"The Second Palestinian Intifada"
Ramzy Baroud is a veteran Palestinian-American journalist and former Al-Jazeera producer. He also taught Mass Communication at Australia's Curtin University of Technology and is the founder and Editor-in-Chief of the Palestine Chronicle, a vital resource for information on Israel/Palestine and much more.
Baroud is an international media veteran. He publishes many articles, commentaries and short stories, is a frequent radio and television guest, and has been a guest speaker at top universities around the country and abroad. He was also once guest speaker at the British House of Commons.
Baroud published his first book of Arabic poetry at age 18 and has since written two others - "Searching Jenin: Eyewitness Accounts of the Israeli Invasion" and "The Second Palestinian Intifada" and subject of this review.
Baroud is well-qualified for his task. He was born and raised in a Gaza refugee camp and saw how Israeli soldiers repressed and humiliated young Palestinians like himself - "forcing (them) to their knees....and threatening to beat them if they did not spit upon a photo of Yasser Arafat." They refused to insult his image even under threat, and "would endure pain and injury, but would say nothing." They've taken plenty, and it's unrelenting.
Baroud's book is poignant and masterful. It blends his personal experience with a gripping narrative of his peoples' struggle for justice. It's about the strong against the weak, war, repression, displacement, massacres, targeted assassinations, and yet Palestinians resisted throughout the painful Second Intifada years. Baroud's book was published in 2006. His timeline is from September 29, 2001 (the Intifada's onset) through September 29, 2005. The Uprising ended, but the struggle continues.
Forward and Introduction
Two introductory sections precede the Intifada years that Baroud recounts. The first is by Kathleen and Bill Christison. They both formerly worked for CIA. Kathleen resigned after 16 years service. Bill retired after 28 years. Over time, their views ideologically changed, and both husband and wife are now vocal Israeli critics.
They reflect about Baroud's grandfather. He was a Beit Daras village refugee, who lived in a Gaza camp for 40 years until his death hoping one day he'd return to his home. It was lost in the 1947-49 Nakba, an old man's dream proved fruitless, and it "symbolizes....the tragedy of the Palestinian people and their great strength."
For decades, Zionists tried to ignore the historical record, delegitimize Palestinian claims to their land, dehumanize and remove them from more it it, crush their spirit, seize their land, destroy their homes, and erase their existence. Yet a proud people persist. The Christisons refer to their "great strength: their resilience and remarkable endurance (despite being) ignored, exiled, repeatedly dispossessed, (viciously) oppressed, occasionally massacred," yet their struggle for liberation continues.
Jennifer Loewenstein is a political activist and University of Wisconsin Associate Director of the Middle East Studies Program. She added her reflections in an introductory section. From her travels to Occupied Palestine, she wrote of her experience - getting through checkpoints, for her as an American Jew, what it's like for Palestinian Arabs, how demeaning and punishing it is, how Israelis control the Occupied Territories, and how they take full advantage to dismember "Palestinian culture and society...."
She describes how Israeli settlers live compared to their Palestinian neighbors - "neatly packed housing units....cheerfully clean, with an assortment of modern businesses available to (their) residents." Some homes have swimming pools, "all of them (have) small, green gardens," streets are lined with "flowers, glossy green shrubs, and well-tended trees."
In contrast, across the West Bank and Gaza (before the disengagement), "poor Arab villages (are) huddled together in valleys overlooked by hilltop settlements" on the choicest land. In most cases, they're "encircled by....IDF military outposts with....watchtowers, barbed wire fences, jeep patrols....scores of entrapping checkpoints" and for-Jews only roads. Big cities are separated from smaller ones, which, in turn, are "cut off from villages...." They, in turn, are detached from farmland, water, businesses, schools, clinics and "access to the outside world."
Under these conditions, Palestinians are viciously confronted. They're vilified as "militants, gunmen and insurgents." These are code words for "terrorists," and the spring 2002 "Operation Defensive Shield" was one of many assaults against them. Israeli forces rampaged through Ramallah. They destroyed civic institutions and NGO records; ransacked buildings and homes; randomly smashed furniture and appliances; scrawled graffiti on walls; covered floors with food, drink, mud, urine, feces, and other type trash; removed computer hard drives; then smashed the equipment beyond repair.
It wasn't enough. They wrecked everything in sight - burning, shredding and at times shooting at photos, posters and pictures on walls. They vandalized radio and TV stations, banks, schools, hospitals, clinics, government facilities and cultural centers. In the end, they justified their actions as "a necessary part of the 'war on terror.' "
This was a single instance of what Israelis inflict willfully, wantonly, viciously, and randomly throughout the Occupied Territories. All the while, world community support is firm, while Palestinian self-defense is called terrorism. Both sides are urged to show restraint as if the struggle were between equal adversaries.
Nonetheless, in spite of everything Israel unleashes, the dream of a liberated Palestine remains strong. That's the goal in spite of continued repression, Oslo's betrayal, fiasco at Camp David in 2000, decades of built up frustration, and Hizbollah's forcing Israel's May 2000 South Lebanon withdrawal remains inspiring. It sewed the seeds of the Second Intifada. Anger and discontent were building, then erupted in a popular uprising on September 29, 2000. Ariel Sharon provoked it by "visiting" the Haram al-Sharif (the Noble Sanctuary) the previous day. Israel responded harshly, a cycle of resistance and retaliation followed, and the struggle continued ever since. Baroud recounts its nominal five year period.
He begins by stating that it "will be etched in history as an era in which a major shift in the rules of the game occurred." It was fueled by:
-- decades of continued, repressive occupation;
-- desperate young people in frustration voluntarily blowing themselves up; their resistance and defiance is called "terrorism;" Palestinians call them heroic; Baroud urges Palestinians to resist targeting civilians regardless of how Israel acts; he believes it's vital to seize a higher ground, maintain moral values, and confine resistance to self-defense and targeting an illegal occupation;
-- the construction of the 721 kilometer Separation Wall on confiscated Palestinian land; the International Court of Justice (ICJ) ruled it illegal and ordered it be removed; Israel ignored the ruling and continues to build its unfinished parts; its consequences have been devastating; Palestinians have been cut off from work, schools, medical facilities, and their community life is seriously impaired; farmers are separated from their land; it's an act of land seizure and collective punishment; and
-- a decades-long struggle now "an eternal divide between two peoples," and its gulf continues to widen.
Baroud was in high school when the First Intifada erupted in December 1987. In spite of it, residents of his Gaza refugee camp "were consumed with....other more" daily concerns: "would they eat today, would they find clean water, would they seize their long-awaited freedom?" Palestinians took to the streets, and Baroud joined them in their chants. He also began to write with poetry his earliest efforts. They evolved into chants, were "published" on Gaza refugee camp walls, and there they stayed.
Baroud was studying in America when the Second Intifada began. Like the first one, Palestinians were unfairly blamed and condemned by a media as one-sided as the nations they report from. Baroud confronts them, and his book and writings are his "contribution" to the mostly neglected Second Uprising narrative and the Palestinian struggle overall.
He has no political affiliation and intends it solely as an independent view. His aim is direct and forthright - to represent and report on "the same principles espoused by countless (numbers of Palestinians) in small and over-crowded refugee camps where freedom is proudly cherished over life." Without comment, his book is dedicated to them and everyone who supports his efforts to reveal what the mainstream continues to suppress.
http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=8923
