They bring us in and serve us tea, but I’m not sure he wants us to be here. "You can’t understand," he says again and again, and our translator translates. "Fatah doesn’t respect us. Israel doesn’t respect us. Hamas is the only one that respects us. This may sound strange to you, because of what the media in your country tells you, but this is the truth.
I didn’t want to be political. I just wanted to live my life, but they made me political."
For the first time in Palestine, I am sensing something like resentment towards us, this eclectic group of seven Americans.
He used to have a greenhouse, a restaurant, and a house in the village, but the first two were destroyed and the last sold for money to live off of. Now he has no money.
I can pick out the Arabic word for “destroy.” They destroyed my house, they destroyed my life, they destroyed my self.
“The future holds massacres and problems and danger for Palestinians and Israelis,” Hani tells us. “This war will extend to the whole world, and this will be the center,” says the man whose house is the center of four walls.
Perry boldly puts a question to the silent women in the corner who brought the tea. At some houses the tea appears without the woman, but here she sits with us. “What is life like here for you?” is the question.
“I am always afraid,” she responds. “Perhaps because I have a small child, I am always afraid.”
The man chain-smokes like everyone else we’ve met. Flicking ash into the tray brought to his hand by the small child, he asks us what we think. “I’ve told you this to make you understand. What do you think?”
I think he’s looking for a right answer. Tara says it’s sad and unfair. When Shirin translates, Hani’s face remains still. “I know it’s sad, but what do you think?”
He is a stubborn old man, I think, and he wants us to give him specific political concessions here and now. He wants us to say Hamas will solve the problems, or maybe he wants us to say Fatah will solve the problems to pick a fight. We can't do it, we won't do it, we don't believe it.
We thought we had five days to figure out what we think, but he wants a response now. And we owe him one, as he says, he has told us his story and we must give him something of ourselves back. His house was gradually closed off on four sides by the wall and by settlement fences, his only way out a gate that Israelis open and close randomly at will. We give him nothing in return but an unspoken group promise of “solidarity” and I walk away feeling insufficient.
2 comments:
I think the emphasis on "respect" may be more politically key then I had realized; I noticed it over and over in the movie "Paradise Now." Sometimes the protagonists almost seemed to be saying NOT that suicide bombs would be effective in bringing about change, but that they were a matter of honor, of making enough noise to be noticed, OF PROVING THEMSELVES, their manliness (don't mean this in a gendered way).
The same way some fundamentalists in some parts of the world will kill a sister who they believe has "dishonored" them without considering any other context. It's a group-think/ tribal we-need to-prove-ourselves-to-others approach, isn't it?
If a large number of Israeli's said "we understand your people is strong and powerful and has it's own important history/culture," would that solve much? Would fear and respect by itself bring about change? Social and economic justice? Or greater repression??
I suppose Fanon (?) would say it's a mentality of the colonized. But I am not sure it's all that simple....Group-think exists all over, from lefty groups -- to those that oppose them. (Just like the fanatic pair of JDate N.Y.lawyers who referred to your bittersweet wrenching piece on Hebron as "dirt." They simply can not hear wisdom OR sadness when spoken by 'the other side', or on behalf of it).
WHAT I LOVE MOST ABOUT YOUR BLOG IS HEARING YOU STRUGGLE TO INTEGRATE EXPERIENCES FOR YOURSELF.
Didn't 'Black Pride' arise internally? It wasn't an attitude offered or fostered from outside. It was a matter of calling up, recognizing, and defining internal strength. It was taking power through rhetoric AND self-understanding, not through bombs.
CAN YOU MAKE PEOPLE GIVE YOU RESPECT? OR DO YOU GIVE IT TO YOURSELF?
It's obviously nowhere the same kind or degree, but when students at your University are denigrading you and telling you to get off campus, how often do you get caught up in trying to make them "respect" you? Or do you assume you've thought your position through carefully, and continue on to consider the next most useful tatic? Do you let them define you? Or do you fight for and earn your own self-respect???
I guess my question here is how and why do some people/s let themselves -- their pride -- their most basic human identity be determined by their opponents and/or oppresors??
This actually relates to a conversation I had with your sister about an article in science magazine entitled Sacred Barriers to Conflict Resolution by Scott Atran, Robert Axelrod, and Richard Davis. It is also only available by purchase online, but I can forward it to you.
Science magazine summarizes the article as follows: Resolution of quarrels arising from conflicting sacred values, as in the Middle East, may require concessions that acknowledge the opposition's core concerns.
My response to Nancy about the article was that an apology seemed too easy but I'd be willing to believe that you and she both know something I don't.
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