Adnan Khalaf left the West Bank to study medicine in Spain because his average was not enough to do so in Arab countries. His family resides in the town of Tulkarem, in the northern West Bank, and he has only been able to visit them once he obtained Spanish nationality. Khalaf follows the news coming from his country with the pain caused by a military occupation and with a contempt for the Israeli state latent in his conversation.
How did you get to Lanzarote?
I am from Tulkarem, in the northern West Bank, although I was born in the westernmost part of Palestine, what is now called Israel, in the province of Haifa. At the age of 18, I wanted to study medicine, so, initially, I thought about taking the degree in Arab countries because Palestinians do not have access to Hebrew faculties; only the children who collaborate with the Israeli state have access. My grade did not allow me to enter any faculty in the surrounding countries, so my next plan was to move to Europe.
They recommended Spain to me and I studied medicine between Valencia and Barcelona, although I spent the first year in Madrid learning the language. I finished pediatrics in '83 and tried to return because my dream was to work in a refugee center, but I could not re-enter the West Bank until I obtained Spanish nationality in '84.
Why couldn't you go back?
No Palestinian from the West Bank can re-enter the country once they have left. I cannot fly to Tel Aviv, the capital of Israel, and I have to enter the West Bank from an Arab country. That's why I tried to return to Tulkarem through Jordan. But when I arrived at the checkpoint, an Israeli soldier of Argentine origin interrogated me and told me that I could not live there. I asked him why and he replied "because you were born here and there is no room for natives." There is only room for Jews there. Muslims and Christians cannot return, but when I left I didn't know it. Furthermore, I don't know my date of birth because they burned all the archives in their eagerness to ignore the Palestinian people, and the one on my passport is estimated. It must be taken into account that in those years it was easy to deceive the West because there were no means of communication.
An Argentine tells you that you cannot enter the West Bank, being from there?
Yes. When the Israeli state was founded, immigrants came from many places: Lithuania, Russia, Bulgaria, Poland, Argentina... from all over as long as they were Jewish. Then the illegal immigrants arrived there based on a story from thousands of years ago for which God had promised them those lands. As if God had a real estate agency and that is why they could keep our territories. If in Spain they come and kick you out of your house under the pretext that God promised someone that home thousands of years ago, the judge immediately admits him to psychiatry. But not in Palestine.
How do you receive the news that comes to us from that side of the Mediterranean?
I get very indignant when I hear how the problem is presented in the media because I see that people do not realize that what is or was Palestine is now Israel. People believe that the problem is between two countries and that one is called Palestine and the other Israel, but people do not realize that Palestine is what the world today calls Israel.
How does this conflict arise?
This is a political and economic trap produced by North America and some European country and we have paid for it. It all begins when the UN, after the First World War when the powerful power was England, places an English Jewish military governor, Herbert Samuel, in Palestine. The Zionist movement, which defended the return of the Jews to their Promised Land, had already begun. The first meeting of the Zionists was in Basel in 1887, but then the Turks were in Palestine and they could not go to their Promised Land.
When the allies win the First World War and end the Turks, it is when England facilitates these gentlemen to occupy the land of Palestine, telling the world that it is a land without people, but we were there. The plan began at the hands of Samuel, who said that he needed 50,000 soldiers to be able to expel 1,500,000 Palestinians and England gives them to him. Thus begins the massacre.
The massacre, like in Gaza in recent weeks?
The one in Gaza in recent weeks was just one more because Israel has been formed at the expense of Palestinian corpses. They have expelled more than 5,000,000 inhabitants, among them: me, who thanks to my Spanish passport I have been able to see my family. But now any Palestinian is subject to the anti-terrorist law. When we have passports from outside we are lucky because they do not dare to touch us because the embassies from outside defend us. Even so, many times they hold you for days and weeks so that you spend your holidays at the checkpoints.
What is your opinion of this law implemented in 2001?
That law is nothing more than a blank check to Israel to do whatever it wants under the pretext of protecting its security. The terrorists cited in that law are Muslims and Arabs. Furthermore, Israel never submits to international condemnations. It has carte blanche to do whatever it wants. In Gaza, for example, Hamas defends itself against a blockade and a wall of 800kms that is condemned by The Hague but no one has thrown it because nothing is ever done against the Jewish victims who already accumulate 88 UN condemnations.
What do you say about Hamas?
Hamas is not a terrorist, but a group tired of seeing how the people are mistreated. There are 500,000 Jewish settlers in the West Bank. When Hamas saw that the dialogue was not leading to anything and in the face of Israeli bombings, it responds with bombings. That you kill 70 Palestinians, well I'm going for you and I'm going to the first supermarket with a belt of bombs because after all those are children of settlers who have occupied my house. And they say, as Hamas kills civilians, it is a terrorist group. But in reality they are people who defend themselves from a blockade, from a wall of 800 kilometers.
1,2000 dead before the truce, what do you say about Gaza?
Gaza is 30 kilometers long and 10 wide: it is half of Lanzarote and 1,500,000 inhabitants live there in misery. And from there they launch those homemade rockets. Those rockets that serve to scare the settlers. Hamas is tired of no one getting involved with the peace plan or putting Israel in its place. So they have been locked in that rectangle like animals since the Hebrews left in 2005 expelled by Hamas. And once outside they decided to lock them up. Whoever enters does not leave and whoever leaves does not return. They cut off the water, the light from the incubators and pass water to them one day so that they do not all die. And they have been carrying out massacres for three years.
How do you assess the truce that occurred last weekend?
This is useless, it can serve morally but nothing more. I am not as optimistic as a Palestinian and I understand that this can explode again at any moment. And of course the Palestinians are not going to endure so much humiliation, occupation and so much military control any longer. What needs to be done is to solve this problem at its root. End the occupation and implement peace. But peace comes in a quick and distinguished way, not, as they have been doing, with years and years of dialogue taking advantage of invading land while talking about peace. Meanwhile, the Palestinians will defend themselves as they can.
