My mom's Palestine diary

Dear friends,
There are a few elements of my latest trip to Palestine that I haven't yet written to you about, and one is my mother's visit. Part of the reason I haven't written about it is that I was waiting for her to do so, and now she has. Below are my mother's journals from Palestine. When she sent it to me, she put the "Impressions" section last, because she just wrote it a few days ago as an overall reflection of the issues she confronted on the trip. It makes the most sense at the end, since it comes after the rest of the journey represented here. I have moved it to the front because I know this e-mail is very long and you won't all be able to read the whole thing.
No more of my words needed... here are my mother's.
-Hannah
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Impressions

Genocide:
Some people use the word genocide to describe the situation in Palestine. This offends many Jews, and turns us off from listening to anything else the speaker says. We picture gas chambers, concentration camp workers, and huge piles of bodies. Some of us have learned that there were massacres of Palestinians by Israelis; others do not know. There is no excuse for killing even one person, but the enormous differences in scale make the comparisons easy to refute.

I have been to the Holocaust Museum in Washington many times. When you enter the museum you go up elevators to the 3rd floor. Off the elevators you hear then General Eisenhower talking about what American troops encountered when they discovered the camps. After that, you wind through dark hallways with the history of the increasing amount of restrictions and discrimination against Jews in Europe. That is where I see the parallels with Palestine. We had ghettos; they have refugee camps. We had yellow stars; they have green license plates and identity cards that dictate what parts of their former land they can access. We were prohibited from working and traveling many places we went before; so are they. Daughters who married and moved from Gaza to the West Bank can no longer visit their elderly parents. People who honeymooned at the sea, or worshipped in Jerusalem can no longer go there if they fled to the West Bank because they were afraid of the Israelis. Were they wrong to flee? How could they know at the time they made the decision? Six million Jews died because they did not flee soon enough.

Israel’s Right to Exist:
The U.S. wants Hamas to acknowledge Israel’s right to exist. I think this is irrelevant. I doubt very many Palestinians will agree that Israel has a right to exist, but they recognize that Israel does exist. That’s recognize with a small r, not a capital R, if there is such a thing. Asking them to swallow their pride and lie about how they feel is counter-productive. We need to work out together how to share this precious land.

Right of Return:
Mohammed, a 14-year-old, told me the history of the mosque in the village the Israelis call Zacharia. I doubt the adults who live next door to the mosque know that history. I, as an American Jew, have a right to move there to live. Mohammed’s parents do not have the right to visit, and neither will he in two years. You can not convince me that they should not have the right of return. I’m not saying that the Israelis who live there now should be evicted, but I do think that there will need to be reparations. Where houses exist, there must be an amount of money that a Palestinian family would be willing to accept to turn over their key, or an Israeli family would be willing to accept to move out.

As for the demographics, I know that allowing Palestinians to return may result in a country that is no longer majority Jewish. To me, Judaism should be synonymous with justice. This is not a just, and therefore not a Jewish state now. It is a state composed of more people who celebrate Yom Kippur than who celebrate Ramadan. To quote Isaiah, “Is such the fast that I have chosen?”

Jerusalem:
The old city will never cease to amaze me. It is my history, and my heritage, and it is not wrong for Jews to worship there. It is also not wrong for Muslims and Christians to worship there. It should be accessible to all.

Courage:
I was amazed by the strength of the Palestinians I met, making as good a life as possible for their children under daunting circumstance.

Tolerance:
I was impressed by the lack of hatred of Israelis, given that there is so much negative contact between Israelis and Palestinians in the West Bank. I heard a sincere desire to work things out.

Hannah’s Safety:
I am less worried about Hannah’s safety now that I have seen where she works and met the people she works with. She seems to really know her way around and have some degree of caution, although I still don’t understand why an asthmatic would intentionally go into areas where she could get tear-gassed. I guess if it made her too uncomfortable she would stop. I also saw how many people truly care about her. She would have many protectors in case of trouble.

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Diary of My Trip to Palestine 2/5/06 – 2/11/06

2/6/06 3:40 AM

So, I am uncomfortable. I spoke about this before coming, but I did not really understand it. It’s like knowing labor will hurt, and then experiencing it. Hannah was told before she came here the first time with IWPS that she might need counseling when she got home. I guess I thought I wouldn’t, but maybe I should see Laurie or Josh or Vivian.

I felt the same missing Jules (my husband) I’ve felt before when I decided it would be more practical to come without him. I still know it would be impractical. I am glad I got to see the IWPS house, and he could not have stayed here. I understood most of what Abu Rabia said last night, but he would have had more trouble with the accent and the crackling fire noise – not to mention the smoke and cold.

Now I realize that I should have taken pictures last night. It seems like such a typical family-values experience – sitting around the fire (stoked wood inside an old metal can, placed precariously on a stand on the porch. It fell over once, scaring me – but they knew that the porch material would not burn so they calmly cleaned and stood it back up.

Um Rabia seems like a calm, content woman – watching her two young children and cradling her swelling belly. Her older son, Rabia, is in prison. He called on his cell phone while I was there. The men in prison make calls when the electricity goes out at the prison, because then what they say is not monitored. Such secret conversations – when you come to visit me on Wednesday, bring me this shirt and that food. Um Rabia will spend Tuesday cooking for him, so even though she wants to cook a meal for me, she can’t do it that day. [Followup – Rabia was moved to a different prison before Um Rabia got to visit him. It is further away from where they live, and she has to get a different permit – so the timing of the next visit is uncertain.] We settled on breakfast today – not a traditional meal to invite guests, but the only time we could fit her into the busy itinerary Hannah planned. Hannah told me to eat slowly, because many people want to make me meals today. I can’t refuse food anywhere, so I need to both save room and show them that I appreciate the food.

The food – it took me a while to accept that I may need to compromise my kosher standards here. Hannah has explained to all that I am vegetarian, but they could serve me soup with a meat base. I compromised kosher before – when I was back in the hospital after Ben they served me a wrapped kosher meal of chicken and rice during Passover. I was so hungry and so depressed that I ate it. Whatever I do during this trip will observe eco-kashrut – not withholding myself from others. I’m glad at least that they have Hallal rules. [Followup – To my relief, everything I was served was vegetarian.]

The house is much larger than I expected, and the materials are fine – nice tile – none of the low-quality crap we see so often at home. But – there are signs of poverty – a very uneven road coming down. I was nervous about breaking the wheels on my suitcase.

I was just interrupted by a long conversation with Marisol – 33 or 34 years old, very nice & thinks very highly of Hannah. She told me people around here really respect Hannah and think she does good work. She confirmed that Abu Rabia and Um Rabia really love her.

Abu Rabia is a startlingly handsome man – very distinguished looking – balding, grey hair, big bushy dark eyebrows. The description does not do him justice. He told me he honestly thought I was Hannah’s sister when he saw me. In the daylight he’ll see the grey hair. He seems so wise. He works in the Fatah office. Hannah asked him how his work has been since the election. He said it has not changed much. He gets respect from Hamas because he is known to the people around here and because he has suffered the same experiences – prison himself and now his son Rabia in prison. There is a large age gap between Rabia and his younger brother Sajid because of his prison time.

Abu Rabia understands that the media has shaped people’s understanding of what goes on here. He said that when a Palestinian kills an Israeli, the media shows the Israeli’s mother, sister, etc. When an Israeli kills a Palestinian, the media shows the funeral procession with men in masks, and did he say carrying guns? I had some trouble understanding his English at times. He said they don’t show the mother or sister of the Palestinian child, their vulnerability – but I was not clear if that was media or Palestinian preference. I’ll have to ask Hannah.

I was distressed at Hannah at and on the way from the airport. She wore a Palestinian sweatshirt and greeted me with “Welcome to Palestine.” I answered that this is Israel; we are going to Palestine. Marisol says most Palestinians accept Israel and the presence of Israelis here; they just don’t want it “to be like this”.

Last night while we were sitting around talking with the Rabia family, Huda, who can’t speak Arabic clearly herself, was trying to teach me Arabic by pointing to pictures in a notebook. It was very cute. When I tried to repeat what she said to me, she would repeat the word. She knew what she was trying to say and expected a grown-up to get it right, not to come out with her toddler pronunciation.

The Israeli road on the way here runs along the “security fence”. Hannah sees all the trees that were cut down, but it looked less obtrusive than I expected. She says they don’t have wall where the Israelis will see it when they drive by, and they also try to keep the checkpoints out of sight, so many Israelis are not aware of everyday Palestinian life. She showed me on a map the blocked Palestinian road that runs from here to Tel Aviv, parallel to the new road that only Israeli license plate cars can drive on.

In the taxi on the way here, Hannah was talking to me in English making lots of anti-Israeli comments. I think if she is going to make peace she should not act that way. She thought the driver could not hear her but I thought she should be more careful.


Monday – February 6th and later (I got behind on my writing and did not catch up completely until the plane ride home)

We had breakfast with Um Rabia, Sajid, and Huda. The children liked playing with the camera. The house is richly decorated and immaculate. There are 2 pictures of Rabia, who is in prison. One is as a young boy. I thought it was Sajid. The other is as a young man – very handsome – with his father’s face and eyebrows, but also with a full head of hair.

Then we walked up the hill to Um Fadi’s house. Um Fadi’s sister-in-law came over while we were there. Her sister-in-law has 12 children. People here are surprised that I am old enough to be Hannah’s mother, and surprised that I only have 2 children. Hannah says that she thinks many Palestinians do practice birth control, but they prefer to have 4 to 6 children before they stop.

From Um Fadi’s we went to Fatima’s village, Qarawa Bani Hassan, to pick up her daughter Maisa. We arrived before she was finished classes and waited in front of the school. The girls coming out stared at us, but eventually a group came over and Hannah started talking to them. They asked why she did not have her head covered. She told them we are not Muslim, and that I am her mother. They said we did not look alike, so I took out a picture of Jules to show them that Hannah looks like him. They all crowded in to see that. Maisa told us later that the teachers were afraid we were there to kidnap her.

We rode in a taxi to Deir Balut. The taxi driver is very skilled. The roads in Fatima’s village are very narrow. We encountered a parked vehicle, and we got around it when he folded in his passenger side mirror and broke off his driver side mirror. We just barely squeezed through. When we got to Deir Balut, he had an argument with an Israeli soldier who said he could not drive up the road. His Hebrew was excellent. We got out of the taxi, walked a bit, and then a village taxi drove us up the hill. The second driver would not accept any money.

Maisa went to the house with 8 girls because her close friend Lana lives there. Hannah and I went to visit Reem, her husband, and their 2 daughters. Their 2 sons were not home. Reem is young and pretty, and obviously has a loving relationship with her husband. I was impressed that her husband sat and talked with us. There is quite a bit of social segregation of the sexes here. Reem is a local official and is going to Spain for a conference soon. Her husband was one of 2 out of 200 men to get a visa from the U.S. to visit Miami & Houston. He says he got it because they know he has 4 children, so he will come back to Palestine. They will be away at the same time, while grandparents care for the children.

Then we went to the house of 8 girls – lots of smiles and female energy. There are 19-year old twins who had a triplet who died. The oldest sister was married at 14. She was surprised to learn Hannah was Jewish. Her sisters quickly added “but not Israeli”, but she seemed uncomfortable. She made an effort to be polite, though. Everyone else has been totally accepting and loving of Hannah.

After we left there we went back to Fatima’s house to sleep – if you can call it that. Her 5 children, aged 17 to 10, were very active and noisy until after 11:00. Fatima is a very active divorced woman who does not always obey traditional women’s roles. She is not comfortable in her village which is very conservative, and she does not have a lot of friends. I told her that there is a lot of love in her house. She said, Shukran, thank you, but then told me how she worries about her older son Milad because he is very angry, and she loses patience with him. I did see some of that while I was there.

I enjoy listening to Palestinian women scold their children. I don’t understand the words, but the tone of voice, facial, expressions, and attitudes are all familiar – universal. So are the faces of the children.

We were up early at Fatima’s house because she had to leave for work by 8:30. Fatima works with Women for Life and Flowers Against the Occupation. Women for Life is a rural women’s group in the Salfit region that works to struggle against the occupation and specifically the wall and settlements non-violently, and internal issues within their own society – self-empowerment and self-sufficiency. Flowers Against the Occupation is the daughter group, doing the same thing for girls, including summer camp, specifically against internal and external violence.

When we left Fatima’s house, we went to visit Munira and her daughter Maisa. Maisa should have been in school but she was home sick, which was nice for me because I got to meet her. She is a very sweet and generous little girl. She gave me a necklace, a hair band, and a glass vase shaped like a star. She also brought out a plastic container with two chicks that were born yesterday. One of them had already figured out how to jump/fly over the side.

Their house is the one that is completely surrounded by fence and wall. There is a settlement up the hill from them easily within stone throwing distance, so they have to watch out for falling stones when they are outside. The settlers did not want a fence right next to their property, so instead it is right next to Munira’s house. On the other side is a short expanse of concrete wall, just wide enough to block Munira’s view of her village. On either side is fence. Munira has a key to a gate in the fence, so she can get in and out to go to her village, but she will not leave her house because she is afraid that the Israelis will demolish it if no one is there. They already demolished the greenhouses and henhouses. She showed me pictures of them.

The concrete wall is the one activists painted. There is some controversy among the activist community about the painting. I commented that I thought it made the home more livable, and that’s what Hannah says they object to – it’s almost as if they are consenting to the wall.
Munira seems sad. She could just leave her house and move into the village, where she would be less lonely, but she does not want to give in and give up. Resistance makes her life very difficult. Would I be able to do that?

We walked back through the village to get a car back to Hares. We saw the remnants of a thriving community. Before the wall, Israelis (many Russian) came in to buy things and eat in their restaurants. There are signs in Hebrew and Russian. Now there is no business.

Back in Hares, we visited Issa, his wife Faisa, and their three young children. Issa has been in a wheelchair since he was shot several years ago while trying to get children out of the street while the army was in the village shooting tear gas. He used to be a strength trainer. He is not bitter. He seems very wise and in love with his young family.

Issa has fond memories of going to the sea. He thinks that Jews and Arabs should be able to travel between each other’s places – that Palestine is one unit and it does not make sense to split it up.

Issa told me that Hannah has a big heart. I told him about the Sam Who Never Forgets story, which made Hannah cry when she was 3 in sympathy with the poor hungry elephant in the children’s book. He said there is an expression in Arabic that the clouds precede the rain. It is used to talk about signs both positive and negative that precede other developments.

Issa is Abu Rabia’s brother. He and his wife are young and beautiful. Most Palestinians look older than their age, but this couple does not.

We went back to the IWPS house and said goodbye to Um Rabia and the children. Then we walked up the hill to the entrance of the village where we visited Um Fadi again. Her children had complained the day before that we came when they were not home. Her husband was home and he sat and talked with us. He has such a wonderful smile. I asked him how he met Um Fadi, and he told me that his brother was her teacher in the next village, and he told him that “he must marry that girl”. I thought it was very romantic.

After we left Hares, we headed to Ramallah. At the entrance of the village we got in a service, in Hebrew Shairut. The Palestinian service are sedans with an extra seat in the back that would never pass inspection in the U.S. There are holes rusted through the floor, torn cushions, and rarely seatbelts. I was surprised at how quickly I adapted to not wearing seatbelts. The only vehicles with seatbelts are those that travel on roads that are shared by Palestinians and Israelis. Passengers must wear seatbelts when going through checkpoints. There are various kinds of checkpoints. The ones on the roads where cars can travel through are manned by 3-4 soldiers. Everyone in the vehicle must show ID, and sometimes get out. Usually only the driver must get out with the passports.

The service system works well. The car sits at its departure point until it is filled with passengers going to the same area, then leaves. After it drops someone off, another person can flag it down and hop in. Men and women sit separately if possible, but no seats are wasted even if they must share. The passengers in the back pass their money up to the driver via other passengers.

We went to Ramallah via the Kalandia checkpoint. This is a huge structure with lots of full height turnstiles through which Palestinians pass to get from one part of the West Bank to another. The process can take hours. It did not take us long because we have U.S. passports. The wall converges from three different directions here. The Israelis put up signs with flowers welcoming people, but the Palestinians have painted huge murals on the wall depicting hope and resistance. Some Jewish internationals have also done spray-painting there. In their most recent action, they spray-painted “Work will set you free” in German in the same style as it hung over Auschwitz. Knowing our history, they found the parallels were striking, as did I.
Ramallah is a bustling city. Other than the number of people with head coverings, and the Arabic writing, it could be a city in the U.S. I even recognized some brand names. We met Dunya and Amal for dinner at a fancy restaurant. Dunya and Hannah insisted on paying the bill as a thank-you from Birthright Unplugged.

Amal is a tall, attractive Palestinian woman who does not wear a head covering. She wears makeup and is very stylish. She is currently the Foreign Policy Advisor on U.S. Affairs to the Prime Minister, but she has been offered a job with the President which she is considering accepting. [Followup – she took the job. She is now Director of International Affairs for Abu Mazen.] She meets frequently with Condoleeza Rice. She studied at Kennedy School and Fletcher (associated with Tufts).

Amal asked Hannah and Dunya about their trips with the children. Both are very impressed that Hannah is only 26, considering all she has done and how good she is at her work. I heard from many people that Hannah has earned their respect.

From Ramallah, we went back through Kalandia to Jerusalem. I forgot to write before about the entrance to Kalandia. Green-plated Palestinian cars cannot pass through Kalandia, so there is an incredible crowd of vehicles on either side waiting for passengers. It is very difficult for people to fit between the cars moving in different directions. It’s a miracle there are not more accidents. When we arrived at the checkpoint on the way into Ramallah, we had to walk about ½ mile up a hill from where we were dropped off before we could walk through the opening in the wall into the checkpoint. When we came back to the same place at night, the vehicles had been allowed to come closer.

During the day, there was a large crowd of men seated on benches waiting to get through the checkpoint. At night, there was a large crowd of men in the streets leading up to the checkpoint, upset because Israeli soldiers had just come into Kalandia refugee camp and arrested several Palestinian men. The cabbie was not sure that he could get us close to the checkpoint. I was glad to see that Hannah and Dunya were nervous about getting out of the cab. I want them to be cautious.

We went through the checkpoint with a young family. The wife and two small children went through with relatively little trouble. Then she waited on the other side, holding the baby and watching her young son toddle around while they waited for her husband, who as a Palestinian man had to be more thoroughly searched and questioned.

Hannah and I packed enough for two nights away and headed to the Old City Damascus Gate one block away. Each time in and out of the hotel, it still took my breath away seeing the old city walls. There is a beautiful view of the old city from the roof. All this for $20 per night!

Hannah and I entered the Old City via the Damascus Gate. Most Jews enter via Jaffa Gate, but there were all religions here. We wandered through the old city, which never ceases to amaze me. Small shops line the stone alleyways. Merchants probably sat in those same shops 2000 years ago. I bought ground coffee at one shop. The man ground the beans and cardamom in front of me. I also bought Palestinian halawa. It is oily, even on the outside of the package. I am curious to see how it tastes.

We snaked through the alleys until we came to the Western Wall. I had a skirt in my backpack, but I saw other women wearing pants, so I did not bother putting it on. It was not difficult to find a place to pray touching the wall. I stood for a while there, then I backed up and stood at a small table that had a siddur. I started to do the Birchot Hashachar (morning blessings), when I was stunned to see the words that have been cleaned out of our books since I was a teenager – shelo asani isha. (who has not made me a woman) I read carefully, skipping verses.

From Jerusalem, we headed to Dheisheh, where Hannah lived when she worked with Shiraa and the Arab Educational Institute through a program with Holy Land Trust. Her host parents consider Hannah their daughter, and I could see the affection and concern. I could not understand what Najah was saying to Hannah, but I recognized her tone of voice when she was advising Hannah not to go out at night to pick up a rental car.

Hannah spent the most time with Yazzin, the youngest, for whom we bought the airplane kit as a 12th birthday gift. He wants to be an airplane engineer when he grows up. They had a good time building it, even though it did not turn out very flight-worthy.

We stayed briefly with the family, then headed off to Bethlehem to tour. We saw the church where Jesus was born. The doorway is interesting. At one time it had been huge, then they made it smaller so horses could not get in. It looks more like a cave entrance now. Inside there is the spot where Jesus was born, and then 2 mangers because the Catholics and Greek Orthodox do not agree on the exact spot.

There is a cutout in the church to show the original mosaic floor. High up there are mosaics, studded with bullet holes from when Palestinians took refuge in the church and Israeli soldiers shot it. The lack of respect for the antiquities of another religion, not to mention human life, was distressing. Hannah said the 62-year old bell ringer was shot when he went up on the roof to ring the bell. Outside the church, across the plaza, there is an olive tree transplanted that survived despite being uprooted to build the wall.

After Bethlehem we headed back to Dheisheh. We walked through the Ibdaa center, a 4-story building with a stairway winding up to the top. On the walls as you walk up the stairs is a mural showing the history of Palestine. The project was coordinated by a Jewish artist from California, Susan Green. Keys are a frequent theme in the mural. They symbolize the resistance movement and the hope to return to the houses for which many Palestinians still hold keys.

At 3:30, we headed across the street from the camp to see the circus. I had no idea what to expect. What I saw was a miracle. The “building” where the circus was held is a partially finished foundation. The owner ran out of money to complete it, but he allows the circus to practice in the basement. The entrance is a rough concrete slope where I presume stairs will eventually go. An outsider seeing a group of young boys and teens descending into a vacant foundation might fear that trouble was brewing below ground. The entrance was treacherous. Downstairs was dusty, rough, and fairly dark. There were fluorescent bulbs taped to columns, powered by extension cords that ran up the columns, presumably to the outside and some neighboring plug.

The show started with the boys pantomiming a bus ride where they arrived at the circus. They were really good and had the comedic body language and faces down solid. They juggled, rode unicycles, walked on stilts (up about 5 feet), tossed hula hoops from the stilts, and did tricks with something that sounded like Diablo. It’s an hourglass shaped heavy plastic piece that rolls sideways on a rope they hold in their hands. They keep it moving and toss the plastic piece to each other. They also did very impressive tumbling. They laid three mattresses on the floor, ran toward them, and did diving somersaults onto the mattresses. When they landed, a puff of dust rose up. As each boy landed, he came back in front of the mattress and hunched over. The first few boys tumbled through hoops; the latter ones tumbled over the other boys.

The boys cooperated rather than competed when they were doing tricks. Hannah says she noticed a lot of that among the men in this culture. The stilts were a cooperative effort. The boy putting on the stilts sits in a chair and straps himself in. Then the strongest boys and adults help him stand up. They do the same in reverse to get him down. It is even more challenging because the ceiling where the boys put on the stilts is shorter than they are when they stand on the stilts, so they have to hunch over until they walk to the open area in the middle of the room.
I was very moved by the performance. Afterwards, Yazzin showed me how to do the Diablo. I was able to keep it going for a minute or so, but I could not throw it. The boys laughed when I emphatically said no to trying the unicycle.

Abu Rabia lives on the bottom floor of a building. His sister and mother live upstairs. His mother had a stroke last year and is in a wheelchair. While I was there she returned from the doctor. Rabia, the oldest son, dragged his grandmother in the wheelchair up the stairs. He is young and strong, but his was a real strain.

Inside the house belies the outside appearance. The family has a nice living room with two adjacent sitting areas, one for family and one for guests. Najah says this is Hannah’s house, so we sat in the family sitting area. There is a plastic table with chairs to the side. We ate breakfast there, but for the more formal dinners, we sat on the floor in the sitting area. Najah put a huge bowl of rice in the middle, and bowls with yoghurt and something green on the side. We each got pita and a spoon, and dug in.

I did not shower in Fatima’s house or at Dheisheh because water is scarce, and it would have been cold. The bathrooms are similar, though. The entire bathroom is tiled and there is a shower hose on one side. There is no shower stall – the whole bathroom is the shower. In this house, there was a small square area for showering, but no wall or curtain around it. In this house the sink was in the bathroom, but in most houses it is just outside. For some reason there is rarely a towel.

Thursday Hannah and I went to Hebron, the most disturbing part of my time in Palestine. Hebron is a town of 400 ultra-religious settlers and 70,000 Palestinians. There is a huge army presence there to protect the settlers. These settlers (including Baruch Goldstein) have been particularly violent, so tourism is cut off in an area that should be bustling – the graves of Abraham, Sarah, Isaac, and Rebecca. The alleyway down to the mosque is similar in construction to the alleyways in Jerusalem, but there are no customers and many shops are shuddered. Overhead there is netting because the settlers took over the upper homes. They toss their trash and worse onto the nets. Periodically they come down in large groups to graffiti and throw things in stores. The Palestinians are then locked in their homes by the army for their own protection.

We tried to walk up the hill to the neighborhood of Tel Rumeida. We passed two groups of soldiers as we climbed the steep hill. Palestinians are no longer allowed to drive up the hill. We saw a man helping his elderly father walk slowly up the hill with a cane. When we got near the top of the hill where the settlers live, a third group of soldiers stopped us from going further. I was relieved that they stopped us because Hannah had warned me that the settler kids up there might throw stones at us. Hebron was the only time I was very frightened in Palestine. I do not have the stomach for Hannah’s work.

We walked down to the mosque where Abraham and Sarah are buried. There are separate entrances for Jews and Muslims. Hannah refused to go to the Jewish side because she did not want to go walk among the settlers. I did not feel comfortable lying on the Muslim side, and I partially misunderstood Hannah’s arguments with the soldiers, so we left. Perhaps I’ll be able to go inside when there’s peace. Incidentally, the Jewish side is now a synagogue converted from part of the mosque by Israel.

We left the old city and met Hannah’s friend Hisham. He picked us up in his typical Palestinian car. It starts as long as you park facing downhill so you can coast a bit first. He drove us past the TIPH (Temporary International Presence in Hebron) buildings where many Danes had been, that had been damaged in response to the cartoons. The windows were smashed and already are being replaced. The buildings are guarded by security (Palestinian or Israeli? - I’m not sure), but the people were escorted out of the West Bank in buses by the police or army. We saw the same schoolboys who had smashed the windows walking home from school. Hisham is not sure if they did it of their own initiative or if they were incited. One of the clever protests we saw were Danish flags painted on the street so cars would drive over them. Hisham told us that when the first George Bush was president, there was a huge portrait of him painted at the entrance to Iran or Iraq’s capitol building, so anyone entering there would walk over his face.

Hisham told me the story of his family’s house in Hebron. Hannah and I had seen the alleyway that leads to it. It was strewn with trash about a foot deep. Hisham said his family had won an Israeli Supreme Court victory to get their house back, but those rulings are not enforced. The Supreme Court is named the Supreme Court of Justice, but Palestinians just call it the Supreme Court because they say there is no justice. The ruling included $3000 or 4000 in damages to repair what the settlers had done to the house. The family did try to fix it, but encountered many obstacles. They had to get workers with special permits. The Israeli police insisted on keeping the key overnight. They said they would return it at 7:30 AM, but when the workers showed up they had to wait until 9:00 to get in. Overnight, the police did not stop the settlers from destroying any progress that was made and any equipment left behind. Also, workers were attacked coming to the house. Hisham’s family was not able to get workers willing to work under those conditions, and the damages grew to $30,000. They stopped trying to fix the house.

A European journalist spoke with Palestinians, including Hisham’s family, and with settlers regarding Baruch Goldstein’s attack. The settlers told the journalist that Baruch Goldstein was a good gentle person, who attacked proactively to save Jewish lives because they had evidence that Muslims were stockpiling weapons in the mosque for an attack. Hisham said that to the outside world, that story is believable, unless you know that all people are searched before entering the mosque, and there are cameras inside. The settlers told another journalist that they blame Hisham’s family for beatings and rapes perpetrated by his grandfather during the Arab attacks on Jews during 1929. The journalist, having seen Hisham’s grandfather’s papers, quickly calculated that he would have been 5 years old in 1929.

Hisham was born in Jordan during the 1967 war. His family had fled there because they were afraid of massacres and his mother was about to give birth. When his family snuck home across the Jordan river, his uncle, the tallest person in the family, held Hisham over his head to keep him out of the river.

Hisham has served a total of 16 months in prison for administrative detention. Palestinian men can be held for six months at a time without charges, renewable indefinitely. Hisham was first brought in when he published a student leaflet in solidarity with students in Jordan who were on a student strike. It had nothing to do with Israel. 80% of Palestinian men have spent time in prison. This prevents them or members of their family from getting work permits beyond the checkpoints near their homes.

Despite his experiences, Hisham seems to have a perpetual smile, appreciating the irony of his situation without being bitter.

After Hebron we headed to Al-Arroub refugee camp to visit with Shireen, her parents, and her younger sister. Hannah met Shireen and her younger brother Mohammed last year and was very impressed with their intelligence. Mohammed is now studying in Michigan, and Shireen will be going to college in Virginia next year. Shireen was one of the girls who went to Colorado last year to attend a camp for Palestinian and Israeli teenagers. I thought the inside of their house was beautiful because the furniture and curtains were all blue. Shireen’s mother asked me how I feel about Hannah working in Palestine. I told her I worry about her. She told me not to worry about her, that she is safe there. I answered that I would stop worrying about Hannah when she stopped worrying about Mohammed. Everyone laughed at that.

From Shireen’s house, we returned to Dheisheh. Hannah wanted me to have a tour of the camp. The two men who usually give tours were unavailable, so two 14-year old boys from the Ibdaa center took us. That was more special.

When the Red Cross set up the camp, they thought it would be temporary, just a few months until the refugees could return to their homes. The Red Cross is not set up for such long-term relief, so the U.N. took over after a few years. The families slept in tents for the first eight years until there was a very cold winter and many children died. Then the U.N. built small concrete box houses for each family. Six to ten people lived in a home the size of a single car garage. After a while, when it was clear they would not be leaving the camp, the refugees built multi-story dwellings – one family on each floor. They did not have any additional land, so they built up to give each family more space. The homes are attached or very close together. The space between one side of a street and the other is no larger than the alleyways in Jerusalem. Everything is dirty on the outside, and there is trash on the ground, because there is no trash service here. When enough trash accumulates, they burn it, including plastic.

One of the boys pointed to his home. Several years ago his home was demolished because of an offense by his cousin. The U.N. moved them to another home until theirs could be rebuilt. Unfortunately, since the homes are so close together, demolishing one home makes 5 or 6 others unlivable.

There is a neighborhood across the street from the camp that is in better shape. Refugees from Dheisheh who can afford to move out have built and are building that community.

As part of the tour, the boys showed me a large stone monument of Palestine. They told me with much pride in their voices that it is the only one like it in Palestine. They said with love in their voices that Palestine is beautiful. At the top of the monument is a torch that they light for celebrations. Hanging from the top is also a black cloth. Seeing the monument was one of the times I felt the least hopeful for a resolution. Both people feel the same way about the land. Can we share it?

Hannah told me in advance not to show anyone pictures of Jake in our house because dogs are considered dirty in Islam, and Palestinians keep the inside of their houses spotless. However, she eventually prompted me to show pictures of Jake. Dogs in Palestine are not multi-colored. I was amused when asked what Jake was wearing.[Followup – about a week after I got home Hannah called from her host family’s house because they wanted to hear Jake sing on the phone.]

Abu Rabia’s sister Haniya used to have a cat. When she was nervous about going outside during curfew, she would send the cat out first. The cat was afraid of the soldiers so he/she would come running back if they were out there. Then one day they sent the cat out and the soldiers shot it dead.

We woke up early Friday morning to leave by 7:30. Again, Abu Rabia made us breakfast. In addition to the usual taboun (similar to pita but bigger), hummus, veggies, and yogurt, he fried eggs. This was the only time I saw a man in the kitchen. It was a combination of his belief in equality for women, and the fact that Najah leaves for work at 4:30. She works ½ hour away, but since they put up the new checkpoint and she does not have a permit to work in Jerusalem, it takes her four hours to get there – assuming she does not get caught on her roundabout journey. This has taken a toll on her health - both physical and emotional. Hannah flies back and forth to the U.S., partially because working there for a year straight gets too intense. Najah has no such opportunity.

We rode with Hannah and me in the front seat, and Amy (an American Jewish IWPS volunteer), Mohammed, and Yazzin in the back. Amy is as dark as the boys, but the soldiers on the road saw Hannah and me with our American passports, and the yellow plated car, and let us through with no problem.

Our first stop was the school where we took a picture of the boys in the same spot where their parents had stood when they were allowed in that village, the village their mother’s family is from. Then we went up the road a bit to the mosque and only remaining Palestinian house, now occupied by an Israeli woman. We know because she came out to tell us to leave. Mohammed’s friend’s grandfather used to live in that house. The boys remarked on how beautiful Zakkariya (Zacharia in Hebrew), with its rolling green hills, is. They are right. After you spend enough time in villages and refugee camps, you expect all places to look like that – as if the dirt and dust and squalor come with the land.

We went past the danger sign into the mosque. I had difficulty squeezing through the door. Inside there was abandoned farm equipment and debris. Mohammed asked in a quiet, surprised, distressed voice “Why did they treat our mosque this way?” Muslims respect Jewish and Christian holy places as part of their own traditions. The lamentations about the destruction of the Temple crossed my mind.

We climbed up to the top of the mosque where we had a good view of the village. Mohammed told us that some people used to pray up there for that reason. It’s also where the person who called people for prayer would go. Mohammed told us another story about the mosque. The mosque was for two neighboring villages – Zakkariya and Ajur. They wrote Zakkariya Mosque instead of Zakkariya-Ajur mosque on the side, which upset the other village. We circled the mosque but did not find any traces of that writing.

From Zakkariya we headed to Jaffa so the boys could see the sea. Mohammed had been there once before the 2nd Intifada with a boys trip, but Yazzin had never seen it. Their parents cannot take them there. Missing this ability to see the sea was a major theme of Palestinian loss among the adults. This family had pictures of themselves there in happier times.

Hannah was looking for a particularly beautiful entrance, but instead we found a small beach by the fishing area. We played there just long enough for Yazzin’s shoes and socks to get totally soaked by a suddenly higher than normal wave, then went off in search of the other beach. We walked on some rough terrain, and I noticed that Mohammed walked near me there. He did not touch me, but I’m sure he would have tried to catch me if I started to fall.

Hannah was quite proud of herself when we found the other beach, and it was indeed beautiful with terraced landscaping on the way down. Yazzin had changed into a bathing suit at our first bathroom break. Mohammed did it in the car here, and then they both headed in to the water.

Mohammed is getting to be a somewhat cool teenager, and he is quieter than Yazzin, so we were pleased when he dove into the water. The signs said dangerous and swimming not allowed. We hope it was because there were not lifeguards rather than because of pollution. We weren’t going to stop the boys from swimming in the sea during what may be their only chance. We hope they get there again in the future.

Yazzin took his soccer ball and the boys played soccer in the water. When they were tired, they sat at the water’s edge and stared into the sea. Hannah took a great picture of them from the back. I took a lot of pictures, too. I’m hoping to email their parents some really good ones.

After the beach we drove to a nearby Palestinian restaurant Hannah had eaten at before. She told us about a nearby ice cream place. The last time she was there with a group of Palestinian kids from the refugee camp, the owner refused to accept money from the children. The kids on that trip were hosted by Palestinian families in Jaffa overnight.

From Jaffa we drove to Jerusalem, where we easily found a parking space near the old city walls because it was Friday afternoon. We wandered through the old city. Mohammed spotted a poster of a Barcelona soccer player from Brazil. His eyes lit up so we bought it for him. It was fun to get him something he so obviously wanted.

We got to the entrance of the mosque, guarded by Israeli soldiers. They told us we could not continue, but Hannah told them the boys were Muslim, so they went ahead while we waited for them. It felt right for us to be prohibited entry while they went in. Of course, we could also go in but by a separate entrance. However, if we had approached from that direction the boys could not go in. When the boys returned we headed back to the car and then back to their home. We were all exhausted. Hannah and I stayed just long enough to say our goodbyes and then we left to return the car. We got to the car rental place before it was supposed to close, but there was no one there. Hannah called the mobile phone number and was told to leave the key with Fuad next door, so she did. Then we got in a service to return to our hotel in Jerusalem, and gratefully, a shower.

We went back to our room, packed, read a bit (the first time on the trip) and went to sleep early. The alarm went off at 3:15 so we could wake up and wait for the Shairut to the airport. The driver called shortly before we were going to go outside to say he’d be a few minutes late. He called again when he was 5 minutes away and we went outside. We left the gate of the hotel, and I glanced left down the street at the illuminated walls of the old city once last time before turning right to walk up to the Jerusalem Hotel for pickup.

I was glad it was dark in the Shairut because I cried as I left Jerusalem.

Welcome

So I've decided to join the modern world and create a blog. I've been working in Palestine since September 2003, and have consistently posted messages to an e-mail list, but now I've put them all on this site and I'll begin to publish new messages here. I'll have to figure out photos another time...

Exit and Entry

So, I'm home. In the Boston area, that is, which is as much home as anywhere these days. There are still so many things about Palestine that I haven't written, so you may get a couple more e-mails from me in the coming weeks, but for now I'll just tell those of you who are interested about my exit from Palestine and my entry into the U.S.

I arrived at Ben Gurion airport in Lyd (aka the airport in Tel Aviv) just after 5:00 am for a 7:25 flight. This is about the amount of time I had last time, when security didn't have enough time to check me and I ended up flying without my luggage and never getting back some of it. So, I got in the first line before baggage check and the Israeli security woman asked, "What was the purpose of your visit to Israel?"

"Look," I responded, "my bags are going to be checked by the police, so I'm wondering if you can just take me straight to security so my bags don't get loaded onto the plane and then taken off again."

She was a little taken aback. I don't think people do this very often. "Why do you get checked?" she asked, seeming not quite to believe me.

"Because I go to the West Bank."

"Just a minute," she said, and walked off to consult her fellow security people. From that moment on, I felt totally in control, and it was great. It took about a minute before someone else came over and asked, "What were you doing in the West Bank?"

I borrowed my reply from Dunya: "My bags are going to be checked and then I'm going to get on the plane to go, and I don't really have anything to say to you in the meantime."

When she repeated the question, not unkindly, I said, "I was traveling around and visiting people, I'm not going to say anymore, can you just take me to the police?"

And they did.

They searched me and my bags, checked me into my flight, escorted me through all the lines (because I'm a security threat, you see, I can't walk through the airport on my own), and everything was finished within 45 minutes! It was great - I really recommend this strategy upon exit for those in the same/similar boat as me.

Perhaps this experience made me a little too bold. Upon entering the U.S., all I wrote in the "countries visited prior to the US" section of the customs form was "Palestine." I never really noticed before that they actually look at those things. They do.

I have to say it was gratifying for a US customs official to ask, "Did you visit anywhere other than Palestine on your trip?" but other than that it was a bit of a hassle. I got a big "S" on my form and was taken aside for my bags to be checked. The man was friendly, but a little too chatty about the political situation, Hamas, Fatah, how Palestinians view Americans, and other things that I'm usually happy to share with anyone, but I wasn't quite sure about with a US border official in the current political climate. Unlike the Israeli security, who these days seriously seem to be looking more for explosives than information, this guy was definitely looking for information. He had no interest in my clothing or anything else, only paper materials. He asked me to translate Arabic posters, read every scrap of paper, every page of my notebook ("When you wrote about Gaza here and you said 'Jihad very small' what does that mean?" "It means that the Islamic Jihad movement has a very small presence in Gaza.") It was far more intrusive than Israeli security. I said, "Can I ask you why you're reading every paper? I think that's unusual for security." "I'm not security," he responded. He was the border police. My father suggested I should have asked him if there are certain words I'm not allowed to carry over the border. I'm not sure sarcasm would have served me well, though, especially since I knew my friend Marjorie was waiting outside for me and I was by far the very last person from my flight to get out.

When he opened the 10 pounds of spices and plants that a friend's family had given me to take to her, I was a little nervous. I had just told him there were no food products in my bag and of course I had answered "no" on the customs form when they asked about agricultural products. "What's this?" he asked. "A spice," I responded. He called the agricultural people over, 2 very young women. They glanced at the bag and said, "Um, I think this is fine." And that was that. Nothing taken from me.

He finished with my things, handed me my passport, and said, "Welcome home."

And so, here I am, "home".

Politics as Usual

My friend Silvia, from Deir Ballut village, had barely had time to sit down after returning through checkpoints and roadblocks from her university in Nablus, when she turned to me and asked, "Want to hear a joke?"

I couldn’t resist, so she began:

A man saved a girl from dying, and in the process a cat died. A journalist went to talk with the man and told him, "Tomorrow in the newspaper I’m going to write, 'American hero saves girl from death.'"

"But I'm not American," replied the man.

"Okay," said the journalist, "I'll write, 'Spanish hero saves girl from death.'"

"But I'm not Spanish," said the man, "I'm Palestinian."

The next day the newspaper came out. The headline read, "Arab terrorist kills innocent cat."

We laughed, continued to tell a few more jokes, drank tea, and talked. As the rest of the world continues to respond to the Palestinian elections as though Palestinians have killed an innocent cat, life here continues. Of course, the elections and the political situation in general are never far from people's minds these days. Every time any leader makes a speech about Hamas or the Danish cartoon, the room I'm in goes quiet as people's eyes are glued to the television.

I've gotten into the habit of asking children who they voted for, although of course they didn't actually vote. Usually they say "Fatah" or "Hamas," generally following the party line of their parents. I was in the home of a Palestinian policeman (Fatah) a couple weeks ago and I asked his 3-year-old daughter who she voted for. "Hamas," she replied. Her father looked at her incredulously and asked, "Whose daughter are you?" She quickly corrected herself: "Fatah." I was in the home of another friend a few days ago and I asked his 3-year-old son who he voted for. "Dr. Waji," he replied, giving me the name of the specific candidate who had gone from Fatah to independent during a series of misunderstandings among the Salfit Fatah party.

Last night my host family here in Dheisheh told me that the PA has been meeting and making as many decisions and changes as they can before Hamas takes power. Apparently they have voted for many significant powers to be transferred back from the parliament to the president's office (Abu Mazen / Mahmoud Abbas is still president), essentially meaning that Fatah will retain power. "Will Hamas accept this?" I asked. "They have no choice," was the response. And meanwhile, I heard that the US Congress has officially decided to boycott the PA because Hamas will be taking power in the PLC.

It's all a bit of a mess, but people are excited to see what will happen. Even people heavily involved in the Fatah movement have told me, "The people taught us a lesson. We weren't united, we ran too many candidates and our support was split, we were corrupt, people wanted change." Several people have even told me that Hamas is the only party that can make peace with Israel and make it look like a victory for the Palestinian people, rather than a compromise of more and more rights. I'm curious to see what that might look like, although I'm not convinced the Palestinians will have a partner after the Israeli elections. Netanyahu's mean face is plastered on huge billboards all over Israel right now, with the simple phrase, "Strong against Hamas." Olmert continues to talk about unilateral steps that he will be "forced" to take. It doesn't seem anyone is willing to actually negotiate. I'm not sure if this will make any concrete difference in people's lives here, since negotiations have mostly benefited Israelis and harmed Palestinians, but again, I'm curious to see what will happen.

Last night while we were watching the news in Dheisheh refugee camp, my host father told me about the "old days" when there was no electricity. Dheisheh got electricity in 1978, but before then, he remembers going with his father and brothers to a big room to watch the only television in the camp, run by a motor. Now it's hard to find a house that doesn't have the TV on all the time. Usually it's music videos from Lebanon and Egypt, interspersed with the news, but these past few weeks people have definitely been watching more of the news. And it seems people are especially interested in what's happening in Israel as well. Every day people ask each other if Sharon is still alive, though the next comment is usually, "It doesn’t really matter. And anyway, it's like with Arafat, he's been dead for a while and they'll just tell us that he's dead when they want to, probably around Israeli election time." Last week we read the streaming headline on the bottom of the screen that Sharon might die that night, followed by the statement: "Before he goes to the grave, ask him how many centimeters of Palestinian land he's taking with him." My host family started laughing and said, "I can't believe they wrote that on the news, that's great!" Last night we watched a very cheaply made program that is on every night, in which a person holds up an Israeli newspaper, and a voice translates the headlines into Arabic. I asked my host father if there's any commentary. "No," he said, "just the translation."

The program ended, and on came a speech from a Hizbollah leader about Denmark. I asked my host family why the community is now so organized in boycotting Denmark and Norway, and not Israel and the US. "There's no substitute for the Israeli vegetarian schnitzel I've been feeding you," responded my host mother. It's not about the schnitzel, I told her, and I'd happily give that up as part of a boycott. But they would hear nothing of it. We're too intertwined with each other, they said. Israel is here, it's not going away, whereas Denmark is not “here” (in Palestine) in the same way and it's not so difficult to boycott them. Another friend said something similar. “When the Arab world and the rest of the world implements real sanctions and boycotts and divestment against Israel, then you can start talking to us about boycotting.” I see the point, but I'm still not entirely sure I agree that one needs to come before the other. In any case, it does frustrate me that Denmark and Norway are taking the blame for what is perpetrated more by the US than any other country in the world. Of course, I'm happy on a personal level not to walk down Salah al-Din Street in East Jerusalem and see the sign, “Americans are not welcome in our land,” but on a political level I do think that would make a lot more sense than, “Danish are not welcome in our land,” which I saw in the window of a shoe store yesterday.

Well, I suppose I did have a lot to say about politics after all. I had planned to write more about the daily interactions I've been having, but I suppose politics infuses them all these days. I will share one final story which perhaps can be seen as a feminist response to the political situation, but which is probably more indicative of teenage girls' obsession with love. On Tuesday, Valentine's Day, almost every girl I know defied the school's rules and wore red to school. Some of the bolder girls wore red jackets and shoes, others wore red t-shirts under their uniforms. One friend told me, "The headmistress made an announcement that everyone wearing red would be punished, but what are they going to do, punish the whole school?" If only this principle would be applied again to resistance, maybe something could change for the better.

Gaza and Democracy

Finally, after several years of wanting to go to Gaza, Dunya and I managed to spend two days there under the auspices of election observation. It didn’t take very long for Dunya to observe that the elections in Gaza City were far cleaner than those in Ohio in 2004, where she was working at the time. Lack of democracy is not Palestine’s problem – the democracy here is more thriving than I’ve seen anywhere else. So our two-day trip consisted of about a half hour of “election observation” amidst many hours of traveling around, talking with people, and photographing everything we saw. I know the West Bank well enough at this point that nothing seems particularly new. But from the moment we arrived at Erez crossing, I began to photograph the buildings, the corridors, the Israeli police dogs, the wall surrounding the Gaza Strip that looks very much like the wall being built now throughout the West Bank.

We stayed in Gaza City with Khaled Nasrallah and his family, one of the two families who had been living in the house in Rafah that Rachel Corrie was killed in front of in March 2003. The bulldozer that killed her did not demolish the Nasrallah’s home that day, but within a year the army completed the task and the family was left homeless. They now live in an apartment in Gaza City while a new house is being built for them in Deir Balah. Most of the people in Gaza who have been displaced by home demolition in the past few years have been displaced at least once before – in 1948 – and some of them more than once. They’ve lived in a constant state of terror for the past five years, and according to some, it only got worse after the “disengagement”. Israeli shelling and other destruction from the air is not entirely uncommon, not to mention the sonic booms that only started since the settlers have left. A 9-year-old girl was shot and killed by the Israeli army on Thursday in Gaza, somewhere near a border with Israel. Probably just a few miles from where we were. Someone from the Gaza Community Mental Health Programme told us that they have seen no particular change in their work since the “disengagement”, whereas a man at the Gaza International Airport explained a building’s construction by saying, “In the days of the occupation, the Israelis instructed us to build this building so they can observe the border. Now there’s no occupation, so the building is for us.”

The Gaza International Airport is really something else. Or not, but that’s what makes it so remarkable. It looks like any other airport, only with more beautiful design than many. And it is deserted. And the control towers have been bombed by Israeli Apaches. And the runways have been bulldozed every couple hundred meters. According to security at the airport, the only employees currently working there, the airport opened in 2000, and was forced by Israel to close early in 2001. Israel still forbids Palestinians from even beginning to reconstruct the runway. Palestinian Airlines only flies now between Egypt and Amman, and they only have two functioning airplanes. Our host is an accountant for the airline.

And then there’s Rafah. The row of houses along the border of Gaza and Egypt (which arbitrarily divided the community of Rafah in half when the border lines were drawn), are shot up thousands and thousands of times. That is, the houses that are still standing. More of them are in rubble. But the bullet holes through the windows, doors, walls… it looks more like war than anything I’ve ever seen. Our hosts who were displaced from Rafah and now live in Gaza City described to us some of the terror of their last year or two in Rafah: never knowing which rooms were safe to be in, Israeli bullets flying through their windows at all hours, the young daughters waking up in the middle of the night and screaming. The girls are still affected, their mother Samah told us, but only the oldest, now five years old, remembers a specific story from Rafah. The family had been sleeping in the garden because it was safer than the house. At one point they were all at slightly different places, someone in the garden, someone in the house, someone on the stairs. The shooting started, and young Mariam remembers the bullets flying towards their house, hitting a tree, and watching a guava fall off a tree and hit her father on the head. Her mother told the story laughing, saying “alhamdulillah” – thank god we weren’t hurt any more than we were. She was in the hospital giving birth to her third daughter when their house was finally demolished. Thank god, she said, that nobody was in the house. The things to be thankful for in Gaza are incomprehensible to me.

Hope looks different, too, as Dunya pointed out during our visit to the former settlements. We had hired a driver for the day to take us around. At every turn he explained that the Israelis used to be here, and here, and here. This is where this person was killed, this is a school that was bombed, this is an old checkpoint. And then we entered the old settlement of Netzarim. I’m not sure what I was expecting, but I wasn’t expecting a scene that superficially looked remarkably similar to me to demolished Palestinian homes. The Israelis are good at destroying things, we joked to each other. They destroy Palestinian homes, and they also destroyed the settlers’ homes (and left a huge mess) upon leaving Gaza. And this is hope, I suppose. Can rubble be hopeful?

Speaking of surprise, Gaza City is bustling. We arrived our first evening, met the family, ate dinner, and then Khaled asked, “Do you want to walk around the city?” We were shocked that he would go out at night, especially with two female internationals, but it was completely normal to him. And indeed, the shops were open, everyone was buying ice cream at the local ice cream parlor, last minute campaigning was subtly happening (campaigning is banned for 24 hours before election day, but nobody can be prevented from driving their cars, vegetable trucks, or donkeys around the streets with party flags on them). Apparently Gaza City is the Ramallah of Gaza, a thriving city where poverty is somewhat less apparent than other parts of Gaza. We asked if this is recent, since the disengagement. No, he told us, in Gaza City people have always just gone about their lives, sometimes dodging bullets and shells, but continuing with their lives.

Gaza is beautiful. I’ve heard statistics about it being the most crowded place on earth, so I wasn’t prepared for the open space, the parks of palm trees, the plazas with monuments and wide roads that are pedestrian friendly. But of course, by contrast, while driving south along the road with a beautiful beach and the Mediterranean to the right, we would look left and see refugee camps that look more like I expected refugee camps to look before first coming to Palestine. The camps I’m used to in the West Bank have slightly narrower streets than cities and villages, and a few more visible signs of poverty, but much of the refugee issue is somewhat unseen if just driving by. Some of these camps in Gaza are different, and with their tiny buildings and narrowest of streets they certainly look like they could be described as the most crowded places on earth.

The little bit of election observing we did was exciting, if only to see the incredible amount of civic engagement. In fact, you couldn’t be in Palestine and not be doing some sort of “election observing” during these past couple weeks, when all anyone has been talking about has been politics. I realize that I come from an American context where civic engagement is among the lowest in the world, so it excites me to be somewhere where even with such difficulty living under occupation, at least 75% of eligible voters voted. There is, of course, the knowledge in the back of my head that Israel is holding 8,000 Palestinian political prisoners who can’t vote from Israeli prisons, that the Israeli government only permitted 6% of Palestinian residents of East Jerusalem to vote in the Palestinian elections, and that the 2/3 of the Palestinian population that lives outside of Palestine, mostly as refugees, do not have any say in who will be representing them and potentially negotiating away their right to return to their land. Not that negotiations will be happening any time soon here, since Israel refuses to negotiate with a Hamas that doesn’t disarm. I wish Hamas would refuse to negotiate with an Israel that doesn’t disarm. Maybe Hamas has already said something to this effect. I don’t know, I haven’t been reading much of the news. Mostly I have just been talking to Palestinian people, people who are shocked, excited, worried, and curious about what their future may bring. Hamas won on a platform of “change and reform” that mostly focused on ending corruption within the Palestinian Authority and bringing economic development to Palestine. Apparently they did not focus either on religion or resistance against Israel, probably realizing that these two points would get them less popular support from the Palestinian people. And indeed, they received in votes what people say is twice the amount of popular support they actually have. So there is shock. Some hope in the possibility of change, but concern about the opinion of the international community, and specifically the end or slowing down of cash flow from Western governments.

The most common joke I’ve heard made in the past couple days, if it can be called a joke, is that I’ll have to start covering myself fully. A man joked today that he’s already starting to grow his beard. I was in Dheisheh refugee camp yesterday where the kids were discussing the election, and the teenage girls unanimously decided they would never wear hijab, even if Hamas legislated it. One of the boys we were working with told us he didn’t want to eat any sweets that we had brought for our meeting, because Hamas won. We had a vote on the title of the exhibit that we’re putting together with the children about the trips we took them on, with suggestions like “Life Within Two Days,” “New Life”, and “Destroyed Villages”. At the end of the voting one of the kids said, “Hamas won!” So there is a lot of light joking about the situation, while everyone waits to see if Fatah will agree to work with Hamas or not, whether the government will have enough support to maintain control over the people, what their relationship with the outside world will be, and whether religious law will or will not come into place in some form.

Either way, as I’m reminded daily here, there is still occupation. I was able to meet my friend Fatima’s mother in Rafah, who hasn’t seen her daughter since 1997 because people in Gaza can’t get out and people in the West Bank can’t get to Gaza. A 20-year-old man we spent some time with in Gaza did not go an hour without saying, “Take me with you to the West Bank.” He’s never been there. Our crossing out of Gaza showed us firsthand for the first time what can only be described as indentured servitude. Thousands of Palestinian workers – those lucky enough to have permits – were standing shoulder to shoulder, waiting for hours to be allowed to cross back home to Gaza after a long day at work in the fields or building construction. They would go home for an hour or two to sleep, and come back to the border at midnight to wait until 6 am to cross back through again.

So the occupation and injustice goes on in all of Palestine, regardless of its status. In Gaza, in the West Bank, and in Israel, Palestinians do not have equal rights. Someone tried to convince us yesterday that while Palestinians inside Israel don’t have equal rights, at least they have some rights. Unequal rights are not rights, Dunya pointed out. It’s a concept that seems to escape many people in this context, people who in other contexts would agree and would be fighting for justice.

I know the Gaza “disengagement” caused people around the world to start thinking that occupation is over and everything is okay. I hope the Hamas win does not cause even fewer people to work for justice here. I haven’t been reading newspapers and I don’t know what you’re being told. But I’m pretty confident that I can advise you to be skeptical of both words and images that come out of this place these days. I doubt the mainstream media has suddenly decided to start telling the truth in the past two days. So question, question, question, and know that Palestine still needs all the support it can get.

Freedom of Movement

I’ve been traveling for the past two weeks with groups of people who enjoy more privilege here than perhaps any other group – American Jews. We can relatively easily pass through walls, fences, gates, checkpoints, “terminals” and other obstacles, moving from Jerusalem to Bethlehem to Ramallah to Haifa and back to Jerusalem without a second thought. Unless we think. Unless we call our Palestinian friends on the phone and try to explain what we’re doing. Unless they ask us, “Where are you?” and we debate whether to lie or to tell them we’re in their capital city that they haven’t been able to reach for the past 5 years.

Last week my host family was looking at some of Dunya’s pictures of the terminal and the Wall, and my 11-year-old host brother looked at one photo and asked, “That’s the Wall?” “You haven’t seen it?” I asked incredulously. “Once or twice,” was the reply, “but not recently.” Freedom of movement is so limited that people who don’t have the permits to leave their ghetto have no reason to even approach its walls.

A couple days ago I asked the IWPS landlord if he is still able to drive to work in Salfit from Hares, a village separated from Salfit by the settlement of Ariel and roadblocks and checkpoints. For now, he told me, he can drive there, but the checkpoint at Zatara is being made bigger. I said, “Yes, I know, it will be like the new checkpoints at Bethlehem and Kalandia.” “No,” he said, “the Bethlehem checkpoint is easy to get through.” Instantly I realized that he hasn’t seen the new terminals, because he isn’t allowed on one side of each of them. So he goes around the long way, through a huge valley that steers clear of Jerusalem, and ends up back in Bethlehem, in order to attend a conference on nonviolence. And the checkpoint in the valley, he says, isn’t so bad. He’s a well-connected man with ties to the Palestinian government, and still I know more about the institutionalization of the checkpoint structures than he does, at least on the physical level of having seen and experienced them. If you separate an entire population into small disconnected enclaves, it makes it difficult for people to organize against the magnitude of the system. This is not a new concept for the Israeli government. This is not coincidental.

And then there’s the less visible, or, for internationals like myself, invisible. I’ve been traveling north and south and all over the place for the past two weeks, and I found out only two days ago that nobody from the northern West Bank has been allowed south of Zatara checkpoint (in the center of the northern West Bank) for the past several weeks. 800,000 people in Jenin, Tulkarem, and Nablus cannot travel to Ramallah because of this Israeli closure. People like me can travel without knowing this, because our taxi drivers from Ramallah or Jerusalem can come north and bring us south. We never have to know, but the same is not true of my Israeli friend who is married to a Palestinian from Nablus. They were traveling back from Nablus to Ramallah after Eid Al-Adha, one of the biggest Muslim holidays of the year, and they split at the checkpoint so my friend could come meet our group in Ramallah while her husband twisted and turned through unpaved dirt roads to try to get home without being turned back at checkpoints. Or another man I know from Jenin who works at a human rights organization in Ramallah. He had gone home for the holiday, and it took him more than 5 hours to return to Ramallah after the holiday. It should have taken about 2 hours, and that’s already taking into account the separation of land and roads due to settlement expansion. I asked him about his father, who I know is sick, and he told me the family has moved him to a hospital in Jericho, though none of them live there, because it’s the only place that different family members can go check up on him without too much hassle.

The division of the West Bank into tiny disconnected cantons is the most recent method of separation the Israeli government has employed, beginning in 1967 and intensifying continuously until today. But I’ve also been especially conscious these weeks of the more existential separation that still haunts people to this day – the loss of 78% of Palestine in 1948, the expulsion of more than two thirds of the Palestinian population, and the separation of families that have never been reunited. I’m not sure I’ve ever met a Palestinian who is able to have regular family get-togethers. Some of them are in the West Bank or Gaza, some in Lebanon, some in Syria, some in Jordan, Bahrain, Dubai, Russia, Venezuela, London, Montreal, Chicago, Houston… Everywhere but together.

I’ve been especially conscious of this dispersion these past weeks because Dunya and I are beginning a new project today that I wish wholeheartedly we had no reason to do. We will try to take kids from a refugee camp to their holy sites in Jerusalem, to the sea in Yaffa, and to the villages that their grandparents fled in 1948. We wish they could just go with their parents and grandparents, that they could visit the land, picnic on the land, build a new house on the land if that’s what they chose to do. But they have no choice. So we will go with them for a short visit, though it breaks my heart when people in the older generations ask us to call them on the phone from the villages so we can describe what we see and they can tell us where we are, what houses used to stand there, where the children used to play. It breaks my heart when we talk about the project to other Palestinian friends and they ask if we can do the same with their children. It breaks my heart when I tell a 17-year-old friend about the project and she says, “I wish I were younger so I could come… But I’m not sure if I wish I were a refugee.” She just wants to come to the beach. Just to see the sea.

A Jewish Israeli friend gave us the contact of somebody from one of the villages we plan to visit who has Israeli citizenship and lives in Israel as an internally displaced person. As an Israeli citizen, he can accompany us to the village. We had only his first name and told my host family, who is organizing this program with us. My host mother, who is from the same village, decided to call. She dialed, he answered, and without even saying her name she told him she’s from his village, and asked him his family’s name. It took about 30 seconds for them to realize that they are cousins. Cousins who have never met, never spoken to each other, never known of the other’s existence. And they live about 30 miles apart. She was excited, and I heard her tell the story to two more people that evening. I got swept up in the excitement too, at first. “This is so cool,” I said to Dunya. “This is so sad,” she replied. The cousins spoke for a few minutes and then hung up. They didn’t exchange information or invitations. There was no indication that they would speak again. Is it the size of the families or the depth of the separation? Is it too painful to constantly be reminded of how many more people would be part of your circle if it weren’t for the circumstances forced upon you? Or maybe they will be in touch again, maybe they just figured I had the phone numbers to be able to connect them if they wanted that in the future. Sometimes my work with refugees, my work connecting Palestinians on either side of the Green Line, feels like a sloppy symbolic attempt to sew back together what my people have torn apart. Sometimes if feels like repentance. Except it’s not about me, and most Palestinians don't particularly care about my identity as a Jew or as an American. It’s about power and trying to dismantle it. It’s about injustice and trying to fix it. It’s about my 17-year-old friend’s response to a question last week about what message Americans can take back to the U.S. from Palestine. “Revolution,” she said. “If all the people in the world overthrow all the governments in the world, we’ll have no problem living with each other in peace.”

In the spirit of revolution,
Hannah

Welcome to Palestine?

I’ve been here for 4 days, and I’ve already been through 2 of the newly opened “terminals” that have replaced the “checkpoints” at the entrances to Bethlehem and Ramallah. I don’t know what language to use for these. They seem more like prisons to me than anything else. My host mother in Dheisheh camp (Bethlehem) asked me if I’d seen it. I told her I just passed through it, and it’s like a prison. “No,” she said, “it’s like the airport.” “The airport is like a prison,” I responded, but that’s not entirely accurate for for many people. I asked my host father if he’s seen it and he said, “Get me a permit, then I’ll go see it.” Because of course, no matter how badly people are treated at these terminal-prisons, the people who are there are mostly the lucky ones who have permits to go through, or Jerusalem ID cards.

I know it’s clichéd to say that the Wall is turning Palestine into even more of a prison, but this was the first time I’d seen the Wall completely closed around the entrance to Bethlehem. There’s an enormous metal door that can be opened and closed at the whim of the Israeli army, with a huge sign next to it saying in English, Hebrew, and finally Arabic, “Go in peace.” Underneath is written “Israeli Ministry of Tourism.” This is in an area separating Palestinian area from Palestinian area. West Bank on both sides. Entirely controlled by Israel.

And it’s the same at Kalandia. Palestinian areas on either side, entirely controlled by Israel. I don’t know which sign is more offensive, the Bethlehem one or the one at Kalandia that says in three languages “The hope of us all.” Next to this is a drawing of a tree, with the word “security” written in Arabic on the trunk, and each of the branches saying (in Arabic) things like “education,” “culture,”and “prosperity.” “Israeli Ministry of Tourism” was missing from this one, probably because Ramallah does not receive as many tourists as Bethlehem, especially at this time of year.

Passing back through Kalandia from Ramallah to Jerusalem last night was one of the most disturbing checkpoint experiences I’ve had. It was certainly the worst I’ve ever been treated personally. From entering to exiting the “terminal,” you are enclosed between metal doors, turnstyles, and windows, so at each moment you are essentially trapped in a different part until a soldier decides to let you through. Everything is done electronically. The soldiers sit behind bulletproof glass and bark orders through loudspeakers. No face to face human interaction anymore. The girl (and yes, these soldiers look like girls and boys) barking orders at people last night was particularly unkind, When it came time for me, I placed my things on the newly installed conveyor belt and walked through the metal detector, like I saw the people before me doing. I held up my passport and the soldier ignored me and started yelling at me in Arabic. I couldn’t understand everything she said and I told her that (or tried to, although there seemed to be no mechanism for people to speak to her, only the other way around), and finally she yelled in English, “Put all your things on the belt!” I did so, then walked through, held my passport up, picked up my stuff, and got ready to leave. She said nothing to me, but began to yell at a man in front of me who was holding a small baby. She yelled at him in Hebrew to come back, and then he called me over and said it was because I hadn’t given her my passport, which she hadn’t told me to do. There are times when I ignore soldiers’ authority because I believe they should have none, but this was not one of those times. I had never been through this contraption before and did not want to hold up the people behind me, but I really didn’t know what I was supposed to do. She began screaming at me in Hebrew when I went back, I told her I didn’t understand, and then she said in Hebrew, “Fine, I’ll speak in English! Give me your passport!” I put the passport down in the tiny hole, she took it, and the man with the baby told me she was saying “Fuck you” and other nice things to me in Hebrew. I got my passport back and she began to bark orders at others again, pressing the magic button to open the next turnstyle for me to exit. I walked out disgusted, with the man and his family watching to make sure I was okay.

I wanted to throw up. Or any number of other things I shouldn’t write here. I don’t know why I keep being surprised. Or maybe that’s not quite it. Maybe it’s just completely disgusted. And angry. I’ve been working in Palestine for just over 2 years, and I’ve seen the street next to Kalandia go from a street to the Wall to the terminal. I was here 5 months ago and it looked so different. And meanwhile I’m working for long-term change and leading groups around the West Bank for American Jewish people to learn about the situation and maybe change some of their understanding and maybe tell some others about that and… what about the here and now? As always, time is on Israel’s side. Palestinians cannot afford to wait. And yet what can they do? I watched all the young Palestinian men joking around inside the terminal as they waited to be yelled at in Hebrew and maybe let through, and I wondered, as I often do here, where all the anger goes.

I hope I never get so used to this that it doesn’t enrage me.

I start with the groups today. I didn’t have a lot of time to write this and have no time to edit it, and I also apologize that I have no pictures to share with you. I’ll try to be in touch again soon, perhaps after this first group leaves next week.

I welcome personal e-mails.

Happy new year to those for whom this is a new year – let’s hope it brings more justice than the last one.

-Hannah