Thoughts about Occupation

I wanted to get outside today because people have started to harvest their trees, but I woke up with a mind full of thoughts, which has inspired me to do a great deal of writing instead.

On Thursday night (start of the weekend) I went to one of the bars in Ramallah that caters to the city’s Westerners and anyone else who wants to spend their social time in a mixed-gendered space where you can drink alcohol and meet foreigners. During the course of the evening I was talking with a Swedish girl, who like some of the foreigners who visit Palestine (but rarely stay for the long term) is a true zealot of the Palestinian cause. (This isn’t to suggest that every other foreigner in Ramallah doesn’t support Palestine, just that they aren’t zealous). As we sat there, in the middle of this bar which is like most other bars in most other countries I’ve lived in, this girl bemoans how miserable life in Palestine is.

Was this a deliberately ironic statement, made to foreground the social inequality in Palestine and further suggest that this inequality allows a few folks in Ramallah to exist in a bubble? The answer was no, it wasn’t that sophisticated. Instead I think it reflects the way in which most people view Palestine as simply a space of Occupation. This is easy to do when you’re not living in Palestine, because all the media (both corporate and activist) tell you about is different forms of violence and/or high level political processes. However, when you actually come here, and see people who like to celebrate, have to go to work, and have traditions stretching back (and also modified by) centuries, I for one find it harder to simply view life here solely through the lens of Occupation. Yes, the Occupation has affected Palestinian society profoundly, but sometimes people like to have a drink on a Thursday night because it’s fun to socialize and relax after a week’s work. You don’t necessarily have to be ‘escaping’ anything, although I’m sure there are those who do. It really speaks to the strength and power of particular representations of Palestine when foreigners visit, are confronted by a variety of different material and social circumstances, and still reproduced the same distanced, myopic narratives. (Of course many Palestinians will often encourage these perspectives, but that’s a different story).

This leaves the question of whether it is only a privileged few are enable to enjoy this ‘richer’ experience of life. I would suggest however that it takes a certain type of arrogance/ignorance to propose that just because you’re poorer, you don’t like to socialize and relax over the weekend. The bar, like many other places in Ramallah, is most definitely a manifestation of the social inequality here, but mostly everyone loves Thursday night.