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The Palestine Chronicle is a 501(c)3 non-profit organization whose mission is to educate the general public by providing a forum that strives to highlight issues of relevance to human rights, national struggles, freedom and democracy in the form of daily news, commentary, features, book reviews, photos, art, and more.
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Stuck in Area A: How We Were Duped into Disowning the Palestinians
Apr 22 2015 / 5:38 pm
Palestinians - and Syrians - in Yarmouk are killed in a myriad of ways, including starvation. (via Social Media)
By Ramzy Baroud
Are you surprised that there has been little mobilization to help Yarmouk, the Palestinian refugee camp on the outskirts of Damascus, which is overrun by militants, and besieged by the Syrian army? Palestinians - and Syrians - there are killed in a myriad of ways, including starvation. As we stand and watch in horror and confusion, they are quickly buried under the mounting pressure of Facebook news feeds or Twitter's endless tweets.
I am not surprised. Even before Palestinian refugees found themselves embroiled in Syria's conflict, I appealed to all parties involved, including the Palestinian leaderships (alas, there are several) to spare the refugees the burden of war, and for Palestinians to set their differences aside to avoid a repeat of Lebanon, Kuwait and Iraq.
Nothing happened, as if recent history was of no consequence and offered no lesson. Hamas was stuck in Gaza, in a real and figurative sense - its attempt at regional politicking was a failure, and left it, like 1.7 million refugees, reeling under siege. Mahmoud Abbas, his Palestinian Authority and whatever branch of his Fatah party currently at the helm, is stuck in his Area A - a supposedly self-governed region that constitutes about 3 percent of the West Bank. While the Israeli army can still raid Area A, comprising mostly of densely populated cities - arresting Palestinians at will - Abbas is entrusted in managing the affairs of the Palestinians there, which should have been an Israeli responsibility as an occupying power, under the Geneva Conventions.
Area B, which is under joint security control between Israel and the PA, consumed about 23-25 percent of the West Bank - comprised mostly of nearly 400 hundred Palestinian villages that are virtually under Israeli control. But a whopping 72 percent of the West Bank is under Israeli control - that's where the settlements are mostly located, and the Israeli military rules with an iron fist.
While Israel sees the entirety of Palestine as its geographic domain, and the whole Middle East region as its political and security domains, Abbas is merrily stuck in Area A - 3 percent of the West Bank and less than one percent of the total size of historic Palestine. Area A is his bread and butter, his reason for existence as a "President" ruling over a population trapped by Israeli walls and checkpoints, Israel-PA security coordination and the humiliating need for a paycheck at the end of each month.
But while many of us were focused on discrediting Oslo and its defeatist culture, we too are stuck in Area A. We cannot break free from reducing Palestine and the Palestinian people and millions of Palestinian refugees to Area A. We didn't do this out of malice, or because we don't care about Yarmouk in Syria, Ein al-Hilweh in Lebanon or Baladiat in Iraq. As we labored to discredit Oslo, we had no unifying vision outside the confines of Oslo, thus were trapped in its disempowering language and impossible geography.
There is much history behind this, and I will try to spare you the details. But an incident that took place over 10 years ago registered deeply in my mind. At the time I was working for a human rights NGO in London when a man with a distraught voice called our office. "Help me, for Allah's sake, please help me," he cried. Literally, he was weeping. My attempt to comfort him failed. He called me using a borrowed cell phone from a rights worker at a refugee camp between Iraq and Jordan. His two brothers were murdered in the Palestinian Baladiat neighbourhood in Baghdad, one by the Shiite militias, one by the Americans.
But when he attempted to seek safety in Jordan, the Jordanians denied him entry. Palestinian refugees have a strange and most precious status, irrelevant travel documents that make it extremely hard to travel. His papers were the wrong kind. He was at the desert camp for too many months. I tried, but could do nothing for him.
His problem, like that of the Yarmouk refugees, was that he fell out of favor with politics, with geography, with any applicable human rights. As if he fell out of favor with life altogether. The only relevant document was the Right of Return for Palestinian refugees enshrined in UN Resolution 194. The latter however is a document, cited generously by researchers and activists, but carries no actual weight for the refugees of Baladiat - as hundreds of them perished in the US invasion - or for the 18,000 refugees still trapped in Damascus.
Yet the process of fragmenting Palestine is as old as the conflict, and has been dictated largely by Israel, as many of us, including Israel's detractors, followed suit, unaware that they are contributing to the very process that is meant to marginalize numerous Palestinian communities.
When Israel occupied East Jerusalem, the West Bank and Gaza, we spoke of "Palestinian territories" not Palestine. Progressively, Palestinians who are citizens of Israel were dropped from the Palestinian and Arab political discourse as if they ceased being Palestinian.
When Oslo was signed, we borrowed its deliberately despairing terminologies and confusing geography and its Areas A, B and C.
We often learn about the existence of Palestinian villages that happened to fall in the way of the Israeli Separation - read Apartheid - Wall, simply because they fell in the way of the Israeli bulldozers defacing Palestinians land.
We speak of Gaza when Israel bombs Gaza. In fact, Gaza became central to the Palestine discourse just after the Israeli siege in 2007. Prior to that it was an addendum in a political language centered mostly on the West Bank, primarily in Ramallah, the seat of the throne of Area A.
In other words, willingly or unwillingly, we are trapped in Israeli definitions, some united at times by their love for Israel, others by their loathing of Israel and its occupation, but all in agreement that Israel and only Israel dictates our actions and reactions.
Thus when Palestinians are starved, beheaded or blown to smithereens in Yarmouk, we stand puzzled. We offer sympathy, tears and little action. We cannot even articulate a coherent discourse, aside from pulling out UN Resolution 194 from some dusty archive to talk about the Right of Return, and how the suffering in Yarmouk is ultimately Israel's responsibility. Proud of our efforts, we carry on with life as if we saved the refugees, all at once, with a single link to a UN website.
When Israel carried out its war on Gaza last summer, nearly 150,000 people protested in London in another massive show of solidarity, duplicated in many cities across the world. For Yarmouk, about 40 people showed up, an admirable effort, but expressive of the fact that the refugees no longer exist at the heart of the Palestine discourse.
In the constant attempt at exposing Israeli injustices against Palestinians, most of us were duped into an Israeli-PA attempt at reducing Palestine to a tiny margin of its actual physical and political spaces that extends from Palestine - the entirety of Palestine - all across the Middle East, hovering above Yarmouk, as it has for many years, without us noticing.
We are trapped in Area A, making an occasional crossover to Areas B and C, only to get back to Area A, where it is relatively safe and easy to fathom and explain. We are stuck behind Israeli walls and checkpoints as we are failing to see the massive space that is Palestine, and the millions of refugees still holding on to tattered deeds and rusty keys, since we promised that that their Right of Return is paramount.
Did we lie? Were we lied to? It is more like we were duped into pseudo-reality crafted so proficiently by Israel, and we are finding it extremely difficult to break away from its confines.
But if our hate for the Israeli occupation, and our loathing of Israeli policies are greater than our love for the Palestinians, all of them, starting with the refugees dying in Yarmouk, then, perhaps it is time to reconsider our understanding of, and relationship to, the conflict altogether.
- Ramzy Baroud - www.ramzybaroud.net - is an internationally-syndicated columnist, a media consultant, an author of several books and the founder ofPalestineChronicle.com. He is currently completing his PhD studies at the University of Exeter. His latest book is My Father Was a Freedom Fighter: Gaza's Untold Story (Pluto Press, London).
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 By Ramzy Baroud Are you surprised that there has been little mobilization to help Yarmouk, the Palestinian refugee camp on the outskirts of Damascus, which is overrun by militants, and besieged by the Syrian army? Palestinians - and Syrians - there are killed in a myriad of ways, including starvation. As we stand and watch [...]
 Charles W. "Chas" Freeman Jr. is an author and career diplomat who served as ambassador to Saudi Arabia, assistant Secretary of Defense, and assistant Secretary of State among many other jobs. He was famous for serving as principal interpreter on Nixon's historic trip to China in 1972 and for being chosen by the Obama administration [...]
 By Sam Bahour One way or another, Germany's Bundestag is about to make history with the upcoming vote on the issue of recognizing Palestinian statehood. A positive vote for Palestine would finally strengthen the European Union's weakest link in contributing to Middle East Peace. A negative vote for Palestinian statehood would leave the Palestinians with [...]
 By Hilary Wise The cancellation of Southampton University's conference on Israel and the law, despite a last-ditch legal battle by the organizers, has sparked widespread condemnation. Entitled "International Law and the State of Israel: Legitimacy, Responsibility and Exceptionalism", the conference had gathered distinguished legal experts and historians from Britain, Israel, Palestine, Ireland, Australia, Singapore, the [...]
Apr 21 2015 | Posted in Articles | Commentary | Read More »
 By Ralph Nader Following the heavy coverage of AIPAC's (the virulently pro-Israeli government lobby) multi-day annual Washington convention in March, the mainstream media might have been interested for once in covering alternative viewpoints like those discussed at the April 10th conference "The Israel Lobby: Is it Good for the US? Is it Good for Israel?". [...]
Apr 18 2015 | Posted in Articles | Commentary | Read More »
 By Ramzy Baroud Members of my family in Syria's Yarmouk went missing many months ago. We have no idea who is dead and who is alive. Unlike my other uncle and his children in Libya, who fled the NATO war and turned up alive but hiding in some desert a few months later, my uncle's [...]
Apr 15 2015 | Posted in Articles | Editorials | Read More »
 By Mohamed El Mokhtar For the sake of historical truth, it is important to recall that Kingdom of Saudi Arabia has traditionally and consistently supported the harsh repression of Houthi rebels under the previous regime and as a result, prevented the question from being settled at a time where their demands were politically circumscribed and [...]
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Israeli Settler Runs over 4 Palestinians in Qalqiliya
Apr 22 2015 / 5:30 pm
An Israeli settler ran over four Palestinians from the al-Nabi Elias town in eastern Qalqiliya late Tuesday.
Mhanna Fathi Khleif, 38, and his brother Muhannad, 35, had been walking with their wives alongside the town's main road late Tuesday when the vehicle hit them.
Muhannad Khleif said that the settler ran them over "deliberately" despite walking to the far right side of the street.
The four were injured and taken to the Darwish Nazzal Hospital for treatment. Medical sources told Ma'an they received medium injuries including heavy bruising.
The Palestinian liaison reportedly contacted the Israeli authorities to follow-up on the incident.
The suspect, a resident of the Jewish-only settlement of Ginot Shomron, called the police confessing he was the driver of the car and had been to scared to stop his vehicle outside of the Palestinian village after hitting the pedestrians, Israeli media reported.
Police told Israeli news sources that Tuesday's incident would be treated as a hit-and-run offense.
Over 90 percent of investigations by Israeli police into offenses committed by settlers in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem fail to lead to an indictment, according to the UN figures.
Israeli officials have voiced the necessity to rectify the unequal implementation of the law onto settlers over the last year.
Following price-tag attacks on Vatican-owned offices in occupied East Jerusalem in May 2014, Israeli Internal Security Minister Yitzhak
Aharonovitch said the government planned to begin using administrative detention against suspected extremists.
Price tag attacks are routinely committed by Israeli settlers in retribution for perceived action by the Israeli government or other political actors against settlements in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem.
Although police had made scores of arrests at the time of Aharonovitch's statement, there had been few successful prosecutions for price-tag attacks and the government was facing mounting pressure to authorize the Shin Bet internal security agency to step in.
The first conviction for a price-tag attack was carried out in December 2014, two settlers were sentenced to 30 years in prison for setting fire to two Palestinian vehicles.
The US State Department's 2013 Country Reports on Terrorism included price-tag attacks for the first time, citing UN figures of some "399 attacks by extremist Israeli settlers that resulted in Palestinian injuries or property damage."
Such attacks were "largely unprosecuted," it said.
(Ma'an - www.maannews.net)
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The Palestine Chronicle is an independent online newspaper that provides daily news, commentary, features, book reviews, photos, art, etc, on a variety of subjects. However, it's largely focused on Palestine, Israel, and the Middle East region. The Palestine Chronicle is a non-profit 501(c)3 organization. To contact the editor, submit an article or any other material, please write to: editor@palestinechronicle.com. For other inquiries write to:info@palestinechronicle.com.
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Ziehier Yoeri Albrecht, die door een jonge journalist van het mediakanaal Left Laser betrapt werd tijdens een privé-onderonsje met twee ...
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