Dear friends,
The Boston delegation has left and I have a couple days off before going back to work in Hares, so I guess there’s no excuse not to write. These two weeks have been stressful but truly incredible. The stress comes from helping to plan and lead a group of people around a place in which it is impossible to plan ahead or know how long it might take to get from place to place on any given day. I feel really blessed to have been able to do this, though, both to share my knowledge, experiences, and relationships with the folks from Boston and also to meet new people and see new places.
I think the condensed West Bank experience helps elucidate the real issues of occupation. Almost every place we went has been or will be severely affected by the Wall. In rural areas the loss of land is by far the most significant issue. Israel continues to operate with a policy of “maximum land, minimum people,” meaning that the Wall is often built between villages’ lands and their buildings, effectively annexing the land into Israel while leaving the people in the West Bank. Already farmers question the monetary value of harvesting their crops, in part because the system of roadblocks and checkpoints make it virtually impossible to transport Palestinian goods from place to place. Israeli trucks pass with no problem and Israeli goods flood the Palestinian market. Now, with the Wall separating Palestinians from their land and requiring them to get permits to pass through at designated times (which are not always respected) and with designated people (who are not always respected), farmers are almost positive that working their land will provide them with a net loss. The problem: if they don’t harvest their land for three years, Israel can “legally” claim it as state land, meaning Jewish-only land. Perhaps you can begin to see how the system works.
Urban areas face similar issues, although we hear the word “unemployment” far more often. The Wall is just one more obstruction to freedom of movement and thus access to employment, one more blow to a population who has received far too many blows already.
And of course, in both urban and rural areas, both Muslim and Christian areas, the prison issue is never far from people’s minds. Between 650,000 and 700,000 Palestinians have been imprisoned since the occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip in 1967. This comprises about 20% of the population, and since a vast majority of them are men, this means that about 40% of Palestinian men have been in prison. Very few of them have had civil trials. Military tribunals are the rule of law here. The judges and lawyers are military officers who, until recently, were not required to have had any legal training to assume these posts. The defense lawyers are often not allowed to communicate with their clients and neither the lawyer nor the accused is allowed to attend the proceedings or see any of the evidence (if there is any) against the accused. In fact, no evidence is needed if two witnesses testify against someone. So if a 14 year old boy is arrested and the army can convince two of his friends to testify that he threw a stone at a jeep, the boy could spend a few years in prison. Then there’s administrative detention, where any Palestinian can be held without charges for a period of 6 months, and that 6-month period is indefinitely renewable. Sound familiar to any Americans out there? It seems like the US has been learning a little something from Israel (many people said this after the Abu Ghraib story broke, since the methods of torture used there were so similar to the methods of torture Israel has used against Palestinians for years).
The military orders themselves, upon which all of this is based, are constantly updated and not often publicized. For example, the military keeps a list of banned books for which Palestinians can be imprisoned for possessing. One of them is a list of UN resolutions on the issue of Palestine. No commentary, no analysis, just the list.
I’m writing so much about the prisoner issue here not only because it is one near and dear to my heart, but because the 7,500 Palestinian prisoners who are currently being held in Israeli jails are on their 15th day of a hunger strike. It overwhelms me when I really think about it, and makes me incredibly upset when I realize that the mainstream world press has virtually ignored this and I’m not even sure that most of you know about the strike.
The hunger strike is different than previous ones of years past. They have no political demands (for instance, their release), but instead a whole list of humanitarian demands. They want adequate food and water, they want the Israeli guards to stop throwing tear gas into their prison cells, they want medical care, they want their families to be able to visit them. Israel’s response has been, “Let them die.” The guards have taken to barbecuing meat in front of the fasting prisoners, and, more significantly, refusing to give them salt. Apparently a little bit of salt in water can prevent the human stomach from deteriorating completely. Many prisoners have been taken to the hospital already, and every day I wait to hear news of prisoner deaths. I don’t think there have been any so far, but it’s only a matter of time.
Our delegation visited the prisoner solidarity tents in many cities and villages, and found women, men, and children sitting and fasting from dawn to dusk as they held framed pictures of their loved ones in prison. Most of them want to tell us their stories. They tell us how the soldiers barged into their houses at night, beat them and/or their children, threw their food on the floor and stamped on it, poured water on their furniture, and, most importantly, took their sons away. Most have not been able to visit. The Red Cross is the only organization that can obtain visitor permits for relatives, and, in my opinion, they could be a bit more effective in this task.
I don’t know if all this information will be too matter-of-fact to affect you or if it will overwhelm you on a human level the same way it does for me everytime I hear a woman tell me her family’s story. Often I think of a Holly Near song in which she sings about a Latin American friend who had been disappeared and tortured. The only line I remember now is, “I cannot bear to hear your story.” (If anyone knows this song will you send me the lyrics?)
I had planned to discuss more people, places, and issues in this report, but I think instead I’ll try to get all my pictures up on my online photo album when I get back to Hares and then send you the link. Until then, please give a few moments of your time to think of those living under occupation here, and specifically those in prison and their families. And don’t forget those in the US – the thousands of people who have been in prison since September 11, 2001 or shortly thereafter simply for being from Arab countries, and the thousands of other political prisoners in our own midst (including 250 bicyclists arrested in New York yesterday and, I’m sure, many more to come in the next few days).
Love Hannah
Sunday, August 29, 2004
Friday, August 20, 2004
From Pain Comes Poetry
I've been with this delegation from Boston for almost a week now, and it's been incredibly intense, incredibly stressful, and incredibly wonderful. We're taking a day off in Jerusalem today to catch up on sleep and gather our thoughts together. The group is a fascinating mix of people with a high level of creative energy, and I've felt my emotions open and my creative juices flow more in the past couple days than in a long time. And so, I will share with you two poems that I've written, and hope that you can read them out loud (I wrote them with this intention).
The first is called "Khalil," the Arabic name for the city that in Hebrew and English is usually called "Hebron." The second is a response to a very painful (for me) visit to the settlement of Bat Ayin, a right-wing ideological settlement strategically placed in the Gush Etzion block between Bethlehem and Hebron (and still referred to as 'the Jerusalem area'). One of our delegates has family living there because her cousin's husband is studying at the yeshiva on the settlement. We met with the rabbi of the yeshiva, and my poem is a response to him. In the third poem, I refer to Yad Vashem, which is Israel's Holocaust museum, and to Al Naqba, meaning 'the catastrophe' in Arabic and referring to the killing and displacement of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians during the war of 1948 (what to Israel is the 'war of independence'). And I think that's all you need to know.
Khalil
"What's the difference between an Arab and a trampoline?"
the question, the set up, the joke begins
in Hebrew, on the wall of a Palestinian home
or a Palestinian store
where once there were people
where once there was life
and how can the people not hate in response?
but somehow they don't
somehow the Arabic words on the walls say instead
"Congratulations to you on your pilgrimage to Mecca"
and "My store has moved to the market outside"
sometimes the truth is so clear that it hurts
sometimes no response is necessary
the answer, the punch line, the joke ends
"On a trampoline you jump without shoes."
To Rabbi Natan Greenberg of Bat Ayin settlement
Why do you think there are armed guards outside our kindergartens?
you asked it rhetorically, Rabbi
you asked it so you could answer it
so you, who have never set foot in your Palestinian neighbor's village, could tell me that if you did, you would be dead in an hour
so you could tell me that if a Palestinian came to your colony, he would be fine, and in the next breath tell me that if a Palestinian came to your door, you would have to assume he was there to kill you and thus take appropriate action
Why do I think there are armed guards outside your kindergartens?
I think there are armed guards outside your kindergartens
because it helps to feed your myth of fear
because it helps to feed your fear of reality
Do you feel safer with the guns?
Do you tell me Jews are not a warlike people?
Do you tell me you hope you have never killed an innocent person but you can't be sure?
Do you believe there are innocent people?
Do you believe there are any other kind?
Why do I think there are armed guards outside your kindergartens?
I think there are armed guards outside your kindergartens
because it is easier to demonize the victims than to stop victimizing them
because you feel more powerful with an illusion of control than a reality of trust
because you cannot see beyond the walls of your own ghetto and the limitations of your own understanding
because "never again" means only one thing to you and you've copyrighted the phrase and stolen the experience of suffering from every other group of people on this earth
in your mind
because you don't know quite what to do with power but you're damn glad you have it and you have no intention of sharing it
or dismantling it
because myth creates privilege
and privilege creates blindness
and blindness creates you
because when myth becomes reality
it is that much more difficult to disarm
Why do I think there are armed guards outside your kindergartens?
because the view from Bat Ayin is beautiful
and you don't know your neighbor's name.
A poem with no name
street signs marking settlements
Hebrew, English, and
when not crossed out or faded,
Arabic
crossed out or faded
crossed out or faded
whitewashing street signs
whitewashing history
a mockery of the land
a mockery of the people
i'm starting to understand the importance of naming
i'm starting to understand why every refugee can tell me the name of her family's prior village and why this is often the answer to "where are you from?"
i'm starting to understand why every mother of every prisoner wants to tell me her son's name, his age, the details of his arrest, the prison where he is being held
the prison where he is being held
the prison that she most likely does not have permission to visit
i'm starting to understand why every martyr has a poster in his name, with his photograph, on the walls of every city, village and camp
the same cities, villages, and camps that the street signs forget
the same cities, villages, and camps that have been erased from the Israeli consciousness as quickly as you can say 1948
the same cities, villages, and camps that have been forgotten by history because thus far, history has been written by the winners
and thus far, justice has not won
i imagine a new permanent exhibit at Yad Vashem like the one they have now
the room of mirrors and candles
(or is it one candle reflected hundreds, thousands, six million, twelve million times?)
the room where, as you walk through, you hear the reciting of names
victims of the Nazi holocaust
names that are so many that the tape has yet to repeat itself
i imagine a room a bit like this
but a room instead in which every destroyed village is named
and every victim of Al Naqba is named
and every refugee is named
and every prisoner is named
and every prison is named
and every uprooted tree is named
and every demolished home is named
and every town trapped behind the Wall is named
and every victim of the Jewish psychosis of fear and particularism is named
including ourselves
and i imagine every Israeli, every Zionist, every Jew walking through that room
and seeing herself
and seeing himself
reflected in the mirrors, in the names, in the light of the candle
reflected in hundreds, thousands, millions
as many times as it takes
until there is not one more rabbi who can look me in the eye and say
"this settlement was built on empty land"
The first is called "Khalil," the Arabic name for the city that in Hebrew and English is usually called "Hebron." The second is a response to a very painful (for me) visit to the settlement of Bat Ayin, a right-wing ideological settlement strategically placed in the Gush Etzion block between Bethlehem and Hebron (and still referred to as 'the Jerusalem area'). One of our delegates has family living there because her cousin's husband is studying at the yeshiva on the settlement. We met with the rabbi of the yeshiva, and my poem is a response to him. In the third poem, I refer to Yad Vashem, which is Israel's Holocaust museum, and to Al Naqba, meaning 'the catastrophe' in Arabic and referring to the killing and displacement of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians during the war of 1948 (what to Israel is the 'war of independence'). And I think that's all you need to know.
Khalil
"What's the difference between an Arab and a trampoline?"
the question, the set up, the joke begins
in Hebrew, on the wall of a Palestinian home
or a Palestinian store
where once there were people
where once there was life
and how can the people not hate in response?
but somehow they don't
somehow the Arabic words on the walls say instead
"Congratulations to you on your pilgrimage to Mecca"
and "My store has moved to the market outside"
sometimes the truth is so clear that it hurts
sometimes no response is necessary
the answer, the punch line, the joke ends
"On a trampoline you jump without shoes."
To Rabbi Natan Greenberg of Bat Ayin settlement
Why do you think there are armed guards outside our kindergartens?
you asked it rhetorically, Rabbi
you asked it so you could answer it
so you, who have never set foot in your Palestinian neighbor's village, could tell me that if you did, you would be dead in an hour
so you could tell me that if a Palestinian came to your colony, he would be fine, and in the next breath tell me that if a Palestinian came to your door, you would have to assume he was there to kill you and thus take appropriate action
Why do I think there are armed guards outside your kindergartens?
I think there are armed guards outside your kindergartens
because it helps to feed your myth of fear
because it helps to feed your fear of reality
Do you feel safer with the guns?
Do you tell me Jews are not a warlike people?
Do you tell me you hope you have never killed an innocent person but you can't be sure?
Do you believe there are innocent people?
Do you believe there are any other kind?
Why do I think there are armed guards outside your kindergartens?
I think there are armed guards outside your kindergartens
because it is easier to demonize the victims than to stop victimizing them
because you feel more powerful with an illusion of control than a reality of trust
because you cannot see beyond the walls of your own ghetto and the limitations of your own understanding
because "never again" means only one thing to you and you've copyrighted the phrase and stolen the experience of suffering from every other group of people on this earth
in your mind
because you don't know quite what to do with power but you're damn glad you have it and you have no intention of sharing it
or dismantling it
because myth creates privilege
and privilege creates blindness
and blindness creates you
because when myth becomes reality
it is that much more difficult to disarm
Why do I think there are armed guards outside your kindergartens?
because the view from Bat Ayin is beautiful
and you don't know your neighbor's name.
A poem with no name
street signs marking settlements
Hebrew, English, and
when not crossed out or faded,
Arabic
crossed out or faded
crossed out or faded
whitewashing street signs
whitewashing history
a mockery of the land
a mockery of the people
i'm starting to understand the importance of naming
i'm starting to understand why every refugee can tell me the name of her family's prior village and why this is often the answer to "where are you from?"
i'm starting to understand why every mother of every prisoner wants to tell me her son's name, his age, the details of his arrest, the prison where he is being held
the prison where he is being held
the prison that she most likely does not have permission to visit
i'm starting to understand why every martyr has a poster in his name, with his photograph, on the walls of every city, village and camp
the same cities, villages, and camps that the street signs forget
the same cities, villages, and camps that have been erased from the Israeli consciousness as quickly as you can say 1948
the same cities, villages, and camps that have been forgotten by history because thus far, history has been written by the winners
and thus far, justice has not won
i imagine a new permanent exhibit at Yad Vashem like the one they have now
the room of mirrors and candles
(or is it one candle reflected hundreds, thousands, six million, twelve million times?)
the room where, as you walk through, you hear the reciting of names
victims of the Nazi holocaust
names that are so many that the tape has yet to repeat itself
i imagine a room a bit like this
but a room instead in which every destroyed village is named
and every victim of Al Naqba is named
and every refugee is named
and every prisoner is named
and every prison is named
and every uprooted tree is named
and every demolished home is named
and every town trapped behind the Wall is named
and every victim of the Jewish psychosis of fear and particularism is named
including ourselves
and i imagine every Israeli, every Zionist, every Jew walking through that room
and seeing herself
and seeing himself
reflected in the mirrors, in the names, in the light of the candle
reflected in hundreds, thousands, millions
as many times as it takes
until there is not one more rabbi who can look me in the eye and say
"this settlement was built on empty land"
Friday, August 06, 2004
A People Like Any Other People
The AEI (Arab Educational Institute) "summer school" is over, and the most important idea I’ve walked away with is that people really are the same everywhere, specifically when it comes to group dynamics and individual personalities. As I said in my last report, my job for the week was to keep the kids busy during parts of the morning and to run icebreaking activities for the larger group. The kids were adorable, and acted like every other group of children I’ve ever worked with - some of them latched on to me, others were too cool, some habitually helped others out of the goodness of their own hearts, others caused trouble.
I was a little nervous about the icebreakers with the larger group, even slightly more nervous than I usually am when I try to get a group of teenagers and adults to play silly games. And like in any group, there were people who participated unabashedly and others who stayed a bit quiet. Overall the activities went splendidly, and even the teenage boys got into the games (and started running them at times).
I’ve participated in four meetings in the past week that reinforce for me the thought that Palestinians are a people like any other people, wrought with all the complexities and variety that would be expected.
1) Ghassan
Ghassan, one of the Palestinian founders of ISM (International Solidarity Movement), spoke at AEI’s summer school about the meaning of international solidarity with Palestinian nonviolent resistance. He started by saying that anybody who comes here to ‘liberate Palestine’ or to ‘help Palestinians’ is coming from a colonialist perspective that implies superiority. We must work as partners, he said, with internationals taking the same risks as Palestinians. It was this last part that challenged me, and that I always find difficult to reconcile with the fact that internationals do still have some privilege as internationals. Part of what it means to be here, part of the power of witness, relies on this privilege. What is our role, then? It is the old question of how to use one’s privilege to dismantle it. And dismantling is exactly what Ghassan stresses. He talks about ISM as one of the few organizations that attempts to dismantle the Israeli systems of control, rather than providing services that serve as band-aid solutions at best. He goes so far as to say that most Palestinian NGOs and foreign government offices are simply doing the work that Israel is legally obliged to do as an occupying power: they are taking care of some of the basic human needs of Palestinians. This is not a new thought, but one that hits home after working with and seeing so many NGOs in operation this past month in Bethlehem. Are they an indication of a healthy civil society? Or are they simply reinforcing the occupation? Hard to tell.
2) Dawud
On Wednesday some of the folks in my program went to pick almonds with Palestinians on land south of Bethlehem near the village of Nehalin. The land is absolutely gorgeous, and the variety of crops impressive. If not for the settlements surrounding the area (on every hilltop and in half the valleys), the scene would be perfectly idyllic. Dawud, the man who met us, showed us the cave where his grandfather and even his uncle lived until their deaths (his uncle in 1987). By Israeli law, they are not allowed to build on their land, so Dawud’s family has been renovating caves and other underground areas that remain undetected by passing helicopters sent to survey the area. The family members mostly live in the city, but take turns staying on their land as they continue a thirteen year court battle to protect it. They have ownership papers from the Ottomans, the Brits, and even the Israelis, but settlement expansion threatens them nonetheless. In recent years, Dawud has made contact with the international community, and recently ran the first "Tent of Nations" (www.tentofnations.org) project whereby internationals came to live on and learn about the land for a few weeks.
Dawud mentioned that some of his Israeli friends in various peace groups have offered to bring hundreds of Israelis and organize a large protest on the land. Dawud’s response: why? He prefers to resist by the simple act of cultivating the land (creating facts on the ground), and not to draw too much army attention to the area while the court case is progressing. "Our problem as Palestinians," Dawud told me, "is that we react instead of acting." I agree with that general statement, but wonder about the strategy and its application to other situations. In his case, I think it’s probably true that this method of resistance is the most effective. When he told me that internationals should not be attending demonstrations at all, though, I had to challenge him. There are many kinds of nonviolent resistance, I said. When people march against the stealing of their land, it’s true that they’re reacting, but at this point, what else is there to do? I hoped he could really answer this, because the question is not rhetorical, and is something I’ve been wondering since I arrived this time. What proactive steps can we take? Ghassan says we can’t plan for the future in this situation, and that we must simply act in ways that are effective and just right now. Dawud says we must think of long-term results. They live with somewhat different realities, and their opinions are responses to their situations. I have seen both, and I am searching for the best way to bridge the experiences, the thoughts, and the methods of resistance.
Dawud continues to work his land, even though it’s not profitable to do so. Many of the farmers have stopped working their land altogether, which is extremely dangerous in this atmosphere of rapid land annexation. Under Israeli law (taken from Ottoman law), people who don’t work their land for 3 years lose ownership of it. But when people can’t live off their land, what are they to do? "We have no infrastructure," said Dawud. "Our leaders who tell us we’re close to the creation of a state are crazy." Let the Israelis annex us, said Dawud, and resume the responsibility of taking care of the population and the infrastructure that they’ve destroyed.
3) Yassir Arafat
Speaking of leaders and the creation of a state, our group took a trip to Ramallah last week which included, among other things, a visit with President Arafat in his compound. My first and very simple impressions: he is small (really, his size does not come through in pictures), old, and friendly. He asked at the very beginning if we had questions, which surprised us. Not only have I heard that he doesn’t usually take questions, but we had just been told by the Palestinian who accompanied us that if we have the opportunity to ask questions, we should be polite and not challenge him. So what to ask? We had plenty in our heads, of course, but it seemed Arafat himself would have to break the ice. He started pulling pictures and articles out of a folder to show us "the tragedies of the Palestinian people." The stories were from different places and about different topics, with no specific connection between them. Pictures of the statue of the Virgin Mary shot up with bullets during the army siege of Bethlehem in 2002; articles about the Israeli use of depleted uranium weapons against Palestinians; stories about the Wall. He kept asking, "Who can believe this?" and "Who can imagine this?" It seemed as though he was trying to convince himself of these tragedies as much as he was trying to convince us. And then it hit me: he has never seen the Wall! Imprisoned in his compound for the past 3 years, Arafat has not seen the new methods of occupation, land confiscation and displacement. He has seen pictures, read articles, and talked with people, but he has never seen these things with his own eyes. How can he help but be out of touch with his people?
Two thoughts occur to me that I cannot ignore. First, I’m not sure leaders who do have complete freedom of movement are really in touch with the people they represent either (I wonder if Bush has ever walked around the corner and visited the large tent city of homeless people just a neighborhood away). Secondly, it’s quite possible that even if Arafat were given the opportunity to be a real president, he would not do so (it’s not as though he’s completely without resources now, and his government is no less corrupt than any other government). But it did strike me that I have probably seen more of the Wall and its real effects on the Palestinian people than the Palestinian president himself.
I came home from the meeting and told my host family where I’d been. They were amused. Comments I heard from Palestinians I know well include, "I hope he dies this year" and "He doesn’t want to see us, only you." There’s definitely a healthy amount of criticism, as well as a healthy amount of support for him (I just don’t happen to be friends with the hardcore Fateh people here in Bethlehem).
4) Shereen and Mohammed
In my opinion, the most important people I met in the past week are Shereen and Mohammed. They approached me in the middle of the AEI summer school to thank me for leading the games - they had enjoyed them. "We like to talk to internationals and practice our English," they said. The conversation continued from there. Shereen (16) and Mohammed (15) are sister and brother and live in the Arroub refugee camp in the Hebron region. Shereen is the number one girl in her class, and Mohammed is the number one boy in his school. Both want to go to university in the US, Shereen to be a doctor and Mohammed to be a software engineer. Both want to be famous and help their people. Their English is incredible and the first word that came to me in our conversation was "superhuman."
We continued to spend time together throughout the week, and at the end they invited me to their house. Yesterday I went for lunch. The taxi dropped me next to an army watchtower and pointed across the street to the entrance of the camp. Mohammed came to meet me and took me in to meet the rest of the family. They have three other younger brothers and a sister (6 kids in total). Their mother is an English teacher and father is a civic engineer, so the whole family has an excellent command of English.
I don’t know how to describe how incredible these kids are. First of all, they both seem older than their years. They’re extremely precise with language, Shereen in particular. I’ve noticed often that Palestinians do the same thing in English that I do in Arabic - simplify their thoughts for the purpose of simplifying communication. Shereen does not do this. She communicates complete and complex thoughts, and is patient enough with herself to find the words she needs to do so.
Not surprisingly, their parents are tremendously proud of them. They explained that recently both kids had taken an exam to qualify to participate in an English program in Hebron. They had taken the exam in the beginning of June and as of last week hadn’t received the results, so Dad called up to find out what was going on. Apparently, both Shereen and Mohammed scored exceptionally high - too high, it turns out. There weren’t enough students to form a group at their level. Essentially, the organization said to the parents, "Your children are too smart to be in our program." Shereen was delighted, Mohammed disappointed.
We sat down for lunch. Shereen’s and Mohammed’s mother had made a plate of vegetarian food just for me, and it was delicious. I was sad not to be able to share with them - to eat from the same huge plate everyone else ate from - but it was a lovely meal and I stuffed myself enough to appreciate the walk afterwards. They showed me around the camp, starting with the bullet holes in the curtains and walls of their own house (from an army invasion of the camp 2 years ago, although there have been many since then). We walked outside and I noticed most of the walls on the main street had brightly colored murals. Mohammed told me they had been done by kids in the camp in coordination with a club. The murals were to beautify the camp, to cover up graffiti from various political parties and militant groups. Dad made sure to emphasize that most people are not involved in militant groups, that the graffiti saying, "Those who want peace are cowards" is not representative of the people.
We crossed the settler road in front of the camp and entered the farm on the other side of the street. The farm is owned by the Palestinian Authority, they said, and there’s an agricultural college located there. It was one of the few open green spaces I’ve seen in Palestine (other than the thousands of dunums of olive groves that is the landscape of this place). A kid rode his bike past us, we strolled through, and the cows seemed happy hanging out in the dirt designated for them.
On our tour of the camp, we stopped at the neighbor’s sculpting workshop across the street from Shereen’s and Mohammed’s house. At first I saw only stone bowls and vases, but when Abu Mohammed asked the man to show me something, he pulled a different piece off a shelf. I didn’t recognize the shape at first. "It’s a Palestinian woman," he told me. I saw it then: a pregnant Palestinian woman holding a basket on her head, with the sun on top. "She’s pregnant with peace," said the sculptor. He turned the piece around, and on the back was the same woman with a moon shape carved out of her stomach. "On this side she’s not pregnant," he said, "and there’s no sun." The meaning of the piece, he said, is that different people can see the same situation in different ways. As I stood on the main road in Arroub with a view of the kids in the camp, the farm, the settler road, and the army watchtower, I thought, "This couldn’t be more true."
I was a little nervous about the icebreakers with the larger group, even slightly more nervous than I usually am when I try to get a group of teenagers and adults to play silly games. And like in any group, there were people who participated unabashedly and others who stayed a bit quiet. Overall the activities went splendidly, and even the teenage boys got into the games (and started running them at times).
I’ve participated in four meetings in the past week that reinforce for me the thought that Palestinians are a people like any other people, wrought with all the complexities and variety that would be expected.
1) Ghassan
Ghassan, one of the Palestinian founders of ISM (International Solidarity Movement), spoke at AEI’s summer school about the meaning of international solidarity with Palestinian nonviolent resistance. He started by saying that anybody who comes here to ‘liberate Palestine’ or to ‘help Palestinians’ is coming from a colonialist perspective that implies superiority. We must work as partners, he said, with internationals taking the same risks as Palestinians. It was this last part that challenged me, and that I always find difficult to reconcile with the fact that internationals do still have some privilege as internationals. Part of what it means to be here, part of the power of witness, relies on this privilege. What is our role, then? It is the old question of how to use one’s privilege to dismantle it. And dismantling is exactly what Ghassan stresses. He talks about ISM as one of the few organizations that attempts to dismantle the Israeli systems of control, rather than providing services that serve as band-aid solutions at best. He goes so far as to say that most Palestinian NGOs and foreign government offices are simply doing the work that Israel is legally obliged to do as an occupying power: they are taking care of some of the basic human needs of Palestinians. This is not a new thought, but one that hits home after working with and seeing so many NGOs in operation this past month in Bethlehem. Are they an indication of a healthy civil society? Or are they simply reinforcing the occupation? Hard to tell.
2) Dawud
On Wednesday some of the folks in my program went to pick almonds with Palestinians on land south of Bethlehem near the village of Nehalin. The land is absolutely gorgeous, and the variety of crops impressive. If not for the settlements surrounding the area (on every hilltop and in half the valleys), the scene would be perfectly idyllic. Dawud, the man who met us, showed us the cave where his grandfather and even his uncle lived until their deaths (his uncle in 1987). By Israeli law, they are not allowed to build on their land, so Dawud’s family has been renovating caves and other underground areas that remain undetected by passing helicopters sent to survey the area. The family members mostly live in the city, but take turns staying on their land as they continue a thirteen year court battle to protect it. They have ownership papers from the Ottomans, the Brits, and even the Israelis, but settlement expansion threatens them nonetheless. In recent years, Dawud has made contact with the international community, and recently ran the first "Tent of Nations" (www.tentofnations.org) project whereby internationals came to live on and learn about the land for a few weeks.
Dawud mentioned that some of his Israeli friends in various peace groups have offered to bring hundreds of Israelis and organize a large protest on the land. Dawud’s response: why? He prefers to resist by the simple act of cultivating the land (creating facts on the ground), and not to draw too much army attention to the area while the court case is progressing. "Our problem as Palestinians," Dawud told me, "is that we react instead of acting." I agree with that general statement, but wonder about the strategy and its application to other situations. In his case, I think it’s probably true that this method of resistance is the most effective. When he told me that internationals should not be attending demonstrations at all, though, I had to challenge him. There are many kinds of nonviolent resistance, I said. When people march against the stealing of their land, it’s true that they’re reacting, but at this point, what else is there to do? I hoped he could really answer this, because the question is not rhetorical, and is something I’ve been wondering since I arrived this time. What proactive steps can we take? Ghassan says we can’t plan for the future in this situation, and that we must simply act in ways that are effective and just right now. Dawud says we must think of long-term results. They live with somewhat different realities, and their opinions are responses to their situations. I have seen both, and I am searching for the best way to bridge the experiences, the thoughts, and the methods of resistance.
Dawud continues to work his land, even though it’s not profitable to do so. Many of the farmers have stopped working their land altogether, which is extremely dangerous in this atmosphere of rapid land annexation. Under Israeli law (taken from Ottoman law), people who don’t work their land for 3 years lose ownership of it. But when people can’t live off their land, what are they to do? "We have no infrastructure," said Dawud. "Our leaders who tell us we’re close to the creation of a state are crazy." Let the Israelis annex us, said Dawud, and resume the responsibility of taking care of the population and the infrastructure that they’ve destroyed.
3) Yassir Arafat
Speaking of leaders and the creation of a state, our group took a trip to Ramallah last week which included, among other things, a visit with President Arafat in his compound. My first and very simple impressions: he is small (really, his size does not come through in pictures), old, and friendly. He asked at the very beginning if we had questions, which surprised us. Not only have I heard that he doesn’t usually take questions, but we had just been told by the Palestinian who accompanied us that if we have the opportunity to ask questions, we should be polite and not challenge him. So what to ask? We had plenty in our heads, of course, but it seemed Arafat himself would have to break the ice. He started pulling pictures and articles out of a folder to show us "the tragedies of the Palestinian people." The stories were from different places and about different topics, with no specific connection between them. Pictures of the statue of the Virgin Mary shot up with bullets during the army siege of Bethlehem in 2002; articles about the Israeli use of depleted uranium weapons against Palestinians; stories about the Wall. He kept asking, "Who can believe this?" and "Who can imagine this?" It seemed as though he was trying to convince himself of these tragedies as much as he was trying to convince us. And then it hit me: he has never seen the Wall! Imprisoned in his compound for the past 3 years, Arafat has not seen the new methods of occupation, land confiscation and displacement. He has seen pictures, read articles, and talked with people, but he has never seen these things with his own eyes. How can he help but be out of touch with his people?
Two thoughts occur to me that I cannot ignore. First, I’m not sure leaders who do have complete freedom of movement are really in touch with the people they represent either (I wonder if Bush has ever walked around the corner and visited the large tent city of homeless people just a neighborhood away). Secondly, it’s quite possible that even if Arafat were given the opportunity to be a real president, he would not do so (it’s not as though he’s completely without resources now, and his government is no less corrupt than any other government). But it did strike me that I have probably seen more of the Wall and its real effects on the Palestinian people than the Palestinian president himself.
I came home from the meeting and told my host family where I’d been. They were amused. Comments I heard from Palestinians I know well include, "I hope he dies this year" and "He doesn’t want to see us, only you." There’s definitely a healthy amount of criticism, as well as a healthy amount of support for him (I just don’t happen to be friends with the hardcore Fateh people here in Bethlehem).
4) Shereen and Mohammed
In my opinion, the most important people I met in the past week are Shereen and Mohammed. They approached me in the middle of the AEI summer school to thank me for leading the games - they had enjoyed them. "We like to talk to internationals and practice our English," they said. The conversation continued from there. Shereen (16) and Mohammed (15) are sister and brother and live in the Arroub refugee camp in the Hebron region. Shereen is the number one girl in her class, and Mohammed is the number one boy in his school. Both want to go to university in the US, Shereen to be a doctor and Mohammed to be a software engineer. Both want to be famous and help their people. Their English is incredible and the first word that came to me in our conversation was "superhuman."
We continued to spend time together throughout the week, and at the end they invited me to their house. Yesterday I went for lunch. The taxi dropped me next to an army watchtower and pointed across the street to the entrance of the camp. Mohammed came to meet me and took me in to meet the rest of the family. They have three other younger brothers and a sister (6 kids in total). Their mother is an English teacher and father is a civic engineer, so the whole family has an excellent command of English.
I don’t know how to describe how incredible these kids are. First of all, they both seem older than their years. They’re extremely precise with language, Shereen in particular. I’ve noticed often that Palestinians do the same thing in English that I do in Arabic - simplify their thoughts for the purpose of simplifying communication. Shereen does not do this. She communicates complete and complex thoughts, and is patient enough with herself to find the words she needs to do so.
Not surprisingly, their parents are tremendously proud of them. They explained that recently both kids had taken an exam to qualify to participate in an English program in Hebron. They had taken the exam in the beginning of June and as of last week hadn’t received the results, so Dad called up to find out what was going on. Apparently, both Shereen and Mohammed scored exceptionally high - too high, it turns out. There weren’t enough students to form a group at their level. Essentially, the organization said to the parents, "Your children are too smart to be in our program." Shereen was delighted, Mohammed disappointed.
We sat down for lunch. Shereen’s and Mohammed’s mother had made a plate of vegetarian food just for me, and it was delicious. I was sad not to be able to share with them - to eat from the same huge plate everyone else ate from - but it was a lovely meal and I stuffed myself enough to appreciate the walk afterwards. They showed me around the camp, starting with the bullet holes in the curtains and walls of their own house (from an army invasion of the camp 2 years ago, although there have been many since then). We walked outside and I noticed most of the walls on the main street had brightly colored murals. Mohammed told me they had been done by kids in the camp in coordination with a club. The murals were to beautify the camp, to cover up graffiti from various political parties and militant groups. Dad made sure to emphasize that most people are not involved in militant groups, that the graffiti saying, "Those who want peace are cowards" is not representative of the people.
We crossed the settler road in front of the camp and entered the farm on the other side of the street. The farm is owned by the Palestinian Authority, they said, and there’s an agricultural college located there. It was one of the few open green spaces I’ve seen in Palestine (other than the thousands of dunums of olive groves that is the landscape of this place). A kid rode his bike past us, we strolled through, and the cows seemed happy hanging out in the dirt designated for them.
On our tour of the camp, we stopped at the neighbor’s sculpting workshop across the street from Shereen’s and Mohammed’s house. At first I saw only stone bowls and vases, but when Abu Mohammed asked the man to show me something, he pulled a different piece off a shelf. I didn’t recognize the shape at first. "It’s a Palestinian woman," he told me. I saw it then: a pregnant Palestinian woman holding a basket on her head, with the sun on top. "She’s pregnant with peace," said the sculptor. He turned the piece around, and on the back was the same woman with a moon shape carved out of her stomach. "On this side she’s not pregnant," he said, "and there’s no sun." The meaning of the piece, he said, is that different people can see the same situation in different ways. As I stood on the main road in Arroub with a view of the kids in the camp, the farm, the settler road, and the army watchtower, I thought, "This couldn’t be more true."
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