ان شاء الله

ان شاء الله

Inshallah : ان شاء الله

inshallah [in shállə]

or insh'allah [in shállə]

interjection

if God wills: an expression meaning 'if God wills', used to suggest that something in the future is uncertain

[Mid-19th century. šā 'Allāh ]

It’s a simple word, and it’s used here a lot. I’d heard it before I arrived here, and then, and until perhaps recently, the real significance of its meaning hadn’t hit me. As the definition states, it is an expression of human fallibility in relation to higher power.

This, I’m afraid isn’t a post relating my conversion to any particular religion or even to any kind of deistic philosophy either, I’m afraid there is a lot more convincing left to be done to this particular religious sceptic before I’m ‘saved’ by anyone or anything.

The particular significance of the phrase ‘Inshallah’ for me isn’t that in regular everyday speech human beings will humble themselves before god; it is that human beings recognise their humility and insignificance in relation to anything at all.

In so much of our lives we promote ourselves as the masters of our own destiny, praising attributes such as determination, authority, commitment to a cause, and value our own limited perspective above all others. I’m particularly guilty of this, I always know more and understand better than any and all of my opponents, and when they disagree, the have never bested me it is simply that they’ve either cheated or are lucky ****ers.

A few recent events that have occurred here, and in some way small way affected me, have reminded me that perhaps the time to start being more humble is now.

These events were more along the lines of unwitting collisions: by simply going about my daily business, pursuing interesting research leads and participating in a life that was seemingly normal for me I have collided with extraordinary events that have jarred my sensibilities and have lead me to this place of quizzical bemusement.

The first of these minor ‘bumps’ was last Wednesday. I was returning to Birzeit Campus with a colleague from the PAS programme in order to interview an extremely interesting professor from the Birzeit Institute of Public Health (the facts of the interview are worthy of separate discussion, but as this is a primary source that I will use in my thesis, I’m afraid I’m going to have to protect my academic integrity and keep it confidential until after September 7th!). Upon walking through the university gates, we were suddenly confronted with the overwhelming sight of a demonstration by about 100 members of the student faction of Hamas. It was a peaceful demonstration protesting against the arrest of one of their members by the (Fatah dominated) Palestinian Police Force. There were about 2-300 other students milling around, some watching the protest, some simply making their way to class. Needless to say my college and I proceeded to make a swift exit from the scene, and headed off to do the interview.

It was after the interview (that lasted about an hour and a half) when we returned outside that a fuller story of the events became clear. After we had left, it transpired that students from the Fatah students’ faction became involved in an altercation with Hamas students. There were some scuffles and stones were thrown. The university authorities responded by ejected all that it could from campus, locking the gates and closing the university until after the weekend. No one was harmed in the altercation, and university business resumed as normal on Monday.

The second collision occurred this weekend. I went, this weekend to meet a group of other international visitors at an European-funded left leaning camp based in the town of Bili’n. One of the activities that we were to observe was the weekly protest by residents against the building of the wall which, like many places in the West Bank, strays beyond the internationally recognised boarder of the ‘green line’ on to Palestinian land. The protest was peaceful and many of the internationals participated, carrying banners and flags. They were also accompanied by a number of press crews. What was utterly absurd about this event was that the IDF soldiers (who were protected by full body armour, with armoured vehicles, behind a 25 foot electrified fence, which, in turn is proceeded by about 10 metres by a mass of barbed wire) were ready waiting for the demonstration, and had already fired several canisters of tear gas even before the protesters arrived.

I remained far from the demonstration at all times, standing, with others, on a mound about 300metres away from the fence. This did not protect us from tear gas which was launched from a bazooka by a soldier sitting in the back of a jeep.

Tear gas, from a distance, does what it says – It makes your eyes run uncontrollably and it also smells horrible. When it is fired at you and lands within 100 metres or so the effects are much more unpleasant. The gas prevents you from breathing, forces you to close your eyes, and makes your face sting like its being exposed to an open flame.

When the land the gas canisters take about 2-3 seconds to activate, when a small explosive charge opens the compression mechanism and distributes the gas into the surrounding atmosphere. This has two immediate effects on the environment:

1. When the earth is particularly dry, and when the canister lands in dead plant matter, the explosive charge may ignite the matter and causing an uncontained conflagration.
2. The effect of the short delay in the release of the gas provides its targets with a few seconds in which to run away intending to avoid the gas’s unpleasant effects. The knock-on-effect of this is that in running, the target elevates his or her breathing rate and inhales more oxygen.

Despite our distance from the primary demonstration, the soldiers fired gas at us. The fire from the previous canisters was already roaring, and when we saw the canister descending toward us, we inevitably began to run away in different directions. The wind, however, was not on my side that day, nor was the fact that more canisters were fired into the path I was running.

The experience was incredibly frightening, for the first time in a long time I honestly panicked for my life. I was running as hard as I could, but with every breath I felt my lungs fill with more gas. After about 100 or so meters I was still surrounded by gas, and felt like I couldn’t run anymore without air. I wanted to sink to my knees and tell them that I didn’t want to play anymore. For those few seconds of gasping, I can tell you now, that I have never ever been more afraid in my life.

Eventually, after what seemed like far too long, I got clear of the gas, and holding half an onion to my nose with the intention of countering the effect on my breathing, I started to spit out all the saliva in my mouth – trying desperately to clear the taste and smell of the gas. It took about another 10 minutes or so for me to gather my breath and to calm down before returning to the vantage point. By this time the fire had spread and had separated some of the protesters from the main group. Also the television crews had also come under fire and had retreated to a further distance.

One of the protestors we could see began to throw stones at the IDF (while under international law the permissibility of symbolic violence, with no realistic chance of causing serious injury or death – such as stone throwing, or flag burning - toward an oppressive military force is generally recognised as permissible,[1] I can’t think of many things that seemed more stupid to do in that context than to throw stones at very well protected men with guns). The reaction of the troops was inevitable, and we again retreated to a safer distance behind cover. We later discovered that that particular protester was shot in the leg with a rubber bullet, only to stand up again and hurl another stone.

Fearing more gunfire, and more gas, I did not return to a position where I could see the rest of the demonstration. It is worth noting that the Palestinians who attended that day protest against the wall, and suffer those retaliations EVERY SINGLE WEEK after Friday prayer.

The third collision with powers greater than myself was the following day. Still with the international camp I’d spent the morning in the city of Qalqilyah and then in a nearby village, meeting with community groups and sampling some of the pretty incredible traditional Palestinian food. It was on the way back to Bili’n that we passed through one of the permanent checkpoints that ‘provide security for the state of Israel’ (there are some 47 permanent checkpoints within the occupied territory, only 17 of these control passage between the OTs and Israel. On average there are 200 ‘flying’ or temporary checkpoints between Palestinian cities and towns). As is likely for most foreign visitors, my experience of checkpoints has been one of fleeting annoyance; soldiers will stop your vehicle, check your passport and perhaps offer some ‘amusing’ comment about how he/she hopes you are enjoying your time in ‘Israel’. This time I was on a bus with a large number of Palestinians.

The bus was required to pull over; everybody was made to get off and submit identification, and then bus and all our belongings were searched. Several of the Palestinians were separated from the rest of us, and we were informed that they did not have the proper permission to travel to this part of Palestine. They were taken away and we were told that they would be returned to their town of origin. While this in itself is preposterous (imagine being pulled over by on your way between Manchester and London by a soldier of a foreign army, speaking a foreign language, and, under the threat of arrest, ordered to return home… and then image that every time you seek to travel anywhere in the UK you run the risk of the same thing happening again), but it was what happened next was the trigger for a re-realisation in my own mind that I really don’t actually understand very much of this conflict at all.

One of the internationals in our party began to lose his temper with the soldier, quoting international law, and threatening to report him to his own government should any harm come to those Palestinians who had by now already been taken away. It dawned on me all of a sudden; this soldier was not going to listen. He, and the Palestinians we were with, had probably heard these very sentiments expressed dozens, if not hundreds of times, from people like this man, and from people like me.

We visit this place, and are so alarmed by the difference in life, and the outright horror of what ever side we are exposed to - regardless of weather the victim we present ourselves with is an Israeli family who have lost a relatives or friends to an act of terrorism, or one of the many many many Palestinians who have lived their whole lives in the dim, hopeless light of occupation - our response is always the same: we want to be the cavalry! Riding from over the hill at the last second… to make the world aware, and by extension, to save our particular victim from the horror that we have only seen a tiny fraction of.

We have to quit wanting to be the savour, particularly in the holy land. We have to take stock of our own emotional reactions, and appreciate that we, like the people we surround ourselves by, come from somewhere, and our perceptions are just as framed as those we disagree with.

Of course when I learned of the extent of the Hamas, Fatah altercation at Birzeit my first thought was ‘how stupid’. And, of course I was made both afraid and incredibly angry by the disproportionate use of force by the IDF against the protesters, and by the observatory of the checkpoint regulations and the unsympathetic attitude of the Soldiers. Indeed my first reaction to almost everything I perceive here is one of extreme emotion one way or the other. Yet with that heated exchange between the Soldier and the International it really dawned on me on a deeper level than my academic acceptance of structural theory, simply put: There, but for the grace of God, go I.

There, but for the grace of God, go I.

It’s worth repeating.

If god had willed it, or if the many forces in this universe, that aremore powerful than I, had aligned slightly differently: I could have been (and still could be) the perpetrator of any of the actions I’d perceived over those few days. Had I been thrown into the universe in a different environment, with different parents, and educated differently – either by the State of Israel or under the oppression of the occupation, I could have been a participant in the altercation at Birzeit, or an IDF soldier firing tear gas at unarmed civilians, or on either side in any of these collisions. Moreover, had this alternative reality transpired, and I’d become: not Phil the Peace Studies student from the UK, but Phil the IDF soldier, or Phil the Palestinian stone thrower, I am sure as anything that it would be the same feelings of fear, rage, and being utterly overwhelmed, that I felt in an incredibly small way over the last few days, that would be present and be the guiding light for my understanding of the world in those instances.

Without even considering the prospects for a lasting peace in this region, what must occur for even the slightest reduction in hostility between these two sides is for somehow the capacity for this conflict to be comprehended as more than the apocalyptic zero-sum. As an outsider, it is my absolute duty to act in no other way than with the greatest patients with all participants and with all events, and to hold firm to no position at the expense of a deeper understanding of the way others live… Inshallah.

[1] Falk, Richard, (Winter, 2002) “Azmi Bishara, the Right of Resistance, and the Palestinian Ordeal” Journal of Palestine Studies, Vol. 31, No. 2. pp. 19-33. (http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0377-919X%28200224%2931%3A2%3C19%3AABTROR%3E2.0.CO%3B2-K)