‘The Palestinians face attacks every day, and yet, they resist’

On a daily basis Palestinians suffer vexatious indignities that go largely unnoticed by the rest of the world. What makes it to the news is the consequence of such humiliations – desperate and brutal acts of violence which are countered by greater force by Israel’s security forces. 

Critics of Israel’s illegal occupation of Palestinian land often call for a campaign of boycotts, divestment and sanctions (BDS) against Israel until it complies with international law and upholds Palestinian rights. 

Others take a more direct approach. Alex Caruana is one of two Maltese activists who are currently in what some still refer to as the Holy Land, carrying out voluntary work in Palestinian refugee camps and in the occupied territories. 

Together with fellow Moviment Graffitti activist Ruth Chircop, Caruana is experiencing the daily toils and woes of Palestinians.

Her first reaction upon reaching the occupied West Bank is one of rage. 

“I felt sorry and angry. Sorry for the Palestinians who are victims of the Zionist project of displacement and colonisation, and angry because of the international community’s inaction in face of this injustice,” she says of her short visit to Hebron.

The city, situated 30km south of Jerusalem, is the place where you can most tangibly feel the occupation, Caruana says. 

“I went there with an Italian friend who lives in Palestine, her co-worker and a friend of mine. They were going to Hebron to visit a family because the week before, the father of the family, who was also a friend of theirs, had died.” 

She explains that the man suffered from heart problems and died after inhaling tear gas fired by the Israeli security forces. 

“The soldiers blocked the entrance to the ambulance, so he had to walk for some time to reach the ambulance at the checkpoint and he didn’t make it to hospital in time. These are common stories here,” she says with a hint of resignation.

“When my Italian friend’s co-worker found out that I was going to Hebron with them, she asked me whether I was really going, due to the very bad situation. Just the day before, the soldiers had killed a young woman during the clashes. I felt unease. I didn’t know what to expect,” Caruana adds.

The 26-year-old activist recounts that as soon as she arrived in the old city of Hebron, “I could feel the tension in the air. We started walking through an empty market – a market with no people.” 

Opposite the empty and silent market stands an Israeli settlement, the only settlement in the West Bank that is located in the middle of a Palestinian city. 

“We continued to walk down until we stopped at a shop and my nose began to burn. There was tear gas in the air. It was a strange feeling walking down an old Arab city, with your nose burning and a fence above you.” 

A shopkeeper stopped Caruana and her companions begging them to buy something because he hadn’t sold anything in three days. 

Palestinians do not dare to venture outside their homes and the clashes are keeping the tourists away.

“He explained to us that Palestinians had put up a fence because the Israeli settlers threw stones at them. In fact, I could see the stones on the fence. On the right, he pointed out to us a soldier in his tower, ready to shoot, and the same thing was on the left,” she says. 

Palestinians deprived of water 

Caruana is planning to stay in the occupied territories for a month, the duration of the Visa she got from Israeli authorities. However, in her first two weeks, Caruana has already visited numerous towns and camps, including the Jordan Valley, which she describes as “very shocking.” 

At first sight the desert was bare but the guide told her that after the rainy season, the valley is full of trees and life. But life for Palestinian Bedouins who live in the valley is anything but easy, with their main cause of concern being water. 

There, she encountered two contrasting realities on the very same road. 

“On the right side, I could see a (Israeli) settlement and their agricultural land, full of tall, big trees of dates and on the left, dry land with Bedouins on it.”

The Israeli settlers have their own modern water pumps while the Palestinians are prohibited from pumping underground water for their own land. 

Palestinians need to apply for a permit to dig a well and if they manage to get one, they cannot dig a well as deep as the Israelis. With their wells being shallow, the Bedouins and farmers find it difficult to pump enough water for their crops and land. 

As a result, “the Israelis, whose presence there is already illegal under international law, are stealing all the water that Palestinians used to have access to,” Caruana says. 

“One evening, I joined the Jordan Valley Solidarity Movement, which is made up of international citizens and Palestinians. Their leader told us that they had devised a machine that creates bricks. The Israeli military demolishes Palestinian houses and destroys them to the point that the materials can never be used again. With the help of this machine, they manage to build a house in 24 hours,” she said.

She later visited a Bedouin family living in the middle of nowhere. “After serving us tea and coffee, the father of the family explained to us that their tent-cum-house had been destroyed twice but they always built it again. What struck me most was their spirit. A spirit of resistance. They are militarily occupied by the same people who took their land, they are facing attacks every day, and yet, they resist.”

The Bedouins believe, Caruana said, that “to exist is an act of resistance because the Israelis want them dead or living on another land.”

“An Italian man who was with us jokingly said that he would have a talk face to face with Netanyahu, but the answer he got from the leader of the Jordan Valley Solidarity Movement was that we are more powerful than Israeli premier Benjamin Netanyahu, Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas, German chancellor Angela Merkel and the Italian president.”

The Bedouin continued by saying that the true force is within the people and only the people can liberate themselves through revolution, from the bottom. 

“Change can never come from those at the top because they are comfortable enough. I went out of the Bedouins’ place astonished, with tears in my eyes and a regenerated faith in humanity and its revolutionary spirit,” Caruana added. 

Some of the activists from various parts of the world who are in Palestine volunteering and helping people in their daily struggle in what is often dubbed an apartheid state

A Palestinian Bedouin riding a donkey in the arid Jordan Valley

Olive picking

Olive picking in Palestine is an act of resistance and solidarity and Caruana says it is one of the few effective direct actions in the occupied territories. 

“Palestinians are constantly harassed by soldiers and settlers while harvesting their olives. Sometimes they are shot at, beaten or barred from entering their fields.”

Since 1967, Israeli authorities and settlers have destroyed an estimated 800,000 Palestinian olive trees.

Olives are one of the main sources of income for Palestinians, and a lot of international activists volunteer during the olive picking season. 

“It’s a wonderful thing to do. I met a lot of different people in just two days of olive picking. I’ve met vegan Brazilians, university students, Muslim British women, old British women, Polish people, and many others. Every grove has its own story. The last place we went to was Al Walaya, a few minutes away from Bethlehem. This village is close to an Israeli settlement and it is surrounded by a fence – in the coming years, this fence will be replaced by a wall. 

“The whole village is encircled by a wall, a wall of apartheid. The people in this village will need a special permit to go in and out of the village and those who have their land on the other side of the wall will find it difficult to reach it,” she says.

While picking olives, Caruana could see the fence just down the road, a road constructed for the exclusive use of the Israeli military. A few metres away, behind a hill, lay the state of Israel. 

“I ended up looking at the beautiful surroundings, the fence, the Palestinian family and thinking about their future. What will happen to them in a few years? This family is already a refugee family.” 

Palestinian refugees and internally displaced Palestinians represent the largest and longest-standing case of forced displacement in the world today. Two out of every five refugees in the world are Palestinian. 

“Will this family be internally displaced again? The fact that I can’t do anything for them and for all the Palestinians except writing about the situation makes me feel angry and powerless. The situation is so bad, discrimination and apartheid are so clear. Then, when Palestinians throw stones at one of the most powerful military in the world, the West comes out condemning them. It’s a shame.”

The wall of separation 

Israel’s separation barrier, dubbed the “Apartheid Wall” or “Berlin Wall” by Palestinians, has increasingly attracted international media attention, largely due to the scale of the wall. 

Once completed, the wall will reach some 650km, more than four times the length of the Berlin Wall. 

Caruana says that the wall is one of the things that stand out upon arriving in Palestine.

“The wall gives you a sense of claustrophobia because you know that all around the West Bank, there is a wall and, sometimes, an electric fence, and to go in and out you always need Israeli permission,” she says. 

The wall which had to be built on the so-called Green Line – the line separating the West Bank from Israel – was built much further inside the West Bank and took kilometres of land, including the entirety of East Jerusalem. 

“This is a wall of separation and a means of oppression and humiliation. Palestinians and internationals drew beautiful graffiti on it to make it somewhat bearable. Artists like Banksy came here and drew on the wall to show their support for the Palestinians. 

“As one graffiti stated, All Walls Fall. I hope so, all Palestinians hope so. Insha’Allah. Maybe it will not be in our generation but justice will and should be done.”