Palestine - April 14-27
As always, I'm late.
This trip was simply so fascinating and interesting that I really have no desire or impulse to talk about it. Not my usual response, I know, but there's just so much I don't know how to describe. We also went only to the West Bank, and were unable to get into Gaza despite having ridiculous contacts. Without seeing Gaza, I'd really rather not generalize.
So instead, here are a bunch of pictures with captions:
On the bus from Bethlehem to Ramallah on the first day, we were interrupted by a herd of sheep led by a few shepherds. Shepherds in Bethlehem...
Graffiti is often disturbing but sometimes just funny. This one roughly translates to "felafel is the restaurant of peace".
Dr. Saad Eddin Ibrahim (prominent Arab sociologist, one of the most important democracy advocates in the Middle East, organizer of this trip) and the President of the Palestinian Legislative Council, Dr. Aziz Dwiek. The PLC was our first stop. Notice the Qur'anic verse on the big PLC sign, which roughly translates to "And you shall determine your affairs through mutual consultation".
With leaders of a refugee camp in the West Bank. For some reason, we were late to every visit to a refugee camp, prompting many bitter jokes about "who cares about an hour here and there, we've been waiting 58 years".
Refugee kids waving to us as our bus drives away
A view from Jerusalem. You can see the Wall from a distance as it traverses the countryside.
Our group in the Palestinian municipality services building, sort of like city hall. This is where Palestinians go for licenses, permits, to register for different things, etc. We were here to meet with various NGOs.
Student Council elections at Birzeit University, the oldest Palestinian university. This is for student council elections, and yet they inspire such fervor. Palestinians are hungry for democracy. Almost makes you forget the key distinction between campaigns and democracy, which roughly translates to: yelling vs. compromise.
Blood on the walls after Israeli troops fired into a Palestinian organization's office and killed several people. As a memorial, they kept the blood on the walls and put up little papers with their names and ages and dates of death. Some Palestinian organizations deal with so much crap and yet manage to be surprisingly effective and professional. Made it hard to go back to Egypt, which has no excuse whatsoever for its shocking dysfunction.
On top of Jerusalem forest, which is sort of a mountain. Every time a Jew is born in Jerusalem, Israel plants a tree in the Jerusalem forest.
On the left is Shadi Zmorrod, a Palestinian who runs theater workshops and directs plays and circuses with children in conflict-ridden zones. If the key to peace is better communication, it's important to explore every form
of expression. He's run workshops with kids from Palestine-Israel, India-Pakistan, Greece-Turkey, etc. and is now putting together a Palestinian circus. One more example of how some Palestinians deal with so much hardship in their lives but are often able to do so much. Perhaps being so aware of death has made them know the importance of making the most of life. Part of that is knowing the importance of hospitality: he did so much for us, showing us around, talking with us, and spending time with us...
In the middle is Ginga, an American girl, daughter of missionaries, who grew up in the West Bank and speaks flawless Arabic. She somehow absorbed the best of Arab hospitality. I plan to be in touch with both of them for a long time.
"Palestinian Juggling." With rocks.
From Jericho in the West Bank, we rented bikes and tried to bike to a nearby Israeli settlement. We went around this roadblock and were caught by the Israeli army, and told to turn around. Before leaving, we took a few pictures by the roadblock, which is actually just a pile of dirt. Meanwhile, they drove back and forth a few times to keep an eye on us. So yes, we tried to get to a settlement but were caught by the Israeli army.
I just like this picture. Michelle on the left, Nate on the right. I miss parks.
In the West Bank town of Hebron, which has had problems of violence between Palestinians and Israeli settlers, especially since the Second Intifada started. The Israeli army built this fence above the marketplace to protect it from settler harrassment. Fadi, a friend of Ginga's who gave us a great tour of Hebron (more overwhelming Arab hospitality), is pointing to some of the heavy rocks that settlers tried to throw onto the marketplace.
This trip was simply so fascinating and interesting that I really have no desire or impulse to talk about it. Not my usual response, I know, but there's just so much I don't know how to describe. We also went only to the West Bank, and were unable to get into Gaza despite having ridiculous contacts. Without seeing Gaza, I'd really rather not generalize.
So instead, here are a bunch of pictures with captions:
On the bus from Bethlehem to Ramallah on the first day, we were interrupted by a herd of sheep led by a few shepherds. Shepherds in Bethlehem...
Graffiti is often disturbing but sometimes just funny. This one roughly translates to "felafel is the restaurant of peace".
Dr. Saad Eddin Ibrahim (prominent Arab sociologist, one of the most important democracy advocates in the Middle East, organizer of this trip) and the President of the Palestinian Legislative Council, Dr. Aziz Dwiek. The PLC was our first stop. Notice the Qur'anic verse on the big PLC sign, which roughly translates to "And you shall determine your affairs through mutual consultation".
With leaders of a refugee camp in the West Bank. For some reason, we were late to every visit to a refugee camp, prompting many bitter jokes about "who cares about an hour here and there, we've been waiting 58 years".
Refugee kids waving to us as our bus drives away
A view from Jerusalem. You can see the Wall from a distance as it traverses the countryside.
Our group in the Palestinian municipality services building, sort of like city hall. This is where Palestinians go for licenses, permits, to register for different things, etc. We were here to meet with various NGOs.
Student Council elections at Birzeit University, the oldest Palestinian university. This is for student council elections, and yet they inspire such fervor. Palestinians are hungry for democracy. Almost makes you forget the key distinction between campaigns and democracy, which roughly translates to: yelling vs. compromise.
Blood on the walls after Israeli troops fired into a Palestinian organization's office and killed several people. As a memorial, they kept the blood on the walls and put up little papers with their names and ages and dates of death. Some Palestinian organizations deal with so much crap and yet manage to be surprisingly effective and professional. Made it hard to go back to Egypt, which has no excuse whatsoever for its shocking dysfunction.
On top of Jerusalem forest, which is sort of a mountain. Every time a Jew is born in Jerusalem, Israel plants a tree in the Jerusalem forest.
On the left is Shadi Zmorrod, a Palestinian who runs theater workshops and directs plays and circuses with children in conflict-ridden zones. If the key to peace is better communication, it's important to explore every form
of expression. He's run workshops with kids from Palestine-Israel, India-Pakistan, Greece-Turkey, etc. and is now putting together a Palestinian circus. One more example of how some Palestinians deal with so much hardship in their lives but are often able to do so much. Perhaps being so aware of death has made them know the importance of making the most of life. Part of that is knowing the importance of hospitality: he did so much for us, showing us around, talking with us, and spending time with us...
In the middle is Ginga, an American girl, daughter of missionaries, who grew up in the West Bank and speaks flawless Arabic. She somehow absorbed the best of Arab hospitality. I plan to be in touch with both of them for a long time.
"Palestinian Juggling." With rocks.
From Jericho in the West Bank, we rented bikes and tried to bike to a nearby Israeli settlement. We went around this roadblock and were caught by the Israeli army, and told to turn around. Before leaving, we took a few pictures by the roadblock, which is actually just a pile of dirt. Meanwhile, they drove back and forth a few times to keep an eye on us. So yes, we tried to get to a settlement but were caught by the Israeli army.
I just like this picture. Michelle on the left, Nate on the right. I miss parks.
In the West Bank town of Hebron, which has had problems of violence between Palestinians and Israeli settlers, especially since the Second Intifada started. The Israeli army built this fence above the marketplace to protect it from settler harrassment. Fadi, a friend of Ginga's who gave us a great tour of Hebron (more overwhelming Arab hospitality), is pointing to some of the heavy rocks that settlers tried to throw onto the marketplace.
3 Comments:
Hey Aatif, really interesting post!
Yeah, good post.
Here is a question I keep wondering about:
What makes a refugee a "refugee"?
A great number of Palestinians are habitually referred to as refugees. Most of them are refugees because their families fled from the war of 1948, as far as I understand. I intentionally use the word "families" because people who have not seen their ancestral land and were born many years after (i.e. some of those kids in your pictures more than 50 years after the war) are still referred to as refugees.
So, my question is this. When does a person stop being a refugee? I was a refugee eight years ago but it would be inappropriate to call me one right now. Clearly, my example points to a very narrow definition of a "refugee".
On the other end, there is the least restrictive definition that most of the Middle East seems to support. If children in your pictures are refugees then even individual's lifetime is not the limit. But then, aren't I a refugee from ... Egypt? As you know, at least some of my ancestors had to flee about two thousand years ago under somewhat strained circumstances.
Alternatively, you can define a refugee by their "usettled state of existence on land different from that of their ancestors". Which is all well and good, but you run into problems. Among other things, it seems very hard to assign blame based on this definition. In particular, people's existence at some point stops being "unsetted" due to the fact that they don't live on their old land but because the new land refuses to inegrate them.
Also, this definition leads to certain counterintuitive conclusions. For example, aren't all Jews, by that definition, refugees for 95% the past 1800 years?
Something to think about.
Hey Aatif,
Your caption about the Jerusalem Forest didn't quite sound right to me. The Forest was planted by the Jewish National Fund, an NGO which predates the State by about 50 years. The trees are all "given" by private donors, not by "Israel".
I asked my brother-in-law and he said that there was a time when municipalities used to "give" trees to the JNF every time a baby (Jewish or otherwise) was born in their city. So for example when he was born in Haifa, a tree was donated to the JNF -- but when I was born, in Jerusalem, ten years later, there was no tree (I do remember, on the other hand, plant-a-tree-drives every spring when I was in elementary school in the US.) The point is, though, that the trees have nothing to do with Jewish population growth in Jerusalem. So the explanation your guide gave you was either a misunderstanding or a bit of a lie.
By the way, the picture taken from just inside the Old City walls, with the basketball court in the foreground, was taken half a block up the road from the house where I was born.
H
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