News from the Region
Olive Harvest Delegation
Report #1: Waiting - and Concrete Realities
November 5-7, 2006
Airport unWelcome
By Miryam Rashid
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Miryam Rashid with Palestinian
children at the Wall. |
I was excited and anxious about going back to the West Bank after an almost seven year absence.
On Sunday, November 5, after a two day orientation in Washington, D.C., the delegation departed the U.S. for Palestine and Israel. The travel itself, and the stopover in Zurich, were pretty exhausting and intense. I could relate to the mixture of excitement and anxiety that others on the delegation were feeling – but for a different reason.
I have traveled through Ben Gurion Airport in Tel Aviv often. My airport experience, like that of other Arab Americans, has always been a dragged out and tiring interrogation process – especially after a 12 hour flight. Consistently, I never fail to be singled out for special interrogation by Israeli personnel.
Though I’m accustomed to going through a time-consuming process of interrogation, I’ve never accepted it. No matter how often I am singled out for extra scrutiny, it is still not something I get used to.
There was a chance that because I was part of a delegation, I could be spared the loss of several hours in waiting and being questioned. But that was not to be. So I waited. And waited. I told the Israeli security agents that I was not traveling alone but was a part of a delegation. The entire delegation of almost a dozen people were already out and waiting for me in a bus and waiting for a long time.
Waiting. How many times have Palestinians expressed that this central feature of their daily life is intolerable and endlessly disruptive of their day-to-day lives? The other central feature of their lives is uncertainty – both of which I only catch a glimpse of with my airport experience.
That glimpse into a life of perpetual, no end in sight, waiting and uncertainty reminds me of why I’m here. I am not a native-born Palestinian, so whatever inconveniences I suffer and whatever racism is directed towards me, I know it is not part of my daily experience. I try to imagine life for the Palestinians, and ironically, at this moment of waiting, it’s hard to imagine how Palestinians survive it day after day, year after year. Waiting at checkpoints, hundreds of them scattered throughout the West Bank. Waiting for a gate to open, waiting to be let in or out of a gate in Israel’s wall located in Palestinian cities and towns, waiting for the international community to decide that they should be free.
The waiting and uncertainty, along with the security agents’ dismissiveness to my requests, exhaust me emotionally and physically. I saw a film once about the centrality of waiting, the loss of hours at a time – often daily – for students, doctors, teachers, mothers, fathers.
This time, though waiting was dragged out and exhausting, my questioning during the interrogation lasted no more than twenty minutes.
There were many personal questions. Demands for home and cell phone numbers. When will I get out of here? Need to get some sleep. Waiting.
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