Stateless in Gaza

>> A Montreal NGO’s fact-finding trip to the
Occupied Territories returns

by PATRICK LEJTENYI

Aaron Maté remembers the three days he spent in Ramallah as the Israeli army was pounding it into rubble. “There were all these bullets, explosions, things blowing up,” says the 23-year-old Concordia student. “I was hiding with the family I was staying with, living under siege.” The 24-hour curfew the Israeli army imposed on the West Bank town meant that no one should be moving around while helicopters and F-16 jets blew the West Bank capital to pieces.

Maté and four other Canadians, all social justice activists, were visiting the West Bank and the Gaza Strip earlier this month as part of a fact-finding team sponsored by Alternatives, a progressive non-governmental organization based in Montreal. While Maté, a Jew who has lived in Israel on a kibbutz and maintains a strong attachment to the country, says what he saw didn’t come as a shocking surprise, he feels at least partially responsible for the atrocities committed by the Israeli army.
“I needed to see what the consequences of the actions taken in my name are, both as a Jew and as a member of Western society,” he says. “They say it’s all in the name of defending the Jewish people, but that’s just bullshit.”

Accompanied by journalist and social commentator Judy Rebick, Monique Simard, a former member of the Quebec Commission on Human Rights, Asseil ben Jamil of Solidarity for Palestinian Human Rights and Sabine Friesinger, president of the Quebec division of the Canadian Federation of Students and president of the Concordia Student Union, Maté followed his Palestinian and Jewish guides through both the Occupied Territories. They witnessed the carnage wrought by the Israelis in the West Bank cities of Ramallah and Nablus, and the wretched living conditions in the cramped and decrepit Gaza Strip.

“Gaza makes Ramallah look like paradise,” Maté says. Over 1.2-million Palestinians, he notes, live within the Strip’s 360 square kilometres. However, only about 60 per cent of the territory is inhabited by Palestinians; the rest is reserved for the 7,000 to 8,000 Israeli settlers.

With the ubiquitous carnage he saw, he also heard the horror stories. He says that every person he met had some tale of loss, either of family members or of businesses, and that the very reason they were living in such abject poverty was due to the fact that the Israelis had destroyed anything of any value. And yet, Maté was amazed to see, the ordinary Palestinians he met were opposed to the cycle of violence that has kept their lot so wretched.

“Most people I spoke to totally condemned the suicide bombings,” he says. “Mothers don’t want their children to be martyrs. They deplore the killings of civilians. But if the Israelis want the bombings to stop, they have to understand why so many people are living in misery.”

As a member of the Jewish Alliance Against the Occupation, Maté knows that the majority of Westerners are either ignorant of, or unsympathetic to, the Palestinians’ cause. But what he saw belied the prejudice he encounters here.

“How they deal and cope with everything is incredibly inspiring,” he says. “They’ve maintained their integrity and self-identity. And somehow, they still have hope.” :