A lengthy post before Signing off...

I'm back in North America, specifically Philadelphia, taking a much needed break at Margaret's parent's house before flying back to South Korea after the holidays.

Its been revelatory having some distance and headspace to reflect on being in Palestine and the Middle East for just over four months. My mind feels fragmented most of the time because I'm now living in the keystone of the United States, which is about the complete opposite end of the spectrum from living in Palestine. There are no nightly gunfire exchanges, no sonic booms from drone jets flying overhead, no loud Minarets, no fighting children, no shouting in Arabic. In comparison, everything is massive here - extra large pizzas; giant backyards that need raking; behemoth automobiles that were christened by Ares himself. Don't get me started on American television..... But why the eff do Puff Daddy, Britney Spears, Anne Hathaway and Tim McGraw have their own perfume/colognes, those sellout bitches - but I guess the global economic crisis truly affects everyone eh?? At least Ralph Nader isn't selling Nikes.

I usually start the day reading the Globe & Mail, the New York Times and Ha'aretz (in that order) and I know there's an entire side of the story that people just aren't getting when they read about the Middle East. I feel hoarse in the throat before I even begin to explain what its actually like there to people and sometimes I feel like I'm suffering from Cassandra Complex.

In Jerusalem, as I watched all the American, British, French, Italian, etc, etc, tourists walk by in their tour groups and get onto their tour buses, I wondered if they ever considered bothering to see the other side of things just over the giant Wall. The Wall isn't just a barricade for the Israelis, its a way to stop the dissemination of information from permeating back to the people. The only Israelis that visit Palestine are soldiers (certainly not non-biased observers) because its illegal for Israelis to visit Palestine unless your a settler. So Palestinians have a narrow view of Israelis and Israelis (and most of the Western world) have a narrow view of what life is like in Palestine. Because of this, I'd like to illuminate two central points I've learnt in Palestine that I don't believe are common knowledge back home.

(1) The Cause of Conflict

The current Israeli-Arab conflict does not have its roots in thousands or even hundreds of years of conflict; this is a common misconception. If you talk to older Palestinians and Jews that lived in the Levant before 1948, they will tell you that British Mandate Palestine, although under colonial rule, had many Jewish and Muslim communities not merely co-existing, but fully intregrated with one another. The animosity of today's conflict is a product of:

(a) the foundation of the state of Israel in 1948, and 

(b) the Occupation of the West Bank and Gaza in 1967. 

There were many conflicts between Pagan and non-Jewish tribes in the Levant during pre-Christian times (including tribes that ascend from modern-day Arabs) this was the norm rather than the exception between divergent ethnic/religious groups during the period, rather than a specifically Arab-Jew conflict. While the Arab people certainly existed before pre-Islamic times, what solidified the modern ethnic Arab identity was the emergence of Islam which didn't formalize itself as a religion until the late 7th century. Additionally, during the height of the Arab empire, Jews flourished in the Ottoman Empire, escaping brutal persecution from the Crusades and the Spanish Inquisition.

While Zionism claims that before the state of Israel was founded, Israel was "a land without a people, for a people without a land" there were several hundred thousand Arab Palestinians that lived and had homes there. Lord Balfour, who signed the declaration with his namesake, carried out his mission that "Zionism, be it right or wrong, good or bad, is rooted in age-long tradition, in present needs, in future hopes, of far profounder import than the desire and prejudices of 700,000 Arabs who now inhabit that ancient land. We do not propose even to go through the form of consulting the wishes of the present inhabitants of the country."

(2) Arab Identity

Palestinians in the West Bank resent Gazans for being so 'extreme' while Gazans resent West Bankers for being so 'elitist.'  

Palestinian Jerusalemites (who hold special permit status) look down on West Bankers and Gazans for being 'uncivilized.'

Palestinian urban West Bankers resent the refugees in the refugee camps in their cities, calling them "majnoon u mish shatir" meaning "crazy and stupid" in Arabic. 

Almost everyone hates the Arabs who stayed in Israel and became Israeli citizens, calling them 'traitors.'

The two major Palestinian political parties, Fateh and Hamas, think they both just want power and are equally corrupt, incessantly fighting with each other.

In one of the smallest regions in the World, the West Bank has citizens that live less than a half hour drive away from one another that NEVER visit each other because of Israeli checkpoints that take hours of humilation and degradation to pass through IF even allowed to pass through at all.  The refugee camps I worked in housed 40,000 people in an area of less than one square kilometre, which are subject to Israeli Soldiers coming into their homes in the middle of the night demanding to see proper identification while staring down the barrel of an automatic. What do you think this does to the psychology of a child when their only exposure to Israelis is this? Gazans cannot freely travel to the West Bank because there are no properly connecting roads for travel, and even cities in the West Bank are extremely restricted by travel because of specialized road networks kept solely for the use of settlers.  A divided Palestinian community will find it next to impossible to achieve statehood because they have been strangled when it comes to speaking with a unified voice.

While these are but my opinions based on my experiences there, I believe they are informed and come from sources that have been marginalized by an oppressive regime.

Not one to simply complain about a shit situation, I recommend several solutions that I doubt will ever be implemented because of egos, mistrust and a general misunderstanding of each others' situations. Furthermore, one of the exacerbations of Israeli government policy towards Palestine has been the emergence of suicide bombings, beginning in the early days of the second Intifada. Fear of suicide bombers from the Israeli side is a legitimate concern. Its an abbhoration of conscience to attack anybody so ruthlessly and I don't condone the behavior of these so-called 'marytrs of Palestine.' However, suicide bombing, in the words of Amira Hass (an Israeli journalist for Ha'aretz who reported and lived in Gaza City for several years in the 1990's) is "an act of desperation by the weak." Suicide bombing is a signal, a warning sign of anxiety from a society that has misplaced the value of life. A independent child psychologist from Norway came to Gaza and the West Bank and conducted several interviews and studies during the 1990's, concluding that children in refugee camps have lost their will to live. Palestinian Refugee camps are the worst place I've ever been to and are breeding grounds of extemist behavior. Camps are inflitrated regularly by soldiers who harrass children, there are no playgrounds and no parks, there is no proper sewage sanitation, and almost everyone has a family member/s that have been killed or injured by random shellings, stray gun-fire, or soldier ruthlessness. These are the conditions that breed extremist behavior, and such conditions were created by Occupation.  

(1) Israel must absolutely 100% pull all of its settlements and outposts out of the West Bank. Settlers are fucking nutjobs who believe that they have a religious and ideological right to the Greater Israel, and they have hatred filled in their hearts. Settlers are not typical Israelis mind you, but they are guarded and protected by the IDF, and all settlers are required, BY LAW to carry semi-automatic weapons everywhere they go. Read up on the West Bank city of Hebron, the most extreme and horrible example of settlers living in Palestine. 

(2) Take down the Wall piece by piece. For anyone who doesn't know this, the West Bank is almost completely surrounded by a giant 20 foot high concrete wall built by the Israeli government on the premise that it will keep suicide bombers out of Israel. Unfortunately, if you buy this garbage justifcation, its a short-term solution that will develop a future long-term problem. Because of the Great Barrier/Apartheid Wall/Seperation Wall, Palestinians have been cut off from their families, lost land, no longer have proper access to water sanitation, and now have to wait hours before crossing checkpoints to get proper medical treatment. The seperation barrier has without a doubt, reduced many cities and villages to ghettos. If checkpoints are to remain, for god's sake, have them run by independent third party coalitions like NATO, so that Palestinians are no longer subjected to humilating interogations and absurdly cruel treatment. 

(3) Bolster infrastructure. Don't just throw money at a problem and give the PLO whatever sum of money they request. Corruption runs deep because the PLO doesn't really have any power, only the power Israel decides to delegate to it. They can't run anything resembling a state when they aren't even permitted basic human rights, let alone jumpstarting an economy that is so heavily restricted on imports and exports. They'll end up creating a black market using tunnels like in Gaza. 

Thank you to my friends and family who constitute the readership of this blog. I learnt a lot from my experiences, and I hope that through this blog I have inspired others to understand a very complex region of the world we all share.

Lastly, I believe the greatest tragedy of the 20th century was not the Holocaust, but that the state of Israel, to the shame of its victims' memories, is slowly and unconciously perpetuating the same tyranny and injustice of their former oppressors. To paraphrase Marx, "Somewhere all great historic facts and personages recur twice; once as tragedy, and again as farce." Unless things change, its only a matter of time.

Sleepless in Jerusalem

I can't sleep. We left Nablus this morning and checked in at the Petra Hotel in Jerusalem. Then we went back through the checkpoints all over again to go to the city of Bethlehem. We found the Church of the Nativity, and then walked around the separation wall taking pictures of the graffiti.

It's strange to be back in Israel. It's cleaner, quieter, no one is shouting "What's your name" at us when we walk down the street. But I keep thinking, do people know what life is like for the Palestinians? Do these tourists go there? How can the Israelis live knowing what's happening to Palestinians? I keep thinking about my friends there, and getting emotional.

At the Church of the Nativity there was a mass and they were singing "Silent Night", which is a beautiful song, but where is "love's pure light" for the Palestinians? They don't "sleep in heavenly peace", they sleep with jets overhead, soldiers at checkpoints, tanks invading at night.

Last night we walked home from dinner with all the Project Hope people. We were giving out thank you notes to people who we had met and were kind to us. We ran into the mother of the young actress in Dave's play. She owns a jewelry shop near our street, and she invited us in. She thanked Dave for all of his work, and told him it meant a lot to her daughter. I was looking at necklaces, and there was one little silver olive tree pendant with Palestine written in Arabic underneath. I asked how much it was, and she told me she was giving it to me. I don't know why, but I started to cry. Sometimes being in Palestine was hard, and I love walking down the street now without young men harrassing me, but so many people were also so nice to us, like that woman.

I can't forget what I learned there. We have more stories to tell, but that will have to wait until we get to our own computers!

Little Boys

First of all, this is a link to a good article that Dave found about the Israel/Gaza strip conflict right now.

http://www.imemc.org/article/57443

I was walking down the street today to Project Hope, which took me past a boys' school letting out for the day. The little boys were throwing rocks at each other, seemingly in teams. I've realized that they don't just throw rocks at us, they throw them at each other. Then I saw two boys beating up another little boys against the wall. They had him down on the ground, and were kicking him, punching, smashing their backpacks down upon his head. I was horrified, so I went up to them and told them to stop, and they backed off and looked puzzled as they have before (this has happened before). The little boy was crying, it was awful. The worst part was, there were four adults that walked by and two more in the shop across the street and they did nothing. They didn't even look at what was happening.

A fellow volunteer was relating to us today the way the teachers beat the boys at the camp where he works. He said the boys are very wild, but the beatings are often unprovoked. Which came first, the beating or the insolence?

Oprah and Dr. Phil

I keep hearing from various students that they watch Oprah and Dr. Phil on their satellite tv. I remember reading a news article that Saudi Arabian women liked Oprah, but I had no idea Palestinian women watched her too! Dave and I mostly stick to the BBC, Arirang ( a Korean channel that we get on our satellite, oddly enough), and DubaiOne. DubaiOne shows a lot of Western programs and movies, although they are heavily censored. They won't show a kiss, but they will show blood and violence. Sometimes it's so edited that the program or movie no longer makes sense.

I didn't really get to finish that last post. I just wanted to say that the Israelis say they are blockading the Gaza Strip because of rocket attacks by the Hamas militants, and the militants say they attacked because the Israelis made incursions and killed Palestinians, and the Israelis say that they did that to prevent kidnappings of Israeli soldiers by the militants.....the blame goes back and forth, and it's hard to get the full picture.

When I arrived at my morning class with the housewives today, the center was locked and dark. The women who runs it was too busy, or something, so the ladies decided they'd rather go home. I walked back to Project Hope, as there was a clothing store I'd passed while in the taxi that I wanted to check out. I didn't buy anything, but I had a very nice conversation with the store owner. Another man in a store gave me an M pendant for free, just to be nice. I always feel better after these encounters.

Remembrance Day

The winter came back today, and brought with it thunderstorms. Why are the classes always canceled when it rains?



Yesterday was November 11th, Remembrance Day, the day to commemorate the sacrifices of veterans and civilians in times of war. I didn't think about it much, except to notice that on the BBC everyone had been wearing poppy-shaped pins all week to signify the occasion. I've never paid much attention to the day, to be honest.



I had my class that morning with the housewives group here in Nablus. We were talking about feelings (happy, sad, angry, etc.), and I asked them how they felt about what was happening in the Gaza Strip (the Israelis had closed the borders because of rocket attacks by militants in Gaza, which were in retaliation for Israeli incursions, which they said they did to prevent future kidnappings of Israeli soldiers...it goes back and forth.) The elder woman in the group, Sameha, who also has the best command of English, spoke passionately about the situation, and how she feels sad to see children suffering. I asked the rest of the group, because I wanted to give them a chance to speak. Rehab began to cry. Rehab invited us over to her house, Rehab is quiet, although her English is decent. She told me how her brother had been killed in his house in Nablus four years ago by soldiers, leaving a wife and two children. The other women began to cry, and so did I. I naively wasn't prepared for her answer to my question.

To hear about these stories in a newspaper or from a secondhand source is one thing. To hear it come from your student, a woman who has been your friend, is another. I don't know why her brother was killed. I don't know if he was targeted for a specific reason. I just know that we all cried together, because Rehab had lost her brother, and she was so very, very sad.

Sometimes people tell me that their tears are dried up, they are used to their situation. We met some neighbors who live on the fourth floor of our building. They insisted on driving us to our destination, and inviting us over for tea. They opened their home to us, offering us food and drink and English conversation. They told us how the Israeli soldiers had once occupied our building. They put everyone into one apartment, where they kept them for a week with no electricity or running water while they used their taken-over apartments for shooting into the El-Ein refugee camp which sits a few streets below our building.

The situation in the Gaza Strip right now appalls me. The Israeli border guards have recently blockaded entry by journalists, diplomats, food aid and medicinal supplies.

I don't even know where to start. This is the problem with not blogging consistently, pretty soon I've got a backlog of stories and I need a forklift to dump them all here.
Let's start with right now. We are in an internet cafe that has giant posters of Leonardo diCaprio plastered on the windows. We call it "Leo's". There are three young Palestinian men crowded around a computer listening to Celine Dion and other soulful songs. The bass is bumping, and reverberating in my cubicle. It's Saturday, the second weekend day as Friday is the day when everything is closed and the men go to the mosques. Schools and businesses are open Sunday through Thursday. Dave is going to help direct a play this afternoon, and I am going to the market and grocery store.
The open-air market is near the city center, a single L-shaped aisle around which sellers set up their vegetable and fruit stands. Some produce is better than others, but all of it is much cheaper than in North America. Produce is weighed by kilos and half kilos in plastic bags, and if we only want two avocados instead of a half kilo they will give it to us for free. One man always throws in extras, a couple of aging pomegranates or two wilting ears of corn. His produce isn't the best, but we go back to him because he is kind to us.
The grocery store is filled with wonders like peanut butter and ketchup, so we do not lack for our Western comfort foods. We would like to learn how to make more Palestinian dishes, especially the sweets, although we have read they are hard to make.
The guys atLeo's do not harrass us, they are polite and friendly and leave us alone. I lost my cool at another internet cafe where the guys next to me would not stop staring at me and whispering to each other. Admitting my lack of patience with this is difficult. I know that they are curious, that I am an oddity, but it slowly grates at one's patience to have it happen every day. I'm used to be a foreigner from living in Korea and traveling to a lot of countries, but there's something about it here that gets to me. Kids have thrown rocks, soccer balls, shouted at us, men have whispered "How are you" and "I love you" in my ears, they hiss at me when I walk by, and most of all they stare in a not-so-friendly-or-brotherly way.
But these are young men. The older men, for the most part, are very kind. One old man sits on his chair outside his front door on my way home and smiles at me and salutes when I walk by. Another younger man helped me find the taxi I needed. When we sat on the curb to eat our falafel the owner of a nearby candy store offered me his chair. So it is balanced. Unfortunately, the negative encounters enlarge themselves in my psyche, causing me to tense up when walking down our street.
If getting from place to place is my only problem, then I am rewarded by when I get there and see my students. I'm teaching a group of housewives, a group of girls at an all-girls' school, a mixed group of kids in one of the worser refugee camps, a handful of older girls at another, and still helping Dave in his all-boys' drama class.
The housewives are funny and kind. We had lunch at one woman's house last week, and she stuffed us with breads and cakes and tea and desserts. They sat around chit-chatting to each other, crocheting baby blankets and patting me every once in a while saying, "Habibti", I think, which means sweetheart. Some of them took of their scarves, and at first I wanted to stare at them. I often look at veiled women and wonder what color their hair is, how they wear it, is it short, long or wavy?
I love my younger students as well. They are enthusiastic and happy to see me. But I have to love those that are not happy as well, right? The other day as we were standing outside after class, we heard a sky-cracking sonic boom. I was startled, and asked what it was. It was an Israeli jet passing overhead, as they frequently do. They all laughed at me for being scared and said they were used to it. One thing that surprised me was when I asked the all-girls group of 10-12 year-olds what they wanted to learn in my class, and the answer was that they wanted to be able to communicate with the Israeli soldiers at the checkpoints. The longer we are here, the less this kind of thing surprises me. We have heard more stories about soldiers killing, fighting, being shot at, seeing your friend go out in the night and not knowing if he will return....
Sometimes I feel cooped up, mentally and physically, but then it occurs to me that the Palestinians must live like this, they have limited opportunities and tenuous safety.

Begets Begets Begets...

Its been a while since I've posted, because, as Margaret points out, we've been extremely busy volunteering with Project Hope. Project Hope is a Canadian sponsored NGO which is located in Nablus City in the West Bank. Project Hope brings volunteers from all over the world to teach French, English, Art and Drama to anyone who signs up for its classes. Project Hope also works as a volunteer base for the greater Nablus community, which has left me more than busy.

I teach two different drama classes in two different refugee camps near Nablus, I do clown and mime workshops with the Nablus City Circus, I'm helping a local playwrite direct his show which opens in 15 days, and I'm working on teaching two drama classes at An-Najah University. The opportunity to work with so many people in Palestine has been very envigorating, because quite honestly, the last thing you read about in the news regarding Palestine is cultural renewal. Indeed, the theatre and drama scene is looking to develop and grow, and I've been very rewarded with the amount of work and effort that my kids in the refugee camps have put into developing their skills, and with the commitment from the local actors here.

So thats the good news. The bad news is that I think Palestine is taking its toll on me... I'm getting tired of street youth yelling out 'hey whats your name' 'hey where you from' 'hey fuck you' to Margaret and I when we walk home each night, and sometimes they become really aggresive. We've had rocks thrown at us three times in the month that we've been here, and while I love the kids I work with in the refugee camps, they fight CONSTANTLY with one another. There is absolutely no discipline in the UN schools we work in, and the teachers just shrug when the boys fight each other. The first couple weeks were really difficult because these kids fear nothing. They are incredibly resilient because they have become completely normalized by drone planes flying over head coupled by Israeli incursions into their homes late at night. Furthermore, I have a loud voice, but it can't even begin to compete with the Minaret blasting the call to prayer when I need even a little bit of focus and attention for the class. Theres no way I can punish any kid for fighting in my drama class because they dont care. I tell one kid he's kicked out if he fights again, and he tells me he's not leaving, or he just walks away, and comes back with some of his friends to start another fight. Only through very slow exercises and an assload of patience have I managed to make even a slight amount of progress.

Don't read this all wrong; I do not blame these kids for their behavior. This is a by-product of life under Occupation, and I'm going to come out of this having earned the patience of Job. But its very telling of what humanitarian work is like, because it can be very depressing. The cycles of violence just seem to perpetuate themselves because of the Occupation, and the psychological state of the youth here is very fragmented that it seems like even a little progress or positive energy can be stamped out in a heartbeat.

So I'm caught between two places - there are people that tell Margaret and I how grateful they are that we have come from our 'clean countries' to work here and share our knowledge with them, while on the other hand, there are many others who hate anyone who isn't Palestinian and make it quite evident they don't want us here. I begin to wonder really what right we even have to be here. Who am I to tell them how to behave or how to direct a play, or how to mime? Maybe the problems that exist in Palestine need a domestically Palestinian solution. Will my work here even matter in the end? There's so many problems that exist that require at least a generation of attention and work by people who can sustain a common presence here, while I've only come for two months to try and show Palestinians what improvisational theatre is like. So are we helping in the short-term, only to cause harm in the long-term?

I don't think I'll ever know the answers to these questions, but its important to ask them because aid work isn't inherently positive simply because its aid work - it can do more damage in the long run when it isn't regulated, monitored, and analyzed for its effectiveness. For now I can only hope that I'm abiding by the Hippocratic oath, while focusing on chipping away on my part of the wall to help bring it down.