Chaos and Order:
Post-Invasion Reflections
19 March 2002
Fredrich Nietzsche once wrote, “Out of chaos comes
order.” But the German
philosopher, whose diverse musings have helped inspire, wrongfully or not, much
of the racism and elitism of the twentieth century and beyond, didn’t offer
much of a timetable denoting how long we must endure the chaos before we enjoy
the order. And while “chaos”
may have a fairly static definition (chaos being the state of absence of order),
“order” has a veritable plethora of definitions and designations, allusions
and illusions.
Order, for example, is how one might characterize the
streets of Ramallah in the past few days. Without
pausing to collect forensic evidence or conduct interviews, a casual onlooker
might not get a sense from the throngs of passers-by that just days ago much of
Ramallah was the arena of invasion. Looking a bit deeper, however, provides one with a sense of
the chaos that occurred not only in Ramallah but also in many Palestinian
cities, towns, and refugee camps.
The moral wisdom of Israel’s invasion and besiegement of
densely populated civilian enclaves in its military campaign against Palestinian
resistance to occupation, while certainly relevant, is the subject for a much
larger and more theoretical debate. But
let the facts speak for themselves. In
Ramallah, the Israeli Defense Forces surrounded the city’s main hospital for
three days, peppering it with gunfire and prohibiting civilian access to it.
Just down the street, the IDF encircled the Al ‘Amari refugee camp and
subjected its denizens to house-to-house searches and endless detentions.
Many of the refugees reported that the soldiers beat them, destroyed
their property, and even looted valuables from the homes.
On middle-aged woman was fatally wounded when the soldiers exploded a
bomb meant to knock out the wall of an adjacent home.
Gun battles erupted in some areas of the city, and in the
midst of the indiscriminate shooting thirteen Palestinians and one Israeli
soldier were killed. Moreover, the
death toll expanded to include several medical relief workers killed when the
IDF fired on at least one ambulance, as well as an Italian journalist shot six
times in the chest.
Yet this foray into Ramallah pales in comparison with the
chaos fashioned in several other areas last week. In refugee camps in Tulkarem and Bethlehem in the West Bank
and in the Jabalya camp just north of Gaza, the Israeli army destroyed or
commandeered homes, killed several civilians and detained and/or arrested
thousands of Palestinian men. Those
that were collectively detained were often forced to disrobe and remain
handcuffed for hours or days. In
some cases Israeli soldiers inscribed numbers on the naked arms and upper bodies
of Palestinian detainees as a system of filing them for later interrogation.
The figures for total arrests are disputed, since both sides accuse the
other of inflating the statistics to win approval from their people.
But those that were indefinitely detained were taken to prisons in nearby
settlements, not in Israel itself, and held without provisions of proper food or
blankets for several days.
And what do Israelis have to show for a week’s worth of
its army lambasting Palestinian civilian areas, besides a coerced withdrawal by
the visiting American envoy Anthony Zinni?
They have, on the one hand, yet another suicide bomb attempt and shooting
attack in Israel Sunday that left one Israeli civilian dead and several injured.
But more pointedly, they can look at the empty glass of their
supercilious government that has once again failed to resolve the issue by
pointing a gun at it.
In Ramallah I see people walking down the streets, shopping
for bread and vegetables, patching up damage to their homes, and in all ways
demonstrating a tremendous resilience to the events of last week.
The casual atmosphere cannot be confused with one of triumph; the
invaders weren’t repelled. They simply left, withdrawing for the ebb of political
motives, not military ones. But
where victory is lacking, survival and perseverance and unity are stronger than
ever. The IDF will likely be back;
it’s just a matter of when, where, and in what disproportionate capacity.
What is certain is that the thick skin of the Palestinians will endure
the chaos, simply because they have no other options.
Richard Johnson - Ramallah
Copyright (c) 2002 canadazone.com