Liana Badr was born in Jerusalem in 1950, two years after the creation of the State of Israel. After the 1967 war, during which the Israelis occupied a large part of the Palestinian territories, including the Holy City, he went with his family to Jordan, where he studied, then to Lebanon, where he obtained a degree in philosophy and of psychology. Like most Palestinians, his life was marked by struggle, exile and dispossession, and this was captured in his novels, poems and documentaries.
Since the 1990s, he has lived in Ramallah, the main city in the occupied West Bank and seat of the Palestinian National Authority. Between 1996 and 2004, she was Director General of Arts of the Palestinian Ministry of Culture, belonging to this authority. In the occupied territory where the author has resided for 30 years – fragmented by Israeli settlements, roads and checkpoints – Badr denounces that “Israel is committing sociocide”.
In an interview with elDiario.es, the writer states that sociocide is different from “the genocide in Gaza, where it kills many people.” It is a way of putting an end to the Palestinian way of life and society little by little. He reports that in the West Bank, settlers are making life impossible for Palestinians with “crazy and continuous attacks on houses, fields, main roads between Palestinian towns…”.
What is happening now will be reflected in Israeli society: they don’t live alone in heaven and do the others in hell think they can just kill all these people, children and women?
“Now the Palestinians are afraid to move from one town to another because the settlers can attack them and they are armed, they have automatic weapons. Sometimes they go to neighboring towns at night and start fires, surround houses and prevent residents from leaving. It’s a nightmare,” said this strong woman.
“In the West Bank, the army [israelí] pursues men, shoots them or arrests them; and in Gaza, he kills them by the dozens or hundreds. “It’s a savage massacre,” says the author of novels like A compass for the sunflower And The eye of the mirror. ”
Badr returns to the massive destruction in Gaza, where almost 70% of buildings are destroyed, including houses, schools, mosques, churches, etc. “The house is the center of the human being, if you have a house, you have your center. Now winter is starting in Gaza and people are living in tents, they have no house, no food, no medicine, no nothing,” he denounces.
“If it is acceptable and easy for anyone to go onto other people’s land and kill them to occupy their homes, this can be repeated anywhere,” he reflects.
Nearly a year has passed since the start of the Israeli offensive against the Gaza Strip, which left more than 41,000 dead (including more than 16,000 minors), and Badr is trying to put himself in the place of those who are still alive in the Palestinian enclave: “Imagine, the people who die every day in Gaza have survived a year. The one who is murdered today has invested all his energy and strength in the hope of living” until this moment.
“In the world, we are not alone, we are not individuals. Everything is linked and if this situation continues, it is a curse for humanity,” adds the writer and poet, who advocates peaceful coexistence between Israel and Palestine.
Even though in South Africa there was no genocide like the one we experienced, nations understood what was happening and imposed sanctions and took action. [contra el apartheid]”
Palestinians “are human beings, we have homes, children, everything. And the normal thing between the nations of the world is to coexist. No one can be Tarzan,” he says, referring to the fact that the people of the world cannot be ruled by the law of the jungle.
People with a “conscience” cannot accept the massacre in Gaza, he said. There are “few countries” that have not accepted it, “like Spain, which supported the Palestinian state” with its formal recognition last May, he adds.
Badr visited Madrid with Casa Arabe and assures that she feels comfortable in Spain while downplaying the difficulties faced by all Palestinians who travel – in her case, through Jordan.
“The United States is to blame”
Also a documentary director (The blue bird2002) compares Israel to “a child who lights fires everywhere” without worrying about the consequences of his actions. At the same time, “the United States is giving it more and more weapons,” he adds.
“The Americans are responsible for what is happening because they promoted the Oslo Accords and now they are on the side of the Israeli government because they are selling weapons. But they were the guarantors of these agreements” signed in 1993 in the United States by Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat and the Israeli Prime Minister at the time, Isaac Rabin.
According to Badr, those responsible for the war in Gaza “are above all arms dealers, they are linked to neoliberalism and neo-imperialism: they want more money, more land, more things, they can kill n no matter who. “They are like the cowboys of the past.” According to him, “the goal is to steal land from the Palestinians,” not only in the Gaza Strip, but also in the West Bank, where land confiscation and the creation of Israeli settlements have increased significantly.
“The occupation sees this as an opportunity to wipe out the Palestinians and get rid of our society, everything about us, so they can stay. [en Palestina] and be happy,” he denounces. The writer and filmmaker believes that it is the great powers that must “raise their voices and not fall asleep or close their eyes” in the face of abuse.
Badr calls for a boycott, following the same model that was successful against the apartheid regime in South Africa. “Even though South Africa did not suffer a genocide like the one we suffered – the schools that welcomed the refugees were not bombed there – the nations nevertheless understood what was happening and imposed sanctions and took action. »
Inaction will have consequences
Furthermore, the author of The white store warns that inaction by the international community will have consequences. “Everyone will pay the price for what is happening, I don’t know what, I can’t imagine it, but it is very dangerous for all of humanity, not just for the Palestinians.”
Badr recalls that “there are many Jews who are against the war”: “We saw it in the United States with the ‘not in our name’ movement.” And she is convinced that “this situation is dangerous for Israelis themselves, who raise their children to become criminals.”
“What is happening now will be reflected in Israeli society: they do not live alone in paradise and the others in hell do they think that they can kill all these people, children and women, without further delay, asks Badr in the middle of indignation? incredulity.
As a writer, Badr wanted to tell the story of the last twelve months in the Gaza Strip, but has not yet succeeded. “I tried to write something about Gaza, because I have a lot of friends there. A colleague from the Ministry of Culture, where I worked, was a poet and they killed him and his entire family in a three-story house. “The house was destroyed and so far no one has brought them out.” [de debajo de los escombros] because they don’t have the tools,” he says.
This is the fate of many Gazans, up to 10,000 people, who, according to the authorities, could be under the rubble of bombed buildings.
As a woman, Badr finds it hard to imagine how they can live like this. “Women giving birth do not have access to a hospital or medical treatment because Israel has destroyed some hospitals and does not allow fuel to arrive so that others have electricity. Young women who are menstruating have neither tampons nor pads and cannot find anything that can help them,” she laments.
The writer explains that, historically, “Palestinian women took care of the house, raised children, stored food, collected olives and other things, but now they are deprived of everything. “They don’t have a home.” In one of his cassettes, Zeitounat (2000), Badr specifically addresses women’s relationship with olive trees and their role in the conflict with Israeli settlers and soldiers who uproot or burn these trees. Zeitounat And The doors are open. Sometimes! (2006) have been recognized internationally.
“I always try to express my ideas through certain characters and I believe that I am a ‘democratic’ writer, as Mahmoud Darwish once told me. [el poeta palestino más destacado]because I don’t impose my ideas on my characters. There are writers who always speak through their characters,” explains the one who has mainly told stories of women, of her compatriots, under the occupation and in the diaspora.
“I leave room in my writing for different ideas and colors, I don’t want it to be just black and white. I always hoped that we could live in peace as two peoples, each in their own state. The only thing I can do is develop my characters and try to find a solution” to the conflict through their experiences.
