Interview with Lauren Anzaldo
Palestine/International Solidarity Movement Activist

This interview was done in August 2003 after Lauren returned from Palestine. It was done over falafel and tea at a little Middle Eastern restaurant in Pensacola

(editor’s note: The spellings of some of the cities, towns, and villages may be different than in other writings. Because the names of these places are in Arabic, the translations may vary from place to place. A friend of mine from Qatar once replied to me when I asked him how to properly spell his name, “It doesn’t matter. If you’re writing it in English, you’re spelling it wrong anyway. As long as it sounds right when you read it, that’s all that matters.” So, for the most part, I went with common English spellings of some words, but they may be different in other sources.)

Scott-Who did you go to Palestine with?

Lauren-Who did I go with?

S-Not individuals, but what group?

L-Basically, what I did was I got in touch with the International Solidarity Movement, which is part of a world wide movement, Palestinian led movement, of Palestinian and international activists. The people involved are mostly westerners from Europe and the US. So I got in touch with them. Their web site provided a lot of information on how to get there and what routes to take. General information, cultural information and stuff like that. I did a training with them in New York City before I left to go over there.

S-What kind of training?

L-Well, it was supposed to be a 2-day training, but I only went to one day of it. They do all kinds of things. They talk to you about the situation in Palestine, what to expect when you get there, and how to talk to soldiers. They kind of brief you on dealing with checkpoints, telling you what it’s going to look like when you get over there, what a roadblock is, what do you say at the airport...that kind of thing. They do a cultural sensitivity training, especially because there’s a big difference between the roles of men and women. And many women may not be used to adhering to certain guidelines that are expected of them when they’re in Palestine. There are different roles for men, too. But men have a lot easier time getting along than women do. The ISM basically provided an infrastructure, and that’s how I got up with them. I also got an e-mail from this school that needed active English speakers to teach these classes. I contacted them and we set it up for me first to go to the school, where they were having a summer camp for the month of July. So that’s what I did. That’s where I went first. Most instructors, when they come (to Palestine), head immediately for Jerusalem and then they hook up with the ISM training that they do where you make affinity groups and you figure out your goals and what kind of work you want to do for when you’re there. They decide what region you’re going to and what the needs are and what you’re interested in doing…

S-In Jerusalem?

L-Well, that’s where you meet up because Jerusalem is the easiest city to get into the West Bank from. But they have training in Nablus and Ramallah. They have training in a couple of different places. They alternate them, one city one week and the other city the other week. But I did it a little differently because I was going to the school. It was called the Arab-American School. So I headed straight there and worked with them for a month. Then I hooked up with the ISM when I was in Jenin.

S-Why did you go to Palestine?

L-My main reason was because as an American citizen, as much as I reject that status, or attempt to, I know that as an American, as a person born here, that I have privilege and I reap the benefits of what the US does. So I know that I feel somewhat responsible for the US actions in other countries. Especially the government’s actions in the Middle East and the US support of Israel. That’s why I felt it was my responsibility to demonstrate my opposition to that physically. Both by saying that I don’t agree with that, but also rather to physically go to the region. And also to see for myself what was happening because I had read so much about it. The situation, the conflict, the life, but you never really understand what it is like until you actually go see for yourself what it’s like. And I wanted to know. To feel like I had first-hand information instead of second-hand information. Those were my main reasons. That I had to follow up my feelings and words with direct action.

S-What were your first impressions of Palestine?

L-The Situation?

S-Not necessarily. More the people, the culture. I’d imagine it would be pretty different, coming from Pensacola and going to the Middle East, especially in the middle of a war zone.

L-It’s really different, obviously. The first thing I noticed was going to the checkpoint and being surrounded by soldiers with guns. So that was the first big reaction I had. Other than that, just seeing everything around me, seeing the difference. It’s really mountainous there. Really rocky. Really dusty. I was just struck, because I had read the bible before and it was really kind of impressive, seeing the country first hand. I’m not religious at all. In fact, I’m an atheist. But when I saw the land I almost felt like I became religious in a way. I could remember all the stories I had read about that had happened there. It just really struck me as momentous. Awe-inspiring. I also felt like this spiritual thing had happened to me looking at the land. It’s so beautiful. The sun sets over the mountains. The olive trees and bushes. Just the way of life there is very beautiful. It’s very simple in a way. Very generous. Very community oriented. The people are so generous and nice. The inner beauty the people have, even in the face of conflict and repression all the time. All those things struck me. It’s kind of hard to explain.

S-How long did it take for you to realize you were in a war zone?

L-Like I said, basically I came out of the airport and I went outside and took a taxi to Jenin in the West bank. Driving through Israel from Tel Aviv, you head north east to get to the West Bank. There were highways; it could have been any place, like Miami. Or more like Arizona. But then we got to the West Bank and we had to pass through a checkpoint to get in. That was when six or eight soldiers with M-16’s surround the taxi. I was inside and they were all looking through the window staring at me like I was in a cage, getting really angry and saying that I couldn’t come in without a permit. I was just struck by the fact that they were so young. Like they were 18 or 19 years old. That they were all just a few years younger than me. They just looked so innocent. They looked confused, like they had no idea what was going on. They’re just following orders or making things up as they go along really. They’re just completely clueless young kids who aren’t fully formed socially. Physically or mentally and they’re carrying these enormous guns. It’s really ridiculous, the situation. It’s a farce, it’s so satirical. It’s like little high school kids who are soldiers. And that was something that really shocked me.

S-I always thought that if they drafted 30 year olds, they wouldn’t have an army.

L-Then the condition of the roads. All these things that affect their lives that are directly related to the occupation. The roads are really torn apart. For one thing, it’s because Palestine doesn’t have a real government or infrastructure so they didn’t have services to provide roads or road maintenance. But besides that, they’re torn up because tanks drive on them all the time. I had never seen a tank in real life prior to this. Except on the trains here in Pensacola, as they were moving by during the war. But I’d never seen one operating. They have these big treads, which are metal, and they’re ridged. So when they drive on the roads they literally just tear up the roads as they go. So then the roads start crumbling and falling apart. So all those things surrounding it are related to the occupation and how that affects the people.

S-How long was it until your first action?

L-Basically, because I was teaching at the Arab-American School, I did it a little differently (than the average person). But I contacted a friend who was in the ISM and he told me there was an action happening in a few days. I got up with him on Thursday and there was an action on Friday.

S-What was the action?

L-A roadblock removal. Basically, a roadblock in Palestine is a pile of dirt. In most cases it’s just a pile of dirt. But it can be many things. Basically, it’s anything that the soldiers can use to block the roads so people can’t get by. Which could be boulders, huge concrete blocks, could be cars, could be trees…it could be anything. Generally because there is dirt in very large supply, and rocks, it’s made up of rocks and dirt. The Israeli army tears up the road and they pull up dirt from the sides of anything they can find around and dump it all in a five-foot high pile in the middle of a road. That way people can’t drive through with cars...and the thing is, this road, it didn’t access a military base. It wasn’t a road that accessed a settlement. A lot of times the roads that do that, I would say almost always, they’re going to be blocked because the Israelis don’t want any kind of access to any of the areas that they consider sensitive. Even if it means there is a Palestinian village next door that was there first. The Israelis build something near it and then they decide that they don’t want the Palestinians to have access to it any more. But Burqin wasn’t that kind of situation at all. It was just a village and Jenin is a city. There was no real reason. Israelis didn’t travel on that road. They don’t have soldiers using that road for any reason except to go into Jenin to harass people on something. But it was nothing that they needed to have blocked off for any reason, other than to make the lives of the Palestinians difficult so they can’t travel back and forth to this center that they need to get to.
There are other routes. That’s one thing, that the people there are very resourceful and they always find other ways to get around (checkpoints). Whether it means climbing over mountains, walking through fields, driving through fields. Whatever they have to do. They’ve been under occupation for 40 years so they’re used to dealing with finding another way to do something.
So there are other roads that go between Burqin and Jenin and this is the main one and it’s the quickest one. It’s the one that the ambulance would use. It being blocked means that the ambulances could get there. Instead of taking five minutes, would get there in 25 minutes.
So we went and unblocked this road.
Basically, it was a really awesome action to go to for my first action. It gave me a really good look into how the ISM operates. Working within affinity groups. What their protocol is. What are our back up measures, plus anything else. There were 15 internationals there including myself and probably 30 Palestinians from the village. What we did was we met at the town square, where there was a bulldozer, the municipality bulldozer, and there was a Palestinian driver. We took a couple of cars and drove the bulldozer. Once we got there, we went to where the roadblock was and the bulldozer started to dig away and remove all the dirt. The Internationals rode on the bulldozers. Two jumped on the bulldozer on each side and held on. That was to prevent the bulldozer from getting confiscated. Also, in case they think of shooting the driver or arrest them, the internationals are there to hinder the Israelis from doing that.
So the rest of us essentially stood around. Lots of us had video cameras, digital cameras, etc and took pictures and posted them on the internet or various other media outlets. There was a even reporter from Al-Jazeera, the Arab network, who also a correspondent for AP and Reuters.

S-And he was in the ISM?

L-No, he was just there to cover the action at the roadblock removal. He did work closely with the ISM as a media person and he covered a lot of our actions. I actually got interviewed by him once. I don’t know if he ever posted it on Al-Jazeera, but he asked me why I was there and stuff like that.
So we all just documented and observed. No soldiers ended up coming, which was really good. We didn’t expect that they would because soldiers don’t usually drive on that road so they had no reason to be there. Usually what happens is that…you would think that the solders would kind of find out what we’re doing and they would catch on to us. But I don’t think they have good intelligence. I know that phrase has a double meaning, but they don’t seem to ever know what’s happening. They usually just stumble upon us, but they weren’t driving on that road that day so they didn’t know we were there to remove the roadblock. Or maybe if they did, they didn’t think it was worth the trouble of sending people out there to stop us.
So no soldiers came and everyone was super excited. We all piled on the bulldozer and we drove it back into town and we sat in the little “scooper” thing as they were rising it up and lowering it and were raising our arms, driving through the town cheering. All the people outside of their houses, the kids…it was just awesome. It was a really good introduction to was happening. To actions and such.

S-Was that the action you were in the NY Times for?

L-No, to my knowledge there wasn't any NY Times coverage of that. It's was pretty boring if there was. There was New York Times coverage of the action at the wall. The one where we ripped open the wall.

S-What was that?

L-It was in a village called Anin, which is to the west of Jenin. They have olive trees there, it's a farming village and community. Basically, what Israel is doing right now, which is really, really huge issue is they're building this wall that's going to surround the West Bank. There's also a wall in existence that is blocking central parts of the Gaza Strip. But I don't know much about the Gaza Strip. I didn't go there. It's really difficult to get into the Gaza Strip. It's really militarized and tightly secured.
Anyway, they're building this wall around the West Bank and in some cases it will actually enclose cities. And some cities will just have this huge wall around them. It happened in Qalqilyah, which is completely surrounded by a cement wall, which is 30 ft high. They say it's twice as high as the Berlin Wall and three times as long. Aside from Qalqilya, where the wall is completely finished and is made of cement, the rest of the wall is temporarily chain link. But it's not just a little chain link fence, it's a 30 ft high chain link fence with barbed wire and razor wire and access roads on both sides of it. There's paved roads that the military drives on and does patrols on a couple of times an hour and has sniper towers, too. It's a very militarized place.

S-Like a prison?

L-Yeah, it's like a prison wall. It's really like...coils of razor wire on top of the wall. The ISM has a policy of referring to it as a "wall" instead of a fence because it is going to be a wall. It's psychology to say "it's a wall", because that's what it is. And the people call it the "Aparteid Wall" or the "Separation Wall" or the "Racist Wall." They have a lot of different names for it in Arabic. The New Berlin Wall. They have a lot of terms. The big thing with the wall, besides the fact that it's really psychologically difficult on the Palestinian people, is it's creating another barrier. They're already enough barriers between Palestinians from what I've heard from Israeli people that I met. I'm not just trying to make things up or anything, but they're taught a different history. Israel looks at the war of 1967 as their victory whereas the Palestinians see it as the worst thing that's ever happened to them because it meant the occupation of their country. Their land. So there are not a lot of cross-cultural exchanges at all. So the Israelis already don't even know the Palestinians. It's really easy for them to believe the really racist horrible stuff that they hear. That all Palestinians are terrorists. That Israelis are the chosen people, whatever. When you start humanizing people and you get to know them, you're interacting with them. It's more difficult to believe these huge stereotypes of people. But Israelis and Palestinians don't really interact with each other very much. Creating this wall will just create another barrier to ever resolving the conflict to the benefit of anyone.
Besides that, the wall is being built very far into the Green Line (the frontier between Israel and the West Bank before the 1967 Middle East War) inside the West Bank. It annexes the really, really fertile prime land. Palestinians lose access to that land because there are only a few gates to the wall. And those gates are rarely open except in extreme circumstances where they demand they be opened. So the Palestinians, when they used to just walk across and harvest their olives or their almonds, now there is this wall there and they can’t. Unless they scale this wall, which would mean their imminent death, they can’t get to their land on the other side. So now Israel doesn't have to do anything because Israel has already annexed that land by default. IF you don't have access to it, it stops being yours. Essentially that's how it's going to operate.
So basically in Anin, there is a gate there. They call them agricultural gates or farmer’s gates because they’re are supposedly these gates that Israel has put in so that they can say that we have these access points so that farmers can get to their land. But the gates are locked and chained up and they don’t open that often so (when they open) you can make a really good show for the media. Having a big photo opportunity for when American legislatures come and do a tour they can say, "Oh look, we have this gate that's really wonderful," or whatever. "We just have this wall. It's really terrible, but it's just for security and we understand it's bad but it's the only thing we can do.” But in reality it's locked up and closed up and no one's getting back and forth. So what we did in Anin was we marched on the wall. There were about 50 internationals. There were 30 Israelis from this Israeli Anarchist collective that were anti-occupation, anti-occupation Israelis, and they came and they joined us.

S-Were they punks?

L-They were Anarchists, but yeah. They were punks, too. I think more importantly though, they were Anarchists. At least the deciding point (for this action). And there were 300 Palestinians. We all met in the village square and marched. Basically we had to march over 4 roadblocks before we could ever get to the wall. So not only are they building this wall, but they’re building all these roadblocks on the road that approaches the wall. They really don't want people getting anywhere near there. And the thing is this is Palestinian land. This is not Israel. Even what they call Israel now, outside the West Bank, this isn't even that. It's all West Bank. They build this wall to block people, Palestinians, from Palestinian land that even Israel tends to recognize as Palestinian land. So, it's really ridiculous. It's one thing to say you need security to keep people from getting into Israel, but it's not what this is. You're keeping Palestinians from their land that's right on the other side that they had access to the whole time. That's not a source of people sneaking through to get into Israel. That’s jut what can be used to explain it and justify it. But it's not thinking of the real reasons or looking at the real impact of this. It's really easy to see the truth of it.
But we marched over these four roadblocks. We had to walk over huge piles of dirt and rubble to this long road that heads up a hill. And there are olive trees that line the hills. And there's olive trees on one side, then there's a wall, then there's olive trees on the other side. It's something like 2,800 olive three are on the other side of the wall that people can't access anymore. Hundreds of acres that are on the other side that belong to this village. So we had signs and we had banners and we all walked up there together. The goal of the action was to break open the gate. To try to destroy the gate as much as possible. To make it "un-closable." Basically, we knew that Israel would close up the gate again and lock it up. Essentially, that’s what they do. They don't let stuff like that slide. We figured if we broke the lock and broke the gate as much as possible, they'd have to get some kind of construction people in there to fix it. That would allow the gate to be open for a little while so that Palestinians could get through and tend to the trees and do whatever they needed to do. Which would only be for a couple of days or so. But that's better than nothing.
So there was a crew of people that were next to the workers to cut through the gate and there was a crew of people that were meant to be blockers to stand in between the workers and the soldiers. So the soldiers couldn't arrest the workers and start confiscating the tools and stuff like that. And the Palestinians were going to just stay back and keep in safe distance from the soldiers and have a rally/demonstration type of thing with signs, etc. What ended up happening was we got up to the gate and there was nothing for the blockers really to do because the soldiers were standing on the other side of the wall. They were standing on the western side of the wall. They just stood there as the people came up and said "We're cutting through this gate" and they started cutting through the gate. So they started shooting rubber bullets at us and dropping sound grenades.

S-Were you shot?

L-I wasn't shot. No. But it was complete chaos. We all just started freaking out because we didn't really know what to do. For me, that was the first time that had ever happened.

S-Were they shooting at you or above you?

L-They weren’t shooting directly at me. I wasn't actually working on the gate. I was supposed to be a blocker. But they were shooting at the people working on the gate. Basically, there's this wall and there's this gate. And people go up to this gate and there were soldiers standing around the other side of the gate and they were firing right though the gate. So they were shooting though chain link and through the bars. At close range. Within 2 feet. Which is really, seriously dangerous because rubber bullets aren’t meant to be used at that close a distance. And they're meant to be shot at the ground and not directly at people because they can be mortal. They can cause mortal wounds.

S-I think when people hear "rubber bullet" they don't sound serious because they sound like they're throwing those bouncy balls you get in the gumball machines at you. But that's not the case.

L-Yeah, a rubber bullet is a regular metal bullet that's coasted with a thin layer of rubber so that it has less velocity. It depends. It doesn't penetrate your skin as quickly as a regular bullet.

S-But people die from those.

L-Yeah, people definitely die from those. It’s like if you take something metal and wrap it in some plastic and throw it at someone, it's still the same thing and has the same weight. It still has the same power and pressure behind it. It's just more blunt, so it's not going to pierce your skin as easily. That's the only thing. Yeah, I always thought when they talked of rubber bullets that they were made completely of rubber. But even something made of really hard rubber...if you threw a tire at someone that would hurt too.

S-Especially if you sharpened it and threw it at a thousand miles an hour.

L-Yeah, rubber isn't so soft when it's wrapped around a bullet. So, what they did...I remember the first thing they did was they started throwing sound grenades. The sound grenades are really, really scary, even though they don't always cause physical harm. But you don't know if they're shooting at you. It's really loud and sounds like they're shooting live ammunition right at you. That’s why everyone was freaking out.

S-In Seattle, the cops were shooting sound grenades, too. No one knew what they were, either. All we knew was that something was blasting around the corner. I assumed that they had started to open fire on the protesters because it was such a loud explosion. Like a super shotgun. It seemed crazy that the Seattle Police would do that, but I had no idea what else it could be. But it wouldn't be unheard of for an army to do something like that. Especially over there. So, I can imagine it really freaking you out.

L-Yeah, it was the first time that I'd heard something like that.

S-It's an explosion.

L-Yes, it is an explosion. And not only is it a sound explosion or something loud like a firecracker. It's a grenade.

S-With shrapnel.

L-And they have shrapnel that flies out of them. My friend got hit on his hand and it caused a chemical burn. The skin was ripped open because he got caught with the shrapnel. And they're hot. A grenade is something exploding. It's just a really loud explosion. It might not have as much shrapnel or gunpowder as a regular grenade. But I imagine that could be deadly, too. Like if you got hit with the shrapnel in the face. At least cause some serious damage to you. And they just hurl them into crowds of people with no regard for anything. The thing that is happening is that here we are, cutting through a gate. We were non-violently cutting through this gate because it was completely illegal and unethical for the gate to be there and for this wall to be there. To restrict people from accessing their own land, and from stealing land from them. So we were cutting through the gate and the soldiers were shooting at us and throwing tear gas at us.

S-Seven people in the ISM?

L-Seven ISM people got shot. One guy got shot in the back and had a really difficult time walking. It hit him in the spine around his lower back. One woman, a 61 year old woman, got shot in the leg and had a big laceration. One guy got shot twice. Once in the stomach, once on the top of his leg near his hip.

S-If you were all Palestinians, do you think they would have used live ammunition instead of rubber bullets?

L-The thing is that it takes a really serious decision to use live ammunition because that carries really serious repercussions. So, they'd definitely be more likely to use it on Palestinians. That's why they stay at a safer distance, or somewhat safe distance further away from the soldiers because the soldiers react a lot differently to the Palestinians. But I still think that they fact that they use rubber bullets regardless of whether we were Palestinian or not was really a big deal. And that made the New York Times and made international news. The London Guardian, all the Palestinian newspapers, etc. So once the they started shooting at us and using tear gas...the only thing I suffered, except getting the hell scared out of me by the sound grenades, was that I got tear gassed. The people on the gate were shaking the gate and they cut through the lock and they were trying to pull the gate open. But they were also dropping like flies because they were getting shot. So they retreated and the people that got shot were moved away to get medical treatment. There were medics there.

S-ISM medics or Red Crescent?

L-No, it was the Palestinian Medical Relief Committee. It's like a union of medical workers and they do a lot of things. But they happened to be there as medics. But anyway, a lot of people left to get medical attention so they needed more people to get on to the gate. So I ran up to the gate to rip it open and I got tear-gassed. But we actually ripped the gate open and it opened up and we were all really excited. Then they threw the tear gas. It was kind of good (opening the gate) because we accomplished what we tried to do. We all retreated, put vinegar on our faces (a tear gas remedy). That was my first experience with tear gas, too. One Palestinian became violently ill and started throwing up because he inhaled a lot of it. But it just messed my eyes up. Your throat burns really bad, too.

S-After you accomplished the mission, was it the same feeling, driving victoriously through the streets of Jenin on bulldozers?

L-Well, I think we all sort of lost our momentum because we opened the gate, but we didn't do as much damage to the gate as we wanted to do. We wanted to cut holes in it and just do a lot more damage. But since we all consented that if anyone was being hit with bullets of any kind-if they were directly firing at us, then we would leave because it's unsafe to endanger that many people. So, once the gate opened and we all retreated from the tear gas, we regrouped and decided we needed to leave. I think that depressed a lot of people because we wanted to cause more trouble.
So we didn't leave so celebratory. We were all pretty happy but we also knew a bunch of people had been shot. So that was pretty depressing. After every ISM action, we have a meeting and you do a debriefing about what happened. What were the benefits? What happened? What needed to be changed? There was a meeting and I think people were generally happy because we achieved our primary objective. But the gate was closed later that day. But we were still happy that it was in the news a lot and brought a lot of attention to the wall. I don't know if it was well known over here or not.

S-I saw an article in the New York Times and on the AP wire about it.

L-In Palestine we started to the see that there was a lot of international discussion about the wall. The legitimacy of the wall and whether it's necessary or not. One of the Israeli officials even promised that they would halt the construction of the wall until there was an investigation. But even as that was being written, there was construction happening that I saw in villages all over the place that were still building the wall. I'm sure they're doing in now. In fact, at some point after all the international focus on the wall, the construction company that was building the wall in the village of Jalboun...they had originally been working from 7 in the morning until 6pm. They changed their schedule so they were working until 9 at night to get the wall finished faster sot hat once it's up, you can't really take it down. Once it's a fact on the ground, you don't get rid of it. Especially since Israel is dumping so much money into it. This is a billion dollar project that the US is heavily funding. They keep saying it's temporary. There was a delegation of Texas legislatures that came and visited and looked at the wall. They referred to it as a security fence. And they always say, "Any fence we put up, we can take down later." But you don’t put up a billion dollar fence with sniper towers to just take it down without any struggle. It's there permanently. You can talk all you want and say it's not permanent, but it is. Totally. They built roads surrounding it. It's not a little project.

S-Knowing that, even though you accomplished your goals of opening the gate, that they came and closed it back up later that day. I’d imagine that you'd have some pretty crazy feelings about it. How did that make you feel?

L-Really, what I felt the whole time I was there was brief moments of triumph, over arched with moments of complete depression and frustration and defeat. Every village that I went to had it's own character. In the village of Anin, they're really, really confrontational. The character of the village is that they want to go after this wall. They want to tear down this wall. They want to continue doing actions all the time. Continuously to draw attention to the wall.
Then there are other villages that are really defeated. In the village of Jalbon where they were building the wall, we talked about doing a demonstration and everyone that lived there was like, if Israel wants to build a wall, Israel will build a wall. And I was already pretty depressed and feeling the world was already pretty fucked up. Not that I didn't know it before I went to Palestine, but when you see it first hand and you see it to that degree, it becomes really obvious. You can't ignore it. But once I had those people in the village, the Palestinians saying, "What's the use?" it just made me depressed and pessimistic. I think I sort of sunk into a depression too and got really frustrated and questioned what the benefit of the work we were doing there and if it was causing any difference or any real change in policy or in action. In the way the soldiers are treating the people. Or in the way that they world looks at Palestine. In the way that the Palestinians live every day. The answer to me is yes and no. I was there. It was the most amazing experience of my entire life. I'm never going to forget it. It was really educational. It had a big impact of my and was really important. But I don't know the long-term effects of it. If it was effective or ineffective. That's my biggest problem. My biggest struggle. Since I've been gone from Palestine for 2 weeks, I feel like I need to be back. I'm thinking about it all the time. I need to go back and help. There's so much work to do. Too much work to do. It’s been decades now. That's too long for people to be occupied. Too long for people to be oppressed and repressed. And killed. But at that same time Israel has become the second greatest super power in the world. There's so much power there. So much financial backing. So much international support that it seems impossible. It's like asking how you can dismantle the US military or the US government. It's a daunting task. It seems like nearly impossible. And the same is true of ending Israeli occupation of Palestine. It's become ingrained. It's become accepted. Supported. There's a lot of history and reasons, political reasons, why Israel exists. So to undo that...and being there for 2 months is not enough time to even begin.
So definitely, I was conflicted all the time.

S-What was it like going over there a few months after Rachel Corrie was killed? Did it make you second guess your decision to go?

L-There was a one month period after Rachel Corrie was killed...Also a man named Tom Hurndall was shot in the head. And Brian Avery was shot in the face. Brian Avery was shot in Jenin, actually.

S-That's where you were, right?

L-Yeah, that's where I was. And Tom’s brain dead now. The other one had reconstructive surgery on his face because his whole face was shot off. So, there was that one month period when I was getting all the ISM updates and everything after I signed on and told them I was coming and I was looking at the web sites and it got a little scary. I remember talking to you about it and you said "Oh, they shot another ISM person today." And that was actually the point that I hooked up with the school that I ended up working at because a lot of people who had planned to go with the ISM to Palestine were feeling a little weary. So they were trying to find some other activities that were going on so they could still basically help the Palestinian people and still do good work, but not do it with ISM because it seemed a little risky. I guess that was kind of my idea. Like, I would work at the school. Plus I couldn't see me going to Palestine and not working with kids because that's something that's really important to me. So that was one of my reasons, but also feeling that it would be a little safer working in a school. But I felt that the whole time, even when I decided I would with the school, that I was going to hook up with the ISM and work with them, too. Maybe do stuff that was less risky. But when it came down to it, when you're in the thick of what's going on, there was no way you could just step down and do something less risky. I felt like I was doing what needed to be done. If that meant I was going to be shot, then there's a time and place for everything I guess. I wasn't going to let that stop me. I wasn't going to let that scare me. Israel knows that if it makes the situation really difficult and dangerous, that if it tries to restrict internationals from coming in to the area and basically frightens them away, then there's lots of tension against Palestine so they can step up the violence against the Palestinians.
So what I thought when I first heard that was that if they just killed an international, an American no less, then they must be doing a lot more to the Palestinians. I need to go and find out about it and do something about it.
It made me afraid, but it made me feel more strongly in my convictions about why I needed to go. It really underscored the situation.

S-How did the Palestinians feel about her?

L-Now she's sort of a household name. If you just talk about Rachel Corrie...whenever we'd meet Palestinians and we'd say we were with the ISM, sometimes they'd know what we were talking about. Sometimes they wouldn't. But if we said, "You know. Rachel Corrie. She was killed in Gaza." They'd all know who she was and who we were with. She's really well known. She's seen as a martyr. She's definitely seen as a good person who died because Israel is really a messed up country and a really messed up entity.

S-I heard that there were martyr posters with her on them.

L-Yeah, I don't know who made these posters, but there are martyr posters of her. They're in English and in Arabic. One of the quotes on the poster says, "She died so that the Palestinians children would one day see the ocean." It's really nice. The pictures and stuff.
I think people generally look at her rather positively and they admire her. Or just feel like she was doing a good thing.

S-I know this is a hard question to answer, but from your perspective and what you saw and heard, to the best of your knowledge, what did the Palestinians think of Americans?

L-At one point, I told some people that I represented, not just myself, but probably at least 30 of my friends who would love to come to Palestine, but weren’t able to, financially or just couldn't come. People thought that was really cool. They got really excited. "You mean there are thirty other people like you?" Yeah, in Pensacola even. Maybe. They thought that was really amazing. They got really excited. The people that I got to know, their reaction to me was very good. They thought that it was the greatest thing that I was there. And most important to them wasn't that I was there with the ISM to do any kind of action, or that I was there for any of that. They just thought it was great that we were there to listen to them tell their story. They just thought that was the greatest thing. I think they wanted to tell other people, too. But mostly they thought it was cool to be able to talk to me, an American. A Palestinian to an American. Just to have that kind of conversation. It doesn't ever happen. We hear a lot of stuff from the Israeli side, but you don't hear from Palestinians about their suffering. SO they were glad to have the ability to do that.
I also think there's a bit of misunderstanding because a lot of Palestinians, when they meet Americans, they meet really sympathetic Americans who made an effort to come to the West Bank. So I think that they think a lot of Americans them.
A lot of people said this over and over again, that they hate the American government, but they don't hate the American people. That they know the American people are generally good people, like most people, but I think they have some confusion about the opinion of what Americans in general think. I think that they think the American government is carrying out this policy of supporting Israel almost against the wished of the people (besides the pro-Israel lobby). Like I think that they think that there are Zionists and then there is the American people. And then there is the government. The Zionists and the government are in collusion with each other and the American people are really pissed off about it.
So I think that there is a little bit of a misunderstanding in the way that they perceive the American people as a whole, and as to how the American perceive them as a whole.

S-What do they think of Bush?

L-They all hate Bush.
And they ask me what I think of Bush and if I hated Bush, too. I would tell them "Absolutely." Then they always like you a lot better. I don't know what they'd say if I’d said that I liked Bush. But I would never ever dare say such a thing. At one point I did learn to say "I don't like him" in Arabic.

S-How do you say that?

L-"Mish ba hebo Bush."

S-Mish be heba Bush?

L-Actually "Mish bahebo" means I don't like him. I think it would be "Mish ba heb Bush". I could also say "I hate him." Ana Bakraho. I hate him. I think you can also say "He is my enemy."

S-Do you remember how to say that? It might come in handy.

L-I think it's "huwwe ado." I think.
Mish ba heba. I don't like him.

S-Lastly, and you can answer this the best way you can from your experience, what is toll of the occupation on the daily lives of the Palestinian people?

L-One thing that's really devastating to the Palestinians, I think, as far as the US in concerned is that they're painted as terrorists. No matter what. Essentially Israel sees all Palestinians as terrorists. Especially Palestinian men. Like soldiers would say "We're looking for Muhammad Abu-Yusef," but it's not like that's a real person. The soldier was being sarcastic and a jerk. "He's a terrorist. So, if you see him, tell him we're looking for him." But really he meant any Palestinian. It was his way of being really demeaning. Just like how in America, race is such an issue. Like saying all young black men, they're all drug dealers and thieves. That's the way Israel, and many Israelis, see Palestinians. All young male Palestinians between 18 and 60. Or younger than that. Between 5 and 80. They're all terrorists. And I think that's a huge deal. In Palestine, it affects Palestinians because it means that people treat them really bad, with little care and compassion towards them. The soldiers do. But internationally, in the US, it means that the Arab community here is under attack and people in general aren't sympathetic to the Palestinian cause because when you say Palestine, people automatically think "terrorist."
People that I know, like my family. They don't know anything about Palestine. They don't know where it is; they don't know what is going on. They don't know the history, the situation. But when I told them that I was going to Palestine, they did know it was a dangerous place. Supposedly. And they didn't think it was dangerous because Israel kills people. That's not why they thought it was dangerous. They thought it was dangerous because they thought the Palestinians were going to kidnap me or kill me or brainwash me. That's the mentality that we've been socialized into. That Palestinians and Arabs are terrorists because that's what the Bush administration and the American government makes us think.
So that's a really detrimental thing to the Palestinian people because the fact that their human rights are being violated doesn't matter because they're terrorists. Supposedly. And that's really serious and not acceptable for that to be happening. So that's one thing.
As far as what's happening to them, I think one of the biggest issues with the occupation in Palestine is that it means there is no infrastructure. No good economic base. It means that kids basically don't have a future. They don't have good, proper nutrition. Their parents don't have jobs. There is 80% unemployment in Palestine and there are no social services to support those people who are unemployed for long periods of time. With no job prospects. I just read the other day that taxes are collected by Israel and Israel owes millions of dollars to the Palestinian Authority that they’ve never given them, that they've collected on their behalf. So the Palestinian people pay taxes that are collected by Israel, that they don't get dispersed. So, where is their money going? Israel is embezzling their money back into Israel. Which already has enough of it's own money!
People say, "Why don't they do this or that?". It's like when someone sees someone living in poverty and they're blaming them for it. When they're doing everything they can just to live. And they’re not able to travel around to work. There are roadblocks everywhere. There are checkpoints everywhere. Checkpoints sometimes take hours to get through. Imagine rush hour traffic. Then imagine that every single person in traffic has to show their ID's, be searched, and talk to soldiers for 15-20 minutes before they can go. Imagine how much longer it takes to travel. If they leave their house at six in the morning to get to work, they're not going to get there until noon! And meanwhile, they just lost those hours they could have been working and getting paid for working. Then they have to deal with the same thing on the way back. The occupation steals people's time. Everything takes so much longer because you have to go through all the hassle with the soldiers. And it makes everything completely random and unstable. People have no knowledge of what's going to happen in a few minutes or in a few hours. Sometimes they travel to work and there is a checkpoint or the road is closed and they're not allowed to get back. People spend a lot of time away from their families and basically not being able to do the things people take for granted. Traveling to work or traveling to the store. It's a form of ethnic cleansing in an economic form. Because if you strangle a people and make it so they can't grow their own food. They have no access to their farmland. They can't sell their produce in market. They can't have jobs. People graduate from college with MA's, BA's, and doctorates and they can't get a job because there is no business. They can't travel to other countries because they're branded as terrorists. They can't go to other countries to work. They can't get visas. They can't get all these things. They have no future. I don't know how I would survive if I was there. I would be completely depressed all the time if I was there. But for some reason, either their strong belief in their religion, or more importantly in themselves, they persevere. They have so much pride. Pride in their heritage, in their culture, in their strength. It gives them the ability to keep pushing on.
And I've talked to people and they say, "Everyone makes such a big deal about what is happening to the Palestinians. They're being shot, they're being oppressed, and they’re being treated so badly and in a lot of danger. Why don't they just leave Palestine?" And it's because the Israelis want them to leave is exactly the reason why they don't leave. That's exactly the reason they stay. They just say, "We're never going to leave." If Israel pushed them out, the Israelis would win. They're never going to let that happen. They have too much pride for that. They're not going to let Israel win by strangling them. Even if it comes down to there being only one Palestinian left. Or only one Palestinian alive, they'll be there. Or she'll be there in the end and she'll only leave when she’s dead. They're just not going to abandon their land.
Some people come to the US and they have a better situation here. Even though the US is really racist here and they have a lot of problems here as well. Maybe the situation is better here economically or whatever. But most people would never do that. I talked to a lot of people and they say their family lives in the US, or they live in Britain or in Europe or wherever. But like this one guy said to me, "I like it when I go there (to the US or Britain). I enjoy it. I have fun. But this is my home. I am a Palestinian and I'm going to live here in Palestine. And I'm going to keep living here to see the day that we will be free."

S-Thank you Lauren

<< BACK