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."
