Matthew
Huh
I’m
back in Jordan after eight days in Palestine. I was in Palestine as part of a
delegation to be in solidarity with and learn from those engaged in Palestinian
liberation. We visited and had dialogues with Palestinians and Israelis in
Bethlehem, Hebron, Jerusalem, Nablus, Ramallah and Sderot. We sat, listened to
and spoke with Christians, Jews, Muslims and non-believers. We went to the Gaza
border.
I
get paid to talk about the political, military, and economic. The questions I
asked, the notes I took, and the lenses through which I viewed the last eight
days in Palestine were geopolitical. Of course, human reality and experience
are never removed or divorced from those subjects; they are those subjects.
Many in the governments, media and think tanks in DC, London, Brussels, et.
al., forget or forsake that wisdom – a good explanation for how ruinous,
counter-productive and failed Western foreign policy is.
What
I just wrote, so pseudo-intellectually in that previous paragraph, is pablum.
What
matters is that just two days ago, I shook hands with a man, Hassan Abu Nasser,
who lost 130 members of his family in one single Israeli airstrike in Gaza.
You’ve never felt so helpless as shaking such a person’s hand. Unless, of
course, you are the one whose bloodline was nearly wiped out. I don’t know what
else to say about it.
Representatives
from civil society groups we met with believe the death toll from the genocide
in Gaza is between 100,000 and 200,000. Nearly all I spoke to in Palestine
spoke of Gaza with a cold and numb tenor and tone, the affect of accepting a
cruel and debauched reality.
In
the West Bank, according to UNRWA, since October 7th, 780 Palestinians have
been killed, 174 children among them. Settlers have killed an additional 21
Palestinians. There have been more than 3,500 attacks and incidents from
settlers, many of them beatings and burnings of agriculture and homes.
American-supplied Israeli rifles and bombs have wounded more than 5,000
Palestinians in the last 13 ½ months. Notably, there have been more than 100
airstrikes; airstrikes had not happened in the West Bank in more than 20 years.
18 of the 168 killed by Israeli warplanes and drones have been children. Before
October 7th, the Israeli military gunned down and killed, on average, more than
one Palestinian a day. In the first ten months of 2023, Israeli soldiers murdered
nearly 50 children in the West Bank. Yet, many in the US believe history
started on October 7th, 2023.
We
cannot compare to Gaza, nothing can, but the violence against Palestinians in
the West Bank is at its highest levels in more than 20 years and worsening.
It
matters that we sat with Fakhri and Amneh in a trailer next to a demolished
home in Jerusalem. Their home and 15 others have been destroyed this year in
their neighborhood of Silwan to make way for Israeli settlements. Their
children and grandchildren had lived with them. That was the home where Fakhri
was born. Now he and Amneh live defiantly in a trailer on that land, next to
their home’s rubble and the desecrated trees, their children and grandchildren
scattered and gone. The Israeli government served a $10,000 bill to pay the
costs of their home’s destruction. If Fakhri doesn’t pay, he’ll be arrested and
his bank account seized. A demolition order has been received for the trailer
they live in now.
Fakhri
and Amneh are attacked at night. The trailer has been raided by soldiers and
settlers, their possessions destroyed, Fakhri arrested. Not once or twice, but
continuously, most auspiciously, the day Trump was elected. They came at 3am.
Their son was beaten. They took Fakhri. Seven homes in the neighborhood were
demolished on US election day; anyone willing to wager that was a mere
coincidence? More than 100 homes in Silwan have pending demolition orders.
1,500 people live in them.
Since
1947, Israel has demolished 173,000 homes and structures in the West Bank. In
2023, nearly 1,400 buildings were razed. Demolition orders have increased 400%
since January. In Jerusalem alone this year, 183 structures have been
demolished, 33 in Fakhri and Amneh’s neighborhood. According to UNRWA, over the
last 13 months, 5,000 Palestinians have been displaced from home demolitions,
Israeli military operations and settler attacks in the West Bank. Coupled with
the terrorism of the Israeli state through its American-financed military and
settlers, the home demolitions are the means of ethnically cleansing the West
Bank in preparation for eventual annexation. Most understand that October 7th
gave Israel its best opportunity for ethnic cleansing, genocide and annexation
in decades.
Fakrhi
speaks to us, Amneh doesn’t.
They
cannot sleep. They expect the soldiers and settlers every night. Fakhri says,
more than once, he is physically and mentally tired and sick.
“We
live by paying fines and penalties, and spending time in jail. We have no hope,
no sumud; nothing is sustaining us…only trying to keep our kids alive”, he
says. It’s a hopelessness and exhaustion I heard throughout Palestine, most
especially from those with children. I have witnessed the famed steadfastness
of the Palestinians, and I have heard testimonies of radical acts of hope. Yet,
I saw a fracturing of spirit and a fatalistic acceptance of reality I had not
known before. More than one father told me what he wants is only to get his
children to safety. 80 years of apartheid, annexation and annihilation will
take their toll.*
Countless
representatives of governments, international organizations and NGOs have
visited Fakhri and Amneh. I sat in the same spot on their couch where Hans
Wechsel, the US Embassy’s Chief of Palestinian Affairs, sat. [It should be
noted that Wechsel’s two previous postings before taking over Palestinian
Affairs in Jerusalem were advising US generals and directing Middle East
counter-terrorism operations. Such a militarized and imperial view he brought
into their home.]
Of
their many high-ranking visitors, Fakhri says: “They are all liars.”
I
didn’t hear anything more true during my nine days in Palestine.
*Israel’s
strategy of breaking Palestinian resistance through terror and brutality may
work on individuals and specific families, but overall their occupation and
subjugation will encounter only deepening resistance. For those who want a
historical example, I recommend watching The Battle of Algiers.
Of
all of the people and places of these last nine days in Palestine, what matters
most to me, what makes me break down sitting on this hotel bed in Madaba, the
first time I have cried this week over Palestine, is the mother’s eyes I looked
into in Ramallah. I’ve previously written and spoken of such eyes, specifically
in Palestine. I’ve seen it in Afghanistan, Iraq and the US as well, mothers’
eyes clouded with the betrayal of it all – humanity, life, God – and their
bodies besieged with a pain whose depths cannot be comprehended until a part of
it transfers to you when you hold them.
Layan
Nasir is a 24-year-old Palestinian Christian woman. I note her faith because
many in the US and the West are unaware that Christians endure Israel’s
apartheid, annexation and annihilation equally with Muslims. A student at
Beirzeit University, Layan, has been held without charge for eight months. Her
family has no idea why she was arrested, no explanation has ever been given,
and if there was, certainly no evidence would be offered. They have not seen or
heard from her. In December, again without explanation or charge, Layan’s
detention can be extended. 
Layan
Nasir. Photo: social media.Being held indefinitely without charge is called
administrative detention. In this manner, more than 5,500 Palestinians in the
West Bank are held in Israeli military prisons, including more than 350
children. Nearly 100 other women are in prison with Layan. In total, more than
12,000 Palestinians from the West Bank are in Israeli prisons, more than at any
point since the First Intifada, which ended 31 years ago. Four imprisoned
college students from Nablus are among those who actually have charges. As
related to us by their friends at An-Najah University, the Israeli army
arrested the four boys for posting about Gaza on Instagram. They have been in
prison for four months now.
In
Gaza, thousands upon untold thousands of Palestinians have been kidnapped,
detained, tortured and executed in Israeli prisons. This week, we learned that
more than 310 doctors and nurses in Gaza have been detained, tortured and
executed since October 7th. 1,000 more Palestinian doctors and nurses have been
murdered by American-supplied bullets, bombs, shells and missiles, many in the
hospitals and healthcare facilities where they cared for the sick, wounded and
dying.
Palestinian
life in East Jerusalem and the West Bank is entirely under Israeli military
control. Arrests, trials, with a 99.7% conviction rate, and prisons are all
military. Palestinians live under more than 16,000 Israeli military laws and
regulations – nothing else matters. The Oslo Accords’ demarcation of the West
Bank into areas A, B and C is practically and ultimately meaningless. Such is
occupation.
Layan’s
mother, Lulu, believes her daughter is well. That’s what she said to us. I want
to believe her, but I cannot. The documentation from the UN, human rights
groups, including the Israeli human rights group B’T Selem, journalists, and
Palestinian testimony tells us otherwise. Israel conducts mass, deliberate and
systematic torture, including rape and sexual abuse against Palestinian
prisoners. That didn’t start after October 7th; it has been Israeli state
policy since Israel’s inception in 1948 – there’s even a Wikipedia page devoted
to it.
The
night Layan was taken from her parents’ home, a soldier pointed his weapon at
Lulu and said: “be quiet or we will shoot you.” When her father tried to
protect his daughter, a rifle was put in his face. That was the last they saw
Layan.
Lulu’s
final words to our delegation were: “My only daughter. She is my sister, my
daughter, my everything.”
If
for no reason other than I met this woman and saw her pain, knowing that Layan
is only one of more than 12,000 held and tortured in Israeli prisons, I ask
every one of you to contact your governments and demand her release. They will
most assuredly do nothing, especially if you are an American. But for a mother
and to be in solidarity with all Palestinians, I ask you to speak out for
Layan.
It
is important for people to travel to Palestine to be in solidarity with the
Palestinian people. I say this for two reasons.
First,
it allows us to stand in defiance and dissent against our government’s
policies.
The
second and more important is that it seemed as if every Palestinian we met with
told us how important it was for people to come to Palestine. The solidarity
shown to them means everything to them. It tells them they are not alone and
not forgotten. It offers some protection for the Palestinians as well, as the
Israeli military and settlers may be less likely to attack and harass
Palestinians if international representatives are present. However, in the last
year, the restraint shown by the Israeli military, border police and settlers
towards internationals has greatly diminished.
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