Palestine: Auschwitz of the Mideast

Two Nobel Prize award winners, along with six other internationally renowned intellectuals, concluded a tour of Gaza and the Occupied Territories last month. The delegation's visit, organised by the International Parliament of Writers (IPW), was the first such tour.

The objective of the visit was to send out a worldwide appeal - 'Palestine: An Appeal for Peace' - endorsed by more than 500 signatories from over 30 countries.

The group included the Nobel Prize winner for literature, novelist Jose Saramago, from Portugal; the President of the International Writers Parliament, Russell Banks from the U.S.; Nobel Prize winner, writer Wole Soyinka from Nigeria; painter and writer Breyten Breytenbach from South Africa; poet Bei Dao from China; Executive Director of the International Parliament of Writers, Christian Salmon from France; Juan Goytisolo from Spain; and Vincenzo Consolo from Italy.

The group had been invited and received by renowned Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish.

Following its tour, the delegation denounced the expansion of Jewish colonies in the territories and called for ending restrictions on the movement of Palestinians, including Palestinian President Yasser Arafat, whom they conferred with. The group met Palestinian and Israeli artists, writers, intellectuals, peace activists and academics.

It is ironic that the delegation's visit took place just before Israeli tanks rolled into Palestinian territory and Israel declared it was in a state of war.

With the recent turn of events, the delegation's remarks on their visit becomes more relevant now than when initially issued. "There is a war going on in Palestine. It is not a war between the armies of two enemy nations but between one of the most powerful armies in the world and an occupied land," the appeal stated.

The appeal described how the Israeli army has been setting up checkpoints in the Palestinian territories and has been seizing control of areas that were once under the PNA's control.

"Once again, one yields to the illusion of the complete power of military action, of the total destruction of the enemy, although the use of these means only gives rise to a spiral of indiscriminate violence and reprisals. Once again, one is trying to use force in order to impose security for everyone, but the result is that war is being made a permanent institution, pitting everyone against everyone else," it said.

The guardians of words perhaps could only become weavers of images; their expressions turning into channels for feelings. When such words express such a world of feelings, mirroring the world of reality, we can only get caught in the web of admiration for what these words are able to construct.

Mahmoud Darwish indeed has eloquently put this in his welcome speech to the delegation. "I know the masters of words have no need for rhetoric before the eloquence of blood. Therefore, our words would be as simple as our rights: we were born on this land, and of this land," he said.

This attachment has made resistance to it a must as occupation turned into a daily debate. As Darwish puts it: "The occupation does not content itself with depriving us of the primary conditions of freedom, but it goes on to deprive us of the bare essentials of a dignified human life, by declaring constant war on our bodies, our dreams, on the people and the homes and the trees, and by committing crimes of war. It does not promise us anything more than the apartheid system, and the capacity of the sword to defeat the soul."

"Yet, can the soul defend itself against the carnage of violence? How will it survive the confusion and shattering let loose by bloodshed? Indeed, how will the soul defend itself?" Darwish delivers the answer: "We have an incurable malady: hope. Hope is liberation and independence. Hope is a normal life where we are neither heroes not victims."

Saragamo, in an interview, also expressed his dreams. "My dream would be for the two communities to live together and in peace. I know this is impossible, but fortunately we still have the right to dream."

In fact, the strongest criticism came from Saragamo as he drew similarities between events taking place in Palestine and what happened at Auschwitz.

When questioned by an Israeli journalist if Gaza has any gas chambers, Saramago said: "I hope this is not the case. There are so many things being done that has nothing to do with Nazism but what is happening is more or less the same."

This has been an impression that has been imprinted on the delegation's visit, an experience that has opened windows of truth as to what is happening in Palestine and which has become part of their memory.

"When I was a teenager, I was greatly impressed by the talk of Jewish friends on the experience of the 'copouts' and how Israel had converted the desert (Palestine) into paradise," commented Salmon. "But today when I arrived together with my colleagues I say that occupation has converted the Paradise into a desert," he added.

And how do writers perceive this reality?

"What is happening in this part of the world is a real tragedy. We are not historians or politicians but we understand the philosophy of pain and suffering because we are human.

"What is happening here is a violation of the rights of the Palestinian people and the situation is similar to the South African apartheid system. It is a racial war in the very strict sense of the word. I am surprised that the UN has refused until now to interfere to rescue the Palestinian people," says Soyinka.

To avoid confusion, though, things indeed have to be named properly and identified with what they really are. "Some people would like to persuade us that this war is not a war. That the civilian victims are not civilian victims.

That the occupation of a territory is not a real occupation. The cordoning off the Occupied Territories is not the only insult to the future; a rhetorical blockade is also set up. Language is appropriated by the military.

On either side of an invisible border, words no longer seem to refer to the same things. Some things can no longer even be named. We could call this a disintegrated language zone. What can we do? Come out of our silence and speak out, explains Salmon.

But do writers and poets change events? Are words capable of turning history around? Could the masters of the world of words build, demolish and create in reality a world they have created masterfully in their fiction and poetry?

"Writers do not resolve conflicts. They do not have the power," said Breytenbach, in an interview. "Neither are they cleverer than other people at understanding the nature of the conflict and thus the solution to the violence. They can point though, at the ambiguity of human nature. We are all torn between anger and pity. Writers can help us remember."

Salmon indeed believes that writers are "not a force of intervention but a force of interpretation". Darwish agrees, as "responsibility for human destiny cannot find expression solely in the literary text".

But if words are not able to do so, they could still reflect parts of ourselves, parts of what we are able to feel, and parts of what we dream of.

And as always, h