RAMALLAH, She came all the way from Sweden, fully inspired, and with lots of expectations, to Palestine, to live, love and document people’s lives under occupation for the whole world to see and think about.
Lena M Fredriksson is a Swedish freelance journalist, photographer, and author who has visited the Palestinian territories several times, one of which was to work on a documentary photo book on the lives of Palestinians under Israeli occupation that she later released under the title: “All Quiet on the West Bank? Living under prolonged occupation.”
“I’m in Palestine nowadays to follow up on some cases, and to see new things. Two years ago, I released a book about living under occupation,” Fredriksson said on her current visit to Palestine, noting that she has not been able to visit for four years due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
“I released ‘All Quite on the West Bank?’ two and a half years ago, and right now I’m working on adding some stuff to it for it in order to make a whole new book out of it,” Fredriksson said. “The Palestinian Ministry of Information said they’d print the new version of the book in both Arabic and English languages and that they’d distribute the book among delegations visiting Palestine.”
Fredriksson’s interest in Palestine came all by chance, as she described it, through a friend of hers, but her reaction to the situation in Palestine was not something that she necessarily expected.
“A friend of mine who studied journalism with me suggested that I take a study trip to Palestine, specifically Beit Sahour in 2011,” Fredriksson said. “I was so upset when I saw the apartheid and the injustice going on here so I wanted to write articles about the situation here. Back then, the war on Syria was happening so the media in Sweden wasn’t exactly interested in my writings about Palestine, saying that they [media] had so much coming from that part of the world.”
But that did not stop Fredriksson from exploring her interest and inspiration in Palestine and decided to find a way to tell stories of Palestinian people living under occupation through photos and documentation.
“Finally, I have so much material, interviews, cases, photos, okay, I’ll make a book then. And so I did,” Fredriksson said. “The purpose of the book isn’t to show Palestinians how to live under occupation but rather to show the world what it’s like for Palestinians to live under occupation. It’s like a ‘Palestine for beginners’ book. It’s a photo book with many, many documented photos inside. I included photos from all the Palestinian areas I visited, Hebron, Bethlehem, Jerusalem, Ramallah, Nablus, Jericho and Jenin.”
For the title of the book, Fredriksson said that found inspiration from a novel titled “All Quiet on the Western Front” by Erich Maria Remarque, who was a German veteran of World War I. She said the title is like a “little play on words” but the subtitle says ‘living under prolonged occupation’.
“The book is supposed to show everyday life because I’m a person who’s not very good with history but feelings and people matter the most,” Fredriksson explained. “What I do here is I try to show the everyday life of Palestinians, the regular Palestinian family, how do they live? How’s school? What happens when they go to a checkpoint?”
Fredriksson recalled her first visit to Palestine in 2011, noting that she found out that the situation in Palestine was way worse than she thought about despite having expectations prior to her visit.
“The situation was worse than I imagined, but the Palestinians were a lot better than I thought; so overwhelmingly welcoming. They said ‘hello, how are you? Thank you for coming.’ They’re super nice.”
The author then talked about her expectations of visiting refugee camps for the first time.
“When I first visited a refugee camp, I didn’t know if I had to be afraid or not. I don’t look Palestinian, and I was afraid I’d be mistaken for an Israeli, or that people would think I got a lot of money since I have a big camera. I was careful the first time. But then I found out I was safe. The people were so nice. Then after multiple visits to Palestine, I even stayed with families in the refugee camp. I felt like I was almost at home.”
However, Fredriksson still felt how unpleasant life can be in the refugee camp, especially under occupation.
“It’s so sad that people live that way. It’s crowded and it’s high in unemployment and I hear that the UNRWA schools don’t get so much funding anymore. There aren’t many teachers and there isn’t a lot of material for the kids and that just upsets me.”
The Swedish journalist then proceeded to say that it’s important to raise awareness about Palestine.
“A lot of people are misled. I’m a person who reads quite a lot and not everybody does. I think that most of the media in Sweden are careful and afraid of being too hard on Israel,” she said. “Palestinian people here thank me for coming here but they also ask me to tell the world about their situation and that’s what I want to do.”
Just like any journalist around the world, Fredriksson was also shocked to learn of the killing of Palestinian-American journalist Shireen Abu Akleh by Israeli forces while she was covering an Israeli military raid into the occupied West Bank city of Jenin last May.
“I was extremely upset and sad, of course, and I thought about her family,” Fredriksson said. “Israelis first said that Palestinians shot her but we have an answer that it turned out that Israelis shot her it on purpose.”
“I spoke to a person from the journalists’ union in Bethlehem and he said that another journalist was assassinated by Israel. It’s really upsetting. Democracy has to have free speech and free media so you can tell about what’s happening.”
Fredriksson expressed her hopes for the Palestinian people.
“I hope there will be freedom and that the occupation will come to an end. I hope that the Palestinians will be allowed to live in peace as they wish.”
Source: Palestine News & Info Agency