Israel = Palestine

Yesterday I went on a trip inside Israel with a Palestinian friend of mine that lives and works in Israel.

We went to see Haifa and Jaffa. Along the way to Haifa I couldn't help myself wondering about the Palestinian villages that have disappeared when Israel was established in 1948. It is estimated that 350-550 Palestinians villages where cleared of its population and destroyed.
Whenever I saw an open piece of land, or a forest I asked myself: Maybe there used to be a village here? With such a great number of villages erased of the map, I knew we would be driving by some of them.
Tonight I had a look on a map displaying the depopulated villages and I found out that we passed many that day... I wasn't being a cynic or a pessimist, unfortunately. Strikingly, in some cases there used to be a village in exactly the same area as where I assumed them to be when 'fantasazing' about it in the car. I turned out to be right, horribly.

Haifa was pleasant. Up on mt. Carmel where the Jewish colonization of Haifa began we had a very beautiful view of the city and a nice stroll. The area was green, clean and organised. No signs of Palestine, a completely different world: Western, with shockingly naked women in the street... but at least no people staring at us too overtly.

After that we went downtown to see the Arab old city of Haifa: Wadi Nisnas. All of a sudden Nablus didn't seem that far away. Even the smells in the street were similar to those in Nablus: Palestine inside Israel. During its 60 year existence Israel has gone through a lot of effort to erase the country it was build upon: from the map, from the minds and from history even. Israel claims that there has never been such a thing as Palestine or Palestinian people: A land without a people, for a people without a land.

Driving through Israel I came to realize that Palestine is still everywhere in Israel, although largely covered under a thick layer of time. Old buildings tell the story of the Palestinian people for anyone ready to listen, they were the silent witnesses to the nakba, that drove out 85% of the people living in the territory upon which Israel was established.

After visiting Haifa we drove down the coast to see Jaffa, once the heart of Palestine, now a sad but beautiful hub for tourists that quickly want to consume some culture before they head back to the beach or the main shopping street in Tel Aviv.
Seeing Jaffa broke something inside of me. I've never had any real emotional difficulty in Palestine seeing or experiencing aspects of the situation, the ongoing colonialization and destruction of Palestine and its people. Until Jaffa. It made me feel sick to my bones.

I was in complete awe when I saw it. The old city of Jaffa is the most beautiful, most charming town of Palestine that I have seen. Strolling through its little streets and harbour the past lingers around you. It's not hard to imagine how life must have been here hundred years ago. The sincere atmosphere of any fishermen village was present there. My mind coloured the alleys with older men going to prayer, women selling fresh fish in the streets and children running around.

However, not anymore. The nakba expelled the people of Jaffa from their homes. Of its 70,000 inhabitants only 4,000 were able to stay and these people were forced to live in one neigborhood designated to them by Israel. The old city is now inhabited by Jewish Israelis and is flooded with Israeli art galleries and fancy restaurants. Hurds of ignorant Russian tourists trample the town day in, day out.
I studied them with great curiosity when I was there. I wondered whether they were aware of the fact that this used to be a Palestinian town and a home to so many Palestinian families. Would they know that the place where they were having dinner used to be a house, where some person in some refugee camp in the Middle East still dreams of going back to? Still holding the key to its property even though Israel illegally expropriated him decades ago...

Every street in the old city of Jaffa, every building, every stone almost, screams history. How do people, that are not willing to recognize the Palestinian suffering, reconcile that with the fact that Israel has only came into existence sixty years ago? Is it not quite logic that if you walk in Jaffa that you would come to the conclusion that this town exceeds the existence of Israel by far and wouldn't you then start to wonder about the people and the society that were there before? And then wouldn't you be likely to think about how and why these people don't live here anymore? Why this town features the Israeli flag all over the place? Apparently not.

This town was alive long before the idea of Israel even came to the minds of the atheistic zionists that established the state of Israel. Atheistic meaning that they didn't base their claims to this land on some holy book. Israel was not given to the jewish people for religious reasons and Israel was also not given to the jewish people because of the holocaust and World War II. Long before Hitler rose to power had the jewish people began settling in historic Palestine, strengthened by the declaration of the U.K. (Balfour declaration of 1922!!) that a jewish homeland was to be erected in this area.

Jaffa was really more than I could bare. I still feel the anger inside and this entire blog is written with that feeling as fuel. I do wonder though why it is this particular experience that has made me so enraged. I honoustly thought that I had seen and experienced quite a lot already. When I was being attacked by settlers in Hebron I didn't even react this strongly.

Maybe it's the complete denial of history here, the complete denial of truth. At least inside the West Bank, with every feature of occupation you clearly see the rotten face of it. Checkpoints are grey, ugly and depressing, the same can be said of the wall. Soldiers don't come across as your average nice guys, to say the least and to see the tormented city of Nablus makes you aware that life here is serious business.

In Jaffa, I think, it's the disguise of beauty and innocence that makes me sick. It's the complete cover-up of the history of Jaffa, and the fate of its people that I can not live with. It's one big ugly lie, black to the bone, but wrapped up in gold.. if you don't come too close, you won't notice its deceitful smell of decay.

I felt so relieved when I came back to Nablus, truly absurd. Most people here experience going through the checkpoint to enter Nablus, as entering a prison. Nablus gives them a feeling of restriction. For me it's almost the other way around, I feel comfortable being in Nablus. I know as a woman here you can not go anywhere you want, you can not drink alcohol in public... I honoustly don't give a shit. I don't feel free in Israel where all that ís possible, where you can drive with 160 km an hour over the freeway, where there are no nightly army incursions. I don't feel free seeing restaurants of Mc Donalds everywhere. And freedom for me is not necessarily about going out on the street whenever you want, dressed in whatever you want. It is part of my sense of freedom but not essential.

I feel truly free in an environment that reflects the principles that I stand for. I don't feel free in an environment surrounded by fake, corrupt and rotten principles, where you have to suppress everything you believe in... a society that suppresses everything I believe in. Freedom is more than being able to consume freely. In its soul freedom is standing for what you believe in and having the space to do so.

In Israel I feel I have to disguise my entire identity. I have to lie about what I'm doing here, where I live, and of course I have to deny everything I deeply believe in just to be able to get in to this country. I'm not allowed to exist as I am in this country. The word Palestine is not allowed to exist, especially at the Israeli airport... it's a big taboo. But even through all this neglect, suppression and denial, Palestine keeps popping back up. Israel = Palestine. Even if you don't want to see the signs, it doesn't mean they are not there.