I will make one or two points on the presentation. I was in the occupied territories twice in 2005. The first occasion, in January of that year, was very sanitised because of the conditions of visiting both the Knesset and Ramallah. It was useful but I returned in September, just one week after the so-called withdrawal from Gaza, with a group of six former Ministers and former ambassadors, for a more extended visit. We travelled on Palestinian roads and used our own bus and translator. I had made contact with 27 organisations on my first visit, and had more detailed meetings with them on the second.
One of the merits of this project is its potential to develop a new model for mental health. Some of the figures are very interesting, especially those relating to people treated outside as compared with those, amounting to maybe 10%, who are kept in units of one kind or another. Looking at our own figures since the legislation of 2001 we have much work to do but we will leave that for another day.
I visited the same areas during the first intifada and have visited them several times since. In the refugee camps in Gaza everything had got worse. Two generations had passed and the limitations on space had driven buildings upwards, meaning family households were multigenerational, creating interfamilial tensions. The report accurately points out the increase in poverty, dependency and unemployment and there were real problems over water. Before the withdrawal the UN purchased water from settlers for refugees. I am an admirer of UNRWA in many ways, but if efforts had been successful and the international community had not been as irresponsible, it should not have been needed in Gaza.
It is very important that this programme be contextual in its emphasis. Even during a short visit it was very clear that the trauma being suffered differs by age, gender and circumstance. I read one study of the experience of women in the southern occupied territories, which made grim reading on the relationships of these people with their children. One included interview clearly suggested the experience of a person's parents being humiliated had a more traumatic effect than the loss of a parent.
There were many examples of older women being humiliated, for example, being kept waiting outside checkpoints while their food products rot. There is also the issue of age difference where a 19 or 20 year old official takes a person's identity papers and comes back hours later during which time the person has suffered greatly in the heat of the sun.
Restrictions of movement have come up in the human rights work with which I would be much more familiar. This issue relates to people being separated from families and not being able to return because of changes in the residency permit. There is also the destruction of houses. How could a person be normal, as we would say in Ireland, if that person's house has been destroyed for the third time by bulldozers? We have witnessed this ourselves.
There may also have been psychotic behaviour on the other side from small groups of settlers. Settlers are not one homogeneous group. I am thinking specifically of the area near the caves at Hebron where the occupation has been extremely violent. We have had presentations on this issue before. This is what I mean when I suggest that the programme should be contextual in focus. One could never construct an interdisciplinary or comparative study that would hold constant parameters. It would be very important that it would have what I would term a psychoanthropological base, which would be able to capture specific narratives.
I do not intend to say much more because I am very strongly in favour of this programme. I would make a comment on the families of prisoners, whom Senator Leyden and I would have met over many visits. The Chairman may have done so himself. From my training as a sociologist I would be aware of the distinction between mind and self, which is negotiated symbolically in present time with the distortions of memory. There have certainly been heroic achievements by the prisoners' group, which has been sharing confined spaces with people who are responsible for many deaths. Last summer they arrived at a progressive conclusion for a way forward, which was unfortunately ignored.
With regard to the prison experience, it is going to be extremely difficult with transactional analysis to get people to work their way through different issues. There have been heroic examples of how people have offered to do things but they are not recognised.
There are other issues, such as the sheer despair of different generations of mothers and women. Old men, for example, will point to the destruction of 400,000 olive trees to build the wall. In the case of the first intifada, people fired stones, and the current intifada has suicide bombers, which I do not support. How can we know what to say to a son who points out that his parents and grandparents have been humiliated and nobody cared, and that everything has got worse, and yet suggest he should be in good mental health?
The legitimate rage and resentment in response to occupation, humiliation, degradation and being ignored by the international community signify a very healthy political attitude. It causes sets of actions and draws forth responses which are themselves seriously problematic and will, in turn, not be confined to the person but to families and neighbours.
I strongly support this programme. I would like to believe there would be a social anthropological dimension built into the method that would enable some fairly specific narratives that will, in turn, themselves suggest interdisciplinary therapies which might be most valuable. We should fund the programme and because of the longitudinal nature of the work, it must be funded on a multiannual basis.
