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<div class="header reader-header reader-show-element"> <font
size="-2"><a class="domain reader-domain"
href="http://www.palestinechronicle.com/this-is-not-a-border-how-israel-has-turned-the-u-s-mexico-border-into-gaza/">http://www.palestinechronicle.com/this-is-not-a-border-how-israel-has-turned-the-u-s-mexico-border-into-gaza/</a></font>
<h1 class="reader-title">'This is Not a Border': How Israel Has
Turned the U.S.-Mexico Border into Gaza</h1>
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<div class="reader-estimated-time"><i><span><span
class="entry-meta-date updated"><a
href="http://www.palestinechronicle.com/2019/10/">October
22, 2019</a></span>
<span class="entry-meta-categories"></span>– Benay Blend</span></i></div>
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<p>In the title quote, the words refer to a collection of
readings from several years of the Palestine Festival of
Literature, an annual literary event that allows
performers to interact with Palestinians on their home
ground, despite the many barriers in doing so. For some
Palestinians, the U.S.-Mexico border feels the same.</p>
<p>When Ahmed Abu Artema, Gazan poet and lead organizer of
the <a
href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2019/03/gaza-great-march-return-protests-explained-190330074116079.html">Great
Return March</a>, <a
href="https://progressive.org/dispatches/ahmed-abu-artema-palestinian-great-march-of-return-dinur-190411/">traveled</a>
to the Southwest in March 2018 he visited the
border. Recalling the same tragedy in Rafah, an area
where a border fence also splits families apart, he
declared:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>“Borders are a declaration of moral and political
failures.”</p>
</blockquote>
<p>For both Palestinians at the Gaza fence and refugees
from South of the border seeking entry into the United
States, borders represent a form of imperialism, a line
that excludes colonized populations while also denying
citizenship privileges and worker’s rights.</p>
<p>There are many similarities, then, between both
borders. The most obvious appears in tactics that have
been exported by Israel to the United States. Such
procedures left many Americans shocked when Trump first
voiced them but closer inspection shows that they have
long been used by America’s closest ally.</p>
<p>As Michael Arria <a
href="https://mondoweiss.net/2019/10/trump-wants-to-shoot-people-in-the-legs-the-united-states-closest-ally-already-does-that/?fbclid=IwAR2uKIYkQgdBBTEn8vul_qF0oU6JtWK2xId_PMG0xZ9nsEer3gmG18C8p30">notes</a>,
when Trump suggested shooting migrants in the legs in
order to halt their progress across the Southern
boundary, he was merely borrowing a page from Israeli
snipers at the Gaza border who target legs over any
other part of the body. Trump appears to have taken a
page out of a horror movie when he added that he “wanted
the [border] wall electrified, with spikes on top that
could pierce human flesh,” as reported by Arria, who
writes that the President even “floated the idea of a
trench in front of the wall that contained alligators.”
But again, given the inhumane treatment that
Palestinians experience at the hands of Israel, Trump’s
pronouncements do not seem all that extreme.</p>
<p>As the increase in migration creates new communities,
so also does the language of ‘borders’ and ‘Diasporas’
acquire new meaning. For example, in Borderlands / La
Frontera (1987), Gloria Anzaldúa, writing from her own
experiences growing up in the Southwest borderlands,
constructs a natural connection between women like
herself (<em>los atravesados</em>, the “mongrel, the
mulato, the half-breed, the half dead”) and others who
feel marginalized by society.</p>
<p>Conceptualizing the U.S.-Mexico boundary as a
metaphorical space, Anzaldúa believed that female border
crossers often negotiate in ways that allow them to
claim contested spaces as their own. For Summer Masoud,
a Palestinian American who grew up on the US-Mexico
border, this concept is particularly relevant.</p>
<p>Because of her ethnicity, she <a
href="http://borderzine.com/2019/01/palestinian-on-the-border/">understands</a>
that the concept of walls and borders for Palestinians
is all common. Her father, who immigrated to the U.S.
for school, stayed on in El Paso where he has worked as
a civil engineer for over 30 years. Nevertheless, he
feels at home:</p>
<p>You wouldn’t think of El Paso, Texas, and Palestine as
having anything in common, but you’d be surprised how
similar these two regions are. On the surface, they look
the same. My father often jokes that’s why he chose El
Paso to begin with. Both areas feature a desert
landscape with craggy rocks and spindly shrubs.</p>
<p>Beyond the commonalities of landscape, though, both
regions are settler-colonial societies that have
constructed borders to keep the unwanted outside
altogether and/or at the very least keep them in their
place.</p>
<p>Like Anzaldúa, Masoud has created for herself a dual
identity, a blending of “two identities,” she says,
“that are in conflict” with mainstream society’s
perception of who she ought to be. In the U.S., Latinos
are perceived as “invaders” who seek to destroy the
American way of life.</p>
<p>Despite the fact that many have lived in the Southwest
for centuries, much longer than the true invaders, the
Anglos, this false perception has been constructed
partly to maintain the desired demographics of the
Euro-American majority who are citizens.</p>
<p>In Palestine, the Indigenous are viewed as “terrorists”
who seek to destroy Israeli’s sense of security in their
newly adopted land. Because of El Paso’s multiethnic
population, Summer and her family have enjoyed a measure
of freedom that perhaps they would not have had at home.</p>
<p>Growing up almost my entire life on the El Paso/Juarez
border has shown me the actuality of the situation. El
Paso and Juarez are sister cities and the border blends
to create a culture of harmony between Mexicans and
Americans here. Conversations switch fluidly between
English and Spanish.</p>
<p>Pesos and dollars can be interchanged in many shops on
both sides of the downtown international bridge. Most
people in this region would agree that it is our
relationship with Mexico that makes our city one of the
safest in the United States.</p>
<p>Nevertheless, Anzaldúa’s theory of cultural
intersections can only go so far. As Ramzy Baroud <a
href="https://www.palestinechronicle.com/walls-and-militarized-police-how-israel-is-exporting-its-occupation-to-the-united-states/">observes</a>,
there are increasing aspects of border life in the
United States that are troubling.</p>
<p>In particular, Israel has been exporting “surveillance
technologies, walls, border monitoring equipment, and
violent tactics” to beef up border security as well as
subdue activists who protest his policies. “Israel’s
illegal tactics are now the model through which the US
plans to police its cities, monitor its borders and
define its relationship with its neighbors,” Baroud
explains, an exchange that makes Anzaldúa’s positive
concept of the borderlands at best outdated.</p>
<p>Beyond pointing out the obvious concern over Israel’s
export of the Occupation to the United States, what are
the advantages of comparative studies between the two
borders?</p>
<p>Drawing on Steven Salaita’s concept of “reciprocal
communalism,” focusing on such relationships, he says,
“move[s] beyond dialogue into a more defined
cross-cultural political consciousness”. While tied to
their space of homeland, Palestinians and border
activists elsewhere demonstrate a commitment to mutual
liberation founded on reciprocal opposition to colonial
power wherever it exists.</p>
<p>For example, The U.S. Campaign for Palestinian Rights <a
href="http://www.palestinechronicle.com/this-is-not-a-border-how-israel-has-turned-the-u-s-mexico-border-into-gaza/On%2520the%2520occasion%2520of%2520Indigenous%2520People%E2%80%99s%2520Day,%2520a%2520delegation%2520of%2520leaders%2520in%2520the%2520movement%2520against%2520the%2520US:Mexico%2520border%2520wall%2520has%2520arrived%2520in%2520Palestine%2520to%2520build%2520connections%2520with%2520Palestinians%2520impacted%2520by%2520the%2520Israeli%2520Apartheid%2520Wall%2520and%2520Latinx%2520and%2520indigenous%2520communities%2520impacted%2520by%2520the%2520US:Mexico%2520border%2520wall">reports</a>
that on Indigenous People’s Day in 2017 a delegation of
leaders in the immigration rights movement arrived in
Palestine to learn about the Israeli Apartheid Wall. The
delegation included journalists, students, and activists
from both sides of the US/Mexico border wall, including
members of the Tohono O’odham tribe whose land is
divided by the barrier.</p>
<p>From the meeting, the delegates hoped to share
information as well as build a world-wide movement
against such borders. As Cynthia Franklin, co-editor of
“Life in Occupied Palestine” notes, <em>sumoud</em> is
a Palestinian tradition, but it gains strength through
international solidarity, certainly as demonstrated here
among activists at both borders.</p>
<p><i><span>– Benay Blend received her doctorate in
American Studies from the University of New Mexico.
Her scholarly works include Douglas Vakoch and Sam
Mickey, Eds. (2017), “’Neither Homeland Nor Exile
are Words’: ‘Situated Knowledge’ in the Works of
Palestinian and Native American Writers”. She
contributed this article to The Palestine Chronicle.</span></i></p>
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