Not long after my arrival in the West Bank I had the following dream: Fred (my teammate) and I are in a madhouse on an undercover operation. We, the only sane patients in the madhouse, were to observe everything going on around us and then report about it (to whom, I don't know). It was a dream full of details: the faces of all the mad people that I have never seen in my waking life (as far as my awareness for that goes), the hectic screaming and running around, the behavior that overall didn’t make any sense. It didn't take me much pondering over the dream to interpret it. Here I am in that madhouse called Occupation and I need to report (blog) about it. I have the feeling of being undercover here too: having to play the role of the tourist, not being able to say I am a peace activist so that the Israelis would let me inside the country (NB: so that they would let me inside not in their country, but in the Palestinian territory they occupy militarily.
"Madhouse", sadly, turned out to be a very literal expression about what we saw two weeks ago…
Now picture the following situation: you build an addition to your house as your family gets bigger. As usually it is the case with such in Area C or East Jerusalem, they get demolished. Instead of this happening, in this very case, settlers (supported by the Israeli goverment) came and started living in the addition while the Palestinian family stayed in their old part of the house.
Currently the Jewish settlers and the Palestinian family share a house. In half of it (the back) dwells the Palestinian family, al-Kurdi, in the front are the settlers. What used to be al Kurdi's family children playground in the front yard is now a space for barbeque for when the settlers have parties.
Internationals have been maintaining presence in the yard by staying in the tent in the picture above: at first they had permanent presence, currently it's only during the night so that the Palestinian family would be able to at least sleep in somewhat of a peace. What makes the situation even more absurd is what these particular settlers are like. They are four guys who do nothing else but party wild, get drunk and then sleep during the day. No job, no anything, by the looks of it. It seems like they are not really living in the house but they're more like coming to hang out, occupy it. We suppose that the government is paying them to stay in the house to" hold the front" but that's just a guess to explain how they may have money to survive and buy all the alcohol. They have thrown everything you can think of at the internationals in the tent: urine, feces, throw- up, the last thing thrown few weeks ago had been bleach (how creative, I caught myself thinking). It seems like they are acting out all their hate on the internationals now so as long as we distract them from harassing the Palestinian family, our presence is worth the showering with all possible – literally – shit. The night me and Fred spent in the tent (together with two guys from Sweden) wasn't that eventful (thanks God, I have to say, as I wasn't carrying with me any spare pants or shoes). Whatever the settlers do to the internationals or the Palestinians is fine as far as consequences for them are concerned. Settlers are sort of immune in this country. We can call the police, they will come and things end there. There were two cameras installed to observe what happens above our tent: one by settles, the other by an Israeli Human Rights NGO: one in "our interest", one in "theirs". In any case our actions were closely watched, activists who had previously sprayed the house with pro-Palestinian graffiti had been arrested a month ago. Moreover, our presence is supposed to be peaceful: so if a settler spits on you for example, you have to turn your other cheek. He can do what he wants but if you respond in any way, you are the one in trouble, no matter who started it all.
The Swedish guys were spending something like 10th night in a row in the tent. They had a video of one of the settlers dancing a really surrealistic dance in his drunkenness in front of them few days ago. Fun. That night the settlers had few visitors, played some music loud, drank some alcohol but the party died out about 12 or so. It was turning out to be a freezing night although I had all possible clothes of mine on me. The youngest of the settlers stopped by to check on us. He had the ultra-right look: the black bonnet on and side-curls plus quite un insane look. He tried to engage us in a "conversation" with his really poor English. It consisted of the following: "Palestine" (pointing to the ground) "No-o-ooooo.", accompanied by a lot of ts ts ts and shaking head. "Israel? YEESSS". Then he tried to ask us if we really believed we were on Palestinian land. We ignored him. There was I though back to my dream with mad people. Now how do I "report" about this, how do you clothe this sort of madness into words? Then he came by to ask if we were sleepy, after if we were cold, etc. At some point he was looking really intently at me expecting an answer and I almost felt like talking to him, to give in to the hint of humanity in the situation. It's so difficult for me to picture that this very same guy standing in front of me is capable of such evil. And yet that was the very same one who settled in in someone else's house solely because God has ordained this land to him and the very same one who threw his shit at people. Exactly the same situation one can have in a madhouse: a guy who's acting friendly at one moment is raving mad at the next one and attacks you, now go match these two pictures into being done by the same person… The second guy, the one with the reported crazy dance moves (while dancing he would make an abrupt movement in your direction to scare you and etc.) didn’t visit us in the tent that night. He stood outside and stared silently at us on few occasions though. At some point during the night he kept on staring into what seemed to me to be my direction for about 5 minutes, a very intent stare at that. I continued chatting with the others ignoring him. Then out of nowhere he interrupted his meditative state only to snap: "Fuck you!", turn around and go away.
The rest of the night was just as freezing. Settlers slept very late but quit their visits to our tent. The Palestinian family I saw only at 6:30 in the morning. The Swedish had left at 5 something, I had fallen asleep on the chair at about 4 finally, Fred was sleeping as well on a bed nearby when I woke up by the passing-by al Kurd family. They had to walk by the settlers' part of the house in order to exit. They had also to walk through our tent. Imagining what kind of a struggle it must be for this family to have anything like a normal life in view of all the circumstances is way beyond my abilties.
