Life Under Occupation

Speaking recently on BBC 5 Live, Occupied Times editor Michael Richmond was debating the Occupy movement when one of his opponents shrilly suggested, “no one suffers in this country, we have a welfare state”. I felt like I had just run into a brick wall. This sort of view could only come from someone who has never spent time with the homeless, the destitute or the desperate. The comment oozed a certain complacency that is replicated across middle England. I passionately believe that the challenge for us is to help people understand issues that are alien to their existence. Issues that they have not, and possibly never will, personally experience. This is no easy task. I am currently pondering the same conundrum regarding a very different type of occupation. I am living in Jayyus, a small farming village in the West Bank which has been living under occupation for over 45 years. Every aspect of life here is controlled, restricted and made unreliable. Whether we are talking about access to water, employment or education, it can all be taken away at a snap of the fingers. I passionately believe that a contributing factor enabling this occupation to continue is European and Israeli citizens’ inability to imagine what life is really like for Palestinians here. Part of the reason I am here is to try and tell the stories of those living under occupation to those who can affect change – you!

We face a similar challenge within the Occupy movement. Most people cannot feel what it is like to be on the negative end of our unfair, unequal and deeply discriminatory economic and social system. When we try to reach out to suburbia and tell them the system is falling apart around their ears, they look through their double glazed windows and wonder what on earth we are talking about. This means we have no choice; it is time to get personal. It is in light of this that I want to share a recent experience with you, in the hope that I can illustrate the devastating effect that the occupation here in the West Bank is having on ordinary people’s lives throughout the occupied territories. I hope to get you to open up your European double glazed windows and to see the occupation for what it is.

I met with Haney Ameer just a few days ago. Mr. Ameer lives on the outskirts of Mas-ha just outside Qalqiliya in the West Bank. Back in 2003, his house was situated on the path of the proposed separation barrier, 80% of which is built on Palestinian land. When he refused to leave his house, the Israeli government decided to build the barrier around him. His house is now surrounded on all four sides by walls, fences and the separation barrier. He lives in what looks like a high security prison. On one side of his house is the eight metre high concrete separation barrier which scars the landscape for as far as the eye can see. On the other side of his house there is an illegal Israeli settlement which is cut off from him by a barbed wire fence. Flanking each end of his property are locked security gates leading to the military road that track the separation barrier. He is hemmed into his small plot of land. Between 2003 and 2006 he lived here but did not own the keys to access his own property. For three years he relied on the IDF to let him through the security gate each day. It was not uncommon in those days for friends to throw food parcels over the wall so he could feed his wife and children.

I sat outside his broken and bruised property in the fading evening sun just a few days ago. He explained to me that he cannot fix any of the broken windows, crumbling walls or holes in the roof as he cannot get a permit from the Israelis to ‘build’ on his own land. The Israelis offered him a lot of money and a chance to rebuild a bigger and better house on more land wherever he wanted in return for his land. He refused. He refused because of a connection to the family home and due to a slightly harsher reality: The Palestinians who lived nearby warned him that if he sold out to the Israelis he would no longer be considered a ‘Palestinian’, he would be isolated. An ironic threat given his circumstances. When the meeting comes to a close, Haney Ameer walks us back to the rusted metal gate in the wall, the one small gate that provides access to his property to which he now has a key. Unlocking the padlock he looks up at the separation barrier and then at the floor. Deep in thought, his body forgets what he is doing but his hands are still unlocking the door that they have unlocked everyday for the last six years.

Mr Ameer lives in the most unimaginable conditions. And this is precisely the point: They are unimaginable. The Occupy movement now faces the challenge to expose the unimaginable as real. We have to make those who sit in their double glazed homes understand that there are people across the UK who are suffering unimaginably because of the gross inequalities in our society. Just as most of you dear readers will struggle to give two hoots about Haney, so most of suburbia will struggle to give two hoots about you. This is our challenge – we have to make people care.  The challenge is not related to the degree to which people are suffering, but to our ability to enable people to empathise with those who are experiencing the suffering.

By Steve Hynd