Thread by @ominousrabbit

Do I feel a thread coming on, like the flu? Possible.

This Gaza situation. I don't know if people (by people, I mean "people who can't find Gaza on a map, or don't know it's Occupied by Israel, or how close it is to Europe, Turkey, Syria, Lebanon, Egypt...etc.) understand how dire it is.

When I was in Gaza 20 years ago, it was dire.

I was actually staying in the West Bank, because I was supposed to be in an International Studies program there at Birzeit University.

Arafat was still alive. The Oslo Accords were still tenuous, but also tentatively viable. The PLO was still the nominal majority party.

The PLO held the majority in the West Bank. Hamas held the majority in Gaza.

People really, really want to make judgements about Hamas and the PLO being terrorist organizations, but as with all of life, it's more complicated than that.

The West Bank and Gaza are so close to each other, that if you took a taxi in a straight line you could get from one to the other in about an hour.

Of course you can't, and no one has been able to since 1948.

I could explain the entire back history of Palestine and Israel, but I won't. It's really complicated, and there are plenty of scholars and brilliant minds who have done it from all sides of the argument.

But I studied the region, and I was so utterly appalled by my ignorance about the facts that I dedicated a year of study and a summer abroad to correct my lack of understanding.

Two things: the Palestinians have been scattered in their own diaspora, which has had various waves, since 1948.

There are Palestinian refugees all over the world, but they're concentrated in a few regions.

Two of the regions are the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. Other regions include Jordan, Syria, and Lebanon, along with a bunch of other smaller concentrations.

These Palestinian refugees have created just an amazing amount of instability in the region as a whole. Lebanon is TINY. And Lebanon took in over a MILLION refugees from al Nakba, which DEVASTATED native Lebanese populations.

So there have been MILLIONS of Palestinians who have been rootless and stateless for 70 years.

Fast forward to the late 80's and early 90's.

In the 80's, Gaza and the West Bank are superficially under the rule of the PLO, after a long, hard, crazy struggle between different factions who both fought against Israeli domination and within their own ranks for supremacy.

And the PLO came out on top.

But there was, of course, the Intifada.

The Intifada, which is my area of understanding (I won't claim expertise in any way, but I focused on it for a year +) was this organic Palestinian movement that broke out of the norms.

In 1987, the Intifada began. Massive eruptions against Israeli might burst out, starting at Birzeit University, the same school I went to in 97-98.

Having been to Birzeit, I can tell you it's not a big school. Nothing is big in the West Bank, because everything has been crowded into these tiny territories.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Int…

So the Intifada erupts. It's a student led resistance, and it's a game-changer.

And the Israeli response was INTENSE. Highly organized, militarized, heavy weaponry.

Checkpoints were set up between towns, neighborhoods, Jerusalem. People who had once traveled between Gaza and the West Bank could not even travel between one town and another.

And I think that people don't understand what a "Checkpoint" is.

It is not a toll booth.

It is a severe and devastating suppression on living.

Because this is in such a small geographic area, people in families will live in one town and visit another to say hello to their parents or grandparents. It's like walking across Manhattan the skinny direction.

So these checkpoints are set up, and they clamped down on all movement from one location to the next.

The students are leading this resistance against Israeli might, and EVERYONE is paying for it.

And paying for it means: people are dying because they can't get to a hospital. They can't get food, or supplies, or even water. Women die in childbirth at checkpoints.

The oppression is absolute. The might oppressing the Palestinians is absolute.

Meanwhile, the Intifada continues, because the severity of their situation is now obvious to anyone paying attention.

Palestinians--mostly teenagers and students from their colleges and universities--are armed with rocks.

Against a fully capable, American armed military force.

There's no freedom of movement. There's no crossing from one region to another to visit your family.

And there is absolutely NO crossing from the West Bank to Gaza during this time. (People sneaked across, because people will always find a way. But in general: NO.)

Two essentially different resistance movements grew out of the Intifada, in part because the Palestinians themselves were not allowed to visit their own people, only 30 miles away.

The West Bank--Ramallah specifically-- was the capitol of the PLO.

But Gaza, far more densely populated in an absurdly tiny sliver of land, became a base for Hamas.

And one thing that people don't understand about resistance movements in general is this:

When everyone--EVERYONE--had abandoned Gazans to the might of the Israeli military, Hamas created humanitarian organizations to fill the void.

They were starving.

They had no medical resources. They were living in (and still are) cinder block houses with limited plumbing.

Kids were playing in open sewage that ran down their streets.

And Hamas, an organization that was far more radical than the PLO, but was also providing regular Palestinians things like milk, which they desperately needed.

These things do not appear out of a vacuum.

And I feel as though it's very, very important for everyone to understand exactly how terrible it has been for Palestinians in general, but Gazans in particular.

It is the most densely populated area on earth. It is depressing. When the UN showed up there, they built homes for Palestinians that were supposed to be temporary.

Gazans have lived in them for many, many decades.

And they are GRIM.

I visited a bunch of refugee camps.

And when I say, "refugee camp" I mean, "hovels that were built to stand for a year or two, but it's now been decades."

When you cross from Israel into Gaza, you go through what I imagine was quite similar to Checkpoint Charlie between East and West Germany.

Tall gun towers, massive barricades. Bored officers, barbed wire, concrete and desolation.

And then it's no infrastructure, surrounded by poverty and dusty roads.

The people who were killed today by the Israeli military literally have nothing to lose. But they have nothing to gain, either. Because Israel has been allowed to grind them down into insignificance.

By opening the embassy in Jerusalem, Trump opened the Gates of Hell.

These are desperate, desperate people. The poverty is inconceivable. The military presence is all-encompassing and oppressive.

When I was there, things were hopeful.

THINK OF THAT.

Raw sewage was being dumped on Gazan beaches by Israeli extremist settlers to poison their beaches.

Since I left, the degradation has been extreme.

It's been one of the great humanitarian disasters of our time, and Americans have no idea what has been wrought.

This is but one tiny, tiny portion of the reality playing out in the Middle East right now.

And the smug self-satisfaction of Trumpian con artists is criminal in the extreme.

They have no idea what they've done.

But I'm here to pay witness: they have done incalculable wrongs to the people of Gaza, to the people of the Middle East, to world peace, and to human values altogether.

It's not too much to say that in a decade, they should be up for Crimes Against Humanity.

Will it happen? I doubt it.

No one listened to the people saying Iraq was a manufactured bullshit crisis.

But that's what this is.

And America deserves to be shunned from polite society for this outrageous transgression against humanity, diplomacy, and general decency.

We're not going to enjoy it at all.

But after this disaster, it's deserved.

Re: Syria. buzzfeed.com/mollycrabapple…

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by @fawfulfan view original on Twitter

This is a very good illustration of what #Gaza looks like. When I was there, the buildings were standing.

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by @alt_uscis view original on Twitter

Most of them, anyway. You’d walk in Gaza City, turn a corner, and a whole block would be destroyed.

Because another thing Americans never hear about is the tactics Israel uses to further oppress Palestinians: they bulldoze properties all the time in the name of “security.” What it really is is terror.

They also bulldoze their farms. Entire ancient olive groves get bulldozed under; this destroys their livelihoods, economy, and history in one fell swoop.

A bunch of the Palestinian students I knew would stay in this one house during the school week and then go home on the weekends to their home towns.

I spent many nights with them at that house.

But a few months after I came home, it was bulldozed in retribution for the protests that occurred. Just leveled.

So the property owner was out his family home, which they had owned forever, and the students had nowhere to live.

This is commonplace.

Yeah, and @ALT_uscis is right: the language used in the US press is terrible.

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by @alt_uscis view original on Twitter

Absolutely weaponized language. It happens with our own protests, too. See: #blacklivesmatter. See: #MeToo.

But Palestinians have been the victims of decades of US press obfuscation and downplaying the utter disparity in strength.

Always look for weak language: “clashes.”

This wasn’t a clash. This was a massacre.

They killed this man, for example.

I have the photo of his body, but for some stupid reason I’ll spare you.

Because it really deserves to be known.

This is a basic overview of the refugee camps from the UN agency who oversee them. unrwa.org/palestine-refu…

This is the UN overview of the 2014 destruction. The photo is amazing. unrwa.org/newsroom/emerg…

This photo shows the foundations of these “temporary” structures being built for refugees. These are still standing—unless bombed to smithereens—and not updated. Open sewage would run down between them.

I say “would” as if it’s in the past. It’s not. My bad.

These are where thousands of Palestinians live still.

This is great image of what the camps looked like when I was there.

(To be clear, I didn’t take this photo. I’m just looking for examples.)

I just found this great site which compares the size of one area relative to familiar ones. The tiny sliver is the Gaza Strip. ifitweremyhome.com/compare/US/PS

Here’s the Israel incursions into Palestine since 1948. Radical settlers keep building illegal settlements to carve out more land.

And don’t imagine that a #settlement is a ragtag bunch of buildings: they’re heavily fortified suburbs. This is from @nbcnews.

They are HUGE. And they’re also situated to further divide the limited land the Palestinians still control.

So for example, a huge suburban settlement will be plunked between Ramallah and Bethlehem.

But the Palestinians can’t drive through them. They have to drive alllllllll the way around them, over crappy roads built through former farmland.

Meanwhile, the settlers drive in their nice white cars over nicely paved roads up to their gated “settlement.”

They’re armed to the teeth, too.

And THEN we have things like #PuertoRico and the unending blackout.

Similar in cruelty and tone, if not in historical similarity.

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But this crap is a full Israel-type dick move. I guess we creeps have to stick together to stick it to everyone else.

This is a scathing and appropriate criticism of this issue by @RichardHaass: msnbc.com/morning-joe/wa…

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by @jaketapper view original on Twitter

I’m not going to alert people like this guy to my withering dismissal of his BS, but this is an extremely perfect example of the “Israel is the victim, poor poor Israel.”

unroll

I forgot to mention this: #Gaza's water quality is some of the worst in the world. The groundwater is so salty you can taste it. Also filled with huge quantities of toxic substances. water.fanack.com/palestine/wate…

And Israel exploits Gaza in much the same way we exploit Mexico: export shitty jobs across the border, import laborers for the shitty work we can't export. And much like our border, it's a toxic dangerous place--for Gazas and Mexicans, but not Israelis or Americans.

Well, until Trump shut down the Guest Worker Visa program for everyone except Mar-a-Lago, the Winter Dacha.

I guess I should start a different thread. How long is too long? This could go on for hundreds of tweets.

I wrote this tiny vignette about my time there. It's like a little micro tale, but captures some of the great confusion of the situation. thenervousbreakdown.com/qmoone/2011/08…

Yeah, well "controversial" is really a matter of perspective. All of them are controversial to Palestinians, since these settlements are on land that's supposed to be a part of Palestinian side of the Two State solution.

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