Creative Adaptations to Oppressive Conditions--Examples of Remarkable NGOs in the West Bank

Naseer's homeless doors project; these are doors gathered from demoilshed homes by IDF soldiers over the past 8 years. He invites Nablusi community members to come and paint them any way they like.. These doors are painted by children and adults. Sometimes he reinstalls them in rebuilt homes. They are mostly opportunities for community members to express something about their experience living under occupation.

Among the many things that amazed me about being with Palestinian people in the West Bank is their amazing resilience and creativity in the face of oppressive, harsh and challenging circumstances. These circumstances appear to differ from week to week, month to month, and in the case of particular years when they faced excessive force and violence during the second intifada (years 2000-2003). One thing I heard over and over is that the punishment and force they experience either at the checkpoints or at demonstrations quite simply depends on the "mood of the soldiers." What I found in many conversations, observations, and interactions with Palestinians from the West Bank is their determination not only to survive (and survival is the operative word here), but also their desire to build some kind of viable society even while they feel they're under attack. What I mean by being under attack is this: many Palestinians feel the occupation leaves them in a state of constant insecurity--they have no state, no borders, no control over their lives. Everything is governed by Israeli occupation  (the flow of goods, the flow of people, their ability to build, to expand, to have contact with the outside world, their ability to represent themselves and their interests, their ability to plan for their future, their ability to protect themselves and their children from violence, and their ability to provide resources for a viable state system that ensures a kind of continous history.) I will probably repeat this same idea while I continue to digest this trip and write this blog. But I could hear this refrain over and over--stated perhaps differently, but unequivocally and in some kind of unison: The occupation (from 1948 Nakba (the catastrophe) to the the 1967 Naksa (the set back) determines everything about the past, present and future of Palestinian life. They seem themselves as a people controlled by a state that both denies their existence and wants to erase their existence. This has a kind of historical resonance, doesn't it? 

Faced with this kind of marginalizing existence, I want to talk about the positive things I observed in the ways that the people of Palestine are coping. Because, even while I found myself dismayed, troubled and outraged at how they're living with the occupation, I also found their ability to adapt and innovate remarkable and inspiring. One example of this was when we went to the West Bank city of Nablus in the northern part of the West Bank. Nablus is an old city and quite large. It's a city which was historically known for its olive production---soap and olive oil, but especially soap. We got a tour of the city from both the old quarry high on a hillside, as well as from down in the oldest section of the city, with a man named Naseer Arafat (no relation to the former chairman of the PLO and the first president of the Palestinian Authority). Naseer is an architect and cultural preservationist by profession so he knows a lot about the city, and the many hidden treasures within it. He also knows a lot about what happened to Nablus under the occupation. He told us that in 2007, Nablus had 307 days under curfew; in 2002 they were under curfew almost entirely the whole year. What that means is that the Israeli military literally camped out in the city, monitored people's movements, and allowed no cars and people in and out of the checkpoint that leads into the city without permission. It also meant that people were severely restricted inside the city and were allowed three hours a week to go out and do their shopping. He described this in a way that seemed hard to believe, because we saw bustling streets and commerce all over the town. But he said the checkpoint had only been opened recently and people felt like they could breathe again. (interesting article featuring Naseer: http://electronicintifada.net/content/breathing-life-nablus/5693).

Outside Naseer's office in the old city of Nablus. These doors he's collected from demolished Palestinian homes for his door project.

Curfews are a regular part of Nablus life for two important reasons; they've been a stronghold of resistance both against the occupation and against the settlers who have attacked the surrounding villages around Nablus in provocation for taking land and claiming some kind of biblical rights to it. The city also contains one of several Jewish holy sites. "Joseph's tomb" which settlers often aggressively seek out and invade often in large numbers at night with the escort of IDF soldiers--assuming it is their right to worship there even if it means trampling on Palestinian rights and land. This is how the settlers are not to be underestimated. In a way, they're doing the dirty work of provoking conflict, that almost always seems protected by the Israeli military, which then becomes a kind of pretext for further occupation and control of Palesitnian land through military, road blocks, and inevitably the Separation Wall which imprisons Palestinians on their own land and also breaks up the Palestinian community into enclaves or bantustans. I'll post a map later--but the settler/colonizer paradigm is so similar to what happened to Native Americans! 

Anyway, back to Nasser and the great work he's doing. Because Nasser is an architect, he's been instrumental in preserving buildings in the old city, rebuilding areas of Nablus which have been demolished by the Israeli military during its curfews and military incursions, as well as for example discovering historical links between particular eras and construction. He gave us a slide show in which he traced the many people who traveled and settled Nablus --including the Canaanites, the Romans, who left their architectural legacy here before the more recent Jewish/Arab populations. He also told us about the Samaritans (the oldest known Jewish community continuously living in Palestine). The Samaritans see themselves as the original Jews of the tribes of Israel and though there are only about 300 of them living in the Nablus area, Nasser described that they were on good terms with the Muslim/Arab community. They have both attempted to remain neutral and at times helped to mediate conflict in Nablus. I asked Nasser a few questions, and he generously answered. I continue to be fascninated by this community. For more about them, I recommend starting with these articles: http://www.livius.org/saa-san/samaria/samaritans.htm; http://www.zajel.org/article_view.asp?newsID=4429&cat=18. They have a unique position in Israeli society---and they reject many aspects of modern Judaism, seeing the faith having been altered by Jews in diaspora and those seeking a Zionist reinterpretation of it in the modern state of Israel.

Naseer shows us around his cultural heritage center and points out th

e old soap factory contained within it.

Nasseer's work seems encompass two areas--working on cultural preservation and renovation within the city, and also working to provide cultural outlets for Palestinians living under occupation. His family used to run an olive soap-making factory in Nablus (at one point there were around 35 of them), today there are only a handful, and he has turned the soapmaking factory which is in the heart of the old city of Nablus into a cultural museum and art center. His center has been attacked and bombed four times by the IDF soldiers because he is a high-profile person in Nablus. He has rebuilt it each time, and has tried to keep it open as a cultural center. The last demolition, after which he rebuilt his office, he kept the original door post-destruction (see below), in order to show people what happens to Palestinian doors in a regular way. He also kept the sign in the old city that has been shot at by IDF soldiers (see also below). The Cultural Center which was his father/grandfather's old soap factory shows all the old tools for making soap. There is an underground well (I am not sure it is a well--some kind of storage area for the oil which is then mixed and cooked with water and a sodium compound. See pictures below.

Inside one of Nablus's few remaining and still functioning Turkish baths.

The famous knafe maker of Nablus who boasted the Guiness Book of World Records largest tray of Knafe after the Israeli curfew of 307 days was lifted in Nablus!

Because he is a historian of the old city, and his work as a cultural preservationist, it is, by necessity, political. He identifies all the ways that the different cultural influences have passed through this ancient city--the Canaanites, the Romans, the Jews (and especially the Samaritan Jews who only recognize the first five books of the Bible as legitimate), the Muslim Arabs, the Seljuks, the Ottomans, and within the last millenia, and a half,-the Arab community that largely resides there today--Palestinians. In addition to giving us the view of the entire city from a point where the Romans used to quarry for stone (and which is below an Israeli military base high in the mountains) he pointed out the religious sites to us--the churches, mosques, the mountain where the Samaritans gather for the sacrifice, even the Turkish baths left over from Ottoman times. He doesn't seem to privelege any group, but rather is interested in the idea of Nablus as a cultural nexus, and the ways that his job as cultural preservationist is to acknowledge all these influences, and to resist attempts to erase or homogenize that history. He took us to the old mosque in town, where he told us he had done some refurbishing of it with the community's help. Naseer was clearly a well-respected figure in the community. Everyone in the old city, the souk knew him, and greeted him warmly. At the end of the day, he took us to Nablus's famous knafe factory (knafe is a kind of Palestinian struedel made with cheese and syrup and it's delicious). After the curfew was lifted, Nablus boasted the largest tray of knafe in the world. Here is the famous knafe-maker of Nablus! (see above).

One of the panels of a door painted by a child.

Naseer was a delightful man. He was so warm and good humored, and spoke about the resilience of the Nablusi community over and over again. He made jokes, but also spoke in serious tones about what the occupation has done to traumatize members of this community. He told us about his youngest child, a son, now aged five, whose first word even before "mamma" and "baba" was "tank." He said, his child was raised in the atmosphere of occupation and it was only recently that he could sleep with the light off and without the plastic pistols he had surrounding his bed. "The trauma of occupation, the violence, home demolitions, the gunfire,"he told us, "that has scarred us, and left an indelible mark on our children. This is why they need art--to help them process and release this pain." Naseer showed us the ceramic studio in the Cultural Heritage Center where he holds classes for children and adults throughout the year. He also has a library within the cultural center for kids and adults. Anyone can come and use books, read there, take books out. He's always looking for book donations as well. The art projects and classes he makes available for people are very popular--he holds classes on a regular basis, and inside the center he had an art project hanging up that was a collaboration between Stavanger, Norway and Nablus, Palestine artists (Stavanger is Nablus's sister city). This kind of international collaboration around art--is something I wish we could do more of with Palestinians. "The people, young and old of Nablus, come and make art here," he says, "because it helps us all remember our humanity, remember our stories, find our lives."

Eating Bullets--A West Bank Artist Turns Weapons into Food for Thought

A case from a 1948 British Mandate shell used on the Palestinian
population in 1948 which has been turned into a flower.

One of the afternoons we were in Ramallah, our group happened upon an art exhibit by a local Palestinian artist who had done a rather daring thing: he's been collecting  Israeli weapons that have been used against the local Palestinian population in the West Bank (his home town is Bilin) over the past four decades of the occupation and has amassed a critical cache of the stuff.  But Ibrahim  (I wont disclose his full name) doesn't have any intention of using the weapons for harming people or property. He's an artist with a mission. He's making art pieces/installations with the thousands of Israeli (and most of them manufactured in the USA) weapons he has found on the ground in a number of West Bank towns and villages that have been particularly hard-hit since the First and Second Intifada (1987-2003). The art exhibit was a powerful reminder of how much U.S.-made and Israeli-deployed weapons are a part of the daily lives of Palestinians. One of the exhibits below I saw was a food display basket (such as you see in a bakery or produce market) filled with tear gas bombs, deafening bombs, etc. This is no joke. Palestinians are fed a regular diet of death, destruction and weapons, particularly when they protest the repressive conditions under which they live. Ibrahim is from Bilin, a village that has been particularly, as well as harshly, affected by the occupation. This village has experienced some of the most dramatic deployment of Israeli shells, grenades, tear gas because of the regular protests against the building of the Israeli Separation Wall and the Bilin Village land that was taken in order to build it.

Palestine ensconced in shells. 

Add caption

Add caption

The artist Ibrahim, speaking about his work. Notice the deep
indent in his forehead--an injury sustained by an IDF soldier shooting a tear gas cannister at him at very short range (less than 15 ft.)

Ibrahim's goal is to collect the weapons, shells, grenade pins, and casings and show just how much a regular diet of weapons Palestinian people are forced to cosume at the hands of the Israeli occupation. He is also a journalist and as such is keeping a log of the numbers of weapons deployed against civilians who protest the conditions of occupation. He told those of us who asked questions that he has been injured 83 times in both in the process of protesting the demolition of homes, land confiscations, and in the process of actually collecting these weapons; some at the hands of Israeli IDF soldiers shooting at him, and other times, as a consequence of collecting the weaponry off the ground. He has been accused of "terrorism" for collecting these weapons, even though he also stated that he does not ever intend to use them except to make his art. 


Ibrahim is a young, intense young man. It's not hard to notice the deep indent in his forehead where an Israeli shot a tear gas canister at close range. Although the weapon caused damage, he was lucky. Unlike the American activist, Tristan Anderson, who was shot by a tear gas cannister at close range in the town of Nilin, West Bank, where he was part of an international solidarity delegation in 2009 and was severely injured and sustained long-term head injuries. He's from Oakland, and as far as I know his case is still pending in Israeli court (nearly two years later) and he's severely impaired. 

'Ibrahim's artwork is very moving--and it's intended to shock you because it's really about the devastating reality of Palestinian life--that culture, art, all the things we take for granted, are rendered nearly impossible by the violence and militarization of the occupation. Palestinians are shot at, bombed, have their houses demolished, are arrested, beaten, and when they try to protest, are subjected to bombs that smoke, smell, deafen, and make a person cry. They are weapons intended to do the same thing the wall does---to render Palestinian civil society--including the act of resistance and protest--impossible if not difficult. There are weekly protests all over the West Bank to protest checkpoints, land confiscations, settler roads, settlements, and road blocks, and the wall and each protest is routinely and regularly met with Israeli IDF soldiers bearing weapons (almost all are made in the USA). This is a man who is trying to make art from the resources of occupation. He has been accused by the Israeli of being a "terrorist" because he has a large collection of these spent weapons, but he states unequivocally that he is an artist and journalist and his real mission is to document the different kinds of deadly weapons that are used against the Palestinians under occupation and to categorize, quantify, and understand the effects of these weapons on his community. He is hoping to collect enough Israeli weapons to build a Statue of Liberty made from them. It isn't hard to see why people have a hard time with the U.S. here in the West Bank of Palestine;  most of this--this ugly, violent, highly militarized 63-year occupation is financed and armed by the U.S. --- so when Palestinians see U.S. Congressman leaping up from their chairs to give Netanyahu a standing ovation--think about what it means for the people of Palestine who are eating our bullets. One woman put it to me this way, "This Occupation has arrested our lives." 

Here are some pieces in the show we saw: 

The Nightmare of Hebron (Al Khalil)--Israeli Occupation's Ugliest Face

This will certainly be the hardest blog entry to write. It is also the day that I kept thinking about Kyle, over and over, and wishing he could have been with me to see what I was seeing. I knew that his own instincts and goodness would have made him understand my own objections to Israeli occupation. I thought of the epitaph which we put on his headstone--- "And I believe in 'one person can make a difference' because if no one did, nothing would ever change." So I write this in the spirit of our son, Kyle, knowing full well he too would expect me to make a difference--to take my responsiblity to write about what I saw in Hebron seriously.

A slide from the Temporary International Presence in Hebron (TIPH) presentation. 

Settler mural that depicts local Palestinians as rats.

The settlers in the Palestinian city of Al Khalil (the biblical name is Hebron) are American Jews who appear to embrace a hateful, violent, ideological view of the Palestinian people and believe they have rightful ownership of the land and believe it is their mission to drive out the local Palestinian population since they are on encroaching on biblical lands promised to Jews by God. I would not have believed until I saw it. I was warned about how miserable and depressing Hebron would be. I was so disturbed that I lay asleep all night wondering how such a thing could be done in the 21st century. How was it possible that people who lived through such racism and violence historically could perpetuate something so awful, so inhumane, so deeply degrading to both themselves and their victims?  I think the worst part of it all is that this is becoming part of the way that the settlers create a situation of hostile conflict that allows the Israeli Defense Forces to come into a place in the West Bank and militarize, occupy, and destroy the lives and economies of Palestinians. Hebron is an extreme example of the Israeli occupation of the West Bank, but it is also examplary of how the settlements function to destroy Palestinian life and create the conditions for further militarization and land confiscation by the state of Israel. For more on this, I'd encourage you all to read Eyal Weizman's book Hollow Land: The Architecture of Israeli Occupation Here is an interview with him: http://www.cabinetmagazine.org/issues/9/wall.php

Israeli AKA 47-armed Jewish settler and IDF soldier fraternizing--under international conventions this contact between occupying army and armed settlers is illegal.

As an academic, I'm familiar with the ways that the situation of Jewish settlers in Palestine have been identified with a form of zionism that is settler-colonial. They go in there, claiming some kind of divine right to a place of religious significance, set up camp with tents and guns, provoke the local population, move in temporary campers, set up their flag, and then illegally start building. They throw rocks, garbage, shoot at, and harass local populations that have lived there for hundreds of years, claiming that they are more entitled to be there. When Palestinians resist their occupation of their land, when they throw rocks back at them, when they protest their illegal presence, the Israeli military is called in to protect them. Hebron has approximately 500 illegal settlers and they are protected by more than 1000 Israeli soldiers. Remember, this is in the West Bank. This is Palestine; these settlements are illegal under international law.

I don't fully understand what their ideology is, but on many levels it is governed by the same frontier mentality that enabled white Afrikaaners in South Africa to believe they were doing black Africans a favor by taking the land in South Africa and white settlers in America redeeming the land from a race of uncivilized savages. They believe in the idea of Eretz Israel (greater Israel which means taking land that has been continuously inhabited by Palestinians for millenia for Jewish people who believe God promised it to them) and they believe in the use of violence to achieve their aims. We went to see the settlements in the old city of Hebron after we visited the university, and heard how the settlements have terrorized the local population and driven out many Palestinians from their homes. It was a particular irony that we visited Hebron the day after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu addressed the U.S. Congress. The President of the University of Hebron, Dr. Nabil, was visibly shaken and told us he did not sleep the whole night after sitting through the entire speech. He was disgusted but not surprised by Netanyahu's speech, but with his voice shaking said, "I cannot believe the people of America have bought his lies and have the audacity to stand up and give him 30 ovations for his lies, which are built on the suffering of our people!" He gave an eloquent analysis of the speech, which he said, exposes the true character of Israel's intransigence and unwilling to negotiate a real peace with the Palestinians. He also told us that if the American people knew what kinds of atrocities the Palestinians were suffering under the guise of "Israel's security" and the image of perpetuating Palestinians as "terrorists" they too would not sleep at night. He was so shaken by the idea of American congressman and women rising to their feet to applaud a state that has committed that I'm paraphrasing here--commits countless human rights violations, expelled and imprisoned thousands of Palestinians, and criminalizes them for resisting occupation that takes Palestinian land, herds them like cattle through checkpoints, and builds walls and roads that are equivalent to South African apartheid bantustans.

Sign posted by IDF saying who can go in and out
of this particular section of Hebron (Palestinians
must go through an Israeli checkpoint at this spot)

This effects the entire city of Hebron, and specifically students, because the local community has lost its main bloodline--the old market in the city that enabled people to sell their produce, wares, and other products. There is more poverty as a result of the settlements, because Palestinians under this military occupation, are constantly faced with threats by settlers, violent and unexpected curfews, and the increased strangulation of local economies as a result of the settler community's harassment. The settlements are residences of Jewish settlers who have occupied themselves in formerly Palestinian homes, which ironically have been confiscated because the Israeli Defense Forces deem it their right to confiscate land not inhabited by Palestinians. Mind you, these are Palestinians who fled their homes because of settler harassment over the last decade. They have had rocks thrown at their houses, their children have been harassed on their way to school, people have been shot at, and injured. When they have resisted they have been met with even more force by the IDF. 

 Walking around the old downtown area, you cannot believe how many shops and homes have been boarded up, but even more disturbing, the metal doors have been sealed with a welded on piece of iron--indicating that the Israelis see fit to confiscate property not inhabited in the past three months. Walking through the old city, the souk, the traditional market that we were told by our two guides, had once been a thriving commercial center, has now been driven into ruin. Settlers living above the old city in illegal settlements throw garbage, dirty water, feces, bricks, stones, shoes, etc. in an effort to intimidate and harass the local merchants who are still struggling to live and work in the old city.

I should clarify that we were with a UN-mandated organization the Temporary International Presence in Hebron (TIPH)--which was agreed to under the 1993 Oslo Accords. The TIPH is an internationally supported NGO whose specific mission is to monitor, record, and witness settler activity in Hebron. Although the Israelis agreed to this in the 1993 Oslo accords, they have no obligation to read reports, follow recommendations, and curb settler activity. And it was obvious that the TIPH was doing their job (it is a staff of 60 international monitors, mostly from Scandinavia who walk the streets of Hebron daily to record settler violations, harassment, and to document the extreme conditions that Palestinians live with with the presence of illegal settlements). The guides who walked with us, took pictures, spoke with local Palestinians about the latest settler incidents--the latest of which was the settlers throwing burning paper down into the souk (which they had covered with a plastic tarp in order to prevent garbage and sand being thrown at them), and burning holes in the tarps.

One of many, many Palestinian shops/homes that are sealed shut by Israeli soldiers after they've fled the terror of the settlement. Palestinians cannot go back into their homes. 

The entire scene of the settlements in the old city makes it look like a war zone. Settler live in a kind of siege mentality, I think. This is because they have illegally siezed land and are protected by barbed wire, checkpoints, road blocks, electronic fences, IDF soldiers, and their own guns. Yes, folks, illegal settlers are allowed to carry AK 47s in and around Palestinian neighborhoods and in their own settlements. It's a rather disturbing sight to see people who are hostile and aggressive bearing these kinds of weapons against  a defenseless population of local Palestinians who have no protection against them. At several points, we saw settlers fraternizing with the local IDF guards, and that was another sign of how entrenched Israel is with these settlers, even though they deny the seriousness of these settlements and when convenient, like to distance themselves from these people's ideological extremism. When Baruch Goldstein, an American Jew from Brooklyn went into the Hebron Ibrahimi mosque in 1993 and shot and killed 27 praying Muslim men, Isarel called him a lone, crazy gunman. But what you see here is evidence of the state's collusion with the settlers to confiscate land, under develop Palestinian life, and threaten the security of Palestinian communities. The settlers do tremendous property damage and psychological damage by shouting insults, throwing things such as stones and garbage at their Palestinians neighbors, and making life so impossible for any kind of thriving market that it causes people to leave. The old city was also once a thriving tourist area for both Palestinian and international tourism, but because of the settlements, the Separation Wall, the checkpoints, and the presence of Israeli soldiers, everywhere, no one wants to come to the old city. Therefore, it looks like a ghost town and the poverty and desperation which have resulted by the settlers is palpable. We were followed through our walk by several Palestinian children absolutely desperate to make a sale of a few shekels by selling jewelry, scarves, chewing gums in order to help their families. At one point during our walk in the souk, two small settler children threw sand at us from above us in a compound. It was disturbing to say the least. Another of our group was confronted rather hostilely from a group of three Jewish American teens who asked our Pakistani-American colleague what she was doing there. Because she looked Asian/Middle Eastern, they made a rather unseemly comment about Muslims. These are kids who are encouraged to be hostile, aggressive and hateful towards Palestinians, and to anyone who might sympathize with the Palestinians living with this kind of behavior.

Settler trash dumped next to a Palestinian man's house. 

The merchants in the old city have moved to safer
areas outside of the old souk. Trash, rocks, bricks, and
sand have been hurled at them by settlers, and as a result they've moved. The overall effect, however, is to scare people off from even going to the Old City--resulting in a kind of active underdevelopment of a traditional Palestinian economic site. Tourists, hearing of the settlers
and their use of violence, are few and far between

one of several settlements in the Palestinian town of Hebron. 

More boarded and shut Palestinian  homes and shops. Notice the guard tower used by IDF soldiers.

We saw one building where Israeli settler children were playing and our TIPH guides took photos because it was on an Israeli military compound inside the old city. Under international law, settlers and IDF soldiers are not supposed to fraternize or share common space. Clearly, this is in violation of international accords that govern the illegality of Israeli settlements. When we asked our guides how the Israelis get away with this they shrugged their shoulders and answered, that their job is to record violations, but the Israelis don't have to comply with their recommendations. We asked how our guides slept at night, and they both answered that it was difficult but they believed that their presence as witnesses was better than not being there at all and they believed that they might have been preventing more harm by just witnessing the abuse of the settlers.

I cannot adequately describe the desperation of this scene. When we went into the Ibrahimi Mosque --which is now divided and has two separate entrances --one for Jews and one for Muslims and which is guarded by IDF soldiers, I felt sick to my stomache. Although there have been historical tensions between Muslims and Jews in this town, they have been made into a kind of war now, and the sorrow of going into a holy shrine that is sacred to both faiths, and to have pass through armed soldiers, and barbed wire, that was the worst. I believe, that even with my short period of ten days in Palestine, that the situation in Hebron is the worst symbol of Israeli support for settlements that can possibly be imagined. Having seen the absolute impoverishment of the community, the hundreds of boarded homes, welded shut by the IDF, seeing the settler children playing on IDF encampments, having sand thrown on us, this all speaks poorly of what the American support for settlements means for peace. This is a form of racism and a blatant support for discriminating against one population using the ideologically loaded notion of greater Israel. The TIPH guide told us that after what happened in Gaza when the settlers were forced to dismantle the settlements, the Israelis are loathe to give up settlements. Our guide Anna, said that the settlers use a "price tag policy" to justify their continued illegal settlements---which means, saying, that it will be more costly for Israel to dismantle the settlements because the settlers promise commit violence and destruction on the community if they're forced to leave. In the end, what this does is make Palestinians into a terrorized population that has no protection and who feel that they are living in a state of insecurity and violence that ultimately makes it impossible for them to have an integrated and whole West Bank due to the presence and protection of these expanding settlements. The settlements are a huge problem, and I became convinced of it after visiting Hebron and seeing how this is the method of colonizing the land. The settlement roads, which carry settlers to cities like Jerusalem and Haifa, are places where foreign Jews are encouraged to settle and they receive tax breaks, subsidized housing, and the protection of the Israeli army. This is not democracy folks. This is apartheid.

Listening to Palestinian women talk about how they had to dodge settler bullets, rocks, and verbal harassment to help their children get to school gave me shivers. I saw the house where one Palestinian woman helped school children pass through her house in order to avoid walking by an Israeli settlement. The house was shot at, and the staircase was destroyed by settlers. The school children had to be accompanied to school by international witnesses, and were at one point protected by the IDF. The house is no longer inhabitable. The woman who lived there could not take the harassment. Even after a sheet of Iran was welded to her front doorstep, the settlers bothered her and the children.

Hebronite Palestinian children play in the old city where they know the TIPH guides regularly patrol. 

Tell me, is this what we Americans should be supporting? I cannot sleep thinking of this poor community of Palestinians under siege, struggling to stay in their city, struggling to make a living, struggling to have their human rights. They are determined and resilient. But they are also tired. They have what Dr. Nabil called "occupation fatigue."

For more, follow these two excellent NGOs that are working to record settlement harassment: Christian Peacemakers: http://www.cpt.org/work/palestine and Temporary International Presence in Hebron: http://www.tiph.org/filestore/TIPH-leaflet-english_lowres.pdf. Please support these organizations. The work they're doing is critical to defending human rights in the West Bank. 

The Wall, Bethlehem University and the Christian Palestinians

Me in solidarity with Handala.

Let me be clear--this trip is an encounter largely with Palestinians living under Israeli occupation. Although I've visited West Jerusalem and a number of the Jewish holy sites, the purpose of this trip is to learn more about the life of Palestinians living, working, and teaching under the 62-year old occupation (don't forget there is the 1948 "Nakba" --the catastrophe that diplaced, dispossessed hundreds of thousands of Palestinians from their land, and then the 1967 Israeli occupation that expanded the reach of the Israeli army and has led to even more misery for Palestinians. It is important to say this, as already several people have commented to me that "there are two sides" to this story. I know that. I think the story that has been suppressed and lesser known (both inside Israel and the U.S.) is the daily suffering that the Israeli occupation of Palestine causes the Palestinian people. It is pervasive and enormous and anyone who thinks otherwise, should go there and see for themselves. I'm writing about that reality--the reality that is never narrated in the U.S. media. It is covered up, occulted, hidden, denied by the use of terms like "terrorism," "Israeli security" and "conflict." But  I'm witnessing it, and I'm sharing those observations with you here. And I must not sanitize it. I've met so many incredible human beings who have shared their stories with me and I owe it to them to share their stories with you. Israeli occupation is a nightmare, and the more I see, the more I understand how much denial there is on the part of both Israel and the U.S. about what is going on here. There is no democracy here. This is a brutal occupation that is bent on two things: confiscating land and minimizing and erasing the autonomy of a functional Palestinian state. Many Palestinians have told me that this is a form of "ethnic cleansing" with a minimal amount of visible blood.

Many Americans don't realize what a diverse country Palestine once was before it became Israel. Jews, Christians, and Muslims, lived together in the land of Palestine when it was under the Ottoman empire. Although Jews were a minority, they were not seen as other. They were part of the Palestinian community. In the Israeli-occupied territories of Palestine, there is approximately 40% Christian and 60% Muslim--although I confess this figure also depends on which cities, which villages you visit. Christian Palestinians have been leaving in larger numbers since the Oslo accord (1993) largely because they can. They have better resources, and, in general, it seems that they have been less villified under the Israeli occupation. One of the cities we have visited is Bethlehem--the city of Jesus's birth--and one of the most important Christian holy sites. Getting there is a bit of a challenge for most Palestinians--but for us, it was less challenging. Because we were driving with Jerusalem (Israeli) license plates, we could travel on the settler roads (yes, folks, roads, reserved just for Israelis and for settlers; Palestinians found driving on these roads can be arrested and fined). Bethlehem isn't very far, but for those who would wish to go there who are Palestinian, it is both a hassle and a challenge. Once again, I become painfully aware of how much more mobile and free I am as an American, than those Palestinians who live there and must pass through checkpoints, get out of their cars, have their cars inspected, and if riding on a bus, must pass through the humiliation of going through the checkpoint that involves cameras, armed guards behind glass, going through a security gate, putting their hand on an electronic finger-print reader, and passing by Israeli armed guards who are 19 or 20 and refuse eye contact. We had to go through a checkpoint in Bethlehem, like the Palestinians, and let me tell you, it was a humiliating experience for me as a visitor, so I can only imagine how it feels to Palestinians. I'll describe more about the actual experience of going through a checkpoint later.

This is what most Israeli checkpoints look like--at Qalandia
checkpoint outside Jerusalem, thousands of Palestinians have to line up each
morning in order to get to work in Jerusalem. 

Our first stop in Bethlehem was at Bethlehem University--a small, private Catholic University, established in the 1970s by the La Salle Order of Brothers (same guys who established St. Mary's College in Moraga). It's a lovely, small campus, and immediately you know you are in a little haven in the midst of a sea of conflict. The young man who greeted us from the Public Releations office, Dimitri, it turned out, went to high school in Pleasant Hill, California, just next door to my high school in Walnut Creek. He gave us a tour of the campus and showed us the site of an April 2002 Israeli missile attack on the campus. This was a time all over Palestine, when the Israeli Defense Forces made targeted incursions into Palestinian Universities (Bir Zeit, Hebron, and Bethlehem were all attacked, occupied and many students were arrested during this time). We saw the site of the 2002 missile attack (it was aimed at the library). Many believe that the IDF have made a habit of targeting sites of cultural importance--particularly places that house Palestinian archives of history. The librarian told us that like the many attacks on offices, hidden archives within Jerusalem that contain documents, photographs, and important historical information about pre-1948 Palestine, the universities are special targets for two reasons: 1) they are places where students congregate, organize, and resist; and 2) they are places where students collect, amass, and create knowledge about their history and communities. This is one of the reasons that the universities are often under siege by the Israelis. When we met with faculty members at Bethlehem University, they immediately voiced their anger at how the occupation has affected their students. Like other universities we visited, these faculty members spoke about the ways that the checkpoints and the general policies of Israeli occupation had made it harder and harder to educate students. The Dean of the School of Humanities spoke about the particular affect of home demolitions on some of their students. HOme demolition is a regular practice of the Israeli army that involves punishing the family of a suspected "terrorist" or "resistance organizer." In a short film they showed us about Bethlehem University, the faculty members discussed how frequent the problems are among students who have difficulties completing their education because of home demolitions in the surrounding areas. Many of these home demolitions and land confiscations are directly connected to the Israeli separation wall in Bethlehem (which is massive and tall) and surrounds an Israeli settlement that was built in 2007 on Palestinian West Bank land. It's a massive complex of housing that you can see from the university, and it has been one of the disturbing things I have seen thus far---clearly a violation of international law, and because it has been supported by the IDF, a massive complex of settler-only roads, and then surrounded by the wall, you can imagine how troubling it is to Palestinians.

This is a picture of the before and after of the Har Homa settlement which was built on a hill outside Bethlehem that was a former Palestinian forest:

The occupation of the university is directly the result of this settlement, and attempts on the part of the Palestinians to resist further occupation and confiscation of Palestinian land in the town of Bethlehem. The wall surrounds the entire Israeli settlement and breaks up Bethlehem in many places.

Here are some of my own photos that show where the Israeli rocket enter the library building and destroyed many Palestinian artifacts and documents housed in the library:

This is the point of entry of the Israeli missile. 

This is a photo of the damage done when the Israeli rocket entered the university campus. 

a view of the wall in the central part of Bethlehem (in red) 

The view of the illegal Israeli settlement Har Homa as seen from Bethlehem University. 

The majority of the inhabitants of Bethlehem are Christian Palestinians. They worship at a multitude of churches including the Church of the Nativity (which is the site commemorating Jesus's birth) but if they want to go to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem, they must seek a permit to go there. I met numerous Palestinians who had applied to get a permit to go to Jerusalem for Easter services but were denied. Some choose not to go because just leaving Bethlehem is just such a hassle. And this is part of the design of the occupation--to make movement and life so difficult. The physical space of Bethlehem is crisss-crossed in many parts by the Israeli Separation Wall, and you can see checkpoints at many of the intersections between roads, settler roads, and the Wall. It's a disaster. Not to mention the fact that they deforested one of the last significant natural forests in the West Bank to build this Israeli settlement. Here is a view of the Separation Wall in Bethlehem, that literally cuts into Palestinian land and cuts off some Palestinians from their own land, farms, shops. The wall (the red line above) cuts into the town (and encloses Rachel's tomb). It's a massive structure and when you're up close to it, as we were, you realize just what it's done to the city both in terms of destruction, land confiscation, dividing the city to privelege the settlers, and to isolate holy sites that are sacred to Muslims, Christians and Jews. It is also meant to cut off and cut into the Palestinian community in a way that makes it difficult for people to get around. They often have to go way out of their way to get to a place that would normally take them five minutes. They are not allowed to use settler roads, and Palestinians must go through checkpoints. The night we ate at a Bethlehem restaurant in close proximity to Rachel's tomb, we saw the wall up close and it's massive. We also went through a very distressing checkpoint, where you are required to go through a cattle gate turnstyle (with lights that turn green when you can go) and you have to show ID. The guards (IDF soldiers of about 19 years old don't even look at you). They're loud and abusive toward the Palestinians--often yelling in Hebrew. We were allowed to go through without incident, but it was still a humiliating experience and even more so, when you come out the other side of the wall and find a poster in the entry point that says, "Welcome to Israel."
Here are pictures of portions of the wall:

A portion of the Israeli Separation Wall in Bethlehem (the Statute of Liberty is holding Handala, the figure created by cartoonist Naj Al-Ali that has come to symbolize the 1948 Palestinian Refugees; a  figure which is banned in Israel. 

Part of the wall in Bethlehem. 

Mo

This portion of the Israeli Apartheid wall is painted by many internationals who pass through here. It's a massive structure and this is one of the tallest points where it exceeds 

some interesting graffiti; the longest portion says "you stole our land, yet you make us into criminals." 

The most obvious historical parallel to the barrier is the Berlin Wall, which was 96 miles long (155 kilometers). Israel's barrier, still under construction, is expected to reach at least 403 miles in length (650 kilometers). The average height of the Berlin Wall was 11.8 feet (3.6 metres), compared with the maximum* current height of Israel's Wall -- 25 feet (8 metres). [*it is not clear whether the shorter fence sections, about 6 meters in height, are first or final stages in Israel's construction of the barrier.]

Israel's barrier is therefore planned to be four times as long and in places twice as high as the Berlin Wall.  

Music and Culture as a Vehicle of Resistance

Ramzi Aburedwan speaking to Charles Zerner, a professor
from Sarah Lawrence College. 

 The dissonance between the diet of stereotypes and lies that Americans are fed  and the reality on the ground here in Palestine troubles me to the point that I have had so much trouble sleeping here. While I had a pretty good idea about what the Israeli Occupation was, I now realize just how ignorant we Americans really are and how much is hidden from us through media representations or the complete invisibility of Palestinian life in any news coverage. In the five days I have been here in Israel and Palestine, I have heard stories of what the misery of occupation has meant for Palestinians on a daily basis. And all this is designed and deliberately concealed from Americans and particularly  from the millions of tourists who come to Jerusalem each year the visit the holy sites in this city. Quite simply, under the guise of "Israeli security," Palestinians are denied of their basic human rights. When I interviewed Palestinian writer and lawyer and founder of the Al Haq human rights organization,  Raja Shehadeh, he described the phenomenon of how Israel manages its self-image of being a so-called democracy by not allowing people to see what it is doing in the occupied territories. The image of Palestine and Palestinians as being violent, unwelcoming,  or America-hating couldn't be further from the truth. The people we have met in Palestine have embodied not only the spirit of resilience I was looking for-- but they are the most dignified and humane people I have ever encountered. For a wonderful account of how Palestinian national territory is being eroded and the destruction to the environment, I highly recommend Shehadeh's Palestinian Walks: Notes on a Vanishing Landscape. This nonfiction book describes the ways that Israeli settlements are systematically changing the landscape and culture of Palestine ---and eroding Palestinian sovereign territory on a daily basis.

Al Kamandjati poster showing Ramzi as a nine year old boy, and then as a young man playing viola.

On our second day here we went to Ramallah where we spent the early part of the day at the Al Kamandjati Music School ://www.alkamandjati.org/ . The school is located in a small but beautiful old house which was donated by a local Ramallah family who heard about the work of the school's founder, Ramzi Aburedwan. While the school is small, it has great acoustics due to its domed ceilings; at the school they recently renovated the building to accommodate more useable space for classes which serve local students in the West Bank (mostly Ramallah) and kids who come for summer camps. The more remarkable thing about this school, however, is the story of it's founder. Ramzi was born into one of Palestine's approximately 30 refugee camps which were the result of Palestinian displacement when the state of Israel was created in 1948 and hundreds of thousands of Palestinians fled violence or were forced from their homes. Ramzi was born in the al Amari refugee camp which  is inside the city of Ramallah. And, like thousands of other Palestinian refugees, Ramzi grew up in poverty and in very crowded living conditions. Palestine's refugee camps are both a serious reminder of both the 1948 displacement of Palestinians and Israel's continued attempt to deny the rights of Palestinians both in  historical and contemporary terms; Israel does not teach or allow anyone to teach about the 1948 Nakba in schools, and thus, the very fact of these refugee camps is a kind of denial inside Israel. The refugee camps symbolize the Nakba (the catastrophe of 1948 when Israel declared itself a state and hundreds of thousands of Palestinians fled or were forced out of their homes through violence and terror).

The plaque/schedule of classes at Al Kamandjati Music School. 

Ramzi told us the story of how he came to music and to start Al Kamandjati. Ramziwas born in Bethlehem, but his family lost their home after the 1967 war and the subsequent occupation of the West Bank. He grew up very poor in the al Amari refugee camp (a squalid, overcrowded slum that is home to approximately three thousand refugees who were displaced in both 1948 and 1967---pictures forthcoming) just outside the West Bank city of Ramalllah. To help his family, Ramzi used to clean the garden of a local Ramallah woman and also deliver newspapers from 4-7 am. Unbeknownst to him, his grandfather was putting aside the money Ramzi was making to help his family, for Ramzi's future education. At the age of nine, Ramzi was one among many thousands of school-age children who was politically awakened during the first Intifada (Paletstinian uprising)  in 1987. Like other Palestinian children, he confronted Israeli Defense Forces (IDF)  tanks that rolled into refugee camps and shot tear gas, rubber bullets, and live ammunition at protestors. These military incursions went all over the West Bank towns and villages and the Gaza strip--the Intifada was a coordinated effort to confront Israeli occupation through shop closures and withholding of taxes to protest the continued Israeli occupation and to move the stalled negotiations. Ramzi was only nine at the time of the Intifada, but like many boys his age, particularly in the refugee camps, he threw stones at tanks to protest the military incursions into their homes and cities.

We visited the refugee camp where he grew up, and I can tell you it was the equivalent of the worst slums you can imagine. People in camps like Amari (we visited two others as well) live in really crowded  conditions, with very little ventilation, poor or no sanitation, and no heating. The refugee camps which started in 1948 as makeshift tent camps, are now cement brick structures, and there is no building codes. People build to accomdate their families, and because they've been protected under international refugee status, they hope to one day return to their original homes. These camps, however, have become more destitute since Israel no longer allows Palestinians work permits to work inside Israel (many of these men were formerly in the construction trades) and now, there is little work. Because they are poor, and have no place to go, the refugee camps are a kind of limbo. Some people leave and others stay both out of principle or because they can't afford to live anywhere else. There are some 22 refugee camps in the West Bank and Gaza as well as camps in Syria, Lebanon, Jordan.

Back to Ramzi, though. Shortly after the the first intifada, the Palestinian uprising, a journalist snapped a picture of him standing in the refugee camp throwing a stone at an Israeli tank invading the refugee camp where he lived. the journalist, a rather responsible human being, chose to find someone in a neighboring house adjacent to the camp to help him identify the boy. The woman was the person Ramzi had done some yard work for. She told the journalist that he was an intelligent young boy named Ramzi. Some time later, that same woman's relative came from Jordan to do a musical  performance in Ramallah. She suggested that his group not only perform for the elites of the city, but that they should also go to the refugee camps and perform and offer some kind of workshop for kids. The woman's relative agreed and Ramzi came to hear the group perform at the Al Bira center, and he said, "after two days of listening, I was swimming in the sea of music."

An American Ph.D. graduate student whose research is in ethnomusicology
and the role of music in the occupation. She is working at Al Kamandjati. 

Ramzi told us how profoundly he was affected by the music and how much he realized that the life of refugee children was without beauty--without gardens, art, playgrounds, ways to express themselves in a harsh climate of poverty, and hopelessness. The experience of hearing music and watching musicians touch their instruments touched Ramzi deeply. He realized how much music reached into the traumatized souls of the children living under occupation and gave them food for their hungry souls. Some years later, he was given a scholarship to study music in France, and after he returned to Palestine in 2000,  he witnessed the devastation of the Second Intifada-- with hundreds of days of curfews, roadblocks, and the confinement of people to the camps for days on end. It was then that he dreamed of bringing music to refugee children and training them to play music. Since 2002, Ramzi had been working to start the Al Kamandjati Music School (he learned to play viola and thus named the school after the word violinist). The school now serves students from around the West Bank (it is an NGO) offering classes, performances, composition courses, and also touring around Palestine to have students play for communities and refugee camps. The music is both Western classical and Arabic influcenced. Ramzi's school  receives support from individual musicians, schools, and some grants from European countries. They also receive donations of instruments and have guest teachers and performers from Europe. They asked us to lobby people to send instruments to his school.

But Ramzi says, the struggles he has to bring and foster culture for Palestinian children is part of the larger struggle against occupation. "Under Israeli occupation," Ramzi says, "Palestinians are not allowed to practice their culture. We are not allowed to have Arab musicians and poets and performers from the Arab world come and visit and play for us. Israelis will not grant them permits to come to Palestine to perform. For sixty years, we have been isolated from culture, music, etc, in the Arab world and in a sense, we are making up for so much with so little. My goal is to bring the beauty of music to the camps, to remind Palestinians of their heritage and their musical traditions, and to help young people find relief from the suffering of occupation by expressing themselves with music. But we are limited with funds, and every performance we do, every city we travel to, every camp we perform in, has to receive a permit from the Isrseli government. We cannot go to Gaza to play music. We don't want to be isolated, but the occupation has made it difficult for us to practice our culture and share it with others." Ramzi describes, for example, how numerous performances have been cancelled due to lack of permits being issued, and for example, incidents such as halls being burned at the refugee camps where the musicians were to perform.

The balcony of Al Kamandjati music school where students often perform for the community.

Ramzi and his students, for example, cannot get a permit to play in Jerusalem, where music and culture by Palestinians also is severely restricted. So you know where they performed last year? At the Qalandia checkpoint outside Ramallah that is the daily lifeline of Palestinian workers who work in East Jerusalem. The Al Kamandjati orchestra played while the lines of cars idled, while the turnstiles where Palestinians walk through and show their West Bank identification and place their hands on a magnetic machine. They played orchestral music by the side of the road to give a little beauty to those people moving through the checkpoint to go to their jobs, to Jeruasalem for permits, for those heading back to their West Bank Palestianin villages. When one IDF soldier confronted one of the musicians playing his oboe, Ramzi answered, "it's not a gun!" This has since been one of the slogans of the Al Kamandjati Music School; google  the school and listen for yourself to the amazing work of this wonderful project to resist occupation with culture!
Another project that involves music in the Palestine-Israel conflict is the Barenboim-Said Foundation which was co-founded by Daniel Barenboim and Edward Said: http://www.barenboimsaidusa.org/