Mats Svensson has been a development worker since 1974 for various nongovernmental organisations and consultants, and for the Swedish government since 1988. He is currently working to support the establishment of democratic institutions in Western Europe’s vicinity, including North Africa, the Middle East, and Eastern Europe. He is also a photographer who has held photo exhibitions in Sweden, Israel, and the occupied Palestinian territory.

Crimes, Victims and Witnesses

Apartheid in Palestine

By Mats Svensson, Angela McClelland, Matilda Svensson

Real African Publishers and The Thinker

Copyright © 2012 Mats Svensson
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-9870348-0-9

Contents

Foreword,
Preface,
The red and white bird in Gaza,
The order to destroy has been given,
Retaining one’s dignity,
“Mats, you must be balanced”,
The devouring dragon,
The making of a Palestinian state,
“Recently I was someone, now I’m nobody”,
The dance of the cranes in Jerusalem,
Short film sequences at a checkpoint,
Strangers at a checkpoint,
Half a green apple,
Playing beach tennis while the helicopters pass by,
Who is a terrorist?,
Her mother’s sad eyes always remain,
Longing to be free,
In the shadow of the wall,
The pilot plays computer games over Gaza,
Dad does not want to know,
“I will never vote for corruption”,
The crimes have no period of limitation,
“Comrades, your enemy is yourselves”,
The last dance in Ramallah,
Apartheid on two continents,
Photo index,
For more information,

CHAPTER 1

THE RED AND WHITE BIRD IN GAZA

Randomly selected houses and families

The young girl from Gaza tells me how she yearns for the red and white bird. It used to come every morning to the little veranda where her mother served a breakfast of bread, tea, water, and fruit when the weather was good. Each morning her father left to look for work in Gaza City, and sometimes he was successful. Most of the time he came home late at night. She used to throw out a few seeds or breadcrumbs to the red and white bird. It came every morning at the same time, as if it had its own clock. They used to have breakfast together.

The girl talks about the time before that day in 2004, when everything disappeared. That was the day when one of the many wars ended. Before then, Israeli soldiers had passed by every day in their big metal boxes. She could see them clattering by when she drank her morning tea. Behind the thick, grey steel sat the young soldiers. On these days, she would remain at home rather than go to school.

They were all scared of the uncertainty and of the unknown. They often heard them in the distance: the big machines with their heavy engines, the roar of rockets, the rattling of machine guns. They were afraid that the machines would come too close, that the sounds would come up to them and stop, and that the machines would turn their jaws directly at them. It was on these days that the red and white bird would not appear.

The adults used to sit in the evenings and whisper about what they had seen or heard that day. Everyone dreamed of the day when everything would be quiet, with no more machine gun fire and no clattering of heavy metal. The girl longed to go back to school.

In the middle of the cold refugee room, with a few possessions piled in one corner, she sits and tells her story. She speaks in a calm and quiet voice as she spreads a rug on the cold cement floor and helps her little sister with her math lessons.

She speaks slowly, as if she wants to be sure that every word is true: no exaggeration and nothing left out. Back then they had a house with a veranda and a red and white bird. She shared a room with her little sister. Now the whole family is squeezed into a small room without a veranda and without a bird that comes to visit.

On the morning of the last day of the war, the soldiers stopped their heavy metal box and aimed the long cannon barrel at the house. That