Snapshots of Return

Dear all,

First, a note for those in Boston: I think there will be an article about Birthright Unplugged in the magazine section of this Sunday’s Boston Globe. If anyone could save a copy for my parents, they would appreciate it. : )

We ran our Re-Plugged trip out of Jenin refugee camp last weekend, and start Unplugged tomorrow. Re-Plugged was bittersweet and wonderful as always. We took 20 kids from 11 different villages to Jerusalem, the sea in Haifa and their villages which all lie somewhere between Haifa and Jenin. Dunya and I will write more about the experience in our communiqué after the summer ends, but for now I’ll just share a few stories:

-We meet 85-year-old Abu Omar in his village of Na’ura, a village that his family has lived in for centuries. He will get on our bus and accompany us to Zir’in and Qumiya, two destroyed villages very nearby where 7 of the children are from. Before we leave, we sit with him at his home and drink juice, and he tells us the history of the area. He asks each child his or her name, and as soon as he hears the family name, he tells the child where his or her family is from. There is not one village he does not know. A walking encyclopedia.

-As we are leaving in 3 buses for the villages, one boy gets on a bus that is not going to the village his grandparents are from. We ask him why he has switched groups and he won’t tell us, but says he wants to go with this other group. We assume it is for social reasons. When that group arrives in Um Il Fahm, a thriving Palestinian city, his reasons become clear. A woman runs toward the bus crying and holding children by the hand. It is his sister, whom he hasn’t seen in 5 years because she is married and living in Um Il Fahm. They have only a few minutes together.

-We meet youth from Baladna, a Palestinian organization inside ’48 (Israel). They join us for much of the trip. One young man tells us he is studying theatre and sociology at Brandeis. We ask him how that is for him – not surprisingly, it isn’t easy for him to be one of few Palestinians at a school that is predominantly comprised of Zionist American Jews. We mention the name of our organization in passing and he says, “Birthright Unplugged?! I have your postcard hanging on my dorm room wall!” He’s been promoting us (mostly unsuccessfully) around campus since he found our old postcard lying on the floor at Brandeis more than a year ago.

-We arrive at the sea. The Israeli police see girls in hijab and approach the group in a classic case of racial profiling. Our Palestinian hosts are indignant; because of the way they dress, this doesn’t usually happen to them. The Jenin kids are thankfully unaware of the incident.

-We split into small groups for dinner with host families. Our host family is politically active and last summer participated in demonstrations against the Lebanon war almost daily. One night, the mother told us, there was a knock on the door and someone yelled in heavily Hebrew-accented Arabic, “Iftakh ilbaab!” (Open the door!). When she opened it, a masked man clubbed her on the head and ran. Her daughters saw it. There was blood everywhere. The neighborhood they live in is entirely Palestinian, so it wasn’t a neighbor. They are convinced it was someone a bit more official sending them a warning about their activism. This happened in Haifa. They are Israeli citizens.

-I ask the host mother whether she is originally from Haifa city itself, and she says no, her family and her husband’s family are each from two different villages destroyed in 1948. The house they currently live in, she tells me, is an old house. They do not know the names of the Palestinians who used to live there. They heard once that the family went to Syria in 1948. Nobody has come back since.

-One girl is from Ayn Hawd, a village that was occupied but not destroyed in 1948. The expelled villagers fled to other countries, to Jenin, and to a hilltop just a couple kilometers away. The new Palestinian village on the hilltop is also called Ayn Hawd, though it is only partially recognized by the Israeli government. The original village is now inhabited by Israeli artists. The whole group plans to meet in the new Ayn Hawd to eat dinner at a restaurant owned by this girl’s cousin, whom she has never met. First, her group visits the original Ayn Hawd. She has directions to her house from her grandmother. They find it. A Dutch man and Israeli woman live inside now, and invite the group in. The girl stands aside and begins to cry. The Dutch man says, “It’s okay, you can come back another time, it’s no problem.” One boy responds, “Actually, it is a problem. When she turns 16 next year, the Israeli army will not let her come.”

-Two brothers are from Braika, a village that was turned into an Israeli military base for years and is now a trash dump. The boys walk among the trash looking for any traces of their ancestors’ homes. They are on the phone with their grandfather in Jenin refugee camp, who is directing them toward a particular tree that he says was in front of the house. After climbing under barbed wire and walking through trash, the boys find the tree. How did they know it was the same tree? As he was fleeing in 1948, the grandfather quickly carried out a last act in his village: he carved his name in the tree. Almost 60 years later, this tree is all that remains of their property.

I told this last story to a friend last night who lives in a house surrounded on all 4 sides by Israel’s wall. She sighed and asked, “When will the right of return come?”

Before it is too late, inshallah.

Palestinian presence

Dear all,

There are, as always, many things I could share about my first days in Palestine this time around. I have a whole host of lovely stories I was hoping to write about (spending time with friends), as well as a few disturbing stories (going through 6 checkpoints between jenin and ramallah, one of which had soldiers pointing guns directly into each of the cars), but what came out below formed itself a bit differently than I’d expected. I do want to share a one-sentence anecdote, though: My friend Fatima and her family were held at a checkpoint for a half hour the other day because the youngest daughter (12-yr-old Bara’a) stuck her tongue out at a soldier. : )

On a different note, I want to acknowledge that Gaza is in an extremely desperate situation right now with Israeli military attacks and closures the likes of which they have not seen in some time, and the world seems to be forgetting about them because they don’t like the political party that is currently in charge. I am not in Gaza and cannot get there, but I try not to forget it and hope that you don’t either.

Okay, onto my other thoughts…

From Ramallah with love,
Hannah


As I exited the plane and walked through the narrow hallway towards the airport, I stared at the advertisement on the wall: photos of famous people and art from centuries ago, with “the first _____” written above them. Example: “the first Italian lady” was the Mona Lisa. The final one, of course, was “the first Israeli.” The picture, a cactus.

For years on my trips to Israel I would ride through the countryside taking in the landscape absentmindedly, oblivious to the stories of the places I was passing. Now that I know more, it seems impossible to ignore the cacti, fig trees, and pomegranate trees that signify the entrances to destroyed Palestinian villages. Often times building walls remain nearby, if not whole buildings. When they are too obvious to ignore, they are labeled as old Roman ruins, with no acknowledgment at all of the continued lived experience of the indigenous Palestinian people.

Every time I arrive in Palestine, it takes me a few days to detox from the airport and the hours after. It takes a visit to my host family in Dheisheh refugee camp to remember that the cactus is not “the first Israeli”. It takes a free ride halfway from Ramallah to Haris (“But this is your work”/ “Yes, but you’re a friend to the Palestinian people, and money isn’t everything”) to overshadow the conversation in the airport taxi between two Americans going to study Torah in occupied land (“Everywhere you go you can dig an inch under the ground and find remnants of ancient Israel…”).

There are two competing realities of permanence here. I can only hope that the one based on presence, and not the one based on absence, will prevail.

A friend of mine asked me the other day how I see the situation here, whether I have a positive outlook on any of it. This friend has a public job with the Palestinian Authority in which people come to him every day with their problems and he can do nothing about them. He tells me it drives him crazy. He tells me he doesn’t want life to be a series of choices to kill or be killed, imprison or be imprisoned, make people afraid or be afraid. His son is in Israeli prison, and he is hoping he is on the list of 250 Fatah prisoners to be released in Olmert’s new plan. But what about the other thousands and thousands of prisoners? he asks. And what about those who are not Fatah? His wife tells me that their 3-year-old daughter, who has only known her brother in prison, has been dreaming of his release. She woke up a few mornings ago and said, “The soldiers opened the door and took his handcuffs off and he left, so why isn’t he home yet?”

So when this friend asked how I see the situation, whether I see any of it positively, it was hard to know how to answer. All I could think to say was what I usually say to that question, as far removed from his experience as I knew it was. I do not see much hope in the current situation, I told him, but it cannot continue forever. The idea that there can be a Jewish state and a democratic state at the same time is unsustainable, and unless Israel completely wipes out the Palestinian people, this idea will continue to be challenged until Zionism comes to an end. It will not happen soon, and it is too late for true justice in any case, but someday the state will adopt true democratic laws (if not practice); someday military occupation will come to an end; someday refugees will have the right to return; someday this contradiction of a democratic Jewish state will die.

I hope you are right, he responded, and I think you are right, but ultimately I am not looking for their end, I am just looking for our beginning.

Here’s hoping for beginnings and continuations grounded in presence in this land.

Commemorating the Nakba

Dear friends,

This week marked the 59th anniversary of the Nakba, the displacement and dispossesssion of hundreds of thousands of Palestinian people. Friends of mine all across the US engaged in Nakba Day commemorations, remembering the destruction of hundreds of villages and the painful fact that 3/4 of the Palestinian population are refugees even to this day.

We've been publishing photos of actions in Boston, Philadelphia, San Francisco, and Minneapolis throughout the week on a blog: questionisrael.blogspot.com. The culmination, for me, was today, when 50 of us went inside the "New England Celebrates Israel" event to commemorate the Nakba there. We were able to stand silently with banners, and stickers with names of villages, for about 5 minutes (much longer than we were expecting!). The statement from our group is below.

Again, please visit the blog for photos and links to more. A video will be ready in a few days as well.

questionisrael.blogspot.com

Lots of love,
Hannah


STATEMENT FROM OUR ORGANIZING COMMITTEE:

We are here today to commemorate the expulsion and dispossession of the Palestinian people from their homeland and to protest this celebration of Israel’s Independence Day. We stand here to remind those inside and those in our larger New England community that Israeli “independence” equals Palestinian Nakba, or catastrophe.

We are a diverse group of people who support the application of human rights for all people. We are painfully aware that the establishment of a Jewish state in 1948 led to the largest and most persistent refugee problem in the world. In 1948, 800,000 Palestinian people were driven from their homes in a process of ethnic cleansing that continues to this day.

Today, almost 60 years later, more than 6 million Palestinians still wait to return home. Three quarters of the Palestinian population are displaced. One out of every 3 refugees in the world is Palestinian. Many live in refugee camps. All are denied the right to return to their land simply because they are not Jewish.

The right of return for refugees is an international law that applies to all refugee populations in the world. The United Nations has reaffirmed this right specifically for Palestinian people every year since 1948, yet the Israeli government has consistently refused to implement this right. Billions of dollars of US aid give Israel little incentive to conform to international standards of law and justice.

Those of us who are Jewish say, “Not in our name!” The organized Jewish community that has planned this event does not speak for us.

As US taxpayers we say, “Not with our money!” The 15 million dollars PER DAY that the US government gives to Israel does not reflect our desires or our priorities.

As people who care about equality, justice, and human rights, we say, "Not on our watch!" Israel must respect international law, including the right of return for refugees.

We are here today to declare that Palestinian experience cannot be forgotten, that Palestinian history cannot be erased, that Palestinian voices cannot be silenced! Never again should this kind of catastrophe happen to any people in the world.

And we are here to let the organizers of this event know that they will never be able to celebrate the establishment of the state of Israel without protest until the Nakba is acknowledged and reparations are made.

The Search for 1948

Part 1:

“Where do you want to go?” asked the taxi driver, expecting to give me a short ride and collect a few shekels.

“Baqa’a,” I replied, “but it’s a bit of a project.”

The West Jerusalem neighborhood of Baqa’a is only a 10 minute drive from the place in East Jerusalem where we were, but time travel takes somewhat more imagination.

“I’m looking for a house from 1948,” I told him, and handed him a diagram of a house that looked similar to hundreds of other old houses in the Jerusalem area.

“Is it yours?” he asked.

“No, a friend’s.”

Only a few months ago I found out that a friend of mine in Boston, who I’d always known as Lebanese, was actually born in Jerusalem. In 1948, at the age of four, he and his family, along with 800,000 Palestinian people, were forced out of their home by pre-Israeli forces. They fled to Lebanon, where his father had lived before moving to Jerusalem 20 years earlier. Nobody in the family has been back to Palestine since 1948, so I asked my friend if he would like me to try to find his house. He gathered some information, including a few nearby landmarks and a diagram of the house, and I set off on my search.

This brings me back to Abed’s taxi, where I sat hoping he knew the neighborhoods well enough to help me. I had planned to seek out an older taxi driver, and possibly someone who spoke English so I could make sure to communicate every little detail I knew. Abed is a young guy who speaks very little English, but he seemed interested in and moved by the project, and immediately began to call all the older people he knew.

“Do you know where the Jordanian embassy was before 1948?” he would ask, as this was our major landmark.

“Yes,” one man told him, “but it wasn’t in Baqa’a.”

“No,” said a couple people, “there was barely a Jordan at that time. How could there be a Jordanian embassy?”

So we began to drive, looking for the other smaller landmarks, or for people who might recognize the name of my friend’s father. Abed would pull over next to every older person he saw (Palestinian or Israeli), and ask about the Ummah school, the Jordanian embassy, and the British army women’s headquarters. Some people were vaguely helpful, some not, and some would inform us in a slightly insulted way that they weren’t alive in 1948.

We left Baqa’a and crossed the street to another neighborhood that is still mostly Palestinian, thinking we would have a better chance of finding both people who wanted to help and people who could help. Not two minutes later, we passed an old man and Abed stopped. We got out of the car, said hello, and explained what we were doing. “You’re in luck,” replied the old man, “I know more about these neighborhoods than anyone else in the area.”

Before I knew it, his wife was serving me coffee in the middle of the street and the man was telling his wife and daughters to go ahead to the hospital because he would come in the car with us as long as Abed agreed to drive him to the hospital afterwards. Abed agreed, and we continued on our journey, this time with a new passenger.

We drove for about a half hour with little success, and then the man (whose name I never learned) suggested we stop at an old house on the corner. We knocked on the door, and an old Israeli man answered. He took one look at us and asked, “Are you looking for someone who used to live here?” as he opened the door and let us in. “You’re in luck,” he said, “I know more about these neighborhoods than anyone else in the area.”

So here I was inside a house with Abed the taxi driver, and two older men, one Palestinian and one Israeli, who said they knew everything about the area. They talked for a few minutes and argued amiably for a few more in a combination of Hebrew, Arabic, and English. The interaction had an air of pre-Zionism to it that is difficult to explain. The men were interacting like any two older men would, both trying to be helpful and both trying to prove what they knew. They used language of “Arab” and “Jew” instead of “Palestinian” and “Israeli”, which many people do, but it just seemed right in this situation. Like nationalism and the way it has played out had nothing to do with this simple human search for an old home.

I had started the trip too late, so by this time it was getting dark and I was running late for a meeting. We had gotten some information that might help us for next time, I had a few questions to go back to my friend with, and we took the name and phone number of the Israeli man so we could try again another day.

Part 2:

Two weeks later, the only day out of several that wasn’t pouring rain, I met Abed in Jerusalem. I had received more precise directions from my friend in Boston, including names of other people who lived and worked in the area and, most importantly, a photograph taken from the house in 1940.

Abed met me and told me he knew where the house was, that he had gone back there after our last search. I showed him the photograph and we drove towards the area where he thought the house was. We parked and began to walk around, holding up the photograph to each gate and entrance. We found one house that looked quite similar and currently has a huge construction project going on directly on top of it. The managers were Israeli, the workers Palestinian. We went in and asked the workers what they knew about the house, which wasn’t much. We were stopped on the way out by a manager. Abed explained in Hebrew that we were trying to find a house. The man
glanced at the photo and said, “Yes, this looks like the house.” Another manager came out and ordered us off the property. “This isn’t the house,” he said. “There was nothing here before 1948.”

We stood outside for a few minutes as Abed explained to me (as though explanation was needed) that the Israeli man felt threatened by us. “We need to find an Israeli to help us,” said Abed. “They think you and I are here to claim the house because I’m Arab and you have papers in your hand. They don’t know we’re only here to look and photograph.”

“We should take the house,” I replied, only half joking.

By that time we had realized this was probably not the house we were looking for. The gate looked the same but we couldn’t figure out the angles in the photograph and it just didn’t seem right. Another older Israeli man on the street asked if he could help. Abed explained that we were searching for a house, and the man joined us for the next 20 minutes as we walked around the neighborhood. We kept finding similar sights, but none of them fit together right. Finally he asked, “Are you sure the house is in the German Colony?”

“No,” I replied, “it’s in Baqa’a.”

Apparently the older Israeli man who had helped us the first time had convinced Abed to come to this area. So we got back into the car and headed back up to his house. He answered the door and I shared all my new information with him. It’s near the Trans-Jordanian consulate, I told him, not the Jordanian embassy. There’s a road that goes down from the main street towards their house. Well, these two pieces of information were all he needed. He followed me out to the street, pointed, and said, “Go two more traffic lights. The Allenby building is probably what you mean, and
that’s on your left. There’s a street that goes down from there on the right.”

Something felt right about this, so I got back in the car excitedly and we drove those two blocks, turned right, and got out and started walking. The streets were different than they were described to me, and the building supposedly on the corner wasn’t there. But sure enough, after a few minutes of meandering, I found myself in front of a large building that was in the background of the photo I was holding. I positioned myself exactly at the angle that the photo was taken from, and looked around. One street continued to go down, so I took it. To my right was a synagogue that I guessed was either my friend’s property or his neighbor’s. I hoped it was
not his, that his house had not been completely destroyed and replaced by a synagogue.

We passed the synagogue and stopped in front of the gate to the next house. This was it. Different from the photo, but with the same dimensions, and seemingly the right distance from the larger building up the street. We entered and found ourselves on the stone path described in the e-mail I had in my hand from my friend’s older brother:

“…continue along the stone-paved path… some 8 meters, you reach the level of the house… Move some 10 more meters and you will have the six stone steps (to the left) that lead up to the veranda and you will then be facing the main door, entrance to the house.”

I was facing the main door, the entrance to the house. I wanted to knock on the door, but wanted to take in as much as possible first. I walked around the house, wondering which plants and trees had been there when my friend lived there and which were new.

Finally Abed knocked. No answer. We waited a few minutes and then left. I came back about five minutes later to photograph more and the door to the house was open.

I went to the entrance, knocked, and said “hello?” A man appeared.

“Do you speak English?” I asked.

“A little,” he replied, which turned out to mean a lot.

“My name is Hannah, I’m from the United States, and I have a friend who I think used to live in this house before 1948. Can I come in and look?”

He seemed hesitant but let me in. I asked if I could photograph and he was slightly more hesitant, but again agreed. He asked if I was sure this was the house, and I told him about the description of the path, stairs, and entrance. I asked how long he’d lived there, and he told me only a couple years. He rents the place from a French Israeli man who has owned it for about five years. Before that, the building was owned by a Moroccan Israeli family.

“Since 1948?” I asked.

“Well, the Israeli government probably had it first and then gave it to them, but yes, for a long time.”

I kept photographing. I was a bit hesitant to have any meaningful conversation with him because I was afraid it might spoil my ability to be filming. As I was getting ready to leave, though, he began a conversation:

“The reason I let you in,” he told me, “is that one time my sister went back to Morocco to find our family house. The man currently living there wouldn’t let her in. She cried and cried, and finally he let her in, but he wouldn’t let her photograph. This is why I let you in and let you photograph.”

“Do you want to return to Morocco?” I asked.

“No,” he said, almost laughing at the suggestion.

“If the situation changed?”

“No, Morocco is for the Moroccans and Israel is for the Israelis.”

“What about the Palestinians?”

“We were here first,” he said, “thousands of years ago. This is our land, it says so in the bible.” I had noticed all the torahs and other religious texts in the house, so it did not surprise me that he was religious.

“Sixty years ago my friend was living here,” I said.

“History doesn’t start in 1948,” he answered.

There was no use arguing with religion. We said an awkward goodbye (what I would usually say when someone has let me into his house would be “thank you,” but it didn’t seem right in this situation), and I left.

My search for 1948 was over, and amazingly, it was a success. As I returned to East Jerusalem with Abed, I thought about how many people we had involved in this project, and how important a project it is, both on personal and national levels. I thought about some of those people, and how their names suited the story perfectly:

The sweet and helpful taxi driver is Abed, “one who serves.”

The man currently living in my friend’s house is named Israel.

The old Israeli man who helped us find the house is named Shalom.

Perhaps if more people named Shalom helped refugees find their homes, the word “peace” would have true meaning.

the blood of the people

Just a quick note about the incredibly sad internal Palestinian violence... and a hopeful response. I probably don't know more about the fighting than you all do, because Gaza is just as inaccessible from the West Bank as from the US, where most of you are. Perhaps I hear news with less sensationalism and more emotion, though - people here are really sad and frustrated. So yesterday, at 10 am, I got a call that there would be a demonstration and human chain in Ramallah at 11. I was already in Ramallah, so I decided to go, thinking it would be tiny.

The event was organized by the Farmers' Union and the idea was to include farmers and workers in the political process and involve people in a grassroots process to take back Palestine from those who seek power at the expense of the people. I arrived and saw hundreds of women and men of all ages, girls from school groups, etc.

We began at the parliament building (Hamas-controlled) and the idea was to make a human chain to the PA headquarters (Fatah-controlled). We didn't quite reach it, but we did reach to the center of town, after which time the crowd just started marching and chanting.

"Ya Haniye, w ya rais, dam ilshab mush rhiis" (Hey Haniyeh, and hey president [Abbas], the blood of the people isn't cheap)

"Wahde wahde wataniye, Fatah, Hamas w'shiuiye" (one one nation, Fatah, Hamas, and the communists)

We marched to the PA headquarters and went inside. The guards in their uniforms and guns shook people's hands as we walked by and let us in without protest. I said to a friend, "This is amazing that they're just letting us in."

"They have to," he replied, "We elected them, we put them there." Can you imagine that happening in the US? A group of people marching to the Whitehouse and the guards letting us in...

I felt a little strange going as an international, since I think there's enough foreign meddling in (and foreign reasons for) the internal violence. But as soon as I arrived it was clear it was Palestinian-led, I was one of only a few internationals, and several people thanked me for being there with them. In that moment, being there felt like solidarity. And like an important story to share.

There was tons of press there, but I worry that it was all Arab press. I'm curious if it got any Western press.

One Year Ago

January 25, 2007

One Year Ago

One year ago today, I was walking around Gaza City in the midst of the excitement of the first Palestinian parliamentary elections in 10 years. Flags of all colors and political parties were waving on roofs of houses, electric wires at polling places, hoods of cars, and backs of donkeys. People were frustrated by the fact that their presidential elections the prior year had brought no tangible results since the Israeli government refused to negotiate with Abu Mazen (Mahmoud Abbas), but this frustration did not translate into a total disillusionment of the political process at large. In fact, voter turnout was about 75% even despite all the Israeli restrictions on movement, and on the streets the turnout seemed even higher. Every child of every age would tell me who she or he wanted to vote for, generally following their parents’ beliefs but not always. In Dheisheh refugee camp, the Fatah office was around the corner from the Hamas office, which was right next to the PFLP (leftist communist party) office, and everyone seemed to get along just fine.

We had traveled down to the Rafah border crossing with Egypt as the election results started to come in. We walked along the block of houses that had been demolished in the previous few years, including the house Rachel Corrie was murdered in front of as she tried to protect it from demolition. We visited a relative of a friend in the Palestinian police, who told us initial results showed Fatah ahead. They were probably looking at local results. By the end of the night we all knew Hamas had won a huge parliamentary victory, and people were somewhat stunned, with some worried and others hopeful that this might bring necessary change. Only Hamas is seen to stand up for our rights, some said, only Hamas can take care of our internal affairs and improve our economy, and only Hamas can truly negotiate a solution with Israel.

We all know what happened after that. Israel and the West (led by the United States) refused to give the government half a chance to function, and Hamas does not have enough cohesion or support to function despite boycotts and sanctions applied by the world, not to mention Israel’s theft of millions of dollars of Palestinian tax money. In the past year, Israel has repeatedly bombed Gaza, including the power grid that supplies all the water for the region. Gaza is now facing not only a political crisis, but a humanitarian crisis the likes of which have never before been seen there.

One year ago, Palestinian government workers (public officials, social service workers, teachers and others) were making a total of 150 million US dollars each month. Most have not been paid in more than 10 months now, and those who have been paid have only received small symbolic amounts every few months or so. Last summer, at about the 5 month mark, people were incredibly frustrated, angry, and depressed. Now it seems people have gotten used to it. They have already adjusted to the newest manifestation of occupation: no salaries for their work.

One year ago, the Palestinian people elected 132 legislators. Today 41 of them sit in Israeli prisons, the vast majority arrested since their election last year and charged with being members of illegal organizations. Most are Hamas, but according to the Israeli military orders that govern the West Bank and Gaza, it is actually illegal to be a member of ANY political party, including Hamas, Fatah, PFLP, and others. How anyone can use the words “Palestinian” and “authority” together is beyond me.

One year ago, more than 630 Palestinian and 1200 Lebanese people were alive who have since been killed directly by the Israeli military, not to mention countless others dying as a result of ongoing policies of war and occupation.

One year ago, Dunya and I began the Re-Plugged program of Birthright Unplugged, taking Palestinian children from refugee camps to Jerusalem, the sea, and the villages their grandparents were expelled from and fled in 1948. Last week we completed our third Re-Plugged trip with 25 children from Balata refugee camp in Nablus. The trip continues to be beautiful, the reasons for it tragic.

As we were crossing through Huwara checkpoint last week, returning the children to their homes, one child asked me which villages we’ll visit on our next trip from Balata. I told her we do one trip from each camp and that in the summer we’ll be working with children from Jenin. She said, “Inshallah [God-willing] you’ll return to Balata and do another trip from here in the future.”

“Inshallah,” I replied, “we’ll be able to take every child from Palestine on a similar trip.”

“Inshallah,” said another child, “there will be the right of return.”

I looked at him and smiled though I wanted to cry, and quietly said “inshallah.” Of course that’s the reason we do this program, of course that is what we are trying to communicate to the world, and that is usually the way I describe the program to others. But somehow in this moment, crossing through the checkpoint, I was just not thinking on the macro level. But 10-year-old Mansour was. He smiled at me knowingly and continued walking through the turnstyles and fences towards the taxi that would take him back to the camp. I wonder if and when he will leave Nablus again.

One year ago we were in the midst of the 58^th year of Israeli occupation of Palestine. Now we are in the 59^th. I truly hope that when 10-year-old Mansour has a 10-year-old of his own, that he will have no reason to remember last week’s trip with us. This looks no more likely this year than last. I wonder what I might say one year from now.

Back in Palestine

I’ve been back in Palestine for two weeks now, though it seems much longer. We’ve already finished one Unplugged trip, I’ve visited many friends, and now we’re preparing for our Re-Plugged trip. We’ll be taking 20 girls and boys from Balata refugee camp in Nablus to visit Jerusalem, the sea, and the villages their grandparents were expelled from in 1948.

The trip starts the day after a new Israeli law is supposed to take effect. Many of you know that there is already a system of apartheid in place for many of the daily functions in the West Bank (my South African friends insist that the situation here is way beyond apartheid and worse than apartheid ever was, but there are still definite similarities). Israeli citizens and people with Jerusalem ID have yellow license plates, and Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza have green license plates. The new law states that even within the West Bank, Palestinian people with West Bank ID will not be allowed in any yellow-plated vehicles. Their relatives from Jerusalem will not be able to drive them around, even in their own villages. In response, a number of Israeli and international people are organizing “freedom rides” this Friday, where they will use yellow-plated cars to drive around as many Palestinian people as possible on their way to the weekly demonstration against the wall in Bil’in village. Even the UN, which generally does nothing more here than produce reports and maps, has stated that they will not comply with the new law. It remains to be seen whether it will be enforced, and whether it will affect us or not as we try to travel with the children.

It’s the work with children here that gives me inspiration. And I’ve been lucky enough to experience a few amazing examples of it in the past week. On Friday I went to the opening of an exhibit at the Freedom Theatre in Jenin refugee camp. The Freedom Theatre was originally opened by Arna Mer Khamis (the film “Arna’s Children” is about this and what happened to the children as they grew older). Arna’s son Juliano, who made the film, has re-opened the theatre and it serves as a cultural and artistic center for the camp. The exhibit is art about Palestine and Lebanon by the children and by older Palestinian and international artists. The place was packed as the program began, with children sitting on top of each other and in the aisles to make room for all the guests who had come. We were Palestinian, Israeli, and international, people from the camp and people from Ramallah and other cities. Juliano’s first thanks were to the Al Aqsa Martyr’s Brigade, Islamic Jihad, Hamas, Fatah, and other militant and political groups for their support of the theatre. In the atmosphere of tension between Fatah and Hamas, exaggerated by the media but nonetheless very present, it was quite fascinating to see a person with Jewish Israeli and Palestinian heritage standing on the stage welcoming fighters from different factions and Israelis to the same location. Zakaria Zubeidi, head of Jenin’s Al Aqsa Martyr’s Brigade and one of “Arna’s children”, came out of hiding for the day to shake each person’s hand, stand on stage with Juliano, and give a speech. Young girls read poetry, a Palestinian musical group from Haifa performed, people with “security” written on their shirts danced and clapped and laughed. The Brazilian ambassador came and was recognized. It was a good time, and different than any crowd I’ve experienced at any other event.

The next day I attended a screening of 3-5 minute films made by children from Dheisheh and Aida refugee camps in Bethlehem. A group from the US had spent one week with them in a digital storytelling workshop, and the result were these incredible films that the children produced by themselves – they wrote the script and chose photos and music to go with it. Many of the films were about friends and loved ones killed or imprisoned by the Israeli army, or about their villages that they long to return to, or even about their own injuries. One boy, Miras, made a film about being shot just last month in an incident that made international press. He was playing with cousins on his porch and Israeli army snipers opened fire on them. Miras was shot in the stomach. I had read about it when it happened but hadn’t read about his recovery, so it was great to see him there, and to see him already reflecting about it and able to express himself through this medium.

I’ll try to write again after our Re-Plugged trip. I realize I’ve written about a few specific events here without any general analysis. This is partly because the situation does not seem appreciably different than when I was last here – or I should probably say that things are getting worse at a pace that Palestinian people are used to, rather than at the rapid pace they were declining last summer. It’s partly because I’ve been caught up in the day to day with little time to reflect. It’s partly because I haven’t been reading the news and hear only bits and pieces of stories about Fatah and Hamas forming a unity government, Condoleezza Rice’s visit and Palestinian protests against it, Bush bombing Somalia, etc.

So this is just a glimpse of what I’ve been up to. Next time I hope to include a bit more of what I’ve been thinking, once I figure it out myself.