What is the ABC of Occupation?
Beginning
ABCs are for beginners. I am that beginner. In May-June 2016 , I undertook a militant research visit to Palestine, my first trip to the West Bank. I had imagined blogging my visit while I was there but bandwidth and the sheer scale of the issues led to a change in plans. Instead, I took daily notes and photographs that I have used as the basis for this Scalar book. The photographs are not illustrations. As a first-time visitor, I did not know what to expect and what I would see. The photographs are intended to help others who have not been themselves cross the visual black-out of Palestine and Palestinians.Palestine was astonishing for the sheer intensity of the oppression. You see soldiers like the two above, on patrol in Hebron, the largest city in the West Bank, everywhere. Even before arrival, we were briefed to never mention to Israeli officials that we might visit Palestine, to delete all Arab names from our phones and to have documents attesting to our status. Once in the country, it was stunning to see with what force the Israeli regime operates and to experience the daily banality of violence. It was humbling to see the challenges of being an activist in Palestine, compared to my own position.
Even on a short visit it is impossible not to see that it is complete and exclusive settlement that is now the palpable, visible goal of the occupation, which builds structures to that end everywhere it can. This occupation under construction is exclusive and segregated behind walls, fences, checkpoints, soldiers, CCTV and the all-pervasive security culture that excludes the Palestinians not only from their traditional land and homes, but from services like water, electricity, transport and so on.
The one thing everyone on all sides agrees on is that it’s all about land—who owns it, who can farm it, live on it, use the rainwater that falls on it and the minerals below—and so on. Palestine was once a land made to be lived in. It is now a land made to be seen and to be under surveillance. The illegal settlements cluster on the top of hills, rather than spreading across the valleys, to maximize their viewpoint.
The valleys are starkly beautiful but where there is most beauty, there is most colonial arrangement, concealment and destruction. Palestinian olive groves have been replaced by fast-growing pines. The mature pines offer timber but also a sense of long-term residence. Palestinians have been evicted from their houses and forbidden to cultivate their land, so a pleasing (to Romantic eyes) ruination and weathering dominates the prospect. Even the wildlife has been sedated and removed to Israeli territory. Here appropriation meets land art and produces an aesthetic of (non) settlement, produced by the visibility of the settler and the forced invisibility of the Palestinians.
And so I came to realize that the sight of occupation is the site of occupation. It is designed to produce a sense of helplessness and hopelessness, to keep all the subject population in full view, and to create an open field of fire in which to be present is to be a target. Against all that, with remarkable persistence that they call sumud, Palestinians remain, insist on being seen and persisting with their claims.
