Dear friends,
In February, as you know, my mother came to visit me in Palestine. She wrote reflections and I sent much of her writing to my list. Just last month, my brother came to visit also (he's studying Russian in Moscow for a few months, so it was relatively easy for him to come). Below is some of what he wrote, both simple stories and political reflections. It's long (perhaps not quite as long as what I sent from my mother a few months ago, but long nonetheless), so take a few days to read it. Included is one particularly disturbing checkpoint experience that I did not write to you all about, so here it is, in Ben's words...
-Hannah
As I was waiting for my plane to Israel, I was surprised that I felt a strong connection with the other people waiting for the plane; I could tell they were going home. Suddenly all I had been told about Jews and Israel over my lifetime entered my head. They had a place to go and be safe. Yet I felt more unsafe in Israel than in Moscow or the US, or a lot of places I have been. This was probably also due to things I have heard about Israel, from many of the same people, saying how dangerous
it is there, asking several times if I was still planning to go. What can explain this dichotomy between Israel being a place for Jews to go to be safe, and people who care about me being worried about me going to Israel?
When I arrived at the airport in Israel, it was impossible to tell that the country was at war, a war in which Northern Israel was being hit by rockets daily. But everyone in the airport seemed completely
normal. It was a completely western airport and feeling. I went through security, said that I was visiting my sister, that I would be meeting her in Jerusalem and then traveling around to see her friends. I got right through, as I did not mention that many of these friends were Palestinian. I followed the directions that sis gave me to exit the airport and turn left, and I saw the Jerusalem sherut. I was the first one there, so it took a while for the sherut to leave, but eventually I arrived in East Jerusalem, went into the cafe she told me to, and there she was, dressed in her Palestine outfit. It was good to see her. I was excited for the next 9 days; I would finally get to see all this stuff she has been writing about for years. My desire for a schwarma had preceded me, and we left the cafe to get me a schwarma. It was good. We met two of Hannah's friends, Ari and another Hannah. Eventually we headed to the bus station and took the bus to Ramallah.
Ramallah seemed like a normal city. There were differences of course with American cities, but it was difficult to tell that it was living under occupation. Of course Ramallah is one of the better off cities
in the occupation, but I was still surprised that the occupation was not apparent.
…
[In Salfit region, Mas’ha village] We first went to a house that is entirely surrounded by the wall or
security fence. The owners of the house now have a key to a gate in the fence, which they can go in and out of, but before that they had to get the army to open up a large gate for them. It is clear that the fence and wall around the house is purely to make it unpleasant for them to live there. The only part where there is wall rather than fence is the direction of the Palestinian village which they are part of, so they can not see it. It is pretty amazing that they still can live there. Their attachment to the land and the house is very strong. Two children were there in the house, and it was refreshing to see them because they didn't seem to realize or acknowledge the situation
they were living in. They seemed just like normal kids. Hannah seems to really enjoy the kids in Palestine. She enjoys kids other places too, but I think the kids in Palestine are especially refreshing
because you can temporarily forget about the situation they are living in. We brought the daughter in the house pictures of a trip Hannah took her on to Jerusalem and to the Sea. She seemed very happy with them, especially when her parents saw them. Hannah runs some trips with Palestinian children to go to Jerusalem and the Sea and possibly their families' old villages because children under 16 are allowed to travel freely. While we were there, the father came home from working as a farmer. He works on land owned by some Palestinian in the States. It takes him a while to get to the land, because he has to walk around the settlement built next to his house.
We then went to lunch back in Hares at Abu Rabia's brother's, Issa's, house. This was my first taste of a Palestinian lunch that I would have several more times. I really enjoyed several aspects of
Palestinian lunches. First of all, there was always a lot of food, and it was good. I also liked the part of lunch where Hannah would be made fun of in Arabic for being a vegetarian; it's good to see that
Palestinians can hassle her about it too.
…
After lunch we went back to the IWPS house. Hannah went to a party I wasn't invited to that night, because it was a women only party, and I stayed in the house and studied Arabic and watched part of a movie. When she got back, we went downstairs where the family I was staying
with was sitting outside. We both sat there for a while, had some tea, and chatted. Huda (the youngest daughter) gave me several things that night including a leaf, a plastic bag, a shoe, and a broken necklace. Hannah talked to Um Rabia for a while and I talked to Abu Rabia. His English is good enough for us to carry on a conversation. We talked for a bit. I remember him saying that he hopes that one day there will be peace and no more bloodshed. He did not mention anything about taking over Israel. I think most Palestinians would be eager for a fair peace, but it is becoming more and more difficult over the years.
…
We then went back to the IWPS house for a bit. They were talking about things that have happened to Palestinians recently, attacks by soldiers and also by settlers. I was a bit shocked how they talked about them and no one was really surprised because it is regular for them. But we never hear about these things in the States. If it was a Palestinian doing the same thing to an Israeli I have a feeling we would hear of it. We then went downstairs to Abu Rabia's. Hannah did not stay long because it was very late, but in the meantime we gave a Russian nesting doll to them. Sajid, the young boy, enjoyed playing with it, but he did not understand the concept of putting it back together in the correct order.
The next morning Abu Rabia drove us to Nablus. We drove through many villages to get there and the scenery was very beautiful. The road just winds through the hills rather than cutting straight through them. It is also much smaller than the roads Israel builds in the West Bank. You know I am not one for keeping the old rather than embracing the new, more efficient roads or society, so I do not say this road was better, it was just different. We drove around Nablus which was a very beautiful city. We drove past an apartment that Abu Rabia owns, and I believe rents out. We went up to the highest point so we could look over the whole city. Then we drove to the center of town and walked for a while through a market. It was very crowded, but interesting. You could tell that tourists do not go to Nablus because we did not have anyone trying to sell us something in English. The only English we heard was little kids saying hi or hello, which occurred a lot in all of the West Bank. We stopped and said hello to some store owners that Abu Rabia knew who all offered us tea, but we declined. Finally we headed out of the city, but we still had to get past the checkpoint.
Going in, we got through the checkpoint rather quickly. I think there might have been only one car ahead of us, and we showed our ids and then were allowed to pass. Going out was a different story. We drove up to the checkpoint and got into a line of cars maybe 10 or 20 long, but they were not noticeably moving. All the people from the cars were standing outside of their cars. We all got out because we were going to have to wait a while. Hannah and I walked up to the checkpoint to have a look and Abu Rabia stayed back with the car. When we got up there we saw many people, maybe 100-200, waiting under a covered area, but there were even more people that did not fit in and were in line outside of that area as well as occupying the side of the street where
cars came into Nablus. When we first got up there, some cars were coming in and people would move out of the way, but soon after, there were so many people in the street that the cars could not get through and the soldiers stopped letting them pass. Getting into Nablus is much easier than getting out, but even so, I think this was bad for going out.
Out of the covered area there was a small exit in which one person would come through at a time and one soldier, of the 10-15 or so that were there, would look at his id and let him pass. It was going very slowly, and I believe more people were arriving to exit the city than were exiting, so there kept being more and more people waiting. People who were sick or injured with doctor's notes would go up to the soldiers and beg to get through without waiting in line. All were at
first refused, whether the note was real or not, but most kept persisting and after a while would be allowed to pass, though some were not and it seemed a bit arbitrary who was allowed to pass and who not. At one point a woman passed out in the covered area. It was very crowded so I imagine very hot even though it was covered. People were shouting at the soldiers to try to tell them that a woman had passed out and eventually she was carried out and given water. The street became more and more crowded (this was where we were standing) and every now and then several soldiers would yell and hold up their guns and force people to move back. Hannah and I had more freedom to move about than the Palestinians did. We were also told to move back, but they did not persist as much as with the Palestinians, and they were also much more polite with us. One of the soldiers spoke English relatively well, and Hannah conversed on and off with him. He said he was a good soldier, not a bad one, and only following orders. I am sure I have heard that excuse before, can't seem to place it right now. At some point the checkpoint was closed, which meant that they
were not regularly checking id's, but that people would still go up to the front and beg to be let through and some were let through, but not as many as when it was open. Hannah asked the soldier why the checkpoint was closed and the soldier said because of people like him, pointing to a guy who had been in a shouting match with the soldier about getting through. Hannah suggested just letting everyone through and then there would not be people like him.
As you may have guessed, but apparently the army does not know, closing the checkpoint did not alleviate the problem of hundreds of people waiting. At one point a Palestinian woman asked us why we were waiting and said that we could just go through because we were not Palestinian, which was probably true. Hannah told her she did not like going through when other people had to wait, and I sort of felt the same way. Eventually we went back to talk to Abu Rabia. He also urged us to just go through, since he would not be able to get through with his car for quite a while, and we were supposed to go to someone's house for lunch. Eventually we decided to go and got our bags and said goodbye to Abu Rabia. It was not exactly under the best circumstances we said goodbye, but I guess it might have been fitting for the situation there. We stayed around the front of the checkpoint for a while longer after we got the bags, mostly because the situation was getting worse, and though we were not sure, perhaps we kept the army from being more aggressive than they would have been by us being there.
The street became very crowded, and I, and I think Hannah too, hopped to the other side of the street where there were not many Palestinians. The soldiers were yelling at everyone to get back. A
couple times the crowd would come forward a bit, there would be yelling and brandishing of guns and people would move back. At one point a soldier, the good soldier, yelled at a family and a girl got very frightened and looked sort of like she was in shock for a couple minutes. The soldier did not understand why she was upset with him yelling at her mother and lifting his gun. Eventually one of the times that the crowd pushed forward, 30-40 people actually got past all the soldiers who were in the meantime yelling and putting the clips into their guns (I noticed the clips are usually set off a few inches from where they would have to be to shoot). One soldier shot in the air and every one got very scared and moved back. After this incident, one of the female soldiers was standing on the street crying, and she was yelled at to go inside. It was a very emotional situation, and I teared up at several points - when the Palestinian woman told us we could go through because we were American, when Abu Rabia told us to go through and we left him there, and at some other points just realizing that this situation is a reality for these people rather than just a one time occurrence for me.
More soldiers arrived at the checkpoint, and basically just stood where the other soldiers were standing to create an increased presence. I pointed out to a couple of the soldiers that a fellow
soldier was crying (she was in a glass enclosure so still visible) and they all pretended not to understand. One soldier that arrived who spoke English asked me what I was doing there. I don't recall what I said. I asked him if this was why he joined the army, and he said "Not for this," and said it in a way that seemed like he was really reflecting about it, not just saying I am just following orders like the good soldier. In general I feel that many of the soldiers did not want to be doing what they were doing, but did not know of any other options. I saw even some of the meaner soldiers have human moments. When one woman was crossing a barrier, her daughter was still on the other side, and the soldier lifted her over as if it was his own daughter. Hannah was upset she did not have postcards of the Refuseniks, which are Israelis who refuse to serve in the army for
reasons regarding the Israeli army's treatment of Palestinians, among other reasons I would suppose. If you refuse to serve in the army, rather than just go and say you have depression in which case they will just let you out of it, you are put in jail for 6 months. I think I would rather that than do what these soldiers do for 6 months.
Eventually the many of the soldiers on the street started checking ids, I believe in order to alleviate the situation. It worked better than closing the checkpoint. If they had only had 5 soldiers instead
of 1 checking ids from the start, or better yet no checkpoint at all, there would not have been a problem in the first place. After a bit of this, Hannah and I just walked through, without ever getting our ids checked on the part of the road where only cars were, past several soldiers.
It is a bad situation, for the Palestinians as well as the soldiers. Now I do acknowledge that it is worse for the Palestinians, since the soldiers can get out of it by being in jail for 6 months rather than dying. But it is still bad for the soldiers that they are forced to do this or face time in jail, as if refusing to oppress people is worthy of jail time. There is also no need for the checkpoint. There is no way you can argue it is for security of Israel. It is a checkpoint between one part of the West Bank and another, and not even the old West Bank, but inside the new one created by the wall. If Israel wants to have borders like these on its international border, it would be reasonable, though it should probably be more efficient. But this checkpoint is not on their border, you have to go through at least one more checkpoint in order to enter Israel. That checkpoint, ironically, is much less guarded than the one at Nablus.
We then went to the house of a woman whose husband is in jail. Hannah met her through the ordeal when he was arrested. He was the one who had meningitis when he was arrested and Hannah struggled to get him proper medical care. We had a nice time. There were several kids there that were running around. One of them was trying to eat a candy bar with the wrapper on because his mother told him to. After she took the wrapper off it was evident why - he didn't so much eat the candy bar as much as smear it on his face and on the ground. We had coffee and
tea as usual…
…
The next day we headed down to Bethlehem where Hannah has a host family in a refugee camp there. We took a shared taxi from East Jerusalem, and by the time we got to the wall around Bethlehem, there were no more Palestinians on the service because access to Bethlehem, or more accurately, access out of Bethlehem is severely limited. The whole area we were driving through, while east of the Green Line, is west of the wall and considered part of Jerusalem. We walked through the checkpoint, which is a large indoor structure, but aside from the girl sitting in the soldier booth, we were the only ones in there that I could see. It's weird they have such a huge structure here, very advanced, but since they don't allow anyone through, no one uses it. We just walked through holding our passports, but not opening them. On the other side of the wall was a lot of graffiti. Some of it was very good. We took a cab to the refugee camp we were staying in. We dropped our stuff off and I met Hannah's host father and saw some host brothers sleeping.
Then we went to Hebron. We exited a different place from Bethlehem, still in Palestinian territory, but the army has put large blocks in the road so it is closed to cars. There are services waiting on either side of the roadblock to take passengers to and fro. Upon arriving in Hebron we first went to a part where there is a checkpoint to get in because a lot of settlers live there, so they only let the
Palestinians who live in there get in, and internationals I guess. Hannah had brought many CD's of pictures from a trip she took many kids in that area on to the Sea and to Jerusalem. She gave many out on the street before we went up to the International Solidarity Movement's and Tel Rumeida Project's office, where she had planned to leave the CD's. Many of the internationals were sitting outside their building with some Palestinian kids. I think that is their main function there, to sit outside and try to keep army and the settlers from doing anything too bad to the Palestinians. The army is not like a police force. They do protect the settlers like a police force, but they do not protect the Palestinians living there like a police force. Settlers can harass Palestinians and they might be told to leave by the soldiers, or the Palestinians might be told to leave. I think you can imagine what happens to Palestinians if they think of harassing the settlers. I don't see why Israel can't protect these people equally, or at least attempt to. I can see why some Israelis and some
Americans resist Israel pulling settlers out of the West Bank, even if I disagree, but I can't see why anyone would think that there should be a "policing" force that only protects the settlers and not the Palestinians. It's not like the Palestinians have the option of making their own police in that neighborhood, or any of the others that the army occupies.
Afterwards we went to meet a friend of Hannah's, Hisham, for ice cream. We went up to the top of a building with a really great view, and it was still pretty cheap. Hisham is an editor of a small
newspaper. It was very interesting to hear all he had to say. He seemed very educated, and it was my only interaction with someone that was involved in running a private enterprise in Palestine. He talked about the war, and we learned a lot from him about that. My favorite part, which is a bit unfortunate for him, is that he got a visa to go to the States, but once he got there he was refused entry because he "falsified" his application. The application asked if he had ever been
arrested for a crime, and he said no, even though, like many Palestinian men, he had been arrested, just not for a crime. Maybe next time he will be clearer on his application, though that could mean he does not get the visa. He also said that he was translating my mother's impressions about Palestine into Arabic and was going to publish them.
…
[Back in Bethlehem, Dheishe refugee camp] After dinner Abu Rabia (Hannah only has host fathers named Abu Rabia) took Hannah and I on a tour of the camp. We walked around the whole camp, saw the school, and interestingly enough saw a wealthy part of the camp. It was not originally part of the camp, but people expanded the camp and made some really nice houses with really nice views. It is weird that these are still basically in a refugee camp. The other houses are very simple, but still nicer than I had expected for a refugee camp. The camp started out as tents in 1948 by the UN, because they thought that the refugees would be able to return once the 1948 war was over. Well they weren't allowed to return, and after a bad winter in which many people died, the UN built small permanent structures. This was in the early or mid-50's. These were where people lived until they started to build better structures in the 80's. I am not sure if they waited so long because building these structures made this living situation more permanent and hence made returning seem more far off, or that they just did not have enough money (what Abu Rabia said). The houses are very close together, and almost all are three on top of each other.
…
Hannah and I went out to a concluding dinner at the same place we ate the first night. We talked for a while about the situation and what she thought the future would look like. When we got back to the apartment, we packed and cleaned. I eventually went to sleep, but Hannah did not because she was leaving very early for the airport. The next day, Dunya and I left at about 8 for the airport. We went with a Palestinian driver who had a car that was able to go into Israel. At the airport there is security outside that stops all the cars. For all of the cars in front of us, the soldier would say a few words to the driver and then let them pass. We were not so lucky because our driver had a Palestinian accent so we were sent off to the side. Then another soldier asked where we were coming from and the driver said Ramallah, which made more problems. The soldier started talking to Dunya and I, mostly to me, and asking me questions. I gave a lot of nondescript answers, and once the soldier realized that I was visiting my sister who worked with Dunya, he started talking to Dunya hoping she would answer more questions. Eventually he took our ids inside a little building. He then came out a few minutes later and said he had to look through Dunya's bags. She is on a list because she works in the West Bank. The driver and I sat outside and eventually Dunya came out with her bag and we went off. While we were sitting there no other cars were stopped.
When we got to the airport, Dunya and I split up and she went to check in. My flight was not until much later (and was delayed as well) so I could not check in yet. I went down to the arrivals area and sat around. Looking at the people arriving and the people greeting them, I did not have the same feeling as when I had seen the people before my flight to Israel. It seemed like they were people who had these privileges at the expense of the Palestinians whom I had spent the week with. They greet family at this modern airport, meanwhile Palestinians can not see some of their family because they are not allowed to travel or if they leave their hometown they would not be
allowed back. I listened to music for a while, pretended I was shopping in a book store while just reading the articles for free, and other such time consuming tasks. I got hungry, so even though Hannah did not want me buying anything at the airport, I went and bought some food at McDonald's. It was actually very good, a sandwich that I had never seen anywhere else. I was able to check in 3 hours before my flight was scheduled to take off originally even though it had been
pushed back two hours. In the check in line, I was approached by someone who started interrogating me about what I had been doing in Israel, why I was going to Russia, why I study Russian, etc. I never said that I was in the West Bank, so I was able to pass with out much
trouble. The metal detector security was incredibly lax for me. I did not take off my shoes, or my belt, and they said I did not need to take change out of my pocket. I walked through and the detector did not go off. It seems like their airport security was much less of a physical security and much more psychological security. If I had seemed strange during my interrogation in line, or had looked Arab, or had said I went to the West Bank, I would have been taken off and put through heavy physical security, but since I was just a normal American Jew, I walked through with relative ease.
My flight was scheduled to leave from the same gate that Dunya's was, so I went to try to meet her, but by the time I got there, they had already started boarding and she had already gotten on. I slept a bit in the corner and occupied my time in other ways to pass the 4 hours until my flight. Eventually I boarded and headed back to the motherland from the "promised" land.
That is it for my summary. Now on to some more opinions. I think that it is pretty absurd for Israel to have the West Bank split up so that Palestinians can not travel freely within it. If they were just
guarding the border (the Green Line) it would be understandable, even though an open border would be best if they could get along. Israel having the right to defend itself gives it the right to guard its border, not to prevent travel in another territory. It does not keep Israel any more secure by not allowing certain people in Hares to go to Ramallah.
It does not seem to me like Israel as a state or government is trying its hardest for a peaceful 2-state solution. They were heralded for taking 8,000 settlers out of Gaza, they won't do the same with the 400,000 in the West Bank and East Jerusalem. And taking the settlers out of Gaza did not lead to an independent Gaza, not with Israel shelling Gaza daily (not just after Shalit) and withholding taxes from the Palestinian government. I think the Palestinian elections are good proof that the USA likes democracy so long as the winners are the ones we want. How democratic of us.
People often say the Palestinians were offered a state in 1948 and they did not accept the deal so that's their problem. This statement is not valid without even saying that the deal was not fair to split the land basically in half amongst a population 93% Palestinian and 7% Jewish. The Palestinians did not accept the terms of the deal, but I don't know that you can say Israel accepted the deal either. Look up a map of the UN proposed distribution of land, Israel did not take the deal. They agreed to it, but then took more. They have gradually and gradually taken more and more land that was not originally supposed to be theirs by the UN plan. But they are praised for being willing to
trade land for peace. If I steal your bike, I shouldn't be heralded for trading it back to you for something, if it is not rightfully mine. Especially if I only offer you the wheels and right handle bar.
If Israel had at any time in their history established a reasonable border for their state and for a Palestinian state, I think we might see two states now. But instead they continued to support settlement into area that was not theirs.
Many of you will read my e-mail and say that the things Israel does are bad and they should stop but also Palestinian violence should stop too. I agree with you, but I don't think Palestinian violence needs to stop before Israel changes their methods. Lincoln did not free the slaves on condition that they did not act up for years and then they would be freed. Slavery was not right so he freed them. What Israel does is not right so they should stop. If a Palestinian then commits a crime in Israel then they have every right to go after him and punish him, but not punish the whole population. Would it be ok if we stopped giving money to inner city schools and other institutions until blacks stopped committing crimes for some amount of time?
My trip to Palestine really opened my eyes to a lot of things. Hannah had already started opening them, but I really had to go there to open them all the way.
