"Well, it is an occupation!"
The African World

By Bill Fletcher, Jr., 
BlackCommentator.com Editorial Board

The Black Commentator
July 21, 2011

http://www.blackcommentator.com/436/436_aw_occupation.php

I recently returned from North Africa and Palestine.  I
found myself giving a talk to a group in the USA where I
mentioned my trip as a way of discussing the manner in which
events can unfold very rapidly.  I mentioned that I had been
to North Africa and the occupied Palestinian territories.

Barely had I finished speaking than an individual rose from
their chair and moved toward the front of the room.  When
the session broke the individual approached me and
challenged my use of the term "occupied Palestinian
territories," claiming that terminology is inflammatory
and that I should have used a more neutral term like "West
Bank" or "the disputed territories."

I looked at the individual and listened to what they said.
I then responded:  "Well. it IS an occupation!"

It is difficult to describe the Occupied Territories. I have
followed the Israeli/Palestinian conflict since the June
1967 War and I have been an advocate for peace and justice
for the Palestinians since the spring of 1969.  I have
studied countless documents, articles, speeches, etc.  I
have seen pictures of the so-called settlements and the
apartheid separation Wall.  Yet, to be honest, I still was
not prepared for what I actually experienced.

I was part of a labor delegation.  When we crossed from
Jordan into the Occupied Territories we immediately
experienced the arrogance of the Israeli occupiers. While
waiting on line to go to the first passport control I was
watched by an Israeli security person.  I somehow knew that
this was not a good sign.  When my delegation awaited
clearance to actually enter the Occupied Territories this
same security person came up to me and me alone (in my
delegation) and proceeded to ask me all sorts of questions
about the objectives of my visit.  Perhaps it was my
naturally curly hair, or perhaps it was that I am told that
I look North African, but in any case, there was nothing
approaching politeness in this exchange.  The Israelis held
us at the border for about two hours for no apparent reason
and then let most of my delegation through.  They then held
one member of my delegation - not me - for an additional
hour, again for no apparent reason and without explanation
or apology (when they were released).

Driving from the border to Nablus is actually quite
beautiful except for a few things.  You drive past these so-
called settlements.  You can clearly distinguish an Israeli
settlement from a Palestinian village or town, both by the
newness but also by the often lush character of the
surroundings of the settlements.  But here it is important
for me to note that even the use of the term "settlement"
does not convey what you see.  You see, in effect, either
very big farms or you see suburban communities.  I don't
know about you but when I hear "settlement" I tend to think
about something that can be easily disassembled. Forget that
idea, my friend.  These settlers have no intention of going
anywhere.

This brings up another point or question of terminology.
What is going on in the occupied Palestinian territories is
not really an occupation; it is an annexation-in-progress.
The Palestinians are being squeezed out, with the obvious
Israeli hope being that they will simply give up and move
out of the West Bank and go to Jordan, Lebanon, or who knows
where ever, but just out of the area.  When you think about
an occupation, you think about the troops of one country
taking over another-which, of course, happened to the West
Bank-but you do not normally think about settlers moving in,
unless you are thinking about the way that the United States
expanded west; the manner in which Morocco took over the
Western Sahara; or what we have been witnessing in
Palestine.  Whatever the original ambitions of the Israelis
in the aftermath of the June 1967 War, it is clear that the
settlements are no longer a bargaining chip but are there as
part of a process of annexation.

This is a slow-moving annexation that is accompanied by
slippery rhetoric out of the Israeli government.  The
creation of the so-called Separation Wall, but what most of
the world condemns as the Apartheid Wall, is all part of the
annexation process.  The Wall is one of the ugliest, most
offensive pieces of work you will see.  It was NOT created
along the so-called Green Line (the pre-1967 border of
Israel) but along lines that protect some of the key
territories that the Israeli government seeks to formally
annex.  It also is used to divide Palestinian territories
such that farmers are separated from their land.

When you stand near the wall, however, you do not think much
about the larger political issues at stake. Rather, it feels
like you are inside a prison.  You look up and down the
expanse of the Wall at the guard towers and, frankly, you do
not know what will happen next.  The environmental damage
created through the building of the Wall is a sight in and
of itself. Piles of dirt, rubbish, concrete, weeds, etc., on
the Palestinian side of the Wall reminded me of construction
debris that some contractor `forgot' to remove from a
project.  This damage makes the land in the immediate
vicinity of the Wall useless and, for all intents and
purposes, dead.

The sense of being imprisoned was more stark when we
witnessed thousands of Palestinian workers pass through the
Qalqeelya border crossing to go to Israel for work. We
arrived at the border crossing around 3:30am and workers
(men and women) were already crossing the border, though in
small numbers.  As dawn approached this trickle of workers
turned into a flood.

The workers proceeded down a covered walkway and then went
to a turnstile, reminiscent of one you might find in a
subway system.  But this was not a turnstile that one can
jump over, but fully metal where only one person at a time
can pass, assuming that the light over the turnstile is
green.  There is an assembly point on the other side where
the workers then gather and seek transportation to their
jobs.  They have to arrange their own transportation, either
through their employers or on their own, because public
Israeli transportation is denied them.  They cannot drive
into Israel and go to work because that is forbidden.  The
process is so demanding that many Palestinian workers remain
at their worksites   for days rather than go back and forth
in this process.  And, while this is going on, it is all
under the watchful eye of the Israeli guard tower, shouting
commands to the Palestinians in Hebrew.

The violence of the Occupation is what you feel more than
any other sensation.  Not the violence that you hear about
on mainstream television when they discuss a terrorist
attack or a military action, but rather the silent violence
that includes traffic signs in big Hebrew letters, while the
Arabic wording has been crossed out by fanatical settlers.
Or it may be the violence of the apartheid Wall, supposedly
constructed to stop Palestinian terrorist and military
attacks, yet no one can seem to explain if that were the
case, why the Wall was not built on the Green Line rather
than over and through Palestinian territories.

There were moments when I forgot where I was.  My own anger
boiled to the surface and I came close to yelling at the
Israeli security personnel or making signs at them with my
fingers, only to stop myself and realize that I was not an
angry African American in the USA (which carries its own set
of risks), but a North African-looking man in Occupied
Palestine who could easily get shot - or cause my colleagues
to get shot - with the assurance that my wife would get a
letter of apology from the Israeli government for the
incident, which they would certainly alleged to have been
the result of my unprovoked actions.

This is what Palestinians experience every day and then
some.

So, yes, this is a violent occupation, and no semantics will
get around that simple fact.

[BlackCommentator.com Editorial Board member, Bill Fletcher,
Jr., is a Senior Scholar with the Institute for Policy
Studies, the immediate past president ofTransAfricaForum and
co-author of Solidarity Divided: The Crisis in Organized
Labor and a New Path toward Social Justice (University of
California Press), which examines the crisis of organized
labor in the USA.]

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