Shining a Light on the Occupation
A review of Kathleen and Bill Christison, Palestine in Pieces: Graphic
Perspectives on the Israeli Occupation (Verso, 2009).
by Mark Chmiel When several of us went to work with the International Solidarity
Movement in 2003, my friend Pat Geier observed that her going raised
the anxiety level of her friends in Louisville. Because she was
headed into a possibly dangerous conflict zone, her friends began to
pay more serious attention to what was going on there. That said, I
can strongly recommend Kathleen and Bill Christison’s recent book
Palestine in Pieces to anyone who has made a first trip to Palestine
as well as to those people who’ve had their anxiety and awareness
raised by such travelers. For example, I think of Matt Miller and Nima Sheth who spent a week on
the West Bank in 2008 and a day in Gaza in 2009; Kelly McBride who
visited the West Bank for three days in 2009; and J’Ann Allen and
Sandra Tamari, who just returned from Cairo where they and 1400 other
internationals had gathered to march to Gaza. I’m guessing that each
of them knows at least a score of people who were made more aware of
the injustices the Palestinians face daily. Years ago, the Christisons were analysts with the Central Intelligence
Agency. Their journey into solidarity with the Palestinians’ struggle
for freedom has been a long, gradual, and humble one. Having made
seven visits to the West Bank and Gaza since 2003, the Christisons
bring to this book familiarity on the ground, critical analysis, and
passion commensurate with the oppression inflicted on the
Palestinians. It’s instructive and intriguing to read how a couple
once ensconced in the foreign policy establishment came to such
clarity about this asymmetrical conflict. The title of the book bluntly calls attention to the results of the
Israel’s occupation. To see the realities created on the
Palestinians’ land by Israel’s settlers and army is to come close to
despair about the possibilities of a meaningful two-state settlement.
The reason is the occupation has so fractured the Palestinians’
economic, social, cultural, and religious lives that they are living
separated from their compatriots and, often, their own means of
employment, access to health care centers, and ability to cultivate
their agricultural fields. Several chapters introduce the reader to the interlocking modalities
of the occupation’s domination of the Palestinians: carving up their
land by establishing Jewish-only settlements (or colonies) and
erecting the illegal Separation Wall; proliferating checkpoints and
roadblocks that impede Palestinians’ freedom of movement; demolishing
people’s homes; and subjecting cities, towns, and villages to the
severe measures of curfew, closure, and siege. Three representative passages: Security is not an adequate or an appropriate excuse for wanton
killing, for expropriating massive tracts of Palestinian land, for
imprisoning millions behind walls and razor wire, for bulldozing
thousands of homes belonging to innocent people never charged with or
even suspected of terrorism. What exactly is the reason for spilling
sewage from Israeli settlements onto the land of neighboring
Palestinian villages? What indeed is the security excuse for planting
settlements on Palestinian land in the West Bank in the first place?
What is the reason for dropping 1,000-pound bombs or lobbing artillery
shells onto homes and apartment blocs in the middle of the night when
it is a certainty that the vast majority of the casualties will be
civilian? The hypocrisy of the demand for sympathy for Israel’s position, when
Israel is the human rights violator and the brutal oppressor, is
stunning. (p. 20) *** At the root of the vast matrix of roads and checkpoints that cripple
the Palestinian economy and Palestinian lives is the network of
Israeli settlements throughout the West Bank. Without the settlements,
there would be no segregated roads, no checkpoints and, most likely,
no Separation Wall. The checkpoints protect the roads; the roads
protect the settlements; the settlements are a colonial implantation,
relentlessly expanding, intended to grab land and keep it for Israel.
Like the “critically inferior” Palestinian road system that must pass
underneath Israeli roads, all Palestinian interests, all Palestinian
security and viability are subordinate to this essential Israeli
objective of Jewish expansion across all of Palestine. (p. 86) *** There are hardly words to describe the human suffering and degradation
deliberately imposed on Palestinians by Israel’s occupation. The
Israeli threat to Palestinian lives and livelihood, individually and
collectively—indeed to Palestinian national existence—through theft of
land and the siege of towns and villages, through walls and roads and
blockades that strangle, through the crippling of economic
opportunity, through deliberate large-scale killing, together resemble
a hunting expedition to cage and ultimately eliminate animals from a
natural habitat. Israeli leaders, Israeli settlers, Israeli soldiers
treat Palestinians not as a collective of human beiges, but as trapped
animals whose fate is of little or no concern. (p.137) One of the dedicatees of the authors’ book is Rachel Corrie, the U.S.
college student who was killed by an IDF soldier in his bulldozer, as
she attempted to prevent a Palestinian family’s home from being
destroyed. In 2003 she had come to Gaza to work with the
International Solidarity Movement. In an email to her family, she
confessed, “I'm having a hard time right now. Just feel sick to my
stomach from being doted on very sweetly, by people who are facing
doom. I know that from the United States it all sounds like
hyperbole. A lot of the time the kindness of the people here, coupled
with the willful destruction of their lives, makes it seem unreal to
me. I can't believe that something like this can happen in the world
without a bigger outcry. It hurts me, again, like it has hurt me in
the past, to witness how awful we can allow the world to be.” Like
Corrie, the Christisons have experienced such kindness, incredulity,
and indignation, and these formative contacts with the Palestinian
reality have given birth to this book.
Palestine in Pieces is a penetrating work of demystification and
conscientization. May something inside this book—a story, a photo, a
fact—hurt something inside the reader as she feels arise in her the
conviction: This must not be.
Perspectives on the Israeli Occupation (Verso, 2009).
by Mark Chmiel When several of us went to work with the International Solidarity
Movement in 2003, my friend Pat Geier observed that her going raised
the anxiety level of her friends in Louisville. Because she was
headed into a possibly dangerous conflict zone, her friends began to
pay more serious attention to what was going on there. That said, I
can strongly recommend Kathleen and Bill Christison’s recent book
Palestine in Pieces to anyone who has made a first trip to Palestine
as well as to those people who’ve had their anxiety and awareness
raised by such travelers. For example, I think of Matt Miller and Nima Sheth who spent a week on
the West Bank in 2008 and a day in Gaza in 2009; Kelly McBride who
visited the West Bank for three days in 2009; and J’Ann Allen and
Sandra Tamari, who just returned from Cairo where they and 1400 other
internationals had gathered to march to Gaza. I’m guessing that each
of them knows at least a score of people who were made more aware of
the injustices the Palestinians face daily. Years ago, the Christisons were analysts with the Central Intelligence
Agency. Their journey into solidarity with the Palestinians’ struggle
for freedom has been a long, gradual, and humble one. Having made
seven visits to the West Bank and Gaza since 2003, the Christisons
bring to this book familiarity on the ground, critical analysis, and
passion commensurate with the oppression inflicted on the
Palestinians. It’s instructive and intriguing to read how a couple
once ensconced in the foreign policy establishment came to such
clarity about this asymmetrical conflict. The title of the book bluntly calls attention to the results of the
Israel’s occupation. To see the realities created on the
Palestinians’ land by Israel’s settlers and army is to come close to
despair about the possibilities of a meaningful two-state settlement.
The reason is the occupation has so fractured the Palestinians’
economic, social, cultural, and religious lives that they are living
separated from their compatriots and, often, their own means of
employment, access to health care centers, and ability to cultivate
their agricultural fields. Several chapters introduce the reader to the interlocking modalities
of the occupation’s domination of the Palestinians: carving up their
land by establishing Jewish-only settlements (or colonies) and
erecting the illegal Separation Wall; proliferating checkpoints and
roadblocks that impede Palestinians’ freedom of movement; demolishing
people’s homes; and subjecting cities, towns, and villages to the
severe measures of curfew, closure, and siege. Three representative passages: Security is not an adequate or an appropriate excuse for wanton
killing, for expropriating massive tracts of Palestinian land, for
imprisoning millions behind walls and razor wire, for bulldozing
thousands of homes belonging to innocent people never charged with or
even suspected of terrorism. What exactly is the reason for spilling
sewage from Israeli settlements onto the land of neighboring
Palestinian villages? What indeed is the security excuse for planting
settlements on Palestinian land in the West Bank in the first place?
What is the reason for dropping 1,000-pound bombs or lobbing artillery
shells onto homes and apartment blocs in the middle of the night when
it is a certainty that the vast majority of the casualties will be
civilian? The hypocrisy of the demand for sympathy for Israel’s position, when
Israel is the human rights violator and the brutal oppressor, is
stunning. (p. 20) *** At the root of the vast matrix of roads and checkpoints that cripple
the Palestinian economy and Palestinian lives is the network of
Israeli settlements throughout the West Bank. Without the settlements,
there would be no segregated roads, no checkpoints and, most likely,
no Separation Wall. The checkpoints protect the roads; the roads
protect the settlements; the settlements are a colonial implantation,
relentlessly expanding, intended to grab land and keep it for Israel.
Like the “critically inferior” Palestinian road system that must pass
underneath Israeli roads, all Palestinian interests, all Palestinian
security and viability are subordinate to this essential Israeli
objective of Jewish expansion across all of Palestine. (p. 86) *** There are hardly words to describe the human suffering and degradation
deliberately imposed on Palestinians by Israel’s occupation. The
Israeli threat to Palestinian lives and livelihood, individually and
collectively—indeed to Palestinian national existence—through theft of
land and the siege of towns and villages, through walls and roads and
blockades that strangle, through the crippling of economic
opportunity, through deliberate large-scale killing, together resemble
a hunting expedition to cage and ultimately eliminate animals from a
natural habitat. Israeli leaders, Israeli settlers, Israeli soldiers
treat Palestinians not as a collective of human beiges, but as trapped
animals whose fate is of little or no concern. (p.137) One of the dedicatees of the authors’ book is Rachel Corrie, the U.S.
college student who was killed by an IDF soldier in his bulldozer, as
she attempted to prevent a Palestinian family’s home from being
destroyed. In 2003 she had come to Gaza to work with the
International Solidarity Movement. In an email to her family, she
confessed, “I'm having a hard time right now. Just feel sick to my
stomach from being doted on very sweetly, by people who are facing
doom. I know that from the United States it all sounds like
hyperbole. A lot of the time the kindness of the people here, coupled
with the willful destruction of their lives, makes it seem unreal to
me. I can't believe that something like this can happen in the world
without a bigger outcry. It hurts me, again, like it has hurt me in
the past, to witness how awful we can allow the world to be.” Like
Corrie, the Christisons have experienced such kindness, incredulity,
and indignation, and these formative contacts with the Palestinian
reality have given birth to this book.
Palestine in Pieces is a penetrating work of demystification and
conscientization. May something inside this book—a story, a photo, a
fact—hurt something inside the reader as she feels arise in her the
conviction: This must not be.
