“13. The Children of Palestine” in “Under the Nakba Tree”
13 The Children of Palestine
The unarmed Intifada produced poignant cultural artifacts, many of which are freely available on the Internet. As I browse the Internet, I can look at photographs of Palestinian children from the First Intifada. I see kids the same age as I was when I lived with my family in Amman, Jordan. Dressed in yellow shorts, T-shirt, and sandals, one youth is aiming a stone at a huge Israeli tank. If I had been a youth in Palestine at that time, I might have been one of the children following orders to roll tires onto roads, pour gasoline on them, and set them on fire. Even Ehud Barak, a former Israeli prime minister, once said, “If I were a Palestinian of the right age, I would join, at some point, one of the ‘terrorist’ groups.”
The posters I think of most often as I reflect on my time in Palestine show kids with slingshots and burning tires, and a boy in profile, holding up his hand against Israeli soldiers and a tank. “An Unceasing Intifada Will Defeat the Occupation,” says the writing underneath his picture. Another poster declares, “Palestinian Children Are Stronger Than the Occupation,” and I have no doubt that is true. Like most Palestinians, both in Palestine and in the diaspora, I do not wish for the conflict to continue endlessly, but I also know that the resistance to occupation must be sustained. I know in my heart that in every Palestinian generation there will be a group of children, men, women, and organizations that will lead that resistance.
While I was in Palestine during the days leading up to the Second Intifada and the days immediately following the protests that broke out shortly after my arrival, I met many Palestinian children who had grown up in an environment of permanent war and occupation, and even some who had been shot at by Israeli soldiers. Even as they lived in despair, or perhaps because they lived in despair, I was surprised by how they still managed to behave like children anywhere else in the world, getting into arguments with their siblings and their friends. Occasionally, I would try to talk with them and get them to make peace, but as I walked away, I would see them going at it again.
The resilience these children show under these circumstances made me wonder who the intended audience was for some of the posters about kids being “stronger than the occupation”—the Israelis and the uncaring world at large, or those of us who doubt the resilience of children. Was it to reassure parents their kids would survive? Or was it to encourage children whose parents were missing, imprisoned, or murdered? I do not know the answers to these questions, but I do know this: those children will survive. I remember giving some kids on the streets money and being surprised when they threw it back at me. Once, I paid a young vendor for a box of Kleenex, but conveniently forgot to take them when I left. He ran after me and shoved it in my hand.
“I’m a businessman,” he said. “I don’t need handouts.”
I soon learned that handouts insulted their dignity and took away their pride. They would not take handouts, not from me, and not from the Israelis. These children will continue to fight until the last occupier leaves.
While I lived with Wael in Abu Dis, I made an effort every day to take a servees to the Old City to attend prayers at the holiest of masjids. Going to Al-Aqsa usually cleared my mind, at least for a while.
On my second morning with my new friends, I woke up not knowing where I was. I had dreamt of meeting Tuma, my grandfather. The dream was still with me as I turned on the tap full blast to wash my face. I wished he and all his loved ones could drink it, splash in it, make tea with it, and take a hot shower to wash all the dust and fatigue away.
My father and Uncle Faisal told me there had been times when there was too much water—when water dripped, even poured, through the leaky roof of the refugee camp tent. Sometimes people would catch some in containers. Being forced to move again, though, meant they were often thirsty; at the most desperate times, like when they were on the death march leaving Lydda, they had to drink urine. Sometimes they would find a well and suck the water off the clothes of the kid who had been lowered down to get the first scoop.
I dried my face, and then set out for the masjid.
After morning prayers, I walked through the Old City. Walking along Jaffa Street, I was surrounded by Western-type venues that were clearly geared to tourists. It struck me that I was one of those tourists, and I vowed I would get to experience the Palestine that lay beyond the tourist sites. It was still early, but it was already scorching, hotter than Edmonton in summer. Alberta had the Prairies, but this place had the desert. I felt parched and dehydrated. I walked into a pub and asked for a glass of water.
The occupation has affected Palestinian access to water significantly. My grandfather had been a farmer, living free, and in later life, a gardener. He always had access to water. Now, Israeli settlers get their water from more than forty “deep holes”—plenty for gardens, swimming pools, and miles of crops and greenhouses. If Tuma were alive today, he would not be able to access this life source. The Israeli military routinely destroys Palestinian water tanks as part of their rules of occupation. Palestinians have to get permits to dig wells, and the red tape involved in getting such a permit makes it almost impossible.
I was thirsty every day. Back home, clean water just comes gushing out of the taps. If the water supply is cut off for a day or so, we can rely on the state to help us get water back into our bodies to keep going. For occupied peoples in Palestine, a water shortage might be the beginning of the end. Many conflicts in Palestine result in severe water shortages and sewage overflows because of damage to the water and sanitation infrastructure. Palestinians have been waiting for decades for Israel to deliver on its promises to restore access to clean water in their homeland, but little happens.
Besides thirsting for water merely to survive and risking being attacked for trying to obtain water, Palestinians also endure occasional Israeli Defense Forces “visits.” I remember staying at a friend’s place one night on the outskirts of Tulkarem, when I woke to the sound of the Israeli Defense Forces talking over CB radio outside our house. There is a constant awareness among Palestinians that the Israeli military is checking up on them, looking into their lives, and intimidating people with their presence.
My efforts to attend daily prayers seemed to inspire my other roommate, Muhammad, who decided to join me at the masjid to pray and to talk to some of the elders. We prayed in the Masjid al-Aqsa, which had opened recently after reconstruction, and also at the Masjid al-Marwani, another place of worship built on Haram esh-Sharif. Muhammad said he had not prayed for years, which shocked me. I was from the West and had come to Jerusalem, the City of Peace, to seek out religion. I was moved when he joined me in prayer.
One day outside the masjid, I heard a tour guide telling a group of Western tourists about the impact the occupation had had on the lives of Palestinians. He spoke with authority and obvious knowledge, and I could not stop myself from following him around so I could hear more. At the end of the tour, I introduced myself to the guide, a man by the name of Ali Jiddah. During the tour, he had spoken openly about his involvement in the PFLP, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, and acknowledged that he had spent seventeen years in prison for bombing Israeli targets in 1968. I was struck by his continued dedication to the cause despite the many hardships he’d suffered.
When we parted, Ali gave me his business card. I kept his card close to me at all times while I was in Jerusalem. Maybe it was naïve of me, but I thought that it might offer me some protection if I were stopped on the streets. If people saw I knew Ali Jiddah and was willing to call him to vouch for me, they might think twice about arresting me, or prevent them from thinking I was a spy. I considered his card an informal a passport into this locked-down city of Jerusalem.
On my way home, I retraced parts of the route Ali Jiddah had taken during his tour. This time, I looked at things differently. I noticed the stark contrast between the spacious homes in the Jewish quarter of West Jerusalem and the cramped living spaces in the Muslim and Christian parts of the city. When I stopped to buy something to eat, I asked the shopkeeper how he felt about the Jewish homes in the Muslim quarter that openly displayed the Israeli flag. “It is illegal to put even a picture of Arafat in front of our homes,” the shopkeeper replied. “In Jerusalem, there are also cameras everywhere, and every move you make can be recorded.”
I told him that kind of thing was an issue in the West because of human rights. He just looked at me and replied, “I see you are from a very different place.”
In the street, I could see some kids playing in the street. Will they grow up to struggle like Ali? I wondered. One young boy looked exactly like my brother Omar. I finished my food and went over to the boy. I asked him what his name was.
“Adnan,” he said. He kept asking me questions: Who was I? Where was I from? Was I a spy? He tugged at my heart, for he was just as curious as Omar had been as a young boy. Sadly, Omar had got caught up in Edmonton’s gang life and was struggling. I felt homesick. I could not help Omar get his life back on track, but I could give Adnan something to engage his mind. When I left, I gave Adnan some money, which he took. I saw Adnan often after that, and each time we chatted. He took an interest in my camera and wanted to know how it worked, so showed him and let him carry it around for me as I made my way through the city. That way, he could earn the money I gave him.
There were posters on the walls of a masjid that had been shut down by the Israelis. “Up with the Intifada!” the writing on one of the posters screamed. It showed a boy whose hand could barely hold the rock he is about to throw. And I thought of Ali Jiddah’s children, the ones who loved to draw but drew only what they saw in the streets of the Old City. Ali had told us about the clashes between the police and Muslims who wanted to pray at a local masjid. At home in Canada, we had our troubles, but no one had ever shut down our mosque. The shopkeeper was right: I was now in a different place.
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