The entrance to the Khan al-Ahmar school in the West Bank, which reads “Khan al-Ahmar School” in Arabic / credit: Ahmad Al-Bazz
KHAN AL-AHMAR, West Bank—More than 70 years after being expelled from the Naqab Desert, Bedouins in the occupied West Bank may become refugees once again.
This month, Israel’s Supreme Court gave the government until April 2 to respond to pro-settler Israeli NGO Regavim’s request to demolish the Bedouin village of Khan al-Ahmar. In 2018, the High Court green-lighted Khan al-Ahmar’s destruction, but the government has yet to formulate a plan for carrying out the ruling.
More than half of the village’s approximately 280 residents are children attending Khan al-Ahmar’s primary school, which could soon turn to rubble if the village is razed.
Khan al-Ahmar’s students aren’t the only Palestinian children whose academic futures are under threat, however. According to the Arab Campaign for Education for All, 58 Palestinian schools serving 6,550 children, including Khan al-Ahmar’s, are currently at risk of demolition.
“When our students face the challenges of occupation, it’s not only the damage of the schools, it’s not only the arrests of teachers and students, but the psychosocial part, which reflects in the [students’] attitudes and well-being,” Sadiq Al-Khadour, spokesperson for the Palestinian Authority’s Education Ministry, told Toward Freedom.
The Israeli Supreme Court has approved the demolition of the village of Khan al-Ahmar in the West Bank / credit: Ahmad Al-Bazz
Israel Undermining Palestinian Education
Students face a myriad of obstacles while attempting to earn an education in Palestine. In addition to school demolitions, students experience detention or arrests by the Israeli army, military raids into their school, delays in their commutes due to checkpoints, and violence from Israeli settlers and soldiers on their way to school. According to the UN, students in the West Bank and occupied East Jerusalem experienced a more than 150-percent increase in education-related violations from 2021 to 2022.
Palestinian schools in East Jerusalem have had their licenses revoked for refusing to teach the Israeli narrative in their curriculum, while those who comply have received a boost in funding. According to the Education Ministry, Jerusalem schools are also the most overcrowded in Palestine, with an average of more than 37 students packed into a classroom. The average student-to-teacher ratio in Palestine is 24-1.
In the besieged Gaza Strip, Israeli missiles have destroyed academic institutions and killed teachers and students.
“This undermines students’ and teachers’ right to access the appropriate educational process,” said Tamam Mohsen, advocacy officer at Al Mezan Center for Human Rights. Mohsen’s organization, which focuses on Gaza, explained that more than 571 educational facilities were wiped out by Israeli bombs from 2008 to 2021.
A teacher and students in a classroom at the Khan al-Ahmar school in the West Bank / credit: Ahmad Al-Bazz
A School Born Out of Necessity
With April’s court deadline fast approaching, the Khan al-Ahmar school and the surrounding community are on edge.
“We’ve heard the news and this has put students in an unstable mood,” said Isra Zahran, who teaches mathematics to students from 7th to 10th grades. Zahran explained constant visits from NGOs and the press have distracted students.
Built in 2009, the school has become essential for Khan al-Ahmar’s children.
Headmistress Halima Zahaike explained that before the school’s establishment, children would take the arduous journey to Jericho for school while some—especially girls—would merely forgo their education.
“Today, girls who are 22 years old or more don’t even know how to write their name because they used to stay home with no education,” Zahaike said. With this clear need, the idea for a school in the heart of Khan al-Ahmar was born.
Like the majority of Palestinian villages in the Israeli-military-controlled Area C of the West Bank, Khan al-Ahmar doesn’t have a zoning plan. Therefore, any construction is deemed illegal. In order to circumvent Israeli military regulations, the school was built as a temporary structure using tires, clay, and mud. The project was built with the support of Italian non-profit Vento di Terra and the European Union.
Yet, even during the school’s construction, classrooms were razed by Israeli authorities.
A Palestinian Education ministry official walks down tires that make up part of the structure of the compound for the Khan al-Ahmar school in the West Bank / credit: Ahmad Al-Bazz
‘I Will Keep Studying Atop Rubble’
With demolition looming, Khan al-Ahmar’s students are losing their will to learn.
“Many of the students say, ‘Our school will be demolished and we’ll have to go to Jericho. I know that I can’t go to Jericho, so let’s skip,’” Zahran said. “We try to encourage them, but there’s this feeling of not being motivated because they ask themselves ‘what I’m going to do after [the demolition].’”
With these barriers to education, 25 percent of Palestinian boys drop out of school by age 15. Despite this figure, the youth literacy rate is over 99 percent in Palestine.
The feeling of resilience is palpable among Palestinian students. While Zahran appears apprehensive, past school demolitions prove Palestinians’ determination to learn.
In November, Israeli forces demolished Isfey Al-Fawqa elementary school in Masafer Yatta, a collective of rural hamlets in the southern West Bank. Days later, students were studying in tents erected above the crushed cement.
The Ministry of Education provided the tents to Masafer Yatta’s students and said they will do the same for Khan al-Ahmar if dismantled.
“If you ask any one of them, they will say, ‘We will never leave our school,’” Zahaike said of her students. “They say, ‘If it gets demolished, I will keep studying atop the rubble.’”
Jessica Buxbaum is a Jerusalem-based freelance journalist reporting on Palestine and the Israeli occupation. You can follow her on Twitter at @jess_buxbaum.
Editor’s Note: The following is the writer’s analysis and was originally published byCovertAction Magazine.
Over the past few months, U.S. lawmakers, the Afghan government, and the international community have called on Washington to stop strangling the Afghan economy as its people continue to suffer from a U.S.-created humanitarian crisis. On December 22, the Biden administration effectively rejected those calls, opting instead for half-measures that will do little to counter the effects of stringent economic sanctions imposed on the Taliban or to improve the material well-being of the Afghan people.
Sanctions in Context
Contrary to the narrative of U.S. politicians and journalists, the August withdrawal of U.S. and NATO forces from Afghanistan did not mark the end of the United States’ so-called “forever war” but rather a shift in U.S. policy—from direct military intervention and occupation to one based on economic sanctions and indirect political subversion. Although the tactics changed, the goal is the same: The accumulation of wealth and power through class warfare against the Afghan people.
Just days after Kabul fell to the Taliban on August 15, Washington took measures to turn off the flow of funds to the new government and paralyze the Afghan banking system. The Treasury Department quickly issued a freeze order on nearly $9.5 billion of the Afghan Central Bank’s assets held in U.S. financial institutions, including the New York Federal Reserve Bank.
Although the Taliban was entitled to receive more than $460 million from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) in currency reserves known as Special Drawing Rights, or SDRs, the U.S. directed the IMF to block those funds as well.
President Biden has also ensured that $1.3 billion of Afghan funds held in international accounts remain frozen, including funds denominated in euros and British pounds and those held by the Swiss-based Bank for International Sanctions.
Notably, these punitive measures are in addition to the pre-existing economic sanctions that the U.S. has imposed on the Taliban, which began in 1999 under President Bill Clinton and which President George W. Bush ramped up following the 9/11 attack as part of the U.S.’s newly created counterterrorism sanctions program, known as the Specially Designated Global Terrorist list. The Obama and Trump administrations followed suit by imposing over 100 and 23 sanction orders, respectively, against Taliban-related targets.
Despite purported exemptions for humanitarian aid, the lack of clarity under U.S. law deters financial institutions from processing such transactions out of fear of violating U.S. sanctions—which not only freeze all assets associated with the Taliban; they subject any individual or entity that conducts a transaction involving the Taliban to criminal liability. The ubiquity of U.S. dollars and financial institutions in international commerce provides the U.S. with virtually globaljurisdiction.
Children in Afghanistan in 2020 / credit: UNICEF Afghanistan/Omid Fazel
Horrific Consequences of Sanctions
Decades of U.S. occupation and war have left Afghanistan a poor country dependent on external sources to fund public spending. No longer able to rely on brute military and political force to protect the interests of Western capital in Afghanistan, U.S. strategists understand that seizing the central bank’s money and cutting all international aid gives Washington powerful leverage against the Taliban, all while inflicting maximum pain on the Afghan people, who continue to be relegated to “starving pawns in big power games.”
The horrific and totally foreseeable consequences of these sanctions have, so far, been well documented by international humanitarian organizations, even if they are reluctant to depict the United States as culpable.
On October 25, the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization and World Food Program published a report urging humanitarian assistance, warning that Afghanistan is on a “countdown to catastrophe.” According to the report, more than 50% of Afghans will face “crisis” or “emergency” levels of acute food insecurity, including over 3 million children under the age of five.
On November 22, the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) published a report warning that Afghanistan’s financial and bank payment systems are “in disarray” and on the verge of collapse. The UNDP report, citing the IMF, predicts the Afghan economy could contract by 30% for 2021-2022.
On December 6, the International Crisis Group issued a more scathing report, warning that the “hunger and destitution” caused by “economic strangulation,” imposed by the West in response to the Taliban takeover, could “kill more Afghans than all the bombs and bullets of the past two decades.”
In other words, U.S. policy of intentionally starving the Afghan people through economic sanctions on Afghanistan is going as planned. As manypredicted, blocking funds from the Taliban and curtailing foreign aid and assistance would lead to a rapid financial meltdown and exacerbate the ongoing famine plaguing Afghanistan.
U.S. Special Representative for Afghanistan Reconciliation Zalmay Khalilzad (left) meets on November 21, 2020, with a Taliban delegation in Doha, Qatar / credit: U.S. State Department
U.S. Retaliates for Taliban’s Military Success
Despite the Taliban’s success in forcing the U.S. government to the negotiating table in Doha and then ousting the U.S. military from Afghanistan, or rather, because of that success, Washington has made it clear that it has no plans to respect Afghanistan’s sovereignty. Indeed, the Biden administration’s response to pleas that the asset freeze be lifted demonstrates the hypocrisy and callousness of U.S. foreign policy.
On November 17, as reported by Tolo News, Mawlawi Amir Khan Muttaqi, Acting Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, sent a letter to the U.S. Congress calling for the return of Afghan assets, correctly noting that “the fundamental challenge of our people is financial security, and the roots of this concern lead back to the freezing of assets of our people by the American government.”
The U.S. Special Representative for Afghanistan, Thomas West, rejected the Taliban’s request in a series of revealing tweets. West’s remarks effectively admitted that the dire situation pre-dates the Taliban takeover and confirmed that the United States was preventing “critical” international aid from reaching Afghanistan as retribution for the Taliban’s military success, while recognizing that Afghanistan’s “economy [is] enormously dependent on aid, including for basic services.”
Further, in a fashion typical of bourgeois idealism, which values words and appearances over substance and material reality, West condescendingly lectured the Taliban that “[l]egitmacy and support must be earned” and confirmed that the United States would consider lifting the murderous sanctions if the Taliban only learned to “respect the rights of minorities, women and girls.”
The irony of Washington’s position of respecting humanitarian rights by denying humanitarian aid was not lost on Muttaqi, who, in response to West’s tweets, questioned the tortured logic: “The U.S. froze our assets and then told us that it will provide us humanitarian aid. What does it mean?” Muttaqi reiterated the demand to release Afghanistan’s assets: “The assets should be freed immediately. The Americans don’t have any military front with us now. What is the reason for freezing the assets? The assets don’t belong to the Mujahideen (Islamic Emirate) but to the people of Afghanistan.”
In tacit acknowledgment that the state needs legitimacy to stabilize its rule, the U.S.-driven humanitarian crisis has prompted members of Congress to ask the Biden administration to reconsider certain aspects of its sanctions policy in light of the dire warnings issued by the UNDP and World Food Program.
On December 15, a bipartisan group of 39 lawmakers wrote a letter to the State and Treasury departments calling on the Biden administration to “allow international financial institutions to inject the necessary economic capital into Afghanistan while avoiding the transfer of money to the Taliban-led government” and designate a “private Afghan or third-country bank” as a central bank. The lawmakers also recommended, among other things, the release of the $9.5 billion of Afghan assets—but only if sent “to an appropriate United Nations agency” and only if used “to pay teacher salaries and provide meals to children in schools, so long as girls can continue to attend.”
On December 20, a group of 46 lawmakers led by House progressives wrote a similar letter to President Biden, explicitly linking the “U.S. confiscation of $9.4 billion” of Afghan assets to “contributing to soaring inflation” and “plunging the country…deeper into economic and humanitarian crisis.” Although the House progressives struck a harsher tone, they made the same requests as the December 19 letter, urging President Biden to allow Afghanistan’s central bank to access its reserves, consistent with proposals by “[c]urrent and former Afghan central bank officials appointed by the U.S.-supported government” and supported by “private sector associations such as the Afghan Chamber of Commerce and Investment and the Afghanistan Banks Association.”
This congressional pushback, tepid as it is, also reflects an inherent tension in the U.S. use of sanctions: While economic warfare is a necessary tool of U.S. foreign policy, sanctions are not always good for business in the short term. Afghanistan had been a source of wealth for the imperialist bourgeoise for the past two decades, and now certain sectors of the capitalist class apparently want back in.
Still, the Biden administration has shown no sign of easing the sanctions. In fact, the Biden administration is considering permanently depriving the Afghan people of the funds needed to combat the current humanitarian crisis, by transferring those funds instead to U.S. plaintiffs with outstanding default judgments against the Taliban. That is what two groups of judgment creditors have argued to U.S. federal judges. (Those cases are captioned Havlish et al. v. Bin-Laden et al., No. 03 Civ. 9848, and Doe v. The Taliban et al., No. 20 Misc. 740, and are pending in the Southern District of New York before Judges Daniels and Failla, respectively.)
Although its formal statement is not due until January 18, the Biden administration seems willing to go along with the plan—the only apparent obstacle is how to seize the Afghan funds without recognizing the Taliban as the legitimate Afghan government. Press Secretary Jen Psaki has twicecited that ongoing litigation as the primary reason for maintaining the asset freeze.
Following its imperial playbook, the U.S. sanctions imposed on Afghanistan are aimed at destabilizing Afghan civil society, making daily life so unbearable that the Afghan people eventually blame the Taliban for their misery, providing the United States and its proxies an opening to enact regime change.
Similar to sanctions imposed on Venezuela, Cuba, Iran, Zimbabwe, Eritrea, Nicaragua, and many others, the sanctions on Afghanistan are having their intended effect, which is to deprive the masses of essential goods and services as punishment whenever a government refuses to surrender its nation’s resources and sovereignty to the demands of U.S. and European capital.
Now more than ever, those in the imperial core must demand the end of U.S.-imposed sanctions against the Afghan people and oppressed people all over the world.
Zachary Scott is an attorney, activist, and member of Black Alliance for Peace Solidarity Network and the Sanctions Kill coalition. He can be reached at [email protected].
More than 3,000 Accredited Social Health Activists (ASHAs) protested in the city of Kolhapur in India’s Maharashtra state on October 26 after several of their demands, such as the legal status of full-time workers, better working conditions, adequate pay, medical insurance, and others, weren’t met / credit: Sanket Jain
Prajakta Khade walked into a public health center daily for three months in early 2021, without ever receiving medical care. The healthcare worker’s 26 notebooks—containing more than 3,000 pages of community health records—point to why she couldn’t seek treatment for her ailments. She was simply too busy.
In March 2020, India’s health ministry tasked 1 million Accredited Social Health Activists (ASHAs) like Khade with COVID-19 duty in rural areas. This, in a country where 65 percent of its 1.38 billion people live outside cities. Suddenly, ASHAs’ workload increased exponentially. Yet, they remain underpaid and now suffer stress-related chronic ailments.
“If a positive case was found in the area, we had to visit the patient, contact trace, arrange medical facilities, measure their oxygen and temperature levels daily, and ensure they complete quarantine,” Khade explained about the added duties to treat the infectious respiratory disease. But all Khade was given to do her job in the assigned area in India’s Maharashtra state was a single N95 mask and 200 milliliters of sanitizer.
ASHAs, an all-women healthcare cadre, remain the foot soldiers of India’s rural healthcare. One worker is appointed for every 1,000 citizens under India’s 2005 National Rural Health Mission. ASHAs are responsible for more than 70 tasks, including providing first-contact healthcare, counsel regarding birth preparedness, and pre- and post-natal care. Plus, they help the population access public healthcare and ensure universal immunization, among other things.
The World Health Organization announced a pandemic in March 2020. But in many countries, lack of adequate healthcare and no social safety nets amid lockdowns wrecked the lives of ordinary people. In India, for example, an additional 150 million to 199 million people are expected to enter poverty in 2021 and 2022.
Chronic Illnesses Spike
One day about a year ago, while surveying people in her village of Vhannur in India’s Maharashtra state, 40-year-old Khade felt dizzy. But she couldn’t take a break. “At one point, my face was swollen, and I could barely see anything.” It turned out her blood pressure level had surged to 252/180 mmHg (millimeter of Mercury), much higher than the standard limit of 120/80. That is how she got diagnosed with hypertension.
However, a month’s worth of medications didn’t help because she continued to experience stress as her workload increased. Senior officials at the health center had early on issued an order to submit patient records daily by noon.
ASHAs, who aren’t considered full-time workers, receive performance-based incentives paid on the number of tasks completed. “For COVID duty, the government decided our worth as merely 33 Indian Rupees per day (43 U.S. cents),” she said. “We received this amount only for three months in the past two years.”
Moreover, during the peak of COVID-19 cases in 2021, salaries for Maharashtra’s ASHAs were delayed by five months, according to Khade. Netradipa Patil, an ASHA from Maharashtra’s Kolhapur district and leader of a union that represents more than 3,000 ASHAs, confirmed this.
One day last year, Khade’s supervisor asked for a list of hypertension and diabetes patients from her village of about 1,200 people—at 10 o’clock at night.
“How could I survey the entire community in the night?” she asked.
Often, such orders meant skipping lunch and staying hungry for 11 hours at a stretch. ASHAs worked four hours prior to the pandemic. Now, 12-hour days are normal.
When medications didn’t help, Khade consulted two private doctors. “After six months of hassle, the doctor doubled my dose to 50 milligrams.” Khade lost over 10 kilograms (22 pounds) of weight and was placed on medications to address anxiety. Even today, she suffers from fatigue.
“I was never this weak,” she asserted.
Chronic diseases among ASHAs are rising rapidly because of the workload, says Patil. “We protect the entire community, but there’s no one to look after our health.” ASHAs in Maharashtra, she says, average a monthly income of Rs 3,500 to 5,000 ($45 to $66 USD).
This reporter spoke to ASHAs’ senior officials from Maharashtra’s Kagal block. (In India, a cluster of villages form a block and several blocks form a district. Vhannur village is in the Kagal block of Maharashtra’s Kolhapur district.) Senior officials said they are not responsible for ASHAs’ deteriorating mental and physical health, and pointed to the Indian government’s order to submit data. The officials didn’t want to be named. Instead, they relayed that they also are overworked.
“ASHAs do the majority of the health department’s work, and they are massively underpaid for their duty,” said Dr. Jessica Andrews, a medical officer at Kolhapur’s Shiroli Primary Health Center. She has been handling mental health cases. “Without them, the health system will collapse.”
‘Not Treated As Humans’
Several ASHAs across India have worked for over a year without a break. One of them is Pushpavati Sutar, 46, diagnosed with hypotension (low blood pressure) and diabetes within seven months of COVID-19 duty in November 2020. Like Khade, she experienced constant spells of dizziness.
“Often, there was fake news of community COVID transmission in my area,” she said.
Every day, senior officials at the health center hounded her to find more details about such instances.
An ASHA for 13 years, she’s never made an error in her surveys and was sure of no community transmission. “After investigating, I found that the accused was COVID negative. Instead, two of his relatives were positive.”
She had to clear such misconceptions almost every day, answer senior officials’ questions, collect records and perform her regular duty. “For several days, I couldn’t sleep,” she remembered.
Further, fearing COVID-19 guidelines and quarantine rules, community members began demanding ASHAs hide COVID-19 cases. “People even accused us of spreading COVID as we would survey the entire village,” Sutar recounted. Moreover, she said senior officials asked ASHAs to visit the families of COVID-19 patients—instead of allowing data collection over the phone—putting them at risk of infection.
“At several places, there have been instances of community violence, where ASHAs were beaten up,” said Patil, who has filed legal complaints on behalf of the assaulted workers and is helping them mentally recover.
Kolhapur’s ASHA union has written to several government authorities, including Maharashtra’s chief minister and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, highlighting the mental toll of COVID-19 duty. Still, none of their letters have garnered a helpful response.
“Forget adequate pay,” said Khade, as she continued surveying, juggling between completing her task and trying to keep her mind at ease. “We are not even treated as humans.”
ASHA Rehana Mujawar, of Maharashtra’s Tardal village, shows COVID-19 records she is required to fill out every day by visiting her community of more than 1,000 members / credit: Sanket JainASHA workers Rekha Dorugade and Mandakini Kodak trekking the Dhangarwada hill to complete their survey, a steep patch of 5 kilometers (3.1 miles) in Kolhapur’s Pernoli village / credit: Sanket JainAn ASHA worker took a selfie as part of their protest on July 21 in Maharashtra’s Kolhapur city / credit: Sanket JainASHA workers protest outside the district collector’s office in Kolhapur city with placards mentioning their workload. In the center, wearing a red saree, is ASHA union leader Netradipa Patil, who has been fighting for better working conditions for over a decade / credit: Sanket JainASHAs across India have been protesting for better pay, full-time worker status and proper working conditions / credit: Sanket JainIndia has 810 district hospitals for 833 million rural people. In mountainous regions like Kolhapur’s Masai Pathar, ASHAs often trek, risking their lives to save pregnant women and make healthcare facilities accessible / credit: Sanket JainAn ASHA worker explains breastfeeding and taking care of a newborn to a community woman in Maharashtra’s Khutwad village / credit: Sanket JainIn Kolhapur’s Khutwad village, ASHA Maya Patil informs a migrant sugarcane cutter, whose relative gave birth to a child a month prior, about post-natal care and how they can access public healthcare facilities / credit: Sanket JainTo inspire fellow ASHAs, Netradipa Patil shares a WhatsApp status quoting lyricist and poet Gulzar: “Milta To Bahut Kuch Hai Is Zindagi Me, Bas Ham Ginti Usi Ki Karte Hain, Jo Hasil Na Ho Saka. (We get many things in life, but we only count the things we couldn’t achieve) / credit: Sanket JainASHAs also distribute iron, calcium, and vitamin tablets, among others, to community women and children every month. “For distributing these medicines, we’re merely paid Rs 100 ($1.30 USD),” says ASHA Netradipa Patil / credit: Sanket JainASHA Prajakta Khade collected the sputum of a patient she suspects to be a tuberculosis patient / credit: Sanket Jain“Be it any health record, the health department relies on our surveys and fieldwork,” says Khade, who has been an ASHA since 2009 / credit: Sanket JainWomen often share their health and mental issues with ASHA workers, as they have built a safe bond over the past decade / credit: Sanket JainAs part of the Health Ministry’s program of reducing non-communicable diseases, ASHAs across Maharashtra are tasked with surveying communities by asking them more than 60 questions. “We will merely be paid Rs 5 (6 U.S. cents) per form for collecting and filling in all the details,” says Khade / credit: Sanket JainA significant part of Khade’s time goes into filling out by hand medical records. “If any record is incomplete, our seniors immediately probe an inquiry, and even the pay is deducted,” she says / credit: Sanket JainSo far, Khade has spent over Rs 10000 ($131 USD) on doctors, medical tests, and medications, an equivalent of three months of her salary. “ASHAs don’t receive any health support system from the government, nor any medical insurance,” she says / credit: Sanket JainASHA Jayashree Khade from Kolhapur’s Vhannur village tested positive for COVID-19 in May 2021. “None of my seniors even once asked about my health. It was only the fellow ASHAs who helped me,” she says / credit: Sanket JainPrajakta Khade gives a plastic bottle to a community woman asking her to submit sputum for tuberculosis detection / credit: Sanket JainPushpavati Sutar, as part of postnatal visits, often counsels women on breastfeeding, seeks regular updates on the health of both the mother and the newborn, and provides the required medications / credit: Sanket JainAn ASHA worker filling out health records of a newborn in Kolhapur’s Shirol region, noting important details / credit: Sanket JainSutar distributes iron and folic acid tablets to her community members / credit: Sanket JainTo ensure community members take medications and supplements on a schedule, ASHAs often write instructions in the native language on the box / credit: Sanket JainSutar ignored her hypotension symptoms for several months and continued the survey because of the tremendous workload / credit: Sanket JainASHA workers always counsel community members on proper healthcare. Here, she is talking to a woman in Kolhapur’s Shirol region about early childhood health / credit: Sanket JainAs part of the health ministry’s Anemia Free India program, ASHAs are given a long notebook to maintain the records of 6- to 51-week-old children and 5- to 10-year-old children from their community. ASHAs regularly provide tablets to prevent anemia / credit: Sanket JainASHAs’ role doesn’t end with distributing medications. They answer questions people raise / credit: Sanket JainASHA Rani Koli, from Kolhapur’s flood-affected Bhendavade village, surveying her community after the July floods. “Even my house was ravaged by the 2019 and 2021 floods, but we keep working to make sure everyone remains safe,” she said / credit: Sanket JainASHA Kavita Patil talking to senior citizens in Kolhapur’s Bhendavade village to understand the mental toll of living through two floods / credit: Sanket JainASHA workers Netradipa Patil and Maya Patil surveying a community to learn more about how two floods and lockdowns affected the lives of rural community women / credit: Sanket Jain
Sanket Jain is an independent journalist based in the Kolhapur district of the western Indian state of Maharashtra. He was a 2019 People’s Archive of Rural India fellow, for which he documented vanishing art forms in the Indian countryside. He has written for Baffler, Progressive Magazine, Counterpunch, Byline Times, The National, Popula, Media Co-op, Indian Express and several other publications.
Palestine solidarity protest on the 73rd anniversary of the Nakba took place in Brooklyn, N.Y., May 15, 2021 / credit: Within Our Lifetime/United for Palestine
From the outset, some clarification regarding the language used to depict the ongoing violence in occupied Palestine, and also throughout Israel. This is not a ‘conflict’. Neither is it a ‘dispute’ nor ‘sectarian violence’ nor even a war in the traditional sense.
It is not a conflict, because Israel is an occupying power and the Palestinian people are an occupied nation. It is not a dispute, because freedom, justice and human rights cannot be treated as if a mere political disagreement. The Palestinian people’s inalienable rights are enshrined in international and humanitarian law and the illegality of Israeli violations of human rights in Palestine is recognized by the United Nations itself.
If it is a war, then it is a unilateral Israeli war, which is met with humble, but real and determined Palestinian resistance.
Actually, it is a Palestinian uprising, an Intifada unprecedented in the history of the Palestinian struggle, both in its nature and outreach.
For the first time in many years, we see the Palestinian people united, from Jerusalem Al Quds, to Gaza, to the West Bank and, even more critically, to the Palestinian communities, towns and villages inside historic Palestine – today’s Israel.
This unity matters the most, is far more consequential than some agreement between Palestinian factions. It eclipses Fatah and Hamas and all the rest, because without a united people there can be no meaningful resistance, no vision for liberation, no struggle for justice to be won.
Right-wing Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu could never have anticipated that a routine act of ethnic cleansing in East Jerusalem’s neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah could lead to a Palestinian uprising, uniting all sectors of Palestinian society in an unprecedented show of unity.
The Palestinian people have decided to move past all the political divisions and the factional squabbles. Instead, they are coining new terminologies, centered on resistance, liberation and international solidarity. Consequently, they are challenging factionalism, along with any attempt at making Israeli occupation and apartheid normal. Equally important, a strong Palestinian voice is now piercing through the international silence, compelling the world to hear a single chant for freedom.
The leaders of this new movement are Palestinian youth who have been denied participation in any form of democratic representation, who are constantly marginalized and oppressed by their own leadership and by the relentless Israeli military occupation. They were born into a world of exile, destitution and apartheid, led to believe that they are inferior, of a lesser race. Their right to self-determination and every other right were postponed indefinitely. They grew up helplessly watching their homes being demolished, their land being robbed and their parents being humiliated.
Finally, they are rising.
Without prior coordination and with no political manifesto, this new Palestinian generation is now making its voice heard, sending an unmistakable, resounding message to Israel and its right-wing chauvinistic society, that the Palestinian people are not passive victims; that the ethnic cleansing of Sheikh Jarrah and the rest of occupied East Jerusalem, the protracted siege on Gaza, the ongoing military occupation, the construction of illegal Jewish settlements, the racism and the apartheid will no longer go unnoticed; though tired, poor, dispossessed, besieged and abandoned, Palestinians will continue to safeguard their own rights, their sacred places and the very sanctity of their own people.
Yes, the ongoing violence was instigated by Israeli provocations in the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood in East Jerusalem. However, the story was never about the ethnic cleansing of Sheikh Jarrah alone. The beleaguered neighborhood is but a microcosm of the larger Palestinian struggle.
Netanyahu may have hoped to use Sheikh Jarrah as a way of mobilizing his right-wing constituency around him, intending to form an emergency government or increasing his chances of winning yet a fifth election. His rash behavior, initially compelled by entirely selfish reasons, has ignited a popular rebellion among Palestinians, exposing Israel for the violent, racist and apartheid state that it is and always has been.
Palestinian unity and popular resistance have proven successful in other ways, too. Never before have we seen this groundswell of support for Palestinian freedom, not only from millions of ordinary individuals across the globe, but also from celebrities – movie stars, footballers, mainstream intellectuals and political activists, even models and social media influencers. The hashtags #SaveSheikhJarrah and #FreePalestine, among numerous others, are now interlinked and have been trending on all social media platforms for weeks. Israel’s constant attempts at presenting itself as a perpetual victim of some imaginary horde of Arabs and Muslims are no longer paying dividends. The world can finally see, read and hear of Palestine’s tragic reality and the need to bring this tragedy to an immediate end.
None of this would be possible were it not for the fact that all Palestinians have legitimate reasons and are speaking in unison. In their spontaneous reaction and genuine, communal solidarity, all Palestinians are united, from Sheikh Jarrah, to all of Jerusalem, to Gaza, Nablus, Ramallah, Al-Bireh and even Palestinian towns inside Israel – Al-Lud, Umm Al-Fahm, Kufr Qana and elsewhere. In Palestine’s new popular revolution, factions, geography and any political division are irrelevant. Religion is not a source of divisiveness but of spiritual and national unity.
The ongoing Israeli atrocities in Gaza are continuing, with a mounting death toll. This devastation will continue for as long as the world treats the devastating siege of the impoverished, tiny Strip as if irrelevant. People in Gaza were dying long before the Israeli airstrikes began blowing up their homes and neighborhoods. They were dying from the lack of medicine, polluted water, the lack of electricity and the dilapidated infrastructure.
We must save Sheikh Jarrah, but we must also save Gaza; we must demand an end to the Israeli military occupation of Palestine and, with it, the system of racial discrimination and apartheid. International human rights groups are now precise and decisive in their depiction of this racist regime, with Human Rights Watch – and Israel’s own rights group, B’tselem, joining the call for the dismantlement of apartheid in all of Palestine.
Speak up. Speak out. The Palestinians have risen. It is time to rally behind them.
Ramzy Baroud is a journalist and the Editor of The Palestine Chronicle. He is the author of five books. His latest is These Chains Will Be Broken: Palestinian Stories of Struggle and Defiance in Israeli Prisons (Clarity Press). Dr. Baroud is a Non-resident Senior Research Fellow at the Center for Islam and Global Affairs (CIGA) and also at the Afro-Middle East Center (AMEC). His website is ramzybaroud.net