Jayyous
Friday, August 20, 2010

The sun rises at our backs into a clear blue sky. The farm gate has opened on time. The farmers with their trucks and tractors, donkey carts and horses, wives and children have all passed through check point #943 receiving polite greetings from the Israeli soldiers and quick glances at the farmers’ passes and the passes for wives, children and donkeys. The soldier closing the gate calls out to us, “Have a good day.” We turn and head back up the hill to the village, his greeting following us, affirming that it has already been a good day at the north farm gate in Jayyous.
“A good day?” It’s a good day when the gates that separate farmers from their fields are closed 22 hours out of each day? It’s a good day when Israeli soldiers choose to give Palestinian farmers permission to go onto their own Palestinian land that they have farmed for generations? It’s a good day when farmers and their families are forbidden to stay on their land over night but must return through the gate between 6 and 6:30 in the evening?
Perhaps it’s not a perfect day but we must take it in perspective. Yesterday several young boys were excluded from their family land because they were over 12 and did not have the proper pass. A farm worker was sent back because his pass had a tiny rip in it. (He would have to go to Qalqillya to apply for a new card.) Yet another’s pass did not match the information in the soldiers’ computer. Others had long waits as the soldiers with U.S. M-16 assault rifles studied their passes and asked many questions. All of this after opening the gates late and gesturing farmers to stay back until waved forward one at a time. Tractors and trucks searched as well as the bags hanging from donkeys and plastic bags carrying farmers’ lunches.
Is this good day “perspective” or does it illustrate the question in the Arabic proverb, “Do you want justice or its cousin?” An English equivalent might be, “The good is the enemy of the best.” (1)
I put this question to some of our neighbors in Jayyous. The responses are always the similar.
“We must survive.”
“We must adapt to the realities of our situation.”
“To do otherwise will drive us into despair.”
“What else is there to do when we lack the economic, military and political power?”
“What can you do to help us?”
And so when the Israeli military jeeps and Hummers come through our village at 2am it is a good night. It is a good night when the soldiers bang on the doors of homes and don’t arrest anyone, but only give papers to teenage boys to report to Israeli authorities for questioning. It is a good night when young boys think it’s a game to throw a few stones down on the military vehicles from rooftops and the soldiers ignore them. It’s a good night when children do not have to witness the arrest of their father.
It’s not a good night or a good day for me, because the question I asked people in Jayyous came from my ignorance. It is not a question to ask people experiencing powerlessness every day. The question is really directed to me. When they ask me, “What can you do?” they are asking me, “Do you want justice or its cousin for us?” They know that my country is deeply involved and strongly influential in the Middle East, including Israel / Palestine. As a citizen of one of the most powerful countries in the world, I have the choice. I have the choice to be a citizen seeking to use our power for peace with justice and refusing to settle for its cousin, coercive power.
While I live in Jayyous, it will be a good day for me each day that I remain aware that it is never a good day when any human being; Israeli, Palestinian, American or any other; is forced to settle for the cousin of justice.
(1) Unload Your Own Donkey, Primrose Arnander & Ashkjain Skipwith, Stacy International, 2007, p.42