La Via Campesina Delegation Visited Palestine in December 2024: Notes from their Daily Diaries [Part – 9]
From December 8 to 18, 2024, a delegation of nine peasant-farmers traveled to Palestine, in the West Bank. All their organizations are part of the international peasant movement La Via Campesina, which also includes the Palestinian organization UAWC (Union of Agricultural Work Committees) as a member. For many years, La Via Campesina has stood in solidarity with Palestinian peasants in their struggle against colonization, land and water grabs, and the numerous human rights violations they endure. However, since 2023, the scale of massacres in Gaza and the openly genocidal intentions of the far-right Israeli government have led La Via Campesina to intensify its solidarity work with Palestinian farmers. Organizing a delegation visit to the West Bank thus gradually became an imperative. Due to the obstacles posed by the Israeli state for accessing Palestinian territories, all delegates were European, hailing from the Basque Country, Galicia, Italy, Portugal, Ireland, and France. We, Fanny and Morgan, are both small-scale farmers, based in Ardèche and Brittany, and members of the Confédération Paysanne. The following texts are our journal from these ten days, which profoundly changed our lives and worldview. [Access all the notes here].
Day 10 – Ramallah and departure
Morgan
Tuesday, 17th December, is the day of goodbyes. Kelo, Dora, Malu, Ollie, Pier and Eliza are leaving this morning so they can reach the border with Jordan before the checkpoint closes at 4.00pm. We have our last breakfast together. We feel sad. It’s so strange: most of us did not know each other ten days ago, but now it feels like being separated from childhood friends. We have had such impactful experiences together! We have all been profoundly transformed by our stay in Palestine.
Each of us will return to their farm and their family. The prospect of plunging headlong into the “magic of Christmas” and its crazy consumerism is something we rather dread. We have exchanged contact details and some of us are already making plans to go and visit others.
Mustafa arrives: he is accompanying the friends to the border in his minibus. Fanny, Carlos and I wave from up in the apartment. And then they are gone.
We tidy the apartment a bit and finish packing. Our flights are very early tomorrow morning from Tel Aviv Airport and we still have a day ahead of us. However, we need to rest because it will be a long and wearing night.
Around 11am we walk to the UAWC offices. We already know the streets of Ramallah quite well. When we arrive, the entire team is ready to have brunch with us. We squeeze into the small kitchen to enjoy a fabulous buffet of guacamole, omelette, zaatar, houmous, pitta bread, and olive oil. It is like a big family. We tease each other playfully. After eating, Tamam, Moayyad, and Aghsan go to have a coffee and a cigarette on a tiny veranda next to the kitchen. We make eye contact with each other, and we think they are magnificent.
Then we go to the meeting room for a last debriefing. We all agree that the trip and the delegation have been a great success. We talk about the future. Suddenly, Fuad’s mood darkens. The attacks against Palestinian social movements have been going on for a long time, but over recent years they have worsened. In particular, Fuad fears that all the Palestinian civil society organisations will soon be deprived of bank accounts, to cut off any possible funding. He adds, “With Trump being elected, what will become of us? Will the Israelis do the same thing in the West Bank that they are doing in Gaza? You have seen that they want to get rid of us.” Fuad explains that UAWC has links with Jewish movements and personalities around the world, but never with “left-wing Zionists” in Israel. “Some Israelis say they are opposed to the colonisation in the West Bank and the ‘excesses’ of the Israeli army, but in the end, as soon as you talk about equality for everyone of whatever religion, as soon as you talk about the right to return for refugees of the Nakba, as soon as you talk about a real Palestinian state with all attributes of sovereignty, there is nobody left.”
I think we understand better now what “Palestine” means. It is not a nation state in ethnic terms, not a country for a separate group. That’s not it. Palestine is a country that is open to mixing and diversity, welcoming to people whatever the colour of their skin, the colour of their eyes, or their religion. A country for the people who live there, who care for the land, the mountains, and the rivers.
In contrast, they are against walls, checkpoints, and barbed wire. Apartheid means separation in Afrikaans. Each community is isolated from others, there is no mixing, and no meeting.
Fuad explains that he is perplexed at the accusations of anti-Semitism levelled against Palestinians and their supporters. I tell him that during our stay in Palestine, we have not heard a word said against the Jews, but that unfortunately, in my region, Brittany, you hear this quite often, along with attacks on Arabs, Roma, and black people. Right from the start, the problem always lay with us, the Europeans. The problem lies in racist, colonial ideology. It lies in the idea that we are superior and that we can decide how to divide up the world. It lies in an obstinate refusal to face up to the crimes committed and the need for reparations. Then the “unconditional support” of our states for the state of Israel perpetuates this model. It is as if we could offload our responsibility for the crime of the Shoah onto Palestinians, and they were now the guilty party, while we as Europeans can launder our reputation by supporting Israel.
Fanny and I tell Fuad that over recent months, it has given us some hope to see all the mobilisations of young people against the genocide in Gaza, and particularly to see that many Jewish people are participating very actively in this movement, refusing to allow condemnation of anti-Semitism to be instrumentalised against the Palestinian resistance. We show him the website of the Union Juive Française pour la Paix (UJFP). Aghsan adds, “Yes, in the Unites States it is the same with Jewish Voices for Peace.” I tell him about my meeting in February 2024 with anti-Zionist Jewish feminists in London, who met every Friday evening to picket the home of the Israeli ambassador to the United Kingdom. Fuad tells us of his desire to see a global movement rise up to defend the values of humanity and human dignity.
The time to say goodbye has arrived. We give each other hugs. It is difficult not to shed a tear. But we also joke that “The next time we come, Palestine will be free and we will visit Jerusalem together!”
Carlos, Fanny, and I go back to the apartment. We must try to sleep a few hours before we set off at 10pm. We are not entirely reassured: many of our friends who have come to Palestine have told me that getting through Israeli customs was more difficult on the way out than on the way in. We prepare ourselves for a difficult situation. After a light dinner, we close our bags and take a last look around. A taxi is waiting to take us to the airport. It is night as we leave Ramallah.
The taxi driver is a Palestinian resident of Jerusalem, so he can have a taxi with yellow number plates, allowing him to enter Israeli territory. I sit at the front, and Fanny and Carlos sit at the back. The driver is rather depressed because the day before, the Israeli authorities seized his other vehicle under a false pretext. He does not talk much. The Qalandia checkpoint is closed. He sighs, “So that’s an extra 30 minutes.” He has to take a detour. We approach another checkpoint. The driver tells us to have our passports ready. Carlos suddenly realises that he has left his in a bag that is in the boot of the car. He says, “No problem – I’ll just get out to get it.” The driver says, “Don’t move. You stay in the taxi. If you get out they might take you down.” He slows down, and the soldiers signal for him to stop the vehicle. “Keep quiet”, says the driver. He lowers his window. The soldier asks for his papers and looks at me. He asks for my passport and examines it closely. He returns it and gestures for us to drive on. “He didn’t see you!”, whispers the driver. The night was getting dark, and the rear windows of the taxi were tinted; Carlos and Fanny went unnoticed.
We reach the airport before midnight. Fanny and I have a flight at 5am, then Carlos has a flight a bit later. It will be a long wait.
Fanny
At Tel Aviv Airport, we feel uneasy. We have the distinct impression that we are not on the right side of the border. As well as feeling sad to have left our friends, we feel rather out of place.
At the first checkpoint before checking in our bags, the staff are cold and aggressive. I am interrogated by a very unpleasant man who asks a string of questions, and I hardly have time to answer in my bad English. I feel my heart beating, and he does everything he can to ratchet up the pressure. He notices the Morocco stamp in my passport and asks “Why Morocco? Who did you go with? Do you have family and friends in Morocco? Was your travelling companion Moroccan? Etc.”, and I think “Emmanuel is not a very Moroccan name, is it?” I try to give answers that are as boring as possible, explaining that Morocco is cheap for French people, there is sun, sea, and ocean, and the food is good.
He finally puts a sticker on the back of my passport. It is white, with a bar code and lots of numbers. Morgan gets a smaller red one. Shit, we don’t have the same one, things have not got off to the best start…
We drop off our check-in bags, and we have got through the first stage. They were not searched, and they did not find our keffiyehs, our seeds from UAWC, and above all they did not find our journals full of notes. We move on to the next control.
An old man there, who speaks fluent French, turns over Morgan’s passport to look at the sticker; it’s OK. He is surprised to see that I do not have the same one, and he tells me that I need to go to a room at the end, in a different place. He is the only person who has greeted us with a pleasant smile since we arrived at the airport, and this encourages me, even if the idea of being separated from Morgan worries me.
Fortunately, the young man who is there for the control seems relatively not offensive. I smile, and I am especially polite. He opens my hand luggage and looks at everything, every pocket, checking everything with a special tool. He notices the Guide Routard on “Israel-Palestine” that I bought to play the perfect tourist, but it doesn’t work. The reference to “Palestine” does not go down well. He also finds a package with the UAWC logo on it, with writing in Arabic. Damn! It fell through the cracks when I checked my things; too many pockets in my bag. I feel a little cold sweat running down my spine, and I force myself to smile. He calls his superior. He asks me lots of questions, and once again I play the role of a naive tourist, who is not too bright, and incapable of stringing together more than 3 words in English. She uses her phone to ask me questions in French. So I don’t even bother to give her spoken answers any more. I show her the hotel reservation in Jerusalem and other addresses that I have saved on my phone. Then she points at the UAWC package, and I tell her that it was a little present that they gave me at a small shop in Jerusalem. She flicks through the Guide Routard, I shrug my shoulders and smile dimly – she lets it pass. I am not going to try to justify the fact that the famous French tourist guide book dares to mention Palestine.
I continue to smile, I say thank you through gritted teeth, and walk away, trying to act like nothing has happened.
I find Morgan, and thankfully the hardest is behind us. Now we just have to wait. I see a man step off to one side, and take off his shoes to kneel in prayer. Instinctively, I look around us, as I am worried for him. I think he is courageous. After everything that I have seen and heard, I am on my guard, and Morgan and I cannot really relax. We are in a great hurry to take off and leave Israel. We soon meet up with Carlos, and everything went OK for him. Uff! We have a last little joke with the “crazy maker” for this week. We hug and wish him bon voyage.
Finally we embark.
However, we remain uneasy in the aeroplane. On her way back from the toilets, Morgan sees a young man behind us looking though models of guns on his phone. We wonder in silence, how many of the people in the aeroplane support the Netanyahu government, how many turn a blind eye to what is happening in Gaza and the West Bank… I tell myself, “Don’t generalise, don’t generalise”, but it is hard not to be suspicious.
I remember the words of Fuad during our last informal discussion. “You can imagine, we are animals to them, we are nothing more than animals.” The terrible words of the Israeli Defence Minister, Yoav Galant, talking about Palestinians, were even more chilling coming from the mouth of Fuad. I felt the pain in his eyes.
In addition to the claustrophobic feeling of being crammed in, unable to move my legs on this low-cost flight, I feel like I have been holding my breath for hours. I dream of running through the silence and beauty of my mountains, far from any people.
Finally we reach Prague. It is amazing how Morgan and I feel a weight lifted from us. We feel like everyone is pleasant and smiling. We enjoy our breakfast. We have a sudden feeling of freedom.
The flight to Paris goes very quickly and we feel better. We arrive in the grey and cold of Paris, but Anna, a friend of mine who lives in Seine-Saint-Denis, is waiting for us with open arms and her little yellow car. She is a ray of sunshine after this trying night. Anna will be the first to hear our impressions, and we have so much to say. She is also the good friend who will generously take the time to proofread this travel log.
She offers to drop Morgan at the headquarters of the Confédération Paysanne in Bagnolet. We decide that it is a good opportunity to say goodbye to Coralie, the staff member in charge of international questions, as it is her last day at the “Conf”, and she has followed our trip closely. And it is Wednesday, the day when all the national secretaries have a meeting. We will give them a surprise.
104 rue Robespierre in Bagnolet is a bit like our second home. We knock on the door and they are indeed surprised! With all the greetings, hugs, and tears in people’s eyes, I think that the comrades at the “Conf” have been worried about us, and we are relieved and happy to see them again. The “Conf” is really like a family.
It is funny to leave Morgan after all these days, emotions, discussions, and impressions that we have shared. However, we know that the travel log project, to bear witness to what we have seen in Palestine, will still bring us together, in writing at least. Then we have a lot of work to do with La Via Campesina, and we certainly won’t give up.
We both travel home.
It feels like I left an eternity ago, as it has been so dense and intense. I was afraid of coming back completely worn out, broken by what I would see, feeling desperate because of the situation. But, in fact, I have come back full of rage and love.
I have fallen in love. Literally.
I have fallen in love with Fuad, Sana, Aghsan, and Tamam.
I have fallen in love with Palestine.
Since 7th October, I have felt immense rage, which has sometimes engulfed me to the extent that I want to explode. Today, my rage becomes a fight. And it changes everything when the fight against an abomination also becomes a fight for the people that I love.
Poem by Rafeef Ziadah
Today, my body was a TV’d massacre.
Today, my body was a TV’d massacre that had to fit into sound-bites and word limits.
Today, my body was a TV’d massacre that had to fit into sound-bites and word limits filled enough with statistics to counter measured response.
And I perfected my English and I learned my UN resolutions.
But still, he asked me, Ms. Ziadah, don’t you think that everything would be resolved if you would just stop teaching so much hatred to your children?”
Pause.
I look inside of me for strength to be patient but patience is not at the tip of my tongue as the bombs drop over Gaza.
Patience has just escaped me. Pause. Smile.
We teach life, sir. Rafeef, remember to smile. Pause.
We teach life, sir.
We Palestinians teach life after they have occupied the last sky.
We teach life after they have built their settlements and apartheid walls, after the last skies.
We teach life, sir.
But today, my body was a TV’d massacre made to fit into sound-bites and word limits.
“And just give us a story, a human story.
You see, this is not political.
We just want to tell people about you and your people so give us a human story.
Don’t mention that word “apartheid” and “occupation”.
This is not political.
You have to help me as a journalist to help you tell your story which is not a political story.”
Today, my body was a TV’d massacre.
“How about you give us a story of a woman in Gaza who needs medication?
How about you?
Do you have enough bone-broken limbs to cover the sun?
Hand me over your dead and give me the list of their names in one thousand two hundred word limits.”
Today, my body was a TV’d massacre that had to fit into sound-bites and word limits and move those that are desensitized to terrorist blood.
But they felt sorry.
They felt sorry for the cattle over Gaza.
So, I give them UN resolutions and statistics and we condemn and we deplore and we reject.
And these are not two equal sides: occupier and occupied.
And a hundred dead, two hundred dead, and a thousand dead.
And between that, war crime and massacre, I vent out words and smile “not exotic”, “not terrorist”.
And I recount, I recount a hundred dead, a thousand dead.
Is anyone out there?
Will anyone listen?
I wish I could wail over their bodies.
I wish I could just run barefoot in every refugee camp and hold every child, cover their ears so they wouldn’t have to hear the sound of bombing for the rest of their life the way I do.
Today, my body was a TV’d massacre.
And let me just tell you, there’s nothing your UN resolutions have ever done about this.
And no sound-bite, no sound-bite I come up with, no matter how good my English gets, no sound-bite, no sound-bite, no sound-bite, no sound-bite will bring them back to life.
No sound-bite will fix this.
We teach life, sir.
We teach life, sir.
We Palestinians wake up every morning to teach the rest of the world life, sir.