The power of humour

Palestine... how good it is to be back, how hard it is to be back. I've arrived almost a week ago from Egypt... but in this week I've seen it all again. I visited almost every city in Palestine: Jerusalem, Ramallah, Nablus, Bethlehem, Jenin, Hebron and on top of that I've ran into all the features of the Israeli occupation, again... The checkpoints, the settlers, the wall, the refugees, the violence, the roadblocks, the random arrests, the economic hardships of the Palestinians, the personal stories of traumas and suffering. It is all too much. All too much to mention in a blog like this. But let me try to give you a clue of what I've been through and of what people go through here on a day to day basis.

The second day I was back, I went to Bethlehem. When I was sitting in the service (the shared taxi) and we passed an Israeli settlement close to Ramallah, I all of a sudden heard the loud and upsetting noise of a stone against the window I was sitting behind. A stone. I saw a settler man standing in the distance looking at me very upset. I was too surprised to realize what had just happened and wasn't really shocked or scared, because it's just beyond imagination that such a thing can happen if you're simply sitting in a car.

In Bethlehem I visited a Palestinian family. During the nice chit-chat, the mother of the family recalled old memories of the first and second Intifada. How her children had been screaming every time her house was invaded by Israeli soldiers. And how one soldier one time tried to make the children feel more comfortable by trying to get the children to shake his hands. Normal stories, nothing special... at least not here in Palestine.
From the window of their building she showed me their neighbor's house that had been completely demolished by the Israeli army, because the father of that family had been a resistance fighter. The house was being rebuild with financial help of Hizbollah.

On friday I went to Bil'in to join in the weekly protest against the building of the separation wall that steals 60% of the land of the village. For four years now the villagers have been demonstrating against this, largely non-violently (except for stone-hurling by some local youths), largely without success... even though the Israeli high court has decided that the route of the wall needed to be changed a little in favour of the people in Bil'in.
Can you imagine that these people try to walk up to the wall every week. Every week with both hands in the air, and their fingers making the peace sign. Every week just trying to get to the wall, to talk with the soldiers, to let their voices be heard. Every week these attempts are met with the most outrageous violence from the side of the Israeli army. Tear gas granades are fired, often accompanied with rubber-coated or even live bullets, sound weapons are used to disperse the crowd, because Palestinians are not allowed to demonstrate... not even non-violently.
When I was there I walked up with the villagers and stood right next to the gate that prevents the Palestinians from reaching their land and the site where the wall is being built. After the Palestinian made it clear that they came in peace the Israeli soldiers made it perfectly clear that they just want the Palestinians to rest in peace and started firing tear gas granades right away. Please note that at this point not a single stone was being thrown by the protesters at the gate. After the first two tear gas grenades were being fired into the air, the next ones were being fired right at us... with a dazzling speed they came in our direction. Luckily everyone managed to escape them, because if such a thing hits you, you will suffer from serious burns.
A few minutes later most of the first ranks of protesters were hit by the teargas and had to pull back, including me. Quite a dangerous situation, because the teargas and the effects it has on your body make you completely forget about the entire situation around you. It burns on your face and you can not see and all you care about is to get rid of that feeling. But in the meantime the teargas is still being fired and you're not paying attention where it is being fired, because you've stopped to care. It was the first time I was being targeted and confronted with violence so directly. But I didn't realize that until I was lying in my bed at night. It felt so familiar, so normal. I wasn't scared at all. I just ran in all directions to escape the grenades as if it was the most common thing to do.
All my respect to the people that go through this process at least once a week.

In the past few days I went to visit Bethlehem and Hebron with some friends. We had rented an Israeli license plate car and went on the Palestinian road to Bethlehem (not through Jerusalem, because that is not allowed for Palestinians... and one of us was Palestinian, although with an American passport that contains a stamp stating that this passport is not valid in Israel!!) We were nearly in Bethlehem when we were stopped at the Wadi Nar checkpoint. The soldiers told us that we couldn't pass this checkpoint because of the Israeli car. Complete nonsense, because Israeli cars pass there all the time. But nothing worked on them, so in the end we had to turn around and go back. Rejected at a checkpoint. We had to go back all the way to a big Israeli settlement to use the (settler) passing there into Jerusalem (to reach Bethlehem inside the West Bank). Illegally smuggling the Palestinian in our car into so-called Israel. All this makes you feel like a criminal, even though we had no bad intentions and were not really doing anything wrong and we didn't even want to go inside 'Israel'. All we wanted to do was visit some nice places and hang out as friends do all over the world.

After that we went to crazy Hebron (the only city with violent Israeli settlers living inside a Palestinian city, terrorizing the local population)... always crazy, always violent and bizarre... so of course we ran into extraordinary situations here. But let me not go into all the details here. Just think of checkpoints around every corner in the old city, a lot of bizarre questioning by Israeli soldiers, such as: What is your religion? If you give the 'right' answer you can pass... and a Palestinian population desperate to survive and trying to persuade you to buy their products because there's simply no customers.

In the evening we visited Dheisheh refugee camp where we met with the amazing general generosity of Palestinian people. Living in the camp, right next to the entrance they had been through a lot. Torture, arrests, attempted assasinations, being held under (tank) fire, having Israeli soldiers "camp" at their roof, seeing their friends being killed... you name it.

When we went back to Ramallah there was a traffic jam about 1km away from Qalandia. After a while we came to realize that it was most likely something of a checkpoint. I had never seen such a thing and was a bit worried. We saw guys with flashlights, casually dressed wearing hoods and shorts. What was going on? Then we saw the guys, which seemed to be Ethiopian jews, checking people's passports and wearing machine guns. What the FCK?!? What to do? Turn around and risk being shot at? Wait our turns and risk being shot at? You just don't know what is possible. They didn't look trustworthy to say the least. The line began to shrink until there were only one or two cars in front of us and all of a sudden an Israeli police car drove by. It didn't stop, nor did it slow down... but the armed guys immediately got into their car and drove away as if nothing had happened. We were shocked. The most bizarre thoughts ran through our heads. Who were these guys? It seemed as if it were just settlers that had put up their own checkpoint and when the police saw them they knew they had to go. And as if the police didn't really disapprove, so they just drove by, giving them a silent sign to go, to prevent them from being arrested. I still don't really know, but it was pretty fcked up scary.

Today when I reached Huwarra checkpoint in the service from Ramallah there was a huge army presence around the checkpoint. I saw all different kinds of armed vehicles and wondered what was going on. When we approached I saw a shitload of soldiers surrounding a couple of blind-folded and handcuffed Palestinians. In the parkinglot I asked a man what was going on. He told me that a few settlers had begun throwing stones at Palestinians close to the checkpoint. Then the army came and the soldiers accused the Palestinians of throwing stones, giving them a "legitimate" reason to arrest them. Sadly this is quite normal as well. Whenever there's settler violence against Palestinians the Israelis like to put the blame on the actual victims of that situation.

And then there's still too much other stuff. Too much... literally. How to deal with this? How to deal with being exposed to the reality of violence and occupation. To be honest... a lot of times you don't really know, a lot of times you're quite okay, but in the deepest moments when you feel you've really been exposed too intensely there's one thing that helps: humour.

The power of humour is astonishing. Who told us that it is impossible to be scared and laugh your head of at the same time? Why can't things that are depressingly sad not be extremely funny as well?
The guys in Dheisheh camp told us their stories with so much humour, irony and charm that it was almost impossible not to laugh. I couldn't stop laughing when one of them told me when he had been dragged outside his house and tortured by soldiers, when he was not wearing much more than his underwear, he managed to sneak inside when they were distracted for a second to, as he said it, "put on some nice cloths"....
After our freaky ninja-settler checkpoint experience we were almost crying of laughter, because of what we had just encountered. Joking around about all the things that could have happened if the police hadn't passed by.

In Bil'in when me and a small group of not even 10 people went up again for a second encounter with the Israeli soldiers, we sat down behind a small wall... sitting in the sun, surrounded by beautiful olive trees and we were singing (Arabic protest songs)... singing and clapping and smiling... as the teargas grenades fired over our heads. A small bubble of sincere happiness in an extremely depressing setting of violence and prolonged injustice and suffering.

This is how I cope, this is what makes it all worth it. Laughing, enjoying, having fun, smiling. All the things that the Israeli army doesn't want Palestinians to do. This is the core of the Palestinian resilience I've talked about before... Sumud.. steadfastness... all made possible by the relativating power of humour.