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CounterPunch
August
27, 2002
The Violence of Curfew
by Sam Bahour
Al-Bireh, Ramallah. "Oh God, please tell Sharon to end the
curfew by this Saturday so I can go to school." This is
how my secular, eight year old daughter, Areen, has put herself
to sleep for the last two weeks. Areen, like so many others here,
have turned to the divine powers to intervene in ending the five-month
Israeli military curfew that is imposed on Palestinian cities,
villages and refugee camps in the West Bank. As post 9-11 global
diplomacy patiently deliberates about how to proceed after the
failure of the Oslo Peace Accords, Israel is systematically destroying
Palestinian livelihood, and with it, any hopes for a future reconciliation
between the two peoples.
Israel's systematic destruction of everything
Palestinian is not new, at least not to the Palestinians who
have survived, thus far, decades of Israeli destruction. What
is disturbing, however, is that this destruction is being done
in full view of the world community. To add insult to injury,
the destruction of our lives is openly discussed and agreed to
by Israeli judicial and political institutions.
Setting aside the political assassinations,
the military onslaught that  took place when Israel violated the Oslo
Accords by invading Palestinian-controlled areas, the F-16's
and the 60-ton Merkava battle tanks that have rampaged Palestinian
cities for two years now, the thousands of Palestinian civilians
and some elected officials that have been imprisoned without
charge or trial, the acres of olive groves that have been bulldozed,
the Israeli settlements that have never ever stopped growing,
setting aside all of this and much more, I would like to focus
on a less visible aspect of this systematic Israeli destruction
of Palestinian livelihood.
It is casually termed in an Israeli military
euphemism as curfew. It is better described as military curfew.
In a more legal, human rights terminology it is called collective
punishment, and as a pen-pal recently pointed out to me, it is
more accurately described to a western audience as a lockdown.
Call it what you will, the continuous policy of forcing, at gunpoint
and tank barrel, 1.5 million Palestinians to remain in their
homes is one of the most sophisticated forms of violence around,
only to be outdone by the occupation itself.
Some who attempt to justify Israeli occupation
will say curfew is much less brutal than other means the Israeli
army regularly uses, and thus should not be spoken about in such
harsh terms. For the sake of argument, let me explain in a personal
sense, especially to my Israeli neighbors, what curfew does to
individuals, families, businesses, and schools. I will let each
reader reach their own conclusions on what the world should expect
from Palestinians, let alone Palestinian refugees, in the coming
years.
First, an Israeli military curfew is
not a limited curfew that is sometimes applied to minors in various
American cities. When Israel applies a curfew upon Palestinians
it is total, comprehensive and unannounced. Businesses close,
schools dismiss, government offices lock their doors, pharmacies
are closed, and medical services are, for all intent and purpose,
inaccessible to the public. How is this so? This total closure
is accomplished by Israeli jeeps, tanks and armored personnel
carries roaming the narrow Palestinian streets with loud speakers
notifying all, in an awful Arabic accent, to go home. This announcement
is regularly accompanied by rapid machine gun fire in the air
and the exploding of tear gas canisters and stun grenades in
the open markets to make sure people get the message. If the
closure takes place in midday, within a maximum of sixty minutes
the city will turn into a ghost town. If the closure is announced
during early morning hours (5am-7am), as has increasingly been
the case, the city never wakes up.
While under curfew/lockdown families
are confined to their homes. With 50% of Palestinians living
in households averaging 7 persons, of which 91% of the households
live in overcrowded conditions -- more than 1 person per room
(source: <www.pcbs.org>) -- parents and children alike
become quickly agitated. Add to this that after nearly two years
of continuous Israeli destruction, the Palestinian economy is
in severe recession and thousands of families are not able to
stockpile enough basic food stuffs to get them through until
the next lifting of the curfew. Per capita real income declined
by 12 percent for year 2000 as a whole, and by a further 19 percent
in year 2001. Additionally, the share of the Palestinian population
now living below the poverty line (US$2 per person per day) is
currently estimated at 45-50 percent (source: <www.worldbank.org>)!
These startling numbers don't faze the Israeli leaders, who continue
to send their soldiers to wreak havoc on our lives. Israelis,
soldiers and citizens alike, have come to the ludicrous belief
that the more Palestinians are battered the more Israeli cities
and civilians will be safe. It is a sad state of mind, just as
sad as thinking that bombing Iraq will promote U.S. interests
at home and abroad.
After a day, or two, or three - or in
the case of Nablus, 66 - of being locked down for 24-hours one's
nerves become on edge. Physically, the lack of exercise starts
to set in and muscles become stiff. Even when the curfew is lifted
for a few hours one does not have time to think about anything
but stockpiling food for the next lockdown and rushing to work
in an attempt to do a week's tasks in 4 or 6 hours. Personally,
I have two slipped discs that require me to regularly walk for
exercise. For five months, we have been imprisoned every evening
by Israeli curfew and thus walking the streets of Ramallah, absorbing
the summer's cool night breeze, is condemned to our memories.
The physical price I pay is living with a continuous electric
current that flares down the back of both of my legs and awaking
many nights to painful leg cramps. My two girls, Areen and Nadine,
2 years old, are starting to show the lack of exercise in their
physical build. My wife, Abeer, miraculously is able to stay
fit as she holds together our family life by keeping up with
the household chores, continuously playing with our girls in
order to keep their attention off the occasional tank or jeep
that comes rumbling down our street, and rationing our supplies
just in case the intermittent lifting of the curfew is cancelled.
From a business perspective the situation
is extremely bleak. Although we go through the motions of being
employed when curfew is lifted, deep down inside we know better
than to think we can sustain this pace for much longer. The great
majority of companies have lost their business feasibilities
and many have already lost their ability to keep employees onboard.
The significant business concerns that remain active in the economy
do so out of a national duty to their country and employees and
with a progressively diminishing hope that the end of occupation
is near. For those lucky enough to still have a job, the majority
are having curfew days deducted from their salaries. This deduction
amounts to workers getting paychecks that are cut by 10-50%,
depending on the month. An increasing number of Palestinians
who have the ability to do so have chosen, or were forced, to
leave Palestine in search of employment elsewhere. In the beginning
of the Intifada, this was limited to individuals; today entire
companies are contemplating taking their operations elsewhere.
For those of us remaining home, the natural aspiration of career-building
has been replaced by a slow recognition that we are rapidly falling
behind in our professions and may never be able to get back on
track - a daunting personal realization, especially for those
that have the luxury to leave.
For students, the nerve-racking reality
that schools and universities will be disrupted for yet another
year is inexplicable. Throughout thirty-six years of Israeli
occupation, Palestinians prided themselves on having one asset
that not even the harshest policies of the occupation could take
away - their minds. Traditionally, education was second only
to family in Palestinian life. Universities managed to hold classes
and graduate students throughout many year of crisis. Day-cares,
elementary schools and grade schools never faced conditions that
caused their prolonged closures or forced sustained disruptions.
But today, with the seemingly calm Israeli policy of curfew,
all of this has changed. As the words of my daughter depict,
even third-graders are feeling the structural damage that is
being caused by the disruption of the educational system by the
curfews. To add additional complexities to the policy of destruction,
the curfews are accompanied by closures, which separate every
Palestinian population center from the every other, thus putting
Israeli military roadblocks and checkpoints between students
and their school or university. Some villages have actually had
Israeli Caterpillar bulldozers dig up the roads leading in and
out of the village and replace them with mounds of dirt. These
Palestinian villages, for the past 24 months, amount to open
air prisons, worthy of using the word lockdown instead of curfew.
In short, it is now common knowledge in Palestine that an entire
generation has been sentenced by Sharon to illiteracy, or at
best, ignorance.
Setting aside the fear instilled in every
household by yet another Israeli military phenomenon of house-to-house
searches, which take place day and night while the curfews are
imposed, this is how we have lived for the last five months.
If my youngest daughter exemplifies the effect of curfew on Palestinian
children, then her first set of words - "dabbabeh"
(tank), "naqelet jonnood" (personnel carrier), "tayyara"
(fighter jet) - portray the challenge we face to rehabilitate
an entire generation. A ray of hope may be that she sometimes
refers to Israeli soldiers as, "Ammou" (uncle).
Those of us that have not lost any family
members to this madness feel lucky. Those of us that still have
all of our utilities intact cannot complain. Those of us that
can claim to still be employed are thankful to those investors
that remain engaged in Palestine. Those of us that are lucky,
cannot complain and are thankful are rapidly becoming a minority
in Palestine.
Word on the street has it that we will
be under 24-hr curfew/lockdown throughout the upcoming Jewish
holidays. As my Israeli neighbors prepare for their holiday season,
I wonder if they would join my daughter's nightly prayer for
her school to open as scheduled. In the meantime, we will continue
to build our state between curfews.
Sam Bahour
is a Palestinian-American businessman living in the besieged
Palestinian City of Al-Bireh in the West Bank. He is co-author
of HOMELAND:
Oral Histories of Palestine and Palestinians (1994).
He can be reached at: sbahour@palnet.com.
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