Month: November 2011

An interview with Amer Ahmad Al-Qwasmah, former prisoner

by Alistair George

23 November 2011 | International Solidarity Movement, West Bank

Amer Ahmad Al-Qwasmah, 45, was released on 18 October 2011 as part of the prisoner exchange deal that saw 477 Palestinian prisoners (with 550 to be released at a further time, thought to be in December) in exchange for Gilad Shalit, the Israeli soldier captured by Hamas in 2006.  Al-Qwasmah served 23 years in prison after being convicted of resistance within the PFLP (Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine).

ISM: What were you convicted of?

Qwasmah: I belonged to a military group and I participated in an operation in 1987, several months before the intifada started, to kill an Israeli man in Jerusalem.  It was because we were under occupation.  We thought it was a civilian but after he had been killed the Israeli’s announced he was an air-force pilot.  It was in the street in the Old City.  He was shot….it was just chance [random]…there were five people in my group; two are still in prison – one still has eight months and the other has four more years.

ISM: Can you describe your arrest and what happened afterwards?

For more on Hebron's solidarity with prisoners during their strike, click here

Qwasmah: I used to live in Jerusalem and came back toHebrononce a week to visit my parents.  One day I was visiting my parents and they [Israeli security] came to the home and they arrested me.  They demolished the house and they prevented my family from building a new building until the PA [Palestinian Authority] started operating here in 1997.  This was common at the time.

They took me to Muscovia interrogation centre in Jerusalem.  It is used as a detention place, for interrogation and as a prison.  After 13 days my lawyer came to see me and I was naked…there were wounds and cuts all over the back [from being beaten]….they [the Israeli security forces] put me on a small chair, 3cm above the ground, and your hands and feet are handcuffed to the chair [in a very uncomfortable position] so that you can’t move.  They also handcuff your hand to the ground for several hours [forcing you to crouch] and then they let you change position and sometimes an investigator comes and makes you stand on tip-toes.

Another kind of interrogation [technique] is that they send you to the freezer – this is unique toHebron.  They put you in a very cold room and put you in a small chair and handcuff your hands to the chair and the chair to the ground to make sure you can’t move.  They put a very bad-smelling cloth, worn by other prisoners, over your head and face.  There are no holes to see or breathe through and they put me in this situation for 20 hours.

ISM: What happened after the period of interrogation?

Qwasmah: They sent me to Ramle jail, inIsrael.  We decided to not go to court, we refused to sit in the court, so we were judged [in absentia] even though we weren’t there.  My sentence was forever – 999, 999, 999 years!  They intend to keep you for that long in the freezer.  For civilians, a life sentence is for 25 years and they usually serve 15 or 15 years and then they’re released.  I accepted this life because I carried a message – I was a fighter and in the resistance and I knew the consequences of resisting the occupation.  I knew [when I joined the resistance] that I might be killed or spend my life in jail.  But I always thought if I would be jailed, then one day I would be released.

ISM: What were the conditions like after you were sentenced?

Qwasmah: Prison is a lot of suffering, the suffering has got worse after 2003; when Ariel Sharon was prime minister he wanted to punish prisoners more and more.  Each year was more complicated and there was more suffering – they prevented relatives visiting, they made us pay fines (like 500 shekels).  They count prisoners three times a day, in the morning, around noon and the evening – if you are 2 minutes late for counting, then maybe they wouldn’t let your parents visit you, or you have to pay a fine, or they sent you to a tiny isolation cell.  It is common for them to ignore you when you need medical treatment.  They also strip search parents and family coming to visit you – imagine what that is like for a woman.  It is not humanitarian behaviour [it is humiliating] when they ask a woman to remove all her clothes for security reasons and they make them wait for several hours until they bring you to see them.

For around 10-12 years they didn’t let my brothers or sisters visit me due to ‘security concerns’.  They didn’t let my mother visit me for 1 1/2 years – they tried to say we weren’t related but she is my mother!  That happened with lots of prisoners.  The Shabak [Israeli security] use it as part of their psychological torture and the interrogation; if they say ‘no’, the Red Cross can’t do anything.

They [the prison authorities] physically tortured me.  They used to put us in a room with around 7cm of water on the floor, so we couldn’t stay comfortable in the room.  Sometimes they made us stay a day and sometimes a few hours.  They killed prisoners [by torture] – Mustafa Al-Qaawi was a doctor who went to study in Romania, when he got back to Palestine he was arrested, interrogated and killed – they put him on the roof of the military building in Hebron and the weather was cold, it was snowing at that time.  He died from the cold.

One prisoner was arrested in 1996 and he has been in isolation since that time.  Another prisoner was in isolation since 1995 and was even in isolation during hunger strike.  One prisoner from Gaza was kept in isolation for 20 years and now he can’t communicate with anyone, not even his family.  Isolation is a slow-death.  They isolated me for eight months – with one other person in a small room.  They said that I tried to smuggle mobile phones into prison – I didn’t do it.  There was no heating.  I didn’t see my parents for 8 months.

 Access to news did not used to exist in jail, like many things – like books.  When I was in jail I participated in different hunger strikes for different demands.  One of these demands was for the media – for newspapers and for books.  Only recently can you get TV in prison but now the channels are limited, there are mainly Israeli or Russian channels allowed because Israel controls the satellite… the newspapers are Israeli and in Hebrew and you have to subscribe.

 The Oslo agreement [signed in 1993] affected the daily life in prison.  The Prisoners Committee was very strong [before the agreement] – there were schools and universities inside the jail.  But after the Oslo agreement, some of the prisoners started acting as if they were released from prison already. Israel brought us papers and told us to sign these papers and they would release us – to say that we support the Oslo agreement but we [the PFLP] were against this agreement so we refused to sign.  Four or five times they demanded we sign this paper and we kept refusing.  Some Fatah prisoners signed and thought they would be released and starting cancelling the political meetings and they even burned some political booklets because they said ‘we are released!’ but the shock came to them when Israel refused.  This affected the situation of the prisoners.  The people who were released were mainly short-term prisoners or they were criminals – in prison for drugs.  Not many political prisoners – only the short-termers.

In prison we used to play sport, especially in the morning – it used to be one hour a day but after some hunger strikes it was changed to four hours a day.  We also used to have political meetings and discussions.  We had official political meetings around twice a week and we often discussed some books or some poets.  The Israelis could listen but they don’t care.  In the beginning [of my jail term] it was forbidden for the prisoners to read books, or newspapers, or watch TV and have meetings – but the history of resistance, the hunger strikes were a strategic weapon that we used to resist and to survive in Israeli jail.  Even pens and paper used to be forbidden– prisoners would write on toilet paper.

ISM:  How did you deal with this treatment?

Qwasmah: I am a representative of the resistance and even though there was a lot of torture I coped.  I was strong and showed them the power of the resistance – maybe that’s why them kept torturing me more and more to break me and my psychological health.  I still suffer from health problems in my stomach and my back – just today I was in the hospital for my colon problem and problems with my digestion.  This happened because of the interrogation.

In prison they use Acamol for everything; headaches, stomach problems – anything. The prisoners used to joke about it and call it the ‘magic medicine’.  My interrogation and torture was for around 15 days but because it was very intense it felt like two years.

ISM: What was it like to hear that you would be released?

Qwasmah: I didn’t care that my name was on the list, I could have checked but I didn’t.  I found out just six days before I was released.  These six days were difficult – for the last 24 years I had always been welcoming and then saying goodbye to other people.  Many people cry when they have to leave jail.  Before, it was others leaving us – now I had to leave the others.  There are prisoners who have been in jail a very long time but they have not been released – so I was sad and unhappy [for them].  I was upset and it made those six days so hard – harder even than a hunger strike or interrogation – because I left people who I had lived with for a long time.  The Israelis allowed the prisoners to go and say goodbye to all the prisoners but I couldn’t say goodbye to anyone, it was too hard.

ISM: What is your opinion of the prisoner exchange deal?

Qwasmah: Your country, the USA, and western countries don’t care about Palestinian prisoners.  All they care about is the Shalit case – which for them was a political and humanitarian case but they don’t care about the Palestinians…even people who care about humanitarian issues.  The Shalit deal is very good but I feel sad for the remaining prisoners.  I want to askEurope; what about the Palestinian prisoners?

 ISM: What are your plans now that you’ve been released?

Qwasmah: First of all I have to get used to being free, to look around myself and spend time with my family and then I will think about work.  Then I will look for a wife and get married.  I feel like there are a lot of obstacles when I got out as I moved from one life to another life and I have to take some time to adapt.

 ISM: Do you regret what you did or feel a sense of guilt?

Qwasmah:  Before, after and during prison I was proud of what I did, I spent my youth in prison…we are offering our lives for the resistance and we can offer more and more forPalestine.  As Palestinians, our lives are political but I am not going to focus on politics until I take some time and adapt to social life and to my family – I have brothers, sisters, aunts that I don’t know.  I can think about politics later.  All forms of available resistance are needed to resistIsrael.

Alistair George is a volunteer with International Solidarity Movement (name has been changed).

Demolition threats continue in Imnzeizil

by Aida Gerard

21 November 2011 | International Solidarity Movement, West Bank

On the same morning when an official from the ICA, Israeli Civil Administration, promised to “pardon” the demolition orders of the solar panels in Imneizil, a village at the southern border of the West Bank, a new demolition order was delivered to the village on 21 November.

Two representatives from ICA showed up at the school in Imneizel and handed over a demolition order that commanded the immediate cessation of restroom construction at the school.

Representatives of the Israeli Civil Administration deliver a demolition order on a unfinished part of the school in Imnezeil.

Several constructions in Imnezeil have demolition orders, including part the main part of the school that was built in 1993.The school is both a primary and secondary school, and if the school is demolished the children of Imneizel and the surrounding villages in the same zone will have no possibility of continuing school unless they are transferred to Yatta.

According to Btselem, an Israeli Human Rights Organization, 88 cons

The demolition order for a new part of the school in Imnezeil

tructions were demolished in the West Bank in 2011, 21  of them in the Hebron area.  According to the Rabbis for Human Rights, it is a part of the bureaucratic system of the Occupation of Palestine that suppresses through a permission system that is supporting demolitions in violation of international law.

Aida Gerard is a volunteer with International Solidarity Movement (name has been changed).

Sowing wheat in Israel’s kill zone

by Radhika Sainath

22 November 2011 | Notes from Behind the Blockade

One need not be an agronomist to know that its been a long time since the farmers of Khuza’a, Gaza have tended to their land near the border.  When we arrived on Friday, the densely packed soil formed small hills with alien, ridged, patterns: Israeli tanks had roamed here, dozens of them. It was hard to imagine how anything ever grew on this brown, barren soil, much less the hundreds of olive, orange and grapefruit trees the Qudaih family reminisced about.

Mahmood Suleiman Qudiah sows wheat near the Buffer Zone (Photo: Radhika Sainath, Notes from Behind the Blockade) - Click here for more images

But those groves and the greenhouses too, were long gone: the Israeli army bulldozed them in 2002 to create the ever-expanding no-man’s land Israel calls the “buffer zone” and Gazans call the “kill zone” — any Palestinian who steps foot inside is subject instant death or dismemberment by the Israeli army fire.

Khaled Mahmood Suleiman Qudaih called us a few days before, asking us if we would accompany his family to his father’s fields so that they could sow wheat.  We met them inside a small tent and they explained to us the situation. The Qudiahs and many other farmers were afraid that the Israeli army would shoot them if the attempted to reach their land near the buffer zone.  We informed them that we could not guarantee their safety, that the Israeli army had killed foreign civilians too.

Alas, our presence and our video cameras was all the impetus they needed to risk life and limb.

On Friday, we arrived to the south Gaza village early, drank two cups of sugary tea with sage, jumped on a cart pulled by a white donkey, and were on our way.  We slowly rode down the main street locals waving as we passed by.  Then we head east out to the farmland, passing between giant slabs of concrete placed at the outskirts of the village in an attempt to protect children playing in the streets from Israeli army gunfire.

The donkey cart pulled us down the lone road heading towards the school. I had been down this road before, my second week in Gaza, when I and 3 local children had been shot at by the Israeli army without warning, reason, or explanation. I understood why those farmers feared the Israeli army, and had not tended to this land in four years.

Our donkey continued on, and we passed the bombed-out shell of a house, covered in fuchsia bougainvillea. We had now reached the point where the Israeli army had shot at me three weeks before, where the road curved towards a high school.

It was quiet.  The sky was cloudy, and the Israeli military towers could be seen in the distance. The donkey turned off the road and onto the land, we were now slowly approaching the border, which was about 300 meters away.  Khaled’s father, Mahmoud, took the bag of wheat off the donkey cart, and I along with the other foreign volunteers donned our fluorescent yellow vests.

Mahmoud got right to work, briskly walking back and forth across his land, towards the Israeli military towers and back, sprinkling wheat on the barren surface.  Those who attempted to photograph him would get a fistful of wheat in their face; it had been five years since he had come to this land and nothing would deter him.

I wondered how these seeds would materialize into actual wheat just lying there on the hard ground, and when the Israeli army would start shooting.  Would we get actual warning shots this time?  According to the farmers, the machine guns were operated remotely – there were no actual human beings inside the towers.

Then the tractor arrived, and it all started to come together.  More farmers emerged with donkeys and equipment. They too wanted to visit their land.  One of us sat on the tractor, and others spread out, video cameras out, ready to record should the Israelis shoot at us.

But it was still early, and the people farmed in silence, certain that it was just a matter of time before the Israeli army started shooting.  Indeed, the border seemed very close. Could this nonviolent farming action end well?

I spent my time staring at the towers, thinking up different iterations of how the Israelis would shoot us. Unlike the day before, when I discovered what a crappy cabbage harvester I was while accompanying farmers in north Gaza, there wasn’t any actual work I could help with.

One of the other farmers even brought me a giant metal bullet he found in the earth. It wasn’t like anything I had seen before three to four inches long, and much heavier than a bullet from an M-16 military rifle.  And then he showed me one of the hundreds of white flyers I had seen stuck in the earth containing a little map of the Gaza Strip and lots of writing in Arabic.

Israeli planes had dropped “thousands” of these flyers over Khuza’a,  which state:

Involving yourself in terrorist activities will bring danger to you, your children, your families and your possessions. Distance yourself from this danger .  .  . Consider yourself warned.

The flyers had blown east, inland, towards the border. I wondered if any of them had blown back to Israel.

A couple of hours passed, and the mood grew celebratory. I wanted to caution them. It wasn’t too late, the Israeli army could still shoot us. Surely, if they shot at 2 women and three children farther away from the buffer zone, they would shoot at a large group of  farming closer.

But it was not so.The farmers plowed the field twice, tank tracks erased. Little black beetles scurried out of holes as we walked across the soft, upturned earth back towards the white donkey. It started to drizzle but moods were high.

“For four years I did not reach my father’s land!” said Khaled.

But the victory was bittersweet. “Before, [this area] was full of greenery and trees and now it’s like a desert,” he explained.  “But still I’m very happy to reach my land and plant on it.”

Hebron: Family members share their stories of settler abuse

by Alistair George

22 November 2011 | International Solidarity Movement, West Bank

As thousands of Israeli settlers and Zionists crowded into Hebron on Friday night, November 19th, and Saturday for Shabbat Chaye Sarah – celebrating Abraham’s biblical purchase of land on the site of the Ibrahimi Mosque, some Palestinian neighbourhoods experienced a surge in settler attacks.

 Wadi Al-Hussain, a valley situated on the edge of Hebron’s old city was the focus of attacks.  The Jaber family lives far down the hill, near to the road reserved for settler traffic leading from Kiryat Arba, an illegal Israeli settlement home to around 7,000 people, to the Ibrahimi mosque in the old city.  Their house faces the settlement a few hundred metres away on the opposite side of the valley.  They have experienced many settler attacks but Saturday was a particularly harrowing day for the 17 Palestinians of several generations which live in the same large house.

Um Safaway Jaber, 28, described what happened to the family.

“We were attacked around 10 times – at one point there was more than 100 settlers outside.  The soldiers put a curfew on us and didn’t allow us to leave the house but the settlers were free to use this road.  We didn’t accept this curfew because the settlers were attacking us and we didn’t want stones to be thrown at the house.  We shouted at the settlers, they shouted at us and said bad words against us.  They said ‘we will kill you’, not just harassment – it was threats. We were lucky that a journalist was in the area filming, although the journalist was bitten by settler’s dog.  The settlers attacked the journalist and the guys [Palestinians] went to defend the them.”

Um Safaway Jaber’s husband was arrested by the Israeli military.

His brother, Moutasem Jaber, 21, said “The soldiers forced their way into the house and arrested my brother because he was trying to protect the women and the family from the settlers.  Then the settlers went to the police station to make a complaint against us that we were attacking them!  After that they came back and had a demonstration outside the house.  They brought video cameras to film the reaction of the Palestinian families and they tried to attack us. “All of us went inside and we didn’t go out because we didn’t want any more trouble but the soldiers came and they put the whole family in one room, they closed the door on us and they didn’t allow us to leave the room from 1pm to 8pm.  After 8pm, the soldiers left the house – we went out and we didn’t see any settlers outside, just lots of soldiers.”

Moutasem’s mother, 63 year old Um Tariq Jaber, added that ” The family was following the Israeli decision not to open our shop or be in the street but the settlers still came and attacked us.”

Many families were targeted by settlers in Wadi Al-Hussain yesterday but the Jaber family was seemingly singled out for a heightened level of violence.  A member of the family, Hani Jaber, was released by the Israeli authorities on 18 October 2011 as part of the prisoner exchange deal that saw 477 Palestinian prisoners released (with a further 550 to be released in a second phase thought to be in December) in exchange for the release of Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit, who was captured by Hamas in 2006.  Hani Jaber served 18 years of a life sentence after being found guilty of killing a settler from Kiryat Arba.

The Jaber’s house was also attacked on the day of his release and Ibtisam Jaber, 33, Montasem’s sister-in-law, was beaten and suffered a miscarriage three days later.  “The settlers came and attacked the house.  Ibtisam lost her baby, nobody else was here because we were celebrating,” said Moutasem.

“I told the police that they wanted to kill him,” said Moutasem – “all of this harassment was included in the complaint to the police but we don’t expect them to do anything.  The police said that the case is ongoing so we’ll see.  Hani grew up in this house and now he can’t come here because he’s afraid for his life.”

 Alistair George is a volunteer with International Solidarity Movement (name has been changed).

An interview with Khaled Jarrar: Stamping Palestine into passports

by Alistair George

21 November 2011 | International Solidarity Movement, West Bank

Khaled Jarrar is a Palestinian artist and photographer from Jenin, currently based in Ramallah.  In addition to photographing and documenting the Israeli occupation, he has designed a ‘State of Palestine’  postage and passport stamp.  This week in an interview with Alistair George of International Solidarity Movement, Jarrar  explains the idea behind his stamp, past and future plans, and the extent to which art influences political resistance.

ISM: What’s the idea behind the ‘State of Palestine’ passport stamp?

Jarrar: I had my idea three years ago.  I was with my international friends and they told me about the hard time they get at Ben Gurion airport [in Tel Aviv] when they want to visit Palestine, and especially if they tell the border police that they are going to the Palestinian territories.  So I was thinking – how come the Israelis decide who is welcome in our country?  We would like to welcome everybody!  So I said that I would make a ‘Green Card’ for my friends; a kind of ironic permit which says they can live and work inPalestine.  It sends the message that we have the right to say ‘you are welcome toPalestine’.  People came to a gallery in Ramallah where they filled in the ‘applications’ and got a ‘permanent resident card!  They took it as a souvenir.

Ten months ago I was trying to re-think and develop the project.  I worked on the design for [‘State of Palestine’] postage and passports stamps.  I was trying to make something beautiful, something that would fit with my ideas about humanity and not just an olive tree or a mosque – something more human than ideology or politics.  I found this bird – it’s called the Palestine Sunbird.  I heard a story that the Israelis tried to change the name of the bird to make it their national bird.  It’s a beautiful bird and I used a jasmine flower, because it is beautiful.  The Israelis actually used the bird on the design of an Israeli postage stamp in 1963, even though they wrote ‘Palestine Sunbird’ on it, which was quite ironic and paradoxical to me.

I made the design, and I was worried that it would be another project that would happen and then disappear.  I needed to give a life for this stamp, and I thought it should be in the official place for stamps – a passport.  Then I started to ask my friends if I could stamp their passports, but they said, “Are you crazy?’  I said, “But they only have stamps for Israel, why not for Palestine– you were in Palestine!”

The stereotype here is conflict, conflict, conflict and I want to show something beyond this, I want to show life.  I started to ask people, and I could not find anybody who dared do it – then I found a French girl. She was sitting in a bar, and she gave me her passport. It was the first stamp.  I started going and doing the performance [stamping passports] at Ramallah bus station and Qalandia checkpoint, and I found that people would like to do it but that I need to search for the right people.  I’ve now also got t-shirts, bags, mugs [with the design].

ISM: How many passports have you stamped and what has the reaction been?

Jarrar: I’ve stamped around 180 passports. I’ve taken the emails for nearly all the people whose passports I’ve stamped, and I keep in touch with them.  I did the performance in Ramallah several times, and for two days at Checkpoint Charlie in Berlin, and also twice in Paris– once at the Pompidou.  Many people like it and find it very beautiful.  But there are many people who are afraid.  But this is an art project.

OK it has a strong political statement about our resistance as a human beings, not only as Palestinians.  The Israelis don’t want to treat Palestinians as humans or as a nation.  We are not defined as a nation by the whole world, we are undefinable – it’s like we don’t exist or we are called ‘stateless.’

Slavoj Zizek [a Slovenian philosopher] got his passport stamped in Ramallah.  One guy came to him and said ‘Slavoj, don’t do it – it’s dangerous – the Israelis will arrest you!’ But he said ‘F— it, do it, do it!’ and so I stamped his passport.

 ISM: How have the Israeli authorities reacted to the stamp?

 Jarrar: Some people have been interrogated, but for many people the authorities didn’t even mention it.  There was one guy from South Africa [who got his passport stamped], his name is Eddie – he was the first one to leave with the stamp.  The Israeli border police saw the stamp and were shocked, they said, ‘This is the first time I’ve seen something like this.’  They stamped his exit visa, gave him back the passport and he left!  They didn’t interrogate him at all. 

 The second one, from Denmark, who left with the stamp – when the border police saw it, they called someone, who called another person, and five people looked at the stamp.  They didn’t say a word, just made a photocopy and then gave him the passport back and he left.

 I think at the beginning the Israelis weren’t sure if this was real or art, but of course there are some bad stories that happened for some people who were interrogated and stopped.  There was one girl from Holland who was stopped by the Israelis. They said ‘we are not used to seeing something like this, it is illegal.’  She said ‘no it’s not, it’s an art project, and from now on you will see many of these stamps!’  The officer interrogated her, asking ‘Why did you do this?’ and ‘Who did this for you?’  They kept her for one hour, they took her hard disk, they did a strip search and opened her luggage.

 I didn’t hear officially from somebody who has been denied entry because of the stamp.  But there are many stories.  There is one American girl who had the stamp – she wanted to apply for work permission in Jerusalem.  She had the invitation and all the paperwork.  The Israeli Ministry of the Interior looked at her passport and they said – ‘you can’t apply for permission for a visa in Israel because you have this stamp in this passport. Maybe you can just remove the paper.’ So she ripped it out of her American passport, she reapplied and she got permission for one year visa to work here!

 There was one girl who got the stamp, she was born in the United States and had an American passport.  In 2008 she applied for the Jewish ‘right to return.’   She got an Israeli passport within 2 years.  I stamped her American and Israeli passports [with the State of Palestine stamp].  She left but when she came back to Israel they asked her ‘What is this?’   She said ‘A Palestinian State stamp.’   When they said that ‘this does not exist,’ she said ‘the state of Palestine existed before the state of Israel.’ They interrogated her for an hour and they cancelled her Israeli passport.  She applied for a new passport and she said that she is waiting to see if she can get a new one.”

 ISM: Is the State of Palestine stamp referring to one state or is it an endorsement of the two state solution?

 Jarrar: It is for a one state solution.  It is a demonstration against occupation and against the partition of Palestine.  I am really against the two state solution.  We need to remove hate, partition and division because this is what our politicians and Israeli politicians want, so they can control us.  If we have one state, the people will rule the state.

ISM: So you don’t support the Palestinian Authority’s bid at the UN for Palestinian statehood?

Jarrar: I’m not with this.  The United Nations are the ones that partitioned Palestinein 1947 – why go to the one who is hitting you to ask for his mercy?

ISM: You’ve also designed postage stamps?

Jarrar: I have a gallery in Paris and my gallery asked the post office there to print these postage stamps and they refused.  We found a printers that likes to do political stuff and they printed them.  I exhibited them at an art fair in France.

 We used to sell this postage stamp with an actual price – 750 fils, which is the old Palestinian currency, around 75 cents.  So at this art fair there was a lot of expensive artworks there – like some that cost over 2 million Euros and my stamps cost 75 cents, so they compared them and made a lot of promotions for us so a lot of people came to buy the stamp – it was fantastic.

 I asked people to use them on actual letters, you can use them next to the official stamp and see what will happen.  I don’t know yet exactly what will happen, if they will reject it, if it will arrive or not – I’m waiting for people to tell me if they have arrived.

 Everything is controlled by the Israelis.  If you send a letter from England to me in Ramallah, maybe it will take 6 weeks.  My gallery [in France] sent me the postcards for the fair two months ago and I haven’t received them.  Maybe the Israelis didn’t let them pass and they threw them away.  I’ve been to Paris, been to the art fair, but the invitations didn’t arrive yet!

ISM: Can you talk about some of your other work as an artist?

 Jarrar: I am also a photographer – I staged an exhibition called ‘At the Checkpoint’.  I took photographs at the checkpoints in 2006 and in 2007, and I exhibited them at the Israeli checkpoint, where the Israeli soldiers themselves could see them.  Some were very angry, they didn’t know what to do.  It was provocative but at the same time it was very peaceful.  One soldier spotted himself in the picture and he was very happy to be in an exhibition!

 An officer came with four soldiers – he ordered them to remove the photos [from the fence at the checkpoint] and arrest the organizer.  But I had invited foreigners, Israelis, the press and this was protection for the exhibition.  One woman from Machsom Watch went to the officer and said, ‘Look, this is not a demonstration, this is just an exhibition.’   We told him we would leave in two hours so they left us alone and it was OK.  I did it twice, once at Huwara checkpoint and once at Qalandia.

 I am hoping to do a book about my projects with Simon [Faulker, an academic at Manchester Metropolitan University].

I also did an exhibition and project about people who are using sewage tunnels to sneak to the other side in Jerusalem [from the West Bank] to visit their families and for social, economic, and religious reasons.

I made a video about it called Journey 110, and I’m making a long documentary because I was observing the whole process of sneaking to Jerusalem for four years.  Now the tunnel is closed but when it was open I used to see 500-600 people use it in three hours.  But there’re not only tunnels, there are other ways [to reach Jerusalem].

 Journalists are there to document it and smugglers also try to play their games and make money.  Sometimes they pay money but they find on their journey that the tunnels are closed, or the walls are too high, or there are Israeli soldiers.  It’s really challenging – they are trying to live and survive and this wall will not stop anything.  So with this issue I’m really destroying the idea that this wall is for security reasons.  So many people manage to enter Jerusalem and none of them are suicide bombers, they are people looking for life.  It’s not just about Palestine and Israel, it’s also about really basic issues – the need for life.  It should be finished in April 2012, I have struggled to find the money.

 ISM: Have you any future plans for the ‘State of Palestine’ project?

 Jarrar: I have been invited to the Berlin Biennale and hopefully I will print some more postage stamps – I have a new version with Hebrew, as well as Arabic and English.  I was having a conversation with a girl fromNew York, she said ‘you know that there were Jews living in Palestine before the occupation and they were Palestinian?’ I said of course and this was a mistake [not to include Hebrew] so I’ve fixed this mistake.

 My work is being exhibited in London for a group show, starting on 23 November [‘Passport to Palestine at La Scatola gallery].  But I’m not going – they invited me really late and it is difficult to apply for a visa to theUK, you need a lot of time and I tried to apply twice before and I was refused because of the bureaucracy.  I will send a stamp and someone will be an ambassador for the ‘State of Palestine’ who will be stamping the passports.  There are other events [to stamp passports] in Copenhagen on 29 November.  In Brussels there is a magazine [A Prior magazine] event so I will be stamping passports and magazines there on the 25 November.

ISM: What impact has the project to stamp passports had?

Jarrar: I’m not sure exactly.  I’m trying to create a new reality and a new way of resisting occupation.  Maybe this will raise awareness for other artists in the world, showing them how they can use new ways of resistance for freedom and equality and humanity all over the world, not only in Palestine.

ISM: This reminds me of Juliano Mer-Khamis’s [former director of Jenin’s Freedom Theatre] idea of  a ‘Cultural Intifada’.  Do you see your work in this way and to what extent do you think art can influence political reality?

Jarrar: Yes I do.  I believe that art can create reality.  I don’t believe in this kind of art that tries to separate itself from politics and reality – they can’t be separated.  So politicians try to control our lives so we should be responsible [as artists] and fight and to express our feelings; not only to talk and make exhibitions in the gallery where just a few people can come and say ‘oh this is beautiful’ and after that you can throw it in the garbage.  So I think art should make a difference and we should use art to send our message loudly to shake and provoke the system and to say to the politicians ‘stop – where are you taking us?’.      

 Alistair George is a volunter with ISM (name has been changed).