Chantal - Have Laptop Will Travel

Yesterday, I finally found something resembling the statistics I’ve been searching for for the last few years: over 4000 killed in the last few years of Middle Eastern crisis, 75% of the fatalities being Palestinian. So for every Israeli killed out of desperation, Ariel Sharon kills at least four Palestinians, with the aid of far more advanced technology than that which is available to the Palestinians, yet still manages to persuade the world that he is innocent, that only the innocent Palestinians he is annihilating are terrorists. For how long can the international community support him without question; for all that Arafat was viewed as an obstacle, for his circumstances, for his absolute insistence on an uncompromisable homeland for those who the Israelis had displaced, can the Israelis maintain their position as a woefully sabotaged and victimised nation? Tonight, I watched on BBC2 footage of Israeli soldiers systematically destroying the bones of Palestinian children. That only supports the stories my Red Cross buddy, Gert, told me of his experiences in Israel and with the savagery of the Israelis, essentially describing them as soulless savages bent on revenge for imagined acts of violence.

I tried to find books by Edward Said – how strongly he is missed in the wake of Bush’s reelection and over Arafat’s death. As the most intellectual, and currently most widely-published Palestinian, this is when we need him the most. He contributed a few quotes to the BBC documentary tonight, but I am sure he never foresaw the death of Arafat, much left that which would follow, which that which I can but watch unfold each day as it comes.

The problem with England, the problem with the West is that figureheads are only temporary. Beckham left Manchester United, and our culture is that of politicians, not personalities. There isn’t the room for someone who, however erroneously, devoted everything he had to recreating even a slice of the homeland his people had held prior to the Israeli invasion, someone who was uncompromising in the conditions his people needed to regain their homeland and way of life despite the autonomy of an occupying nation which felt no remorse at all at displacing the land’s inhabitants in the name of a millennia-old claim.

Everything I have seen since Arafat’s sad death has only confirmed my opinion of the Israelis as relentless murderers immune from justice. Pinochet is being held to trial for the genocide committed during his rule; let Sharon be investigated for the same, for overseeing his share of the 3000+ Palestinians massacred in his attempt to establish rule over a land which is not his own.

I may not have bought the Edward Said books I want to read, but I’ve seen and read enough to confirm that every Israeli who has contributed to the death of a Palestinian should be subjected to a War Crimes court, that even though Israel has managed to amass so much land to date – 80 % of that which was formerly known as Palestine for two thousand years – and no matter how much impunity the Israeli nation has managed to accummulate over the years through international guilt, I can only wait for the day when Sharon is held in court to answer for the genocide and assassination charges he has authorised over the last few years.

Last night, I watched the press recording of Bush and Blair, in which they stressed that they would have supreme control over the upcoming Palestinian elections to ensure that democracy would be upheld.

How, under any warped logic, can a Christian Western nation presume to control the elections of a Muslim, hotly-debated state? Bush only seems to know three concepts: Democrac, Arabs-are-Evil and Space-Exploration-Is-Good-If-Pricey. It’s not up to Bush or Blair to determine the outcome of the Palestinian elections; after all, Bush’s government has done all it can to distance itself from the Palestinian situation, to the point of ignoring it outright, and he has frequently urged for Arafat to be overthrown so that a puppet can be installed who will be more amenable, no doubt, to American influence.

I can’t stop missing my Lewisham colleagues, If Arafat had died while I was still working with them, then probably a whole day would have been set aside to discuss his legacy and its implications on the future. I cried out as soon as I read the news online on Thursday, but spent the rest of the day reading all of the news stories I could find online, from Western to Latin and Israeli, just to find something which resembled the truth.

I’m too busy grieving to accept the fact that Arafat is truly dead, that he is no longer a player on the international diplomatic circuit; that in all his years of effort, he was never able to secure an established homeland for his people. Yet, despite all his faults, had he not tried, had he not given all he had in those 40-odd years, his compatriots would have simply become forgotten people inhabiting refugee camps in neighbouring states.

Like the Mastercard ad, hope is priceless. And what he gave his people, despite all that I don’t yet know about him and his people, is hope. And now it’s gone. I’m a translator, counsellor and database programmer. And if any Palestinian charity needs me, I’m there. I cannot and will not support the claims of a nation which displaces a nation in the name of a millennia-old right without regard for the land’s inhabitants, and which proceeds to annihilate those with a superior claim than to their own to the land which they are occupying.

But as I’ve been accused in the past, I don’t have a Western perspective. Tomorrow is Remembrance Sunday, but what of the Central Amercan fatalties in US-sponsored civil wars? What of the Native Americans wiped out in the settlers’ desire to establish themselves in their new homeland? What of the 3000+ Palestinians killed in their desire to return to the only home they’ve known? Israel may have the full backing of the US administration, but not of me: I call them the same names they have called Yasir Arafat over the years: murderer, assasin, terrorist, perpretator of genocide.