Jenin
Today we drove to the Jenin refugee camp, picking up a lot of medical people who visit Jenin and many other places through Physicians for Human Rights — Israeli Jewish and Israeli Palestinian doctors, a nurse, a dentist, a rehabilitation specialist, some students. Every Saturday they set up mobile clinics and see patients who generally don’t get enough regular medical care. There were also some journalists this trip, one from the U.S. and two from Barcelona. And the five remaining members of the FFIPP faculty group, the more numerous students having finished their tour.
Getting to Jenin meant changing buses at another checkpoint, this one near the village of Barta’a, where the bus slowly made its way through the crowded streets comprising an open-air market. After the checkpoint we got on a bus with Palestinian plates and continued, passing through one more internal checkpoint where a line of cars waited, even though today, the day before the Palestinian election, there weren’t supposed to be any internal checkpoints.
In Jenin, we were met by camp officials and the docs went through their set-up routine. There were already patients waiting, some with lab results and X-rays in hand. We spent a long time hanging out, most of the time besieged by young children asking us to take their pictures again and again. Eventually we got a tour of the camp, which is being rebuilt with modern housing to replace the total wipeout a couple of years ago when the Israeli army bulldozed their way through. The new streets are wide enough to let a tank pass without knocking down houses.
After a late-afternoon lunch, just as we were about to leave, Zakaria Zubeida showed up with his bodyguards to thank the visitors for coming. He’s the local Fatah militant Israel most wants to capture. We saw him in the film Arna’s Children the first night of the FFIPP tour — the film showed him and his friends as young children in Jenin learning to be actors, then a few years later taking part in the intifada. One by one his friends were killed in battle in Jenin, and another one after attacking civilians in Israel. By the end of the film Zubeida was the only one still alive. In Jenin today we saw the building where the theater Arna set up was located, on the top floor. Zubeida’s family lived downstairs.
Seeing this young man the Israelis are trying to capture or kill left me both curious and uneasy. I don’t know any details about what he’s done, and although I think most of the resistance is legitimate, the details still matter to me. As described by Lawrence of Cyberia, his path is unsurprising, and understandable.
The older man who showed us around the camp and explained its history told us they have no battle with Jews or with any other people — their battle is with the Occupation, which they have the right to resist. Peace and rights, as he put it. And Zubeida himself showed up to talk to Jewish and Israeli peace activists about the need for peace.
If I were living under occupation I too would support resistance, though I like to think I would stop short of supporting attacks on uninvolved civilians. But I’m not under occupation, and I don’t really know how I’d react. I try to think back to when I was Zubeidah’s age and younger, a young Zionist convinced that my cause was just. I think I would have fought and died for Israel back then. I’m glad, of course, I didn’t do either.
Today I still believe there are causes worth dying for. I’m less sure there are as many causes worth killing for. Nationalism, religion, racism — at some point I’d like to see both sides step back from the abyss that turns all into something none want to become and create something new, free of preconceptions and illusions, together.
