Loose Ends and Personal Updates

After a month in the Holy Land, I thought I'd tie up some loose ends and give a personal update of sorts.

Besides knowing how to count from one to ten and a few essential phrases, my conversational Arabic is still very basic. Ramallah, the most "international" city in Palestine, is a terrible place to try and learn Arabic; even when you say "marhaba" or "salaam aleikum" to somebody, they will likely reply in English. I assume they like to impress foreigners. Seeing as I will only be here for another month and have no formal training in Arabic, let alone the Palestinian dialect, it’s difficult to justify delving into the language when I already spend enough time sitting indoors writing this blog and will be back in an English-speaking country in the blink of an eye.

However, I plan on taking lessons in Modern Standard Arabic when I return home, and already I am envisioning spending another summer here, studying the Palestinian dialect at Birzeit University, which two of my roommates are doing currently. The language is well known for being a bitch to learn, for lack of a better word. To me, this is part of its appeal, along with the sheer beauty of it, both in speech and in writing. If I want to both read and write Arabic, it essentially means learning two languages. I could learn only the Modern Standard, also known as Fusha (pronounced FOOS-HAH), but speaking to Palestinians in Fusha is roughly the same as speaking Shakespearean English to an American; it comes off as partially incomprehensible and slightly arrogant. So if I want to actually hold a decent conversation with a Palestinian, I should also learn the local dialect – known as the "colloquial" form.

Given my lack of Arabic skills, I've come to the conclusion that the biggest social benefit of this trip has been meeting and making connections with the large variety of internationals here—the French-German cultural center near the city center is one of my more frequented hang outs—rather than the Palestinian population itself. Of course, I love talking to Palestinians when I can, but my shame of appearing ignorant of the language and culture makes me feel "paralyzed," in the words of another friend of mine. How does one pull off this international journalism thing, anyway?

You may have noticed that there are not many pictures of people, nor are there many names mentioned in my blog. I've done this, for the most part, to protect the people I'm talking about. I'm probably being paranoid, but I'd rather not cause anybody else to be interrogated on their way out of Israel and not be allowed back into the country because I blabbed about something that they said or are involved with. Also, I’m hesitant to take pictures of friends who I haven't known for very long, and I loathe appearing like a tourist. Some of these are not good excuses, and are especially not befitting of an intrepid journalist, but I struggle with it nonetheless.

My work with ICAHD is slowing to a crawl after I completed the East Jerusalem tour flyer. Considering the pain of going to the office in Jerusalem (it takes an average of an hour and 45 minutes to make a 6-mile journey), I only go out there if I have to, which at the moment is rarely.

The Jordan Valley study is proving more difficult than we had imagined. We're realizing that we are going to need our own car to be even moderately successful in doing what we want to do in that sparsely populated desert, and it's unclear if ICAHD has the funds to cover the costs of car rental. I know I don't.

Thus most of my "work" out here so far has been simply soaking up experience and knowledge for both mine and the blog's sake, writing about my time here, hoping to educate about this incredibly interesting- and incredibly misunderstood—part of the world. And if you guessed, perhaps from the volume of writing and its suspiciously good punctuation, that writing this blog takes up a good chunk of my time, you'd be right.

Overall, I am mulling over the notion that this conflict will play a big part in my life from here on, whether I am talking to my fellow Americans about the situation here, or writing articles about the conflict, or once again coming out here to be in the midst of the Palestinian people. Which brings me to say that my views or "biases" on the conflict have only been strengthened by what I've seen so far. The injustice here is obvious, but unfortunately, the solution remains elusive. An end to the Occupation would be a nice start.

For those of you wondering, I am eating well out here. My British roommate is a skilled cook, and just the other night, I sat down to this feast in Ramallah (not pictured, unfortunately, is my lamb's liver sandwich):

I'm planning a more comprehensive post on food later on. Until then, brace for envy when I show you this picture of the scenery from my evening walk home.

Adventures in the Jordan Valley

Even the rush of air outside the car was hot. Rather than providing a respite from the heat, cracking the windows was like opening a recently-used oven. A charming quirk about midday Middle Eastern air, I suppose.

Here I sat in the backseat of a Mitsubishi, wedged in tightly with two American comrades, taking in the sun-scorched landscape of the Jordan Valley along winding mountain roads. As we pushed further and further away from the major population centers, dusty golden hills laid out endlessly before us, punctuated by Palestinian tents and double-fenced Israeli settlements.

In the front seats were two Israeli women, probably in their mid-to-late twenties, clad in black, one with a camera and one with a notepad. Both carried an air of battle-hardened confidence that suggested they had already been through a lot, both together and separately. If I had to guess at their political leanings I would say they were anarchists, though I didn't ask. People with such determination can be intimidating.

The women were part of an organization called Machsom Watch, a human rights group whose members—all Israeli women as far as I can tell—stand at Israeli checkpoints throughout the West Bank and record what they see. Similar to what Copwatch does in America, Machsom members write reports, take pictures, and record video of the treatment of Palestinians by Israeli soldiers at checkpoints.

I was introduced to one of these women (to be known from here on out as “the writer,” the other will be called “the photographer”) through a contact at ICAHD that recognized our mutual interest in the Jordan Valley. My main project for ICAHD at the moment is the construction of a report on how Israel exercises control over the Palestinians in "Area C" of the West Bank. The Jordan Valley, the large strip of land alongside the river of the same name, comprises the vast majority of Area C and a sizable portion of the West Bank itself. Recently, many villages in the Valley have been issued demolition orders by the Israeli military. Also, some of these rural Palestinians have lost their lives to stray bullets from Israeli military exercises; it seems like gradually the whole area is destined to be composed of either Israeli settlements of "closed military zones."

At an ICAHD meeting a couple weeks ago, I had volunteered to cover the issue since it sounded like a unique, unsung part of the Occupation that would provide good journalistic fodder. But not long after I wondered what I had gotten myself into: the villages are far out, spread out, and I speak virtually no Arabic. Luckily, I was paired with an Arabic-speaking fellow ICAHD volunteer for the assignment, but it didn't (and still doesn't) solve the first two problems.

Finally, though, we had an "in" with people with an interest in the Jordan Valley and their own private car. We were off.

Our first stop was a Palestinian home not more than five hundred meters from an Israeli checkpoint. There we pulled into the rocky driveway and the writer approached the man of the house, who was wearing a keffiyeh the proper way: on his head. A few exchanges in Arabic and before long, we were all sipping coffee and sitting in plastic chairs arranged in a circle. Three children—two boys and a girl, ranging in age from 8-13—sat alongside the father, soaking in the conversation. The oldest boy possessed that fascinating quality that many Palestinian boys have of acting much older than their real age; a contemplative intensity mixed with tactfulness.

During the conversation I sat dumbly and mutely listening to an alien language and the occasional braying of a donkey in the distance. I badly want to learn Arabic. Thankfully I was filled in as we got out of our seats: the family has already had two homes demolished on the property (evidenced by the rubble in the distance), and luckily, has evaded a demolition order for their current house because the structure was built before 1967. Yet they do have a demolition order for their livestock pen; they showed us both the pen and the piece of paper that sentenced it to the same fate as their two previous homes.




After that was over it was back into the stiflingly hot car and off on the road again. The writer pointed out that these cinder block signs had only recently gone up all over the Valley:

These signs were all placed at the driveways or entrance roads to Palestinian homes. We guessed that perhaps this was the first step in an effort to scare the Palestinians off in order to spare the effort of pushing them off the land. From an apolitical outsider's perspective, it would seem that the Israeli military wants to construct the biggest firing zone in the globe.

We pulled into another driveway, this time towards a series of tents opposite a livestock pen. Once again, a few words and we were invited inside.

Although I couldn't participate in the ensuing conversation, I was still quite absorbed. The situation this family lived in was pretty raw. There were five or six small children, two women, and an old man cramped into this tent that was swarming with flies. An infant was asleep on a quilt on the ground (there were no beds), despite that fact that flies were buzzing about her face, crawling on her cheeks and mouth. A bowl of rotting eggplant sat on top of a refrigerator that didn't seem to have any electrical power coming to it. Outside of the tent, an adolescent boy riding a donkey sauntered by, occasionally smacking the animal on its neck with a stiff wooden plank.

Despite their obvious poverty, the family still gave us the remarkable hospitality characteristic of Palestinians. After chairs were provided for us, they all sat on the ground. And before long, a platter with six steaming cups of tea made its way into the tent. Although this family, as it turns out, hadn't received any demolition orders, they lamented the fact that they had to pay exorbitant costs for water—the water supply of Area C is completely controlled by the Israelis (the pumps have barbed wire fences around them). As you may guess, this arrangement has been good for Israeli settlers in the area.

Which leads me to our next stop: an Israeli settlement. The Machsom women wanted to see if any growth in the settlement was happening—an issue that not only resonates with local Palestinians, but worldwide. Before we arrived, however, we came across this wonderful oddity on a hilltop nearby.

The photographer muscled the surprisingly resilient car up the rocky slopes, kicking up a massive cloud of dust, until we reached the abandoned tank. No telling the origins of this beast—1948? 1967? Jordanian? Israeli?—but it was fun to look at and pose with nonetheless. Scattered about the ground, weighed down by rocks, were these military-issue cardboard cutouts:

At this point we were right next to the eastern border and could see the hills of Jordan not far off in the distance. We snapped a couple more shots and moved on.

As we neared the gate of the Israeli settlement, the Machsom women debriefed us on our new identities: we were just tourists, looking for a health-food store that we had heard about. At the gate, the writer smilingly exchanged Hebrew with the Israeli soldier who stood guard, and we were let in. At that moment I envied the women for being Israeli Jews: the privileges that it allows an activist and a journalist regarding this issue are incredible. Not only does it allow access into places forbidden to most, but it nullifies any allegations of anti-Semitism that have become so common among the increasingly paranoid "defenders" of Israel across the globe.

To be honest, the first homes in the settlement didn't look much different from the trailer parks characteristic of redneck America; there was even a shirtless man standing outside one of them. As expected, there was no shortage of water here—the settlement bloomed with greenery. (My fellow Americans and I learned, as we were driving throughout the parched Valley, to easily identify settlements in the distance by this feature.) As we wound around the trailers, we came upon a construction site with a few men walking about. Bingo.

We feigned wonder and excitement to the builders about the hardened-sandbag structure and soon met a young American from Florida at the site. I asked him how he had gotten here, and he replied that it had been through the World Wide Opportunities on Organic Farms program.

"Oh really? What do you grow here?"

"Nothing actually. They just used it [WWOOF] to get people to come out here and help them build." *laughs*

Despite this initial deception, the young man from Miami said he was having a fantastic time, better than he ever could have imagined if he had been actually growing food. As for our own story, it didn't hurt that one of my colleagues is attending Brandeis, a largely Jewish private university. We were just traveling, innocently taking in the beauty of Israel...

Still, I was glad to be gone once we left—I hate having to lie. To quote Mark Twain (who, ironically, had harsh words for Palestinians): "If you tell the truth you don't have to remember anything."

Our last activity of the afternoon was a checkpoint watch – the Machsom women's expertise. Because of Israeli military regulations, we parked at least a hundred meters away from an outpost flying an Israeli flag and what appeared to be – but could not have been – an anarchist flag (I found out that this was the flag used by this particular battalion/unit/whatever you call it) and strolled up towards it.

The soldiers were familiar with the writer and, occasionally flashing looks our way, talked amongst themselves. Meanwhile, Palestinian cars and people trickled through without much problem. This is a perfect example of how an observer, simply by being present, alters the natural state of a system and perhaps gets a false impression of the normal state of affairs. In science, this is plainly called the observer effect.

To put this theory into a concrete framework: Israeli soldiers are much less likely to give Palestinians a hard time when there are possibly influential internationals or fellow Israelis watching; there exists no greater privilege for being white than in the occupied Palestinian territories. Thus, watching the checkpoints is a win-win situation: either the mere presence of a non-Arab watcher allows the Palestinians an easier time through than they would normally get, or if the Israeli soldiers are bold/dumb enough to mistreat them with somebody like us watching, there will be recorded data on it, which will be presented to the world, which will ultimately help the Palestinian cause.

It's also quite easy to argue that the sheer existence of the checkpoints amounts to a gross violation of Palestinian rights, but unfortunately, the public discourse—similar to the limited focus on illegal settlement growth rather than illegal settlement existence—is not quite at this level yet.

Despite the fact that the soldier had told the Machsom writer that the police were on their way, she stood there unflinchingly. She warned us to step aside if we wanted to avoid any implication if the police did arrive.

At this point I was a fierce admirer of these women.

Fortunately, we stayed only another fifteen minutes and left. We repeated the process at another checkpoint, and then we were back on the road to Zaa’tara Junction, where we would catch a service taxi to Ramallah. What a day.

A special thanks to friend and expert baller Paul Notar for these photos.

Note: the Machsom photographer's excellent pictures - all relating to Israel, Palestine, and the Occupation - can be found at www.activestills.org.

Gay Pride in Jerusalem

Earlier this week, I heard that a Gay Pride parade was to be held in Jerusalem. Seeing as I've never been to a Pride parade ever, and seeing how the parade has caused plenty of tension in Jerusalem in earlier years, I decided to check it out.

The streets a half an hour prior to the march. The calm before the gay storm...

This noble Israeli policeman is ready to defend the public from the bloodthirsty gay hordes, akimbo style.
The security stations at the front of Liberty Bell Park, where queers and liberal-minded sympathizers gathered before the march. Boys in one line, girls in the other, patted down, scanned, bags checked. In Israel you get used to these kinds of security checks; it's also something you have to go through at any major bus station.

A "rabbi" talking to the press.

The rowdy drum brigade that kicked off the march.

Anyone good at reading upside-down Hebrew?

A drag king and queen try to hype the crowd up for the march.

And off we go!

The oft-seen Israeli-gay hybrid flag. To me, it's some of the most tragic irony I've seen yet in this country: a flag of tolerance joined with one of intolerance. Explain? A state that feels existentially threatened by a growing Arab population, a state that has devised ways to keep a Jewish majority at the expense of other people - that seems pretty intolerant to me.

A pretty nifty, epic banner...once again, translation from my massive Hebrew-speaking audience would be nice.

The most disappointing part of the march. This sad old man was the counterprotest, and judging from the fact that this city is the holy meeting place of three somewhat homophobic religions, I expected a much larger anti-gay presence.

The socialist bloc of the march, which was the only one that took the initiative to chant anything. Another disappointment of the march was that it was rather tepid; really it was just a walk down King David St. from one park to another. I didn't want to see bloodshed or rioting, but some passion would have been nice.

Oh well, I can always entertain myself in other ways.

My Gripe With Palestinian Culture: Littering

After a few days in any Palestinian city (including East Jerusalem) you'll probably have the pleasure of seeing a native casually letting his empty bag of chips or falafel wrapper drift to the ground. And after a couple weeks, you'll become so used to it that you no longer snicker, nudge your fellow international friend, or stare with mouth agape when it happens again.

The littering is rampant here. It's really tragic, because I can imagine it is one of those little things that reinforces racially-tinged arguments of why the Jews are better fit to occupy the land.

When I ask my more well-traveled roommates about this, they say that it is a problem in the whole Arab world. The German says that during her trip to Syria, she visited public park-spaces in which the trash was ankle-deep. The Briton remarked that during his time in Jordan, he saw families simply leaving all their trash behind when they were done with their picnic at the park.

Recently, I met an American here who was volunteering with an organization that hopes to "strengthen youth leadership skills” or something like that. Put in concrete terms, it encourages Palestinian teens to improve their community with a variety of social works projects. Thus I wasted no time in nudging him to nudge the kids to undertake some sort of community clean-up operation.

Prepare for some imperialist arrogance: the core of such a hypothetical program would have to be an aggressive education and public relations effort to instill better habits in the Palestinian community. Otherwise, it won’t be long before the city is once again coated in trash.

Palestinians could easily argue that they have much bigger things to worry about, and I probably shouldn't impose judgment on a culture that is not my own. Yet when Palestinian farmer Daoud Nassar lamented the times he's heard Palestinians using the Occupation as an excuse to do or not do certain things, the rampant litter was his first example.

Perhaps it’s some lingering OCD that finds this so bothersome, or perhaps it’s the fact that these Palestinian cities are so beautiful save for this one nagging blemish that is relatively easy to fix. Either way, below are some pictures regarding the issue for your...enjoyment?

Taming the Cynic Outside the Old City

Walking back from the ICAHD office a couple days ago with a fellow volunteer, I somehow ended up at what was called the "Big Hug" of Jerusalem, which was essentially a gathering of peaceniks of all races, religions, and nationalities near the Damascus Gate of the Old City. Since my bus to Ramallah leaves from the Gate, I figured I'd check it out before I headed on home.

The gathering featured almost every stereotype of the hippie known to man. There was finger painting, hand-holding, singing, acoustic-guitar playing, vague exhortations to love and peace...and plenty of photographers to take pictures of it all. The sight of the two event organizers hugging, one obviously a Muslim and the other obviously a Jew, was an especially irresistible photo op. Much like a well-constructed Facebook photo album makes a party seem more epic and memorable than it really was, I'm guessing that these photos will serve the same purpose in inflating the effectiveness and size of the event.

(Prepare for a jarring shift to present tense...)

While I sit there placidly munching a slice of watermelon, an internal, cerebral battle is taking place; the cynic (who made an appearance in the previous paragraph) is on the attack. The cynic believes that events like these are utterly pointless exercises in futility, feel-good orgies of self-congratulation full of people afraid to do actual work. The cynic points to the two Palestinian boys looking puzzledly downward at the white people on their hands and knees dipping their hands in paint and pressing them to a cloth. The boys are probably wondering what this will do to take away the checkpoints, the humiliation, and the deprivation.

The cynic admittedly has a point, and he used to handily win battles like these.

But another part of me, the idealist, senses the genuine goodness in the air, even if it is expressed in corny sing-alongs and cliché phrases. The idealist understands that a true solution to the conflict will ultimately happen in the hearts and minds of Palestinians and Israelis, not well-educated internationals. In other words, peace cannot be imposed from outside. And so little by little, completely apolitical demonstrations of affection and acceptance will chisel away at the hardened shells of bitterness and contempt between the two peoples.

Let's not be fooled, though: years of such chiseling can be undone by one well-placed bomb blast or home demolition. Enter political activism...

The Tent of Nations and the Clash of Ideologies

Yesterday night was spent in a Spartan bed swatting away mosquitoes under a tent that looked like the standard commission from a foreign aid agency in Africa. Not to complain: after all, I was here by choice.

Where exactly was I? The “Tent of Nations,” a Palestinian-farm-turned-political-cause just south of Bethlehem. After going to my first Shabbat dinner in south Jerusalem the previous night, I met an American girl who told me about the place and invited me along. So the next day – after paying an obligatory visit to the tourist-loaded Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem – we took a shared taxi southward, hopped off on the side of a road, and took a short hike to the farm, which looks over the Palestinian village of Nahalin.

The farm, run by the Nassar family, has a rich and interesting history. It was started by the first Nassar in 1916, who made a home in one of the many caves dotting the property and began planting grapes on the land. Mr. Nassar was one of the few Palestinians to register his land with the ruling Ottoman Empire, which most other Palestinians at the time neglected to do to avoid paying taxes. This documentation proved invaluable a three quarters of a century later in 1991, when the Israeli military tried to evict the family from their land. The Nassars guess this was done because the farm is located in an inconvenient place for the Israelis—right between two Jewish settlements in the Gush Etzion Block.

Despite the irrefutable proof of his family's ownership of the land, the legal battle over it has persisted for nearly two decades; to date the Nassar family has spent over $140,000 in legal fees. These Palestinians are difficult for Israel to handle—they have taken an explicitly non-violent stand ("We Will Not Be Enemies" is chiseled into a stone adjoining the front gate) and have strenuously jumped through all of the legal hoops that the Israeli court system has set up for them, leaving no weaknesses for Israeli lawyers to exploit. Although Israel doesn't have much regard for international law, it still wants to project the image of an enlightened and fair legal system within its own borders. After all, if Israelis themselves begin to doubt the moral fabric of the state, Israel is in big trouble.

The history of the farm was told over cups of sage tea by Daoud Nassar, the second-youngest of nine children and a tireless campaigner for his farm's cause. He lives on the farm along with his mother and the volunteers who come to stay and work on the land through the WWOOF program.

As night fell the walled, uniformly built Israeli settlements around us seemed to have switched on every light possible, while we only had two hours of electricity provided by a generator. Because the farm is located in Area C of the West Bank, it is completely under Israeli control. Thus the Israelis have forbidden the Nassars any access to the electric or water grid as another tactic to try and force them out. They have even offered the Nassars a blank check for the property, which was refused. "The land to a Palestinian is like his mother," Daoud said. "I cannot sell my mother."

Before long the generator switched off and we were in darkness; Daoud turned up the flame on a waiting kerosene lamp. Meanwhile the lights of the Jewish settlement of Neve Daniel burned steadily and brightly into the night. With that, I reflected on the judgments we often make of people through the circumstances they live in. For example, an American ignorant of the political situation surveys the landscape here and sees the sturdy-looking, well-lit, smartly designed Israeli settlements. Perhaps a half mile away to the west is a dimly lit Palestinian village which looks like an accidental pile of buildings.

I think it would be quite easy for this hypothetical American to take this landscape as proof of the hopeless backwardness of the Arabs and the triumphant, enterprising nature of the Israelis. When looking at the situation of the Palestinians, a socialist could see inequality and oppression, but the capitalist could see laziness. Of course, both are taking guesses based on their political biases and both traits are possible. But how often do we make judgments without knowing the whole story? How many Israelis living in Neve Daniel know that the Nassars spend most of their night in complete darkness not because they are stuck-in-their-ways peasants, but people pointedly denied electricity by an occupying power?

I think I'll try and close that very large can of worms before I go any further. Suffice to say that Daoud was quite critical of his fellow Palestinians as well, lamenting the fact that most volunteers on his farm were internationals rather than Palestinians, and that Palestinians sometimes use the Occupation as an excuse for actions (or inactions) that are totally under their control.

The evening on the farm was rather peaceful. I watched yet another stunning sunset; this time I swore I could see the Mediterranean, swallowing the pink ball of light slowly, but surely. Slightly nearer were the glittering clumps of light from the coastal towns like Ashkelon and Ashdod. Before the sunset I helped to feed bushels of hay to the horses and goats (Goats have the most darkly cartoonish eyes. The flattened oval of a pupil looks as if it was supposed to reproduce via some process similar to mitosis, but then was frozen in the first stage.)

A couple mangy dogs—only a couple with names—followed us around the property. (This was one of the first obvious signs—besides the cross on the wall, of course—that the Nassars were not Muslim, but Christian. Because of the Prophet Mohammed's harsh words for dogs, few Muslims own them.) Often getting into some sort of disagreement, the dogs made the most vicious growling noises at each other. If I were an avant-garde musician I would have been on my hands and knees with a microphone to the dogs' snouts, then retreating to a laptop to remix and master the hellish noises.

All the while, we were accompanied by a breeze that gave the whole scene a serenely majestic feel. I imagine it had much more practical benefits for the volunteers toiling in the midday sun.

I left the farm inspired by the Nassars' non-violent, non-confrontational approach to even the most naked oppression. Their kind of resistance makes sense at this stage in the conflict—after all, the Israelis have the most expensive, destructive toys that the military can buy, and judging by the ruinous state of the Gaza Strip, it’s obvious that they're not afraid to use them. (When they heard the shelling of Gaza in the distance earlier this year, Daoud and his brother "put their frustrations to work" and built a new cistern.)

But I admit that if half my family were killed, if my home were destroyed, and newly homeless, I ended up at a squalid refugee camp...and if the perpetrators had the nerve to claim that they were the victims, and then the world actually believed them...it would be tempting to pick up a rifle.

A Trip Through the Qalandia Checkpoint

The military checkpoint is one of the most salient features of Israel's occupation of the Palestinian territories. High on the list of the average Palestinian's grievances, the Israeli checkpoint is like a nightmarish version of airport security—even longer lines, pickier metal detectors, and a heavier blanket of humiliation. And like airport security staff, the soldiers manning these checkpoints are bored and pissed from the monotony of it all; recently I saw a soldier behind the glass-paneled booth listening to an IPod.

According to the Israeli government, these checkpoints exist for security reasons. But not all of the checkpoints lie on the Israeli border: in fact, many are smack-dab in the middle of the West Bank. The only logical rationale for these checkpoints in the thick of the Palestinian territory is to protect the Israeli settlements there, which are illegal by international law. Yet regardless of where the checkpoints are, all of them make life more difficult for Palestinians.

To get from Ramallah to Jerusalem (where the ICAHD office is), I – along with Palestinians who have Israel’s permission—have to go through the Qalandia checkpoint. Since I’m an American, my stamped passport suffices as permission. Depending on when I go, it could take from ten minutes to an hour to pass through. Before I walk you through this process, let me give you a few lowlights I've encountered so far in the barred, metallic halls of Qalandia.

- A middle-aged Palestinian man has to pass through the metal detector one, two, three times. Beep. Beep. BEEP. After the first couple beeps he takes off another accessory or article of clothing. After the third he complains to the Israeli soldier behind the glass—but he is ordered to do it again. He flashes a pained smile at his friend standing in front of me, and his friend laughs and says something in Arabic. Meanwhile the line swells behind us. BEEP. The man then lifts his leg up in the air to the glass, then pulls his pant leg up to show that he has no firearm or knife strapped to his ankle. Finally he is let through.

- A Palestinian woman passes through the metal detector. BEEP. She tries again. BEEP. "Take off your shoes!" barks an Israeli voice over the intercom—in English. I wonder if this poor woman even understands English...

- I wait almost a half an hour in one of the lines. When I finally make it through the turnstile, to the metal detector, I place my backpack on the conveyor belt for the X-ray machine. It doesn’t move. I soon learn that the machine is not working at this station—there was no warning before I got into line. A woman with her purse finds this out as well. So we have to trudge back out and get a different line, and wait another half hour. I wonder if it would have been that hard to put up a sign that said "X-Ray Machine at this station not operational—if you have a bag, please move to station 3 or 4."

I'm sure as the weeks go on I'll have more touching vignettes to share. Now begins my photo presentation on Qalandia:

The Qalandia checkpoint is a brief break in the giant wall that snakes in and around the West Bank, built by Israel ostensibly for security reasons. Here is where automobiles have to pass through.

To pass through in an automobile, you're going to need an Israeli license plate. But it still doesn't guarantee a smooth go-ahead, especially for Palestinians coming into Israel to work or see family members. That’s right, there are plenty of Palestinian Arabs that live in Israel – which casts some serious doubt on the official rationale for the Wall’s existence.

A Palestinian plate. You're not going to get through with one of these. You're just going to have to...

...park in this here lot and walk over to that white building. You're going through the checkpoint on foot, I'm sorry to say.

If you're lucky and arrive during a slow period, the first line may look like this.

But its more likely that it will look something like this.

Looking back at the barred tunnel-cages which mark the first control stage of the checkpoint. The only way to know if you are getting through the turnstile is whether it jarringly locks in front of you or lets you pass and saves the aforementioned fate for the poor shmuck behind you. Proceed carefully.


Now waiting in the second line, looking towards the watchtower in which an Israeli guard supervises the crowd. To my right are several different ports which split the line once more, leading to the final stage of the checkpoint.

The "line" in one of the ports. As time drags on, Palestinians not only get agitated with the Israelis, but with each other. Ahead is the second turnstile you must pass through, with the same silent, brute language of admission as the last one.

If I had some serious cajones I would have here a picture of the Israeli soldiers behind the glass, checking my passport. Taking pictures is not a good idea here, and when I do pass through this checkpoint it’s for a good reason: I have somewhere to be and would rather not be held and interrogated. Basically, once I pass through the turnstile I place my bag on the X-ray machine and go through the metal detector. Then I turn left and present my passport and visa stamp to the soldier sitting in an office on the other side of the glass. Thankfully I’ve had no problems so far.

Looking back at the checkpoint after my exit. Whew! It's over.

Ramallah seen from the other side of the wall.

The #18 bus from Ramallah to Jerusalem waits to pick up its passengers that it unloaded on the other side of the Wall, probably about 45 minutes ago. Also, if you have a car with a Palestinian plate and parked on the other side, you'll complete the rest of the journey by bus.

Of course, this whole tedious, harrowing process is unnecessary when you want to come back the other way.

For a well-written and comprehensive story on Israeli checkpoints, check out a piece called “Checkpoints Take Toll on Palestinians, Israeli Army” published in the Washington Post. Here's an excerpt:

As the Palestinians inch forward, armed soldiers standing behind sandbagged concrete walls shout orders to have bags opened and their contents dumped on the ground. On one recent morning, soldiers demanded that a man squirt shaving cream from an aerosol can to verify its contents. They ordered another man to rip the red-and-silver wrapping paper off a box to reveal what was inside: a doll for his granddaughter.

Finally, in a personal update, I sprained my ankle yesterday playing some two-on-two basketball with Palestinians over at the Christian church in Ramallah. It may have had to do with the terribly tattered skateboarding shoes I came here with. This is sprain #3 for the right ankle, and as of right now she is being iced and elevated. The prospects for entering next month's Streetball tournament are not looking so great, but we'll see. You should stay tuned here—despite my immobility at the moment, there's plenty more to talk about.

An Afternoon in Ashdod and a Reflection on Israeli Manners

Today I took an hour and a half bus ride out to the Israeli coastal city of Ashdod to meet up with a friend that happened to be in the Holy Land as well. When I arrived, I encountered a full blown shopping mall with two floors and dozens of stores all staffed by ridiculous amounts of attractive, shapely women (and oh yeah, a bus station). Luckily it wasn't as huge as the Jerusalem bus station/mall combo, which made it only moderately maddening to find who I came to meet up with.

Once finally united my friend and I walked down to the beach, which featured a few macho men working out in the blinding sun. In the distance to our right could be seen the Port of Ashdod, bristling with ships and ruddy metal cargo containers. According to my friend—an Israeli-born Jew with family in Ashdod—the dockworkers at that very port receive a better salary than any other proletarian worker in the entire country. But my friend also says that Israeli Jews as a whole are poorer than most people think.

Here's a token picture of the beach (Believe it or not, this is the most exciting photograph in the set):
After taking a dip in the absolutely perfect water, we went to a beachside restaurant to eat lunch. Although the level of service seemed pretty standard to me, my friend remarked that the waitress was an above average specimen, considering that Israelis are not known for their cheery devotion to customer service. With that, the wheels started turning in my head and I thought back to a couple weeks ago when I bought an Israeli Orange SIM card for my phone and watched an old American woman essentially plead the Israeli woman behind the counter to help set up her phone.

I also thought of the first Israeli I talked to when I arrived in Tel Aviv, who said frankly that Israelis are sometimes "rude." Indeed, the general impression I've gotten from the Israeli public is that of an unsmiling brusqueness. Compared with my earlier bubbling assessments of the generosity and kindness of Palestinians, you may be inclined to think that my political bias is quite obviously framing the way I look at these two peoples. But I challenge you to come here and see for yourself. And who's to say that Israelis are not actually softies behind that tough exterior?

On a different note, I think I overestimated the average Israeli's English-speaking skills—many awkward encounters today. My fatal error was assuming a close political relationship between two countries implied a close cultural relationship, but now I'm seeing that outside of the familiar venues of shopping malls and bars, Israel is actually a pretty foreign country.

A Tangent-Ridden Account of a Visit to Sebastia

This past weekend my roommates and I decided to head out to the Palestinian village of Sebastia (via Nablus) after hearing about a music festival going on there. We also wanted to go there to see ruins that date back 10,000 years. The town has been touched by many an empire over the millennia—Alexander the Great destroyed it in 331 BC, and Pompey rebuilt it three centuries later. (OK, so men under their command destroyed/rebuilt the town. Alex and Pompey were likely supervising from the shade.

Back to the modern era. As soon as we stepped out of the shuttle, a local man named Mosleh took us under his wing and became our unofficial chauffeur with a hospitality that may seem unusually excessive by American standards. But this kind of thing becomes expected in Palestine; most of the people here seem incapable of the cold calculus and rationalizing that keep American hearts closed.

The first place that Mosleh led us to was the courtyard of the Al-Kayed Palace, where a five-piece band was playing traditional music near the reflective windows. Alongside an old man who plucked and bowed a stand-up bass with an impressive intensity were two men expertly playing a beautiful guitar-like instrument called the oud, which is commonly used in Arabic music.


After that was over, the crowd began the pilgrimage towards the other side of town for the main event in the ancient amphitheater. We took these shots on the way; the first is a view of the main courtyard in the village. The second depicts some graffiti advertising the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine, a Palestinian political organization with a Marxist-Leninist ideology. The DFLP broke off from the more militant and well-known Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine in 1969. No telling how much of a hold the DFLP has here among the Sebastian populace, but I will say that after a trip through the Nablus market, capitalism seems alive and well in Palestine.

If I had to wear that, I'd be pissed too. If only I had seen him earlier I would have known that there was also a wedding happening in town, and thus spared myself some embarrassment.

I heard music coming from the large hall near the ruins pictured above, and I thought it was another music venue for the festival. When I entered the room, it was a colorful (and very stuffy) zoo of dancing and clapping, but I noticed something—of the scores of faces I glimpsed, none of them were those of fellow men. Within seconds a woman was wagging a finger at me and I knew I didn't belong in that room, so I darted out. The segregation among the sexes as nowhere as severe here is in, say, Saudi Arabia, but it still takes a Westerner some time to get used to.

The ancient amphitheater, filled with people, looking upon the Norwegian band Peevish Penfriend. We ran into these very nice fellows at a bar in Ramallah a couple nights later and I learned more about Norway in an hour than I had learned in my entire life. Did you know that Norway levies an 80% tax on oil revenues and pumps it into a massive state pension system? Did you know that this very Norwegian pension system is also recognized as a powerful investor, owning two percent of the entire European stock market? Did you know that in 1944, 350,000 Nazi soldiers were stationed in Norway, anticipating an Allied landing on the Norwegian coast rather than at Normandy?

Well now you do.

A few from the cheap seats, which are not as uncomfortable as they look. This shot was taken before the show started; these seats filled up shortly after. Snacks were ridiculously cheap - I munched on an ear of corn that cost me about 25 cents.

This two-dimensional picture doesn't nearly do justice to this majestic view. Here I am looking upon the hills north of Sebastia. Over the mountain lies the village of Jenin, which suffered a barbarous onslaught of destruction and demolition by Israeli bulldozers in April of 2002, in the heat of the Second Intifada.

I'll end this post with a telling testimony of an Israeli bulldozer driver that was part of the said operation that, within 72 hours, razed more than 300 homes and left 4,000 Palestinians homeless:

"For three days, I just destroyed and destroyed. The whole area. Any house that they fired from came down. And to knock it down, I tore down some more. They were warned by loudspeaker to get out of the house before I come, but I gave no one a chance. I didn't wait. I didn't give one blow, and wait for them to come out. I would just ram the house with full power, to bring it down as fast as possible. I wanted to get to the other houses. To get as many as possible. Others may have restrained themselves, or so they say. Who are they kidding? Anyone who was there, and saw our soldiers in the houses, would understand they were in a death trap. I thought about saving them. I didn't give a damn about the Palestinians, but I didn't just ruin with no reason. It was all under orders.

"Many people where inside houses we set to demolish. They would come out of the houses we were working on. I didn't see, with my own eyes, people dying under the blade of the D-9. and I didn't see house falling down on live people. But if there were any, I wouldn't care at all. I am sure people died inside these houses, but it was difficult to see, there was lots of dust everywhere, and we worked a lot at night. I found joy with every house that came down, because I knew they didn't mind dying, but they cared for their homes. If you knocked down a house, you buried 40 or 50 people for generations. If I am sorry for anything, it is for not tearing the whole camp down.

"I didn't stop for a moment. Even when we had a two-hour break, I insisted on going on. I prepared a ramp, to destroy a four-story building. Once I steered sharply to the right, and a whole wall came down. Suddenly I heard shouting on the radio: 'Kurdi, watch it! It is us!' Turns out there where our guys inside, and they forgot to tell me.

"I had plenty of satisfaction. I really enjoyed it. I remember pulling down a wall of a four-story building. It came crashing down on my D-9. My partner screamed at me to reverse, but I let the wall come down on us. We would go for the sides of the buildings, and then ram them. If the job was to hard, we would ask for a tank shell.

"I couldn't stop. I wanted to work and work. There was this Golani officer who gave us orders by radio—I drove him mad. I kept begging for more and more missions. On Sunday, after the fighting was over, we got orders to pull our D-9's out of the area, and stop working on our 'football stadium', because the army didn't want the cameras and press to see us working. I was really upset, because I had plans to knock down the big sign at the entrance of Jenin—three poles with a picture of Arafat. But on Sunday, they pulled us away before I had time to do it.”