April 12-17th; West Bank: Checkpoints, Bureaucracy, Foundation Stones

Bir Zeit University

I’m back in Muslim El Bireh again (sister city to Ramallah). Across the hotel room, on the wall, is a sign pointing out the Qibla (the direction a Muslim faces when praying, in other words, the direction of Mecca). Below the sign is a TV stand which houses not only the TV, but the prayer rug and the Quran -as casually as the nightstand in a US hotel room houses the Gideon Bible. I felt a bit funny coming back here after a dinner with a glass of wine in Ramallah. But the many moderate Muslims in the Ramallah area have no problem with the availability of alcohol in Ramallah and the banning of it in El Bireh, the sister city.


I’m waiting, it seems endlessly, for a permit to get into Gaza. All in the region are captive to the Jewish religious calendar, whether or not they are Jewish. Israeli offices are closed on Shabbat. They are closed on the first and last days of Passover. Since an Israeli permit to visit Gaza takes ten or more Israeli working days, that translates to 14 or more days this month. I am waiting, but at least I, as a foreigner, am still able to travel around in the West Bank, Jerusalem, and Israel.

Waiting and being at the mercy of Israeli bureaucracy and Israeli interests, is part of daily life for Palestinians. Unpredictability makes it impossible for Palestinians to plan. The apparent randomness of the closure of checkpoints, the waits at checkpoints, the wait for permits to travel – all impact on business, the ability to get to schools or health care, and the ability to visit family or friends. As Palestinians have told me, they measure how long it takes to get somewhere by the number of checkpoints, not the distance. A month ago the Israelis eased up significantly on the internal closure, apparently to keep the Obama administration at bay. In other words, fewer of the checkpoints require stopping and lengthy waits, fewer of the over 500 checkpoints are manned. But that does not mean that travel will be unimpeded, as seen by the continuing long (1 – 2 hour) wait at the Huwara checkpoint from Nablus and the lines at the Atara checkpoint. The unpredictability is just a constant reminder that you are not in control of your life.

As a traveler who comes here annually, I have to relearn the routes each time. One year foreigners have to get off at the Kalandiya checkpoint to Ramallah and walk through, catching another vehicle on the other side, the next they are permitted to go through in a bus or shared taxi. One year foreigners are advised to walk through the Bethlehem checkpoint and catch a vehicle to Jerusalem, the next they are advised to take a bus from Beit Jalah that travels through the bypass tunnel/road into Jerusalem. I did this trip twice in the last days to get into Jerusalem. When the bus leaves the West Bank and enters West Jerusalem, the bus must stop at an Israeli checkpoint. Foreigners are permitted to stay on the bus as a soldier boards, inspects the bus and hold and checks passports. But the few lucky Palestinians who can travel this bus because they already have permits to travel to Jerusalem are forced off the bus and must stand in a line and wait – regardless of the weather – until one of the teenage Israeli soldiers feels like taking their ID cards and allowing them to reenter the bus. I got off with the Palestinians each time to see what it felt like. The first time I was quite cold and uncomfortable and terribly annoyed to see the three teenage Israeli soldiers chatting in total disdain of the waiting Palestinians. Ten minutes later one of the soldiers finally sauntered over to check IDs. The second time I again stood there waiting, but this time when the Israeli soldier (a young black Jewish 18-year old woman with an M16 slung over her shoulder) opened the hold right next to me I had a sudden urge to grab her M16, point it straight at her chest and ask her how it felt. Fortunately I did not act on this urge, since I surely would have been shot down by one of the other two teenage soldiers.

Here’s a question for you: If you had an American passport and could travel relatively freely in this region, would you ever apply for a Palestinian residency ID? That is the question that one Taiwanese American woman is faced with at the moment. While in Beit Sahour, I called up a Palestinian-American professor who left Connecticut last August to move back to his family home in Beit Sahour. His Taiwanese-American wife joined him three-months ago and is planning on getting a Palestinian residency permit so that she can stay. I shared a very pleasant dinner with them at their home in Beit Sahour.

If you are Palestinian or have a Palestinian name it does not matter how American you are. It does not matter if you were born and lived your whole life in the US. Israel treats you as it treats all Palestinians. You are not protected by your American citizenship. If you are a Palestinian-American and chose to move back to Palestine you must get a Palestinian residency ID from Israel. But, once you have that Palestinian residency ID you can no longer go through the checkpoints. Despite your US passport you must apply for permits to travel to Jerusalem, to travel to other parts of the West Bank, or to travel into Israel to catch an airplane at Ben Gurion. Your only other option is to neglect getting the residency ID and enter the region on an Israeli three-month visa. Once that three-month visa runs out you must leave and, because you are “Palestinian”, may not be given another three month visa for a year. The many internationals (non-Palestinian) working at NGOs, particularly in the Ramallah area and in Jerusalem, must leave the country every three months in order to re-enter with a new three-month visa, but in general, Israel will give them the repeat three-month visa. The NGOs set aside one week every three months that they call “renewing visa week” to allow their employees to leave the country and re-enter on a new visa. But, if you are of Palestinian descent or have a Palestinian name, you can’t renew your visa by exiting and re-entering. You can only enter once a year.
So, the Taiwanese-American wife of my Palestinian-American friend risks not being able to be with her husband if she does not apply for Palestinian residency. But, if she gets it, she will no longer be treated like an American, and will face all the travel restrictions of the Palestinians. It’s a catch-22. No winning!

Okay, enough of checkpoints and bureaucracy. Let’s talk culture. This waiting period has given me a breather to ask endless questions and get snippets of conversation in. First one: What is written on those Arabic-language stones that appear above or beside the doorways of the homes? I guessed from seeing the attractive calligraphy that they were Quranic blessings. The answer was far more interesting that I anticipated.

If a Muslim contracts to have a home built, once the home is built, but before the family moves in, there is a celebration at which the “foundation” stone is laid. This stone says something like:
“In the name of God the merciful, the compassionate, this house belongs to God.”
Or: “In the name of God the merciful, the compassionate, this fortune is from God.”
This is followed by the name of the owner and the year the home was built.

The foundation stone is just part of the celebration though. A sheep is slaughtered in front of the house and the celebrants jump over the carcass of the sheep on the way into the house. The butcher then cuts up the sheep and a mansaf dish is cooked (lamb, rice, and yogurt) for the welcoming feast.

Another snippet: Rents, land costs, etc….
Palestine has rent control. This has existed since British rule in the early 20th century. If you pay rent it stays the same no matter how many years you live in the home. The landlord is not allowed to raise your rent or to force you out, even if you don’t pay your rent. So, my friend Adel, who has lived in his home for 22 years, still pays $85/month for rent. Were he to move out, the owner of the home could probably rent it out for $700 a month. So, what is an owner to do? Eventually, if the tenants just hang on, the owner might try to sell it to them since he is not making much money on his investment. And, the tenant will usually get a very good deal since by that point the owner just wants out.

Land prices are exorbitant in the Ramallah area – much higher than the value of the homes. A dunam, which is ¼ acre, can go for $1M. As we passed through one of the new, wealthy areas of Ramallah, on the west side, I asked who was living in the new extravagant homes. The answer: high ranking government officials who got rich from corruption.

Another snippet: The Friends’ School in Ramallah (associated with the Quakers) is the Harvard of primary and secondary schools here. My friend Adel is elated that his adorable, but terribly unruly son got accepted into it for kindergarten starting in the fall. The waiting list is very long, there are tens of applicants for each seat, and the process involves interviews of the tots. Primary costs are about $2700 per year, secondary costs over $3000. This is an enormous expense for a Palestinian family. (Palestinian wages are 1/10th of Israeli wages.) Several of the applicants live in Hebron, Nablus and other far away parts of the West Bank. If accepted, the parents must send these students to live with family or friends in the Ramallah area. This is just one of the many testaments to the Palestinian commitment to education.

There is an old Arab saying: “Egyptians write books, Lebanese print them, and the Palestinians read them.” Adel says that this is not quite so true these days when Palestinian children, like their American counterparts, prefer to watch TV, play video games, and do social networking. But, the parents still emphasize schooling and are willing to make enormous sacrifices for their education. There are a lot of Ph.D. holders in the area, many Palestinians speak multiple languages, and several of them have earned their advanced degrees at European and American universities. I am constantly reminded of the relatively high educational achievement here. When I was traveling in a beat-up shared taxi to Taybeh last week, the older gentleman sitting next to me started a conversation. It turned out that he is a professor of political economy at Bir Zeit University. I wish that those 18-year old Israeli soldiers had even a smidgeon of an idea of who they are dealing with. They treat the Palestinians as sub-human.

Okay, now for the last cultural note. There were at least two occasions for celebration in Ramallah over the last two days, and, in Palestinian celebratory fashion, the celebrants shot into the air. It can be terribly frightening for those who are unfamiliar with this custom. And, sometimes one of the celebrants is hit with a returning bullet. Granted, terribly foolish, but that is part of the culture. Tonight the shooting I heard came from a wedding celebration. Yesterday the shooting was because Fatah won the student government elections at Bir Zeit University.

The Fatah win at Bir Zeit was hardly unanimous. They won 24 seats to Hamas’s 22 seats. And, reports are that Fatah won by going to students and giving them 100 shekels and a 50 shekel phone card to vote Fatah. But, there you have it!

I have spent endless hours the last few days in olive wood and mother of pearl workshops, looking at what is available, taking pictures of the artisans at work, and buying. Yesterday, at one of the workshops I had the opportunity to feed ideas to the artisans and watch them implement them. I am looking for more secular olive wood gifts to carry, especially gifts for men, since I have close to none. At my request, they were designing and carving olive wood napkin rings, coasters, napkin holders, pen and pencil cases, business card holders, etc… One of the men in the workshop showed me a small Swiss knife on his keychain to which he added custom cut olive wood to replace the red plastic sides. I thought that could be a nice gift. I saw some olive wood pen and pencils on line and was hoping to buy some that were completely manufactured here. The carvers claim that the olive wood is cut here and shipped to China where they have the means to add a pen. Oh well….
Carving olive wood at Nader Kassis's workshop, Beit Sahour


In addition, I spent hours looking at embroidery in Bethlehem and Jerusalem and selecting some, including a great meeting with Shirabe at Sunbula. Shirabe is a manager at the Sunbula fair trade shop in Jerusalem. She applies for funds to work with women’s cooperatives on product development. The women making the products in the nearly idyllic (except for the checkpoints and unemployment) small villages of the West Bank are unaware of what designs might sell or what quality is expected. Additionally, they have no means to market and sell their products. Shirabe will bring a Palestinian designer who was trained in Paris to a village to work with a woman’s cooperative on a weekly basis for six months. By the end of those six months, the cooperative is producing a newly designed, high quality and sellable work. Sunbula is dependent on funding to continue their product development work, so if anyone out there knows of such funding, let me know.

Jewelry buying was on my agenda as well. One of my off the beaten path stops is in the Armenian Quarter in the Old City of Jerusalem. If you enter the Jaffa Gate and turn right, you will be headed towards the very small Armenian Quarter (“Quarter” is a definite misnomer!). You will also be on the foot highway to the Western Wall. On a religious holiday, as Wednesday was (the end of Passover), you feel nearly trampled by the many Orthodox and Ultra-Orthodox Jews racing to the wall. The costumes the ultra orthodox wear could be called “colorful” if they were not completely black and white. White shirt, black pants, long black caftan, payes (long side curls), and big hats of various styles. I was there to buy jewelry from Movses, who owns the Armenian Tavern with his family but also makes dangling earrings on the side. When I stopped into his shop, Movses was uncharacteristically excited. He was just finishing the final touches on a decoration he was preparing for Saturday’s procession prior to the Orthodox Easter.






The Orthodox Easter is big doings in the Armenian community. He had made a massive blow up of a picture of an altar with flowers. In Armenian it said “Christ has risen”. He was using a staple gun to tack it onto one by ones and then adding a fringe that perfectly matched that in the picture. He was very pleased with his work and with the prominent role that it would have in the procession.

Well, I must go now. Got to get some sleep! Tomorrow I will be going on a tour of Ramallah with Norwegians, then with Germans, both run by the Palestinian Association for Cultural Exchange. Although I have been in Ramallah several times, I have much to learn.

Janice

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April 8 - 11; West Bank: Religion, Checkpoints, Hike, Tours, & Hairdresser

Husney Kohen, Director, Samaritan's Museum, Mt. Gerizim, Nablus

Today is Easter Sunday and I am sitting in my room at the Golden Park “Resort” in Beit Sahour, Bethlehem District. I have a large room here with a large and sunny balcony. The weather is perfect – sunny, dry, not too hot – so I would prefer to be writing this from the balcony, but, as much as I love that perfect sun, it bleaches out the screen too much.
Traveling the Wadi Nar
Wadi Nar Road - The Palestinian Route from Ramallah to Beit Sahour


Beit Sahour is a majority Christian town and is where most of the olive wood and mother of pearl is carved. I visit here each year to buy those products. My friend Joseph and his family do what they can to make me feel at home while I am in Beit Sahour. Joseph is an anomaly for the Bethlehem area. He and his wife (who is also his cousin) were raised Greek Orthodox, like most of the Christians here. Some years back, when his wife Haifa was very ill, an American born-again woman living in the area exposed them to good old American born-again tradition, and brought them into the fold. Joseph and Haifa claim that Jesus saved Haifa’s life, and now their life revolves around faith.

Joseph, Haifa, and their five children attend a small Baptist church in Bethlehem, and set their TV to Christian-only stations. In other words, these indigenous Palestinian Christians tune into American TV evangelists. I was at their home once when the TV was tuned to one of these shows – maybe Joel Osteen, maybe someone else – and the preacher was spouting Christian Zionist lines. I asked Joseph what he makes of that – the support these evangelists show for Israel and lack of support for Palestinians, even Palestinian Christians – and he did not really have much of an answer other than they don’t get it. I’ve thought that if I can understand Joseph and his family I would know how to help Christian Zionists in the US understand the conflict here and stop their uncritical support for the Israeli government. But maybe the only thing I need to understand is the amazing power of absolute faith. I have never had the absolute faith to suspend my critical thinking. I stopped attending synagogues because I am unable to experience faith when I hear a rabbi or a congregation mouth support for Israeli government actions. These attitudes conflict with my interpretation of Judaism itself.

Joseph is not the only special case in this region, which is full of people who don’t quite fit the mold, and that is what makes being here so interesting to me. There’s the perfume seller in the Old City of Jerusalem who grew up an ultra-orthodox Jew in New York, moved here, converted to Islam, changed his name to Ibrahim, and has two or more wives and who knows how many children. There is the woman who grew up Episcopal in England and Africa, took to the Bedouin Sinai and some sort of religious/spiritual guru there, then moved to Jerusalem, only to find out that her father was Jewish, had been furious at being disowned by his family when he married a Christian woman, changed his name to Godfrey, and raised his children Episcopal. She recovered his old Goldstein name, hyphenated it with the Godfrey, and now works with the Israeli Committee Against Home Demolitions.

This morning, I listened to the loud and long peeling of Easter bells from the nearby church which nearly drowned out the call to prayer from the minaret at the local mosque. It felt like a manifestation of the tension here which it is not politically correct to mention. Palestinians need to unite to resist a stronger enemy – the Israelis who are trying to steal their land and push them out of the area. But, it is really hard to spend a significant amount of time here and not be affected at some level by the tension between Christians and Muslims. I can’t and don’t want to deal with just Christians or just Muslims. The vast majority of the people are Muslim and they make most of the embroidery, ceramics, glass, olive oil, and olive oil soap. The Christians are about 2% of the Palestinian population here and make most of the olive wood and mother of pearl carvings. I am not part of either population. I am a woman born to Christian parents who converted to agnosticism when I was seven. I converted to Judaism at 32. I’m now 54 and consider myself half disillusioned Jew/ half agnostic. My spiritual home is Judaism. I’ve read the Quran and studied some of the Hadith. It is clear to me that Judaism and Islam are much closer, despite the widespread use of the term “Judeo-Christian tradition”. So, here I am in the “Holy Land”, going from Muslim to Christian producers, Muslim to Christian villages and avoiding the discussion of my religion as much as I can. When pushed, I tell some of my background and say that I deal with and respect all religions. Although many Jewish activists wear their Jewish credentials as a badge and want to make sure that the Palestinian population knows that there are some “good” Jews out there who support Palestinian rights, I am much more circumspect. I go into areas where the tension between Jewish settlers or the Israeli army and the Palestinian population is so high that I would be in danger to be an open Jew. Not, as some might think, because the Palestinians have blind hatred for Jews, but because the Palestinians have their antenna up for collaborators. Although many Palestinian intellectuals have good relations with progressive Israelis and many Palestinian shop owners, particularly in border areas, have in the past had significant dealings with Israelis, there are some areas, such as Hebron and Gaza, where I don’t want to take the risk of being mistakenly taken for a collaborator.

Since I do deal with Muslims and Christians, I hear them talk about and criticize each other. The complaints I hear from some (not all) of the Christian population sound like a Palestinian version of American white flight. “They are moving in on us.” “Wealthy Muslims are bringing in big money and buying our houses.” “They are pushing us out of our area.” “They are not as clean as us.” “Their children don’t behave.” “They steal things from other school children.” And, what I hear from the Muslim side is: “They treat us like we are dirty.” “They are sectarian and won’t have anything to do with us.” And there are specific examples: I had a friend in Beit Jalah who reported going to a Christian-owned gym and seeing a sign there that said “No Muslims allowed”. When the pope came to Bethlehem in 2000, the Christians of Beit Sahour instructed the Muslims of Deheisheh refugee camp to “clean up their children”. Many of these are easily recognizable as class issues. The Christian population is, in general, better off than the Muslim population, more well-connected to the western world, and have fewer children. They have more support from the western world and more options for emigrating. There are whole towns near Cleveland, Ohio, in Chile, and in other areas of the world that have large populations of Palestinian Christians who have relocated there from Beit Sahour and Beit Jalah.

On occasion I hear issues that pertain to real ideological differences. Christians want to be able to lead a less conservative life style. Older Christian women talk wistfully about how they were able to wear shorts when they were children, and how the increase in conservative Islam has forced them to dress more modestly. Palestinian Christians fear losing their children to the faith, and have been known to toll the church bells if their daughters marry into a Muslim family. Christians were truly frightened when Hamas was elected that Islamic dress code and restrictions on the arts and in education would be legislated.
Now take the tension that is natural to this problem and add the west into the mix. The tourists and activists coming to Palestine are primarily North American and European Christians. They are made to feel at home in the Christian villages like Beit Sahour, Beit Jalah, and Taybeh. The message that Christians are being hurt in the Holy Land is a powerful message that works well in many of the churches, and is used as a rallying cry to gain support for Palestinian rights. Pushing for Palestinian rights helps both Palestinian Christians and Muslims. But, the Palestinian Muslims don’t benefit as much financially from the support of western Christians who tend to spend their dollars in Christian villages and support Christian-based groups. These tourists don’t grace towns like Hebron, Nablus, and Jenin with their presence or tourist dollars. And they don’t get enough exposure to the Muslim community to gain a sense of comfort and familiarity.

An offside: As a seller of Palestinian products, I come face to face with some despicable attitudes within the US. At one sale, a woman approached the register with a pile of products that she planned to buy. I started writing them up and talking about the artisans who made them. When she found out that the olive wood and mother of pearl were made by Christians in the Bethlehem area and the embroidery was made by Muslim women in refugee camps, she returned all the embroidery and purchased only the olive wood and mother of pearl. Then, of course there are the Jewish customers who become enraged that I am allowed to sell any Palestinian products. At one sale a woman ranted loudly that my products support terrorism. At another a Jewish woman came up to me after spotting a tag that said “Made in Palestine”. She demanded to know why the tags said “Made in Palestine” when there was no such country. I told her that I put that tag on the products so that people would know that my products were made by Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza. If they did not want to buy a Palestinian-made product they did not have to. That made a sea change in her behavior. She realized that I might see her as a bigot, which did not sit well with her politically correct Massachusetts lefty image. She started talking about how she was all for peace and a two state solution, yada, yada, yada…..

And now, back to Palestine. Religion is a theme for me today because it is the Latin Easter, the Orthodox Palm Sunday, and the Jewish Passover. It is hard to ignore religion here. Easter means that many Beit Sahour businesses, including the olive wood factories, are closed, although the souvenir shops are open to cater to Christian pilgrims. Passover means that the entire West Bank is “closed”, and the Palestinians are locked in so that Israeli Jews can enjoy their holidays without fear of or intrusion of “the other”. The only Palestinians who can pass the checkpoints into Israel or Jerusalem are the lucky Christians who were granted special permits at the request of their church to visit Jerusalem for Easter. The numbers are probably in the hundreds. Joseph and his family are among them and are enjoying Jerusalem for the first time in a long time.

As an American passport holder, I enjoy real privilege here. I don’t have to be Christian, I don’t have to ask a church to request a permit and wait for the Israelis to approve it. I just move through the checkpoints by showing my passport, closure or not. And, as I have discovered over the years, I can push back on the border guards and get away with it. The other night was a case in point which I will discuss later on. But first, let me share with you how I chose to recognize Passover this year. I went with the Palestinian Association for Cultural Exchange and a group of six Palestinians and one other American to watch the Good Samaritans do their Paschal sacrifice of the lambs. Kat, my dear vegetarian friend, if you are reading this you might want to stop. But others, I do recommend that you continue reading.

The Good Samaritans, who some of you may know of from the New Testament, consider themselves the real Israelites, descended from Joseph. There are just over 700 of them remaining in the world. They live on Mt Gerizim in Nablus and in Holon, Israel. They are a peaceful group of people, and hold three passports (Israeli, Palestinian, and Jordanian), hence, they are very successful merchants who are able to go between these communities to trade. They are fluent in Arabic and Hebrew, and they use a Torah which – according to them – precedes the common Torah and is written in old Hebrew. They claim that they follow the original religion of the Israelites. When the other Israelites accepted the Temple, synagogues, and the reading of the Torah in place of the earlier sacrifices, they did not. They worship at Mt Gerizim rather than recognizing the site of the destroyed Temples in the Old City, where the Dome of the Rock now stands.

Israelis, internationals, and Palestinians go in the hundreds to witness the yearly Paschal sacrifice on Mt Gerizim in Nablus. Because of this, Israeli soldiers move in and take control, setting up checkpoints at both entrances to the village. The Samaritan community, fortunately, has cordial relationships with the soldiers. Palestinians who want to attend are required by the Israeli soldiers to present a written invitation from the Samaritans. The Palestinians in our group had these written invitations. The Americans did not need them. When we approached the checkpoint, the soldiers refused to recognize the invitations from the Samaritans and refused to let the Palestinians in. I got in easily with my passport and raced to the sacrifice site to find the Kohane(priest) who had issued the invitation so that he could intervene to get the Palestinians in.

Imagine walking into this scene of high drama. Hundreds of people crowded into a big yard: Kohanes dressed in white caftans and headdresses, Samaritan women dressed in bed robes in commemoration of having to flee Egypt at nighttime in the time of the Pharaoh (the Passover story), Samaritan men in white coveralls speckled with blood from the sacrifice, hundreds of tourists speaking a multitude of languages, and press from Reuters, Al Jazeera, etc…, etc…. I had been instructed to find the particular Kohane that issued the invitation. Imagine too that Passover has started and religious law forbids the Samaritans to use the phone on Passover. Having the name of the Kohane and knowing where his house was, I was able to find his daughter, beg her to interrupt her father’s sacrificial duties to intervene. She went down to the yard and spoke to him. He could not telephone the soldiers at the checkpoint, so he spoke to higher ranking Israeli soldiers who were in the sacrifice yard. They called the soldiers at the checkpoint, and my Palestinian friends were let in.

Each Samaritan family is required to sacrifice a lamb and eat it within 24 hours. They do it in a big common yard. The slaughter takes place at the back of the yard. The lamb’s neck is sliced over a long slough, a front leg is cut off as a gift to the Kohanes, salt is used to draw the blood out of the lamb, and each lamb is tied to a long pole (about 3 meters long) by their feet. It takes some time to get all the lamb ready for cooking and to hose the blood off the sacrifice ground. Samaritans dip their finger in the blood and smear it on their foreheads, just as the Israelites smeared blood on their doorposts in Egypt to instruct the Angel of Death to pass over their house rather than kill their first son. While the sacrifice is going on and the lamb are being tied to poles, other Samaritans stand around deep open pits in which they are building strong fires. When all the lamb are ready, men carry the poles bearing the lamb to the pits and position themselves around it – about 6 lambs per pit. When ready, in unison they lower the poles and lamb into the pit. Then they rush to cover the pits with a large screen on which they shovel a thick layer of mud. A high priest, the chief Kohane, reads out prayers over these actions, but I was not close enough to him to follow it in any detail. After the pits are covered, the tourists disband, and the Samaritans wait several hours for the lamb to cook.










Our group headed back to our van and out of Nablus. We hoped for smooth sailing through the checkpoints (Huwara and Zatar), but did not get it. At the Huwara checkpoint there was a very long line of cars, being processed very slowly by a couple of soldiers. It looked like a one to two hour wait for us, and it was already 10 PM. The Palestinians talked among themselves and then asked me to intervene. Just as I am not a line cutter in the US, I almost never use my American passport to circumvent a line in Palestine. I stand in line with Palestinians at the checkpoints. The only time I make an exception is if Palestinians beg me to. This happened once before when I was in a Palestinian service taxi headed to the Allenby Bridge to go to Jordan. We sat in it waiting for two hours while the soldiers let all of the vehicles ahead and behind us pass. They absolutely ignored us. We were nearing the time of bridge closure. The Palestinians in the car begged me to use my passport to get us through. I marched to the soldier, presented my passport and said “We have been waiting here for two hours. WHEN are you going to let us pass?” The kippah-wearing settler/soldier said “Now”, and they waved us through. The passengers were very angry at me that I had not intervened earlier.

I was being asked to do the same thing and I did not hesitate. As my friend Adel (who was leading the tour) explained to me, if the soldiers were to get away with holding him up at these checkpoints no one would be willing to go on tours with his organization. So, accompanied by a Palestinian who had a Jerusalem residency card, I marched hundreds of yards from the van to the checkpoint. The two young male soldiers were there in uniform, flack jackets, helmets, M16s and what appeared to be night vision on their heads. They were inspecting the trunks of the cars as well as ID cards. I presented my passport and said I was in a mixed van of tourists and we wanted to pass. First answer was no. I pressed again. Second answer was no. The Palestinian who was with me gave me the nod to try once more. One of the soldiers asked me how many vehicles. I said one. He said okay. We raced back to the van, got in, and were able to pass the line of vehicles and get through the checkpoint with no inspection of the vehicle or the IDs. The Palestinians instructed me to say thank you and I screamed a “Todah Rabbah” to the soldiers as we passed.

Two checkpoints later was the Atara checkpoint. Again the soldiers were taking IDs and inspecting vehicles. This time I was a hindrance. The soldiers apparently thought I was Israeli (it is against Israeli law for Israelis to travel in areas under Palestinian control). They looked at all the people in the van but only asked me for a passport. I handed it to them and they wanted to know why I was in the area and where I was staying. I said we were tourists and I was staying at the City Inn in Ramallah. He seemed to have trouble grasping the whole thing: Americans hanging out with Palestinians. But, he did let us pass and I finally made it back to my hotel room.

Fast forward two days: I went on a trip with Adel to Hebron to buy ceramics. I buy ceramics from a few family businesses in Hebron. Unlike NGO-city (Ramallah), Hebron is entirely free of foreigners other than the few who do monitoring at checkpoints and trouble spots. I stick out like a sore thumb. The ceramics business is a scene of its own: it requires plenty of time sitting in small smoke-filled offices or factory floors drinking Arabic coffee with men and transacting business. I always feel intimidated by it and have never gone without the company and help of a Palestinian man. Additionally, there is one price for foreigners, and a significantly lower price for Palestinians. Hence, I do all my ceramics buying through a Palestinian.

Hebron is divided into H1 (under Palestinian control) and H2 (under Israeli control). The H1 area is okay, the H2 area is extremely tense. H2 is where the Ibrahimi Mosque/Machpelah/tombs of the patriarchs is and extremist settler communities have grown up around it. The soldiers are there to defend these lovely settlers who behave like a bunch of thugs. One of the ceramics factories I visited is in H2. The block where the factory is located looks like a Hollywood set for a war movie. At each end of the block are checkpoints, complete with pill boxes, soldiers with bulletproof vests, helmets, M16s, etc…. On one side of the street the fronts were blown off the homes to widen the street for the convenience of the Israeli military. On the other side of the street are shuttered businesses. There is virtually no business taking place in this part of the city because of the presence of these checkpoints and soldiers. No vehicles are allowed on this block. We had to park the van before the checkpoint and walk in on foot.

I took the opportunity to take several pictures while I was there to document the insanity of the situation. Then we went inside for an hour to transact business. When we emerged I snapped a few more and then we headed for the checkpoint. There were four of us – three Palestinian men and I. Two of the men were carrying boxes of pottery. I and the other man were empty handed. We walked past the checkpoint and then I heard the soldiers behind me screaming out something. Between language issues and the men behind me talking, I was not entirely sure what they were screaming. But I assumed they were screaming at me to stop. I decided not to look back and not to stop. I have been in Hebron before, visiting the Christian Peacemakers’ Team, when soldiers screamed at me to stop. The team instructed me to keep walking. So, I did the same thing this time. I never could do the same if I were a Palestinian. They would shoot first and ask questions later. But, as an international it is relatively safe to assume that they will not shoot. And, as I guessed, they didn’t want to chase me, so they just let me continue on. When the Palestinians behind me caught up they did confirm that the soldiers were screaming at me to stop. Why, I don’t know. We all surmised that they saw me taking pictures. If I had stopped, they may have confiscated my flash card, confiscated my camera, or destroyed my camera in front of me – it is not uncommon. Or, more likely, since I am an international, they would have cautioned me against taking pictures of checkpoints. But, I did not stop and I have those pictures, now duplicated for safety.











Halas! Enough about checkpoints!

If I were to recap everything I did in the last four days, I would never get to bed. So, here are some of the highlights:
An amazing 20-km mountainous hike northwest of Ramallah, originating in the village of Kufr AlDeek in the Salfit district. My friend Adel from PACE (the Palestinian Association for Cultural Exchange) led the hike with 11 Palestinian men and me. Most of the men had a passing knowledge of English, so it was great to chat with them as we hiked through wild flowers, past olive orchards, and up to rocky cliffs to see ancient caves and look down upon a Bedouin encampment. One of the highlights was five kilometers from the end of the hike. A young man from the village came in on donkey with charcoal, chicken, ground meat, humous, and olives and we had barbecue over a small dirt pit. Some of us hiked up to a natural spring while the food was cooking and partook of the water dripping down. The participants included an olive oil producer, people working for the Ministry of Culture: Heritage Division, artists, an art instructor, and a language instructor.

















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A visit to the Christian village of Taybeh - known for Taybeh beer - to meet with Maria Khoury, lunch with her, and tour the village. Maria is from Boston and is married to David Khoury, the mayor of Taybeh. His brother Nadim owns the Taybeh Beer micro brewery, which has great beer. RIWAQ , a Palestinian organization, is reconstructing this ancient village with the help of French archaeologists. At the end of my private tour, I stopped at the brewery to buy a case of beer to give to Adel as a gift. I grabbed a shared taxi to head back to Ramallah, trying to hide the case under the seat in order not to offend the driver or any Muslim passengers. When I arrived at my hotel in El Bireh (a Muslim town where drinking is not allowed) I raced up to my room covering the beer case with my arms and purse. I then put it in a laundry bag to sneak it down to Adel when he picked me up.







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Getting my hair colored and eyebrows plucked. Okay….. these are just the trivialities of life. But, sometimes it is trying to manage your normal activities that exposes you to differences. Like my dirty laundry. There are no laundromats in Palestine, so my choice is to pay someone to do my laundry and trust that they will take care that my clothes do not bleed or shrink (something I am loathe to do anywhere) or wash them in the sink. The day I had free for coloring my hair was Friday in Ramallah. The hairdresser was closed on Friday so Adel’s wife Lina took me to a neighbor’s house to get it done. The neighbor has been coloring hair in her home for three years. A pretty rudimentary setup compared to my hair salon in Concord, but adequate. The hairdresser was embarrassed to ask me to stand over her small bathroom sink for the hair wash. But, the real surprise for me came when she went to shape my eyebrows. She pulled out what looked like embroidery thread and started twisting and pulling it over my skin to pull out the tiny unwanted hairs. I had never seen or heard of such a thing, so I looked it up on google lately and found out that it is called “hair threading” and has been practiced in the east for years. Quite effective.

Anyway, that’s it for now. Whatever I forgot could not have been that important.

Janice

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