24 July 2007
I woke a few minutes before the loudspeaker at the mosque next door started blaring, calling people to morning prayers. That was at 4:15am, gotta love jet lag. My body is still adjusting.
We hopped in the car and drove off towards Bethlehem. I hadn’t realized how close it really was and in minutes we were zooming up into the hills. We stopped by the side of the road on a huge hill overlooking the countryside. In the distance we could see the wall, snaking in and out all over the place. From our perch in we could see the monstrous stone high-rises like an army of block soldiers standing quietly and still next to each other. We could see the equipment congregated around many of the buildings, still under construction. Ziad pointed out the road next to part of the wall that only Israeli’s could drive on, the wall built over a portion of the road that extended between two huge tunnels. The wall was built to keep the Israeli cars from being attacked with stones, debris, and weapons from above. I could see the division between the land, not just physical, not just the great expanse of barren land between the two lands but also psychological. It was like looking at two different worlds.
Later we stood under a portion of the wall constructed of electric barbed wire. On one side the Palestinian houses and on the other the Israeli settlement. Ziad showed me how the wire cut off the Palestinian land so that families on the one side were a few feet away from what used to be another part of their land. I could hear a tear in his words as he talked about what the family whose land we were standing on had gone through as the fence cut them off from their land and pushed farther and farther onto their properties, the rocks and other things that had been thrown down upon them during less quiet times than the few minutes we stood upon the land. Ziad knows the family well. He talked about non-violence, about how at points it’s hard to understand how people pushed so far can still maintain patience and hope. I heard my first gunshots in this area from that hill, echoing in the distance…
We drove as much along the wall as we could, coming within 20 feet of Jerusalem but as Ziad pointed out, he could not go there. His Palestinian identification and plates on the car prevented him from passing the checkpoint. Later as I talked with Imam and Isaar, a brother and sister who work with Ibdaa we reflected on how unfair it is that I can just walk across that border but they have never been there.
After a rousing game of basketball in the Palestinian championships at the Catholic Action Cultural Center in Bethlehem, that Ibdaa (the only team that comes from a refugee camp) won and was the first time I had been to a basketball game where the armed guards were carrying AK-47’s I sat back up in the restaurant on the 4th floor surrounded by the smells of stale cigarette smoke and strong Arabic coffee as Ziad, Ibrahim and two other men talked about life in Palestine after 60 years. They spoke quickly, passionately and sometimes loudly in Arabic about, as Ziad put it, the million-dollar question: Where do we go from here? I listened closely though I could only pick out a word here and there, occasionally Ziad would stop and translate a bit of what was going on. There was talk about the need for open conversations, for dialogue with Israelis though Ibrahim asked; how can we have dialogue when we are not on the same level. As humans we are equal, but as the Occupied and the Occupiers he can’t see how dialogue will happen. Ziad reinforced a position that he had stated to me earlier that day as we were driving away from the wall. At that time he had told me he would like to set up a time for me (and others) to go meet with Israeli’s and talk about life. And in this conversation he reiterated the need to be in conversation, to hear all perspectives and to continue trying to find a non-violent way to move forward in this small part of the world. Its small geographically, but I can already tell after 3 days that the worlds represented here are miles and miles apart…
We hopped in the car and drove off towards Bethlehem. I hadn’t realized how close it really was and in minutes we were zooming up into the hills. We stopped by the side of the road on a huge hill overlooking the countryside. In the distance we could see the wall, snaking in and out all over the place. From our perch in we could see the monstrous stone high-rises like an army of block soldiers standing quietly and still next to each other. We could see the equipment congregated around many of the buildings, still under construction. Ziad pointed out the road next to part of the wall that only Israeli’s could drive on, the wall built over a portion of the road that extended between two huge tunnels. The wall was built to keep the Israeli cars from being attacked with stones, debris, and weapons from above. I could see the division between the land, not just physical, not just the great expanse of barren land between the two lands but also psychological. It was like looking at two different worlds.
Later we stood under a portion of the wall constructed of electric barbed wire. On one side the Palestinian houses and on the other the Israeli settlement. Ziad showed me how the wire cut off the Palestinian land so that families on the one side were a few feet away from what used to be another part of their land. I could hear a tear in his words as he talked about what the family whose land we were standing on had gone through as the fence cut them off from their land and pushed farther and farther onto their properties, the rocks and other things that had been thrown down upon them during less quiet times than the few minutes we stood upon the land. Ziad knows the family well. He talked about non-violence, about how at points it’s hard to understand how people pushed so far can still maintain patience and hope. I heard my first gunshots in this area from that hill, echoing in the distance…
We drove as much along the wall as we could, coming within 20 feet of Jerusalem but as Ziad pointed out, he could not go there. His Palestinian identification and plates on the car prevented him from passing the checkpoint. Later as I talked with Imam and Isaar, a brother and sister who work with Ibdaa we reflected on how unfair it is that I can just walk across that border but they have never been there.
After a rousing game of basketball in the Palestinian championships at the Catholic Action Cultural Center in Bethlehem, that Ibdaa (the only team that comes from a refugee camp) won and was the first time I had been to a basketball game where the armed guards were carrying AK-47’s I sat back up in the restaurant on the 4th floor surrounded by the smells of stale cigarette smoke and strong Arabic coffee as Ziad, Ibrahim and two other men talked about life in Palestine after 60 years. They spoke quickly, passionately and sometimes loudly in Arabic about, as Ziad put it, the million-dollar question: Where do we go from here? I listened closely though I could only pick out a word here and there, occasionally Ziad would stop and translate a bit of what was going on. There was talk about the need for open conversations, for dialogue with Israelis though Ibrahim asked; how can we have dialogue when we are not on the same level. As humans we are equal, but as the Occupied and the Occupiers he can’t see how dialogue will happen. Ziad reinforced a position that he had stated to me earlier that day as we were driving away from the wall. At that time he had told me he would like to set up a time for me (and others) to go meet with Israeli’s and talk about life. And in this conversation he reiterated the need to be in conversation, to hear all perspectives and to continue trying to find a non-violent way to move forward in this small part of the world. Its small geographically, but I can already tell after 3 days that the worlds represented here are miles and miles apart…