fugitive peace

The image on the left is a map that I bought in an antiques shop in Jaffa. It is dated 1940 and shows Jewish-owned land in green. Under the legend “FACTS”, it states, “The greater part of Palestine is still uncultivated. Jews now own less than six percent of the land of Palestine.” It enumerates three zones: in the largest, called Zone A, “land transfers to others than Palestine Arabs are prohibited”. The map is issued by the “Keren Kayemeth Leisrael”, the Jewish National Fund.

The image on the right is the JNF’s land holdings today. As I wrote in last week’s story, there is some disagreement over dates, amounts and prices, but between 1949 and 1953 either 1.25m or 2m dunums (1,250 or 2,000 sq km) was added to the 6% or so that Jews owned before Israel was created, by means of selling the JNF land that the state had confiscated from those same “Palestine Arabs” who had fled the war.

It took me a while after I bought the antique map to read the legends properly and realise that it was propaganda. The JNF was trying to show how little land Jews controlled, and how restricted they were from acquiring more, in an attempt to stave off criticism that they were taking over Palestine. In the preceding years tensions had flared and land prices had gone up many-fold as the Arabs in Palestine started to resist the slowly growing Jewish influx.

The figures are, of course, somewhat misleading. The 6% refers to the whole of Palestine, of which a great deal was and is desert, and does not easily support large population centres. Much of the Jewish land shown in the 1940 map is concentrated in the coastal strip, where Tel Aviv and its metropolitan sprawl, the biggest population concentration in Israel, are today. Looked at in terms of population rather than land, the picture changes: though estimates vary, by 1940 Jews were around 30%.

Likewise, today’s dispute about the JNF is based on a somewhat misleading figure. According to its charter, its land can be leased to Jews only. But it owns only 13% of Israel. So is it really such a big issue? When you look at the map on the right, where the JNF holdings are so tightly packed that they clearly outline the northern West Bank, it becomes clear that in the bit of Israel that most people want to live in, the non-arid part—in other words, from about the level of Ashkelon northwards—the JNF owns a great deal of the land, perhaps as much as half.

Back when Hamas won the Palestinian elections in January 2006, a curious story did the rounds: the Palestinian Taybeh brewery was planning to mark the occasion by releasing a non-alcoholic beer with a label in Hamas green - just in case the Islamists decided to ban booze.

It was a time of many jokes - secular Palestinians were going around exchanging formal Islamic salutations and asking how many lashes you get for driving over the speed limit - so I didn’t take it too seriously.

But two weeks ago I went to the Oktoberfest.

Taybeh is the only entirely Christian town in the West Bank, and the only town with a brewery. Three years ago the brewer, Nadim Khoury, decided that what’s good enough for Munich is good enough for Taybeh, and put on a beer festival. True, the only beer you can get is Taybeh beer, and the Oktoberfest was in September so as to avoid clashing with Ramadan and offending the Muslims in a neighbouring town (who launched a nasty attack over an incident of family honour two years ago). Still, it’s wildly popular, especially with foreigners working in Jerusalem and Ramallah; by the time I got there the town centre looked like the parking lot for an international donor conference.

The highlight of the festival, apart from the beer - and I have to admit I don’t like beer - was DAM, a Palestinian rap crew from the town of Ludd/Lod, now part of Israel. In Israel and Palestine they’re very popular, but their lead singer, Tamer Nafar, still lives in a pokey corner bedroom at his parents’ house. And not just because he’s a devoted son. As Israeli citizens, it’s very hard for them to sell their music (let alone get concert tours) in the Arab world, where Palestinian-Israelis are still treated with suspicion.

Which is why they play gigs like Taybeh, where the sound system was cutting out every five minutes and the audience consisted largely of awed 12-year-old local girls and drunken foreign aid workers trying to dance and make gangsta signals.

Still, everyone was having a great time, and at some point a friend introduced me to Mr Khoury. He looked just like a cartoon brewer: short, plump, jolly, wild hair, loose tie, red face, bloated nose and a little unsteady on his feet. Naturally, he had a beer in one hand.

I asked him about the pro-Hamas beer. Ah, he sighed; they were still working on it. There was a religious problem: if you do it the usual way, which is to brew the beer and then remove the alcohol, a bit of alcohol usually remains, and that might be haram. So they were trying to find a way to make beer without fermenting it. It sounded to me like cooking without heat, but he seemed unfazed. “We are trying and trying, and in the end we will get there!” And off he weaved to find someone else to drink with.

Israeli parents are furious at the army for letting their sons, new conscripts, sleep in unprotected tents at the Zikim army base, where dozens of them were wounded on Monday night by a rocket from Gaza. The government, for its part, has decided not to hit Gaza hard in retaliation.

But please spare a thought for another unintended victim of the rocket attack. This morning I got this email from a friend in Gaza who, after months of struggle to get the necessary visa, exit permit and who knows what else, was due to leave yesterday to realise a long-awaited dream of studying abroad. His words express eloquently one of the things that one can so rarely learn from media reports: the misery of being an ordinary Gazan trapped between the forces of Israel’s occupation on the one hand and Palestinian extremism on the other:

I set out of here on time Tuesday 4:00 am. I got on the bus with the other travelers and we moved on to Erez crossing, passed it after we had done all the checking procedures on the Israeli side so swiftly and smoothly. Every thing seemd fine and good. We got on other buses and were supposed to head to Egypt. We waited and waited and waited to move, time of waiting on the buses almost 4 hours. We did not move to Egypt though :-( . Then we were told we have to return to Gaza for security reasons. We heard later that it was because some Palestinian stupid group fired a rocket against Israel and hit a group of Israeli soldiers, one was killed [NB: according to reports today he is critically injured but still alive - Gideon] and 60 others were injured…. On the way back, I saw the women and kids traveling back bursting into tears feeling so disappointed, grievous and upset. All of them were of course stuck in Gaza and this was their only chance to reunite with their families, fathers and husbands… It is so sad and agonizing to know that we ,the Palestinian, do this to ourselves and call this “resistance” of the occupation… The Israelis did not do this to us… quite the opposite they were so helpful at the crossing and let us pass so quickly…. I do not know.. I am beginning to hate my own country and people.. not all of them but those utilitarians blood traders who use the Palestinian cause merely for personal and party interests without caring about the people’s well being… I want to know… why why why… they would fire rockets only when they know people are traveling through Erez crossing… it was not a coincidence, It was known to every body in Gaza that we were traveling today earlier…. It is all because the Palestinian “blood traders” cant travel through Israel, they are screwing this way up…. though more than 80% of the Palestinian people can benefit from this crossing to go after their business, education and to reunite with their families out of Gaza…. It is so fuckin stupid and ungly…. Excuse my words.. I am so upset right now….

This year, in a rare coincidence, the Jewish and Muslim festivals begin together. To everyone, wherever you are, and especially to my Gazan friend,

On Friday a colleague and I visited Bil’in, a Palestinian village that has become famous for its weekly protests against the anti-terror fence/separation barrier/apartheid wall. (NB: when I learn Javascript, I’ll add a “delete as appropriate” feature so you can read the version of this blog that corresponds to your politics.) This week the villagers were celebrating an Israeli High Court decision to reroute the barrier, restoring to the village about half of the farmland that the existing route cuts off.

By the time we arrived the festivities had ended so the village could gear up for a wedding celebration, and handfuls of foreign sympathisers were loitering around trying to hitch rides back home. We drove out to the site of the protests next to the fence itself, where the ground is littered with the packaging from tear gas grenades.

As we stood taking pictures we heard a gunshot, and a minute later another. A group of boys in the distance had evidently strayed too near to another part of the fence, and the soldiers on the other side were firing warning shots and gunning the engine of their jeep. We decided not to make them any more jumpy by hanging around too close to the fence ourselves, and started driving back.

On the way I stopped the car to take a leak in an olive grove. From there I could hear the boys and the soldiers cursing each other in a fluid mix of Hebrew and Arabic. We walked closer, and it became clear that this was part of an established and mutually enjoyed tradition:

Boy: Fuck your sister!
Soldier: Your sister is a whore!
Boy: Your mother and your sister are whores!
Soldiers: [uproarious laughter]
Boy, mockingly: Where is Sharon? Sharon is dead!!
Soldier: [more laughter] You’re not a man!

That was true. The kids were barely into their teens, but they were hurling stones and insults at the troops with an air of long practice. From time to time a stone would hit the fence with a clang, which only seemed to amuse the soldiers even more. As we got closer the boys welcomed us in Hebrew; then, when we replied in Arabic, began badgering us to take pictures of them and give them money. One of them showed us the scab of what he said was a rubber bullet wound on the back of his head. It could have been, though his claim that it had been inflicted earlier that afternoon was clearly preposterous.

We took the pictures, but held back the money, citing as an excuse our wish to maintain the purity of the muqawame, the resistance. They pressed spent rubber bullets and a live round used for firing them (the cartridge of an ordinary round but without a bullet in the tip) into our hands as souvenirs. As we took our leave they returned to yelling and launching stones from their slingshots, though the army jeep had by now retreated well out of range…

Just back from seeing “Jerusalem - The East Side Story”, which was being screened to a selection of Ramallah’s great and good, among them Rafiq Husseini, Mahmoud Abbas’s chief of staff. Unlike “West Bank Story“, an Oscar-winning musical comedy about rival Israeli and Palestinian falafel families, this is a worthy but relentless litany of the injustices Israel has visited on the Palestinians of East Jerusalem in its attempts to create a unified Jewish capital.

The film is largely (and tragically) accurate, but like most propaganda in this conflict, makes too few nods to the other side’s narrative to win over many viewers who don’t already sympathise with its message. For 70 minutes the narrator pummels us in the doom-laden tone that wildlife presenters usually reserve for the moment when a nestful of cute goslings is about to be devoured by a feral cat. You come out wanting to slit your veins, or preferably the narrator’s. Still, it has two good moments.

One is an interview with Husseini’s boss, the president of Palestine, recounting one of his favourite to-camera stories: how he showed the map of Israel’s separation barrier to George Bush in 2003. According to Abbas (though it varies slightly with each telling), Bush was furious and told Dick Cheney, “this is not a state”. Abbas looks proud and self-satisfied. The audience, until then respectfully transfixed, started laughing and jeering. They jeered even more when Bush appeared, awkwardly telling the press, “This wall is… uh… a problem.” I wished I could have seen Husseini’s face at that point.

The second is of an elderly Palestinian woman, with title deeds and old photos in hand, coming to see the house in West Jerusalem that she fled as a child. The camera follows her as a group of Israelis strolls past. She watches them recede, then sums up the whole conflict as well and as succinctly as anyone I’ve ever heard. “We live in fantasy,” she sighs, “and they live in denial.”