Maureen Clare Murphy

The Palestinian presidential election campaigns have not yet officially begun, but already there is much worry over Israeli-imposed restrictions on Palestinian movement, and how they might thwart the democratic election process. While Israel is making assurances that it will ease restrictions on movement during the election, recent events give reason to question their sincerity. Acting Speaker of Parliament Hassan Khreisheh dropped out of the race today, citing Israel’s refusal to allow him to travel to Gaza, and at 9:00 pm last night, presidential candidate Dr. Mustafa Barghouthi and his campaign delegation were detained and beaten at the Jaba checkpoint outside of Jenin while they were attempting to travel home to Ramallah.

Today Ramallah awoke to the news of Palestinian President Yasser Arafat’s death, and while the world had been anticipating this day during the nearly two weeks Arafat was hospitalized in France, confirmation of the Palestinian symbol’s passing was no less jarring in Palestine’s cultural capital. Palestinians poured into Ramallah’s Manara Square city center, and spontaneous demonstrations have been and will be taking place. While not many in the streets are crying (emotions will probably run higher tomorrow when Arafat’s burial takes place), people are coming together during this time of mourning and uncertainty.

Olive harvesting, an ancient practice that holds great spiritual and economic significance to Palestinians, is threatened by Israel’s colonization of West Bank lands. In areas such as the village of Jayyous, farmers have been cut off from their olive orchards by the apartheid wall Israel is illegally building on Palestinian land with the intention of annexing precious natural resources to the Israeli side while preventing the rightful Palestinian owners access to their land. But here in Yanoun, it is the Israeli settlers themselves who harass and shoot at the Palestinian harvesters, whose only crime is their desire to work the land that their ancestors have tended for generations.

While the BBC and CNN have been treating the failing health and rumored death of Palestinian President Yasser Arafat as the world’s top story for the past two days, it is business as usual here in Ramallah. Though journalists swarmed the PA headquarters where Arafat has been holed up for the past three years (known in Palestine as the Maqata’a) last night and presumably this morning, news of Arafat’s impending death did not stop the Friday markets from bustling this morning — another Friday during Ramadan. Today I casually asked a Palestinian man I had been talking to in a shop what he thinks will happen in Ramallah once Arafat dies. “Nothing,” he said.

As soon as he’s done saving New York, perhaps Spiderman can take his act to Palestine, where his uncanny ability to scale high walls will be welcomed by those imprisoned by the concrete barrier walls that enclose Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza. After all, Spiderman’s connection to the Middle East is pretty close, considering that Palestinian-born cult-animator Ralph Bakshi, was executive producer of the animated Spiderman series in the late ’60s. Bakshi’s other claims to fame include animating America’s first X-rated animated film Fritz the Cat, directing The Rolling Stone’s video “The Harlem Shuffle,” and inspiring the Comic Book Guy character on the Simpsons.

“People who have been [to the West Bank and Gaza Strip] always say it’s very difficult … to speak about it” to others who haven’t been there, says French director Samir Abdallah, creator of the film Writers on the Borders: A Journey to Palestine(s). Abdallah adds that his film “brings some proposal to this question of how to speak about it and show what’s happening in Palestine and … [informs how to] not only be a storyteller but an actor, in an active position” in striving for justice for the Palestinians. EI’s Maureen Clare Murphy caught up with Abdallah who was in Chicago for the North American premier of Writers on the Borders.