Following Visit to Gaza, Delay at Erez Checkpoint, Edward Said Recommends “A Certain Kind of Courage”

By Sr. Elaine Kelley

Edward Said’s first visit to Gaza in six years ended with a two-hour delay at the Israeli Erez checkpoint on the Israel/Gaza border and provided the substance of his remarks at a Sabeel Liberation Theology Center book-launching event in Jerusalem on March 15 where he was the invited guest.

Sabeel, an ecumenical Christian center in Jerusalem which promotes liberation theology as a way to make the Gospel contextually relevant to Palestinian Christians, hosted the gathering at East Jerusalem’s YWCA to announce the publication of Holy Land, Hollow Jubilee: God, Justice and the Palestinians. The book is a compilation of the papers from the Third International Conference of Sabeel held at Bethlehem University in February 1998 where Said was the keynote speaker (see the Washington Report, April 1998).

Hosting the event were the book editors, Rev. Naim Ateek, director of Sabeel, and Rev. Michael Prior, a Bible scholar from St. Mary’s College in London who opened with remarks describing the 1998 Sabeel gathering as a “carefully chiseled conference” and an example of Sabeel’s significant achievement in “embracing all wings of the Christian church.”

The Erez checkpoint separates Israel from the Gaza Strip. During the intifada, Erez was the site of many violent clashes between Israeli soldiers and Palestinian youth and, peace deals notwithstanding, continues to be a sore spot to Palestinians who must wait in long lines when leaving or entering the Strip. It is still the site of frequent confrontations.

Erez also serves as the preferred meeting ground for high-level talks, such as the October 1998 meeting of U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, Palestinian President Yasser Arafat and Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu.

Most of those in attendance for the book launch—area NGO representatives, church leaders and educators—waited over two hours for Said to arrive from Gaza.

Others in attendance included international and local activists such as Gospel singer Garth Hewitt, who works with the Greenbelt Festival, an organization promoting Third World and environmental issues.

Human rights lawyer Jonathan Kuttab shared some ideas before Said’s arrival, comparing the present situation in the Palestinian community to Isaiah’s “cracked cisterns that don’t hold any water.” Kuttab told the audience that people had “placed our faith in false hopes in the Oslo process, this uneven yoke that has tied and captivated the Palestinian leadership in uncomfortable, unwieldy partnership with their oppressors.”

Upon arriving, Edward Said shared some perceptions of his experience at Erez, saying that he had not been to Gaza since the summer of 1993, though he had tried a couple of times to visit but either could not get the required permission from Israel or that the borders had been closed. “So this was an important visit,” he said.

He explained that he was not singled out for harassment at Erez but was caught up in a line of cars trying to leave Gaza Strip through “four or five checkpoints.” He described the changes in Gaza, the absence of Israeli soldiers, and “the sense that the place is slightly more open,” but also called it “very disheartening,” referring to “that thing at Erez” which suggests one is “entering a prison.”

He said it was particularly striking to observe large numbers of Palestinian workers returning to Gaza from Israel walking “through a cattle ramp in the darkness,” a reference to the way in which Palestinians are herded from buses on the Israeli side of the checkpoint through a narrow passage around the checkpoint area and into the Gaza Strip. “The treatment of Palestinians is so blatant,” Said stated, adding, “I’ve never seen it put on TV in the West.

“If you are a VIP you don’t have to go through it,” Said said in reference to the special status provided the Palestinian Authority, adding, “and to make people do this as a result of a peace agreement suggests a lack of care.”

Said stated that the political visions of the past 50 years “have produced a monstrosity,” what Hobbs called a “state of nature,” he said. He elaborated on the concept of the “absence of care,” the loss of purpose through militarization, dictatorship and loss of democracy and suggested that people need to concentrate on the cultivation of values, ethics and “a commitment to a kind of decency that had no place in the struggle of the past several decades. As the book suggests, it has been a hollow 50 years.”

Said told his audience of an unexpected phone call he received four months ago from New York Times Magazine deputy editor Harvey Shapiro, a man Said describes as someone about to retire, who has had a supportive connection to Israel all his life. Shapiro, who has worked for The New York Times for over 40 years, told Said that he had heard about Said’s writings on the failure of the peace process and asked him to submit an article. Said told his listeners, “I couldn’t believe The New York Times would be interested.”

Shapiro said he had believed the state of Israel to be an answer to the problems of the Jewish people. “But quite frankly I think the whole thing has failed,” Said quoted Shapiro as saying, adding that Harvey Shapiro’s words were “a significant admission for someone like him to make.” Said also told the audience that The New York Times published his article unchanged. “The One-State Solution” appeared in the Jan. 10 issue.

Said’s remarks led to an open dialog among people in attendance on appropriate actions to take in view of a failed peace process. Reverend Ateek made the comment that “we’re all groping for strategy, vision, and guidance,” and invited ideas and questions. A physician from Nablus commented on the lack of a “Palestinian narrative,” and a young woman who described herself as “an Israeli Arab peace activist” complained of “immense apathy” among Palestinians and a world that believes wrongly in a peace process that isn’t working.

“It’s a difficult moment,” said Edward Said, elaborating on the immediate difficulty of a world which believes there is a peace process and thinks, “Your leaders are going to the World Bank, getting money, there are meetings, negotiations, so why are you continuing to complain?”

For his part, Said told the group, “That’s where the role of witness is very important.” He said that he himself had “never felt utter defeat and hopelessness” and that it was very important for “citizens to refuse to accept an unacceptable situation.”

He used as an example the mass act of nonviolent defiance by 1,500 Lebanese students in February in Arnoun, Lebanon, when Israeli forces erected barbed wire around the village after dynamiting 21 houses. “Something happened and they charged the wires,” Said said, noting that the students charged even knowing that the area could have been mined.

They tore down the wire and later the authorities in Beirut repaired water and road networks in the village. “It’s not about having arms,” Said told them. “It’s a certain kind of courage, a certain kind of confrontation.”

(Editor’s note: Israeli forces have subsequently reoccupied Arnoun, but the whole saga of Israeli seizure, Lebanese student liberation, and Israeli military reoccupation has received international media coverage, even in the U.S.)

Ongoing Sabeel activities include the newsletter Cornerstone, Bible study and youth events. The organization has announced that the Fourth International Sabeel Conference will be held in the year 2001 in Jerusalem. The theme will be “Two Thousand Years of Christian Heritage in the Middle East.”

Sr. Elaine Kelley is an American grant researcher and ESL instructor at Bethlehem University.