Advertisement
Advertisement
Ben Ehrenreich: I think one of the things that is most deceptive about the "objective" narratives that we see a lot in journalism is that they refuse to acknowledge their own role in the production of the very texts that they're creating, and refuse to acknowledge whatever entanglements they have with their subjects. For me, it's important to acknowledge that and to place oneself in it. While I don't believe in objectivity, the role of the writer as subject and the degree to which the writer is enmeshed in the lives of the people he or she is writing about should be as transparent as possible.
Advertisement
Some of it was; a lot of it frankly wasn't. Most of the things written about the occupation and the conflict, at least by American writers, tends to either focus on the high politics of the occupation—on the negotiations, on the political figures, etc.—or to be more academic and focus in a more scholarly way on the functioning of the occupation. I didn't want to do either of those things, I've never been at all comfortable reporting in those high circles of power; I am always much more interested in how those [politics] play out in people's lives. It's tempting to say "the lives of ordinary people," but I don't really believe in the notion of "ordinary people." I just wasn't interested in spending time with the elites, which is what most writing about the conflict by Americans tends to do.
One of the things that is possible in writing is to give people an opportunity to imagine lives that are completely other than their own, and to gently challenge people to abandon their own experience and step into someone else's and imagine themselves as another. In many ways, that is one of the most important exercises people in this country can undertake when confronted with a population that is so routinely dehumanized. It is through that relation of details that kind of identification becomes possible.
Advertisement
From most high points in the West Bank, you can see the sparkling of the sun on the Mediterranean in the late afternoon. Nonetheless, most Palestinians can't go there, and most children in their teens have never been to the beach. When we think about the occupation, we think about people being killed in raids, we think about prisons.But one of the things that Palestinians talk about and plays a larger role in people's imagination in some ways than many of the obvious forms of oppression is not being able to visit the sea. They talk and dream about seeing the sea all the time. So one day during Ramadan in the summer of 2015, Israelis were allowing men under seventeen and over forty and all women to cross through Qalandia checkpoint into Jerusalem, so they could pray at Al Aqsa Mosque. I met up with a family with three children and some Israeli friends, and we took them to the beach near Acre, where the children could play in the water for the first time in their lives.
How are the characters in the book doing today?"More than half of the two thousand two hundred people who were killed in Gaza were civilians, and many, many more have been killed in the West Bank since then. That makes it a lot harder to convince anybody that they should risk their lives with empty hands while standing up to the occupation."
When I first started going [to Palestine], several villages were doing weekly demonstrations against the occupation, and it still seemed possible that the number of villages might still grow and might spread, and one might see a grassroots unarmed resistance really challenging the occupation in some meaningful way. But I don't think anyone believes that now. It is, unfortunately, clear to most people, even the ones who are still taking part in that particular kind of resistance, that they need to find new strategies.
Advertisement
Particularly after the 2014 war in Gaza, it's become harder to convince anybody that it would make any sense to resist the Israeli military forces in a nonviolent manner, when they have shown themselves so willing to slaughter civilians. More than half of the two thousand two hunred people who were killed in Gaza were civilians, and many, many others have been killed in the West Bank since then. That makes it a lot harder to convince anybody that they should risk their lives with empty hands while standing up to the occupation. One frequently hears in the American pro-Israel press people bemoaning the lack of a "Palestinian Mandela" or lack of a "Palestinian Gandhi" and voices criticizing Palestinians for not starting a nonviolent mass movement against the occupation, which is I think hypocritical on a number of different levels. But the most obvious one is that Israel has taken great pains to destroy every nonviolent movement as it arises.There's all this talk in the book about a third intifada, or uprising. Do you think the West Bank has lost the torque necessary for an intifada?
I think the big question mark is the role of the Palestinian Authority (PA) because one of the main functions of the Abbas regime is to prevent any organized resistance. I know this goes completely counter to the narrative we see coming out of Israel, which is frequently parroted in the American press, that Abbas and the PA are inciting violence against Israel. If you spend any time in the West Bank, it's very clear that the main role of the Palestinian Security Forces is to suppress any resistance to the occupation. Demonstrations not against the PA, but against the Israelis, are frequently put down with great violence by the PA. No one quite knows how to work around that yet. People are not ready to challenge the Palestinian Authority head-on, both because it's dangerous and because it's their own.In a way, it sort of fits into a broader neoliberal structure being replicated all over the world.
Yes, exactly. And that's a more complicated and invisible enemy than a group of soldiers. Most of the activists that I know well talk about that neoliberal atomization as the greatest obstacle that they have to deal with, not Israeli bullets or tear gas. Many people have a salary from a Palestinian Authority job and a great deal of consumer debt they have to think about constantly. So they are a less likely to rally to anything.Where do you see things going from here?
I think the fact that the lockdown on criticism of Israel is now breaking up is a real opportunity. We shouldn't forget that $3.1 billion American tax dollars goes to the Israeli military and that the US is in an absolutely direct way paying for what is happening over there, and we are not powerless. For years that has been unquestioned, and if Hillary Clinton had her way that would remain unquestioned. Americans who care about this have to make sure that it is not just questioned but powerfully challenged in a way that the political leadership in this country can no longer afford to ignore.Munir Atalla is a Jordanian of Palestinian origin, working as a producer at NBC News. Follow him on Twitter.