The quintessential Palestinian experience

[ProgressiveMuslim]

Laila El-Haddad writing from the United States, Live from Palestine, 14 April 2009




"Its not very comfortable in there is it?" said the stony faced official, cigarette smoke forming a haze around his gleaming oval head.

"Its OK. We're fine," I replied wearily, delirious after being awake for 30 hours straight.

"You could be in there for days you know. For weeks. Indefinitely. So, tell me, you are taking a plane tomorrow morning to the US?"

It was our journey home that began with the standard packing frenzy: squeezing everything precious and dear and useful into two suitcases that would be our sustenance for three months.

The trips to the outdoor recreation store in preparation for what I anticipated to be a long and tortuous journey across Rafah Crossing to Gaza. The insect repellent, the mosquito netting, the water purifier, the potty toppers for my kids and the granola bars and portion-sized peanut butter cups. This time, I wanted to be ready, I thought to myself, just in case I got stuck at the crossing. The crossing. My presumptuousness is like a dull hit to the back of my head now.

In addition packing the suitcases, we were also packing up our house -- my husband Yassine was finishing up his residency at Duke University and set to start a medical fellowship at Johns Hopkins in July. In the meantime, we were "closing shop," putting our things in storage, selling the rest, and heading overseas: me to Gaza, my husband to Lebanon to visit his family; and eventually I was to meet him there (assuming I could get into Gaza, and then assuming I could get out). Yassine is a third-generation Palestinian refugee from the village of Waarit al-Siris in northern historic Palestine; he was born in a refugee camp in Lebanon and holds a laissez passer for Palestinian refugees. Israel denies him return to his own home -- or even to the home of his spouse in Gaza. So when we go overseas, we often go our separate ways; we cannot live legally, as a unit, as a family, in our own homes.

I hold a Palestinian Authority passport. It replaced the "temporary two-year Jordanian passport for Gaza residents" that we held until the Oslo Accords and the creation of the Palestinian Authority in the mid 1990s, which itself replaced the Egyptian travel documents we held before that. A progression in a long line of stateless documentation.

It is a passport that allows no passage. A passport that denied me entry to my own home. This is its purpose: to mark me, brand me, so that I am easily identified and cast aside without questions; it is convenient for those giving the orders. It is a system for the collective identification of those with no identity.


read more of Leila's story...
http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article10463.shtml


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Leila El-Haddad blogs regularly at "Raising Yousef and Nour: Diary of a Palestinian Mother"
http://a-mother-from-gaza.blogspot.com/

[Smith_3]

1. A palestinean passport is like the david star jews were forced to wear.

[ProgressiveMuslim]

2. No it's not.

I posted this so people could read about this woman's experience, raising these 2 kids, trying to go home... and identify with her as a fellow human being.

When you equate her experience with a Jew during Nazi times, you shift the whole conversation.

it hijacks the thread, and now we'll have a huge debate about anti-semitism.

I don't know you, don't know if you're pro-Palestinian, but these kinds of statements don't help our cause. They hurt us.

Palestinians face many difficulties, especially those who can't travel, who are stuck in camps, who live in Gaza.

But Leila El-Haddad's experience is not the equivalent of a Jewish person under Hitler. She's back home, safe and warm, in the arms of family here in the States.