Back in the U.S. of A.

Dear friends,

I promised you another letter so here it is. The paradox, of course, is that I’m only able to sit down and write after having recovered from the initial shock of being back in the US, which probably would have lent itself to deeper reflections. The sunburn on my nose that I got at Huwara checkpoint last week is nearly faded, and I’m finally sleeping through the night and not waking up at 5 in the morning thinking it’s the middle of the day. Palestine is more or less out of my system. The separation – the break – needs to happen or I could go insane. So much, and so little, depends on where on this globe I choose to position myself. And I have that choice. I can fly out of occupation and all my Palestinian friends are left to struggle to live their daily lives. I’m not sure how best to deal with this, and of course the bigger question is not how I’m going to cope but rather how we have created and maintained a world in which such disparity in living exists and is taken for granted… and how we’re going to change that.

So I’m back in the United States, and I’m noticing the grandiosity of things, even down to the nature around us. The trees are so big, I think upon looking around, walking around, driving around. So big, and yet still they seem to be built into the building structures and not the other way around. In Palestine the houses are planted into the land – you can just look around and see people’s connection to the land in the way they build. Here (at least in the suburbs of Philadelphia) everything is compartmentalized. I don’t even know the names of the trees, other than maple and pine. I don’t know what fruit they give, if any. I miss the olive trees, the fig trees, the almond trees of Palestine. Even as they continue to be uprooted and destroyed and stolen, especially as they continue to be uprooted and destroyed and stolen.

It seems Jewish fundamentalism has reached new levels. Not only has the state – through settlers – stolen the land, but now the settlers act violently, and threaten more violence, in an attempt to maintain control over that stolen land. They claim a connection to the land even as they destroy it. Now that I’m back in the US, I can’t report to you about life as I experience or witness it in the West Bank, a life that is being totally ignored as any media in the area focuses exclusively on the Gaza disengagement plan. But I can relay news I’ve read in the past days. Today a settler who is active in the Kach movement (a Jewish terrorist group that is outlawed even in Israel, although the government continues to fund their settlements in the West Bank) opened fire on a busload of Palestinian citizens of Israel in the Druze village of Shfaram (inside Israel). He killed four, including the bus driver, before being killed himself. I read the story on the Ha’aretz website, as well as dozens of comments calling for the Jewish terrorist’s home to be demolished, or for curfew to be instated in his settlement of Tapuach, or any number of other collective punishment measures. These suggestions, of course, are made tongue-in-cheek. In actuality he will simply be considered a crazy person, like Baruch Goldstein was – an outsider, not representative of Jews or Israelis.

Yesterday an article reported that a significant number of teenage boys from Gaza settlements have threatened to drown themselves in the sea as a mass suicide if the disengagement plan goes forward. An act wrought with symbolism, of course, and maybe a lesson for Jews: It’s not the Palestinians who are going to throw us into the sea; we’re doing it ourselves. When I started my Palestine work a couple years ago, this was perhaps what compelled me most: I saw that we were “throwing ourselves into the sea” – basically, the soul of the Jewish people was at stake. While I still believe that is true, I no longer prioritize the soul of the oppressor over the physical existence of the oppressed. They are linked, of course. My work hopefully benefits both. But now when I think about my work I think about my Palestinian friends, their lives, their loved ones lost to death and prison, their land lost to settlements and the Wall. This is human existence we’re talking about, nothing more and nothing less.

And so I continue, and try to come up with new and better ways to change the ever-worsening situation in Palestine. I’m trying to figure out how to be most effective, especially on this side of the ocean. I’ll plug into economic-based campaigns like BootCAT (trying to get Caterpillar to stop manufacturing bulldozers for the Israeli army) and the divestment campaign. I’ll try to arrange for speaking tours for Palestinians and Israelis. And I’ll continue to speak and show pictures myself. If you’re interested in hosting me or hosting other speakers this Fall, please drop me a line. I’ll be away most of August and back in September, hopefully in the Boston area through December, but happy to travel elsewhere as well.

So be in touch.

Love Hannah

My Exit

Dear friends,

I'm back in the U.S. My bags are not, but I am. I just read at least 20 e-mails with articles about what's going on in the West Bank and Gaza right now. Most of it is sad and enraging, some of it is hopeful and defiant. There are too many things for me to try to share any of them with you, so this is just a short check-in about my exit. I've been taking notes on other things to share with you about my last couple weeks (sorry I haven't written) but that will have to wait.

For now: The shared taxi picked me up at 4:45 am, and we proceded to drive around much of East Jerusalem and seemingly half the West Bank picking up settlers to take them to the airport. The Nesher taxis specifically drive people to and from Jerusalem. Since Israel keeps expanding its definition of "Jerusalem", it was not all that surprising that I found myself in the middle of the district of Ramallah watching the Palestinian villages pass by as people sat in the car with their orange ribbons signifying opposition to the Gaza disengagement plan. A woman in my car started talking to the driver. My Hebrew isn't great anymore, but from what I could make out, she was saying she was on her way to the airport to meet 2 full plane loads of American Jews who were making "aliyah" (moving to Israel under a racist policy that allows all Jews full citizenship rights in Israel, and denies that same right to everyone else, especially Palestinian refugees who are the only group that actually should enjoy the "right of return" in Palestine, according to international law). An orthodox man in the front seat said to the driver, "Why do they keep bringing outsiders in? This should be a place for Jews." "You don't understand," said the driver, "these are Jews. All the Americans who come are Jews. The Americans aren't the problem, it's the Arabs who are trying to say this is their country who are the problem." I wanted to throw up. Or to punch a hole through the window. I think I need to work on my anger, especially as I'm going to be spending time with USers now, and not Palestinians.

In any case, I arrived at the airport at 6:00 for my 8:00 flight. I made it through the first random pre-bag-checking questioning with no problems. ("What are you doing here?" "Traveling, visiting friends." "Have you been here before?" "Yes, a few times." "Doing what?" "Traveling, a couple programs with Habonim Dror, etc." And that's the clincher - As disgusting as it is, a Zionist past can get you through that part of the airport just fine.)

I arrived at passport control around 7:00, the woman typed my name into the system, and immediately called the police. I spent much of the next hour waiting around and following people from room to room. They didn't seem to have any interest in speaking with me, although a couple times I heard them ask each other to "make sure Arabs didn't give her anything." They took me to a back room and I got the strip search that my friends of Arab descent have been known to get in the past. They paid extra attention to the seams of my clothing. I wonder if they really think that Palestinian weaponry is sophisticated enough to fit in the seams of clothing (I recently found out that one of the reasons Palestinians don't blow up the Wall or buildings is that they don't have the bombs to do it - it's just not a population that has much access to real weapons). In any case, finally the head of security came in and said, "We've pulled your bags off the plane, and we have to keep your carry-on too. We need to check your stuff and your plane won't wait for you, so you can go now without your bags or you can wait here for 8 hours and go with your bags if the next flight has room for you." I remembered my friend who recently left without her stuff and had much of it robbed by airport security (including a couple thousand Euros), but I also had no interest in hanging out with security officials for at least 8 hours (probably longer, since I think all flights are overbooked these days). My bags were also out of my sight anyway (I never saw them), so I didn't see how I could prevent robbing either way. And finally, it did seem to me that they were more interested in checking for bombs in the seams of bags and clothing than in any materials I had or information I could give them (I think they're more interested in long chats and interrogation on the way in than the way out). The only thing I was reluctant to leave was my unchecked carry-on bag with my laptop in it. But in the end, I did leave it behind. They asked if there's anything I really need with me. I took out my purse, my water bottle, a book, and my glasses case. They took everything aside and a minute later brought me my purse and my book. My water bottle and glasses case could not come with me. They ran me to the plane, where I got a sympathetic look from the British Airways employees, who seemed to think Israeli "security" measures are as ridiculous as I think. And this was my exit from the god-forsaken holy land.

I'm hoping my bags come today. I'm still a bit worried about my carry-on (computer, cds, etc.), of which there is no record. I can't leave you all with this as my final message, so I'll write again within the next week or so. I'll be working on a number of projects this Fall, and am still interested in speaking, and also very interested in organizing speaking tours for Palestinians (and maybe Israelis as well). So let me know if you're interested in any of this.

Looking forward to hearing from many of you soon.

Love Hannah

Happening Again

Dear friends,
The Israeli army has invaded the villages in the Salfit region every night for the past week, breaking glass, arresting men, beating women, shooting holes in framed verses of the Koran. My friends who are still at IWPS have seen all this, but I have not. Below I’ve written about experiences I have personally had, about topics and thoughts that have been particularly haunting me this week.

With as much love as I can muster up, Hannah


“This happened. And it could happen again.”

Houses demolished, villages unrecognized, not given water infrastructure or electricity or rights to their own land. The army had raided the village, had destroyed everything. And every person affected was an Israeli citizen. This particular story comes from a video filmed over 10 years ago, but the situation is the same today. Palestinians with Israeli citizenship do not have the same rights as Jews. Internally displaced refugees remain unrecognized in the communities they have tried to build after being denied the internationally recognized right to return to their original land. There is nothing complicated about the situation. There is nothing complicated about most of what happens here. “Complicated” is a word people use to excuse human rights abuses. “Complicated” is a word people use so they can be openly racist in thought and action, with no repercussions. After all, the Jews were victims once.

“This happened. And it could happen again.”

We visit Saffourieh, one of the largest Palestinian villages before 1948, one of the few that was actually bombed from the air. The village was then surrounded on three sides by Zionist militant groups, leaving the northern route open – and people took it, escaping to Lebanon and Syria. There is now a Moshav called Tzipori that sits on top of the destroyed village, along with 7 other Jewish settlements.

Our tour guide is from Saffourieh, which is to say his family is from Saffourieh, his father an infant in 1948 when his family fled. His dream is to move back and farm the land. Since he can’t, he does small projects, finding village remains and weeding around the cemetery so at least history doesn’t forget the village’s dead. He leaves work early to accommodate the schedules of a group of North American Jews, so he can share his story and show us the land.

And the pictures.

One picture from 1945 of a hill filled with hundreds of houses, a small castle sitting at the top. The castle remains, and the rest of the hill is now a pine forest, as foreign to this land as the American Jews who grew up paying for the trees quarter by quarter in our weekly tzedakah collection at synagogue. The trees a way to cover up any evidence of the thriving community that existed before. “How can the Jews remember 2000 years," asked a nakba survivor who spoke with us, “and expect us to forget 50 or 60?”

“This happened. And it could happen again.”

On a wall in the old city of Hebron, on a street that used to be the market and has been shut down by soldiers and settlers over the years, we find graffiti written in Hebrew, directed towards the Palestinians whose homes and shops are being defiled. “What’s the difference between an Arab and a trampoline?” it asks. And answers: “On a trampoline you jump without shoes.” I saw it last year, and again last week. It has chipped away slightly, but is still readable. From our group comes a question: “Why don’t Palestinians cover this up?” From our tour guide, a response: “If I had my say I’d frame it.” At that the questioner becomes emotional: “In the U.S. if we saw something like that on a wall we would cover it up. Why don’t you cover it up? Why don’t you paint over it and move on?”

Paint over it and move on? Paint over it and move on?! Is it really the responsibility of the oppressed to ignore what is happening to them so that members of the oppressor group can feel fine about themselves as long as they’re not the ones with the paint on their hands? Is it the responsibility of Iraqis to forget the American occupation, of people of color to forget hundreds of years of racism that continue to this day, of women to forget rape, of GLBTQ people to forget hate crimes perpetrated against them?

Sixty years after the Nazi Holocaust, Jews and others from around the world continue to visit the concentration camps and death camps and to study the structures of the Nazi regime. In Hebron, people are being driven out of their homes and jobs TODAY, Palestinian children being stoned as they try to get to their schools TODAY, Jewish stars scrawled across their shops TODAY (coming from Jews, this time; as a show of power, this time), racist graffiti becomes a tangible mark of what is happening TODAY. How could we ever dare to demand that the oppressed forget their oppression even as they are living it?

We remember because we need to, we remember so that when we see these structures emerging, as they have over and over again throughout history and around the world, we can stop the oppression. Must we wait until there are death camps before making any comparisons? Is comparison simply an intellectual exercise, or is it a human tool we can use to stop ourselves from hurting each other?

“This happened. And it could happen again.”

Breathtakingly Beautiful

It's a beautiful evening. Even a little chilly, which is quite welcome these days. I'm in Jerusalem, partly relaxing and partly preparing for delegations I'll be leading in the coming weeks. I like the Old City of Jerusalem. I like the stones, I like guessing how many hundreds or thousands of years they've been in their current configurations, how many different people have passed through and lived in these buildings. I like the narrow alleys, and the small openings that hide huge buildings, underground structures, and expansive rooftops. I like the bustling Palestinian market all around Damascus Gate, the grass and trees just next to the gate, the people of all ages sitting together, sprawled out in the shade on hot sunny days.

I don't like the Israeli soldiers and border police who patrol the streets, sit on the steps of the Austrian Hospice, set up barriers outside Damascus Gate to block Muslims from coming to pray. I don't like the college-aged Americans and army-aged Israelis who parade around in tiny tank tops and miniskirts with no awareness of cultural sensitivity. I don't like the Israeli flags strewn across rooftops in the Muslim Quarter of the city. I don't like the religious Jews who march through the city as if it's theirs, who read obituaries of Palestinians and then occupy their houses as soon as they die. I don't like that I project this settler identity onto every black-hatted Jew I see, even though many of them are not settlers in that same sense of the word; many are probably just coming into the Old City to visit, or to pray. I don't like that the political situation makes me unable to appreciate any kind of visible Jewish presence, even just walking down the streets, in any part of occupied or annexed East Jerusalem, including the Old City.

I don't like the look I get when I tell my West Bank friends that I'm coming to Al Quds (Jerusalem). I don't like the guilt I feel for easily being able to travel to the holiest city in the country, when my Muslim friends for whom it would mean so much more are not allowed to go. Sometimes I don't even tell them where I'm going; sometimes I say I'm going to Ramallah, because for me it's the same, and for them it is not.

I don't like the orange ribbons on all the cars around here, expressing solidarity with Jewish settlers of Gush Katif and opposition to evacuating them from Gaza. I don't like the blue and white ribbons that have come in response, supporting the "disengagement" as the patriotic thing to do. I don't like that I sit in Jerusalem and see these ribbons about Gaza and get a phone call that there is curfew in Hares. I don't like that I know this, as well as everything else that happens in the West Bank these days, will go completely ignored by the world, and I don't like that I myself feel almost nothing when I hear the word "curfew," that my response is automatic: if I were there, I would go out and check on the situation, but since I'm not, I hang up the pone and continue my walk.

Sometimes it's nice to be here in Jerusalem, and sometimes I just want to get out, back to the villages, back to a life that in some ways has become comfortable for me. I was in Deir Ballut last week, just visiting friends. I took a taxi over there just after sunset. The twists and turns through the hills, the dirt road surrounded by thousands of olive trees, the almost full moon shining in an almost dark sky - it was all so breathtakingly beautiful. This is how Palestine could be, I thought, appreciating for the first time the bumpy half-hour long ride that would take 10 minutes if Palestinians could pass through the Qarawa roadblock and the Deir Ballut checkpoint.

I love entering Deir Ballut, driving through some of the most lush fields in Palestine, towards the always welcoming village. I arrived at my friend Reem's house, and her husband told me she was out. At the store, confirmed the kids. As always, I marveled over the difference between Deir Ballut and other nearby villages, like Hares. In Deir Ballut, women go out on their own after dark, have wedding parties outside with dancing, singing, and drumming, and have a tendency to refuse all marriage proposals until they're finished university. Or at least this is true of the girls and women I know. Oh, and in Deir Ballut the kids don't point and stare and whisper, "ajnabiye" (foreigner) or yell, "sawrini!" (take my picture).

I'm going to miss this place. I'll miss my friends in Deir Ballut, who tell me "women are free here" and I'll miss my friends in Hares who tell me it's not appropriate for women to go out, that they're not strong enough to defend themselves. I may even miss the blonde kids up the street who throw stones at us out of boredom or amusement, and who occasionally try to physically remove our cameras from our bags to take pictures of themselves.

I'm still in Palestine for another month, but I'll be on the road the whole time with three different groups that I'll have the pleasure of introducing Palestine to. I'm not sure if or when I'll find time to write, so don't worry if you don't hear from me for a while. Jaber's trial is on Monday (he's the one who had meningitis and was arrested at Huwara checkpoint a couple months ago), and I'm going to try to go, so perhaps that will inspire a report. But no promises.

Until next time,
Hannah

No Peace for Palestinians

Last week ended the way it started, with nonviolent Palestinian demonstrations against the Wall being met with severe violence from the Israeli army. An Israeli friend of mine recently pointed out that we should not call the demonstrations “nonviolent” because they’re extremely violent – it’s just that the violence comes not from the demonstrators but from the fourth largest military in the world, trying to suppress peaceful protest.

Friday’s demonstration in Marda was even worse than the others. We were barely a few meters from the houses, starting to walk up the mountain through the olive groves, when tear gas canisters started flying. The army, as usual, was shooting gas from several directions. We counted about 50 canisters in the first 4 minutes, and it continued at this rate for at least 10 minutes more. Then, before we could collect our thoughts and make any sort of plan, the army entered the village. Now tear gas and sound bombs were coming at us from even more directions – every direction, it seemed. People scattered throughout the village, with some journalists, a few boys, and a couple internationals and Israelis near the center of the village. I was on a roof with several people, trying to see what was happening. We started to hear rubber bullets, and then, suddenly, live ammunition. We called everyone we could think to call, including a number I had for the US Embassy. I got someone on the phone, told him we were in the village (even said “there are 4 or 5 American citizens here and the army is shooting bullets into the village”). He was unresponsive as I talked, and finally said, “Um, okay. Thank you for making me privy to this information. I advise you to stay away from crowds.” Incredulously, I asked him if he was going to report this to anyone. “I report to many people,” he responded. “Will you call the army?” I asked. “I think I know what they would say,” he replied. “People are scared for their lives,” I reiterated. “Thank you for informing me,” he said again, and that was it. At that moment I found myself wishing a tear gas canister would enter his office. As it was, one entered Marda's sewing factory, sending 4 women to the hospital.

We heard more bullets fired, this time several rounds at a time, so I called Arik Ascherman from Rabbis for Human Rights. He called back a few minutes later and said, “The army says they’re not in the village, and are only shooting tear gas from outside.” Later they admitted to him that they were inside Marda, but shot only one rubber bullet and no live ammunition. They claimed that the bullets had come from a Palestinian with a Kalachnikov rifle. So now we had a new job – go around and collect as many bullet casings as we could, to prove that they were from M-16s (the army’s weapons). It wasn’t difficult, as the children of the villages have a habit of collecting all the weapons used against them, and trying to impress visitors with them. We have since given the casings to Arik, who has delivered them to the army, who apparently is investigating the situation... I don’t have much confidence that any follow-up will happen, although maybe this will make soldiers think twice next time before firing live ammunition at unarmed farmers and kids.

I should mention that the four bulldozers that had been working before we started up the hill that day stopped as soon as the army started firing gas at us, apparently retiring for an early weekend. So the demonstration was not entirely in vain.

Shortly after returning to Hares, we got a call that 6 jeeps were inside Hares, so we went to the entrance of the village to check it out. Sure enough, dozens of soldiers were hanging out next to jeeps. I asked an open question into the crowd: “What are you doing here?” One soldier stepped out of a jeep and said, “That doesn’t concern you, Hannah, since we're going to put you on a plane to the U.S. in two days.” There are so few internationals around these days that many soldiers and border policemen/women know me, especially after the intensity of last week. But this was someone I didn’t recognize. I made a mental note to try to pay more attention to soldiers’ faces and not only their guns. For my own protection, I should be able to recognize them.

Abu Rabia later told us that he had been leaving Marda earlier that day when he came across a detained international and many soldiers near the entrance. She had been grabbed while filming the army’s (mis)behavior in the center of the village. Abu Rabia asked, “Why are you holding that woman and when are you going to let her go?” One soldier replied, “Her name is Hannah and she’s been around too much. We’re going to deport her.” They later let her go (would they have let me go?), but Abu Rabia told me I should stay in the house for the next few days and write reports or something like that. I had to smile – he was trying to make me feel useful even while forbidding me from going to demonstrations. I can’t say I was disappointed. In fact, I was quite relieved. The last thing I want to do is go out every day and try to dodge bullets and handcuffs.

As it turned out, there weren’t any demos in the next few days, partially because Marda villagers probably had the same desire I did, and partially because the bulldozers weren’t working. Shabbat was followed by Shavuot, and no Wall work happened for three days. It’s funny how Jewish holidays affect Palestinian life. On this occasion it was positive. The first time I came to Palestine, which spanned the time of Rosh Hashana, Yom Kippur, Sukkot, and Simchat Torah, the West Bank was under closure for a full 3 weeks, meaning Palestinians weren’t allowed on the roads at all. Settlers also tend to attack villagers more often during holidays, possibly because they’re not working and have nothing else to do. At the same time as Marda was breathing a sigh of relief at not seeing bulldozers, my friend Munira was trying to calm her kids who had been woken up in the middle of the night to the sound of stones hitting their house. Munira, from Mas’ha, is enclosed on all 4 sides by walls and fences (the Annexation Wall, a settlement fence, and army gates). On Monday night, to celebrate the end of Shavuot, settlers from the nearby settlement of Elkana came to throw stones over the settlement fence at her house. I asked if it was a group of kids. “At one in the morning?!” she said. “No, they were adults.”

Meanwhile, people are talking about “relative calm” in this part of the world, about peace, about disengagement from Gaza, not realizing that the intention of the disengagement is not to be a beginning, but to be an end. Not remembering that Gaza is just a tiny tiny piece of Palestine. I was talking with Um Rabia the other day about the new Wall path, which encroaches even more on many of the villages in our region (including Hares, where we live). They do that on purpose, Um Rabia, said. They tell us the Wall is going through our house so they can later move it slightly and we will say, “thank you, that’s great, we have won.” And meanwhile, Israel is getting exactly what they wanted in the first place. It’s like people who say the occupation is easy now, I said. They only have to go through 2 checkpoints a day instead of 5, and wait for only a half hour and not several hours, so they think, “Great, the occupation is over.” And meanwhile the system is being more and more solidified. Um Rabia gave another example. Apparently sisters of prisoners have recently been given permission to visit, whereas it used to only be parents and spouses. She knows cases of sisters who have been denied permits and they fight and fight for the permit. But what are we really fighting for? Um Rabia asked. Do we want permits to visit our brothers and sons or do we want them out of prison?

People don’t think about the bigger issues, Um Rabia told me. They don’t think politically, and if they do they’re arrested or killed. It’s true, I thought, there is such risk here for Palestinians who even think differently than the Israeli authorities would like. How many Palestinians are sitting in Israeli prisons for supposedly thinking about doing something? That kind of risk does not exist for me. I can analyze the situation, understand it, talk about the real issues (which Um Rabia says are the Wall, Jerusalem, the refugees, and the prisoners, among a few others). I can do all this with minimal risk. And I encourage you to do the same. Don’t be appeased by the media, don’t believe that there is “peace” here, don’t be satisfied with an occupation that has slightly fewer checkpoints than it did a couple years ago. And don’t stop thinking. Not until there is justice.

i wish you knew

i’ve been meaning to write for days. i’ve been meaning to sit down, have a free moment, compose my thoughts, figure out how to translate my experiences into something understandable to a world where injustice is not quite as daily, quite as random, quite as violent. i wish i could just say “there was curfew in marda today” and that you all would understand. that you would know without my telling you that that meant israeli army jeeps were driving through the village at 5:30 am (and for many many many hours after that), that they were throwing sound bombs and tear gas, and shooting rubber-coated bullets randomly, that there was a complete atmosphere of fear. i wish you would know that when three international observers arrived, we were kept out of the village by army, detained by border police, and threatened with arrest. that we were told we could only enter if we were press, but then when the press arrived they weren’t allowed in either.

i wish you would know that a boy’s id was taken from his home and he was told to come to the next village to pick it up, but that his father wouldn’t send him because he was afraid his son would be killed. or that a young man was arrested and his family couldn’t locate him all day (they now know he’s in qedumim settlement / detention center). or that each time soldiers were asked for justification of their actions, they would say, “it’s closed because we say so. this is our territory.” i wish more than anything that you could know everything that is behind this statement, every way in which it manifests itself, every way in which the world completely ignores what is happening here.

i wish i could trust that the media would tell you that a group of disabled palestinians (in wheelchairs and on crutches, many blind people, etc.) were shot at with tear gas by the army at a demonstration today in bil’in before they got anywhere near their destination (which was on their land).

i can’t even remember what is usual and not anymore. i am not surprised by things. i am only angry. and resentful. and even hateful sometimes. i don’t know how to change this. i don’t know how to get away. i don’t think anyone should be able to get away, not when others can’t. and yet how can i think clearly? saturday was a wonderful demonstration in marda, although even as i say that i think about the hundred or so soldiers who lunged towards the crowd – but they only beat a couple people, only arrested a couple israelis, and only temporarily. only. sunday we tried to accompany farmers to their land and were shot at by a private security company that guards wall work. monday we tried again to accompany farmers to their land, and this time were met by hundreds of soldiers who began firing tear gas before they could even tell who was there. 200 rounds of tear gas. before they could even see us. it’s better, of course, in the grand moral scheme of the world, that no distinction be made between palestinian farmers and international peace workers. but it’s scary. it’s confusing. and of course, the result should be that we are all treated as human, not that we are all treated as expendable.

there’s a newly involved israeli who has come to a couple demos recently. the other day we were standing in marda looking up to the top of the hill with the bulldozers, and she said, “this is just crazy. they’re just taking someone else’s land.” as a taxi driver noted a few days ago, “if i don’t like my neighbors and want to build a fence to separate us, i’d build it on my yard, not my neighbor’s.” even more simply, after i explained to a new iwps volunteer yesterday a few of the happenings of the past couple days, she said, “now that’s not nice.” and still, i can’t even bring myself to think any of this. because i am not surprised anymore. only angry.

i was in west jerusalem for about an hour today, walking down the street looking at the half-naked teenagers with their orange ribbons in solidarity with the settlers of gush katif, and i just thought, "you have no idea." if palestinians could see this, i thought, i'm not sure they would be quite as patient as they are. although they probably already know. they're probably already so used to this, more used to this than i am, that nothing fazes them at all. some have a patience that i can't always quite fathom ("this too shall pass"), and others just use avoidance ("if i stay in my home and don't let my kids out then everything will be tolerable").

i talked to a 17 or 18 year old friend in marda the other day. we were discussing the israeli activists’ involvement in demos around here, and she told me she thinks if israelis are really on their side, if they really agree with the palestinian cause, then they should leave. many israelis have told me this before (“people refuse to be soldiers, but the entire state is corrupt. we should refuse to be israelis”), but no palestinian has ever said this to me. so i pushed her, played devil’s advocate, tried to get to the root of her thinking, not sure myself whether i agree with her or not. i asked her if i should leave the u.s. because my country is doing just as many (more) bad things as israel. the difference, enas responded, is that you don’t all serve in the army. there are civilians in america. there are no civilians in israel. one thing she said that stuck with me the most is this: “we can talk about one state for all of us where we all live in peace together, and that’s fine, but what if they do separate us? what if they try to create two states? what if they finish the wall? which side will these israeli activists be on? they’ll be with israel.” i don’t know if that’s true about all of them, but certainly most.

i am going to sleep in marda now, going to be a presence in case the army returns. i don’t know if this is more important than crafting a nice message to you all. or uploading my photos. or writing up events of the past few days. or eating a meal.

i’m supposed to leave iwps next week, to start preparing for delegations i’m leading next month, and then to come back to the u.s. this all seems profoundly strange to me.

i will send this only so you have a little bit of news from here. i know it is not as much of an “article” as my usual reports. i hope you forgive me. and i hope you do something today to better the world. i realize not all the pain in the world is here. this is only my little corner. and i do only what i can. we all do. and it’s never enough. never ever enough.

with sadness and anger, hannah

Prisons and Parties

On May 18, after four weeks in prison, Jaber Dalany (the Palestinian man with meningitis who was arrested at Huwara checkpoint), was finally presented with charges. As expected, the charges are preposterous, not to mention the fact that they all refer to incidents that supposedly happened more than 2 years ago. The first two relate to membership in Hamas (which he and his family deny) and providing food, shelter, and cell phones to “wanted” men (his brother stayed at his house shortly before being arrested a couple years ago). The third charge is both the most serious and the most ridiculous, stating that Jaber and two others had “planned to introduce an explosive vehicle into the settlement of Ariel, near its movie theater. The plan, however, was not carried out when the defendant and his comrades discovered that Ariel had no movie theater.” It would be laughable if we weren’t talking about someone’s life here. I mean really, if I had planned to blow up Ariel’s movie theater and then found out it didn’t exist, I’d probably blow up their hotel. Or their mall. Or their college. Or the mayor’s office. Or the police station. Or the army headquarters. No cinema, no bomb? Doesn’t make much sense. The charges don’t even state that there was a bomb, just that they had “planned” something, meaning at most that someone could have thought about an action. As an Israeli friend said to me last night, “I can’t even count how many times I’ve thought about blowing up things in Ariel.” We talked about trying to organize 1,000 people to walk to the police station in Ariel to confess our thoughts about the place, but decided against it.

So Jaber is still in prison, with a trial date scheduled for June 27. His wife is due to give birth around that time, and his three children (a 4-year-old son and 1 1/2-year-old twin girls) continue to wake up every morning and say good morning to the picture of their father. I went to visit the family on Monday, and as Jaber’s brother pulled up to the house with me in the car, 4-year-old Kassam came running out, laughing and clapping his hands and chanting, “Ajaat Hannah, ajaat Hannah!” (Hannah’s here). I decided he’s my new best friend. He sat on my lap for much of the time I was there, and then took me around the yard on a tour of all the plants and trees. I marveled over his knowledge of the land. After only 4 years of life, he can point out to me olives, figs, apples, sage, thyme, cauliflower, tomatoes, cabbage, parsley, almonds and more. Khulud, Jaber’s wife, called us in for dinner: maklube, my favorite Palestinian dish, with extra cauliflower, my favorite fried vegetable. I was touched, and again amazed. I hadn’t even remembered telling her my food preferences, but she knew. And she didn’t even try to get me to eat chicken (although her mother-in-law did, insisting it’s not really meat).

This past week, my friend Fatima turned 47 and her youngest daughter Bara’a turned 10. We went to their house for a little party, complete with dancing, eating, singing, and crying – tears of joy, Fatima insisted. The atmosphere was mostly joyful, as the girls took turns tying a scarf around their waist and dancing, and then Shams organized a small dabke performance (Palestinian folk dancing is her favorite kind). Shams and her friend Lana were joking around with each other afterwards, and suddenly we heard Shams say to Lana, “Fuck you!” I looked up, shocked, and said, “Shams!” She covered her mouth and apologized, telling me she had just learned recently that “fuck you” and “damn it” weren’t the same thing. “It’s not my fault anyway,” she added with a smile, “it’s the American movies.”

On Saturday I stopped by an international friend’s house in Ramallah for a going away party. There were probably 10 internationals there, but what I noticed more were the number of Palestinians and Israelis, and their obviously close relationships with each other. Usually when I’m with Palestinians and Israelis together, we’re at a demonstration, so it was nice to see folks interacting with each other socially.

We left Ramallah around 8:30 pm to try to make it back to Jerusalem by 10, which under normal circumstances is no problem. When we got to Kalandia checkpoint, however, we saw a man being held with his hands cuffed behind his back. I quickly went around to a group of people watching him through a fence, and asked, “Do you know him?” A man who appeared to have been in tears (either that or extremely exhausted) responded, “He’s my son.” They had been coming from Ramallah on their way to a wedding in Aram about an hour before. Soldiers had glanced at everyone else’s IDs and waved them forward, but when they came to this young man (28 years old), they pulled him aside and told him to wait while they checked his ID. Fifteen minutes later they put him in cuffs. He had just gone through that checkpoint yesterday with no problem, his father told me, completely perplexed as to why the soldiers would want his son. The father began talking to the soldiers in English, saying he works for the UN and this is his son and they’re on their way to a wedding, etc. Finally they asked me to talk to the soldiers and I stepped forward with a few futile attempts at, “Excuse me, what’s the problem?” Finally the commander came out to our side of the fence and told everyone to go home. The father protested, and the commander said fine, you can stay, but the rest of the group should leave. “What are you doing with him?” asked the father. The commander replied, “We’re waiting for the police car to get here so we can take him away.” “Where are you taking him?” I asked. “We don’t know yet,” the commander responded. “Why are you arresting him?” I asked. “Because he needs to be arrested.” Trying to get information from soldiers can be one of the most frustrating and useless tasks. We gave the family the phone number for Hamoked, an Israeli organization that can sometimes help in these situations, and they called. Hamoked promised to make a few calls to the army. There wasn’t much else we could do. The soldiers were not being particularly violent and it didn’t seem they would start being violent in our absence, so we gave the father our card and continued to Jerusalem. About a half hour later, the father called to tell us his son had been released, and the whole family was told to go home. So they weren’t able to go to the wedding, but things could have been much worse. We were relieved. In the grand scheme of occupation here, this major injustice is a relatively minor hassle.

We met up with an Israeli and a Palestinian friend in the service taxi to Jerusalem. Just outside of Jerusalem, Yossi (my Israeli friend) said, “Here’s the racist Apartheid traffic light. Have you been here?” I had heard about the traffic patterns and city planning in Jerusalem that sets out to accommodate Jewish Israelis and inconvenience Palestinians, but I had never counted the length of the light. After sitting and watching traffic go by for at least 3 minutes (I want to say 10 but I know it always feels longer than it actually is), our light turned green for exactly 7 seconds. This is not an exaggeration. There was just as much traffic coming our way as the other way, but coming our way were Palestinians. The 4 cars in front of us went through the light, and we stopped for another 3 minutes, until our 7 second slot opened up again. Unbelievable, I thought. I can’t even imagine how much honking there would be if the times were reversed.

This week, like every other week in Palestine, has been full of stories of prisons and parties. I find myself not wanting to write these days, not being surprised by anything and not really seeing any changes on the ground. But I know the danger of forgetting. Just because injustice is systemized and commonplace does not mean we should ignore it. So here it is. And in that vein, below is a partial list of incidents this week, incidents you probably have not read about in the mainstream media.

Until next time,
Hannah

P.S. Many props to all the Israelis who are stepping up their activism and their risk-taking in a way that has been a long time coming. 26 Israelis were arrested at a demo in Bil’in last Friday, and then 32 in Hebron the next day as they attempted to visit Palestinian families who are terrorized by the settlers who keep taking over their homes and attacking them. There aren’t a lot of internationals in the country right now, but Israelis are taking over much of the work that internationals have been doing.


Published on Friday, 27 May 2005 – This week’s update from IMEMC (International Middle East Media Center)

A report prepared and published by the Information Center revealed that 347 violations to the truce were reported, including 57 shooting incidents against civilians, causing four deaths and 25 injuries.

27 invasions were conducted, and 57 arrests were made.

Soldiers closed roads and Separation Wall gates 113 times, and installed 52 portable checkpoints.

Israeli soldiers and settlers bulldozed and uprooted family orchards, especially lands planted with olive trees, 7 times over the last week, causing considerable losses.

19 attacks were conducted by the settlers against Palestinian homes and residents.

Soldiers annexed farmlands from the village in order to widen settlements and construct sections of the Separation Wall.

Soldiers broke into dozens of homes, detained residents and interrogated them after forcing them out of their homes.

Soldiers stopped a school bus near the northern West Bank city of Qalqilia on Thursday, forced the children out of the bus, punched and clubbed several students; at least five children were injured.

Checkpoints and crossings were repeatedly closed and border crossings were blocked, barring the residents from leaving or entering the country.

Video footage broadcast on the Israeli TV Channel 10 showed soldiers breaking into a Palestinian home in Hebron area and taking over the TV room in order to watch a soccer match. The footage showed damage in the home - broken windows and furniture - after the soldiers seized the TV room. The family reported that five soldiers broke into their home to view the Champions' League final between AC Milan and Liverpool. Anan al-Zrayer, a teenager from Hebron, said that he was walking down the street when the soldiers stopped him and asked him if his family has a TV set and a satellite dish. "I said yes, but we don't have Israeli channels, and after they entered our home, I gave them the remote control, and they carried out a search after kicking us out into another room", Anan said. A Hebron resident told Channel 10 that this is not the first time that soldiers had taken over Palestinian homes in Hebron to watch TV. The resident added that about two weeks ago, eleven soldiers broke into his home and stayed for the whole night while watching TV.

Friday morning, Israeli soldiers invaded the village of Beit Liqya, south of Ramallah, and arrested eight residents. Two weeks ago, Israeli soldiers invaded the village and fired at children; two were killed.

Journey to Jerusalem

At 6:30 yesterday morning, I embarked on a journey with Fatima and her oldest daughter Shams, to attend a 10:00 meeting about a summer camp Shams will be participating in this August in Denver, Colorado. I wish I didn’t have to call it a “journey.” When I’m traveling alone, the 40 miles to Jerusalem is usually no journey, just sometimes a hassle waiting for cars and passing through checkpoints. West Bank Palestinians, however, do not have this same luxury. Without permits, they cannot visit their capital, their holiest site in the country.

The organization sponsoring the summer camp had attempted to procure permits for the girls and their parents who were coming from the West Bank. Everyone got these permits – everyone except Fatima. No reasons were given for the denial. “You’re a terrorist,” I joked with her. “Like you,” she responded with a smile. Nevermind, Fatima decided, we’ll go to Jerusalem anyway. The occupation won’t give me a permit. That’s not surprising. But they can’t keep me away from Jerusalem.

So we headed south, from Qarawa roadblock to Huwara checkpoint, from Huwara checkpoint back out through Zatara checkpoint and towards Kalandia checkpoint. At Kalandia, instead of taking the regular bus I take to Jerusalem, we took a shared taxi towards Aram checkpoint, and just before the checkpoint everyone got out and walked around on a small path towards the right. We reached a bus, whose driver was hurriedly trying to file people in and depart before being noticed by soldiers. It was too late, though. About 30 seconds into our journey, three soldiers – one man and two women – jumped out from behind a building and ordered the bus to stop. The male soldier entered and checked everyone’s ID cards. Shams sat innocently, planning to tell the soldier, if asked, that she wasn’t yet 16 (she’s 17) and thus didn’t have an ID. He didn’t ask. She was the only one on the bus who he passed over, although most of the passengers were women and old men, who often are not checked at checkpoints. I had a valid visa, and a couple other people were “legitimate” as well, but the soldier removed everyone else from the bus and told the bus to leave. Fatima told us to go ahead without her, but we didn’t feel comfortable doing that, so we got off the bus. We stood for about 20 minutes, waiting for people’s IDs. Several people told the soldier, “Fine, I won’t go to Jerusalem, I’ll turn around, just give me my ID.” At this point, though, it was punishment and not prevention. The soldier kept saying his captain would arrive in 5 minutes.

During the time we stood there, we watched dozens of people walking on parallel roads a few hundred meters away, people who probably do this journey more often and know the best ways to walk without being stopped. I looked at the soldier, who was also watching the people in the distance. I wondered whether he would call his captain to report this, or just continue to do his particular task, which wasn’t to stop all people from reaching Jerusalem, but only the people on this particular road at this particular hour. He continued his task, holding onto the IDs and just watching the people in the distance.

Fatima went to the soldier and said, “I don’t need a permit to go to Jerusalem. I’m old, older than 40.” “Where did you hear that?” the amused soldier asked. “On the radio,” Fatima replied. “Do you believe everything you hear on the radio?” asked the soldier. “No,” said Fatima, “I don’t believe anything that comes from Israel, because it’s all political propaganda.” I couldn’t hold back a smile. Even (especially?) in a situation of extreme power differential, Fatima was in her element, stepping up to the challenge of holding onto dignity and freedom in the midst of humiliation and arbitrary restriction.

After a few more minutes passed, I asked the soldier why his captain wasn’t there yet, and why he needed to come in the first place. “He’s bringing some papers,” said the soldier. “These people broke the law by trying to go to Jerusalem without permission, and they need to sign papers.” Fatima was unimpressed, and decided she’d waited long enough. “Let’s go back,” she declared, “and go around another way. I don’t need my ID, I have another one at home.” Apparently she had lost her ID once, and after getting a new one she found her old one. Knowing that made me slightly less worried, but I still feared that the soldier would not be too happy to find that Fatima was no longer there when it came time to hand the IDs back. Nevertheless, Shams and I followed Fatima and we started to walk away, without being noticed by the soldiers. That is, until Fatima turned around and yelled, “Enough! Keep my ID – it’s yours!” I didn’t turn around, just looked at Shams and started laughing. “I can’t believe my mother,” Shams said laughing. The soldiers didn’t try to stop us.

“I’m free,” Fatima said a few minutes later. “I’m not afraid of them.” We walked for about 15 minutes until we reached a more major road. During the walk, we heard the captain finally arrive and start yelling through the jeep’s loudspeaker. I couldn’t tell what he was saying, and I don’t know exactly what happened, as we quickly got out of sight of that scene. I wonder how many times a day this happens.

Finally we caught a bus to Jerusalem, and then a taxi to the meeting, arriving at 10:15. It took us almost 4 hours to travel about 40 miles. I am reminded of an art exhibition I saw last year in Bethlehem, in which a woman had asked several people in Bethlehem, “How far is it from Bethlehem to Jerusalem?” Responses ranged from “two hours” to “10 kilometers and 4 years” to “I’ve never been to Jerusalem.”

From the balcony of the meeting place, we could see the Al Aqsa mosque and the Dome of the Rock to the left, and to the right the Annexation Wall snaked through the landscape of Abu Dis and other Jerusalem villages. Shereen, a friend of mine from Arroub refugee camp in Hebron, who will also be participating in the summer program, walked out to the balcony and saw the Dome of the Rock. “Wow,” she whispered reverently. Shams looked up and smiled. “Is it the first time you’ve seen it?” she asked. “No,” said Shereen, “I’ve seen it twice before.” “Me too,” said Shams. They stood and stared for a couple minutes, and then continued to talk about what teenagers talk about, asking each other questions about families, where they lived, musical tastes, and more.

The meeting ended, we walked to French Square to join the end of the Women in Black vigil against the occupation and to meet up with someone who was coming home with us, we walked through the Old City for a few minutes, and we started on our way. Luckily, Fatima wasn’t asked for her ID (which she no longer had) during any of the ride/s back north. We reached home around 6:00 pm, hot and exhausted, with another story to tell. Another day in Palestine.

Thoughts on "Independence Day"

There is always too much and too little to write. Everything here is extraordinary, and nothing is new. This week Israelis commemorated the Holocaust and their fallen soldiers, and celebrated “Independence Day.” This week Palestinians lived another week under occupation, with an eye towards “Al Nakba” (the catastrophe), a commemoration of the tragedy that 1948 was for the Palestinian people. This week my Israeli friends were beaten and arrested by Israeli police officers in Tel Aviv while protesting the Israeli army killing of two Palestinian boys the previous day. This week I stood in support of Palestinian villagers in Assira who opened the roadblocks that the Israeli army had placed to block them from going to Nablus on this road for the past 5 years. This week a friend in Dheisheh asked my advice on whether he should accept money for his organization from US AID, which requires a signature on an “anti-terror” statement (“I’m against terror,” my friend told me, “but by my definition, not theirs. I’m against killing of Palestinian children and Israeli children...”). This week I asked the same friend what he thought of Jewish Palestine solidarity activists using Israel’s discriminatory immigration laws in order to do this work. He told me what many Palestinians have told me: you and hundreds of other like-minded people should get Israeli citizenship and vote the bastards out (paraphrased). But isn’t that a bit like the soldiers at checkpoints who tell me, “I’m serving in the army in order to humanize it. I’m the good soldier”? You can’t humanize a checkpoint, you can’t humanize the occupation, and you can’t humanize a state that was founded on someone else’s land (like the US, I realize, but I was born in the US and my citizenship there was not a choice), and whose existence is based on the concept of rights for only a small group of people. There is a larger number of non-Jews in Israel than non-Christians in the United States. What if the US were declared a Christian country? Some may argue that our current leadership is bringing us closer to that, but Bush would never dare say that non-Christians cannot buy land, or build additions to their houses, or enjoy other rights of citizenship granted to the ever-shrinking majority population.

I am increasingly frustrated by “left-wing Zionists,” people who believe in an end to the 1967 occupation and in the creation of two states, but who don’t question the character of those two states; people who admit to me that they’re not quite sure how Zionism and democracy can coexist, but that there has to be some way, and besides, their “bottom line” is that Jews need a state. They are not willing to think their thoughts to their logical conclusions. They simply end with their “bottom line,” while millions of Palestinians live in refugee camps all over the world waiting for that bottom line to change.

The uncomfortable truth I’ve come to is that Zionism and democracy are incompatible. This is not to say that Israel must be wiped off the face of the earth. This is simply to say that you can’t have a democratic state and a Jewish state at the same time. You can’t have a democratic nationalism that is based on religion and ethnicity instead of geography. I’ve heard people say Israel can be a “Jewish state” if it embodies Jewish values of justice and humanity. Fine, then let Israel be that kind of Jewish state, which will also make it a Muslim state, a Christian state, a Buddhist state, a secular-humanist state, ...

Israel has been pushing and pushing at the borders, expanding and expanding, cantonizing the Palestinian population and essentially making a two-state solution impossible. So some of the progressive thinkers on both sides may end up being right, and may find themselves living in the one state they’ve been calling for for so long. I think this is a likely scenario for the far future, that all of historic Palestine will be one state (whether it’s called Israel, Palestine, or something else), and that everyone in that state will have equal rights, at least under law. I don’t see a viable long-term alternative. This is an end to Zionism. The question is, how long will it take until people come to terms with this necessity? How long will it take until people realize that Zionism is only a pit stop in the history of the Jewish people? And, perhaps most importantly, how many Palestinians will lose their land, their homes, and their lives in the meantime?

These are my thoughts during this week of “Israeli independence.” Questions and comments are welcome. I realize this is incomplete, so maybe I’ll write a follow-up after seeing what you all have to say. The purpose is not to create a political doctrine or to advocate any particular vision for the future (ultimately I think that’s up to the people living here to figure out), but simply to offer a few thoughts (admittedly, not new thoughts) as honestly as I can. Also, for any of you out there who are believers in justice and democracy, and consider yourselves Zionists, please explain to me how this can work (I may not be convinced, but I would at least like to understand).


The following is an excerpt from a book I just read by Mourid Barghouti, called “I Saw Ramallah.” The passage begins with him describing his reaction to Rabin’s speech at the signing of the Oslo accords. I find it particularly powerful this week...

“I felt that tremor that I know so well and which I feel when I know that I have not done my best, that I have failed: Rabin has taken everything, even the story of our death.

This leader knew how to demand that the world should respect Israeli blood, the blood of every Israeli individual without exception. He knew how to demand that the world should respect Israeli tears, and he was able to present Israel as the victim of a crime perpetrated by us. He changed facts, he altered the order of things, he presented us as the initiators of violence in the Middle East and said what he said with eloquence, with clarity and conviction. ...

It is easy to blur the truth with a simple linguistic trick: start your story from ‘Secondly.’ Yes, this is what Rabin did. He simply neglected to speak of what happened first. Start your story with “Secondly,” and the world will be turned upside-down. Start your story with “Secondly,” and the arrows of the Red Indians are the original criminals and the guns of the white men are entirely the victim. It is enough to start with “Secondly,” for the anger of the black man against the white to be barbarous. Start with “Secondly,” and Gandhi becomes responsible for the tragedies of the British. You only need to start your story with “Secondly,” and the burned Vietnamese will have wounded the humanity of the napalm, and Victor Jara’s songs will be the shameful thing and not Pinochet’s bullets, which killed so many thousands in the Santiago stadium. It is enough to start the story with “Secondly,” for my grandmother, Umm ‘Ata, to become the criminal and Ariel Sharon her victim. ...

The houses built on top of ours gallantly declare their willingness to understand our odd predilection toward living in camps scattered in the Diaspora of gods and flies, as though we had begged them to throw us out of our homes and to send their bulldozers to destroy them in front of our very eyes. Their generous guns in Deir Yassin forgive us the fact that they piled our bodies high at the sunset hour there one day. Their fighter jets forgive the graves of our martyrs in Beirut. Their soldiers forgive the tendency of our teenagers’ bones to break. Israel the victim polishes its hot, red knife with the sheen of forgiveness.”

From Jenin to Herziliya, from Bil'in to Afula

*As I’m getting ready to send this, I’m reading that two more Palestinian children have been killed by the Israeli army (at a demonstration against the Wall in the Ramallah village of Beit Liqya). I wonder how much longer this one-sided cease fire can last...


I just got back from visiting with my friend Um Fadi, who is preparing for tomorrow’s local elections in which she’s running. There are 33 people in Hares running for 9 seats on the village council, and then that group of 9 will vote for a mayor among them. At least 2 of the representatives must be women, and only 5 women are running, so Um Fadi has a decent chance of winning (besides, she’s great, so I don’t know why anyone wouldn’t vote for her!). In Hares, like a few other villages, everyone is running independently, with no stated political party affiliation.

I spent an hour or two chatting with her and her kids, sharing jokes and riddles, and practicing different languages. The youngest kids (8 and 11 years old) began to tell me all the words they knew in Hebrew: “meshugea” (crazy), “hamoor” (donkey/ass), “kelev” (dog), “bo” (come), “lech la’baytah” (go home)... I started to notice a pattern, and indeed, they confirmed that these are the most common words Israeli soldiers yell at Palestinians. Suddenly, 8-year-old Ali said in English, “Stop your game!” “Did the soldiers say that to you?” I asked. No. A few years ago, Um Fadi explained, soldiers were standing at the entrance of the village throwing gas and sound bombs into the village. One international was at Um Fadi’s house, and stepped out into the doorway to yell at the soldiers, “Stop your game!” The soldiers responded by throwing a sound bomb in her direction. The kids still remember the phrase.

Today I was on my way home from another visit to the university in Zebabdeh, Jenin, when a soldier stopped the taxi at a flying checkpoint. He looked at my passport and began asking questions: “Where are you going?” “Where do you live in Israel?” “Where will you sleep tonight?” I couldn’t tell if I should worry about saying the right thing or if he was just making small talk, but I answered curtly and vaguely. He started looking at other people’s IDs but kept talking to me: “What’s wrong? You don’t like soldiers?” “It’s difficult for me to talk to you when you have a gun,” I replied, stealing my colleague Anna’s line. I was glad to see that several Palestinians in the car understood what I had said, and nudged each other smiling. “You think it’s my gun?” asked the soldier. “It’s the government’s gun, the government gives it to me, I don’t choose it.” “You can refuse,” I replied. “If I came here with no gun,” he said, “there would be no me.” He then looked at one of the Palestinian men in the car and asked, “nachon?” (“correct?” in Hebrew). “Nachon,” replied the man absent-mindedly. “You don’t have to come here at all,” I said. “You can stay in Israel.” By this time he wasn’t paying attention to me anymore, but I was amused that he had tried to convince me that guns are necessary for occupation, when really my problem with his presence was the occupation itself, not merely the gun.

My visit to the university in Jenin was for a meeting primarily for members of Green Resistance, a new nonviolence club at the university, and the Israeli group Anarchists Against the Wall. The goal was to get to know each other and try to plan activities together. I was a little frustrated at the lack of concrete ideas generated by the group, especially the Palestinian students who have very little experience with any kind of resistance, until I realized that the meeting itself was a huge step. We introduced ourselves at the beginning, and one international who teaches English at the university said he came because he appreciated the courage of the Israelis to come there and the courage of the Palestinians to invite them. We broke into small groups to talk, and I sat back for a moment to watch the groups interact, knowing that this kind of cooperation is unusual these days. While the group didn’t agree on any one action (it seemed the Israelis were more into direct action against the Wall, while the Palestinians were more interested in joint lectures about nonviolence), they did agree to develop a joint statement and schedule a larger meeting in the near future that will be open to the whole campus. I wasn’t exactly sure what my role as an international was at the meeting, other than to observe and offer my support, but I must say it was nice to spend a whole day in a place where I didn’t hear the word “ajnabiya” (“foreigner”) whispered once. I walked around campus and nobody even noticed. They’re used to internationals teaching English, and also to female Palestinian students who don’t cover their heads, and I could have passed for either. Recently Palestinians have been telling me more and more that I look Arab. I take it as a compliment – “you’re one of us.”

I’ve traveled a lot this week, demonstrating, visiting, meeting, and relaxing. Last Thursday the village of Bil’in held a demonstration against the Wall. This is not unusual, as Bil’in has been one of the most persistent villages in their nonviolent resistance over the past few months, hosting demonstrations several times a week. What was different about Thursday was the presence of several hundred Israeli activists and the decision by the Israeli army to try new tactics and new weapons against the crowd. It started peacefully, even joyfully, as a Palestinian van blasted music and villagers carried the biggest Palestinian flag I’ve ever seen. There was also an impressive display of tear gas canisters, bullets, and other weapons that had been used by soldiers against villagers in previous demonstrations, and were now arranged on the ground to spell phrases like “No to the Wall.” We began to march towards the bulldozers. The wind was against us, so the tear gas quickly wafted our way. And then strange things began to happen. I turned around and saw what looked like two Palestinians fighting with each other. There was a crowd between me and them, so I didn’t see the rest, but according to eye witnesses and media footage, two men had begun throwing stones at the army. The Palestinian organizers tried to stop them, and quickly realized that something was awry. Indeed, as the men tried to stop the stone-throwers, the stone-throwers turned around, grabbed the men, and arrested them. They were undercover cops, apparently part of a unit used previously only to break up prison demonstrations. The Palestinian men who were arrested are still being held in a military prison camp, with charges of “assaulting a public service agent” or something along those lines, even though the cops wore nothing to distinguish them from civilians, and the “assault” was merely an attempt to get them to stop throwing stones.

After the main part of the demonstration ended, groups of Palestinian kids were collecting the weapons. I saw BBs for the first time at one of these actions, and then I saw a strange little plastic orange ball with a white powder inside. “Salt,” the boys were saying. Apparently, the soldiers had shot these salt pellets directly at people, causing welts and burns on people’s bodies. For photos and video footage of this, the undercover cops, and more, Gush Shalom is the place to go: http://zope.gush-shalom.org/home/en.

I left the demonstration exhausted, having inhaled more tear gas than ever before, and went with Dorothy, an Israeli friend, to her home in Herziliya. The next day, we were going to visit Jaber, the man with meningitis who was arrested at Huwara checkpoint the week before. He had been transferred to an Israeli hospital the Saturday before, I had visited him Sunday (as I wrote in my previous report), and on Tuesday he had been scheduled to be taken to court. The lawyer showed up at Salem that morning only to be told that Jaber still had a fever and the doctor had not released him. His lawyer told the judge that he planned to file a request to have him do his required bed rest at home. The judge said fine, we’ll be in touch, and the lawyer left. The next day the lawyer found out that the court session had gone ahead in both his and Jaber’s absence, and that the court had extended Jaber’s detention for another 15 days. He immediately filed an appeal, since the proceedings were blatantly illegal. He hadn’t seen Jaber since then, so he asked me to tell him, if I was able to see him, that he had another upcoming court date on Monday.

Dorothy and I were in the car on the way to the hospital when Jaber’s wife called to say, “Hurry up, get there quickly, they’re taking him away!” “How do you know?” I asked. “Did the doctor call you?” “No,” she replied, “another sick man who’s with him called me.” I called the lawyer and Physicians for Human Rights, who have been following the case, and neither knew anything about his being transferred. When we showed up, however, it was confirmed; he would be taken back to Salem within the hour. We did arrive on time, though, and walked directly into the room where the soldiers were sitting. Jaber smiled when he saw us, and I was immediately glad we had come. His health was infinitely better than it had been five days before, I was relieved to notice. I talked with him for a couple minutes, passing the messages that his lawyer and his wife had asked me to deliver, while Dorothy argued with the soldiers who were trying to get us to leave the room. I told Jaber I had seen his family, that they send their love, and that his 4-year-old son was so happy that I had seen his father that he stared at me and sat next to me almost the entire time I was at their house. Jaber smiled again.

Finally the soldiers forced us out and closed the door. We met the man who had phoned Jaber’s wife, and he told us he’d spoken to the family a few times this week, upon Jaber’s request. I spoke with the doctor, who said Jaber was physically, if not psychologically, ready to be released. He told me that in order to release him, he had to sign an army paper saying Jaber was healthy enough to be released to prison. He knows next to nothing about the prison conditions, he said, but signed the paper anyway. He seemed somewhat apologetic, but also said he understood that the army wanted him released from the hospital as soon as possible, since they were wasting precious resources guarding the hospital bed of a sick man whose legs were shackled together. It was Friday afternoon, and there were only a couple more hours before Shabbat began and Jaber would have to stay the weekend. So they took him. He started on foot, but the shackles made it impossible for him to walk properly, so they took him the rest of the way in a wheelchair, out to the parking lot and into a regular white car (not a jeep). I managed to sneak a few pictures of this process.

Tomorrow I’ll give the photos to the family, whom I’ve been trying to keep in touch with. Court dates continue to be scheduled and canceled, and his detention continues. According to his wife, he had a court proceeding today, and will have another hearing of some sort six days from now. Still no stated reasons for his arrest.

When I returned to Hares Monday, after several days away, I was greeted warmly by Um Rabia. Abu Rabia told me later that it was too quiet while I was gone, that without IWPS women upstairs, it seemed they had lost something, that something was missing. It’s nice to feel appreciated. I have no illusions about the effectiveness of our work these days, but I’m confident at least in the relationships I’ve formed with friends. We may not be getting any closer to an end to the occupation, but we’re getting closer to each other. For now, that will have to suffice.

Freedom and Captivity

The past few days have been a whirlwind of joy and sorrow, freedom and captivity. Passover, my favorite Jewish holiday because it’s a celebration of freedom and a commitment to struggling for justice, has framed these days. At the same time, the story of Jaber Dalany, a sick Palestinian man who was arrested at a checkpoint on his way out of the hospital Thursday night, has also framed these days. I was encouraged at a Passover seder last night to reflect on what “my community” (however defined) has done to break apart other communities, what we must take responsibility for. Suddenly I was outside my role as an international. Suddenly the soldiers guarding Jaber’s hospital room were my community (the Jewish community), and the shackles on his legs were my doing. I started to cry, and then shared his story.

On Thursday afternoon, 31-year-old Jaber was leaving a hospital in Nablus where he had spent 5 days and been diagnosed with viral meningitis. He was stopped at Huwara checkpoint and detained from 12:30 pm – 10 pm, when the checkpoint closed and the soldiers officially arrested him. Jaber’s health deteriorated during that time. His wife, who is pregnant with their fourth child, was with him and reports that he became delirious after so many hours in the sun with no food or water. The army reports that after arriving at Salem detention center, he was given water through an IV. We heard nothing else for a couple days – no reason for his arrest, and only vague medical reports from the army whose doctors diagnosed him with everything from a stomach ulcer to heart disease, always with the same conclusion: “Medical condition does not bar arrest.” Finally after many phone calls from organizations and individuals around the world, they admitted he had something more serious and took him to Ha’emek Hospital in Afula. I called the hospital, and the first English-speaking doctor I found was also Palestinian. All the Jewish doctors had gone home for Passover, he told me, so the family could call the emergency room and speak Arabic with any of the doctors if they wanted to find more information. He was extremely helpful, calling me back twice to tell me as much as he knew.

Meanwhile, I kept getting phone calls from the family and friends, saying his wife was not doing well, the family was worried because he hadn’t seemed fully recovered when leaving the hospital in Nablus, etc. Everyone who heard about his arrest was shocked – he has no political ties, people kept saying. The family asked us to try to visit him, so Susy (an Israeli activist) and I went to Afula yesterday. We drove north through Israel, but not far from the Green Line. We passed countless Palestinian Muslim villages (I saw mosques everywhere) and Palestinians walking along the roads. I marveled over the fact that even after Israel’s destruction of over 400 Palestinian towns and villages, so many still remain. This drive made it seem like the 20% of Israel’s population that is Palestinian was more like 80%. For the first time inside Israel, I really felt, “This is Palestine. Some European tourists moved in and formed a state 57 years ago, and are still here, but the land still knows that it is Palestine, and the people still know...” Maybe that’s part of what makes Israelis so uncomfortable. They can build all the shopping malls they want, but Palestine isn’t going anywhere. There was something comforting about the drive, about this thought, about the land.

We arrived at the hospital and went directly to the ward where Jaber was being treated. His room was not difficult to find, since it was the only one with a closed door and two armed soldiers sitting outside. Susy tried to walk in and was stopped by the soldiers. They would not let us enter, but we were able to talk to the doctor, who had not yet received any information about Jaber’s prior medical situation. He seemed frustrated with the army’s lack of sharing information. We gave him the phone number of the doctor who had treated Jaber in Nablus, and just at that moment the faxed medical report from Nablus came from friends of the family. The doctor told us he had just done a spinal tap and would soon determine Jaber’s illness. The viral meningitis diagnosis was confirmed an hour later.

We paced back and forth in front of Jaber’s door a few times, knowing it was unlocked and we could just walk in, but that that probably would not be good for anyone. The soldiers became agitated when we got too close, and were disturbed by our presence. The hospital security guard, however, was somewhat more friendly, and called the DCO to see if we could go into Jaber’s room. Finally an answer came: “No, you can’t go in right now. Maybe after many hours you’ll be allowed in.” So we left the hospital and ran another errand, and came back an hour or two later. We were almost sure we would not be allowed in, but thought it was worth a try, another argument, whatever it would take. It didn’t take anything. We showed up at the entrance of the hospital and the guard said, “You have permission now.” It was surprising, but not unheard of – the army rules and decisions never cease to amaze me in their arbitrariness.

We returned to Jaber’s ward, and the soldiers let us in, but said one of them had to stay with us the whole time. When we entered Jaber was sleeping. I said his name softly and he opened his eyes and gave a little moan. I introduced myself, and even in his delirium, illness, and lack of control over his circumstances, he greeted me with the customary, “Ahlan w’sahlan” (welcome). He started to come to his senses a bit as he realized this was an opportunity to notify the outside world of his situation. He was so tired, and so sick, he told us. He kept saying “Biddi amoot” which could be translated as “I want to die” or “I’m going to die.” I’m not sure which he meant. Maybe both. He said the doctor was good, the hospital was good, but if he’s taken back to Salem detention center they might as well shoot him. He was in tears, half from pain and half from terror, as he told us he hadn’t eaten, drunk, or slept in three days. In Salem, he said, they threw him in a small cell with 9 other people, and did not let anyone out to go to the bathroom from 9pm – 8:30am. He spent the next two days on the floor in pain (there were no beds), where he said it was extremely cold at night. He told us he lost consciousness four times, but didn’t sleep at all. Nobody spoke with him while he was there, so if there is to be any interrogation, it has not yet begun. He still hasn’t had anything to eat or drink, he said, only the occasional IV to keep him from deadly dehydration. I had seen a full tray of food leave his room earlier, and asked him about it. “The doctor told me not to eat for a half hour after the spinal tap,” he said. The soldier argued, “The food came two hours later.” Jaber disagreed. I don’t know who was telling the truth. Possibly both of them. Jaber did not seem to be thinking clearly, so it’s possible he was not aware of the time, or he slept through it, or he was not strong enough to feed himself (he asked us to feed him when they brought more food, which is not something I would expect from a 30-year-old man unless he really was too weak to feed himself). Or maybe he didn’t eat because they served him matzah, which would have been disastrous for his throat. He told us to lift up the blanket covering his feet, and we saw the metal cuffs on his ankles, which seemed totally ridiculous. He was too weak to sit up or feed himself, and two armed guards sat outside his room, but he had to be shackled? One of the soldiers said, “It’s not our decision, we’re only the escorts. We don’t even have the key.”

Susy distracted the soldier for a minute while I dialed Jaber’s wife’s number. She picked up and I quickly said, “Hi Khulud, I’m with Jaber, hold on...” and handed him the phone. They talked for a minute before the soldiers noticed and then another minute while Susy argued with the soldier about why he should be allowed to talk on the phone. When he hung up, Jaber handed me the phone, thanked me, and smiled for the only time all day.

The doctor pulled me aside at one point to ask about my organization. When I told him about IWPS and what we do, he asked why. It was a personal question: Why do you come from America to do this? I told him I’m American and my tax dollars go to support Israel’s occupation of Palestine, and I’m Jewish and my name gets used to oppress Palestinians as well. “You’re Palestinian, right?” I asked. He smiled and said, “I’m nothing. I’m just me.” He was a nice guy, a good doctor, and obviously concerned about Jaber. He said if he were releasing him to his house he would do it almost immediately, but that he wasn’t sure about releasing him to prison. He seemed uncomfortable with the whole situation. Palestinians with Israeli citizenship are already in a peculiar position, and I think he was caught inside that, saying it’s none of his business what happens to Jaber after he’s released, but at the same time it was his responsibility to make sure Jaber was okay. At the end of the conversation he gave me his cell phone number and said, “Don’t give it out, I don’t want any trouble. But feel free to contact me if I can help with anything... that is, anything that’s not political.” I didn’t think it was a good time to get into a discussion about how everything is political, especially everything here.

We stayed with Jaber for over an hour, feeding him pudding, water, and juice (when I asked for a second cup for the juice, one of the soldiers said, “This is a hospital, not a restaurant”). Jaber asked for another blanket and pillow, which the nurses brought. He asked me what day it was, and I told him – Sunday, April 24. He begged us to go to the Finance Ministry in Ramallah, where he works, and see if they can do anything to help. He also stressed the importance of sending the photos that Anna had taken of him being arrested at Huwara to the newspapers, and giving them to his family. I told him people from all over the world already knew about the situation, that the army and hospital had been getting calls all night, that he had to hang in there for his family, etc. “Just don’t let them send me back to Salem,” he kept saying, “or I’ll die.”

I felt guilty leaving him, especially since there didn’t seem to be any time limit on our visit and I knew he may not see another person outside of prison for months. But it was getting late, I already knew I would be at least an hour late to the seder I was going to in Jerusalem, and I wasn’t sure there was anything else we could specifically do for Jaber at the moment.

We left, made our way through the holiday traffic to Tel Aviv, and I took a shared taxi to Jerusalem. It was nice to arrive at the seder to a group of progressive Jews, to meet new people, to sing. But I couldn’t get Jaber out of my mind. I was too tired to think critically about the meaning of celebrating freedom while Jaber’s legs were cuffed together in his hospital bed. I could only feel it, and share it, and try to be proud of what the Jewish tradition could mean if applied more compassionately.

At the end of the seder I read a paragraph I had written for the seder we hosted at our house on Friday night. Twenty Palestinians, Israelis, internationals, and people who cross all those identities had come together to tell the story of Exodus (which is almost exactly the same in the Torah and the Koran, we discovered), to sing songs of freedom, and to express solidarity with and gratitude for each other. We ate taboun (huge wonderful Palestinian bread) instead of matzah, drank grape juice from Bethlehem instead of wine, and covered our seder plate with a Palestinian flag. We ate maklube and sat on mattresses on the floor, the way so many Palestinians do during meals. The cultures, symbols, and people blended beautifully and naturally.

My closing paragraph follows:

“At the end of the seder, Jews have always promised each other: ‘L’shana haba-a bi-Y’rushalayim - Next Year in Jerusalem!’ This year, as we sit here in the West Bank with Palestinians who are not permitted to go to Jerusalem, the phrase ‘Next year in Jerusalem’ has new meaning. What was a dream for Jews and a reality for Palestinians has become a reality for Jews and a dream for Palestinians. This year, in a measure of solidarity with Palestinians, let us all say ‘Next year in Jerusalem – Il’sane il’jayye fil Quds.’”


For those of you who want and are able to do something for Jaber, please call Israeli authorities and demand to know why they continue to hold a sick man with no charges.

Israeli Army phone numbers (these numbers are what you dial from the US – those of you outside can hopefully figure out which number to dial from where you are):
DCO in Jenin: (011-972) 4-640-7312 or (011-972) 4-617-9207
DCO "Humanitarian Office": (011-972) 2-997-7733

The Real Terrorists

I never know when to send out a report, or when my next moment will be something I desperately want to tell people about right away. The day after I forced myself to sit down and write something to you all last week, I witnessed my first settler attack. “It was nothing,” my friend Arafat told me afterwards, and I know that he was speaking in comparison to other attacks, when people have been injured and even killed. Here, the Palestinian farmers were simply forced off their land. Too simply. Too easily. But what can they do? They don’t have any weapons (unless you count their farming tools, as one woman joked to me); only the Israeli settlers and soldiers have real weapons.

We went to AsSawiya (not to be confused with AzZawiya) because the farmers needed to plow their land that they haven’t been able to plow for four years, and they had permission from the army to go on Sunday. The entire situation is absurd. The village has been here for centuries, and in the past couple decades they’ve seen Israeli settlers move onto their land, destroying or stealing it and preventing farmers from continuing with their lives. In the past three years they’ve seen this new outpost from the settlement of Eli encroach even more upon their land, with the help of the Israeli government who, even according to their own expansionist laws, should stop new outposts from being built. When Palestinian farmers try to go to their land that is anywhere near any settlements or outposts, they are attacked, beaten, and forced off their land by settlers. No settler from this area has been prosecuted, and the police consistently refuse to accept statements and evidence, or to follow up on cases.

Now the Israeli army has decided to “protect” the Palestinian farmers. The way they do this is to give them permits to reach their land for a few days a year (why do people need permits to go to their own land, and what about the rest of the year?), and they promise to protect the farmers while they are plowing (why don’t they remove the settlers from their illegal dwelling place instead of trying to minimize the effects of the predictable settler violence against Palestinians?). Even the army’s protection is questionable. What happened to us on Sunday is similar, apparently, to what usually happens: settlers come and threaten or attack Palestinians, and the army responds by telling the Palestinians that they should leave their land in order to avoid being attacked.

But let me start at the beginning. We (four people from Rabbis for Human Rights and I) arrived in AsSawiya and met my friend Arafat, his mother, and a few other farmers. We walked up the mountain to the land, with Arafat pointing out their new water pipes that carry water to the village, and also pointing at the fresh water spring that the settlers had contaminated a few years ago by bathing and swimming in it. We reached the place where people wanted to work and could see the outpost in the distance. The army was nowhere to be seen (even though it was a designated army protection day). The farmers spread out and plowed for about 20 minutes before two armed settlers approached and began yelling at the families to stop working, to go down, to leave their land. Most of the farmers, knowing the danger, began to pack up right away. It wasn’t quick enough for the settlers, who kept yelling and running from family to family. A couple minutes later two more settlers approached, and more followed. These settlers were armed only with binoculars, not rifles, but their behavior was more aggressive and violent than that of the settlers with guns (who were apparently some sort of outpost security force, though they had no uniforms and were clearly self-appointed security guards). Some of the settlers began pushing the farmers. I saw one of them kick a donkey pretty hard, but the donkey seemed unperturbed. One man later showed me his ripped shirt and told me a settler had hit him on the shoulder. There were no witnesses, so the police would not take a report.

The farmers began walking down the hill, followed (chased) by the settlers. Finally, an army jeep pulled up. Most of the settlers temporarily left (although some came back later), and the Palestinians were relieved. The armed settlers approached the soldiers and began chatting. Their arms were on each other’s shoulders as one soldier asked where another settler was; clearly they knew each other. Arafat tried to talk with the soldiers, to say, “Where were you? This is our designated day to plow, and we were on our land plowing. Can we go back now and continue work?” The response was truly baffling: “You have to wait for the army to get here.” Weren’t they the army? Apparently there were other soldiers and commanders assigned to this task and they hadn’t yet arrived, so the Palestinians had to continue moving down off their land, because God forbid these soldiers would actually ask the settlers to walk up back towards their (illegal) homes.

When “the army” and police finally arrived, the settlers, Palestinian farmers, and Israeli accompaniers began negotiating. I sat with the women and talked, and time passed. We must have sat there for an hour before the army finally announced (or rather, asked Arafat to announce) that they would be allowed back to their land to plow for what was left of the day. Two catches: 1) They could not go to the land they wanted to plow, the land they had begun working earlier. They had to stay in the lower area, even further from the outpost. 2) All men (except children and old men) had to have their IDs checked. One soldier stepped forward and said he would check IDs, but the job was immediately taken over by a settler. That’s right, an armed Israeli settler from an illegal outpost of an illegal settlement held a notepad in his hand and proceeded to write down the ID numbers of every Palestinian man who had come to plow that day. Other settlers began taking pictures of the farmers. All of this was probably just a way to scare them, but who knows what they could try to do if they wanted to hurt the people – they have connections, and there are generally no repercussions to their actions.

Finally the farmers were able to plow on some of their land. I chatted for several hours with a couple Palestinian boys, one of whom told me he spoke fluent Hebrew. Usually only the Palestinian men who have worked in Israel speak Hebrew, so I asked him about it. “My brother is married to a Jewish Israeli,” he said, “and she taught me.”

One army jeep drove up to the outpost, and soldiers patrolled there for the next several hours, making sure settlers did not come down again. The farmers were relieved, and it was a minor victory, but I was disgusted that the ability to hurriedly and frightfully plow land, in a place that is not the place that most needs the work, is a “victory” in the context of occupation.

Perhaps the most difficult part of the day for me, on a personal level, was listening to attitudes of some of the Israeli accompaniers and watching one of them interact with all the parties there. Most people who come with Rabbis for Human Rights (RHR) are fine, but not everyone has the same political analysis or familiarity with the land and the people as Arik, the RHR director. At one point, after the men had all packed up their equipment and gone to where the army told them to go, a few women were still trying to stay on their land and argue with settlers and soldiers. One of the Israeli accompaniers (a man) said to me, “The women don’t understand the situation. The most important thing today is to plow the land, not make a political statement. If they don’t plow for three years, an old Ottoman law says that the land is not theirs anymore.” “I think the women understand better than everyone else,” I responded, “that playing by the rules doesn’t get Palestinians anywhere. Just because they work their land does not mean the settlers won’t build another outpost and steal it.” I heard the man talking with someone on the phone later, probably a man, and speaking in a condescending and amused tone about the women.

In a far worse example, another Israeli accompanier was acting exactly like the army – telling Palestinians not to go to the land where they wanted to go because that would be “provoking” an attack; stepping in the middle of an attack by facing Palestinians and yelling at them to move down the hill, rather than asking the settlers to move up; ordering farmers to go to certain places for their “protection” – even pushing Arafat at one point in the direction this man wanted him to go. I told him I thought he was being completely inappropriate, that Arafat knew exactly what he was doing and had far more experience with settler attacks than this man did, etc. He did not change his behavior. He came to me later and said, “I have seen too much death and tragedy in my own family, so I’m here to stop violent confrontations no matter what it takes.” “That’s fine,” I said, “and a completely appropriate attitude when you’re in Israel. But when you’re here, your job is to follow the lead of the Palestinians and do what they ask you to do, not push them around and tell them what to do. If you don’t want to listen to Palestinians, you should continue your work at home, not here.” I don’t think he had any idea that the farmers would perceive him as more of an oppressor than an accompanier. And honestly, I don’t think he really cared. His work had nothing to do with Palestinians; it was for himself. It’s the same thing that happens in so many situations of oppression, when a member of the oppressor group comes in and tries to dictate to the oppressed how they should act, to tell them what’s best for them. People can’t or won’t step out of their own heads. It reminds me of an e-mail I read last week that is more amusing than offensive. Someone had sent a message to an activist Israeli list serve entitled “Israeli presence needed in Yanoun on Sunday” (Yanoun is a small village that has been consistently terrorized by settlers from Itamar settlement). One Israeli responded to the whole list saying, “That e-mail title was a bit ironic, and almost funny. In fact, Israeli presence is absolutely what is NOT needed in Yanoun on Sunday.”

Where does all this leave us? More and more I’ve been hearing about settler attacks recently – rounding up men and threatening to kill them, poisoning land, unleashing wild boars in Palestinian gardens, and more. “And they call us the terrorists,” so many Palestinians have said to me recently.

I didn’t realize I would write so much about the settler attack, so I’ll stop now, but I hope to write again soon. Anna and I went to Jenin on Monday to meet with Palestinian women, a cultural center, and a nonviolence club at the American University of Jenin. I would love to write more about that experience, at the university in particular – it was interesting to hang out with middle class Palestinians my age whom I relate to socially better than most of the people I know here, but whose political views, academic and somewhat removed ways of thinking about the situation, and feeling that “we can’t do anything, we have to wait for others to make peace” were frustrating for me. But perhaps it could also be enlightening.

More later. For all of you celebrating Passover this weekend, Hag Sameach! It’s my favorite holiday, one I feel I don’t need to stretch at all to fit my political and human beliefs. We’re having a seder here at our house tomorrow night, and inviting Palestinians, Israelis, and internationals to participate. More about that later as well.

Love Hannah

Living More Than Working

Dear friends,

I realize I haven’t written in over a week, and while some of you may be enjoying a break from my reports, others may be wondering where I’ve gone. I’m still here, still in Palestine, still living and working with people under occupation. I think I’ve done more of the living this week than the working, though, and it’s been nice. I don’t know if it’s a result of last week’s tragedies, but this week I have found myself sitting and drinking tea with friends more than usual. I decided at some point that when I don’t have work outside the house, it’s better to hang out with people than to sit behind a computer (like I am now) looking for another task to do in the list of endless tasks.

And so I’ve been spending time with people. Issa was in the hospital for a few days this week, and came home today. It was wonderful to see him, although he says his infection is not completely gone and he’s not sure he’ll ever fully recover from this last sickness. He and his wife Faisa asked about our friend Karin’s wedding, which happened a couple weeks ago in Bethlehem. I told them it was beautiful, and that Karin and her husband made a nice speech afterwards thanking everyone for coming and saying, “The people who came from furthest are not necessarily the people from Austria and Germany, but those from Salfit and Gaza and even Jerusalem.” “That’s right,” said Faisa sadly, “because of the checkpoints and the soldiers. It’s all because of Israel. If it weren’t for Israel there would be no problem.” She paused, and then added, “But if it weren’t for Israel, we wouldn’t know you.” I cringe to hear this, knowing it’s true. What a strange relationship we have with people. What a strange situation, where people get to know us and want to see us, but know they’re likeliest to see us if there is a problem in their village.

Like the village of Yasouf. I haven’t visited Yasouf yet since I’ve been back, and when my friend Abu Srur found out I had been here for a month without calling and visiting, he was hurt. Tomorrow I’ll go, and I’ll see him, but I’m only going because doctors from Bir Zeit University will be there to talk with the villagers about safety precautions on their land. I wrote in my last report about poison that ideological Jewish settlers had placed on Palestinian land in the south Hebron hills, killing many of their sheep. Well, this same poison has shown up in Yasouf now. Small orange pellets of death. Announcements have been made on mosques throughout the region, but that cannot remove the poison or the system that refuses to prosecute those responsible for planting the poison.

Tomorrow’s visit may not help me change our image from people who show up in problem situations to people who show up because it’s nice to see people, but I’ve been working on it at least in this small part of Hares. Last night my friend Amal dyed my hair with henna. I slept with the dried mud on my head, covered in a head scarf and looking like any other woman in the village. Today I went to return the head scarf and she told me to keep it, that it looked nice on me. I told her she’d get more use out of it than I would, but that next time we dye my hair I’ll wear it again.

Yesterday I took my friend Fatima’s two oldest daughters to the Ibdaa Cultural Center in Bethlehem to record them singing for a project I’m working on. They were amazing, and had a blast. At the ages of 17 and 15, it was their first time traveling without their mother (except for school trips). I picked them up at the roadblock outside the village, where they were waiting hidden away in a car so nobody else in the village would see them leave without their mother. We snuck into another service taxi on the other side of the roadblock, only to find that the two men sitting in front of us were from the same village. We arrived at Zatara checkpoint and Shams noticed the posters plastered all over the bus stops by the settlers in the area. “Sharon,” she said, pointing at his picture. “Yes, it’s against Sharon,” I replied. She was surprised. I told her that many settlers now agree with many Palestinians, but for much different reasons, when they say Sharon is like Hitler. This sign was against the settler evacuation from Gaza. “They will put all the settlers here in the West Bank,” I said. Shams asked, “And the settlers don’t want to be in the West Bank?” “They want to be in the West Bank,” I replied, “but they also want to be in Gaza.” Shams sighed, “They want everything.”

The girls started to relax as we got further south, and we arrived at Dheisheh refugee camp three cars later with no problems. The people at Ibdaa’s radio station / studio thought they were simply doing me a favor by letting me record the girls there, but after the first song, one of them came into the room and asked the girls, “Where are you from?” He was clearly impressed. They opened up completely in the studio – they were in their element, for sure. We recorded five songs, and then one of the men asked if they wanted to read a couple excerpts in English from personal testimonies for the radio program. Shams played a young girl, and Mayisa an old woman. As they were reading, the producer said, “Damn, I wish they lived closer to here.” Apparently it takes some kids an hour to get a good version of just a few lines in English. Shams and Mayisa did everything almost perfectly on their first try.

After finishing and copying CDs, we went to visit the host family that I lived with for a month last summer. The girls had a great conversation with my host mother, Najah. They asked her about life in Dheisheh, how often the army invades, whether all the girls and women in the camp have to wear head scarves or not, and more. She asked them about their parents’ work, life in the village, what kinds of songs they sing, and more. They talked about resistance against the Wall (the girls argued it was necessary, Najah argued it was futile, they didn’t necessarily disagree with each other).

We returned the same roundabout way we came – through Wadi Nar. It would be much quicker, more direct, and less expensive to go through Jerusalem, but Jerusalem is forbidden for West Bank Palestinians, save for a lucky few with special permits. So we went through Wadi Nar, and I remembered the one spot in the turn where it is possible to see the Dome of the Rock – a tiny gold dot in the distance. I pointed it out to the girls, who looked at it in awe and with sadness. “We can’t go there,” said Shams. The whole way there and back we saw pieces of the Wall snaking through the land. In Abu Dis we watched the Dome of the Rock, slightly closer now, disappear like a sunset behind the Wall as we descended a hill.

We went through Ramallah, though it wasn’t the most direct way home, because the girls were in no rush to get back to their village and I thought it would be nice to extend our trip and return home as close to dark as possible. We arrived in Ramallah and Shams wanted to try to find the dabke (Palestinian folk dance) instructor she had taken a couple lessons from last summer. We stopped to ask someone for directions and Shams said, “I love asking people where things are.” “Why?” I asked. “Because it makes me think people are good,” she replied. “My mother always says people in this century are not good, not honest, and don’t help each other. But when I ask someone where something is, and he gets out of his car and walks me to the next street corner to show me, it makes me feel good about people.”

The cultural center that we were looking for was closed, so we headed back to the center of Ramallah to catch a bus north. Shams and Mayisa stopped at a flower and plant shop to find a gift for their mother. “We cleaned the house on Mother’s Day and cooked,” they said, “but we didn’t really get her a gift.” (Mother’s Day in Palestine was a few weeks ago.) So they went into the shop, and asked about a few things. Fifty shekels, thirty shekels, all too much. “I have 10 shekels,” Shams finally said, “and I want a bouquet.” So the man made her a nice bouquet, and off we went to catch a service taxi home. I crossed the Qarawa roadblock with the girls and we took a taxi towards their house, picking up Fatima on the way. She was so happy to see the girls (I forgot to mention that she called 3 times during the day to see where we were and how we were). So the day ended beautifully.

I don’t have much more to write myself right now, but I can share a couple links and a joke:

1. For those of you planning a Passover seder this year who haven’t yet seen the wonderful Love and Justice in Times of War Haggadah (written a couple years ago), check it out at http://colours.mahost.org/events/haggadah.html.

2. Shministim, the high school refusenik movement, continues to grow, and the number of high school seniors imprisoned for refusing to serve in the Israeli army continues to grow as well. For updates on the kids in prison and their statements to the court before being sentenced, visit http://www.newprofile.org/.

3. If you really want to read depressing and insightful reports about the occupation, since this one is probably neither, you can visit my co-worker Anna’s website at http://annainpalestine.blogspot.com.

4. The joke:

An old Arab lives close to New York City for more than 40 years. He would love to plant potatoes in his garden, but he is alone, old and weak. His son is in college in Paris, so the old man sends him an e-mail.

He explains the problem:

Beloved son, I am very sad, because I can't plant potatoes in my garden. I am sure, if only you were here; you helped me and dug up the garden for me.
I love you,
Your father

The following day, the old man receives a response e-mail from his son:

Beloved father,
Please don't touch the garden. It's there that I have hidden 'the THING'.
I love you too,
Ahmed

At 4pm the US Army, the Marines, the FBI, the CIA and the Rangers visit the house of the old man, take the whole garden apart, search every inch, but can't find anything. Disappointed they leave the house.

Another day later, the old man receives another e-mail from his son.

Beloved father, I hope the garden is dug up by now and you can plant your potatoes.
That's all I could do for you from here.
I love you,
Ahmed