of the September attacks’ polarizing effect on American society.

Bennis, director of the New Internationalism Program of the Institute for Policy Studies in Washington, DC, said that long before September she had been asked by Americans, “Why do they hate us?” There is a fundamental challenge in that question, Bennis noted, that is at the root of our huge collective failure to recognize that our government’s actions have consequences.

For 60 years, she said, the U.S. has acted around the world with impunity—but not with innocence. According to Bennis, when Americans ask, “Why do they hate us?” they reveal that they never thought this country would pay a price for those policies. While the entire world was shocked by the attacks, she noted, only Americans were surprised. To understand why, Bennis said, this country needs to distinguish between the few perpetrators of the attacks and the huge numbers of impoverished people around the world who thought the attacks perhaps might wake up Americans. If the U.S. changes its policies, Bennis argued, the former will still exist, but they will have trouble finding sympathy and support from the latter.

Among the areas Bennis identified as leading to antagonism toward the U.S. is Washington’s support for Israel’s illegal military occupation. The U.S. gives 25 percent of its foreign aid budget to Israel, the 16th wealthiest nation in the world. When F-16 fighter jets, Merkava tank engines, tear gas canisters, and gunship missiles are all labeled “Made in USA,” Bennis said, Americans should not be surprised when Palestinians hold the U.S. accountable.

Another source of anti-U.S. sentiment, Bennis continued, is the sanctions policy against Iraq. Just as Americans watched the September attack over and over on television, she explained, people in the Arab world see dying Iraqi children every day. Prior to Sept. 11, she noted, the international anti-sanctions campaign had grown so strong that Secretary of State Colin Powell advocated “smart sanctions.” Since then, however, talk of whether Saddam Hussain will be the next target of the war on terrorism, even though there is no demonstrable link between Iraq and the September attacks, has pushed sanctions off the agenda, Bennis said.

From the beginning of the current Bush administration, she observed, there has been a visible split on U.S. policy toward Iraq between the Powell pragmatists and the ideologues represented by Under Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz. The difference, however, Bennis argued, is only over strategy, because both factions agree on the principle that U.S. domination in the area is necessary and right. Powell advocates coalitions maintained through coercion, force, and persuasion, she said, while Wolfowitz, Vice President Dick Cheney and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld prefer unilateralism.

An additional factor in “why they hate us,” according to Bennis, is U.S. arrogance. On one treaty after another—the International Court of War Crimes, Land Mines, the Convention on Rights of the Child, the Germ Warfare Convention—the U.S. has demanded and received crippling concessions, she said, but in the end voted against the treaty. The U.S. uses the U.N. to legitimate unilateral actions, Bennis charged, but has been in violation of the U.N. Charter since Oct. 7, when the bombing began in a far-off country in which none of the attackers were nationals.

On Sept. 11, 2001, 36,000 children (the daily average) were killed by poverty or war, as against 3,061 of “us.” To stop future terrorism, Bennis said, the U.S. should use its considerable resources to alleviate such suffering.

Jane Adas is a free-lance writer in the New York City metropolitan area.