Eternal Limbo ~ Gaza Refugee Camp (Jarash)

Eternal Limbo by Rula Zein-Iddin

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A crumbling, dismal shantytown
A shambolic hovel of bricks and refuse
A forgotten, nay,  forsaken people
Struggling to survive in a jungle of aging asbestos

Leaking pipes, broken walls
Flimsy zinko rooftops
Corroded metal doors
Absent floors

They call this health hazard, "home"
They had little choice seventy years ago
Displaced not once but twice
Double the loss, double the sacrifice then
Options practically nonexistent now

It is bleak
It is dirty
Fragrant cooking aromas
Clash with offensively putrid air

Children roam unattended
Seemingly carefree and oblivious
Cheeky comments,  intelligent banter
Radiant smiles not quite reaching their weary eyes

Flashes of commotion
As a few lash out
But mostly free
Blissfully unaware,
At least for now

Quickly the narrow streets brimful
A steady stream of school-boys
Heavy bags eerily replicating coming burdens
Heading home, the afternoon shift complete

The schools barely take a breath
Awaiting the third shift of the day with despair
Caged in classrooms filled beyond capacity
What determined magician can think, let alone teach here?

Limited land, scarce resources
Infrastructure bursting at the seams
Dark, dank corridors of sheer hopelessness

"We would rather learn than eat" they say
Education is the fuel for our souls
Food is a secondary need
Studying voraciously is our way out

Third generation refugees
Eleven thousand over fifty years
Yield thirty thousand
Bleak mathematics
Cramped on the same piece of limited land

How can they fathom what was lost?
This is all they know
For some, it is all they will ever know

A few make it out
But forever remain connected
They live outside the borders of the camp
They never forget those they left behind
An incredible sense of selflessness
An overwhelming drive to make a difference

They have found a way to make a living
Against all odds
True survivors
Silent heroes

Why them and not us?
How to appease an uneasy conscience?
The cards could so easily have been dealt differently.

Refugees from a place that remains incarcerated
Neighbours living in an open air prison
Bombed, mentally and physically abused
Robbed of the most elemental human rights

A forgotten cause
An oppressively, dispossessed people
Humanity brutally stripped bare

Are they more free here?
Two sides of the same tarnished coin.
Which would you choose?

How do you live your life when there are so few choices available to you?
How do you make ends meet when so many opportunities are denied you?

How do you have a sense of self-worth when so many deny your existence?
How can you have the willpower to go on when the world has forgotten you?

The sense of community, is palpable
The generosity of those with so little, is humbling
Genuine invitations to share a meal are called out
Open arms proudly welcome you into dimly lit abodes

Their shared upbringing makes them stand united
Their hope for a better future is beyond inspiring
It blinds you.
For fleeting seconds you believe it is possible.

They believe in a better tomorrow
They are adamant that they will return
But to what? And where? And when?
And who can deny them hope when that is all they have got.

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The Gaza refugee camp in Jerash, Jordan is home to nearly 34,000 Palestinian refugees who fled from Gaza, Palestine in 1948 and 1967. The photos above provide a glimpse into the living conditions many of these refugees have had to contend with given the lack of political, social, and economic options at their disposal.

Palestine: Resistance or Terrorism?

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Text in the picture states:

"Ahmad of Palestine yearns to be Mahatma Gandhi. Dare we say that his yearning is in vain?

Gandhi wanted peace & freedom above all things Ahmad wants exactly the same thing.

The path to peace begins by understanding why Palestinians are not even free to yearn. Ahmad is dying to believe that such a path exists "

(Source: wwww.dyingtolive.com)
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In Gaza, Palestinians have once again been blamed for their own deaths.

The British made a similar argument 151 years ago when they killed thousands of Indian civilians -- 1,200 in a single village -- in response to the largest anti-colonial uprising of the 19th century.

If Israel truly desires peace with the Palestinians and safety for its citizens, it should look back to one of the greatest, and misunderstood, independence movements in history.

Most people believe India won its independence from the British exclusively through Gandhi's famous strategy of nonviolence.

They're wrong; armed resistance has deep roots in India. During the Sepoy Mutiny of 1857, also known as the First War of Independence, Hindus and Muslims serving in the infantry for the British East Indian Company revolted against the British Empire, killing British officers and civilians alike.

While the majority of these cavalrymen were Hindu, Muslims also partook in the rebellion. These Muslim fighters called themselves "jihadis" and even "suicide ghazis."

The British quashed the revolt, but for the next 90 years Indian violence, even terrorism, in response continued.

In the early 20th century, Indian militants, frustrated with the Congress party -- the party of Gandhi and Nehru -- regularly resorted to acts of violence to overthrow the British. Official government reports note 210 "revolutionary outrages" and at least 1,000 "terrorists" involved in more than 101 attempted attacks between 1906 and 1917 in the state of Bengal alone (see Peter Heehs, "Terrorism in India During the Freedom Struggle," The Historian, 22 March 1993).

One young revolutionary, Bhagat Singh, later referred to as "Shaheed" Bhagat Singh, bombed the Legislative Assembly in 1929.

On the other hand, Palestinians are usually portrayed in Israel and the West as exclusively militants or terrorists.

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Yet Palestinians have a vibrant, albeit unsuccessful, history of nonviolent resistance.

In 1936, the Palestinians maintained a six-month general strike, the beginning of what became known as the Great Arab Revolt.

The British retaliated by declaring martial law, jailing and killing large numbers of Palestinians, and destroying numerous Palestinian homes. The revolt lasted for three years and was the largest and longest anti-colonial uprising in the British Empire.

Fifty years later, the first Palestinian intifada was largely nonviolent and included acts of mass civil disobedience like flying the Palestinian flag, organizing strikes and boycotting Israeli products.

In 1985, Mubarak Awad, a Palestinian-American psychologist from Jerusalem established a center for nonviolent resistance on the teachings of Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr. He was deported by Israel in 1988 (see Mubarak Awad, "Non-Violent Resistance: A Strategy for the Occupied Territories." Journal of Palestine Studies. Summer 1984).

A year later, Beit Sahour, a town near Bethlehem, engaged in a tax revolt against Israel, under the famous American slogan "No taxation without representation." The Israeli army responded by arresting over 80 Palestinians, cutting telephone lines, blocking food shipments into the town and confiscating millions of dollars in Palestinian goods.

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What about the current conflict?

All the public hears about are the small, makeshift rockets Palestinians fire into southern Israel. But farmers, fisherman and children had been nonviolently resisting the Israeli occupation for years.

Up until the Israeli invasion, Gaza fishermen had been d*isobeying Israeli orders by fishing in their waters* -- not unlike Gandhi when he urged Indians to march to the sea to collect their own salt against British orders.

In response, the British beat and imprisoned Gandhi's marchers. Likewise, the Israeli navy repeatedly forced Palestinian fisherman to strip to their underwear and swim to Israeli navy ships, where they are detained and their boats confiscated.

Since 2002, Palestinian men, women and children have been sitting in front of Israeli bulldozers flattening their olive groves to construct a wall deep into the West Bank.

The Israeli army has responded to these peaceful protestors with tear gas, beatings, arrests and even death.

The pattern occurred time and again: nonviolent Palestinian resistance would be crushed by Israeli force and ignored by the West.

With nothing to show for their efforts, is it any surprise that the Palestinian peaceful protest movement founders?

Violence has always been a historical response to colonialism and repression, in conflicts from India to Algeria to South Africa.

That doesn't make attacks on civilians right -- or strategically effective, for that matter.

In fact, as we all know, the Indian revolt against the British Empire only finally succeeded when Gandhi convinced his countrymen to resist peacefully.

Extremist factions, like those during the Indian independence movement, only gain strength and popularity when Israel flattens even the most harmless dissent.

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Radhika Sainath is a civil rights attorney and an editor of Peace Under Fire: Israel/Palestine and the International Solidarity Movement. She lived in the West Bank from October 2002-December 2003.

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The questions raised by Radhika in this fascinating comparison are very valid. So let's consider:

(a) Do you think that Palestinian resistance against Israeli occupation should continue to be labeled terrorism or freedom fighting?

(b) Do you think that Israel's continued disproportional response will breed more violence?

(c) Do you think that the collective punishment inflicted upon Gaza - (inc. 18 months of seige culminating in the recent war) - is justified when Hamas was their democratically elected choice?

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Israel: Stop Crying Wolf

By Rula Zein-Iddin
http://www.ireport.com/docs/DOC-200507

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It is clear that your oppression
Consistently breeds repression

And such blatant suppression
Only provokes more aggression

This constant brutality
Induces fatality

Why is all this mutilation,
Greeted with jubilation?

Distasteful salivation
At destroying a whole nation

How can you rejoice
Giving racism a voice?

Realize that what you once beseeched
Is about to get you impeached

Tell me, how did all this hate spawn?
Will you forever only act out with brawn?

Knowing that children are being used as a pawn
When will you stop rendering them forlorn?

Will the suffering awaken a conscience asleep?
Your silence speaks volumes, not even a peep

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Gaza: Death by Amnesia

by Rula Zein-Iddin


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As I stare at the headlines in bewilderment
It appears the veiled aims obtained fulfillment

For nowhere in the foreign media transmission
Is Gaza mentioned once, such a blatant omission

For political analysts this is a clear portent
Of a biased administration's avid intent

So who designed Michelle's elegant white dress,
Takes precedence over a whole nation's distress?

With talks of recession & even depression
It is clear that we must repress the oppression

As I continued to watch with mounting rage
What would it take for us to be centre stage?

Let's not wait any longer with baited breath
For a miracle to extract us from this bleak myth

The human psyche and its frail humility
Razed to the ground by rampant brutality

No need for expectations since the writing is on the wall
For Gaza & its children have been failed by one & all

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Quoting: http://inthefield.blogs.cnn.com/tag/paula-hancocks/

"Wars today are fought on the battlefield, or in this case in the crowded streets of Gaza, the rest is won or lost on television screens and through public perception.

The vast majority of Israelis see this as a military success, but approval of Israel's operation around the world - even among its strongest allies - could be undermined by a disturbingly high Palestinian civilian death toll and misery inflicted on a far wider target than Hamas."

Which would be true in Europe but not in the US where the Jewish Lobby ensures that the pictures of the suffering and devastation wrought on an incarcerated population of 1.5m people in the open air prison that is Gaza is kept well hidden. This obstruction of the truth goes against the very essence of journalism and only serves to increase misunderstanding, prejudice and hatred.

So how do you propose that Arabs in general & Palestinians in particular can get a fair hearing in the US media?

Who am I?

Today I was asked on http://www.ireport.com/docs/DOC-199704 who I 'represent'.

Well here is my answer:

Who am I?
I am the voice of every innocent child that was cruelly murdered.
Of every orphaned child who no longer has a mother.
Of every mutilated child whose limbs were amputated by Israeli's DIME weapons.
Of every scarred child still burning from the Phosphorous bombs dropped on them
Of every disturbed child who wakes up petrified because they can still hear the F16's about to bomb them.
Of every wretched child whose spirit has been broken.

I, am your worst nightmare. For I am here to shatter the prejudice, racism & hatred that you perceive is reality.

Obama, take away the pain in my stomach

The I Word: Part Six

The I Word: Part Five

The I Word: Part Two

Occupation 101