The Arab Spring
I am back. In Beit Sahour. Palestine. 13 months later. I’m pretty excited about it. In a way this feels like some sort of a homecoming, but also it doesn’t.
Even though I knew how long the bus ride from Eilat to Jerusalem would take, and exactly where I was when I woke up after napping a bit on the bus, how much the taxi from the bus station in Jerusalem to the checkpoint is supposed to cost, how to maneuver my bag through the revolving doors at the checkpoint, how much I’m supposed to pay for a taxi ride to Beit Sahour from the checkpoint, and where to go on a Tuesday night to find people when I have lost all the phone numbers the last year. It is a homecoming, even though most of my friends from my last stay are now scattered around the world, and I now live alone in the same apartment were I used to have a flatmate who did the dishes and tidied up after me. It is a homecoming, but it is different. It’s the same place I left a year ago, but also it’s not. Some of the things that I left here is still in the apartment. It feels like it’s no more than a month since the last time I was here, also it feels like 10 years. I know this, even though I have only been here for a few days now.
I experienced some of the same things in Cairo last week. I got pretty well acquainted with Cairo in November 2010 when I was waiting for my new passport (yes, I still think the Norwegian embassy there is sort of a joke), and spent a lot of time in the afternoons just strolling the downtown streets. Cairo has changed. Egypt has changed, Dahab where I have spent most of my time the last two weeks has changed. Obviously there is less police in the streets now, as Mubarak’s regime is gone. In Dahab this was most noticeable by the free flow of marijuana in the streets, and people smoking openly, with no fear from the extreme legal consequences that drug use in Egypt has. In Cairo I witnessed that 100 000 people again gathered in Tahrir Square, as they were marking Egypt’s Second Day of Rage. Even a couple of days before the protest the army announced that it would stay away from Tahrir, as many of the people gathered there to express their dissatisfaction with indeed the army, and it’s leaders who are now controlling the country. Even though Egypt isn’t close to perfect, and people aren’t satisfied, the country has changed since the last time I was there. After all the Second Day of Rage developed to be more like a celebration, with the underlying demands of a people who forced one of the longest lived dictatorships in the world to fall, in the same place, in this very same spring. Sure the Egyptian army knows this, and the Egyptian people feel empowered, but still oppressed, I guess. Empowered and oppressed, that must be the hardest, and certainly the most scary group of people to try to rule, and neglect.
This is the Arab Spring.
People are behaving differently. Also Palestinians. On May 15th when Palestinians all over the world commemorated the Nakba (the Catastrophe), and marked the 63rd Nakba Day, it was clear that the Arab Spring is still very much alive. In addition to the more “normal” Nakba demonstrations all over Palestine, thousand of Palestinian refugees, walked, unarmed, to the Israeli borders with Syria, and Lebanon (they were stopped by the Egyptian army before they reached the Israeli border there), in Syria demonstrators actually managed to cross into the illegally annexed Golan Heights close to the town of Majdal Shams. 13 Palestinians were killed by the Israeli army in these non-violent marches, and hundreds were wounded. In Qalandia, close to Ramallah, doctors said that they hadn’t seen as many people wounded in one single event since the Second Intifada. On Sunday, these scenarios are likely to take place again.
5th of June is the Palestinian Naksa Day, (the Day of the setback), and Palestinians will commemorate the 1967 war, when the Israeli occupation of Golan, East-Jerusalem, the West Bank, Gaza, and even Sinai started. Thousands of Palestinian refugees will again march to the Israeli borders. Palestinians will demonstrate all over the West Bank, in East- Jerusalem, Gaza and in Israel (the Israeli Government has made it illegal to mark the Nakba Day, and even to mention the Palestinian suffering that came with the declaration of the Israeli state in 1948 in Israeli schools, I don’t know if they have a official policy on the Naksa though). It will surely be another tense day, and sadly I’ll be more surprised if the day ends without any loss of human life, than with more people dying because of the all the historical wrongdoings that has led up to where we are today. Occupation and oppression. Settlements and walls. Racism and segregation. Two wrongs make a right, huh?
Not according to international law. International law is what drives the Palestinian resistance. International law is opposing the moral and legal standards of the Israeli state’s behavior towards the Palestinian people. The refugees that forcefully, and unarmed, will be trying to march into Israeli territories are indeed doing it with the UN Resolution 194 backing them. A resolution that says that the Palestinian refugees have the right to return home to where they fled from in 1948. The Nakba. The international community, the UN, and even the US, is still clear on the fact that the Golan Heights, Gaza, East-Jerusalem, and the West Bank is occupied land from Syria and the Palestinian people. This is now Israel’s problem. The Arab Spring. People don’t seem to be scared to defy authorities in this region any longer. Empowered and oppressed. And Israel is dealing with this as it has always done. Violence, and more violence. And people die. And Israel continues to neglect international laws. And people die. And violence creates violence.
I must say that I am genuinely afraid that any excessive use of violence that will be used to handle the Palestinian’s Arab Spring, might lead to a circle of violence that we hoped would be in the past. Counterproductive and horrifying. Whoever thinks that taking another human’s life in this conflict is promoting freedom and justice is wrong. It only promotes death and killing. This should be remembered as the Israeli army have to handle Naksa Day- protests on Sunday. It’s the Arab Spring. Handle with care. Or it explodes.
Oh, and I should probably also mention the flotilla expected to set sail for Gaza in the end of June. It will be a busy month for the Israeli army to defend it’s right to neglect international law.
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