I don't know quite how I got to the point where I can say this, but after 4 and a half months, this will be my last letter from Palestine this year. This week has been full of olive picking, coordination, strange travels, and goodbyes.
We've had three different delegations here to help with the olive harvest (one from Boston, one from the UK, and one from Austria). Now only the Austrian group is still here, and has been picking in the north of the city of Salfit near the southern fence of Ariel settlement. Moving the group there from Marda took us about 2 hours instead of the half hour it should take. The flying checkpoint I've come to expect under the bridge at Iskaka was nowhere to be seen, but construction workers were paving the only road to Salfit (the only Palestinian road, that is - the army has their own ways of getting there), and it was completely closed. I asked why they didn't do the paving at night. "Do you think the army would let us do that?" one of the workers responded. We switched cars many times and walked several hundred meters right next to the burning tar. At one point we ran into a whole group of 10-15 year old boys. I asked where they were from. Turmus Aya. What are they doing here? They've come to visit their teacher in Yasuf who was beaten up by settlers a few days earlier. I knew the incident. I had spoken with 25-year-old Tariq, who had been attacked on the main road on his way home from work. A settler sprayed gas in his face and a group of settlers kicked and punched him until he was unconscious. A Palestinian car noticed him on the road, picked him up, and took him to the hospital. He suffered injuries to his thigh, ribs, shoulder/back, and nose.
So these kids from Turmus Aya were on their way to visit Tariq. They seemed unconcerned by the delay, and were delighted to have the chance to whip out their American passports and talk to me about Chicago. I've heard that Turmus Aya is a town with large houses and no people, because all the people live outside Palestine. I told the kids this. "Nos nos," they responded (half, half). Some of these children split their time between the US and Palestine, others have never been to the US, but it seems most have family there.
We arrived in Salfit just before iftar (the evening meal to break the fast of Ramadan each day). The farmers were tired, hungry, and thirsty, but not quite as irritable as I would have expected for that time of day. We sat around a table trying to split up which internationals would stay (and therefore pick the following day) with which families. After it was all finished, the mayor took me aside and told me I would be staying with him. "Everyone wanted you at first," he told me, "but then you said you were American, and then you said you wouldn't be picking tomorrow, and now nobody wants you." He said it with his typical joking smile, but I can't help but think there's some truth in it. Wait until they find out I'm Jewish, I thought. Incidentally, one of the coordinators later asked me, "Are you Muslim or Christian?" "No," I responded. "Nothing?" he asked. "Jewish," I responded, and then quickly added, "but not Israeli." "Why do you say that?" he asked. "It doesn't matter. We like you because you are a human being. Jewish, Israeli, it doesn't matter." This is the most common response I get when I tell people I'm Jewish. The other day I met a woman on the bus who, in the midst of telling me that there's no difference between Jews and Israelis, that all participate in an oppressive system, and that Islam is the best religion because it is all-encompassing, also stated that someday we'll realize that we all believe in the same one God, and that we just have different messengers.
The more I find out about Islam, the more I want to know. Someday soon I'll sit down and read the Koran, but until then, I hope to have many more conversations with people and many more experiences like I had that night in Salfit. After dinner in the public gardens the Sheikh gave a speech, which was followed by what I can only call an "Ask the Sheikh" session. Women, men, and children were there, and all were asking him questions about fasting. "How old should children be when they begin to fast?" "Lots of people say they're fasting but they're not. What do you say about that?" "Why are we using plastic plates?" (this was my favorite question). The whole evening seemed very democratic to me. Interaction, interruption, camaraderie. I like seeing democracy in action, especially in religious institutions.
I stayed with the mayor's family, and was excited to get up at 3:30 am to eat the morning meal before sunrise, which I'd never done. I set my alarm, and was up and ready at 3:30. I waited around for a few minutes and didn't see or hear any movement, so I went back to sleep. In the morning, they asked, "Why didn't you wake us up?" They had slept through their alarm.
After a few more errands, I managed to get home and left the next morning for a short 'break' before leaving for good. I had heard from my friend George about a youth center in a building that used to be a prison in Fara refugee camp, in the Tubas region (between Nablus and Jenin, but also on the edge of the Jordan Valley). Kate and I were determined to get there, if only because it seemed like an adventure. And it certainly was. Everything we thought would be difficult about the travels was easy, and everything we thought would be easy was difficult. We snuck around Huwara checkpoint outside of Nablus with absolutely no problem, actually walking with complete confidence in full view of the soldiers, who probably assumed we were settlers or at least walking to the nearby settlement (which was feasible, since it was Saturday and there wouldn't be any settler cars driving). Getting from Nablus to Fara, though, proved to be the real adventure. One driver said he could take us, but after stopping at a broken down amusement park for at least a half hour trying to figure out if his car was strong enough to drive over the roadblock ahead of us, he decided to take us back to Nablus. So we left Palestinian style - that is, over the mountains in a jeep, desperately trying to hold on to our seats as we bounced all over the place, the car speeding over rocks to try to avoid being seen by police or army. We arrived in Fara to a confused crowd of people who kept asking us why we were there (not in an unfriendly way, but they certainly don't get many foreign visitors and were curious, to say the least).
We toured the center, went to the city of Tubas for a few minutes, and then left for Jericho. No, Jericho is nowhere near Tubas, but both are east. Besides, neither Kate nor I had been to Jericho, and we figured we might as well see the oldest and lowest city in the world before leaving. We stopped at Hamra checkpoint, where we encountered hostile soldiers who we're sure are ideological settlers in that area. They wouldn't let us through, claiming that we had to get out the way we came in. Get out of where? we wondered. If we had been near the border with Israel, I would understand that, but seeing as we were in the middle of the West Bank, I was utterly confused. If we had been coming from the other direction would they have forbidden us to pass because we hadn't come through this way? Anyway, our Israeli friend Dorothy made several phone calls for us, and after an hour and a half, the soldiers let us through. Apparently one of the reasons they were worried about it was that if we go through, we might be going to Jericho, which is closed to internationals without special permission. Hamra is nowhere near Jericho, but it is on the same road.
By the time we passed through the checkpoint, it was almost iftar (dark, no cars, etc.). We hitched a ride with a nice settler for a couple minutes, but she was turning off the road, so we got out and began to walk. Kate insisted it was impossible to walk to Jericho, which of course I knew, but at least I needed to feel like I was going somewhere. A couple minutes later, a Palestinian man came out of his house, and we said hello to him in Arabic. He asked where we were going, we told him, and he told us we'd have to come eat with them and spend the night, because there wouldn't be any cars until the morning. I have to say this was a very welcome invitation. And I also have to say that I wasn't surprised. I have come to expect this almost incomprehensible hospitality and trust among Palestinians. Two strange foreigners wandering past his house as it was getting dark - and really, we could have been settlers. How was he to know? Anyway, we stayed, we played with the kids, we talked with the men and women in the house, we slept, and in the morning we got a car to Jericho.
At the checkpoint into Jericho, where we were afraid we'd be asked for our 'permits,' the soldiers just looked at our passports and gave them back to the driver of our car, letting us through with no problem. Jericho is a beautiful city, although it's one of the places where the suffering economy (lack of tourists) is most apparent. The streets were pretty empty, and the cable car operators on the Mt. of Temptation seemed to open up just for us. An article from 1999 hanging in the building said they were expecting the project to pay for itself with Jericho's 500,000 tourists each year. That's over 1,000 a day. I doubt they had many more than 2 the day we were there.
I returned to Hares to the news that Angie, one of our founding team members and a prominent activist in the UK, had been denied entry and was being held at Ben Gurion airport until they could find her a flight back to Britain. We wrote to the press, and I even had a discussion with Abu Rabia last night about an idea that Kate had: Let's get the Palestinian Authority to issue her a visa, to make a statement that if Israel doesn't want Angie in their territory, fine, Palestine wants her in theirs. We'll see where that goes.
I am aware that most of this probably reads more like a travel journal than anything else. I'm not feeling so poetic right now, and I'm a bit overwhelmed with the fact that I'm leaving. I had some wonderful goodbyes yesterday, and realized that people really are going to miss me, and I'm really going to miss them.
What more to say? Perhaps I'll write again sometime next week, from the comfort of my parents' home in Pennsylvania. In case I don't, I'll say my thank yous now, to all of you have been reading and writing and passing my messages along and thinking and reconsidering and apprecicating the realities that are so important to face here. Please remember to contact me if you have ideas of where I can present. Boston: Nov. 7, 2:30, Christ Church.
In the spirit of peace, justice, and truth,
Hannah
