UN-Truth

In Ramallah, the truth is, one does not feel the worst effects of the Israeli military occupation — most of the time.

But, those who lived here during the re-invasion of Palestinian cities in the West Bank still see the ghosts of the huge Israeli tanks tearing up the pavement and rolling through the streets, turrets swiveling, as they rolled to positions which became dug-in as the weeks went by. There were curfews and fear, a lot of shooting, and death. The Palestinian presidential headquarters in the Muqata’a in Ramallah was partly destroyed with then-leader Yasser Arafat still inside. Israeli leaders made periodic threats to go in and finish him off. But Arafat left only for his death in a Paris hospital in November 2004.

Today, Ramallah celebrated Natural Cultural Day — with hardly a mention of the total closure of the West Bank imposed in a surprise decision 36 hours earlier.

In fact, the total closure hardly had an impact, except for those who had a rare permit, or plans for travel to Jerusalem or points further toward the Mediterranean Sea — every day is a total closure for most people of the Israeli-occupied West Bank.

Tonight’s Palestinian Culture day celebrated the memory late Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish, whose last public appearance was July 2008 in the Ramallah Cultural Palace built with Japanese donor funds by the then-Minister of Culture, Yasser Abed Rabbo.

Tonight, Yasser Abed Rabbo, was in the front center seat, and presided over the event in the Cultural Palace as Executive Secretary of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO). His wife, Liana Bader, sitting beside him, is well-known Palestinian novelist, and a cultural activist. Next to them were Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad and his wife.

Only a few weeks after Mahmoud Darwish’s last public appearance, he died — in Texas — as a result of complications following heart surgery. Darwish was buried on the high hill — perhaps the highest point in Ramallah, from which there is a clear view to some of the high new buildings of Jerusalem — right next to the Ramallah Cultural Palace.

At the opening of the event, there was a brief video of a performance Marcel Khalife, the Lebanese singer and oud player who has sung many of Mahmoud Darwish’s poems. One of the post-award Palestinian performers sang a Marcel Khalife’s version of one of these poems: Jawaaz Safar (Passport) — a vital document that many Palestinians still don’t have.

The Jubraan Quartet of oud players, who had played with Mahmoud Darwish at his last presentation, in the Cultural Palace in July 2008, just weeks before his death, played some of the same tunes.

Hassan Khader, a Palestinian writer with a personal interest in the study of Israeli literature, head of the Mahmoud Darwish Foundation, who recently returned to Ramallah, announced the prizes. Yasser Abed Rabbo made the presentation, with Salam Fayyad, Presidential Advisor Tayyib Abdur Rahim, and two other figures joining them on the stage.

Prize winners were (1) Breyten Breytenbach of Cape Town, South Africa — who was jailed in South Africa for opposing Apartheid and violating Apartheid laws.  Breytenbach, wearing a red Mao-style jacket, sat next to Fatah Central Committee member Mohammed Dahlan, and Hanan Ashrawi sat next to him. Ahdaf Souif, a (female) Egyptian writer (2) was awarded the prize in her absence.

Among the several Palestinian donors who contributed to the financial prizes were: Bank of Palestine – $50,000 dollars; Al-Quds Bank – $20,000; Bil’in Anti-Wall committee – $100; Al-Amary Palestinian refugee camp committee – $100: and others.

The event was broadcast live on Palestinian television, but there were problems and frequent break-ups in either the transmission — or maybe it was with my satellite reception.

“As I stand here tonight, I bring with me the greetings and solidarity of the writers who came with me [on an earlier visit in 2002, when he and other writers read with Mahmoud Darwish], and of thousands of other writers around the world. You are not alone. The understanding and solidarity of your cause is growing. People know of you, and think of you … ”

Breytenbach said he asked Mahmoud Darwish to think of him as his Palestinian brother, and told the audience: “You must be a great people to produce a poet like that…You must be a great people. I know it’s not easy…”

He then presented a gift: “Our two countries have a history together of stones. They have been used for many different purposes. But a stone is perhaps the oldest and closest companion of humanity”. Breytanbach showed a stone he found on a beach — the weight and size of a heart, it may also have been a very ancient tool”. He showed that it was painted on different sides the colors of the Palestinian flag: green, white, black and red. Breytenbach issued an appeal “to my fellow writers around the world, each to bring a stone when they come to visit Palestine, as a sign of solidarity”. He said he had visited the grave of Mahmoud Darwish last night — and had taken away a stone, in memory.

According to Wikipedia, Breytenbach “studied fine arts at the University of Cape Town and became a committed opponent of the policy of apartheid. He left South Africa for Paris in the early 1960s. When he married a French woman of Vietnamese ancestry, he was not allowed to return: The Prohibition of Mixed Marriages Act (1949) and The Immorality Act (1950) made it a criminal offence for a white person to have any sexual relations with a person of a different race … In France he was a founder member of Okhela, a resistance group fighting apartheid in exile. On an illegal trip to South Africa in 1975 he was betrayed (by the ANC who mistrusted him), arrested and sentenced to seven years of imprisonment for high treason: his work The True Confessions of an Albino Terrorist describes aspects of his imprisonment. Released in 1982 as a result of massive international intervention he returned to Paris and obtained French citizenship. He currently divides his time between Europe, Africa, and the United States.” This can be read in full here.

A biographical note posted on the New York University website heresays: “From 1975- 1982, he was a political prisoner serving two terms of solitary confinement in South African prisons”.

An entry on the South African history site, here, states that Breytenbach “began his tertiary studies at the University of Cape Town in 1958. His opposition to apartheid saw him leave South Africa for Paris in 1960. In 1962 he married Yolande Ngo Thi Hoang Lien, a Viëtnamese national. His first published work, in 1964, Die Ysterkoei Moet Sweet (The Iron Cow Must Sweat), broke new ground in Afrikaans poetry as ‘powerful and startling ideas are presented without the use of traditional rhythmic metres and attractive images’ (Joyce). When Breytenbach returned clandestinely to South Africa in 1975, he was swiftly arrested. He pleaded guilty to entering South Africa to start an organization, Atlas or Okhela, intended to be the white wing of the ANC. Charged with treason under the draconian Terrorism Act, he was sentenced in the Pretoria Supreme Court to nine years in prison. Even while in prison Breytenbach was prolific, writing five volumes of poetry and English prose. An example is his prison memoir Confessions of an Albino Terrorist(1980). After his release in 1982 he left South Africa for France and became a French citizen … In December 1993 Breytenbach — still living in self-imposed exile in Paris — paid a visit to the ‘new South Africa’. This visit contrasted sharply with the fiasco of his furtive return in 1975, the catastrophe of his arrest, excruciating ‘show trial’, and the two years spent alone in a cell directly adjoining Pretoria Central’s death row”.

Breytenbach writes mainly in Afrikaans, but sometimes also in English. A review of Breytenbach’s book of reflections upon the death of Mahmoud Darwish — with whom, it says, he shared a friendship of four decades before Darwish’s death — can be read here.

On 7 April 2002, from Paris, Breytenbach wrote An Open Letter To General Ariel Sharon, in which he said: “Should it interest you, I’m a writer born in South Africa now living and working abroad. For some time back there I also grew up among a ‘chosen people who behaved as Herrenvolk–as all those who believe themselves singularized by suffering or entrusted with a special mission from God. I apologize if my comparative allusion to Israel as Herrenvolk hurts because of the echoes from a recent past when, in Europe, so many Jews were the victims of a ‘final solution’. But how else is one to attempt describing the comportment of your armies when one is flooded by the horror of what you’re doing? … Apartheid was not Nazism, though to say so was a striking slogan. And the policies now perpetrated by Israeli forces on the Palestinian people should not be equated with Apartheid. Each one of these processes and systems is evil enough to merit a thorough description of its own historical singularity. And yet… There are similarities and differences: This blind competition, on both sides, to be recognized as more-victim-than-thou; cloaking atrocities in the ‘divine’ right to self-defense; the shameless manipulation of perceptions and the mendacious lying; the concomitant brutalization of your own society; the disdain shown for the humanity of the Palestinians–indeed, denying even the most elementary humane treatment to a terrified and trapped civilian population… As was the case with the South African regime, the preferred methods by which you hope to subjugate the enemy consist of force and bloodshed and humiliation … your settlements are armed colonies built on land shamelessly stolen from the Palestinians, festering there as shards in their flesh, or snipers’ nests, intended to thwart and annul any possibility of Palestinian statehood … Recently, I had the opportunity of visiting the territories for the first time. (And yes, I’m afraid they can reasonably be described as resembling bantustans–for only too often are they reminiscent of the ghettos and controlled camps of misery one knew in South Africa.) I only glimpsed Israel briefly, upon entering and then later leaving after spending a night in the opulent but dismally deserted David Intercontinental Hotel of Tel Aviv. You may say my view is fatally one-sided. Perhaps. Though one is always within sight of Israeli demarcation lines, checkpoints, tanks and armed outposts in the West Bank. I wondered, are your two peoples really all that different? … The few days I spent there, with the delegation of the International Parliament of Writers, left me with a mixed bag of strong but conflicting impressions. How small Palestine is! How inextricably linked your peoples are. The stones everywhere. The topography of names familiar from the Bible.  The beautiful light … How abysmally sad the villages are, reminding one of the lifeless and apathetic towns of East Germany. The green lights in the mosques and all the unfinished habitations. The ugliness of the architecture everywhere–the ubiquitous light-gray limestone building blocks. The inanity of your occupation–all those lit-up detour roads built for the exclusive use of settlers and Israeli citizens. The surly pettiness of your controls at checkpoints, having little to do with security and everything with the primitive urge to humiliate, frustrate, harass and drive to insane rage an occupied population. The extreme youth of your soldiers, and sadly they are so obviously well-cultivated boys and girls. The ruthless rapaciousness with which you destroy the possible Palestinian economy and steal their goods. The ancient revenge — bulldozing houses, destroying olive groves. The equally primitive sight of armed positions under camouflage netting and Israeli flags in commandeered houses … The old kerchiefed women in some refugee camp screaming that you, Sharon, will never make them move, that they chased away your soldiers ‘like dogs’. Proffering abuse, also, at the spineless Arab states and the cowardice of their own Palestinian Authority. The ebullience of the intellectuals and artists under siege in Ramallah–arguing, laughing at their own plight. How they all say, ‘We don’t want to be heroes, we don’t want to be victims, we just want to lead normal lives’.” Breytenbach’s Open Letter to Ariel Sharon, written in 2002, is posted and can be read in full here.

Salam Fayyad then addressed the event. He mentioned Yasser Arafat …

Who was the poet who performed at the beginning and end of tonight’s event? [Was it the Egyptian-Palestinian poet Tamam Barghouthi?]

The Palestinian TV’s regular 9 pm nightly news was not broadcast, in order to air this live event on Palestinian Culture Day. It ended with the audience rising to their feet and joining two of the performers in singing, together,  “Mawtini”…

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On the afternoon of Mahmoud Darwish’s last public appearance, at the Ramallah Cultural Palace, in July 2008, there was one of the first huge traffic gridlocks I have ever seen at the main Qalandia Checkpoint — Israeli officials call it a “border crossing”. It took me terrifying and stress-filled four hours to move a few hundred meters in the summer heat. When I got back to Jerusalem, I found an email invitation to the Mahmoud Darwish reading that night — and I returned to Ramallah, despite the earlier horror, re-crossing Qalandia …

Today, because of stone-throwing, Qalandia Checkpoint between Jerusalem and Ramallah was shut down completely for a period by the Israeli military, reinforcing the total closure that has been in place since a surprise announcement following a decision taken by the Israeli Minister of Defense Ehud Barak on Friday morning.

UPDATE: The Israeli military announced on Saturday night, just hours before the Total Closure of the West Bank was supposed to end, that it was being extended until Tuesday night “due to rioting and other violence in and around Jerusalem”, an SMS says…

Filed under: Human Rights, International Humanitarian Law, Israel, Palestine & Palestinians