Your World Today

The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is much more complex and deep rooted than this latest flare-up will tempt you to judge. The tendency to simply scream “it’s Hamas’ fault for sending rockets!” is far more comfortable than to attempt a real and sincere look at the situation from the perspective of the Palestinians and in the context of their 60+ years of struggle with Israel.

One poet squeezed out this bitter piece at a recent Gaza rally in New York City. It may give you a glimpse into what the Palestinians see as the real unresolved issue. Before the suicide bombs. Before the rockets came along.

The root of the problem has persisted since the establishment of the state of Israel. There is no real will from the international community (read: USA & Britain) to resolve the real issues, as they refuse to instate a permanent and viable solution for the Palestinian refugees who have been displaced by the creation of Israel. It is as if the only viable propositions for peace are those that cater to the interests of Israel alone. The mighty victor always dictates the rules of the truce.

According to the latest figures from the UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), there are currently over 4.5 Million Palestinian refugees who persist in shanty houses in refugee camps and cities in and around the disputed territories.

It is widely believed that there can be no two-state solution until clear provisions are made to address where the refugees will return to. You can’t squeeze that many new people into the little slice proposed as the Palestinian “state” (that Israel and the US will “bestow” on the Palestinian people, but only if they begged nicely) and expect everything to be fine.

Surprisingly, most public comments I have read in Nova Scotian news articles regarding the recent Gaza situation show an overwhelming tendency by readers to fall into the practice of cursing the symptom while ignoring the disease. “Hamas are terrorists”, they say. “The rocket attacks must stop”. “Don’t poke the bear if you don’t want to be mauled”, they wisely offer.

So here is a crude attempt at providing a bit of perspective to those Halifax/Nova Scotia readers, from the Palestinian side of things. Feel free to dispute this version of events, but remember that truth is in the eyes of the beholder. What really happened is somewhere between the following fictional analogy, and what you believe to be the truth.

Imagine that tomorrow an army of Vulcans arrives at Halifax harbour, having been displaced from their Vulcan planet due to unfathomable reasons that have rendered their planet un-inhabitable, and with the understanding that Nova Scotia really belonged to their ancestors, who had landed and lived in the area some 10,000 years ago.

Jewish settlers arriving at Haifa harbour, Palestine in 1946

This army, using the latest and greatest in military might, then proceeded to herd all current residents of Halifax (including you and your family) into two designated areas: Sackville and Cole Harbour (Gaza and the West Bank). This army then proceeded to appropriate all vacant lands, and moved their families into the homes that previously belonged to Haligonians.

As Haligonians huddled in Sackville around camp fires and in gas stations, they pondered their future. The humiliation was unbearable. Food was scarce, medical capacity inadequate, and the ever watchful eye of the Vulcan troops surrounding their area are a constant reminder of their state of imprisonment in their own city.

Of course, they were always given the choice to leave the city altogether and seek shelter in another province or country, but Haligonians were silly people with salty sea-faring blood who clung to such old fashioned notions like ‘home’, ‘pride’, ‘freedom’, and ‘resistance’. So they decided to stay.

Those without homes in Sackville and Cole Harbour formed camps and shelters which they built out of scrap metal and any materials they could gather to protect themselves from the harsh winters. The Vulcan army controlled entry and exit to these camps, ensuring that occupants do not obtain any weapons or significant means of resistance.

Palestinian Refugee Camp, 1952

Yet, Haligonians persisted. They refused to leave the city, and continuously caused trouble with various attempts at resistance over the years. This kept the Vulcan army at a constant state of alert, and prevented them from enjoying normal lives with their families and friends that had moved in to the rest of Halifax. So, they decided to create ‘incentives’ to encourage the occupants of Sackville and Cole Harbour to leave the area permanently.

For example, on one dreadful evening, guards at a particular camp (called Sabra & Shatila) in Sackville gathered a gang of known enemies of the Haligonians (let’s call them the Lebanese Christian Phalangist militia). They let the armed gang into the camp, then closed the gates behind them. In the following 60 hours, the gang carried out a systemic rampage of rape and murder on the men, women, and children who occupied the camp. An estimated 400 to 800 were killed. (Israel launched an inquiry into the Sabra/Shatila massacre and found then Defense Minister Ariel Sharon to be ‘partially’ responsible, and forced him to resign his post. He later became Prime Minister of Israel, while preparing to defend himself against charges of war crimes.)

As similar ‘incentives’ were creatively introduced across the designated Haligonian areas, more and more Haligonians left the area for fear of the safety of their families and children. They became the largest known group of nation-less refugees in the world, surviving on the charity of neighbouring nations and requiring special permission papers to be able to move from one place to another.

Meanwhile, life for the Vulcan families in Halifax was prosperous. Vulcan children played in school yards. Vulcan students attended Dalhousie University, which was renamed “Vulcan Institute of Higher Learning”. Vulcan guys and girls partied the nights away at the Lower Deck, oblivious to the strife of Haligonians a few miles away.

Slowly, the simmering anger and discontent of Haligonians erupted into a major uprising (the first intifada). Men, women, and children picked up what they could and attacked their Vulcan prison guards in any way they could. They threw rocks, whacked tanks with sticks, and shot at anything wearing a military uniform, using any ammunition they could get their hands on. The resistance took to the streets of Sackville and Cole harbour, and urban warfare was in full effect.

First Palestinian Uprising (intifada) 1987-1993

The resistance continued for 6 years, yet the Vulcan army kept it firmly contained within the designated Haligonian areas of Sackville and Cole Harbour, ensuring that the daily lives of the Vulcan army’s families and friends in Halifax were not being disturbed by the Haligonian nuisance.

The uprising yielded no results for the Haligonians, and the death toll was far more significant among the stone-throwing Haligonians and their families than the tank-riding Vulcans. However, during 6 years of active resistance since the uprising, Haligonians formed guerrilla groups of former police officers, firemen, volunteers, and anyone who knew anything about handling guns and/or defence tactics. These groups paraded under a variety of uplifting names and acronyms, like HAMAS, FATAH, etc.

These groups studied the futility of the uprising, and came to a dreadful conclusion. They decided that, after nearly 40 years since the Vulcans arrived at the Halifax harbour, the stakes for the Vulcan army were not high enough for the Vulcans to consider any form of change in their policies towards the afflicted haligonians, let alone the idea of returning Halifax to its previous inhabitants.

These groups decided that in order to be effective, the fight has to affect the Vulcan army’s families and children just as much as it is affecting the Haligonian families and children in their camps in Sackville and Cole Harbour. The suffering had to befall both sides of the conflict, not just the side that is trying to break free.

Since the Haligonians did not have the means to remotely launch attacks into Halifax (where the Vulcan families resided), they looked at options and came to the conclusion that the only way for their attack to reach places like the South End or Clayton Park is for one of them to smuggle a bomb in person, then detonate it manually, inevitably sacrificing his own self in the process. These ‘martyrs’ were to be praised as fallen heroes of the resistance, achieving near comic-book fame of caped/masked crusaders of the Justice League.

Following Role Models. A child dressed as a suicide bomber during a demonstration in the West Bank.

Thus began the era of suicide bombings. Unfortunately, the tactic worked. The vastly unaware Vulcan populace in Halifax began to take note that the chirping canaries they had locked up were screaming in pain, not singing in joy. International observers, previously silent, became active and rushed in with proposed ’solutions’ to end the war and the conflict. Things began to look up, but not for long.

The Vulcan army came up with a new tactic. To stop Haligonians from escaping their settlements and sneaking into old Halifax to plant manual bombs, the Vulcans decided to build a wall around Sackville and shoot anyone that comes within a few hundred yards. This ought to bring things back to the way they were before the uprising, they thought. The same idea they used with the refugee camps in the past, but on a larger scale.

This way they could control what comes in and out of Sackville, and have total rule over the livelihood of the Haligonian inhabitants. If the Haligonians act up, the army can cut off food, medicine, power, and water. They will squeeze Haligonians into submission.

But the Haligonians have learned a few things now. With some help from some PEI volunteers, they learned how to make potato-fueled rockets to carry their homemade bombs a limited distance. They no longer needed to carry bombs in person into the army quarters in Halifax, so the rate of suicide bombings dropped significantly.

Instead, they now lobbed as much as they can over their prison wall, as far as they can get it into Vulcan territory. While the practice was virtually ineffective, it continued to send to the Vulcans the timeless message: that Vulcans will not live in peace in Halifax and drown out the injustice taking place in the besieged territories in Sackville (Gaza) and Cole Harbour (West Bank) until they face what they have done to Haligonians and fix it.

In over 60 years since the Vulcans landed in Halifax and began herding Haligonians out of their homes and concentrate them into the two camps of Sackville and Cole Harbour, no solution has been offered to Haligonians that truly addresses the humiliation and injustice they have suffered. It is as if this little part of the world called Halifax just doesn’t matter to anyone other than the Haligonians themselves.

In 6 decades, Haligonians lost everything. Any notion of a normal future for them and their families had vanished one or two generations ago. There is no industry. There are no jobs. There are no schools. There are no Saturday morning cartoons. Food is scarce. Medical supplies are even fewer. Death and destruction surrounds their daily lives, as they remain besieged in Sackville, hopelessly looking over that notorious wall, wondering if the nightmare will ever end, and if they will ever be let out.

Until then, they might as well send another message in a rocket to the outside world. ‘Help Us’.

……………………………….

I will leave you with a compelling insider account of the deep rooted causes of the conflict in Palestine/Israel, by Jewish Israeli journalist  Gideon Levy of the Haaretz daily news paper in Israel. He gave this talk in Halifax not too long ago. (From the website of the Halifax-based organization called the ‘Canadians, Arabs, and Jews for a Just Peace‘.

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