A Lonely Battle For the Palestinians

by Marion Fitch

Looking back, it doesn’t seem that there was ever a time when I did not hear about Palestine and Palestinians. Probably it was because, although I was a U.S. citizen with an American father and British mother, I grew up in England, a colonialist country when Lawrence of Arabia was still a national hero. There were always students at my school who jingled lovely foreign bracelets and spoke wistfully of Arab souqs and Indian hill towns or—magic name!—the Kyber Pass with its fierce watchers, guns at the ready, not at all averse to firing on unwary travelers below them.

With relatives in Spain and Alexandria, Egypt, I was drawn inevitably to the Mediterranean, although I was not to meet a Palestinian for many years and, in fact, when I started on my travels I went first to Poland. But the Palestinians were struggling for their rights, twice proposed and twice betrayed (as the Poles were betrayed at Yalta), and they were very much in my mind when I was working in New York in 1948. I had been incredulous when, the year before, it was settled by one power, the United States, acting for another people, the Israelis-to-be, that Palestine was to be divided, the larger and more productive half going to Jews who were mainly European.

The third people, the Palestinians, who were the most concerned, were to be dealt with as envisaged by Britain’s Lord Arthur James Balfour when he said in 1919: “In Palestine we do not propose even to go through the form of consulting the wishes of the present inhabitants of the country, though the American Commission has been going through the form of asking what they are…Whatever deference should be paid to the views of those living there, the Powers in their selection of a mandatory do not propose, as I understand the matter, to consult them.”

Later, working at the U.S. Embassy in Rome, I had to learn to keep my mouth shut although the news from Palestine was worse all the time. In 1967 I was allowed to appeal, through the embassy news sheet, for medical aid and blankets for Palestinian refugees, but only one other person answered my call. The rest of the embassy staff sent their aid to Israel.

Luckily, English traveler Freya Stark put me in touch with an English couple stationed at the British embassy in Amman who were the founders of Medical Aid to Palestinians. Jordanian Airlines helped me get supplies through to the refugees. But I felt this was far from enough.

When I left government service under early retirement, therefore, I went back to Rome and found a job with a new office being opened at the Vatican whose purpose was to help the Palestinians and others in the Middle East. They had already set up offices in Beirut, Amman and Jerusalem and I was sent off to visit them and their dedicated staff members who were operating them against all odds. It was an enlightening experience and, fortunately, for every horror tale there was a good one of projects continued, food and medicine brought in, or children protected.

Those also were the days when Romans (and citizens throughout Italy) demonstrated long and hard for Palestinian independence, easily getting 10,000 people to fill the great piazzas. Amongst those demonstrators were large numbers of Palestinian students. Political leaders and PLO representatives (Italy had recognized the PLO) gave grand speeches and we chanted Siamo tanti, siamo qui, siamo tutti OLP (“We’re many, we’re here, we’re all PLO”).

During the same period, Israel was making Europe its battleground for the hunting of Palestinian intellectuals, shooting them down as terrorists whether or not they even knew how to use a gun. We lost several in Rome and out came the crowds. Meanwhile, of course, we organized fund-raising events and sent help however we could.

Archbishop Hilarion Cappucci, ex-prisoner of the Israelis, held a big meeting at his titular church of Santa Maria in Cosmedin, down by the Tiber, and I was mortified to find that all the Palestinians and Italians could sing “We Shall Overcome” but I, an American citizen since birth and now one of the few Americans present for the Archbishop’s meeting, didn’t know the song except as a name.

It was this feeling of being out of touch that helped motivate me to return to the States. There I found an astonishing change, from all the previous brief sojourns on leave when I had found no one who would listen to me describe the plight of the Palestinians. I first found my way to the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC), whose staff showed me all that they were doing. Then ex-Congressman Paul Findley, to whom I had written from Rome, introduced me to the grand duo who had turned the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs into something unique on the American scene. From then on, it seemed that everyone I met had something to do with Palestinians, their rights and needs, and justice and peace for them, and I didn’t need to feel out of step with my countrymen anymore.

Of course, I was hardly back before I went off to the Peace March in Jerusalem in 1989. Our plane was delayed, perhaps deliberately, and we weren’t even allowed to go into the city, where we were told the Israelis had been savagely beating the marchers for three hours. Next day I discovered what had happened to the 800-strong Italian delegation and to all of the other brave ones who had started out to serve peace among peoples and had found one side that had no intention of being peaceful. I found many friends, dejected or hurt, but did not know until later that the couple who had helped me from the British Embassy in Amman had been among the marchers.

It was a sickening beginning for our visit, which showed me how much worse things had become in the Holy Land itself. We stayed with Palestinians in Gaza and, to our eternal shame, ran from Israeli soldiers throwing gas bombs while Palestinian women came to their doors and waited calmly to give help where they could.

In the night we were awakened by Israeli soldiers stomping into the room to demand our passports. Alas, mine was in the pocket of a friend in another house. I had some qualms but must have frightened off the soldiers with a “stony British stare” because, after waiting interminably to see my friend’s passport, which she offered slowly, with her head turned from them, they “forgot” to ask again for mine. You can imagine the chagrin of our colleagues in the next house who had no such adventure, but I was secretly glad it had not ended in an Israeli jail cell.

There is no space left to tell of the kindness of all we met on that journey among the Palestinians. Since this was a “wake up” trip for the others, they were especially determined to “tell all,” including the hostile treatment at Tel Aviv airport where the men were strip-searched, had their film taken away, etc.

It merely confirmed me in my own effort to keep on working until our government recognizes that Palestinians, too, are human beings who also have an inalienable right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness in their own country. There still is a long way to go, but I believe that if we hold together and keep speaking out by every means to our fellow citizens and those in government, we shall yet see a Palestinian state in being.

Someone once wrote that the Poles, in their spiritual endurance, stand alone. I have seen, however, that the Palestinians share that capacity, and it is up to those of us in the United States who know the truth about the Israeli theft of the Palestinian nation to help make sure that all the deaths and sacrifices have not been in vain. No matter how long it takes, we can do no less.