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MAHA ABU DAYYEH: "AS LONG AS THERE IS A
SOCIETY THAT RESISTS
THERE IS HOPE."
Interview: 20/12/04, Jerusalem
Maha Abu Dayyeh is
director of the Women's Center for Legal Aid and
Counseling (WCLAC) in Jerusalem.
My office is close to my
house—I just walk across the street. Now, the
Wall ends just before the intersection of where
I cross. When its construction is completed, I
will have to drive all the way through Qalandia
checkpoint, turn right around, and cross the
checkpoint again and go to Dahiet Al-Barid,
before I can get to my office! I live on the
left hand side of the street going from
Jerusalem to Ramallah which is the Jerusalem
side. However, all the services for my daily
existence will be on the side that will be
blocked off. Think about getting vegetables or
food, or getting maintenance and household
support. Half of all Jerusalemite Palestinians
are going to suffer from this because
electricians or maintenance people all live in
areas that are blocked off. Because they will be
harder to get, they will be more expensive. Life
is going to become much more expensive, and not
only monetarily. We also will pay heavy social
and emotional costs. We will become
disconnected—literally and figuratively—from
family and friends. Going to them in Ramallah or
Beit Jala, places actually not very far from
here, will be very difficult.
Practically speaking, the
Wall is imprisoning us. The gates are not in the
house itself but beyond the house. To go in and
out you will need to have a special permit, and
you will need to pay for it. On top of that,
there is destruction to the environment in areas
close to the Wall because of the digging in the
streets, the dust, the fuel, and the fumes. Dust
and fumes are always in the house; you can't
ever get it totally clean. Going in and out of
the house means jumping over rubble and
concrete, over all kinds of building refuse. You
destroy your clothes, your shoes. You have to
have extra budget for all those expenses. And
the Wall blocks the view. You can see only a few
meters beyond. You wake up in the morning and
face the massive, ugly, grey cement blocks. We
are living in chaos.
* * *
One has to realize how the
Wall specifically and the living conditions as a
whole block us psychologically. When you are
psychologically blocked, your thinking is also
blocked. Your ability to be creative is blocked.
Your ability to feel is blocked because you have
to protect yourself all the time from feeling
frustrated. These are what destroy the person.
It's a sort of psychological torture. You always
have to be on the alert. You can't be relaxed.
You always think how you are going to deal with
the next obstacle. You can't ever plan and fully
expect to complete one plan. You always have to
have plan A, plan B, plan C. It often happens
that you can’t achieve the goals you worked so
hard for. All the time you face disappointments.
An outsider to this
situation has to go through this to understand
what it really means. The Wall is one of the
most violent forms of psychological and physical
aggression directed against the Palestinian
collective and against the Palestinian
individual. This is especially true for those
whose daily existence requires them to cross the
Wall or go around it. Maybe there are a few
people in the center of Palestinian towns who
can manage and who do not have to move, but
these are very few. The majority of the people
have to cross the Wall all the time. You cannot
cross without a permit issued by the Israeli
government, so the Israelis control our
movements. They decide who is able to move or
not. In so doing, they control the lives of the
Palestinians. They decide who is important or
not; what is valuable or not; who can go to work
or not. On a day-to-day basis, these decisions
are up to soldiers who guard the gates. These
soldiers on the ground make a lot of their own,
independent decisions. They can sexually harass
the women if they want to. They can choose to be
easy, hostile, or violent. And when they have
violated the rights and dignity of Palestinian
people, they can always find an excuse and the
government will cover up the violations. We live
our daily lives within this violent situation.
Because of the current
situation the number of women who are
able to reach our office is declining. We are
not able to help as much as we could. It forces
us to open more centres throughout the region,
which is more expensive, unnecessarily
expensive. It is a terrible waste of resources.
We end up using our money on administration, on
rents, on other overhead expenses including
transporting staff, rather than on doing program
work.
* * *
There is nothing like one's
own real experience. I internalized the violence
of the Wall after I heard that it was built
around Qalqilia. But hearing about it and
internalizing it in an intellectual way are
incomparable to the actual experience of having
to go around or walk or drive by it. You drive
next to the Wall but there are also buildings
bordering the other side of the road. They built
the Wall in the middle of the street and you're
stuck between it and the buildings in a narrow
channel, like cattle. You know what happens with
cattle: The cattle are lined up and the machine
takes them one by one while they can't move,
like in a cage. The same happens to us. You
cannot run away. You cannot backtrack. You
cannot go left or right. You are stuck between
the Wall and the other buildings. You're in a
line and whatever happens, you cannot act on
your own or control your own destiny. This
happens all the time. You get the feeling that,
inevitably, you are going to be destroyed,
killed, stampeded, caught in the middle of a
shooting, as if you are living your life in one
giant, ubiquitous crossfire. You are constantly
on the alert, and feeling very vulnerable. To
say this is a disempowering experience is an
understatement. In fact, you are being choked
unmercifully, cold-bloodedly.
All our lives we have to
deal with crises. You become weaker as a person.
Your capacity to tolerate difficulties becomes
much smaller. You are emotionally charged most
of the time. Personally I am deeply affected
when I observe the children. The kids are
nervous all the time, agitated, so much of their
energy and effervescence is restrained. They are
afraid, especially of soldiers. When they see a
patrol, they all run away and start crying. If
they start crying, I start to cry myself. And
that shows I too have been, and continue to be,
traumatized. It is a new thing in me. I am
affected by the whole situation. It is a
horrible way particularly for children to grow
up.
* * *
Freedom, for me, is the
ability to walk endlessly without being stopped.
To be able to keep moving forward. For me this
ability is physical and also mental. To think
without being restricted. I find that my ability
as a thinking and moving human being is
handicapped because my physical movements are
continually hindered and restricted. Freedom
also is being able to do what I want to do, see
my friends when I want to see them. Freedom is
not to be restricted irrationally and
arbitrarily, that is, when I don't understand
why I am restricted. In my childhood I never
could accept a "no" without an explanation. I
wanted to see friends, to be with people, to
have activities, and to be able to participate
with my friends in joint activities. And to be
able to think freely and to express my thoughts
freely without being shut up or being told that
I am stupid or unrealistic or otherwise blocked
in my ability to think. As an adult living under
Israeli occupation, I see the same patterns. The
restrictions and hindrance are more
sophisticated but the same principles are still
there. There is an English expression, “the sky
is the limit.” That means that one's imagination
and ability to be an actor in the world should
be far-reaching, limitless, unrestricted. But in
the Palestinian context, the Wall is the limit.
As an individual, I cannot
complain. Indeed, if I compare myself to many
other people, I am a lucky person. I am able to
travel abroad, and meet very interesting and
creative people. They help me overcome my own
thinking blockages. I think with them, learn
from them. When I return home, I am better able
to overcome my own limitations in thinking
freely. Traveling and seeing other realities
enable me to regain my sense of balance. When
you travel you see that the situation here is
abnormal and the normal should be what people
out there experience. When you stay here you get
used to the situation and come to believe there
is no other way of life.
So my level of anger is
elevated when I come back and see the situation
again. My anger means that I am alive. My anger
makes me act more, be more constructive with my
colleagues, with my kids. I try to help them
cope with the situation they are in. Being able
to use my anger to help others is important to
me because it gives me energy. If I can maintain
my anger at a steady level, I am energized.
Anger means that I am trying to act on what
happens. I think people need to be angry all the
time about the situation. People have the right
to be angry and express their anger. It's a sign
of living, a refusal to die. Through anger, you
say no to a brutal situation. We should not walk
quietly in the face of brutality. One should
resist, for instance, by showing anger to the
soldier and by breaking the rules. Refusing to
respond to instructions given in the Hebrew
language is a form of resistance. Everybody has
a chance to resist by any small way or means. It
builds one's strength. Resistance is not the
same as survival. Survival is barely making it,
just going on with your dealings. Resistance is
acting consciously, purposefully on your
situation. Some people just choose to survive
because they are tired of resisting and
fighting; I can't blame them. I consistently
hope that not all people in our society fall
into that mode. So far, it looks like they are
resisting and fighting. My organization supports
coping strategies but also the fight to maintain
humanity, the refusal to be dehumanized, to
maintain hope. When we do our educational
programs in the community, we just remind people
of the issues of justice and the rule of law.
You can always find hope for building a better
life.
I personally refuse to be
killed emotionally or psychologically. I will
not give up. I am a resister. As long as there
is a society that resists there is hope. I see
people resisting as a profound, courageous
expression of choosing life. I see it all around
me. It may not be tangible in the immediate, but
when people choose life, there is hope. I see
happy children too all around me. As long as
there are kids laughing there is hope. |
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Toine van Teeffelen