Yanoon

We arrived back in Nablus today after a brief visit to Yanoon. Yanoon is not far from here, but we had to pass through the checkpoint at Hurrawa again to get through. There were lines of Palestinian men waiting to get through, but we were able to speed through the "Humanitarian and Women" line on the right. Two Israeli soldiers were standing there nonchantly, asked to see my passport and asked a few basic questions about where I was from, where I was going, why I didn't go to Tel Aviv or Eliat in Israel, and didn't I think Nablus stank? Then they asked if Dave played basketball, and that was the end of the interrogation. A taxi driver who knows Maarouf, our Project Hope coordinator, was waiting on the other side to take us.

The countryside was quiet, with cleaner air than Nablus and lots of silvery green olive trees on rocky, brown hills. Yanoon is a very small village with only about 100people living there, I think. It is divided into Upper Yanoon and Lower Yanoon.

****(I lost the rest of this blog to the Internet gods. I will try to rewrite it.)***

So......Yanoon. Yanoon is infamous for being the first place in Palestine where Israeli settlers completely emptied the village. Israeli settlers are very aggressive, and harrass Palestinians using violence to drive them off their land so the settlers can claim it. It is illegal by international law for an occupying country such as Israel to have settlements in the country which they are occupying, such as Palestine. Illegal by international law but not Israeli law. The more I learn about the UN and international law the more I realize its ineffectiveness. Anyway, Yanoon. A paved road links Lower Yanoon from Upper Yanoon. There is nothing there but olive groves, a few houses and one small school built when it became too dangerous for children to walk to Lower Yanoon to the school there for fear of attacks by settlers. The settlers' houses are built on the top of the hills surrounding Yanoon, and you can see them peeking over the edges of the hills. They have huge spotlights which they turn on at night, directed at the villagers' houses.

We had tea with Rashid, the village mayor, essentially, who had been through the worst of the violence five years ago. After the villagers were driven out, they received support from an Israeli human rights group, and returned to Yanoon to reclaim their houses and land. Many of them never returned, and moved to nearby Aqraba. The IDF is supposed to protect the Palestinians by law, but from what we heard they usually just stand by while the settlers harrass the villagers.

To make up for this lack of security and protection for the villagers, a group called EAPPI formed to invite international ecumenical volunteers to live in Yanoon for 3 months at a time as observers. They do not fight the settlers, they simply watch and document it as best they can. If the settlers see the volunteers with cameras, they will take them away. The have been known to beat the volunteers as well.

The funny thing is, while we were there Yanoon seemed to be very peaceful and calm. Except for the two army tanks that rolled through in the afternoon. But the villagers were there to harvest their olives only, trying to live their lives. Dave and I helped a family with the harvest, they were very generous and we shared their meal of olives, pita, zatar and goat yoghurt. Amir and Ranya were the parents, and didn't speak much English, but had two little boys about 4 and 6 years old, Amir Jamal and Mohammad. Ranya's brothers were also helping out. Amir offered jokingly to sell me Amir Jamal for one shekel (about one dollar) and take him with me to America.

The next morning I woke up and walked down the road to help two women pick olives. They had their small children with them as well. One little boy had a toy gun, and was pointing it at me and everyone else in the grove. His little brother tried to climb out of the highchair and the little boy rushed over, put a gun to his head and shouted at him. We see this scene a lot, chidren playing with toy guns, recreating checkpoint crossings, shootings, drawing pictures with bloody people lying on the ground....

I wonder about how growing up amid this violence affects them. The children we work with in Dave's drama class at one of the refugee camps are undisciplined, unfocused and a bit violent. But they are also playful, friendly, and eager to learn.

Waiting Room

This is Margaret writing. I'm just posting an update to let everyone know we are still here. We don't have a computer, so we are at the mercy of the office computers at Project Hope. There are rumored to be internet cafes in town, hopefully we will find one eventually.

I'm the one waiting, Dave is a busy man. I don't have any classes set up, so I'm just waiting to see if one is scheduled for me. There are a lot of English teachers volunteering, and classes have just resumed for the Palestinians after Ramadan so it has been slow going. Dave is one of two Drama teachers, and he has four classes scheduled at two different refugee camps, plus he will be helping teach at the circus, and helping a guy with his play, AND going to the drama club at a university maybe? He can explain it all in greater detail. I'm just going with him to his classes to help out, as I have nothing else to do. I feel like there should be something more to do, that the fault is with me, I guess I'll just do my best to help wherever I can.

There is so much more I want to write about being here, as well as our earlier travels, but I'm not in the right frame of mind right now.

Tomorrow we are going to Yanoon to watch the olives be harvested. This is supposed to be a contentious area, as the Israeli settlers clash with the Palestinians trying to collect the olives. I'm not sure what will happen. Not much was explained to us, just that we are there as observers.

I'm going to let Dave get on the computer before class. More later.

...............................

And now it's later! It's funny how things can turn around very quickly here. I was just talking with Maarouf, the Volunteer Coordinator, and I might be able to do an Art class with the kids in the refugee camps, which would be great. I want to give them a chance to do something fun and express themselves. Hs wife is a psychotherapist focusing on children's reactions to violence and war. I'm interested in this area, so I can't wait to talk to her more about it.

The taxi driver that just dropped us off was asking Maarouf about what we do here at Project Hope, and he said to say thank you to us for leaving our "clean" countries and coming here. Life is a balancing act of men like that versus men ogling us on the street, kids throwing rocks at us and kids giving us flowers.

I'll write a more interesting post later.