There is an oft-told Palestinian allegory about a family who complained
their house was small and cramped. In response, the father brought
the farm animals inside - the goat, the sheep and the chickens all
crowded into the house.
Then, one by one, he moved the animals back outside. By the time the
last chicken left, the family felt such relief they never complained
of the lack of elbow room again.
No doubt, the recent release of Palestinian tax receipts by Israel,
some of which will be used to pay Palestinian civil servants who received
only partial wages for the last 16 months, felt like the last chicken
leaving.
Fundamental changes might appear to be afoot with all the recent releases
- of salary payments, of BBC reporter Alan Johnston and of about 3
percent of Palestinian political prisoners held in Israeli jails.
The problem is, Israel's military occupation means most households
are still full of goats and sheep. Nothing really has changed. Palestinians
remain living in conditions of ceaseless physical and economic insecurity.
Israel continues its incursions into the open-air prison that is the
Gaza Strip. Israel's armed forces and settlers continue to kill Palestinians
- including civilians and those suspected (not tried and convicted)
of anti-occupation activity.
According to the United Nations, during the last week of June, Israeli
forces killed 20 Palestinians, including two children, injured 47
and arrested 87 in the West Bank and Gaza.
Palestinian families, moreover, are straining under a load of debt
accumulated during more than a year of sanctions, living on land cut
off from fields and jobs by Israeli checkpoints and the separation
barrier. For those stuck in Gaza, the United Nations has warned of
"increasing concerns of shortage of essential food commodities."
The Palestinian Ministry of Health reports 81 items on its essential
drugs list are out of stock while low reserves are reported for another
43 items. This is the same place where half the population is under
age 18 and 80 percent of the population lives under the national poverty
line.
In a non-lethal, but still indicative episode in June, Israeli soldiers
arrested 18-year old Khaled, an active volunteer at a youth center
in a Bethlehem refugee camp. Soldiers plucked the teenager from the
center where he was teaching folk dancing to a group of younger children.
Khaled was detained five hours, during which time he was beaten, his
hands bound and his head covered with a sack, while settlers watched
and soldiers snapped his picture. He passed through this ordeal one
day before he was meant to take the last exam of his first year in
college.
That Palestinian death-by-occupation is ignored continually and young
men are humiliated, harassed and turned into souvenir photos may no
longer be surprising, but it is no less worthy of mention and concern.
These conditions are troubling not only because poverty, denied freedom
of movement, arbitrary arrest and extrajudicial killings are inhumane
and immoral. The conditions merit notice because ignoring Palestinian
suffering is not in anyone's long-term interest.
A young man whose education is interrupted and dignity is wounded
may rethink his hitherto non-militant engagement in social service.
Children whose parents cannot provide them with enough food will be
muddle-headed students and feeble leaders and citizens in the future.
Families who watch sick relatives weaken because the Israeli occupation
has cut off their medicine may find succor in whatever religious organization
can alleviate their pain, even if it means giving up on this life
and looking for a noble way to the next.
A U.S. policy focused on quashing Hamas, isolating the Gaza Strip,
and supporting Mahmoud Abbas will solve nothing so long as all Palestinians
under occupation are prohibited from living safe and secure lives.
The international community must take real steps to end the occupation.
The relief that comes from kicking out the occasional chicken is not
enough.
----
An anthropologist writing a book about Palestinian nationalism, Lori
Allen is an academy scholar at the Harvard Academy for International
and Area Studies and an editor of Middle East Report. - www.merip.org.
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