Meanwhile, in the West Bank
A great Amira Hass piece on April 12 reminds us of some of the realities of the stifling and anti-humane interaction between Israelis and Palestinians inside the West Bank.
Remembering of course that things are now noticeably different from the way they are in Gaza. In the West Bank, the Israeli military and "Border Police" people are still intimately entwined with the lives and movements of the Palestinians-- even in the areas in the north from which four (or was it six?) "Illegal outposts" were removed. Whereas in Gaza, there is no ground presence of either Israeli troops or Israeli settlers. But that has given the IOF much greater latitude to treat the whole Strip as a free-fire zone, if they choose.
So the nature of the interactions in the two territories have now become different...
Hass's piece is titled The uber-wardens, and it details many of the forest of restrictions placed on the West Bank's 2.4 million Palestinians as they try to pursue the errands and chores of everyday life.
We actually did a lot in Chapters 2-4 of our 2004 Quaker book on the Palestinian-Israeli issue, to describe these restrictions, and the role that their always unpredictable and often capricious nature plays in making the pursuit of an "ordinary life", including the simple ability to plan one's activities for the days or hours ahead, impossible for Palestinians.
Hass concludes by writing about the Israeli military-government bureaucrats who design the many prohibitions places on the Palestinian residents of the West Bank that,
- They continue to invent prohibitions because there is no one raising a voice against it. And they are responsible for not only seriously disrupting the lives of Palestinians, but also implanting the jailor mentality in thousands of Israeli young people, soldiers, clerks and policemen - an intoxicating mentality of those who treat those weaker than they with impunity.