On subjects non-ornithological, I spent two days in Bethlehem in the West Bank last week. I went on a trip organized by "Encounter" which has as its mission bringing Jews of various flavors from outside of Israeli to the West Bank so they can meet with and hear from Palestinians. (I actually think they say that their mission is to bring Jewish leaders to the West Bank. Of course in the Jewish community just about everybody considers themselves a Jewish leader. I looked for the trip for Jewish whatever-the-opposite-of-leaders is but couldn't find it, so I settled for this).
Bethlehem is about half an hour from Jerusalem, which was my first shock, ie just how close everything is. I could walk and certainly bike from my home to the main Bethlehem checkpoint. It is remarkable to stand in Beit Jala, a neighbourhood in Bethlehem, where you can see the 'back' of Gilo, a Jewish neighborhood in Jerusalem (built outside the Green Line, the cease fire line which was Israel's border until 1967 when it captured the West Bank, the Gaza strip and the Golan Heights). We visited a private school called Hope Flowers which is run basically by a single family which is committed to educating Palestinian children about non-violence and trying to foster some sense of mutual respect between Israelis and Palestinians.
Met a guy named Sami Awad. He is the nephew of Mubarak Awad who was deported from Israel for his non-violent leadership of opposition to the Israeli occupation in the first Intifada. It was interesting because Sami Awad said that seeing his uncle deported actually solidified his own commitment to non-violence rather than driving him away from it because he saw how intimidating nonviolence was to the occupation. Sami Awad showed us around a little, including the security barrier. Two other things he said that stood out to me were that he thought the Oslo peace accords were doomed to fail because they had been so top down, negotiated by politicians without really reading the feeling of people who were living with the reality. He also said that he had spent a week meditating at Auschwitz-Birkenhau. He said that contemplating the intensity of the evil there had lead him feel that the Palestinians -- instead of trying to understand Israel's security "addiction" -- had spent too much energy on placing themselves in the position of the "victims of the victims." I thought that was really insightful. Throughout the visit this was the only time I heard a Palestinian articulate an
understanding of Israelis' and/or Jews' concerns for individual and communal physical, existential safety. As I remarked to one of the participants as we were walking through the lobby of the Bethlehem hotel, one of the big differences between that and, say, the Dan Panorama in Jerusalem or any other hotel in Israel, is that there is no guard at the entrance to the Bethlehem hotel.We got to see the security barrier which cuts through Bethlehem. (See the map from b'tselem at the right: Green Line is pre-67 border. Red line = existing separation barrier. Red dotted =projected seperation barrier. The Blue ares are Jewish settlements and the brown are Palestinian areas) If I ever had any doubt that the thing was being done stupidly that visit eliminated it. Interestingly, a number of the Palestinian's we talked to said that they didn't have a problem with a security barrier... along the green line. In Bethlehem, you can see how dramatically the barrier encroaches on daily life and how far beyond the pre-67 border it reaches.
One of the weirdest things right near Rachel's tomb which is completely surrounded by the barrier was a spot where one lone house stands surrounded by the security barrier on three sides. Sami Awad said that the family was Catholic and had been able to get the church involved so the Israelis didn't want to the black eye of expropriating the house, so instead they just built the barrier around it on three sides. He said that the shutters on the top floor must remain closed at all times and the family has to get permission from the military commander in order to go out on their roof, lest they should fire on the wall, or the guard towers.
The barrier is also just a disaster from a purely political standpoint as it gives everybody a 9 meter high billboard on which to scrawl their discontent. Spray-painting on the wall has actually become a sort of pro-Palestine tourist attraction and most of the graffiti we saw near Rachel's tomb was in European languages, not Arabic. Surprisingly, while it was pretty strongly anti-occupation, none of what I saw was really anti-Israel. There was one spot where there was a giant "Ich bin ein berliner" and in smaller letters nearby somebody had written, "tear down this wall." Which in that context could only be an allusion to.... Ronald Reagan: "Mr. Gorbachev, tear down..." I thought that was pretty funny, given that most of the people who were writing on the wall, if they were old enough to remember Reagan, were about as far from him politically as could possibly be.
Several prominent artists have done work on the wall. I got to be about as close to a Bansky as I am likely to get this year.
I stayed with a very nice middle class Palestinian Christian family who both desperately wanted to move out of the country (it reminded me of a host family I had on Kibbutz once upon a time -- "What's Canada like? Is it hard to get a visa?") and at the same time badly wanted to stay. They have a small apartment-building that was built together by four brothers, not far from Shepherd's field. It is funny how things can be so so old fashioned and so up-to-the-minute in Arab communities. Bethlehem is a pretty big city but you still see people riding donkeys, hear roosters crowing in people's houses. The whole living with your family thing too seems -- if not old fashioned -- at least very different from the way we do things in Canada or in Israel for that matter. The other guy who was staying with them asked, "How do you get along with your brothers?" I expected an answer like, "Sometimes its hard" or "Mostly okay but we fight about things from time to time," but our host just said "We get along well." It makes you realize how much of what you get out of something is determined by what you expect going in.
I'll write more tomorrow about the rest of the visit including Wadi Fukin but now I have to go to bed.
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