Principles

I'm a relative new comer around here. It is not unusual to meet expats who have had some kind of relationship with Palestine for a decade or more. Most of course left during the second intifada, but eventually made their way back. There is an emotional connectedness that they have to this place, the environment and the politics that I admit, I lack to a degree.

What grabs my attention is how principled a lot of these people are about the politics and how they react to them. They boycot products, people, newspapers, books. Sometimes I feel a weakness because I lack this principled approach to all that happens around me, but I like to justify this weakness by saying that I am not a person who has the ability to be so black and white about the world. Or, I just wonder if sometimes people become so principled about it all to help them feel as if they have some control and power in an environment in which it is difficult to empower anything.

Throughout the Arab world, you find a large number of people who refuse to drink Coke products. The reason? Coke is produced by an Israeli company, apparently? I've never had the will to really look into the issue. Its true, there is a large coca-cola bottling company near Tel Aviv. Yet, in Palestine itself, people drink coca-cola products by the gallons on a daily basis, and the whole distribution chain inside the West Bank is Palestinian run. Palestinians raise their eyebrows when they hear that their Arab brothers and sisters refuse to drink Coke. Honestly, its making almost zero difference on the life of people here who are more concerned about the daily hassles of checkpoints and the wall.

I recently attended an NGO discussion about an operational approach that the US government put in place to get the humanitarian goods funded by them into Gaza. The operational approach actually makes things a great deal more effecient for those US-funded humanitarian partners. But, there are those principled humanitarian partnes (several of whom I used to be employed by), raising up protests because its all "American" and all wrapped up into the politics. I could be naive, but I just don't see it. Plus, we have a new administration whose made some pretty solid statements. True, its difficult to trust these statements after the past 15 year policy toward Palestine and the ability of the US Government to turn a complete blind eye to the human rights abuses. But honestly, if the ability to get humanitarian goods into Gaza is going to make my life easier, why would I protest it? I'm sure the people who are suffering in Gaza couldn't give a care how the goods that are to save their lives came in, just as long as they received them hastily.

Not sure if its obvious - but I'm kind of burned up about this issue.