Sage:Miramiya

I am currently sick with major stomach problems and have just been given a strong sage tea mixture by my friends in Jenin to drink - I am told it will heal my stomach. The taste is pretty damn bitter, but I down it quickly, eagerly hoping to end the waves of nausea.

Sage: Miramiya in Arabic. An herb that grows wild in Palestine..and in Turtle Island (the land of north america). This little plant is the link in my mind right now between Palestine and Tyendinaga Mohawk Territory.

I went to visit Ni'lin for the first time, a village to the North-West of Ramallah. I sat underneath olive trees in this beautiful farming land as someone pointed out over the hill where the wall was being built and how the land had been stolen by the encroaching Israeli settlements of Modin Illit (Keryat Sefr), Mattityahu, Hashmona'im and others. Already Ni'lin has seen its land diminish to 1/5 of its original size - now the wall confiscates another 2 500 dunums of farming land. The olive trees are short and stubby but are generations old - deceiving in appearance when I am used to seeing the old growth forests in northern ontario or the west coast of canada - there they are so tall you can imagine how they have been there long before any European settlers or lumber companies aiming to chop them down.

I am told that miramiya grows wild under the old olive trees and in the hills of Palestine. The wind is constantly blowing when you sit on a hilltop such as the one outside of Ni'lin overlooking the settlements and the construction of the wall. When the wind blows strong you can smell the wild sage and thyme. I picked up a small branch and rubbed it between my fingers - the rest of the day the sage oil was seeped in to my hands.

I came to Ramallah and checked my email - there was a new message saying Shawn Brant - spokesperson for the Tyendinaga Mohawks, along with 9 others are arrested again - facing serious charges for, plain and simple, defending their land and upholding their rights as the Mohawk nation. Shawn has now been put under 23 hour lockdown for burning sage in his cell - a tradition, a medicine - punished by settler courts that are clearly designed to uphold colonial rule. Burning sage in his cell. 23 hour lock down - unable to see or even really speak with his children.

Back in Ni'lin - at a recent demonstration I was walking in the back as the demonstrators from the village marched through that same olive grove to the location that the wall is being built - bulldozers were working at digging up land, surrounded securely by fully armed IDF soldiers and military jeeps. As the demonstration approached the soldiers began firing round after round of tear gas canisters directly in to the crowd. People re-gained their breath and went right back forward towards the bulldozers. Again the soldiers drowned the area in tear gas, then took aim and started shooting rubber coated bullets at close range. The youth, some with slingshots in hand, started grabbing stones and throwing them as far as possible at the soldiers. Back and forth it went, all the while people choking from the toxic smell of tear gas or some being carried away in stretchers after being hit by rubber bullets. One kid - 15 years old - had a rubber bullet enter his leg above his knee - his friends trying to get to him to help him but the soldiers were still firing. Finally the medics got to him and carried him down the hill towards an ambulance. At one point the grass caught on fire, spreading quickly in the dry area of the olive grove. People ran through the gas to jump on the fire in an attempt to put it out to stop it from burning the land.

In the midst of this the many miramiya bushes on the ground are being stamped on by soldiers and people running away. There is a strange mixture of smells between the toxic gas and healing sage...

As the demonstration ends I am sitting with some of the people from the popular committee talking about what people want to do next against the building of the wall on their land. They ask me about canada and so I begin to talk about what I know of the history and ongoing process of genocide, transfer, and land and resource theft of the First Nations people. And about Tyendinaga - about the land reclamation and the Quarry, the highway and rail blockades in resistance, and the recent jailing of leaders from the community - treated as criminals on their own land for defending their land.

'Ah, i see, Palestinians in Canada', one man says.

'Yes', i said, 'it is similar, but for 500 years, and i am the settler'.

We talk some more about the history of both Palestine and Turtle Island.

'We know this very well..The land is everything - we give everything for it' he says.

In Balata camp - speaking with an 80 year old woman from Haifa - living for 60 years in a refugee camp. She puts sage in her tea everyday - says it is good for you to drink sage every day. She tells us that the best place to pick Miramiya in Nablus in on the mountain, but that she can't go there because of the settlement and therefore closure for Palestinians. But a friend managed to bring her some sage from the mountain, and the rest of the time people in the camp grow the herb in small pots on their steps of their crowded cement refugee houses.

Sage - Miramiya grows wild and resiliant on the land. It is medicine and ceremony in the face of 500 years or 60 years. Medicine in the cells of 12 000 political prisoners in Palesine; burned in ceremony by political prisoners in Quinte Detention Centre in Turtle Island.

Back to drinking my tea...I am realizing that perhaps my stomach issues are from being...i think the word is overwhelmed, and so incredibly humbled that my heart has dropped in to my stomach and is swishing around down there.

From: A State of Siege by Mahmoud Darwish

...This siege will endure until the besiegers feel,

like the besieged that anger is an emotion like any other.

"I don't love you. I don't hate you,"

The prisoner said to the interrogator.
"My heart is full of that which is of no concern to you. My heart is full of the aroma of sage.

My heart is innocent, radiant, brimming. There is no time in the heart for tests"...

Speech of the Red Indian by Mahmoud Darwish:
http://arabwomanprogressivevoice.blogspot.com/2007/01/poem-speech-of-red-indian.html

For more on Tyendinga:http://www.ocap.ca/supporttmt
For more on Ni'lin:http://stopthewall.org/factsheets/1669.shtml

Jenin and exploitable markets

All that i know of Jenin is watching the little bits of news that we got in 2002 when the IDF invaded the camp, and then a year later when my friend worked in Jenin for 5 months. Jenin is in the north of the West Bank - near the northern line with the state of Israel. It is quite isolated, and is known for being a place that many fighters and martyrs come from as well as a huge amount of political prisoners. I am told that at least 2 500 of the 12 000 Palestinian political prisoners come from Jenin.

The residents of Jenin camp have seen three generations of displacement. A lot, perhaps most, of all the people I met are originally from the Haifa area and were exiled in 1948. Jenin is not far from Haifa, and on a clear day you can even see it from the high point of the city.

One of the entrances to Jenin camp goes past a cemetery...this is the martyrs cemetery - those that have been killed by the occupation either in resisting Israeli forces, or in incursions and assassinations, or in the massacre. There are hundreds of graves - stone after stone from April 2002, some as young as 3 or 5 years old that we could read. Some stones as recent as the fall of 2007. There is a large statue in the entrance to the cemetery that lists the names of those who died in the massacre. Along the cement walls surrounding the cemetery there are messages to the martyrs written in spray paint..'we will not forget our brave fighters', 'you taught us how to be brave'...and so many more that are so heartbreaking to read. The cemetery is a raw image of what people mean when they talk about how the Nakba is ongoing.

We walked up the hill from the cemetery past the destroyed house of a father who had lost 2 sons..his house was bulldozed twice..posters and pictures of his sons pasted on to the bits of cement structure that were left standing.

In the other entrance to the camp is a somewhat strange (at least at first glance) sculpture of a horse that was built from the wrecked metal of the many many cars that had been bombed by the Israelis in air strikes - one of the main pieces is part of an ambulance.

We met with two different families from the Haifa area - the first couple in their 50's talked about their parents having left Haifa during the Nakba. The man's father was so distraught to have left his home that he tried to cross back over to reach his village in 1949 - he was arrested and deported to Gaza. The family didn't see him again for 14 years - the whole time believing that he was dead. Then one day they received a letter saying that he was alive and trying to return to Jenin to be with his family but was being prevented...eventually he was allowed back to Jenin camp after being separated from his family for over 14 years. Then again after 1967, when he was getting very old, the father wanted to return again to his village near Haifa. He somehow made his way back to his village..where he then worked on his own land as a labourer for settlers for the remainder of his life.

The second family - we spoke with the grandfather who was in his 80's..he told us about the time period of the Nakba when they were expelled from their village of Ijzim near Haifa..Thousands of people made to walk eastward, not knowing where they would end up and thinking that they would return home only after a few days or weeks at most. He told us about the times before the zionist armies came..about a time period when a Jewish family lived next door and their two families used eat together, their kids used to play together..they had daughters at the same time and named them close to each other: Ralia and Dalia.

Jenin refugee camp is one of the saddest places that we have gone to so far...14 000 people in the camp alone - forced to live as refugees for 60 years. At first in 1948 the camp was made out of tents, then UNRWA built small cement box houses which are what people live in today. But the camp is so small and so crowded.

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The wall in Jenin district runs north and west of the city, like in many other areas, the wall confiscated a great deal of fertile agricultural land, essentially cutting off the livelihood of local farmers. This has created a massive base of people in need of an income, and also dependent on Israeli imports. Jalameh terminal is the main gateway to '48 - it is a massive checkpoint just outside of the city of Jenin. Jalameh is where products will come in and out of Jenin district, and where workers will line up at 3am to try to enter Israel. The terminal will often be closed at the will of the Israelis. We went to Jalameh in the afternoon as workers were coming back from Israel through turnstile gates in the terminal and then piling in to cars.

The whole area of Jenin has a ridiculously high unemployment rate - some say as high as 78%. One of the main sources of employment is to apply for a permit to work in Israel - these permits are almost impossible to obtain in that you have to go through security check after security check and if anyone in your family is in prison, or they just plain decide that they don't like you, you are de-facto a threat (which means that the majority of the population is shut out from this). If you are one of the lucky ones that gains a permit, you will make 1/3rd of what a Jewish Israeli worker will make, most likely be treated in terrible working conditions (especially in construction), and have very little rights which are upheld under Israeli law - so if you are injured on the job it is almost a given that you will not only not receive compensation, but you will also lose your job. Another major source of employment is people who cross without permits (so illegally) in to Israel - these people have it the worst - chased probably every day and living under constant fear of arrest.

The new addition to Jenin is the Industrial Zone - the Israeli and P.A 'solution' to boosting the economy, and to gain the the perks of cheap exploited labour that has no other choice and is literally walled in, is to create a free-trade border industrial zone (much like the industrial zones along the border of the U.S and Mexico). This project is being funded by guess who...the World Bank, is being built on Palestinian land, and controlled by both the Israelis and parts of the P.A. The Jenin industrial zone is unfortunately only one of many new proposed projects to create free-trade and 'economic re-vitalization' in the West Bank. Just when you thought the language of corporate globalization, 'structural readjustment', and 'development' were perhaps not as popular as in the 90's (or maybe its just that North Americans lost the focus of it)...well it is alive and well in Palestine - gaining ground on the back of a brutal apartheid system. For example, recently there was the Palestine Investment conference in Bethlehem which was aimed at attracting all international and Israeli investors to slice out a piece of the economic pie here in Palestine. It is a gross attempt to 'normalize' apartheid - in fact, there was no mention of occupation in any of the language of the conference and instead included such disgusting proposals as 'the untapped resource that is Gaza'...no mention of the siege.

More on the PIC:

[http://www.imemc.org/article/55008]

One thing piles on top of another: Refugees living in camps for 60 years, constant military invasions, confiscation of land...leading to further unemployment and a destroyed economy, and capitalist greedy assholes finding ways to make money off of the whole thing.