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