De un modo más explícito se puede comprobar la presencia del tema en cues-

‘There is no humane way to rule people against their will’. Naomi Klein (2007:126)

Palestine is occupied, some prefer to say ‘colonised’ (Cook, 2014; Pappe, 2014), by Israel and this has a profound impact on the lives of Palestinians. International and Palestinian voices combine to tell us of the experience living in an occupied country: the daily and commonplace brutality and oppression (Baroud, 2013; Chomsky, 2014; Chomsky, 2010; Nabulsi, 2014; Pappe, 2006a; Pappe, 2006b ); the long history of ‘ethnic cleansing’ that has robbed Palestinians of most of their homeland (Pappe, 2006a); the suffering of Palestinian children (CAAC, 2010; Pilger, 1991); the lack of freedom of movement within the occupied territories and beyond (Barghoutti, 2004; Fleishman, 2014; Howell, 2007; Tutu, 2014); the repeated flouting of international law by the Israelis (Corbyn, 2014; Hunter, 2014; Pappe, 2010 and 2006; Pilger, 2002; Said, 1979; Tutu, 2014); the economic benefits for the Israelis of violence and oppression rather than peace (Klein, 2007); and the by-and-large international disregard for the suffering of Palestinians (Milne, 2014; Said, 1979). Inhumane treatment of the Palestinians is made possible because Israeli soldiers (most Israelis

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serve time in the army) are trained not to see Palestinians as human beings but as potential terrorists (Independent, 2014). The word ‘occupation’ to describe the situation in Palestine is perhaps too mild. Cook (2014) argues that the word “occupation” is inadequate as it implies a temporary state of affairs before normality is restored and that this is the opposite of what is happening in Jerusalem, the West Bank and Gaza, where ‘the occupation is entrenching, morphing and metastasizing’. Ilan Pappe (2014), more accurately, talks of ‘colonisation’ rather than ‘occupation’ to describe the situation. The stark fact of 230 illegal settlements housing 500,000 Israeli settlers in the West Bank and East Jerusalem (Palestine Solidarity Campaign, 2009), settlements that then control natural water sources so that Palestinians are left in water poverty (Friends of Al-Aqsa, 2009), supports the need for this change of terminology: ‘occupation’ is too innocuous.

Inclusion, a key theme of this study in relation to children with autism, is only possible when attention is given to the voices, perceptions, rights, wishes of the group to be included, be it children with autism or the Palestinian people. Disregard for Palestinian voices is not new. The history of the Palestinian people is characterised by lack of concern for Palestinian voices. Startlingly so in the early days of the displacement of the Palestinians from their lands in 1948, when a memorandum passing through the British Cabinet just after the Balfour Declaration offers a staggering example of the total disregard for the Arab inhabitants of Palestine at the time of the British Mandate:

For in Palestine we do not propose even to go through the form of consulting the wishes of the present inhabitants of the country [ ……. ]. The four great powers are committed to Zionism and Zionism, be it right or wrong, good or bad, is rooted in age-long tradition, in present needs, in future hopes, of far

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profounder import than the desires and prejudices of the 700,000 Arabs who now inhabit that ancient land (cited in Said, 1979:16-17).

This ‘narrow orientalist grasp on the Arabs as lesser beings with lesser or no rights’ (Baroud, 2013) is a model that was ‘borrowed and amply applied by the Zionists’ (ibid). Baroud (2014b) shows us how Palestinians are still excluded from the discourse relating to them, saying ‘it is unfathomable that Palestinians are still largely excluded from shaping their own discourse’. Exclusion of Palestinian voices allows for damaging misrepresentation of the Palestinians within international media (Chomsky, 2014). Public opinion in ‘free-market’ democracies is ‘manufactured just like any other mass-market product - soap, switches or sliced bread’ (Roy, 2004 p43). Israeli expertise with ‘hasbara’4 _{is used to present pro-Zionist accounts of}

situations in the region (Chomsky, 2010). Another problem for Palestinians is a negative perception of Islam in the West (Baroud, 2014a) as well as a readiness to interpret support for the Palestinian perspective or criticism of Israel as ‘anti-semitic’ (Rose, 2014; Tutu, 2014). A new worrying aspect of hasbara, it seems to me, is a development in the Israeli narrative whereby they characterise Palestinian resistance to oppression as extremist Islamic jihad which then allows Israel to claim that it is standing with the western world in the struggle against terrorism (BBC, 2014; Pappe, 2014).

These issues are pertinent the context of my research but the complexity invites greater attention than falls within the scope of this study. Nevertheless, in my research I have kept in mind the need to listen to and understand concerns expressed by Palestinians themselves. An iconic image for Palestinians is that of

4

Hasbara is an Israeli word that means ‘explanation’ and is also a euphemism for ‘propaganda’. It refers to the dissemination of positive information about Israel.

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Handala (Figure 5), a cartoon character created by Naji Al Ali who was subsequently assassinated in London in 1987. Handala is a voiceless, faceless figure whose silent observation questions the status quo and challenges injustices and ironies in the political landscapes depicted in Ali’s cartoons. Handala is solitary, isolated, a part of society but excluded from it. For me, Handala is Palestine, silenced, faceless, excluded, poor. As an image of exclusion, I would like to return again to Handala, an excluded child whose rights are not recognised, when talking about some of the world’s children with autism. Despite the injustices described here, Palestinians cannot be dismissed as mere victims of their circumstances, and the next few paragraphs describe their creative resistance, another important aspect of the background to my research.

Figure 5: Handala, created by Naja Al Ali

2.4 Palestinian solidarity and the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS)