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The edge of reason
by Laurie King-Irani, The Electronic Intifada, 16
May 2003
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So it all comes down to this:
a jagged fence, an armored jeep, and a sniper tower; a
lone, bullet-scarred house barely sheltering a terrified
family at the edge of Rafah, at the edge of Palestine, at
the very edge of human decency and endurance.
A swirling wind whips dust, sand, and garbage along a
short, rutted street to the border. Tatters of old
newspapers can get across, sailing away past the fence
and out of this hell, yet the people living here cannot
go anywhere.
Staying is not much of an option, either. Mere existence
in occupied and besieged Rafah demands unimaginable
strength and continuous courage. The only way anyone
leaves Gaza is by leaving life itself. An extended
military closure makes dying the only exit option.
All the pipes and drums of political rallies and
remembrance day parades; all the ink of history books,
policy papers, executive summaries, and polemical tracts;
all the solemn newsbytes, sturm und drang and spin
of media coverage are pointless here at the edge of Gaza.
Talk or yell, scream or rationalize, pontificate or
analyze all you want, but it all boils down to this:
Ahusband, a wife, and their three small children clinging
to the vain hope of home and normalcy in a shattered neighborhood of
demolished houses. A family without guns, passports,
money or connections constantly watched and menaced by
roving tanks, enormous bulldozers, buzzing drones, and
lethal helicopters.
This is the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the
"Question of Palestine," the "Middle East
Crisis." This is how far diplomacy, aid packages,
political inducements, international conferences,
declarations of principles, and dialogue groups have
taken us: right here, to this jagged fence and ruined
building under a dust-darkened sky. This is it: a 24/7,
non-stop freak show of human rights violations and grave
infractions of International Law and the Fourth Geneva
Convention. Genocide on the installment plan.
A Palestinian woman living
in Rafah displays Israeli shrapnel
collected in her home, a sign of the ferocity and
frequency
with which residents are shelled. (Ronald de Hommel)
No one needs a college course, a political affairs
specialist, a newspaper columnist or a particular ethnic
or religious background to know that what is happening
here is absolutely and obscenely wrong. Anyone with eyes
can see, anyone with a heart can feel, anyone with a mind
can deduce that no human beings -- and certainly no
children -- should ever have to live like this.
This is wrong. This is terrorism. This is evil.
So it is no surprise that the Israeli Government and its
Army of Occupation do not want any foreign eyes, hearts,
or minds poking about here in Rafah, at the edge of the
edge, where dignity is disintegrating nearly as fast as
the last remaining shell-pocked buildings, where the
sound of something breaking might be a child's hope, a
family's crockery, a man's pride, a woman's mind, or the
international community's body of laws. Don't hear. Don't
ask. Don't think. It's not anything that concerns you.
If no one sees these massive rights abuses and daily,
calculated cruelties, did they actually occur? If no one
acknowledges that there are human beings here, living in
the tiny spaces between the snipers' cross hairs, are
human rights even an issue? If no one hears the sobs of
the bereaved or the screams of those deranged by the
daily rape of the mind that is occupation, has anything
really been lost?
This is the age of reason after all, and we, watching our
televisions in the USA, are known to be reasonable
people. Hence, whatever we cannot see, hear, smell, taste
or touch really should be doubted, taken with a grain of
salt, considered askance with our characteristic,
street-savvy suspicion. We are no one's dupes, after all;
nobody is going to play on our sentiments with these
maudlin, second-hand tales of woe about how the oppressed
are suffering in some town whose name we cannot even
pronounce.
We shall withhold judgment until we can decide for
ourselves what is what. Maybe Christiane Amanpour or Ted
Koppel will do a special segment....
The IDF acted quite reasonably when it decided to keep
all those eyes, hearts, and minds far away from Rafah.
With the new
requirement that all visitors must sign a waiver
excusing the IDF in advance from murder and mayhem, it's
unlikely that many hearts, minds, and eyes will ever make
it into Gaza in the first place.
Members of the
International Solidarity Movement confront an Israeli
bulldozer in Rafah, under the watchful eye of a nearby
Israeli watchtower, 6 April 2003. The photographer, Tom Hurndall, was shot 6 days later from a
similar guard tower in Rafah, and was left clinically
dead.
Best that your feet never find their way to this edge of
inhumanity and despair. Best that the world keeps
thinking of "the conflict" in terms of abstract
propositions, hypothetical solutions, and diplomatic
scenarios.
Go ahead and ponder your Road
Maps from a distance, but keep the hell off this
sandy road that
leads to this jagged edge of Rafah. Let no one actually
find the lane that leads to this huge, gaping hole of
someone's grave, someone's wound, someone's demolished
house, someone's shattered international legal system,
someone's failed hopes for a country that aspired to be a
"light unto the nations."
Best that you continue to assume, from afar, that you are
in no way implicated in any of the events that will
happen tonight as a husband and wife close the
bullet-riddled front door of their battered house in
Rafah and crouch in the darkness shielding their three
small children from whizzing bullets, incoming artillery,
and hovering Apache attack helicopters with all that they
have left: tired bodies enclosing hearts filled with more
love and pain than any jagged fence or military order
could ever encompass.
Laurie King-Irani is one of the four co-founders of
the Electronic Intifada. She teaches Social Anthropology
in British Columbia and serves as North American
Coordinator for the International Campaign for Justice
for the Victims of Sabra and Shatila (www.indictsharon.net).
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