Nearly 75 years of sewage with nowhere to go but the Mediterranean Sea. You’d think that alone would be reason enough for the Israelis to want Palestinians to at least have sewage treatment parity with Israel so that the beaches, the gorgeous coastline of what was once Palestine, would remain pristine. There actually are sewage treatment plants in the Gaza Strip, but restrictions on electricity and repeated incursions and bombardment have left these facilities severely compromised. Perhaps that could be a new proverb of sorts: If you undermine the humanity of your fellow human being, you will swim in their shit.
I will never get the image of open sewers out of my mind that I saw in Gaza over 35 years ago, roughly half of Israel’s lifetime. Having come from Freiburg in Germany during my Junior Year Abroad where there are lovely clear waterways adorned with hand-laid stones in marvelous patterns that add to the delight of this charming city, I had no idea at first that the channel down the center of the passageway of the family home I was visiting was raw sewage. It was only after I watched Salwa squeegee water from the courtyard into a smaller artery that led straight to the channel and noticed the proximity of the squat toilet—like an outhouse inside the house—that I put two and two together. My stomach turned as I watched young Palestinian children play barefoot knowing no child deserves to live under such conditions.
I will never get the image of open sewers out of my mind that I saw in Gaza over 35 years ago, roughly half of Israel’s lifetime. Having come from Freiburg in Germany during my Junior Year Abroad where there are lovely clear waterways adorned with hand-laid stones in marvelous patterns that add to the delight of this charming city, I had no idea at first that the channel down the center of the passageway of the family home I was visiting was raw sewage.
It was only after I watched Salwa squeegee water from the courtyard into a smaller artery that led straight to the channel and noticed the proximity of the squat toilet—like an outhouse inside the house—that I put two and two together. My stomach turned as I watched young Palestinian children play barefoot knowing no child deserves to live under such conditions.
Seeing the abandoned water treatment facility buried in the sand further down the Gaza Strip with the then director of Save the Children Chris George, a project licensed, then blocked by Israel, only reinforced my sense of desperation at this madness in the modern age. Locking up Palestinians in Gaza, more than 70% of whom are refugees, their original homes and land only a short drive away, does not make the thousands that have become millions go away. No war story justifies the subjugation of others, certainly not those locked up in their own homeland, their only crime their longing to go home.
Calls of blood thirsty Arabs who want to drive the Jews into the Sea is a feeble yet effective attempt to draw attention away from Palestinians’ thirst for clean water, recognition, and acknowledgement of their displacement due to Zionist attempts to secure a Jewish majority in a land with a people for a people that chose to take someone else’s land right out from under them—including homes, businesses, and personal property under newly passed laws such as the Absentee Property Law—a choice that was not The Chosen People’s choice to make.
(Photo: Christa Bruhn)
Seeing the abandoned water treatment facility buried in the sand further down the Gaza Strip with the then director of Save the Children Chris George, a project licensed, then blocked by Israel, only reinforced my sense of desperation at this madness in the modern age. Locking up Palestinians in Gaza, more than 70% of whom are refugees, their original homes and land only a short drive away, does not make the thousands that have become millions go away. No war story justifies the subjugation of others, certainly not those locked up in their own homeland, their only crime their longing to go home.
Calls of blood thirsty Arabs who want to drive the Jews into the Sea is a feeble yet effective attempt to draw attention away from Palestinians’ thirst for clean water, recognition, and acknowledgement of their displacement due to Zionist attempts to secure a Jewish majority in a land with a people for a people that chose to take someone else’s land right out from under them—including homes, businesses, and personal property under newly passed laws such as the Absentee Property Law—a choice that was not The Chosen People’s choice to make.
I must sound angry, but really I am overcome with sadness that subjugation is Israel’s only solution to the Question of Palestine it chose to answer through the reconfiguration of Palestine into the state of Israel instead of sharing the land two peoples call home.
The reality today is that until the state of Israel and its Jewish citizens and settlers embrace the principles of democracy and human rights they espouse as ‘a light unto nations’, Israel will continue to effectively govern an Apartheid state from the river to the sea as so clearly spelled out by B’tselem and Human Rights Watch as well as declarations by the United Nations and the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (ICC).
I must sound angry, but really I am overcome with sadness that subjugation is Israel’s only solution to the Question of Palestine it chose to answer through the reconfiguration of Palestine into the state of Israel instead of sharing the land two peoples call home. The reality today is that until the state of Israel and its Jewish citizens and settlers embrace the principles of democracy and human rights they espouse as ‘a light unto nations’, Israel will continue to effectively govern an Apartheid state from the river to the sea as so clearly spelled out by B’tselem and Human Rights Watch as well as declarations by the United Nations and the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (ICC).
Other contexts in contested spaces have found a way to live together, acknowledge each other’s anger and suffering so they could build a brighter future based on equal rights and dignity for all. That said, if legal equality doesn’t translate into a life of dignity as in South Africa, a fragile peace can explode into chaos. In Palestine and Israel it is not a question of whether we will move beyond Zionism and Palestinian nationalism, only a question of when, and that question depends on the integrity of those with the power to block such a transformation to come forward and do the right thing. It is my hope that the 75th anniversary of the establishment of the State of Israel, which doubles as the 75th commemoration of Al-Nakba, will mark that new beginning where we break through the borders that separate ‘us’ and ‘them’. The world is watching and Palestinians are tired of waiting…
