These words were penned in early summer 2011 following a visit to Shatila refugee camp in south Beirut, Lebanon. - To all the refugees of Occupied Palestine ....
Isn't it strange?
Isn’t it strange how something illegitimate gains legitimacy over time?
Isn’t it strange how a forced exodus of nearly a million people is forgotten?
Isn’t it strange how religion is a barrier to returning home?
Isn’t it strange how a pilgrim will only see what they want to see?
Isn’t it strange how a country’s name dwindles almost into distant memory in history?
Isn’t it strange how a massacre is not annually remembered by a minute’s silence?
Isn’t it strange how some refugee crises obtain almost a cult following and we are all asked to pledge some funds?
Think about how it is or is not strange. Then think of this:
Israel is an internationally recognised State, with functioning State institutions not so different to those you find in the West.
750,000 people lost their homes, their land and their country in 1948
A Jew from anywhere in the world can go to Israel and settle. A Muslim or a Christian Palestinian cannot.
A Christian pilgrim on a sanitised tour of the “Holy Land” (I don’t find anything “holy” about an Apartheid Wall but maybe that is just me) photographs the Church of the Holy Sepulchre and the Jewish Wailing Wall but does not visit Gaza to share worship with Palestinian Christians – come on all you Christians out there who have done the “Holy Land” tour – tell me how many of those Arabs did you chance upon to meet on your travels?
“Where is Palestine?” he asked with a concentrated look of confusion. “Do you not mean Pakistan?”
9/11 – I don’t need to say more, we all know. How about 9/16?
“More aid to Africa” is the demand of celebrities keen to increase their popularity and fame (“Africa” – that continent of 47 countries, not all of which are destitute but it always sounds good to say you are helping “Africa”). What of aid though to the third generation of forgotten people?
Last Week:
Last week I visited Shatila refugee camp in south Beirut. Home to maybe 12,000 – although there are no official figures as Lebanon has not held a census since 1932 due to the sensitive religious demographics. Understandably so in a nation that has seen enough bloodshed in its recent history.
If you have read anything about the Palestinian crisis then you may have heard of “Sabra and Shatila” or more likely you may not have. Why would you have? Lets face it; just another crisis somewhere in the “Middle East” and as the popular media tells us daily Arabs and particularly those Muslims are big on war, killing and violence – aren’t they? That is after all what Sky News and CNN keep telling us. Has anyone told you though about Sabra and Shatila?
Here’s a little bit of history:
In 1948 British Mandate Palestine came to an end and the State of Israel was created: “a land without people for a people without land” was the popular and much cited myth. But wait, that land was not without people. It was full of people. People who could trace their ancestors back eons of time but those people were Arabs and Arabs were no longer welcome in their own home. “Al nakba” - “the catastrophe” – May 14th 1948 – a date etched in the mind of every Palestinian. A date that a Palestinian child today will know. It didn’t end there though, worse was to come when Israel later snatched the West Bank and Gaza – land it still illegally occupies to this day. Yes, it is illegal under international law – did you know that? But where is international law as more and more illegal settlements spring up? Yes, of course it is condemned but what does that mean? No-one has stopped Israel. I detract however from what I want to say.
One of the consequences of al nakba was the creation of refugee camps springing up around the region. Sabra and Shatila are two of the most well known.
Why?
Well in 1982 Lebanon was in the grip of Civil war and our dear old friend Israel was embroiled in that. On the evening of September 14-15th Ariel Sharon – I am sure you have heard of him – “terrorist” is one of my more polite words to describe him, sent Israeli troops (the IDF – Israeli Defense Force – one of the most brutal military regimes anywhere) into west Beirut and surrounded Sabra and Shatila refugee camps. Christian militias entered the camps, supported by their Israeli allies who guarded the exits to the camps and over the next two days massacred Palestinian refugees.
Well known journalist Robert Fisk writes upon entering the camp hours after the massacres:
"Down a laneway to our right, no more than 50 yards from the entrance, there lay a pile of corpses. There were more than a dozen of them, young men whose arms and legs had been wrapped around each other in the agony of death. All had been shot point-blank range through the cheek, the bullet tearing away a line of flesh up to the ear and entering the brain. Some had vivid crimson or black scars down the left side of their throats. One had been castrated, his trousers torn open and a settlement of flies throbbing over his torn intestines."
He continues with:
"On the other side of the main road, up a track through the debris, we found the bodies of five women and several children. The women were middle-aged and their corpses lay draped over a pile of rubble. One lay on her back, her dress torn open and the head of a little girl emerging from behind her. The girl had short dark curly hair, her eyes were staring at us and there was a frown on her face. She was dead."
Finding it unpleasant, how about this?
"Another child lay on the roadway like a discarded doll, her white dress stained with mud and dust. She could have been no more than three years old. The back of her head had been blown away by a bullet fired into her brain. One of the women also held a tiny baby to her body. The bullet that had passed into her breast had killed the baby too. Someone had slit open the woman's stomach, cutting sideways and then upwards, perhaps trying to kill her unborn child. Her eyes were wide open, her dark face frozen in horror."
Why do we choose not to remember?
That was 1982, approximately 3,000 Palestinians died. “Died” though is too clean and final a word. More specifically young men and boys were tortured, women and girls were raped, infants were shot in the head –that kind of gets to the truth of it a bit more.
I wonder though where the one minute’s silence and the lit candles are each September for those victims? Can anyone explain why we fly a flag at half mast and ask people to pause for a minute to remember and reflect every September 11th now but not every September 16th?
Who is to blame?
Lebanon continues to balance its religious demographics carefully, sectarianism has been rife and the Lebanese are keen to display a united front to the world now. Unfortunately this has meant that the Palestinians in Sabra and Shatila are further ignored. Most are Sunni Muslims, if they were granted full citizenship and employment rights the demographics of Lebanon would alter. On the other side the PLO leadership in Lebanon back in the early years refused full citizenship rights as that would effectively meaning signing away forever the dream of a return to Palestine. I can see their point. However, when I see the plight of the residents of Shatila I do wonder. Losing your country is bad enough but to continue to live in squalor from one generation to the next is somehow worse.
The camps were set up by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) for the refugees following the 1948 forced exodus however, UNRWA struggles for funding. It is not that fashionable for governments and the great celebrity bandwagon to keep giving out cash to subsidize a seemingly unsolvable problem – and of course it is even more unfashionable to help Palestinians, that somehow makes you anti-Semitic (yeah, go figure it out that is apparently what you are if you open your mouth in criticism of Israel). Yet, people should and have to know.
Feelings:
I walked the alleyways of Shatila, I saw the one clinic that serves the population. I spoke with the articulate young lady who lived in a 2 roomed “apartment” with six others. I saw the “playground” that had been constructed with twisted pieces of metal so the children had somewhere to play. I saw the looks of despondency and bitterness that were on the face of a seven year old boy. I saw the bombed out buildings that continued to crumble. I saw the attempts to build on the rubble. And what I saw most of all and what got to me above all else was the school. "Ramallah School" – established by some Swedish aid agency. A school where children in the camp go to be educated. To be educated until they are around 10 years old and then that stops. Yes, you see if you are a Palestinian in Shatila you leave school and if you are a boy you help your father sell vegetables or perhaps beg on the street or wash windscreens of cars. If you are a girl you go home and help your mother cook with whatever food you can eek out. Forget university. What use is that when you have almost no employment rights in Lebanon? You will spend your teenage years in the camp then you will probably marry and try to add some small rubble built annex onto the family “home” and so the cycle beings again. Where is this to end?
Lebanon is not some third world country yet the extremes I saw in one week were almost unbearable. The day before I went to Shatila I had wandered the streets of downtown Beirut. I could have been in Paris or Dubai. Money and more money oozed from every shop, café and bar. Lebanon is home to many good universities yet a child born in Shatila has about a zero chance of ever finishing school let alone getting to university.
Who do we blame?
The Lebanese government for their refusal to grant full citizenship rights? The PLO who originally refused full citizenship as it is meant the end to any possible return to Palestine? The Israelis for their racist policy of “right of return” being applicable to a Jew from any part of the globe but not to a Palestinian? The UN for their failure to guarantee the rights of the Palestinians? The Allied powers for their inability to prevent al nakba and to secure a just settlement?
I truly do not know. I despise and hate Israel more than I can put into words but I also feel anger towards the international community for not addressing this problem properly because it is not just going to quietly disappear.
As I walk the dark and muddy alleys of Shatila I feel my emotions verge on extremes; I feel anger, I feel hate and in the end I just feel like sitting down and letting my tears fall unashamedly in the midst of it all. Perhaps because I am a teacher I was most struck by the message of hope, yet also bitter irony, on the school wall: “Education is our only way to be free and responsible”. This is true but that can only be the case when the barriers to education are lifted, when people are free. We have to hope and pray that one day this wrong will be righted and another generation of Palestinians will not grow up in this mass of twisted rubble.
I also would like to think that all human life should carry the same value and when we remember the fallen of the two World Wars every November and the victims of 9/11 every September we would also pause and remember the bludgeoned, raped and massacred innocents of Sabra and Shatila.
If you ever visit Lebanon take a morning out of your shopping and tourist sites schedule and take a taxi to south Beirut, Shatila is easy to find. Ask the taxi to drop you off at the Kuwaiti roundabout..it wont take much effort to see where the camp begins..
(UNRWA estimates there are 4.8 million registered Palestinian refugees in Jordan, Lebanon, Syria and the Occupied Palestinian Territories)
Kat
June 22nd 2011
