I lived in Palestine from 2012-13 and visited for the first time in ten years last September. I wrack my brain about what part I can play in bringing an end to the horrors going on in that beautiful, hospitable, and magical country and know that whatever we do needs to be collective.
I recently watched an excellent documentary called “Where Olive Trees Weep,” about the multifaceted, brutal, and non-stop oppression Palestinians face under Israeli occupation. I would recommend it to everyone.
We continue to watch in horror as the atrocities in Gaza become more vicious and depraved daily, and we continue to watch our government completely ignore the mass murder and maiming of civilians while insisting on continuing to sell arms to Israel – to “defend itself.”
But we also continue to see ordinary people rising in resistance, saying “not in my name,” risking arrest and the derailing of their lives because they know what is happening is not OK; it is not normal, it is something evil they refuse to normalise and accept.
I asked someone I know from the occupied West Bank to give me a brief summary of what Palestinians are facing there, to hopefully offer a tiny snapshot of what life is like in the “calmer” and “safer” part of occupied Palestine.
He wrote about how his generation, born in the nineties, had years of their lives stolen from them. He described the “popular schools” that were created after the massive Israeli invasion of the West Bank in 2002, which was followed by repeated incursions, making it unsafe to walk around the city.
Children stayed in their neighbourhoods, and lessons were given in storerooms by a local teacher, “because in those days the internet wasn’t available everywhere like today, and there was a lack of electricity”.
“It was not an adequate education,” he said.
“We will also never forget our friends, martyred as schoolchildren, who never got to complete their educations. After the 2002 invasion, we suffered for over 10 years until the economy improved, new infrastructure had been built, and the destruction left by the invasion had faded.” When he finished university, he said his dad had just set up a new project, a manufacturing plant, but “the occupation forces came and blew it up, causing us to fall into huge debt”. He said it took 8 years before the family could even start repaying the debt.
He remarked on the restrictions on movement Israel places on Palestinians in the “big prison” that is the West Bank: “In this current time, in 2024, and before, if I wanted to go from Nablus to Ramallah, I’d have to wait for hours at checkpoints. And if, when I got to the front …, I might be met with an Israeli soldier in a bad mood who makes me go back just because he’s bored. But if this soldier is in an angry mood, it’s very possible he could shoot me and I’d lose my life - for this reason, I prefer not to leave my city. So after the events of October 7, I have lost my job, due to the difficulties travelling from town to town.”
His final summary was this: “We Palestinians in the West Bank live a tragedy, deprived of the most basic rights to live on this land. But whatever happens, we won’t leave our land just for someone else to come and enjoy it - whatever the consequences. In every Palestinian family, there is a harrowing story, a tragedy, and a deep pain inside. There are those who lost their families, those who lost their futures, and those who have been left physically disabled.”
Back to the documentary. At the end, one of the main protagonists, a Palestinian Christian female journalist and activist from Jerusalem who never stops fighting for her people, says something like: “We Palestinians have long given up on hoping others will rescue us. We can rescue ourselves. But what you have to do, is stop feeding the machine, and propping up this evil system.” She is talking about a settler-colonial system – Zionism – which renders Palestinians not simply worthless, but actively unwanted – to the point that Israeli soldiers habitually spray machine gun fire as they enter refugee camps at any time of day, injuring dozens with life-ruining injuries. No compensation, no acknowledgement, no redress. Not reported.
This is a system we are propping up; with every arms sale to Israel, every trade deal, and every bank funding operations on stolen land. A few years ago, the UN released a list of companies operating in Israel’s illegal settlements. There are also the arms companies making millions from the mass slaughter of the trapped and starved people of Gaza, and elsewhere. And others. The Palestinian journalist was calling on us to fight our own complicity, to break those links, to stop bankrolling an unjust and violent system of oppression and appropriation. We need to think about, explore, and discuss together ways we can start to do this. The Conservative Party fought hard to get a bill through at the start of this year. Dubbed the “Anti-Boycott Bill”, it was expressly about stopping public bodies, i.e. councils and universities, from divesting from Israel, or from companies operating in its illegal settlements. However, after calling the election, parliament was dissolved, and so was the bill, which had seemed on the brink of passing.
When it dissolved, just like that, when it had seemed a done deal, it felt like a weight being lifted suddenly – maybe like divine intervention. Maybe, I thought, God is giving us a boost and showing us one path to take. And at the same time, maybe He is showing how what seems to be unstoppable repression, and insurmountable obstacles, can disintegrate in an instant. What seems impossible right now, freedom for the Palestinian people, could materialise in a way we can’t imagine, in a way that will seem a miracle. A number of UK universities recently announced they are divesting from arms companies supplying Israel – a testament to the determination of students who have led protests across the country. This would not have been achievable – at any rate, not so easily – if the Anti-Boycott Bill had passed. It is a huge win and should give us hope. We must take advantage of this reprieve.
Let us pray for peace, freedom, and justice in Palestine and everywhere, and let us start organising together to break our ties to the oppression of others.