My experience in Palestine

I spent three weeks in October/November volunteering in the West Bank of Palestine. I have had enough time to decompress and collect my thoughts and I wanted to share my experience.

Before I go into my experience, I think it is important to understand the basic history and geography related to the establishment of the modern country of Israel. The conflict is often described in the western media as ancient, or complicated, but it is neither. It is complex, but not complicated. I will do my best to summarize the recent history from the establishment of Israel until the present.

On November 29, 1947 the UN voted to adopt the Partition Plan for Palestine which would have divided the territory, then known as Mandatory Palestine and controlled by the UK, into two separate countries, one Jewish and one Arab.

The next day fighting between Jewish and Arab forces began, this phase of the conflict is known as the 1947-48 Civil war in Mandatory Palestine. By May of 1948 over 700,000 Arab residents of Mandatory Palestine fled or had been expelled from their homes by Zionist paramilitary forces.

Zionism is central to this entire conflict and is a nationalist political ideology first developed in Europe in the late 19th century with the goal of creating a nation state for Jews in the biblical land of Israel.

On May 14, 1948 the British Mandate on Palestine ended and David Ben Gurion, the Executive Head of the World Zionist Organization and Chairman of the Jewish Agency for Palestine declared the establishment of the State of Israel.

The next morning, in reaction to this declaration, the countries which neighbored the newly declared State of Israel, Egypt, Syria, Iraq and Transjordan (now Jordan), invaded Israel, starting the 1948 Arab-Israeli War.

This war lasted for 10 months. At its conclusion Israel controlled all the territory which had been proposed for a Jewish state, and more than half of the territory which had been proposed for an Arab state. West Jerusalem, which had been designated an international zone was also controlled by Israel. The territory now known as the Gaza Strip was controlled by Egypt, and the territory now known as the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, was annexed by Jordan.

Palestinians who lived in Israeli controlled areas continued to be expelled from their lands. The expulsion of the Palestinians from their homeland is referred to as the Nakba, the Arab word for catastrophe, and is the origin point for the displacement of Palestinian people across the region, and the origin of the multiple overlapping conflicts surrounding the State of Israel.

The demarcation line set out at the end of the 1948 war became known as the Green Line and was the de facto border of Israel from 1949 until the six-day war in 1967. In May of 1967, amid worsening relations between Israel and its neighbors, Egypt began a military build up along its shared border. In June, Israel launched a surprise attack on the Egyptian armed forces and destroyed nearly all of Egypts air assets, giving Israel arial supremacy.

Six days later, Israel occupied the Sinai peninsula and the Gaza Strip (from Egypt), the Golan Heights (from Syria), and the West Bank, including East Jerusalem (from Jordan).

Over 250,000 more Palestinians were expelled from their lands in the aftermath of this war and the conquered territory came under Israeli military occupation.

The next year, in 1968, the first Israeli settlement in the West Bank was built. Today over 800,000 Israeli settlers live in dozens of settlements across the occupied West Bank.

That is the history, I tried to lay it out as objectively as possible. The UK supported a plan to resettle European Jews in Palestine, a project known as Zionism, which predates World War II entirely. European Jews could have been settled countless places, and there were many other plans and proposals, but an established Zionist movement sought to create a Jewish state in the biblical Jewish homeland, and this movement succeeded. As a result hundreds of thousands of European Jews were relocated to Palestine, and in doing so, caused many of the pre-existing Arab residents of Palestine to have their lands dispossessed. This created the conditions for neighboring Arab countries to intervene militarily on behalf of the dispossessed Arab Palestinians. Israel won those military interactions and continues to occupy much of the territory it conquered.

What all this means today.

Today Palestine is divided into two entities, the Gaza Strip and the West Bank. In the past they have shared a governing body, the Palestinian Authority, but in 2006 Hamas won local elections in the Gaza Strip. Hamas has refused to acknowledge the agreements the Palestinian Authority had previously made, most notably acknowledging Israel as a country, and the Gaza Strip has, as a result, been largely isolated. In 2022 Hamas attacked Israel resulting in over 1000 deaths, many of which can be attributed to Hamas fighters. This attack received intense media coverage and was subject to gross inaccuracies in reporting, Inaccuracies which were, and often continue to be, repeated in major western media outlets. Images of the attack are extremely limited, and the Israeli Military has ‘lost’ most of the footage from the thousands of security camera it has installed around the Gaza Strip and across the country.

I am not writing this to talk about the Gaza Strip, or re-litigate the events of October 2022, but only to establish that the claims about the attack which the Israeli state often makes are at best inaccurate, and at worst well calculated lies designed to mislead the public, specifically western, English speaking audiences, who are besieged with stories of rape, torture, and child murder, none of which have ever been verified, many of which have been recanted, but are still cited in major media outlets with no sources.

What I do want to write about is the West Bank. Within the West Bank, as a result of the 1993/1995 Oslo accords, there are three areas of control, Areas A, B and C. Area A consists of the major cities in the West Bank like Ramallah, Nablus, Jenin, and Bethlehem. Area A is around 18% of the West Bank by area, and in theory, it is under complete Palestinian control. I say in theory because they still use Israeli money and the Israeli Army regularly conducts operations there. Israeli citizens are forbidden from entering area A and there are no Israeli settlements in Area A.

Area B is around 22% of the West Bank territory, usually land surrounding area A, and is under joint Palestinian-Israeli control. It is important to note that areas A and B are not contiguous, instead they are an archipelago. Patches of A and B are islands, surrounded by Area C.

Area C, which comprises between 60% and 70% of the West Bank is under full Israeli military occupation. Area C is contiguous, and is where the Israeli settlements are built.

In Area C, the Israeli military has the final say on everything, including life and death. The Palestinians who live in Area C are largely farmers and shepherds, living off the land as they have done for generations. When the Israelis build their settlements, the Palestinians who live near the settlement sites are forced to leave by the Israeli Army. If they do not leave their land, they face increasing pressure and violence from the Army itself, but also from settlers who adopt terroristic tactics with the goal of getting the Palestinians to leave their land.

These tactics include arson, physical attacks, the burning of crops, and the slaughter of livestock. Settlers will invade Palestinian farms and homes, steal and destroy property, and, when faced with resistance from the Palestinians, call the army for backup. Once the army arrives, the Palestinians are again told by the Army to leave their land with the promise that the next time the Army returns, it will be worse.

There is no civilian authority the Palestinians in Area C can appeal to, no one to protect them from vigilante settlers except the Israeli Army, an army which operates in collaboration with the settlers. Everyday for Palestinians living in Area C is a difficult, threatening experience.

Many Palestinians in Area C live in the shadows of newly built settlements. These settlements are gated communities surrounded by barbed wire fencing and patrolled by armed security. Within the gates there is all the amenities one might require, schools, shops, cafes, civil administration, clean water, sewage systems, etc. Outside the settlements, Palestinian farmers and shepherds live without running water, instead they are forced to buy water and store it in tanks. If the Palestinians had access to the water below their feet they would have green gardens as well, but they are forbidden to dig wells.

Palestinians often have no electricity connection and instead rely on solar arrays and battery systems because the Israeli Army does not allow them access to the electrical grid. They have no sewage and instead dig latrines because the Israeli Army again does not allow them to access the sewer system. They have no paved roads, as paving the roads is not allowed by the Israeli military. They live in semi-permeant tents because they are not allowed to build permanent structures. If they do build something permanent, the army will come with a demolition order, forcing the Palestinians to either pay for the destruction, or destroy the structure themselves.

The image of Palestinians living in tents on dry, dusty land, next to modern settlements awash in greenery is often used in Israeli propaganda to demonstrate that the Palestinians do not utilize the land to its potential. In reality it is an entirely constructed image. The Palestinians are forced into extremely difficult living condition by the settlers and the Israeli Army. If they were allowed to build homes with running water, electricity and sewage they wouldn’t live in tents, but this is forbidden to them by Israel.

Palestinians who live in Area C but who do not live in the shadow of settlements still face threats from settlers. Settlers have no compunctions about driving onto Palestinian farmers lands and harassing families, stealing livestock, sabotaging farm equipment, and physically attacking people. They often do this at night and it results in Palestinian farmers forgoing sleep to stay up all night keeping watch. The Palestinians have no weapons and must make do with high powered flashlights to locate approaching settlers and hopefully dissuade them. The settlers wield clubs and occasionally guns.

The goal of the settlers is to make life as difficult as possible for the Palestinians with the idea that the Palestinians will simply leave their land due to exhaustion and fear. Once this has happened it is only a matter of time before the land is claimed by a settler or settlement for their own uses. The Israeli state has legislation which they apply selectively to protect settler claims on property while ignoring Palestinian property rights. The Israeli Army facilitates this process by also making life difficult for Palestinians and supporting any accusations settlers might make. Because Area C is a military occupation, there is no higher authority than the Israeli Army where teenage soldiers hold the power of life or death over entire Palestinian families and communities.

I spent 2.5 weeks in Area C, specifically the North Jordan Valley, staying the night with different Palestinian families. I would arrive with a comrade around 7PM, we would sit with the male family members, drink tea, and talk using google translate. Around 10PM we would begin night watch and simply stay awake while the family slept. We would use the flashlights to look out for any signs of settlers or the army attempting to come onto the family’s land. When we saw settlers we would shine our flashlights at where we saw them and alert the family by yelling out the Arabic word for settler, mustawtin. The men would jump out of bed and the women and children, if they were not already, hid away in the most protected tents.

Together with the men of the household, we would run to wherever we saw the settlers and confirm that they had left. If they had not left there would be a confrontation. One of us would record on our phones while the other attempted to keep distance between the settlers and the Palestinians. If we had more numbers, the settlers would leave for the night, but they always return.

The simple presence of internationals with the Palestinian families would occasionally be enough to dissuade the settlers, but this was certainly not guaranteed. There are also many more Palestinians than internationals, and never enough human resources to provide presence with the number of families requesting it. Our presence was not a solution, it simply bought families a single night of sleep.

Some families were very talkative, they wanted to not just share their story, but talk to us about the world, politics, America and Europe, what our lives were like back home. They wanted to know why the West lets them be treated in such unjust ways. They wanted us to know they have no hatred of Jews, that they used to live side by side before 1948. It was politics, specifically Zionism which forced them apart and into conflict.

Families would ask me if I spoke Arabic and when I said no, they knew I was Jewish. To them it was obvious, if I wasn’t Palestinian, then I was a Jew, I simply looked too much like everyone. It was never mentioned again, they simply poured me more tea and we continued talking.

I was told over and over by the Palestinians I stayed with that all they wish for is to be able to raise their animals on their land. To send their children to school, and live simple, peaceful lives. They wanted a good night’s sleep. These people have no desire to march to Tel Aviv or Haifa and reclaim that land. They just want to live under the agreements already made and signed by the leaders of both sides. To go back to the pre-1967 borders, have two neighboring states, and live peacefully.

What these Palestinians must instead face is violence and aggression from a military occupation which shows no signs of ending. Israel does not want to annex the land in Area C because then it would have to give the residents Israeli citizenship. Israel does not want to do this because its goal is a Jewish ethnostate, adding more Palestinians as citizens does not help that process. Instead it maintains a military occupation with no obligation to provide services to the Palestinians while allowing a steady inflow of Israeli settlers who consistently claim more and more land. The result is increasing pressure on the day to day lives of the Palestinians with the goal of the Palestinians simply leaving the land on their own accord, either moving to the cities in Area A, or becoming a refugee in a neighboring country.

When I sat under the stars, and more often under the flood lights of settlements and army bases which never turned off, during my night watches I would try to comprehend, for a moment, the pain and stress these Palestinian families feel every single day. The lack of sleep, the lack of security. I would sip the sweet black tea which never ran out and feel an overwhelming sense of shame that people who I am associated with are the perpetrators of inhumane violence, of a truly evil system of apartheid, ethnic cleansing and genocide. As a child I saw the star of David as a something to be proud of, a symbol of resistance, of overcoming adversity. Now I can only see it as something graffitied on the wall at the entrance to a Palestinian village intending to instill fear, to terrorize, a symbol of hatred.

Sadly, in the west, we have been told an inaccurate story about the realities of the situation between Israel and Palestine. Criticisms of Israel are presented as anti-semitism. Average Palestinians are painted with a broad brush as extremists, a description which could not be more false. But the western media is eager to perpetuate these falsehoods and inaccurate descriptions because it furthers a greater goal, that Israel is a democracy defending itself from violent Islamic extremists who value life less than the Israelis do.

The reality is that Israel is a test bed for what a state can do to people. How difficult can they make lives, how radicalized can they make people. How far a state can push a person until they break, quit, or even blow themselves up. What happens in Israel, with its surveillance state, its omnipotent, all present digital eyes and ears, and militarized society will happen in other countries as well, it is only a matter of time. How quickly Israel can turn technology and the media against people is evident when voices who criticize the political and military actions of a country are silenced, de-platformed, or smeared with accusations of anti-semitism, all because they speak the truth that Israel runs a military occupation, supports settler colonialism, commits war crimes, engages in ethnic cleansing, and is guilty of crimes against humanity.

I hope anyone reading this spends some time to think about what they have been told about Israel and Palestine in the past. Who told them, why it was framed the way it was, and if they have ever listened to the Palestinian side of the story. We in the West, specifically Jews, have been sold a story which is not only untrue, but purposefully obscures the truth with the goal of forwarding a Zionist program which wants a Jewish ethnostate in a biblical Jewish homeland.

I did not always understand the entirety of this conflict. I was not always on the Palestinian side. I was told Israel is the place for me, for my people, my homeland, and while I was never particularly a Zionist, I believed the narrative. I bought the propaganda that told me Israel was the only democracy in the middle east, its soldiers were brave and moral, and that its neighbors were violent aggressors who hated Jews. But then I traveled to Jordan, Egypt, and Lebanon, not to mention Oman, Turkey, Morocco, Qatar, and the UAE, and saw no evidence of this.

I don't think any ethnostate is a good idea. I don’t want one person to be dispossessed of their land just so someone else can fulfill some biblical claims of which I don’t believe. I certainly don’t want them to instrumentalize my Jewishness to forward and defend those claims.

What is happening in Gaza is horrific, but it is not the only atrocity happening. There is and has been a constant, gradual genocide happening in the West Bank for decades. One the west has ignored because it happens slowly, not with air strikes flattening whole neighborhoods (although those do happen), but with settlers wielding clubs who methodically dispossess families of their lands and livelihoods.

Ignoring this reality made possible the resentment which begot October 7th. Again, the conflict is complex but not complicated. We in the West, particularly Jews, have an obligation to stand up against what is being done with our money and in our name.

Israel proclaims that it is the only safe place in the world for Jews. It proclaims it has the world’s most moral army. Both are outright lies. The actions of the State of Israel make Jews less safe globally. Israel only increases the threat to my safety as a Jewish person anywhere in the world because of the barbarity of its Army and the unjustness of its cause. It falls to Jews outside of Israel, specifically in the West, and more specifically in the USA and UK to call for an end to the Israeli occupation of Palestine. 

Criticizing the actions of Israel is hazardous for anyone, but particularly for non-Jews, who are called Anti-Semites and face pressure to stay silent for fear of losing their own livelihoods, or worse. Jews in particular, because of the historical injustices they have suffered, have a duty to stand with the oppressed and call out Israel for exactly what it is, an authoritarian, anti-democratic, ethnostate which has no other goal than its own self perpetuation.

This is already longer than I planned to write, but it is only a fraction of what I saw, or what there is to understand. There is so much to say, and so much has already been written by people more eloquent and qualified.

If you are interested in engaging more with this complex, but I cannot stress enough, not complicated conflict, I recommend the following sources:

Websites:
+972 and Electronic Intifada

Books:

The Hundred Years' War on Palestine: A History of Settler Colonialism and Resistance, 1917–2017 by Rashid Khalidi

Palestinian Walks: Forays into a Vanishing Landscape by Raja Shehadeh

The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine by Ilan Pappé

Films:

No Other Land (2024)

I was not always where I am now. The best day to plant a tree is yesterday, but the second best day is today. If you want to have a conversation, either one on one, or as a group, please reach out.