Sometimes you go through an experience in life that leaves an indelible mark on your soul and an inerasable footprint on your mind. My trip through the West Bank as a participating member of the International Solidarity Movement for the Palestinian People was such an event. There were things that I saw, heard and participated in that I could not forget if I wanted to. But at the end of the day I had grown as a human being far more than I think any two-week period had ever caused me to grow.
If there is anything I learned in Palestine over those two weeks it is that this conflict that has raged for too many years needs to be looked at in its proper context: it is a fight for life.
Before I went to the West Bank, I had my own ideas on what was going on and how best we could resolve the issues. I knew maps that had clear boundaries and cities that had names. I knew of military checkpoints and of Palestinian bombers; I knew of Israeli troop atrocities and of a death toll that kept mounting day after day.
But when I experienced my first action in Ramallah, an attempt to march into the Moqatta compound where Yasser Arafat was still under siege, my knowledge of reality ended up amounting to nothing more than pages out of the countless books I had read while an undergraduate at Rutgers in America.
As the international contingent marched in front of the Palestinian people, the Israelis switched from the live ammunition they had been using to tear gas and sound grenades. For the first time, but not for the last, I realized that my life was valued far more than that of any random little frustrated Palestinian boy who threw rocks from 500 meters away because it was the only way he could protest. Not because of my innate worth as a human but because of my skin color and the words on my passport.
Before I came, I had visions of myself helping to lead the group of internationals bravely into an onslaught of Israeli fire while keeping composure and maintaining a stiff upper lip. All of that went out the window when the first sound grenade, launched from a mortar that we couldn't even see, blew up in the air about 50 meters from us. I dropped to the ground like a child having been hit in the face; the Palestinians kept marching.
When I had regained my composure, and we kept marching, the tear gas canisters rained a cloud on us that introduced me to that wonderful instrument of crowd dispersal. My eyes started tearing to the point that I could no longer see and my throat constricted beyond anything I ever thought was possible. I could not breathe. I could not see. There were sound grenades exploding all around and I couldn't even see anything except people running around frantically tending to those who were unlucky enough to be caught in the path of the grenades. I knew fear for the first time in my trip. My lungs ached and I ran to the side of the road spitting and coughing, saved by a young Palestinian medic (younger than me) who calmly handed me a cotton swab soaked in vinegar.
Some brave, valiant hero I was. One thing I will never forget is when I looked back and saw an ambulance being loaded with a Palestinian who had been wounded by a grenade hit. The man who closed the door looked back at us and then to the air just in time to see the sound grenade that landed in his face. There was an explosion and he dropped to the ground like a rag doll, quickly picked up by his friends and rushed into the ambulance as well. I later found out that he had suffered third degree burns on his face, arms and chest.
When the attempt was ended (thanks to massive doses of gas and grenades), I stumbled back with the rest of the group and recovered well out of range of the onslaught.
Although some small girls told one of the members of the team that we were heroes for even being there, I did not feel like a hero. This is what Palestinians go through every day. There were no live rounds fired at us, no mortars, no tank fire, not even rubber bullets. My immediate thought went to how the hell soldiers went through REAL war, how Palestinians dealt with REAL ammunition and how my composure fled at this which most of the young Palestinians regarded as "soft" tactics by the Israelis. There was no pride. There was no heroism. There was only the image in my mind of that man who was helping others dropping to the ground in a cloud of smoke and fire.
In Hebron, days later, we talked with several families whose houses had been raided by the Israelis. One middle aged man recounted how in the middle of the night the Israelis had smashed his door and come into his house, herding all the women and elderly into one room and grabbing two of his sons, aged 19 and 23, dragging them from their beds and pulling them out into the dark night. They raided his life-savings and all his wife's jewelry. His wife, who was pregnant, tried in vain to get to her sons and was forcibly restrained by the Israelis. She suffered a miscarriage. His eyes welled up with tears as his cousin, who was doing interpretation, translated his words, "that night I lost three sons."
Did he want revenge? Did he hate Israel? Did he hate America for supporting Israel? Did he blame Sharon, Peres, Netanyahu, Arafat? His only words were, "I just want my sons back." He couldn't go on past that and we respectfully left the house. We, the conquering warriors, the ones who would make the situation right walked out with tears in our eyes as well. Though we had lost nothing except maybe some more of our innocence.
When I had talked to a few Israeli soldiers the day before, we asked them if they enjoyed being in the army. One of them, a Russian immigrant who was 19 by his own account, told us that he couldn't wait for his term to be up. He asked us if we had Playstation 2 and if so what games we liked. Later, this same soldier was in the group that received orders to detain a Palestinian doctor whom we were escorting to a patient.
When we tried to protest (some of us actively protested by holding fast to the doctor and refusing to let him go) he became irate and started yelling at us to back off. I told him that I would be happy to go with the doctor to make sure he was ok. He lowered his gun slightly and told me it was none of my business. I replied that Palestinians tended to die in Israeli hands from time to time and so maybe one of us should go with the doctor to make sure that he turned out all right. At that point his face became dark and he screamed at me, "You shut up! You don't know what the hell you are talking about! I have had friends killed by Palestinians, some of my best friends! You don't know what you are talking about! Just shut up!"
I had signed up before coming with the idea that Israeli soldiers were like robots; inhumane machines trained to just do what they are ordered. When I looked into his eyes I saw a hurt human being.
Once again, the conquering crusader with the American passport was immersed in the reality of Palestine, and the pain and suffering that existed in everyone no matter what uniform they wore, what language they spoke or what god they worshiped washed over me.
It was at the hospital that I saw my first two dead bodies, not the neat type made up for a wake or funeral, but two bodies that had been decomposing for a day before being hauled in. Their clothes were torn up from bullet holes and the bloodstains were all over. Their feet were decaying. Their eyes were closed, perhaps the only potentially peaceful thing about them. I stood in the doorway to the room with two Italian journalists and a Swede whom I had befriended.
All of us, the journalists included, just stared at the bodies dumbfounded. The doctors asked the journalists to take some pictures for documentation and they duly obliged (more out of a sense of journalistic duty than out of want to do so) but my friend and I just stood there frozen. The smell is the thing that stuck with me the most. We both swallowed hard to choke back the bile that was rising in us.
War wasn't supposed to be like this, was it? We weren't supposed to actually see the dead but rather to read about these two in the papers the next morning, right? Standing there these men were no statistics. For some reason, my mind shot to the World War I poem "Flanders Fields." Part of the poem read:
We are the dead, short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow
Loved and were loved and now we lie
In Flanders Fields
The doctors respectfully wrapped each one in a white shroud and tied it neatly at both ends. Johannes and I looked at each other and then started to slowly walk back towards the lobby. I found it impossible, try as I might, to wish death on anyone after that. To imagine myself, or someone I loved, in that state was too much for me.
Two days later, as my friend Sam and I wandered through Hebron, we came to a house where they offered to show us the place an Apache had shot up a P.A. policeman. They had outlined the area in bricks, as one would outline the area in chalk. The bricks, however, were larger than a body should be. "This is because he was in pieces when we got to him" explained one of the men. There were large pockmarks in the road where the rest of the shells from the Apache had hit the road and torn it up. He scraped away the sand that had covered the ground where the body had laid to reveal dark, crimson ground... the blood had turned the sand to a reddish mud. I wondered if the pilot saw the body after it came apart at the limbs and waist.
I could go on here... I could cite the numerous other times that I saw death and destruction, or heard a family talk about their missing sons and pleading with us to do something. "Could you take the names to the Red Cross? Maybe you could talk to the American Embassy about this? Please, WE HAVE NOWHERE ELSE TO TURN..."
There were so many times that I simply broke down at the end of the day due to my ultimate feelings of helplessness. I came to realize one thing: this war is not about Sharon or Arafat; to say that would be giving them too much credit. This war is about humanity. It is an affront to humanity, and the lives that are being consumed by its always-hungry mouth simply add to the misery, anger and hatred.
These are the real fuels that feed the fire of war: mistrust and hurt. At the end of the day, no political settlement can bring any of them back. This is a fight for life, for the right of human beings to live and to have peace. To watch their children and their children after them grow and laugh.
The title of this account is based on a poem by Faiz Ahmed Faiz that bears the same name. In it, Faiz talks about how after some experiences you just can't ever be the same person again. I will never be the same person again after this trip. I would like to think it is for the better. Only time will tell if I will keep the lessons I have learned there. I pray to God that I do.
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