After hiding away in Minnesota for four months, I resurfaced on KPFK, a listener-sponsored non-commercial Southern California-based radio station. Don Bustany, who has hosted a show called "Middle East in Focus" since the 1970s, asked me what happened before I left Palestine and asked me some questions about the peace process, at the same time Clinton, Netanyahu and Arafat were negotiating what was later to become the Wye Memorandum.
A diary radio clip of part of the interview is available below next to the section title in which it appears. Click here (right mouse button on PC) and select "Save this link as..." to download if the streaming option below experiences network congestion.
Don Bustany: ...Well today our guest is Nigel Parry, a Scotsman who lived and worked in occupied Palestine for four years. Born in Scotland, raised in Singapore, then back to Scotland for high school, then down to London for university and a degree in English and Psychology, then off to work for a series of human rights organisations.
Along the way he became a journalist and a little more than four years ago he went to work [in the Public Relations Office] at Birzeit University, the Palestinian school in the West Bank near the city of Ramallah, where he lived anything but the quiet life. He came home one day to find all his belongings removed from his apartment and tossed into the street. The story went out that he had been ousted from his residence by the Palestinian National Authority, the organisation headed by Mr. Arafat. Well at the moment Mr. Parry, now a freelance journalist is living in, of all places, Minneapolis Minnesota. Nigel Parry, welcome to 'Middle East in Focus'.
Nigel Parry: Hi Don, how are you doing?
Don: Fine thank you.
Don: Look, I want to speak to you about broader issues but first let's clear up the story of your eviction, which went around the Internet at almost the speed of light. Who threw your property out of your apartment?
[...]
Nigel: To cut the very long story short, what happened was basically - I was in dispute with my landlady, which was not unusual in Ramallah, there were 400 such cases at the same time as ours. The situation out there basically allows people to go around the law. The rule of law in Palestine is not very well enforced at the moment. Human rights centers, in fact, say it is virtually nonexistent. She basically went round the law by getting a gang of people - which included members of the Palestinian security forces - to forcibly evict my property and in fact took a bulldozer to part of the house...
Don [interjects]: She wanted to bulldoze a part of her own house?
Nigel: Well it was all about money ultimately. What's happening since the hand over to the PNA in December '95 of Ramallah and other towns as well, [is that] property prices have gone through the roof. So essentially, it was for a high rise building. You can make a few million dollars if you have a property in the center of Ramallah these days.
So ultimately it didn't matter about the house, even though that house is more than eighty years old and therefore is considered to be part of the Palestinian national heritage but as I said the rule of law is so nonexistent there that nobody will be punished for demolishing that house. I heard, just last week in fact, that bulldozers finally flattened the whole house. It was just a partial demolition initially but they have completely flattened it.
Don: There was no one living in it at the time?
Nigel: No. We'd left by that time. This happened [originally] on May 25th. I arrived home to find this group of guys with clubs and weapons in the house and in the yard and my belongings in the yard as well. We managed to last a week in the house after that, trying to stand and fight which [laughs] is the tradition in the country, to fight for your rights in that situation! After that we left. It was just getting too intense.
Don: So how did the owner of the house benefit from having it bulldozed?
Nigel: Well ultimately she was intending to get us out because she had already sold or was selling the house. She would have got a few million dollars for the property, and whoever bought it, probably a Palestinian from outside the country - although I am not sure as I haven't heard any exact details about that - would then put up an apartment building and rake in a lot of money over the next couple of years renting out the property for offices or...
Don [interjects]: So the land was valuable, not the house necessarily?
Nigel: Well the house itself you could say was valuable too, because it was part of the Palestinian national heritage.
Don: Okay. Well, let's move on to political things because that's where I came to know about you and your activity over the Internet. Didn't you design the website for Birzeit?
Nigel: Yes, that's what I did.
Don: Okay. I hope you'll give us the website address a little later because many of our listeners might be interested in visiting.
Nigel: Okay.
Don: Now, in the PR department at Birzeit, you mission was to handle the website?
Nigel: Actually initially no. When I went out in September '94 my main role was to do English publications, press releases, brief publications for the university, and of course general duties. That particular office gets something like 5,000 international visitors through it a year. Birzeit is very much considered to be the Harvard or Oxford of Palestine...
Don: I see.
Nigel: ...and a lot of people pay courtesy calls [to Birzeit] when they come to the country to visit the Palestinian National Authority and the Israeli government because it's a prominent Palestinian university. It's a very central place in Palestinian society, it's the only truly independent Palestinian university and it gets a lot of attention from the media and from people who visit the country.
Don: When you say 'truly independent', independent in what way? For example, Al-Quds doesn't have the same degree of independence1?
Nigel: If you were to look at international definitions of universities, there are eight universities in the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem. Out of these, three would be considered by international standards to have reached the level of resources, staffing, etcetera, to be considered a university. And those would be considered to be Bethlehem, Birzeit and An-Najah, in Nablus in the north.
Don: Okay, I see. We regularly hear on 'Middle East in Focus' the views of Jewish Israelis, Arab Israelis, and occupied Palestinians. And here you are - a Scotsman, a citizen of the United Kingdom, and a human rights advocate - who has lived there in the occupied territories for four years, and worked there. So we'd like to hear your views on that mess in the Middle East.
As we speak, Benjamin Netanyahu and Yassir Arafat, and the catalytic presence of Bill Clinton - [laughs] everyone hopes - are also speaking. We don't know what they're saying yet but how much of your own money, Nigel Parry, would you bet that Arafat and Netanyahu will finish the talks this weekend having made real progress towards a solution?
Nigel: If you're referring by the word 'progress' to further redeployment, it's pretty inevitable at some point that there has to be for the sake of US-Israeli relations, but in terms of whether that actually means real progress or not there's a a potential that this could be the last redeployment in my opinion.
I'm not really a betting man and I don't have a lot of money to bet with at the moment but what's being talked about being given back at the moment is not really that significant for your average Palestinian on the ground. We're talking about very small areas that are effectively not really patrolled by Israeli troops at the moment. For example, Ramallah, the Palestinian town about 20 kilometers north of Jerusalem. Just a bit north of that is Birzeit University, about ten minutes along the road. And that road has basically a chicken farm on it, a home for mentally retarded children, a lot of trees, and a small village called Abu Qash. I mean, that would be one of the places they would hand back. It's got absolutely no Israeli security or resource interest at all.
So, you're not necessarily talking about very significant parts of the West Bank. None of the aquifers are being talked about obviously. Most of Israel and Palestine's water comes from the aquifers which are based in what Palestinians consider to be their land - in the West Bank - and of course that's not being discussed.
Don: I want to get to the water in a few minutes.
Don: By the way, I noticed when you referred to transfer of land from Israeli hands to Palestinian hands you used the phrase, "hand back" or "give back".
Nigel: Yes.
Don: You didn't use the Israeli usage of "giving land" to the Palestinians.
Nigel: Well, if you look a hundred years ago at the map, there certainly wasn't any Israelis because there wasn't an Israeli state. There was not a high percentage of Jews in the land, even settlers at that point, so it's commonly understood by Palestinians that this was their land as far back as generational memory lasts, and recorded history - land deeds and titles from the Turkish period. It's their land as far as they are concerned. So, we would consider it "handing back" the land, which would be different if - let's say - we were talking about Israel handing Tel Aviv to the Palestinians? No Arab ever lived in the area of Tel Aviv so you wouldn't use "handing back" in that particular instance.
Don: Very enlightening.
Don: Let's move to the human relations aspect. What can you tell us about what you've observed and heard first hand about the way the Israelis treat the Palestinians? 2
Nigel: I lived in the middle of the West Bank, just north of Jerusalem. When I moved out there in September 1994, the town [of Ramallah] was Israeli-controlled for another three or four months and then it was handed over to the Palestinians. To be honest, during that time and the time afterwards, the only Israelis you would ever see in that area are either Israeli army personnel - they're carrying guns, they're dressed in khaki, they're obviously soldiers - or Jewish settlers from the nearby settlement of Beit El, which is "Bethel" from the Bible, where Jacob had his dream. That particular settlement, because of the biblical connotations, is a religious settlement primarily, and so the settlers that tend to be there are much more militant than - let's say - in a 'dormitory of Tel Aviv'-type settlement.
Don: Where are those settlers from most of them? Do you have any idea?
Nigel: To be honest, for that particular settlement, no. But you find a high percentage of Americans [laughs] in a lot of these religious settlements. It seems to attract people from New York and so forth. You're talking about a much more militant brand of settler - very political, very religious - and generally hostile towards the local residents, the Palestinian population.
For example, on a very obvious and visual basis, when you go to the settlement it's completely surrounded by barbed wire - fortressed - and on the road sign opposite the Beit El settlement front gate the Arabic has been spray painted out by settlers. It's in Arabic, English and Hebrew. So there's lots of little visual things like that.
Don: There signs are put up by the government, right, in the three languages?
Nigel: Yes. Arabic and Hebrew are the official languages of the State of Israel.
Don: And then the settlers spray can out the Arabic? Is that what you're saying?
Nigel: Yes. It's kind of common.
Don: I see. There's a message there, certainly.
Nigel: Yes.
Don: In that particular settlement are there swimming pools?
Nigel: That particular settlement I've been in once. Actually, round about the time of redeployment, while I was trying to write something about the whole atmosphere of that time. I didn't go in enough to see if there were swimming pools but I did see there was a firing range.
There was an interesting moment when I stopped at this bus shelter and it had this sign in Hebrew on it. I don't read Hebrew but I photographed it and brought it later to some friends who did. This is completely typical of the fortress mentality of these places, it said, "An Arab Vehicle can enter - Guns. Explosives. - and take our children. Security is in our hands." So there's very much a fortress mentality in these areas.
If you're looking for examples of swimming pools, the best example in my mind is Ariel settlement near Nablus which is, I think, the largest settlement in the West Bank...
Don: And is being expanded now.
Nigel: ...Oh yeah. It's been constantly expanded since its formation. The irrigation - it's got lush playing fields, swimming pools. They've diverted water and poisoned remaining water supplies from the local village of Marda, which is a couple of hundred year old Palestinian village and slowly the villagers are watching their land being eaten up by the settlement as it expands and these bypass roads take more of it. And there's a lot of tension in these situations.
Don: Now, every time Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu gets a microphone and TV camera, he speaks of the necessity of the PNA, the Palestinians, to live up to an agreement under which they will control terrorism. And the Oslo/Hebron accords reinforced that. And what we don't hear from the Palestinians is that Israel is in violation, and has been for many years, of international law that says a conquering nation cannot put its citizens in residence in the occupied territories. What's said or thought about that among Palestinians and any of the Israelis that you have spoken to over the last four years?
Nigel: The question of illegality where it comes to Israeli actions like placing settlers in the occupied lands and removing Palestinians they arrest to outside the occupied territories into prisons inside Israel, the deportations, the land confiscation and all these things which change reality, which put "facts on the ground" - a phrase people like to use a lot - the illegality of this is not in question by human rights groups, by your average Palestinian who is brought up knowing that.
The problem is that international human rights law is not what determines foreign policy. Netanyahu is ultimately a very good politician and a good prime minister for his people in that he is trying to get the best deal. But I'm not sure that peace is best made by politicians. In my mind, it's best made by people on the ground. And if you approach a conflict that is as old as this with the perspective of trying to "win" it, to "get as much as you can", ultimately what you leave behind is going to leave a bitter taste in people's mouths and Oslo very much did that for your average Palestinian. For the first time in history, you had movement between Palestinian towns curtailed on a regular basis. That was unheard of before Oslo and that's the sort of thing that people notice.
It's not the handshaking on the White House lawn that impresses your average Palestinian, it's whether he can visit his relatives or go to work in the village or town next door.
Don: Which means an unstable peace.
Nigel: Very much so.
[Don breaks to fund raise for KPFK, a listener-sponsered non-commercial station]
Don: Nigel, we touched on it before but it's worth mentioning it again because it's not mentioned by the press in reporting regarding Israelis who live in the occupied territories. Under international law, we are told, it is illegal for Israelis to settle in the occupied lands. We touched on that but do you want to give it a closer and we'll move onto other areas?
Nigel: In terms of international human rights law it's absolutely clear that the settlements are illegal. The issue brought up by the peace process - any peace process should look at the thing pragmatically - is how to deal with [the fact that] in the West Bank and Gaza excluding East Jerusalem, you're talking about 150,000 settlers. I mean that's an incredible amount of people to consider resettling somewhere else inside the borders of Israel.
Don: 150,000 settlers where?
Nigel: This is excluding Jerusalem. The West Bank and Gaza.
Don: Should we exclude Jerusalem? That's occupied territory.
Nigel: [laughs] I'm just doing it for the simple convenience that, in East Jerusalem the number of exact settlers is not known. The municipal boundaries of Jerusalem have been pretty much gerrymandered to show a Jewish majority. Areas which if you look at a map and think, "Well that must be part of Jerusalem", have actually been excluded. The boundaries of Jerusalem look like one of those Rorshach ink blots, which miss out huge amounts of - I mean something like 120,000 Palestinians live in the Al-Ram area which is between Jerusalem and Ramallah and that's not considered to be part of Jerusalem even though it's on the road, but one side of the street is [considered to be Jerusalem, the side] which has all the settlements.
And this is the kind of way they've got a demographic majority in the city. Having said that, it's important that in any final peace deal that the human side is considered. Regarding the settlers who have settled in the occupied territories, it's up to the Palestinians and Israelis to decide among themselves how to deal with that. At the very least there should be some sort of compensation in the same way that there should be some compensation for Palestinians if we're not going to be talking about handing back areas like Haifa and Yaffa, which seem to be completely out of the equation now although formerly Palestinian towns.
Don: Yes. Every time the issue of restitution or compensation for Palestinians comes up, there should be a reminder or a note in the back of our minds - although the Palestinians have nothing to do with it - that Arab Jews who were forced from their residences in various Arab countries should have the same right of compensation for lands and property they lost.
Nigel: Yes.
Don: Look, as a non-Arab observer, were you able to witness and photograph violent incidents in the occupied territories?
Nigel: Actually, I spent a large portion of my time doing that. For me - the clashes between the Israelis and the Palestinians - once you go to one and you have been used to seeing them on the media it's a completely shocking experience because the gulf in reality between what you see on the TV and what you see in front of your eyes is enormous.
Usually you'll see, on CNN or whatever, pictures of Palestinians throwing stones and Israelis shooting back, maybe teargas, maybe rubber-coated metal bullets or plastic-coated metal bullets, and you'll see an ambulance carry someone away, and you never get any sense of perspective on this. I've watched a lot of clashes over a period of four years and I've never ever seen a Palestinian shot and killed or shot and seriously injured who was actually within stone throwing distance of Israelis.
Don: Wow.
Nigel: And that's after watching maybe thirty series of clashes.
Don: Yes.
Nigel: I've stood in the middle of crowds of journalists who are observing from a relatively safe point and watched this happen - someone gets shot maybe a hundred meters away - and read their reports the next day and none of them ever say that. For me that's the most important point. And for the Israeli army presumably it should be as well because their open fire orders are very clear about the necessity of it being a life-threatening situation which, in my experience, is never the case. I've never seen a life-threatening situation [for an Israeli soldier] at one of these clashes [where demonstrators are being shot].
Don: Let me get this clear now. You say you've been in situations where you as a journalist were with a group of other journalists watching an altercation and you see a Palestinian who is not where the trouble is - where the conflict is going on physically - who gets shot? Is that what you are saying?
Nigel: I've seen that as well but what I'm actually talking about is - think about this from the point of view of a Palestinian. You want to go out and demonstrate and you want to show your anger. The traditional way there is to go out and throw stones at soldiers, but at the same time you don't want to get shot. So you try and use cover wherever possible but a lot of these clashes take places in areas where there isn't a lot of cover. There's nothing to hide behind...
Don: I see.
Nigel: ...so the distances between the soldiers and the Palestinians throwing stones is sometimes 150 meters and most definitely at least a hundred, so you're talking about a distance which ...[laughs]... well it's pretty hard to throw a stone that far. So the soldiers themselves are not in a life-threatening situation yet they'll be firing rubber-coated metal bullets or plastic-coated metal bullets, and sometimes they'll be firing those things - which are supposed to be "less lethal" riot control equipment - at the same time as they're firing live ammunition. I mean there's just no logic in it.
But of course it sounds much better on the news if you've shot a "rubber bullet" or a "plastic bullet" at someone. I mean it sounds like it's almost fun. What's missing from the story is the fact that you're talking about heavy cylinders of steel which are covered with maybe a millimeter of hard plastic...
Don: They're not nerf balls.
Nigel: No, they're not benign. This is not paint balls we're talking about here.
Don: Let me ask you this: Arafat and Netanyahu and Clinton are talking in Maryland. If they ask you what would you suggest to them? If they said, "Nigel Parry, what are your thoughts on what we have to conclude here? Do you have any suggestions?"3
Nigel: I think that ultimately the final picture has to be decided by the Palestinians and the Israelis themselves. But there are some things, outside that necessity to decide their own fates amongst themselves, that are important to consider.
Almost all the power is on the Israeli side. The government of the United States, which at the beginning of the peace process proclaimed itself an "honest broker", most clearly isn't. The pressure that comes onto the two parties in the region is almost entirely on the Palestinians.
The power that's held on the ground - well, Israel has one of the best, if not the best armies in the Middle East. We have two-and-a-half million Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, a largely unarmed population and where they are armed, we're talking machine guns. In September '96 we witnessed Israeli Cobra helicopters shooting at civilian homes and they surrounded Ramallah with tanks. This is like a whole different league than the weaponry the Palestinians have access to.
I mean, that's on a really crass military level but in terms of negotiating power and in terms of who has actually got the land under their control, it's much easier to defend something if you've got lots of tanks and guns and you're in possession of it in the first place. The power is all on the Israeli side. That's very clear on the ground.
Don: Well, Nigel, our first segment is coming to an end but I would like you to give us the address of the Birzeit website so anyone interested can visited. It's www-something, right? [laughs]
Nigel: [laughs] That's right. It's www dot birzeit - that's spelt bee-eye-aar zed-ee-eye-tee.
Don: I'll translate that to English [laughs], American English, that's bee-eye-aar zee-ee-eye-tee.
Nigel: [laughs] dot. ee-dee-you.
[...end]