thursday was a really good day. early in the morning i went to the TRC and helped 'supervise' with the other trainers a couple of 5np sessions with clients. it was really incredible. there were two groups, one for men, one for women. everyone was nervous, the trainees were excited, and they did a wonderful job. after the needles went in and they sat for half an hour, there was nice discussion afterwards. the men said that they all had come in feeling very agitated, and even angry, many of them had had to deal with severe harrassment from soldiers even that morning on their way to the treatment center. compounded trauma. men sat around the room with scars on their gentle faces. they talked about politics for a while when they had needles in, but one of the trainees asked them to listen to the quiet music and think about beautiful things. after the session was over the men agreed that they really liked it and it was a good suggestion to listen to themselves on the inside. the best part, perhaps, was the confidence that the trainees got, because they saw finally the effect on their clients, and they were very, very excited, and proud of themselves. they are very much looking forward to continuing the work, and they had tons of questions afterwards.
it was a sad goodbye from the center, over the past few weeks i have come to know all the workers there, and we are quite affectionate of one another. one man offered me a job next year in a holistic care center for children, i have a job offering at the TRC, and one woman wants me to come back to ramallah to open just an acupuncture clinic. so the possibilities are so numerous i dont really know where to begin. i have really enjoyed working with all these folks, i am sure the relationships wont end today.
at night i went out to have coffee with some of the workers and their friends, and it was really nice. their friends there were happy to meet me because they had heard so much exciting stuff from the trainees, and had been test subjects as well. i sat most of the night with a really nice guy who reminded me of my friend muhammad in tulkarem from 2003. ahmad is 25 and he works for a computer company, but his true love is sports, both soccer and basketball. he says that he hopes that things dont get worse (he means israeli military presence) because he actually wants to have a full season this year. in all the years that he has played basketball, he has never been able to play all the games because of closures or checkpoints or whatever. they train very hard, he says, two days on, one day off.. always though there are problems with actually being able to meet the other team to play. its very sad he says, and it wears on him. i am telling this story because of all the things that we take for granted in the US. people cant even do the most enjoyable things in their lives without being stifled by the occupation.
today i spent the whole day with abed in his village, it was amazing. i will write more later, but i have to run. tomorrow inshallah i will be in ni'lin with physicians for human rights for the protest against the wall. please look into this issue, there is a good link on the right of the blog to get history. its pretty terrible. thats all for now.
Friday, July 11, 2008
Wednesday, July 9, 2008
Today in jenin
this morning i left for jenin, it was a quick ride, very unusual. we think it was so because there is so much happening in nablus and in ni'lin. last night in nablus there was an operation, leaving at least two dead. you may have heard about ni'lin, a village that is near ramallah that has been protesting the construction of the apartheid wall for about two months now. on the 4th of july the israeli army declared closure in the entire city, and the protests that ensued left dozens wounded, some critically. several internationals were arrested. check out a report from the alternative media center here at http://www.alternativenews.org/ . the four-day seige was lifted yesterday, but protests are expected to continue, especially tomorrow which is the anniversary of the UN ruling on the construction of the wall. physicians for human rights invited me to go with them on saturday to ni'lin, so i hope to do so.
today in jenin i have been at the freedom theatre, again without a camera, but please check out the website, there is a link on the right of the page here. it is a wonderful and beautiful place, in the middle of jenin refugee camp.
also, another amazing resource, perhaps the most comprehensive website for information about palestine, is www.pcpd.org for the palestine centre for peace and democracy, and you should definitely check it out. it has dozens of full-length videos for streaming, and you can watch arna's children on it, the documentary about this freedom theatre. it also has many incredible maps, and so much more. anyway, its good if you want to get sucked in and learn a ton about the conflict. you could spend hours on the website.
today i visited abdallah baracat who is the general director of the governorate of jenin, a very nice man. he was telling me many stories about his life in jenin, about how the settlements in the east of jenin used to prevent thousands of people for 5 years from having smooth access to the jenin city. the settlements outside of the city made the conditions such that a person who lived only one mile from the city would have to travel almost 40 miles around the settlements to get home. this would make a 10 minute commute into a 1.5 hour commute. but with protests they were able to remove the settlements, and now life is a bit easier. he also told me about his village, in the mountains north of jenin, where before 1948 it was comprised of 38,000 acres, after 1948 it was reduced to 8000, and now it is close to 5000. his personal land has been reduced even further by the construction of the wall by a third. but he smiles and tells me that he still lives on his land, at least he is not a refugee.
today in jenin i have been at the freedom theatre, again without a camera, but please check out the website, there is a link on the right of the page here. it is a wonderful and beautiful place, in the middle of jenin refugee camp.
also, another amazing resource, perhaps the most comprehensive website for information about palestine, is www.pcpd.org for the palestine centre for peace and democracy, and you should definitely check it out. it has dozens of full-length videos for streaming, and you can watch arna's children on it, the documentary about this freedom theatre. it also has many incredible maps, and so much more. anyway, its good if you want to get sucked in and learn a ton about the conflict. you could spend hours on the website.
today i visited abdallah baracat who is the general director of the governorate of jenin, a very nice man. he was telling me many stories about his life in jenin, about how the settlements in the east of jenin used to prevent thousands of people for 5 years from having smooth access to the jenin city. the settlements outside of the city made the conditions such that a person who lived only one mile from the city would have to travel almost 40 miles around the settlements to get home. this would make a 10 minute commute into a 1.5 hour commute. but with protests they were able to remove the settlements, and now life is a bit easier. he also told me about his village, in the mountains north of jenin, where before 1948 it was comprised of 38,000 acres, after 1948 it was reduced to 8000, and now it is close to 5000. his personal land has been reduced even further by the construction of the wall by a third. but he smiles and tells me that he still lives on his land, at least he is not a refugee.
Tuesday, July 8, 2008
not sure
i have tried to post something but i am not sure if it makes it up or not... i hope so, its like 15 pages of writing. i hope you can see it where you are, because it isnt showing up for me.
i know its a lot, but take your time
So since the last time i wrote many things have changed. I am thankful that I am able to adapt, I think, because plans change so quickly. Initially I thought that on Sunday I would be travelling to Nablus, but then joe said he was going to hebron for the day, so I cancelled my meetings in Nablus, made some in ebron, and planned to go in the morning and return in the afternoon for another meeting in Ramallah. but when I got there I was immediately busy and then asked to stay to go to the summer camp for children. So I cancelled my afternoon meeting in Ramallah and stayed the night in hebron, and changed my Nablus plans for nect week because now I will go to jenin on Tuesday and Wednesday and need to be in Ramallah on Thursday, then things close on Friday and Saturday so I don’t know where I will be, perhaps go back to the village of arora and I also need to go back to Jerusalem. I only have a week left, so each day I have to make count. My plans to go to jenin this morning (Tuesday) were solid until midnight last night, then I had to change them and now I will be here in Ramallah again today, maybe go to Jerusalem, and then to jenin tomorrow. Wow, things have been busy and back and forth, but good. Now let me try to remember everything that has happened since Saturday.
On Sunday morning I left for hebron with joe and three other internationals working for ngo´s here. The area of hebron is beautiful, very hilly and green. Our trip took us through a confusing matrix of Israel and west bank roads and lands, through several checkpoint. At some times we had Palestinian villages on both sides of our road, which was for the exclusive use of Israelis, and the villages were separated from the road by fences on each side. Again, more cages. On the side of the roads the settlements are clearly distinguished from Palestinian villages because they are cookie-cutter. We also passed several “illegal” outposts, which are basically trailer parks filled with very armed and very religious settlers who feel that it is literally their “god given right” to be there. these are the people who ruthlessly attack and kill local Palestinians when they try to reach their olive trees or fields. They are some of the craziest and most violent people here, the most fanatical and dangerous. And each month there are more and more of these “outposts”, filled with people who are filled with the pride of knowing that they are on the dangerous frontier in the name of god, willing to make the sacrifice in a savage land for Him. Very scary.
I notice that on the way to hebron we see only signs in Hebrew and English, not in Arabic, and none of them mention any names of Palestinian villages that are along the way, but they have big signs for even the smallest of Israeli settlements. When I comment on this, a guy in the car who has been here for years reminded me that there are no signs in the west bank that have the word JENIN on it. Not a single one. Jenin has been repeatedly assaulted by the Israeli military but there are so many other ways that Palestinians are denied their identity by Israel, such as this, in order to make life so difficult so as to wipe it off the map.
As we drive I ask the woman next to me about her work, and she tells me she works for defence for children international http://www.dci-pal.org/ where she takes testimony from children who have endured trauma or violence by the hand of Israeli soldiers or settlers in order to document the human rights violations and lobby for European and UN involvement. she told me this story about a boy she interviewed the other in qalqilya. this boy was subjected to physical abuse amounting to torture for 2.5 hours by Israeli soldiers who stormed his family’s shop on 11 June, seeking information on the location of a handgun. The boy was repeatedly beaten, slapped and punched in the head and stomach, forced to hold a stress position for half and hour, and threatened. He was deeply shocked and lost two molar teeth as a result of the assault. the soldiers had come into the shop where the boy was watching over for his father, they were demanding the boy show them his father's gun. the boy kept saying that his father had no gun, and the soldier continued to beat him. i checked the website, and there are many other stories like this.
In one case, Israeli interrogators beat 15-year-old Ibrahim S. over the course of several hours. Ibrahim was then threatened with sexual assault for the purpose of extracting his confession. The accusation, which Ibrahim kept denying, was that he had thrown stones at the Israeli army when it invaded his village the day before. A Military Court accepted Ibrahim’s confession and he was imprisoned in Israel for five months.
In a second case, 14-year-old Mohammad E. was standing with a group of friends near the Wall which passes close to his village near Ramallah. Mohammad was suddenly grabbed by four men in plain clothes who proceeded to hit him about the head with the butts of their guns whilst spraying his face with tear gas. Bleeding from wounds sustained during his arrest Mohammad was coerced into signing papers written in Hebrew in which he confessed to throwing stones at the Wall. An Israeli Military Court accepted this confession and sentenced Mohammad to four and-a-half months’ imprisonment.
Who are these men that do this? These are not just bad apples. They are not an exception to the rule. The army breeds these animals, these people who can beat a child so ruthlessly. And of course, Claudia told me, this is just one story. There are hundreds of these that she herself has documented. And just about children. And Israel defines child as anyone younger than 16, not 18 and thus violating yet another of the international agreements to which they are a signatory.
and then i remember that one block from where i am sleeping here in ramallah there is a memorial picture and small palestinian flag on the sidewalk, a place to highlight the exact spot on the sidewalk where 10 months ago a fourteen year old boy had thrown stones at an israeli military truck passing on the street and was shot in the stomach. he died there on the corner, bleeding to death, while his parents and many watched and the soldiers prevented any medical assistance from getting to him.
Our wonderful, rambling conversation continues and they tell me a bit about hebron, the old city that I have watched movies about and read so many reports of. The old city is occupied by settlers, and is one of the only examples of Israeli settlements that are actually within a Palestinian city. It is difficult to imagine the violence and conflict that has arrived as a result of this process. By the settlers’ own admission they have, and I use their word, “sanitized” the old city. check out video of the tel rumeida project on the link on the right of the blog page.
I tell my fellow riders that yesterday I had seen the horrific video of what happened in Jerusalem with the Palestinian man who went on a rampage and killed several people with a tractor. In the video you see an off-duty soldier (because everyone is either a soldier or an off-duty soldier in Israel) jump on top of the tractor and reach the cab, calmly reach into his back holster, pull a handgun, take aim, and fire first one shot into the driver’s head, then three more. A policeman then jumps onto the tractor, and when he arrives shoots the man three more times. And I cant stop thinking about this moment. It haunts my dreams and thoughts. I keep wondering what I might do in that situation. This man gets there and I know that the driver had just killed people, but in the moment when the Israeli guy gets there, and is looking at the man, who is unarmed and could easily be subdued, he decides to shoot him in the head at point blank range. Of course, there is no citizens arrest in Israel. Just kill them. That’s the first impulse. I am not saying that the Palestinian driver was a good man and didn’t deserve to be punished, but Israel is a country that doenst have a death penalty. and he was executed on the spot here.
and this to me encompasses the essence of this conflict, and so many other conflicts, this inability for people to treat the other person in front of them as an individual. The collective trauma and anger don’t allow us to make decisions about the person in front of us as a unique person, but rather an abstract representation of a larger conflict. and in that moment we place all the blame for past events on the person in front of us, for things that they had nothing to do with and neither did you, but somehow we are all held accountable for. This sort of disconnect allows for policies of collective punishment to be carried out. Collective punishment, the concept that you punish a larger group of people for the actions of an individual, or an unconnected party. It allows for people to take their anger out on innocent people. It allows for soldiers to beat a child, it allows for suicide attacks, it allows for missiles fired into houses, it allows for checkpoints and hatred, and it allowed for the off-duty soldier to look at the unarmed man who had, yes, just killed several people but posed no threat to the man in front of him, and shoot him in the head. I wonder what the face of the man looked like when he saw the soldier. Was it fear, remorse, anger. Whatever it was, we will probably never know. But that man made a decision to take this man’s life. One more life destroyed. And that Israeli man’s life will undoubtedly be altered by this trauma, of him having to make that decision. In fact there was probably no deliberation, this is how he was trained. But in hindsight I am sure it will haunt him too. Who knows what he will have to do to get past this trauma, to convince himself that he had to kill someone that day.
Anyway, its just been difficult for me to replay this event in my head. I wonder if I could look at the driver of the tractor that had just killed my own family or people around me and I just cant imagine a situation where I would want to kill that man. I cant say and I will probably never know, because I cant imagine being in a situation where I have the ability to take the life of a person with a gun for any reason, and I hope that I never do. I try to understand what might have gone through that soldier’s mind and it is difficult for me to imagine executing such an action. The only way that I can sort of understand it is that he must have, in that moment, been out of his mind, not thinking, acting, as david told me in the kibbutz, as more machine than man. I cant imagine the Palestinian man, what he must have thought that morning, to just snap. Also, he was out of his mind. He could not have been looking at the people in front of him as individuals. He may have thought about every time he was wronged at a checkpoint, humiliated, or whatever, but instead of dealing with those individuals in the moment, because you cant exactly tell the soldier who is beating you that you think this is wrong. The denial of justice and communication between individuals in this conflict is what creates this pent up hate and anger and reaches a boiling point at some time where someone else who is a long way from the initial insult or injury, to suffer.
I get to the treatment and rehabilitation center for victims of torture in hebron, where I am met by dr. assad and rahman, both of whom were participants in the 5np training course in Ramallah. they were elated to see me, and were very touched by my visit. The word, which is often the only word that all Palestinians know and I have heard more than anything else, “Welcome” was repeated to me through smiles. Dr. assad was telling me that “the workshop was really really terrific, and people are very hopeful to learn something new”, he had already presented his information to the entire staff at the TRC in hebron. When I arrived he wanted me to talk to a class of psychologists and volunteers who come to the center. Each class lasts six months, and helps train community members and university students in how to help deal with trauma and torture victims. When I get to the class I suggest that he give the introduction, not me, since he was at the training, and I guess he really was listening! He passionately described Chinese medicine and the uses of the 5np to the class, and everyone was on the edge of their seats. Then he demonstrated the 5np on the class and everyone reported that they were very relaxed and happy.
After the class I was talking with the social worker at the center, nihaya, a very wonderful woman who graciously spent that day and the next with me, translating and explaining the center and hebron politics for me. she explained to me all the methods of torture used by isrealis in the detention centers, stories that I will not include here. She invited me to stay the night in hebron and then come to the summer camp for children the next day. The camp is three weeks long and it is for children who have suffered torture or are sons or daughters of the clients at the TRC. Of course I said I would stay, so I changed my afternoon plans in Ramallah and stayed the night in hebron.
Dr assad took me to dinner with his family in the evening. First we went to a wedding celebration for a distant relative in his family. We went to the building where there was a reception, a lavish and happy event, where we drank coffee and ate sweets for some time while the family received us and we told them congratulations. Then he took me with his wife, son and daughter to his favourite restaurant in hebron, where I ate so much food. The hummus, falafel, babaganoush, tabouleh and pita were enough to fill me up, and even though this happens every time I still forget, that its simply an appetizer. Then the meals come out, course after course of delicious food. I am a bit of a confusion to thiem since I don’t eat mean, they say that they don’t think that vegetables and rice will ever fill you up, and they feel very sorry that I am not eating meat. I tell them its not a problem but I think they think I need to eat more and more in order to be full. I am filled beyond capacity and then they order desert, which I am convinced to eat just one more, so many times. In fact, dr assad’s wife tells me that in their culture, a woman chooses her husband on one criteria alone, and that is how much food he can eat. I tell her that must be why I am not married and they laugh, but feel sorry for me. on the way out of the restaurant we see a small-scale replica of the dome of the rock, the holiest place in islam, made with a half-million small glass beads. The replica was made by a man who is part owner of the restaurant when he spent 26 months in jail. The dome of the rock is in Jerusalem, where this family has not been able to visit in nearly 8 years. then we leave the restaurand, and go to the street where we eat more sweets, and I really begin to feel that I cant take anymore. Then we get into the car and they decide to go get icecream and sit in the only park in hebron. So I sigh only because it means more food, but I cant express the gratitude. We get icecream and go to the park, and tiny, tiny park in the middle of hebron. They all apologize for the size of the park, saying they know in my country there are big parks. They say it is small but they really like it, and they are very proud of it. It is a new addition to hebron, just built last year. The green space in the park cant amount to more that 20 square feet, and a handful of benches and a small fountain. And they are very proud. As we sit in the small park I am informed that it is their 29th anniversary, and they have spent this entire evening entertaining me. I am not sure I can express how humbled I felt at that moment. Dr assad’s wife says “you are bringing change to Palestine”, and her tone almost sounds like a question so I wonder if she means the coins I have in my pocket, but she says that she thinks that acupuncture has so much potential to help here, and I think she must be talking about the other kind of change. I sleep well that evening.
I wake up and am supposed to meet nihaya at 7:30am to go to the summer camp but she doesn’t arrive until after 8. she apologizes profusely and tells me that she is late because the Israeli checkpoints have been vicious the past two days, and that people have been held for a very long time. I ask her to please not be sorry for being late about this. I wonder if this increase has to do with what happened in Jerusalem a few days ago, and she shrugs that it could really be anything. It could be the Hezbollah prisoner exchange that has people on edge, it could be the Jerusalem incident, it could be anything. She says it doesn’t take much to get this treatment, and often it happens for no apparent reason. Collective punishment. Somebody is mad somewhere and all soldiers have a collective policy to punish all Palestinians. So many innocent people. Nihaya is feeling very tired, as we walk to the summer camp, because she was unable to take her car across the checkpoint. They make everyone get out of their car, walk across the checkpoint, and take a taxi at the other side. So much walking, she says. And when people cant take their cars across it obviously limits what people can take with them, so forget about any large products or goods that need to get into the city. The Israeli army has decided that nothing gets in today, and it is so. And there are so many people and so few taxis, it takes so long. Then we keep walking to the camp and she makes a joke about how she is so happy about the occupation because she gets so much exercise. Without the occupation she would probably be so lazy. I reluctantly laugh.
We get to the summer camp and stand under the shade of a 250 year old olive tree in the middle of the courtyard of this small school. I am reminded of the fact that the olive trees are such a symbol of Palestinian connection to the land, because for hundreds, thousands of years the same families have been picking olives and making a living from the same trees. And the Israeli army and settlers have a policy of destroying the trees, severing a very visceral connection to the land. I watch from the tree as 40 young children, ages 6-14, line up and do morning exercises. Laughing and playful, smiling, they are so happy to be there. I find out that the majority of these children are sons and daughters of parents (one or both) who have been killed by the Israeli army. Many of them have seen their parents killed. Other children have also been tortured or beaten by settlers or soldiers. All have been traumatized. A tiny girl, 6 or 7 years old, volunteers to sing me a song for me, ala kufiya, a wonderful song, and then they all sing it together. The summer camp is filled with activities like singing, drama, art, and traditional Palestinian cultural activities. I sit in one of the classes for most of the morning and since it is day two of the camp, the children have been divided into three groups and each must come up with their own name and a song to sing to represent them. This group is called birds of paradise, and their song is “we are the birds of paradise, we wish peace and blessings on this camp”. Some of the children engage quickly and easily with the others, and there are some who you can see almost have a hollow look to them, who have or are currently really suffering. Deep-set eyes, subdued. Sad.
At the lunch break I share a popular education activity that I developed a few years ago with the leaders, and they love it and will implement it. It feels good to be able to contribute in this way as well. I give one man a few ear seeds to help with his foot pain and his smiles broadly, slaps me on the back and declares that he hopes I find a good wife very soon. Later I show them how to put ear seeds on the shenmen point on the children, a point I learned helps with hyperactivity. It seems like such a small thing, but I hope it helps. The camp leaders learned how to do it and were very excited, and I left them with a few hundred seeds and they promised to share with me if they noticed any difference. If anything the kids are feeling special because they all get a neat new sticker on their ears.
In one of the drama activities the children are asked to play out a scenario of a checkpoint, and it almost brings me to tears. Its such an everyday part of their lives.
I remember that david, harry and chana’s son, will be trained in the next eight months as a soldier to enter the west bank homes to arrest suspected persons of terrorism. It is this soldier who I saw shooting children in tulkarem in 2003, who left two children dead one morning shot in the stomach. it is this soldier who leaves so many innocent people shot, and who kills so many men and women, innocent and only suspected, dead, and it is this soldier who leaves so many children like these in front of me, as children of martyrs.
I leave and the man who I gave seeds to earlier kissed me four times, two on each cheek, thanking me for coming.
Nihaya takes me to the old city where we pass through the market. Its a common scene if you have been to an arab country – big bowls filled with different colored seeds and spices, a man on a donkey pulling a cart, vendors selling clothes, trinkets, food, animals. And then its atypical because above the street along the market there is a fence covering the street. It is a metal fence that is littered with glass bottles, trash, cans and other filth. This is what the settlers throw onto the people in the market, and the fence has been constructed to protect the people just trying to make a living there. almost all of the houses in the old city of hebron have been occupied by settlers, where over the past years they have violently harassed the Palestinian occupants until they were forced to leave. An permanent Israeli military presence in the city ensures the protection of the settlers, although ostensibly there for peace. This is, I remind you, in Hebron – Area A – where at the entrance to the city there stands a sign that declares the limits of the city to be under the control of the Palestinian authority and the presence of Israeli soldiers is illegal under Israeli law. I can only imagine what sort of daily treatment the vendors and consumers in this market had to endure before the fence was put up, that exists there now to prevent the Palestinians from the excrement of the ruthless settlers there on a mission from god. We walk to the end of the market and pass through a checkpoint, where I am held for five minutes in line, holding everyone else up because of what I have in my bag, and I feel very embarrassed to make them wait even longer than usual. I get through and nihaya apologizes again to me for having to wait, although she says it is normal for her. We pass through the checkpoint so that we can visit the mosque, and now we have to pass through yet another checkpoint, where the soldier tells me that no tourists are allowed in while they are praying. How noble of him, to protect the sacred mosque. Despite the fact that I am there, upon the generous invitation of muslims to visit their sacred mosque, it is an Israeli jew who regulates this coming and going. I am insulted, and so is nihaya, but she smiles and shrugs, and we head back. The rest of the old city is a full-on settlement, and if nihaya goes there it is likely that she will be beaten, or worse. We head back and I ask her about how she feels about the checkpoints, the soldiers, the occupation. She says that she is used to it, a comment that makes me cringe. Nobody should have to feel used to this treatment, and she says its the only way to stay sane. I ask her what she thinks about me, and about foreigners, especially those who come to Palestine. We have built a trusting relationship, so I tell her I expect an honest answer. She said that when she heard me say, I am from the US, she immediately thought, Bush. Then it changed after we started talking, but couldn’t help but admitting that this is a common initial thought. She also said that she was bored of hearing so much rhetoric from the international community supporting Palestinians, they are just tired of it. There is no real support, just talk, and they are bored of it she said. But she said she was happy that I was there, and I am not sure she was speaking honestly, but it seemed to be quite heartfelt. She said she understands that individuals are different from their governments. She kindly walks me back to a taxi so I can return to Ramallah.
We are lucky in the taxi and are not held for very long at the checkpoints, and I arrive in Ramallah by around 3:30 and go to the TRC to answer some lingering questions from two of the best students from the training last week, Amghram and Sami. I answer the questions as best as I can and we set Thursday as the day when they will first practice the 5np on their clients. Very exciting! Then I talk to sami for a while. She is 24, born in east Jerusalem. Truly a no-man’s (woman’s) land. She comes to Ramallah everyday to work. Through the wall.she says that most of her social life is in Ramallah, and that she only has one friend in Jerusalem, because it is a depressing place. It makes her sad, to see so many Palestinians trying to act jewish, losing their language, culture, their style. Just be Palestinian, she says. But she doesn’t belong in either world. She is a second-class citizen in Israel who cant vote and is resented. (west bank ID holders are more like third-class citizens). She is viewed sa not Palestinian fully because she has some of the very few privileges as a palestinian with a jerusalem ID and is resented by other west bank Palestinians as well. Even in the Palestinian presidential elections there was a large debate about whether east Jerusalem Palestinians could vote. In the end they said yes, but the issue itself increased her feelings of alienation. Her passport is Israeli but it says “Palestinian” next to her name, cementing her second-class citizenship. But now when she renews her ID they put a series of stars next to her name and she says they are denying her to even call herself a Palestinian on her ID, so she hasn’t changed it yet.
Amghram says tha she was born in Israel, in pre 1948 arab areas, so has full Israeli citizenship. But her husband is from the west bank and can not leave to see her family. But she keeps the Israeli passport because she gets benefits like health care, access to ben gurion airport, and can go to the beach.
My plan was to leave this morning for jenin, but that has changed so I stay in Ramallah and still think I might got to Jerusalem today. Tomorrow I will go to jenin, in the morning to be with the freedom learning centre, and in the afternoon at the TRC office in the city. On Thursday I need to be at the TRC in Ramallah in an advisory capacity for the two women to start their 5np program with their clients, and on Friday I will most likely go to arora with abed again. Who knows what the next week has in store. So that’s a ton of writing, I am sorry for it to come in such a lump. peace
On Sunday morning I left for hebron with joe and three other internationals working for ngo´s here. The area of hebron is beautiful, very hilly and green. Our trip took us through a confusing matrix of Israel and west bank roads and lands, through several checkpoint. At some times we had Palestinian villages on both sides of our road, which was for the exclusive use of Israelis, and the villages were separated from the road by fences on each side. Again, more cages. On the side of the roads the settlements are clearly distinguished from Palestinian villages because they are cookie-cutter. We also passed several “illegal” outposts, which are basically trailer parks filled with very armed and very religious settlers who feel that it is literally their “god given right” to be there. these are the people who ruthlessly attack and kill local Palestinians when they try to reach their olive trees or fields. They are some of the craziest and most violent people here, the most fanatical and dangerous. And each month there are more and more of these “outposts”, filled with people who are filled with the pride of knowing that they are on the dangerous frontier in the name of god, willing to make the sacrifice in a savage land for Him. Very scary.
I notice that on the way to hebron we see only signs in Hebrew and English, not in Arabic, and none of them mention any names of Palestinian villages that are along the way, but they have big signs for even the smallest of Israeli settlements. When I comment on this, a guy in the car who has been here for years reminded me that there are no signs in the west bank that have the word JENIN on it. Not a single one. Jenin has been repeatedly assaulted by the Israeli military but there are so many other ways that Palestinians are denied their identity by Israel, such as this, in order to make life so difficult so as to wipe it off the map.
As we drive I ask the woman next to me about her work, and she tells me she works for defence for children international http://www.dci-pal.org/ where she takes testimony from children who have endured trauma or violence by the hand of Israeli soldiers or settlers in order to document the human rights violations and lobby for European and UN involvement. she told me this story about a boy she interviewed the other in qalqilya. this boy was subjected to physical abuse amounting to torture for 2.5 hours by Israeli soldiers who stormed his family’s shop on 11 June, seeking information on the location of a handgun. The boy was repeatedly beaten, slapped and punched in the head and stomach, forced to hold a stress position for half and hour, and threatened. He was deeply shocked and lost two molar teeth as a result of the assault. the soldiers had come into the shop where the boy was watching over for his father, they were demanding the boy show them his father's gun. the boy kept saying that his father had no gun, and the soldier continued to beat him. i checked the website, and there are many other stories like this.
In one case, Israeli interrogators beat 15-year-old Ibrahim S. over the course of several hours. Ibrahim was then threatened with sexual assault for the purpose of extracting his confession. The accusation, which Ibrahim kept denying, was that he had thrown stones at the Israeli army when it invaded his village the day before. A Military Court accepted Ibrahim’s confession and he was imprisoned in Israel for five months.
In a second case, 14-year-old Mohammad E. was standing with a group of friends near the Wall which passes close to his village near Ramallah. Mohammad was suddenly grabbed by four men in plain clothes who proceeded to hit him about the head with the butts of their guns whilst spraying his face with tear gas. Bleeding from wounds sustained during his arrest Mohammad was coerced into signing papers written in Hebrew in which he confessed to throwing stones at the Wall. An Israeli Military Court accepted this confession and sentenced Mohammad to four and-a-half months’ imprisonment.
Who are these men that do this? These are not just bad apples. They are not an exception to the rule. The army breeds these animals, these people who can beat a child so ruthlessly. And of course, Claudia told me, this is just one story. There are hundreds of these that she herself has documented. And just about children. And Israel defines child as anyone younger than 16, not 18 and thus violating yet another of the international agreements to which they are a signatory.
and then i remember that one block from where i am sleeping here in ramallah there is a memorial picture and small palestinian flag on the sidewalk, a place to highlight the exact spot on the sidewalk where 10 months ago a fourteen year old boy had thrown stones at an israeli military truck passing on the street and was shot in the stomach. he died there on the corner, bleeding to death, while his parents and many watched and the soldiers prevented any medical assistance from getting to him.
Our wonderful, rambling conversation continues and they tell me a bit about hebron, the old city that I have watched movies about and read so many reports of. The old city is occupied by settlers, and is one of the only examples of Israeli settlements that are actually within a Palestinian city. It is difficult to imagine the violence and conflict that has arrived as a result of this process. By the settlers’ own admission they have, and I use their word, “sanitized” the old city. check out video of the tel rumeida project on the link on the right of the blog page.
I tell my fellow riders that yesterday I had seen the horrific video of what happened in Jerusalem with the Palestinian man who went on a rampage and killed several people with a tractor. In the video you see an off-duty soldier (because everyone is either a soldier or an off-duty soldier in Israel) jump on top of the tractor and reach the cab, calmly reach into his back holster, pull a handgun, take aim, and fire first one shot into the driver’s head, then three more. A policeman then jumps onto the tractor, and when he arrives shoots the man three more times. And I cant stop thinking about this moment. It haunts my dreams and thoughts. I keep wondering what I might do in that situation. This man gets there and I know that the driver had just killed people, but in the moment when the Israeli guy gets there, and is looking at the man, who is unarmed and could easily be subdued, he decides to shoot him in the head at point blank range. Of course, there is no citizens arrest in Israel. Just kill them. That’s the first impulse. I am not saying that the Palestinian driver was a good man and didn’t deserve to be punished, but Israel is a country that doenst have a death penalty. and he was executed on the spot here.
and this to me encompasses the essence of this conflict, and so many other conflicts, this inability for people to treat the other person in front of them as an individual. The collective trauma and anger don’t allow us to make decisions about the person in front of us as a unique person, but rather an abstract representation of a larger conflict. and in that moment we place all the blame for past events on the person in front of us, for things that they had nothing to do with and neither did you, but somehow we are all held accountable for. This sort of disconnect allows for policies of collective punishment to be carried out. Collective punishment, the concept that you punish a larger group of people for the actions of an individual, or an unconnected party. It allows for people to take their anger out on innocent people. It allows for soldiers to beat a child, it allows for suicide attacks, it allows for missiles fired into houses, it allows for checkpoints and hatred, and it allowed for the off-duty soldier to look at the unarmed man who had, yes, just killed several people but posed no threat to the man in front of him, and shoot him in the head. I wonder what the face of the man looked like when he saw the soldier. Was it fear, remorse, anger. Whatever it was, we will probably never know. But that man made a decision to take this man’s life. One more life destroyed. And that Israeli man’s life will undoubtedly be altered by this trauma, of him having to make that decision. In fact there was probably no deliberation, this is how he was trained. But in hindsight I am sure it will haunt him too. Who knows what he will have to do to get past this trauma, to convince himself that he had to kill someone that day.
Anyway, its just been difficult for me to replay this event in my head. I wonder if I could look at the driver of the tractor that had just killed my own family or people around me and I just cant imagine a situation where I would want to kill that man. I cant say and I will probably never know, because I cant imagine being in a situation where I have the ability to take the life of a person with a gun for any reason, and I hope that I never do. I try to understand what might have gone through that soldier’s mind and it is difficult for me to imagine executing such an action. The only way that I can sort of understand it is that he must have, in that moment, been out of his mind, not thinking, acting, as david told me in the kibbutz, as more machine than man. I cant imagine the Palestinian man, what he must have thought that morning, to just snap. Also, he was out of his mind. He could not have been looking at the people in front of him as individuals. He may have thought about every time he was wronged at a checkpoint, humiliated, or whatever, but instead of dealing with those individuals in the moment, because you cant exactly tell the soldier who is beating you that you think this is wrong. The denial of justice and communication between individuals in this conflict is what creates this pent up hate and anger and reaches a boiling point at some time where someone else who is a long way from the initial insult or injury, to suffer.
I get to the treatment and rehabilitation center for victims of torture in hebron, where I am met by dr. assad and rahman, both of whom were participants in the 5np training course in Ramallah. they were elated to see me, and were very touched by my visit. The word, which is often the only word that all Palestinians know and I have heard more than anything else, “Welcome” was repeated to me through smiles. Dr. assad was telling me that “the workshop was really really terrific, and people are very hopeful to learn something new”, he had already presented his information to the entire staff at the TRC in hebron. When I arrived he wanted me to talk to a class of psychologists and volunteers who come to the center. Each class lasts six months, and helps train community members and university students in how to help deal with trauma and torture victims. When I get to the class I suggest that he give the introduction, not me, since he was at the training, and I guess he really was listening! He passionately described Chinese medicine and the uses of the 5np to the class, and everyone was on the edge of their seats. Then he demonstrated the 5np on the class and everyone reported that they were very relaxed and happy.
After the class I was talking with the social worker at the center, nihaya, a very wonderful woman who graciously spent that day and the next with me, translating and explaining the center and hebron politics for me. she explained to me all the methods of torture used by isrealis in the detention centers, stories that I will not include here. She invited me to stay the night in hebron and then come to the summer camp for children the next day. The camp is three weeks long and it is for children who have suffered torture or are sons or daughters of the clients at the TRC. Of course I said I would stay, so I changed my afternoon plans in Ramallah and stayed the night in hebron.
Dr assad took me to dinner with his family in the evening. First we went to a wedding celebration for a distant relative in his family. We went to the building where there was a reception, a lavish and happy event, where we drank coffee and ate sweets for some time while the family received us and we told them congratulations. Then he took me with his wife, son and daughter to his favourite restaurant in hebron, where I ate so much food. The hummus, falafel, babaganoush, tabouleh and pita were enough to fill me up, and even though this happens every time I still forget, that its simply an appetizer. Then the meals come out, course after course of delicious food. I am a bit of a confusion to thiem since I don’t eat mean, they say that they don’t think that vegetables and rice will ever fill you up, and they feel very sorry that I am not eating meat. I tell them its not a problem but I think they think I need to eat more and more in order to be full. I am filled beyond capacity and then they order desert, which I am convinced to eat just one more, so many times. In fact, dr assad’s wife tells me that in their culture, a woman chooses her husband on one criteria alone, and that is how much food he can eat. I tell her that must be why I am not married and they laugh, but feel sorry for me. on the way out of the restaurant we see a small-scale replica of the dome of the rock, the holiest place in islam, made with a half-million small glass beads. The replica was made by a man who is part owner of the restaurant when he spent 26 months in jail. The dome of the rock is in Jerusalem, where this family has not been able to visit in nearly 8 years. then we leave the restaurand, and go to the street where we eat more sweets, and I really begin to feel that I cant take anymore. Then we get into the car and they decide to go get icecream and sit in the only park in hebron. So I sigh only because it means more food, but I cant express the gratitude. We get icecream and go to the park, and tiny, tiny park in the middle of hebron. They all apologize for the size of the park, saying they know in my country there are big parks. They say it is small but they really like it, and they are very proud of it. It is a new addition to hebron, just built last year. The green space in the park cant amount to more that 20 square feet, and a handful of benches and a small fountain. And they are very proud. As we sit in the small park I am informed that it is their 29th anniversary, and they have spent this entire evening entertaining me. I am not sure I can express how humbled I felt at that moment. Dr assad’s wife says “you are bringing change to Palestine”, and her tone almost sounds like a question so I wonder if she means the coins I have in my pocket, but she says that she thinks that acupuncture has so much potential to help here, and I think she must be talking about the other kind of change. I sleep well that evening.
I wake up and am supposed to meet nihaya at 7:30am to go to the summer camp but she doesn’t arrive until after 8. she apologizes profusely and tells me that she is late because the Israeli checkpoints have been vicious the past two days, and that people have been held for a very long time. I ask her to please not be sorry for being late about this. I wonder if this increase has to do with what happened in Jerusalem a few days ago, and she shrugs that it could really be anything. It could be the Hezbollah prisoner exchange that has people on edge, it could be the Jerusalem incident, it could be anything. She says it doesn’t take much to get this treatment, and often it happens for no apparent reason. Collective punishment. Somebody is mad somewhere and all soldiers have a collective policy to punish all Palestinians. So many innocent people. Nihaya is feeling very tired, as we walk to the summer camp, because she was unable to take her car across the checkpoint. They make everyone get out of their car, walk across the checkpoint, and take a taxi at the other side. So much walking, she says. And when people cant take their cars across it obviously limits what people can take with them, so forget about any large products or goods that need to get into the city. The Israeli army has decided that nothing gets in today, and it is so. And there are so many people and so few taxis, it takes so long. Then we keep walking to the camp and she makes a joke about how she is so happy about the occupation because she gets so much exercise. Without the occupation she would probably be so lazy. I reluctantly laugh.
We get to the summer camp and stand under the shade of a 250 year old olive tree in the middle of the courtyard of this small school. I am reminded of the fact that the olive trees are such a symbol of Palestinian connection to the land, because for hundreds, thousands of years the same families have been picking olives and making a living from the same trees. And the Israeli army and settlers have a policy of destroying the trees, severing a very visceral connection to the land. I watch from the tree as 40 young children, ages 6-14, line up and do morning exercises. Laughing and playful, smiling, they are so happy to be there. I find out that the majority of these children are sons and daughters of parents (one or both) who have been killed by the Israeli army. Many of them have seen their parents killed. Other children have also been tortured or beaten by settlers or soldiers. All have been traumatized. A tiny girl, 6 or 7 years old, volunteers to sing me a song for me, ala kufiya, a wonderful song, and then they all sing it together. The summer camp is filled with activities like singing, drama, art, and traditional Palestinian cultural activities. I sit in one of the classes for most of the morning and since it is day two of the camp, the children have been divided into three groups and each must come up with their own name and a song to sing to represent them. This group is called birds of paradise, and their song is “we are the birds of paradise, we wish peace and blessings on this camp”. Some of the children engage quickly and easily with the others, and there are some who you can see almost have a hollow look to them, who have or are currently really suffering. Deep-set eyes, subdued. Sad.
At the lunch break I share a popular education activity that I developed a few years ago with the leaders, and they love it and will implement it. It feels good to be able to contribute in this way as well. I give one man a few ear seeds to help with his foot pain and his smiles broadly, slaps me on the back and declares that he hopes I find a good wife very soon. Later I show them how to put ear seeds on the shenmen point on the children, a point I learned helps with hyperactivity. It seems like such a small thing, but I hope it helps. The camp leaders learned how to do it and were very excited, and I left them with a few hundred seeds and they promised to share with me if they noticed any difference. If anything the kids are feeling special because they all get a neat new sticker on their ears.
In one of the drama activities the children are asked to play out a scenario of a checkpoint, and it almost brings me to tears. Its such an everyday part of their lives.
I remember that david, harry and chana’s son, will be trained in the next eight months as a soldier to enter the west bank homes to arrest suspected persons of terrorism. It is this soldier who I saw shooting children in tulkarem in 2003, who left two children dead one morning shot in the stomach. it is this soldier who leaves so many innocent people shot, and who kills so many men and women, innocent and only suspected, dead, and it is this soldier who leaves so many children like these in front of me, as children of martyrs.
I leave and the man who I gave seeds to earlier kissed me four times, two on each cheek, thanking me for coming.
Nihaya takes me to the old city where we pass through the market. Its a common scene if you have been to an arab country – big bowls filled with different colored seeds and spices, a man on a donkey pulling a cart, vendors selling clothes, trinkets, food, animals. And then its atypical because above the street along the market there is a fence covering the street. It is a metal fence that is littered with glass bottles, trash, cans and other filth. This is what the settlers throw onto the people in the market, and the fence has been constructed to protect the people just trying to make a living there. almost all of the houses in the old city of hebron have been occupied by settlers, where over the past years they have violently harassed the Palestinian occupants until they were forced to leave. An permanent Israeli military presence in the city ensures the protection of the settlers, although ostensibly there for peace. This is, I remind you, in Hebron – Area A – where at the entrance to the city there stands a sign that declares the limits of the city to be under the control of the Palestinian authority and the presence of Israeli soldiers is illegal under Israeli law. I can only imagine what sort of daily treatment the vendors and consumers in this market had to endure before the fence was put up, that exists there now to prevent the Palestinians from the excrement of the ruthless settlers there on a mission from god. We walk to the end of the market and pass through a checkpoint, where I am held for five minutes in line, holding everyone else up because of what I have in my bag, and I feel very embarrassed to make them wait even longer than usual. I get through and nihaya apologizes again to me for having to wait, although she says it is normal for her. We pass through the checkpoint so that we can visit the mosque, and now we have to pass through yet another checkpoint, where the soldier tells me that no tourists are allowed in while they are praying. How noble of him, to protect the sacred mosque. Despite the fact that I am there, upon the generous invitation of muslims to visit their sacred mosque, it is an Israeli jew who regulates this coming and going. I am insulted, and so is nihaya, but she smiles and shrugs, and we head back. The rest of the old city is a full-on settlement, and if nihaya goes there it is likely that she will be beaten, or worse. We head back and I ask her about how she feels about the checkpoints, the soldiers, the occupation. She says that she is used to it, a comment that makes me cringe. Nobody should have to feel used to this treatment, and she says its the only way to stay sane. I ask her what she thinks about me, and about foreigners, especially those who come to Palestine. We have built a trusting relationship, so I tell her I expect an honest answer. She said that when she heard me say, I am from the US, she immediately thought, Bush. Then it changed after we started talking, but couldn’t help but admitting that this is a common initial thought. She also said that she was bored of hearing so much rhetoric from the international community supporting Palestinians, they are just tired of it. There is no real support, just talk, and they are bored of it she said. But she said she was happy that I was there, and I am not sure she was speaking honestly, but it seemed to be quite heartfelt. She said she understands that individuals are different from their governments. She kindly walks me back to a taxi so I can return to Ramallah.
We are lucky in the taxi and are not held for very long at the checkpoints, and I arrive in Ramallah by around 3:30 and go to the TRC to answer some lingering questions from two of the best students from the training last week, Amghram and Sami. I answer the questions as best as I can and we set Thursday as the day when they will first practice the 5np on their clients. Very exciting! Then I talk to sami for a while. She is 24, born in east Jerusalem. Truly a no-man’s (woman’s) land. She comes to Ramallah everyday to work. Through the wall.she says that most of her social life is in Ramallah, and that she only has one friend in Jerusalem, because it is a depressing place. It makes her sad, to see so many Palestinians trying to act jewish, losing their language, culture, their style. Just be Palestinian, she says. But she doesn’t belong in either world. She is a second-class citizen in Israel who cant vote and is resented. (west bank ID holders are more like third-class citizens). She is viewed sa not Palestinian fully because she has some of the very few privileges as a palestinian with a jerusalem ID and is resented by other west bank Palestinians as well. Even in the Palestinian presidential elections there was a large debate about whether east Jerusalem Palestinians could vote. In the end they said yes, but the issue itself increased her feelings of alienation. Her passport is Israeli but it says “Palestinian” next to her name, cementing her second-class citizenship. But now when she renews her ID they put a series of stars next to her name and she says they are denying her to even call herself a Palestinian on her ID, so she hasn’t changed it yet.
Amghram says tha she was born in Israel, in pre 1948 arab areas, so has full Israeli citizenship. But her husband is from the west bank and can not leave to see her family. But she keeps the Israeli passport because she gets benefits like health care, access to ben gurion airport, and can go to the beach.
My plan was to leave this morning for jenin, but that has changed so I stay in Ramallah and still think I might got to Jerusalem today. Tomorrow I will go to jenin, in the morning to be with the freedom learning centre, and in the afternoon at the TRC office in the city. On Thursday I need to be at the TRC in Ramallah in an advisory capacity for the two women to start their 5np program with their clients, and on Friday I will most likely go to arora with abed again. Who knows what the next week has in store. So that’s a ton of writing, I am sorry for it to come in such a lump. peace
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