[News] Pilgrimage to Palestine: A New Form of Resistance

[Anti-Imperialist News]

https://www.palestinechronicle.com/pilgrimage-to-palestine-a-new-form-of-resistance/
Pilgrimage
to Palestine: A New Form of Resistance
May 14, 2020
------------------------------
Palestinian in Gaza protests the right to return to their homeland. (Photo:
via MEMO)

*By Ghada Ageel <https://www.palestinechronicle.com/writers/ghada-ageel>*

Last August, the voice came loud through the phone line, “We made it, mom.
We are home. We are in Gaza.”  It was one of the most pleasant pieces of
news I have heard in a long time. In fact, it’s probably the main
achievement of my family this year.

My children and husband succeeded where even members of the US Congress
<https://globalnews.ca/news/5782616/omar-tlaib-barred-entry-israel/> are
now failing due to the bigotry of the Israeli government and the active
collusion of the American president.

I had been waiting to hear this news for about 96 hours. Over four
consecutive days, I worried. The six-hour trip from Cairo to Rafah’s border
at the southern end of the Gaza Strip now takes days and sometimes weeks.
Travelers endure countless checkpoints and multiple searches. They sleep on
the floor, on the road, under 40-degree heat. They have access to few
services but lots of flies and humiliation. Meanwhile, thousands of miles
away, I was counting the hours waiting for any news about them and
reflecting on how in 2012 I made the same trip in several hours while being
warned by the US government that it was too dangerous.

My daughter repeated herself, thinking I had not heard her. “Did you hear
me? We succeeded in practicing our right of return. We are home with our
family, we can hug them and we can talk to them directly and not through
multimedia, Viber or Skype. Isn’t this incredible?”

Joy filled my soul. I didn’t comment on the full right of return
<https://ohrh.law.ox.ac.uk/palestinian-refugees-and-the-right-of-return-in-international-law/>
being a return to my family’s home in Beit Daras from which my grandparents
and parents were ethnically cleansed in 1948 by Zionist militias even
before the state of Israel was formally established later the same month.
That conversation can come later.

When I tried to inquire about my youngest son after the heatstroke he had
on the way, my daughter said that was all in the past. “This is home and is
worth the cost.” When I heard this sentence, I felt for a minute that I was
childlike in my worries and that my child had become the adult comforting
me. In my absence, my children had aged and matured through the trip in
unbelievable and unexpected ways. Could a hard trip and the suffering along
the way produce this kind of maturity and clear vision?

When the call ended, I started to think of my daughter’s words. Right,
returning home is worth the cost. I know that. And true, everyone has the
right to return to his or her home and practice their right of return —
whether to Khan Younis camp or Beit Daras. I know that too.

When the right of return to one’s country
<https://www.un.org/en/universal-declaration-human-rights/> was envisioned
it was meant to include everyone, including Palestinians. Palestinians have
the right to visit and to return to their homeland whenever they wish, the
same as the French have the right to visit and return to France and the
same as the British have the right to visit and return to the UK.  Even
birds can return home. The laws of nature can be mightier than the imposed
laws of states.

Yet some states, or more accurately occupying (apartheid) states such as
Israel, along with the collaborating state of Egypt, deny many Palestinians
this right — whether they live in exile or in the Gaza ghetto. What is
wrong with Palestinians insisting we be allowed to visit and return to our
homeland of Palestine?

My daughter spoke to me compellingly about basic human rights, the right of
return home, the right to move freely, the right to travel without fear of
the barriers at borders, and the right to travel without fear of being
denied egress at the end of the visit. She was not speaking about a
theoretical right, but about exercising her rights in going to visit her
family in Khan Younis refugee camp by breaking the fear of borders. She was
feeling in her bones what it means to “return home,” a feeling denied to
many Palestinians — even the wealthiest and most politically powerful who
can seemingly be disregarded and disrespected without repercussion by
Israel.

Now, here she was speaking about being reunited with her family and the
land.  For a moment, I thought of the hundreds of Palestinians I know who
live in exile and yearn to visit home but fear the denial, fear the borders
and inevitably fear the cost. For them, especially the generation born in
Palestine but kicked out in the 1948 ethnic cleansing
<https://ore.exeter.ac.uk/repository/bitstream/handle/10871/15208/1948%20Ethnic%20Cleansing%20of%20Palestine.pdf;sequence=2>
or Nakba, this is the chance to feel home, to talk and hear directly
without multimedia as my children say. It is the time to kiss the ground as
my children did. And it is the time to experience the unbelievable surging
feeling of belonging as my children did. It’s the chance to express and let
out some of the feeling that has been bottled up during decades of imposed
exile.

For the new generation born in exile, it is a crucial time to establish
bonds with Palestine and establish ties with the generations that have been
born under the occupation and have never seen their cousins and relatives
(entire families sometimes), let alone the wider world. It is a chance to
listen, to share, to hug, to feel and to be felt, to kiss and to explore
our roots as family, as a people and as a nation. For all the generations,
this is the first step in breaking the fear of the occupier and solidifying
our rights in this land.

Could this small exercise to visit Palestine be a new pilgrimage? I think
it could be.

During their visit to Gaza, the conversation between my children and their
home and people continued through discussions with my family, friends and
neighbors. The phrase *ahlan wa sahlan*, welcome or sometimes even *Met
ahlan wa sahlan*, million *ahlan wa sahlan, *hundreds and millions of
welcomings, can be heard from everyone who meets or greets my children as
if the people in Gaza want to assure the visitors that despite the denial,
the obstacles, barriers of borders, the humiliation they endured along the
way, they are most welcomed in and to their home. My children say that they
heard or replied to this phrase probably hundreds of times a day, as if all
Palestinians in Gaza want to affirm to them that their right, as a fourth
generation Palestinian refugees, to their homes is intact and
unquestionable.

For native and refugee residents of Gaza alike, travel or freedom of
movement is a far-fetched dream. Until very recent times (2005), the
movement within the strip itself was hindered with the Israeli
colonies occupying
40 percent
<https://www.globalpolicy.org/security-council/index-of-countries-on-the-security-council-agenda/israel-palestine-and-the-occupied-territories/land-and-settlement-issues.html>
of the best areas in Gaza — not unlike apartheid South Africa and much like
the West Bank
<https://interactive.aljazeera.com/aje/2017/50-years-illegal-settlements/index.html>
to this day. Military checkpoints divided the tiny strip into three small
cantons. Gazans, including this writer, endless hours waiting for these
checkpoints to open in order to go to school, work or return home.

Similarly, painful is that many Gazans traveling outside the Gaza Strip
spend weeks and even months in transit lounges of various airports or on
borders or no man’s land. When their residence permits expire where they
are working, they are deported and told to “go home.” President Donald
Trump even told a Palestinian American member of Congress
<https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/14/us/politics/trump-twitter-squad-congress.html>
to go home, but when she tried to visit her ancestral home he told Israel
to say no.

Since 2006, the right to freedom of movement has been more restricted when
first Israel and then Egypt imposed an illegal, immoral and inhumane
blockade, considered the longest in human history, on the impoverished
Strip. It is because of this suffocating closure and blockade that
Palestinian civil society organized the Great March of Return
<https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2019/03/gaza-great-march-return-protests-explained-190330074116079.html>
to call the world’s attention to the slow strangulation by blockade as well
as the unimplemented right of return.

In the peaceful demonstrations and sit-ins held in the buffer zone imposed
by Israel hundreds of yards from the outer perimeter of the fence encaging
Gaza, Palestinians have narrated our story and put before the world an
extraordinary example of resistance, celebrating Palestinian survival,
tradition and culture. Since March 30, 2018, protesters have gathered for
about two years but suspended now because of the pandemic, to sing, dance
traditional *dabkeh*, share stories, fly kites, cook traditional meals and
recount memories of what was once their homeland, all the while praying for
and dreaming of return. On Fridays, Palestinians protest by burning tires.
Some throw largely symbolic stones at the well-protected occupying forces
stationed at the fence that hinder their return home.

For daring to remind the world of Palestinian rights, protesters have paid
and are paying a heavy price, far more costly than the four days my family
spent on the border under the heat of the Sinai sun. The World Health
Organization reported over 300 Gazans shot and killed by the Israeli army
during these rallies, as of December 2019, with 35,000 more injured
<https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/israel-palestine-gaza-hamas-protests-hospitals-who-un-a9263406.html.>.
On May 14, 2018 alone, military snipers killed 60 unarmed demonstrators and
wounded 2,700
<https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/14/world/middleeast/gaza-protests-palestinians-us-embassy.html>.
These crimes, alongside the collective punishment imposed on the strip, are
being committed because Palestinians dare to demand their rights.

In February 2019, after a year of demonstrations, the Independent
Commission of Inquiry, set up by the UN Human Rights Council
<https://www.ohchr.org/EN/NewsEvents/Pages/DisplayNews.aspx?NewsID=24226&LangID=E>,
confirmed “reasonable grounds to believe that Israeli snipers shot at
journalists, health workers, children and persons with disabilities,
knowing they were clearly recognizable as such.” Accordingly, the report
found that the Israeli army might be responsible for war crimes in Gaza
against protesters involved in the Great March of Return.

When my children speak about their homeland, I cannot but recall my
grandmother’s words, descriptions and shattered hopes about our land.
Through the description of my grandmother of her village, Beit Daras, her
home, her happiness, her memories, that I described at length in my
book, *Apartheid
in Palestine*
<https://www.globalresearch.ca/apartheid-in-palestine-hard-laws-and-harder-experiences/5505935>,
I can see all these threads of my grandmother’s description bold and clear
in my children’s description of home.  That lineage is clearly and
beautifully there and as strong as I could dream it to be despite the fact
that none of them, fourth-generation Palestinian refugees, nor me as third
generation, have ever been allowed to visit our lands and our villages from
which we have been exiled. How have all these feelings, the yearning and
the love still be carried in all parts of their body?

Isn’t this incredible to use my daughter’s word?

They astound me with all they tell me about the happiness at home – the
food has a different taste and the air smells different. Laughter seems
wider, faces brighter and happiness has a taste. Happiness having a taste
mirrors exactly what my grandmother — my *sitty* — used to say to me about
her days in Beit Daras, when happiness had a taste. It is the same feeling
I used to have when home, even amid the incredible worry, pain and danger
caused by the occupation.

The conversations with my children and the feelings they have brought
forward in me have made clear the utter failure of 53 years of occupation
and 72 years of ethnic cleansing. We have not forgotten. All of us remember
where we came from and the taste of both happiness and freedom.

Generation after generation sends the same unified message: return is
possible. It is an absolute, sacred and unquestionable right. Israel backed
by Trump and the vast formal diplomacy of the West claims this right is
unrealistic, impossible and won’t be allowed. But fourth-generation
Palestinian refugees say return is possible, definite, absolute, sacred,
unquestionable and will happen. There is power in our resilience.

Seeing all the suffering Palestinians endure in Gaza, power outages of 10
hours a day, shortages of cooking gas, shortages of medical supplies,
undrinkable water, zero ability to move, poverty but also a buzzing
humanity, my daughter kept asking: How can we Palestinians convey the
message of such unspeakable suffering, the beauty of Gazans, and the
overwhelmingly nonviolent nature of the resistance to the wider world?

Today my daughter claims that she knows the answer. Palestinians*:* Come to
Palestine. Practice your right of return — even if just partial — to visit
home, to any place in Palestine that you can reach, Gaza included and Gaza
first and foremost. Break the barrier of fear, barriers of borders and
barriers of occupation. You deserve to be home and homes will welcome you.
Palestine says: *Ahlan wa sahlan.* Answer the call.

*– Dr Ghada Ageel is a visiting professor at the University of Alberta
Political Science Department (Edmonton, Canada) and active in the
Faculty4Palestine-Alberta. Her latest Book is “Apartheid in Palestine: Hard
Laws and Harder experiences”. She contributed this article to The Palestine
Chronicle.*
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