jenin, jenin (wednesday, thursday)

in jenin i first met with abdelrahim's organization the palestine fair trade association, http://www.palestinefairtrade.org/ the first of its kind, selling fair trade and organic olive oil, olives, zaatar, sundried tomatoes, etc. it has been incredibly helpful to the farmers, according to abed. they are interested in having an acupuncturist come to teach the farmers or to do travelling clinics in the area to provide service to the 25 surrounding villages where the farmers have no access at all to any care. one of the men showed me his back, explaining an ancient muslim tradition of cutting the back and then placing cups over it to bleed the back! very similar to chinese, and in similar locations. thought that might be exciting to those practioners reading this...

from there i went to the jenin governmental hospital, it is a sad place. almost every night the israeli army has some sort of operation in the refugee camp, which was totally destroyed several years ago. if you have never heard of this, please look it up, terrible. the 2002 massacre is denied to this day by the IDF. anyway, every night there is some operation, which inevitably ends up in the injury or death of several people. the hospital is filled with them. i did not know it then, but that night there was to be another israeli invasion of the camp.

after the hospital i went to the jenin creative cultural center http://orgs.takingitglobal.org/19381 which has a pretty bad website for such a cool organization. it is much like the al-rowwad center in aida refugee camp. the founder of the center, yousef shalabi, is the man who started ISM branch in jenin, who now has shifted his focus of resisting the occupation to the cultural center. it is a fascinating place, and they are also very interested in the acupuncture trainings. he said that he needed to take a step back from ism because of the psychological damage that he had recieved - having seen children, women, men, and even internationals shot or killed by the israeli army. sustained years of that resistance had taken its toll. he wanted to begin treatments for himself right away.

next door to the center is the jenin branch of the treatment and rehabilitation center for victims of torture. the director gave me a tour of the facility, and showed me a mosaic making workshop for a group of twelve men who had been tortured. he told me the stories of some of the men. one man had no eye because he looked at a soldier at a checkpoint and was beaten in the one eye severly for a hour, then taken to prison where he was not given care. another man had no hands. they told me that he was on his way to his fields to prune his trees and the settlers came and cut off both of his hands with his shears. mahmoud reminded me that torture is just one level of the trauma that palestinians have suffered. in fact there are layers upon layers, before one can even come close to being resolved another happens. a man has his child killed, his house demolished, fields taken from him, beaten at a checkpoint, put in prison, tortured.

that evening was also very difficult for me, since i spent the night in a small village outside of jenin. while the army was in the refugee camp, i was outside in a quite town, drinking endless coffee with every person who saw me. if palestinians can say one word in english, it is "welcome". but the night was hard because i saw the repercussions of this structural violence in the home where i was staying. the wife and child were treated very poorly, and i can only imagine that my presence may have delayed some sort of physical violence. everybody was on edge, all the time. it was an uncomfortable night. and when mahmoud told me he had been in prison for two and a half years and i remembered that dr. sehwail said that 95% of prisoners are tortured, i could only imagine what he endured. and now the cycle of violence spins on, damaging the family, the children. it was very sad.

in the morning we headed back into town and the signs the army had been there were evident. boys throwing stones at fully armored jeeps were getting shot at and chased. checkpoints were up everywhere. when we left town we realized that the previous afternoon nobody with a jenin regional ID was allowed to leave, NOBODY. this means that nobody could leave to get out of the region for a day. no matter the reason. (abdelrahim told me that he had to wait four hours at a checkpoint. checkpoints up everywhere. lots of people being held. ) the same was true for nablus and tulkarm. nobody left. the inhumanity continues. i drove through the refugee camp and it was "normal". business as usual. just another night of terror.

i returned to ramallah after three hours of avoiding sketchy checkpoint in tiny towns, i had a nice meeting with abdelrahim again, which was beautiful. and sad. he has such a big heart and i hope to see him again. our parting was difficult. he said that if there is anyting that he could for me, anywhere in the world, then he would do it. we both cried a little tear. then i went to bir zeit university to meet with ghassan andoni, the founder of ism. he is brilliant, and gentle, and full of wisdom he shared his vision of the future of the west bank, a very depressing story. he said that for the first time the internal conflict is more devastating than the occupation itself, and is hurting the movement to end the occupation. it hurts the international image, it hurts everyone internally. but he was quick to empasize that the internal violence is NOT A JUSTIFICATION for the occupation. in fact, the occupation has everything to do with the current violence. but he says the only way the internal conflict will end is through massive palestinian demands for ending the power struggle and corruption.

ghassan he also reaffirmed the need for alternative medicine in the territories. ghassan, like so many others, confirmed that people are fascinated with the medicine, have heard so much about it, but have never had acces to it. there is a strong desire for profound healing, he said, and people want to find the tools for that. the meeting with him made my whole trip worthwhile, in some ways. then five hours to the north to wait for the qalkilya checkpoint tomorrow to work with physicians for human rights.