Section:GDN 1J PaGe:11 Edition Date:190808 Edition:01 Zone: Sent at 7/8/2019 17:46 cYanmaGentaYellowbla
Thursday 8 August 2019 The Guardian •
11
that a new, post-struggle era has begun. After the
levelling of the old Tegart, there is no place where the
young can experience what our generation endured. My
nephew Aziz and his contemporaries can no longer visit
the window in the small porch of what was called the
civil administration, behind which we crammed, day in,
day out, waiting for one or another of the many permits
needed for all sorts of activities, whether travel, driving
or getting a telephone line; or see for themselves in
the next part of the building the tiny cells where the
prisoners were held in solitary confi nement, sometimes
for weeks and months; or see the torture chambers
where the heroic fi ghters of my generation suff ered ,
or read what they scribbled on the walls , or see at fi rst-
hand the conditions of their incarceration. Likewise,
the Ottoman building that served as the Ramallah police
station, where so many suff ered, was also destroyed by
a large bomb dropped by an Israeli helicopter gunship. It
is as if the Israeli authorities and the Palestinian offi cials
have worked together to obliterate these sites of great
suff ering, stopping the young from experiencing what it
was like under full Israeli rule.
I decide to visit the Arafat Museum and Mausoleum,
which have been built on the ruin of the old Tegart.
A gleaming white walkway led to Arafat’s grave. There
were pink and red sweet williams and a well-maintained
lawn. The landscaping was good, with large boulders to
break the level ground. A tower is topped with a gadget
that is supposed to send a ray of light towards Jerusalem,
the city that he failed to liberate. Perhaps it is meant to
symbolise the unrealised hope of reaching it some day.
The museum, which is next to the mausoleum, is
well designed, but tells the Palestinian story through a
selective presentation of material that is remarkable for
what is left out. The story is told entirely from the point
of view of the Palestine Liberation Organisation.
Palestinian history is presented as beginning with the
British mandate, as if we had no history prior to that.
Totally missing is any representation of the sumoud
(steadfastness) of those of us living under occupation
for half a century, or the solidarity and struggle of
Palestinians living in Israel.
The curator (who, I am told, is Egyptian) could have
easily chosen to highlight the life story of one of the
heroic symbols of sumoud, such as Sabri Ghraib , who
struggled from 1979 until his death in 2012 against the
Jewish settlement of Giv’on HaHadasha , established
on his land and that of his village. Despite years of
harassment and assiduous eff orts to evict him from his
house, he managed to hold on to some of his land and
continued to live in his house, which the settlement
eventually encircled. Or Muhammad Abdeh , who
has held on to his house in Gush Etzion. Or Sa’deah
Al Bakri, who managed for years to live in her house
next to the settlement of Kiryat Arba , despite
continuous attacks by the settlers on her, her children
and their house. Surely these and many more heroes
of sumoud deserve recognition.
The main story is the doomed armed struggle. And
yet the presentation is neither self-congratulatory
nor valorous. So much so that the couple behind me,
especially the woman, kept repeating: “ Hasrah alena
wain kuna u wain surna” (“ For pity’s sake! Look
where we were, and where we are now” ). There are
photographs of numerous leaders assassinated by
Israel over the many years of struggle. The negotiations
leading to the signing of the Oslo accords on the
White House lawn are presented as a victory for the
Palestinians, with endless photographs of Arafat’s
travels to the capitals of the world, where he was met as
a head of state. The fact that this encouraged countries
that had previously refused to have any relations with
Israel, such as India, to establish them, is not mentioned.
Seeing the museum and how it portrays the struggle
without giving due credit to the sumoud of those living
in the occupied territories dampened my spirits. There
is absolutely no recognition here of past mistakes. But
then a national museum is hardly the place for that. It is
generally the case that when a people’s struggle is over,
one group represents how it was won. But in our case,
the struggle is neither over nor won, and what keeps it
going is nothing other than our sumoud.
There is no doubt that Arafat’s endurance of the
bombardment in those last six months of his life was
heroic. He presents an apt symbol for Palestinians
under threat. But what is one to make of this symbol?
Had the struggle succeeded, it would have been right
to showcase it. But it didn’t. It is ongoing. What, then, is
the point of overshadowing the ongoing endurance of
the rest of the population, who are still suff ering? Or is
Arafat’s story meant to produce some form of catharsis
in a long-lasting tragedy?
His tragedy (or rather ours) – his legacy – is that he
failed to leave behind a democratic system, a processby which the top man seeks and receives counsel
and decisions are taken collectively. The Palestinian
Authority he left behind pays no heed to advisers who
could help it build a more eff ective strategy in the face
of the massive Israeli challenges. And look where we
have got to: we are totally subservient, defeated and
dominated by Israel.My fi rst impression upon leaving the well groomed
gardens of the museum and returning to Irsal Street is
that the city is no longer involved in a collective struggle
against the occupation. Each of us is on our own. I can
see no posters of shuhada (martyrs) on the walls – they
are removed as soon as they appear. The only posters
are for banks, advertising “How to Win a Million”.
The city has aged and changed almost beyond
recognition from the time I was growing up. In these
past 50 years, it has suff ered two major invasions, in
1967 and 2002. It survived both and fl ourished and is
now claimed by the young. The Arafat Museum, built on
the ruins of the Tegart, represents the past. It is the story
of one aspect of our struggle leading to no heroic end,
no climax. That phase of the struggle is over. Yet by no
means is the struggle itself over. The words of Matthew
Arnold in Dover Beach come to mind:And we are here as on a darkling plain
Swept with confused alarms of strugg le and fl ight,
Where ignorant armies clash by night.I have now walked to the end of Irsal. At one corner,
the road going east leads to the boulevard that
dignitaries visiting the Palestinian Authority drive
along after crossing the Israeli checkpoint called DCO,
in reference to the District Coordination Offi ce there.
The government spent a lot of money to make the road
leading into the city from that checkpoint as impressive
as possible, following the practice of most impoverished
countries in making every eff ort to keep out of sight any
evidence of poverty from the main artery leading from
the airport to the posh hotels where they stay.
After Oslo, we had high hopes that Palestine would
have an airport of its own. The DCO is all we got. When
dignitaries come to visit our president in Ramallah,
Palestinian soldiers can be seen with their armoured
cars parked at the corner leading to the checkpoint,
unable to venture any further, as if they are waiting at a
proper border of their state, when in fact it is a border
that isn’t a border. The DCO separates Palestinian terri-
tory from other Palestinian territory within the West
Bank. When the dignitaries arrive, these soldiers accom-
pany them in an impressive parade, while other soldiers
line the streets of Ramallah all the way to their hotel.
To my left as I face the road leading downhill to
Birzeit , north of Ramallah, is a grand building in the
shape of a ship, hence its name, Al Safi neh. It is narrow
in front and tilted up like a bow, with round windows on
the side and a chimney on top fl ying the national fl ag. In
this ship is a Caribbean restaurant fl ying the Jolly Roger
with its skull and crossbones.
The front is directed towards the horizon and the
Mediterranean Sea, as if ready to sail. It made me think
of T S Eliot’s Gerontion : “Signs are taken for wonders.
‘We would see a sign! ’” This strange structure confi rms
my impression of Ramallah as a city of illusions,
inhabited by aspirants, poised to take off but prevented
by the forces of circumstance and misfortune. •Extracted from Going Home: A Walk Through Fifty Years
of Occupation by Raja Shehadeh, published by Profi le
and available at guardianbookshop.comGraffi ti near
Ramallah,
above; Yasser
Arafat’s tomb,
below
ALAMY; GETTY
Raja Shehadeh
is a writer,
lawyer and
founder of the
Palestinian
human rights
organisation
Al-HaqThe struggle is
neither over nor
won, and what keeps it
going is nothing other
than our steadfastness
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