Book Review - Absurdities of life in occupied Palestine

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This book review for "Sharon and my Mother-in-Law: Ramallah Diaries" has inspired me to add this to my reading list. The review itself is quite well-written and informative. It is worth reading just for the pointers to other books, documentaries on the same topic.


Sharon and my Mother-in-Law: Ramallah Diaries,
by Suad Amiry, London: Granta Books, pp. 194, 2006, PB, £7.99.
Recently, I had the privilege of seeing a documentary called ‘A Palestinian Journey’ made by the Palestinian film maker, Osama Qashoo. This powerful and evocative film about Palestinian farmers and their determination to protect their farm land and olive trees from Israeli bulldozers left us all spellbound. We found the courage, bravery and resilience of the Palestinian farmers and their families to be stupendous and truly inspirational. Having read widely on Middle Eastern history and culture, I was already familiar with the history of Palestine and its people but I could see how the non-Muslims in the audience were also moved by the plight of the Palestinian farmers and their families in facing Israeli inhumanity. It is often said that challenging circumstances bring out the best in us and that is so true in the case of the Palestinian people. Despite suffering persecution, torture and exile from their beloved Palestine for more than a half a century, the indomitable Palestinian people have never wavered in their determination to protect their lives and livelihood from the might of the Israeli bulldozers.
About a decade or so ago, I read Geoffrey Furlonges’s Palestine is My Country: The Story of Musa Alami (London, 1969). This book represented one of the very first attempts to analyse the plight and predicament of Palestine through the life of one of its great champions. Since then, Palestinian writers, intellectuals and poets like Mahmoud Darwish, Edward W Said, Ghada Karmi and Mourid Barghouti have produced some of the best memoirs, biographies and poetry I have read.
Suad Amiry’s book, under review, is yet another interesting memoir by a Palestinian writer. A founder and director of the ‘Riwaq Centre for Architectural Conservation’ in Ramallah, Amiry grew up between Amman, Damascus, Beirut and Cairo and studied architecture in Beirut, Michigan and Edinburgh before settling in Ramallah. This book consists of her diaries kept between 1981 to 1994, focusing on events leading up to the Israeli invasion of Ramallah in March 2002, and her ninety-two year-old mother-in-law coming to live with her, hence the title of the book.
According to Amiry, “The diaries….begin with my journey away from my mother and Amman, the city where I grew up and had lived most of my life till then, to Ramallah, a town under Israeli occupation. The trip, which was meant to be for six months turned out to be a life long journey. In Ramallah, I lived, worked, fell in love, married and acquired a mother-in-law.”
If Ariel Sharon was a merciless pursuer of the Palestinian resistance movement, then Marie Jabaji, Amiry’s ninety-two year-old mother-in-law, must be considered the epitome of Palestinian determination and resilience. “The diaries – which include”, says Amiry, “accounts of my everyday life under the occupation and my frequent encounters with the Israeli ‘Civil Administration’ and soldiers – took place during major political events that engulfed the Palestinians in the territories during the last decade and half: the 1982 Israeli invasion of Lebanon; the 1987-93 Palestinian Uprising – referred to as the First Intifada; the first Gulf war in 1991; the period of relative quiet ushered by the Oslo Peace Accords (1993); the eruption of the second uprising, Intifada, in September 2000; and finally the construction of the Separation Wall, beginning in 2003.”
Amiry’s diaries provide a vivid insight into the absurdities of daily life lived by the Palestinian people under Israeli occupation. Despite being an architect by training, Amiry has an eye of a social scientist and the insight of a behaviour psychologist. Her observations of Israeli army’s ruthless behaviour with Palestinian people, coupled with her intimate understanding of the suffering and agony of her people, makes this book not only a fascinating read but also a powerful indictment against the world community, especially the United States and Britain for our failure to resolve this long-standing conflict. Indeed, the absurdity of Israeli political, economic and military policies against the Palestinian people is best explained by the fact that the Israeli authorities could not find gas masks for Amiry and her family during the first Gulf War, but they insisted she obtained a Jerusalem Passport for her dog at a time when the Palestinian people could not obtain one for themselves. If “living under a curfew for thirty-six days is not ridiculous, not giving Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza gas masks is not ridiculous, giving the Arabs in Israel out-of-date gas masks is not ridiculous, the absolute madness and hysteria about Saddam’s chemical and nuclear heads are not ridiculous, bringing your mother-in-law and …ninety-year-old mother to live with [you] in sealed rooms day and night is not ridiculous…,” then what is ridiculous?
It seems at the time the Israeli Government was determined to implement Ariel Sharon’s policy, spelled out most unambiguously by him back in 1973, when he said, “We’ll make a pastrami sandwich of them. We’ll insert a strip of Jewish settlements in between the Palestinians, and then another strip of Jewish settlements right across the West Bank, so that in 25 years, neither the United Nations, nor the USA, nobody, will be able to tear it apart.”
Seeking to steer a path between the harshness of Israeli occupation and Palestinian pessimism and dejection, Amiry’s diaries highlight the need for greater human understanding and pragmatism in a region scarred by decades of persecution, bloodshed and killing.
Being neither a Palestinian nor an Arab, to me, the tragedy of Palestine is not only a tragedy for the Palestinian people, it is also a tragedy for the Jewish people; indeed, the suffering of the Palestinian people represents the failure of human imagination and conscience on a colossal scale. We, in the West, especially Britain and the United States helped to create this conflict in the first place but our failure to help the people of Palestine to reclaim their honour and dignity will no doubt go down in the annals of history as one of our darkest periods.
This powerful and moving book is a required reading for both Jews and Palestinians alike, and especially for the neo-cons in both Bush and Blair’s administrations.

Muhammad Khan

URL: http://www.muslimnews.co.uk/paper/index.php?article=2686