by Randa Abdel-fattah - The Sydney Morning Herald - 20 July 2011
There was an element of tragicomedy to the situation. Me, the daughter of a dispossessed Palestinian, dressed up as a settler in order to enter the Israeli city of Jaffa.
With me was my American host, Sophie, who in April invited me as a writer-in-residence in Ramallah. An expert in checkpoint avoidance, she has lived with her Palestinian boyfriend for seven years and renews her visa every three months by pretending to have a lesbian Jewish lover.
As we approached the fortified checkpoint, we tied a scarf at the nape of our necks and proceeded to pose as settlers (lose the panicked ”will they let me pass or harass me?” look, sit up tall, act like you own the place).
After days of dehumanising encounters with heavily armed soldiers, this simple act raised us to the ranks of the privileged. The soldier waved us through with a conspiratorial smile – no need to worry, you’re not one of them.
There are many theories as to why a solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict remains elusive. They include the military occupation, Israel’s defiance of international law, US bias, the illegal settlements rendering a contiguous Palestinian state an impossibility, the suffocation of Gaza, the wall, the second-class status of Israeli-Arab citizens, the abysmal Palestinian leadership.
But, after my visit, I would argue that the oxygen feeding such injustices is a pervasive racism that simply sees Palestinians as inferior. I witnessed and experienced it first-hand....READ MORE
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