Nakba 2009

I commemorated 61 years of Nakba together with Palestininian friends from Bourj al-Barajneh Refugee Camp in the south of Beirut. For the first time, the commemoration was held outside of the camp, in the centre of the roundabout in an underpass of an elevated highway. The event began with the opening of a small exhibition, including photographs from 1948, posters, and paintings by the camp children.

Six Palestinian NGOs working in Bourj al-Barajneh were selling handicrafts: all kinds of practical and decorative items adorned with traditional or modern cross-stitch motives.

The Palestinian map was everywhere; Handzala, the little fellow turning his back to you, barefooted and in tattered clothes, who was invented by the famous Palestinian cartoonist Naji Ali to represent the Palestinian Right of Return, decorated many paraphernalia; and like everywhere in the Westbank, there were a lot of items decorated with the famous portrait of Che Guevara, the revered freedom fighter. The third symbol you can see everywhere where Palestinians live is the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem.


One person from each participating NGO held a speech; journalists from Lebanese dailies and a TV station were filming and photographing the event and interviewing participants.
The children were playing and dancing to the loud music blaring from two giant loudspeakers.

Old men and women had come, some hobbling on their walking sticks across the busy road passing between the camp and the place where the event was held. They are the last witnesses to the actual Nakhba in 1948, the last of their generation to tell the now fourth generation of the loss of their homeland.

In one corner, sitting on dusty cushions on the ground, some old women were demonstrating old household appliances used by them in Palestine before, such as a coffee roaster, a hand-mill to grind corn, a stone with a wooden club for mashing food items, a mortar with pestle, etc. The hand-mill and the mortar could also have come from rural Malaya.

Many children were trying out these household tools, struggling and laughing and having a good time.

A woman brewed the freshly roasted and ground coffee and we all tried a few sips; the coffee was fragrant, most delicious and refreshing.

The tantalizing rhythms of Palestinian music got everyone dancing, whipping with their feet, nodding the head, moving shoulders, arms and hands with the rhythm. Even small children who could barely walk were dancing.

I watched the kids drawing on huge white papers which had been put up on some of the walls: they were drawing the Palestinian flag, houses, tanks, people, explosions, bombs, helicopters, and other things from their collective memories.

Then I had a closer look at the exhibited photographs of the Palestinian exodus in 1948, as well as the victims of Zionist violence in British Mandate Palestine.

The pictures immediately reminded me of pictures of Palestinian victims in Gaza 2009. It seems that nothing has changed in 61 years. Palestinians are still being slaughtered, burned, and torn to pieces by the Zionist colonial war machine. To the collective trauma that affects Palestinian refugees until today, my friends in Lebanon and elsewhere have to deal with the collective trauma that years of civil war in Leban, total depravation, dispossession, and complete disempowerment for generations have heaped on them.



How many more generations are the Palestinian refugees in Lebanon and elsewhere not allowed to go back to their land in Palestine where they, their parents, grandparents and ancestors before them had been born and were living, while Jews from whatever country in this world, many of whom have been completely assimilated and culturally integrated and are full citizens with all citizens’ rights in their country have the right to hold Israeli citizenship and live in Palestine.

After having written this, I actually feel the urge to do some research on the statistics regarding the Jews and the Palestinians. Are the Palestinians the ‘new Jews’? Persecuted, gassed, burned, exterminated? The Palestinian people have the right to live peacefully in their own land. But peace cannot be achieved without justice. So what does ‘justice’ entail in the context of the conflict in Palestine?

More on this at a later date.

Beirut

I have arrived In Beirut on Sunday. The weather is warm and sunny, not hot and humid like in Malaysia when I left. So after having visited the main office of our partner in Lebanon, Beit Atfal Assumoud (Home of the Children of the Steadfast) to get updated on the latest news regarding the situation of the Palestinian refugees in the camps and to discuss new programmes, I went for a long walk, down through the Hamra district, past AUB, to the Corniche, the beach promenade of Beirut.


Even though Lebanon is facing elections on 7 June, I only saw one poster on my three hours walk that is related to the coming elections.

I passed the American University of Beirut, which was founded in 1866.

I went down some very steep and long stairs which were decorated with graffiti left and right on the walls. I immediately felt removed to Zurich, the place of my childhood, where there is a similar staircase leading up to the University of Zurich. The stairs in Zurich might be a bit broader, but have the same kind of graffiti and the students are sitting in the same way on the stairs in groups.
Here are the stairs in Beirut. Please note Mickey Mouse in the forefront on the right.

In the area around the university there is a lot of graffiti on almost all walls. I have always been fascinated by these expressions of the “city guerilla”, the student underground. Graffiti is an art form by itself. But more about this another time.

The sun was already low in the sky above the sea when I finally reached the Corniche, the promenade on the shore of the Mediterranean in Beirut. I sat down on a bench, with my back to the road and the row of hotels behind that. The friendly smile of an old lady had invited me to share the place with her.

There were quite a number of cyclists with bicycles from the bicycle rental shop “Beirut on Bicycle” which I had noted on my way down. Some men and women were jogging along; some were doing other physical exercises such as stretching, bending, jumping; there were two men who were fishing with fishing rods surrounded by an admiring crowd; many young families with small children, many children with their Tamil or Philippino maids to attend to them; an old bag lady with a shopping wagon containing all her belongings; also the young and beautiful were strolling along talking on their state-of-the-art mobile phones.

The aroma of freshly brewed coffee enveloped me. A small van had stopped behind me at the kerb: it was a mobile coffee shop. For 750 cents I got a small cup with a few sips of fragrant, bitter, refreshing, piping hot coffee.

The atmosphere at the corniche again reminded me of Zurich, where half of the population will congregate at the lakeside as soon as the sun is warm enough for people to sit outside. From cyclists to old women enjoying the warmth of the sun, and the playing children, the scene was similar. The only difference: nobody in Zurich is selling Arabic coffee from a van.

When the sun had sunk into the sea, I slowly walked back to the hotel.

How similar people are. All you have to do is go to one of these places where people go in their free time to unwind and enjoy themselves and you find that they enjoy the same kind of activities, be it in Kuching at the riverside, in Beirut at the corniche, or in Zurich at the lakeside. So, if we are so similar as human beings why can’t we live together as human beings in peace? Are not our similarities bigger than our differences?

Lebanon

Tomorrow I am off to Beirut to attend a conference on disabled Palestinian children in the refugee camps in Lebanon. This is my fifth visit to this fascinating place. Why am I so taken with Lebanon?
Lebanon is an interface to several cultures and lifestyles. It is multi-flavoured. There is the flavour of Arab culture, language, foods; there is the flavour of French savoir vivre, very European; and there is the flavour of an international, English language and culture style.
Robert Fisk, one of my favorite writers and journalists, expresses his view about the flavours of Lebanon in the following way:
“When I arrived in Beirut from Europe, I felt the oppressive, damp heat, saw unkempt palm trees and smelt the Arabic coffee, the fruit stalls and the over-spiced meat. It was the beginning of the Orient. And when I flew back to Beirut from Iran, I could pick up the British papers, ask for a gin and tonic at any bar, choose a French, Italian or German restaurant for dinner. It was the beginning of the West. All things to all people, the Lebanese rarely questioned their own identity.” (Fisk, Robert: Pity the Nation, p. 163).
Lebanon is also one of the cradles of civilization: Byblos, called Jbail today, 37 km north of Beirut, was to celebrate 7000 years of ‘continuously inhabited city’ in 2006, when Israel wrought war on Lebanon and bombed the country and its infrastructure to bits. To no one’s surprise hardly any tourists came to celebrate.
Unlike the American army in Iraq, the Israeli ‘Defense’ Forces did not destroy any ancient sites this time around. So Byblos and Baalbek can still be visited and admired by tourists today.
The more recent history of the country is very mixed, if not to say tortured. War after war after war have come down on Lebanon during the last few decades. As soon as there is some semblance of reconstruction and normalization of life, the next conflict is waiting around the corner. At the moment though it looks pretty stable politically, despite elections looming on 7 June.
Coming from Switzerland, a mono-cultural country with mostly Caucasian inhabitants, Malaysia and Lebanon are the epitome of cultural mix. Lebanon officially recognizes eighteen religious communities within the country, and its political system reflects these communities. Malaysia also has different ethnic and religious communities which are reflected in the political parties.
Some 20 years ago, standing at one of Zurich’s busiest places, the Bellevue-Platz, waiting for the tram with my two kids, my elder son suddenly said: “ There are so many different people here.” What he expressed was the following: Coming from Malaysia, where you could easily identify the different ethnic groups by their clothes, in mono-cultural Switzerland people expressed their individuality in a thousand different ways, resulting in a variety that did not allow to identify anybody with a particular ethnic or religious group.
In Lebanon, I am still learning about the different groups.

Déjà Vu

I am currently reading this thick book by Robert Fisk “Pity the Nation: Lebanon at War”. Robert Fisk is the Middle East Correspondent of the British daily The Independent. He is based in Beirut, Lebanon. The book was published 19 years ago in 1990. In it, Fisk describes the events taking place in Lebanon in the 1980s, including the Sabra-Shatila massacre.

What has been really striking is that about every ten pages I get this feeling of déjà vu.
“I had to take the babies and put them in buckets of water to put out the flames. When I took them out half an hour later, they were still burning. Even in the mortuary, they smoldered for hours.
Dr. Amal Shamaa of the Barbir hospital, after Israeli phosphorus shells had been fired into West Beirut, 29 July 1982” (In: Fisk, Robert: Pity the Nation, page 282.)

The first time I had come across information that something special is going on in the warfare of Israel with its neighbors in the Middle East was in 2006, in an article in Al Ahram Weekly, an online digest in English of the Egyptian Al Ahram newspaper sometime in June or July, during the Israeli attack on Gaza named “Operation Summer Rain”. The article included an interview with a spokesman of Shifa Hospital in Gaza, who stated that the doctors at the hospital were confronted with patients who had horrific wounds, torn limbs and burns such as they had not seen before and were helpless to treat.

Then in the July War in Lebanon 2006, which started on 12 July and formally ended on 8 September, again there were indications that Israel was trying out new chemical and other munitions with devastating effects on human beings.

In early February 2007, at the three-day War Crimes Conference at the Putra World Trade Centre, Kuala Lumpur, organised by the Perdana Global Peace Organisation, one of the speakers also showed the devastation of these new types of munitions: small entry wounds with extensive damage and burns inside, or bodies and limbs torn apart.

With all the above knowledge I am certain that Israel, after having tested the use of these new munitions and weapons in Gaza and Lebanon in 2006, used them systematically for the first time in their war on Gaza named “Cast Lead” in December 2008/January 2009. White phosphorus, DIME (Dense Inert Metal Explosives), cluster bombs and flechettes (a sort of ‘cluster darts’ that can penetrate bullet-proof vests) were unleashed onto Gaza, killing and maiming thousands of human beings, civilians, men, women and children.

Coming back to ‘Pity the Nation’: now I know that the use of phosphorus on civilians by the so-called Israeli “Defense” Forces has a much further reaching history than I had known before.

I do hope that the Russell Tribunal on Palestine (http://www.russelltribunalonpalestine.net) established on 4 April 2009 in Brussels will uncover the history of such illegal warfare, take these war crimes into account, and make perpetrators and their supporting partners in crime accountable for their horrific deeds.

Thank You for Treating Me Like a Human Being

Over the last two months, three different, unconnected and unrelated people have thanked me for treating them like human beings. What have they got in common? They are all Palestinian refugees in Malaysia.

Malaysia has not signed the 1951 UN Convention relating to the Status of Refugees. Therefore, legally, the refugee status does not exist in Malaysia. So people registered with UNHCR (United Nations High Commissioner of Refugees) in Kuala Lumpur are considered illegal migrants. They are not allowed to work. Their children do not go to school. Their lives have been suspended.

They are waiting for resettlement to a third country through UNHCR, but this takes time. 2-3 years is no exception. Some families pull together all resources and live together in rented apartments, one family per room. Some get a bit of support from caring Malaysians, some from Arabs doing business in Malaysia. Some bachelors stay in suraus.

MSRI, the Malaysian Social Research Institute, the organisation I work for, is managing a Palestinian trust fund. Among other aid programmes, we also have a Sponsorship Programme for Palestinian Children in Lebanon. Because of these programmes, Palestinian refugees in Malaysia often find their way to my office in Jalan U Thant, Ampang. Like the three men mentioned above.

Wherever they turn to in their distress about their situation, whoever they approach will be sympathetic. But most people do not want to hear about the hardship these Palestinians face here. Malaysia is supposed to be this tropical paradise, and refugees, not only Palestinian but also for example Burma refugees only spoil the picture. So most people just turn away; the ones who have some empathy will press a 50Ringgit note into their ourstreched hands before turning away.

It is particularly bitter for Palestinian refugees from Gaza to read in the newspapers that millions of aid and support is going to Gaza; to see all the banners hanging at many places in the cities, mosques, bridges and other strategic places declaring the solidarity of the Malaysian people with the people in Gaza, while they, also from Gaza, live the lonely lives of refugees right in their midst.

Over the last two years, more Palestinian refugees from the Middle-East have come to Malaysia, ususally after having spent months beeing pushed from one country to the other, or from war zones such as Iraq. They come to Malaysia because here they can get "Visa on Arrival" which is valid for one month. So increasing numbers of Palestinian refugees are also arriving at my doorstep.

What MSRI can do to help these people is very limited. First of all, we will talk to them and evaluate their situation. We actually listen to their stories, mostly very sad and tragic stories. In times to come I might just tell some of them here. We listen when they pour out their frustration with their current situation and their powerlessness to change anything and to be in charge of their lives, their suspended lives in Malaysia. We offer a sympathetic ear and a cup of coffee or tea. This is why I hear this sentence so often: "Thank you for treating me like a human being!"

I want to cry when they say that. No human being should have to say that sentence. Particularly not in Malaysia, where we all pride ourselves to be part of a caring society.

After evaluating their situation we are looking at how we can help. The immediate support includes emergency food aid and medical support. A short-term goal must be to get the children to school. The refugees also need some sort of income to sustain themselves until they can be resettled. Mid-term goals are successful resettlements. The ultimate goal is for Malaysia to implement refugee rights according to international law.

But this will take time.

Until such time, I wonder how many times I will have to hear that sentence: "Thank you for treating me like a human being."