By the way, we are entering Jerusalem illegally...

Here are some pictures from Hebron.

Armed Israeli settler walking freely past the military checkpoint on his way to the complex that houses the mosque and synagogue above the tomb of Abraham.

Military checkpoint in the city.  Palestinian youth waiting to be allowed to continue on their way.

Closed Palestinian shops in Hebron.

Closed shops in Hebron.

Closed shops in Hebron.

Last week we took a trip to Hebron and Bethlehem.  The occupation in Hebron is a bit unique.  About 400 extremist Israeli Jews have occupied the Old City of Hebron with several thousand IOF (Israeli Occupation Forces) soldiers there to "protect" them from their Palestinian neighbors.  The neighborhoods outside of the Old City are Palestinian with illegal Israeli settlements interspersed throughout them.  This has been an area of extreme tension and is a hotbed of settler violence against Palestinians.  The city is home to the tomb of Abraham, a place holy to Jews, Christians, and Muslims.  A church was constructed over the tomb.  Later it became a mosque and then it became a place of worship shared by both Jews and Muslims.  In 1994 Baruch Goldstein, an Israeli physician in a settlement in Hebron, got past Israeli security with hand grenades and a machine gun and entered the mosque at Abraham's tomb where he opened fire on people as they prayed.  He killed 29 Palestinians and wounded another 150.  The people within the mosque fought back with a fire extinguisher and killed him.  His cause of death was officially registered as "murder" although no charges were filed against those who ended his killing spree.  Riots followed that killed 25 Palestinians and 5 Israelis.  A two week curfew was imposed on Palestinians only.  They were not allowed to leave their homes while settlers, including those from Goldstein's community, were free to come and go as they pleased.  A memorial was set up for Goldstein at the nearby settlement. 

After this massacre, the prayer site was split into two - one section for Muslims and one for Jews.  There are three checkpoints to get into the mosque.  Both sides have access through a window to the tomb of Abraham and you can look through the window in the mosque and see people praying in the synagogue.

The actions of Baruch Goldstein were the most horrendous of recent attacks but there is a long history of both violence and dispossession as well as peace and coexistence on both sides.  What is happening today in Hebron is dispicable.

The beautiful Old City is a ghost town.  Most of the Palestinian shops have been forced to close.  The floors above the stores has been occupied by Israeli settlers.  The Palestinian municipal government had to install wire fencing above the shops that are still open and below the windows of the settlers' houses to protect Palestinians from garbage and stones being thrown on them.  

As we were sitting having tea with a Palestinian shop owner, a settler came up to him and verbally threatened him.  He asked him "Why are so many terrorists coming from your home?"  Many families lost their businesses from accusations that they were somehow linked to "terrorism" and therefore were a security threat.  

Israeli soldiers set up checkpoints all throughout the city and Palestinians must show their ID cards when they are just trying to walk down the street.  The soldiers can then hold them there as long as they want for no reason.  We saw this.  When a group of TIPH (Temporary International Presence in Hebron), a group that monitors and reports on Israeli abuses of Palestinians in Hebron, walked by, the soldiers finally gave the young boys back their ID cards and let them go.  

The military presence is much more aggressive and threatening than in Jerusalem.  There are snipers on the roofs with their finger on the trigger and gun pointed following you as you walk by.  Can you imagine your child walking home from school with a sniper's gun trained on her everyday?  When we were shopping in some of the shops that are still in business, a pack of Israeli soldiers walked through for some reason.  They walked through slowly with their machine guns raised and their fingers on the trigger.  They would stop as they approached people, including us, and remain a few minutes eyeing us with their weapons pointed at us.  

Israeli flags fly from the settlers homes but Palestinian flags are not allowed to be flown.

Just this past passover a 2 week curfew was imposed on Palestinians.  One of the families we spoke to keeps a donkey in their house and they were not able to take him out or go out themselves during this time.

The air is filled with desperation as the economy is being strangled and threats occur daily in an attempt to finally clear the city completely of Palestinians.

Hebron is one of the cities that the Israeli human rights organization B'Tselem launched their project "Shooting Back" in which they provide Palestinians with video cameras to document abuse at the hands of settlers and the IOF.  A search on youtube.com will turn up some disturbing footage from Hebron.

I cannot express enough how disturbing the situation is.  Palestinians in the West Bank are occupied by the Israeli military force.  The Oslo Accords produced areas A, B, and C with varying degrees of autonomy for Palestinians but this is no matter because regardless of what type of area you are living in you are still occupied.  As a Palestinians you may have your own Palestinian local government and police force but they are helpless in the face of the Israeli military and your neighbors in the illegal settlements.  There is no one to protect your rights.  You are a citizen of a country that has no power to protect your rights and you are not a citizen of the country that controls whether your rights will be respected or not.

Well before I end this I want to explain the title of the post.  You see we got up early in the morning to take the bus into Jerusalem only to catch a bus there back into the West Bank to go to Bethlehem.  The bus that I usually take, which has Israeli plates and can drive through the checkpoint and into East Jerusalem, was not there. They guys told me I could take this smaller shared taxi.  In the taxi they told me that they could either bring me to the normal checkpoint that I go to and I would have to go through the security process and catch another bus on the other side OR they could take me to another place where I could just walk through easily.  So I said "yeah the second one will be good if you think it is easier."  Three of them were going to this second place too so they could help me find my way.  The taxi brought us close to the normal checkpoint but then turned down some other roads and stopped right by the Wall.  What followed was 20 minutes of climbing up and over things and meandering up and down alleys.  Two of the guys were going to Israel to work.  The other guy is a student at the American University in Jenin and was visiting a school in Jerusalem.  Finally this student said to us, "By the way, we are entering Jerusalem illegally.  The Israelis will not give any of us permission to visit Jerusalem." That is when I realized that we were walking around the Wall and sneaking into Jerusalem illegally.  Great.  So much for security.  It was pretty easy and painless.  Many Palestinians still work illegally in Israel, something families depend on to survive.  It is just that now it takes them longer to get to work because they have to find the cracks in the Wall.

Ni'lin: Still not the story they want you to hear

Thank you Neve Gordon and The Nation.  Where is the rest of the world?

Don't Try to Understand

Yasser told us, "Don't try to understand the situation.  There is no logic or answer to be found.   I have been here my whole life, living this experience.  It is the only reality I have ever known and even I can't begin to comprehend it.  Perhaps some day we will get some answers."

Yasser is a very active member of the African Palestinian community in Jerusalem and runs the African Community Youth Center in the African area of the Old City of Jerusalem.  I had an incredible 1.5 hours with him thanks to two other GWU students that I ended up spending the day in Jerusalem with last weekend.  One of them had been working and living in East Jerusalem last summer and had met Yasser then.  On our meanders through the city we found ourselves in the little African section of the city so he asked a guy hanging out on the street if Yasser was around.  To our surprise the guy set off on a mission to find him.  About ten minutes later Yasser arrived and invited us into the center he runs.  

He told us his story.  His father is from Chad and his mother is a "white" Palestinian.  Other Palestinians that I told his story to think it is funny that they are considered "white".  His father came to Palestine on a French passport and therefore in 1967 when Israel occupied East Jerusalem and his mother's family was forced east and settled in Jericho and Jordan, his father and mother were able to stay due to the French passport.  He received a scholarship to study in England but was only given a three month permit to do so.  When he returned at the end of the semester to renew the travel permit he was arrested.  After that he was arrested many times for his political and social activism.  His longest stint in jail was for five years.  He is still regularly arrested and says that anytime there is anything sensitive happening in the city they just come and get him and put him in detention for a few hours.  The last time was back in May when he was leading a group of Palestinian children on a tour of the Old City to counter the 60 years celebration.  He was arrested and taken from the children he was leading.  When his friends at school in Englad asked him why he wasn't returning and lamented about the injustice of it he tried to explain to them (and us) that "It's ok.  Some things are just not a possibility in my life.  It's ok.  I can find alternatives.  I will not give up.  The limitations they impose will not stop me.  I will go to school here.  Every time they try to deny me, I find an alternative."  He also said that every time he is arrested the army and police try to divide him as an Afro-Palestinian from other Palestinians.  They say, "You are African.  Why do you want to support these people? You are not one of them."

When he discussed his work with Palestinian youth in Jerusalem, where drugs and low school attendance are a problem, he echoed the words of the woman I am working with here in Ramallah.  He said that they are very limited in the impact that they can make because of the occupation. By combating drug use they are battling the occupation though. By encouraging youth to get an education they are battling the occupation.

As a lifelong resident of the Old City and as a scholar of Jerusalem Studies he had many things to share with me about the city. When he spoke about the situation and the struggle and the occupation he was completely focused on Jerusalem. It was like he was devoting his life to holding this one piece of ground. He is holding ground while people are offering his community very good prices to sell their homes and move out of the Old City.

He shared with me a very interesting story about the Western/Wailing Wall.  After hearing it I kind of feel like an idiot for not realizing it myself since it is so obvious.  It just shows the degree to which power is all about controlling the narrative.  So did you ever wonder why the holiest site in Judaism, a wall that is thought to be a wall of the 2nd Temple, has a huge amount of open space in front of it in the Old City of Jerusalem where everything else is incredibly cramped with little winding paths throughout the neighborhoods? I am ashamed to say that I never wondered about this before myself. What I learned is that this big open area was formerly the Moroccan quarter of the Old City.  This 700 year old neighborhood became highly diverse with people not only from north Africa but also Muslim, Christian, and Jewish residents of Palestine living in the neighborhood. There were a few meters of space between the wall and the buildings of the neighborhood.  This space became a regular place of prayer for Jews after Sultan Sulayman (1520-1566) cleared a few meters for this purpose.  After the 1948 War, the 1500 Jews living in this neighborhood were expelled by Jordan to the Israeli controlled part of the city, just as tens of thousands of Palestinians were expelled from the Israeli controlled to the Jordanian controlled parts of Jerusalem.  After the 1967 War Israel occupied all of the Old City and put the Moroccan quarter under house arrest while their city planners were brought in. On June 10, 1967 Israel gave two hours notice to the several hundred residents of this quarter that they were to evacuate their homes.  By the evening of June 11th nearly all of the 135 homes had been destroyed.  They destroyed an entire neighborhood in the ancient city of Jerusalem. One old woman who didn't evacuate her home was crushed to death inside it.  Initially religious structures were left in tact. But even the mosques were bulldozed by 1969. Israel offered each family 200 Jordanian Dinars. Only about half accepted it because to do so would have legitimized the ethnic cleansing that took place.

So this is how the "Western Wall Plaza" came to be. It is now considered a part of the Jewish Quarter of the city. Although only 20% of the land is actually a part of the Jewish Quarter, the rest being land appropriated from the Palestinians forced from it, only Jews are allowed to live in this neighborhood. This law has been upheld by a 1978 Israeli Supreme Court ruling in the case of the Burqan family against the state of Israel. The court recognized that the Burqan family were the owners of a house in what is now the Jewish Quarter but said that the special historical significance of the area to the Jewish people trumps all legal claims to the property by non-Jews.

It is strange to walk through Jerusalem and see the American kids on their Birthright trips and all of the Christian tourists and hear all of the stories the guides are telling.  To control the narrative of the city of Jerusalem is to possess the city. At the moment, the pro-Zionism Israeli narrative (only one of many Israeli narratives) is the dominant one. But of course possession of this city, along with the power of narrative, has changed hands throughout time. This is the way of all things I guess. All powers fall, right Mom? I only hope that we can keep the subjugated narratives alive through their period of subjugation.

Omar Qassis

In the middle of the night on March 27, 2008 Omar Qassis, a student at Birzeit University in the West Bank, was woken from his sleep and arrested at his family's home.  He remains in prison now in Israel even though, since he is from the West Bank, it is against international law for Israel to transfer him across territories. He was eventually charged as an adult with "throwing stones" sometime during 2001-2002 when he would have been 16 years old.  This charge does not require that the charge be connected to a particular incident or a particular day. So it is impossible for him to present a defense and an alibi. Below is communication that Birzeit University's "Right to Education" campaign received from him on May 17th:

"I am O.K. but since my arrest my weight has dropped from 67 to 59 kilos.  Since arriving in Ofer I have not been given enough sugar so I have been feeling dizzy and dehydrated, and I couldn't sleep for the first 4 days.  I had hemorrhoids which were painful but my requests to see a doctor were ignored.  In the end I had to skip meals to be able to see a doctor.

The hemorrhoids developed while I was under interrogation because I wasn't given any clean clothes and the solitary confinement cell I was in - 'the hole' - was really humid.  I was in 'the hole' for 11 days.  Also when they started interrogating me I was tied down to a chair while intelligence officers questioned me for 4 hours at a time. Some soldiers told me that I would get hemorrhoids from sitting down so much if I didn't start confessing.

I also couldn't sleep because of the mental distress I was under.  I wake up easily, every time a soldier walks past. I saw soldiers beating other inmates and fear that I could be next. I'm also very disoriented, I hear sounds of dogs barking and people screaming at night. I think these are recordings but they affect me. I also heard a siren the other night and I imagined Israel was going to war with Iran and that they had evacuated the prison leaving me there alone. I have lost my bearings and am generally confused about the times of day or night.

The other day I cried. I cried at the sight of an old man, probably in his 60s, sitting alone and looking very fragile. I also know that he is diabetic. I can't stand to see the injustice he is in, and even less to imagine the injustices he has seen.

Now that I am here in prison I am in less physical pain but I am still stressed at the uncertainty of it all. I have no idea how long I will be in prison. I have no idea what they are doing or claiming. All I know is that I'm not a threat to security but I was still being questioned about all sorts of things, so anything and everything is going through their heads.

I basically just want to know when I can see my family again."

A Wedding in Ni'lin

We held a workshop in Jenin today on women's representation and participation in the Palestinian media.  But what I want to tell you about is that one member of our staff was not able to make it to the workshop.  Her sister-in-law was getting married yesterday in the village of Ni'lin, near Ramallah.  Ni'lin is facing the construction of the wall.  It will cut them off from their land.  Land that now has the raw sewage from the nearby Jewish settlement running through it.  They are waging a legal battle against the construction but the building goes on regardless.  So they have been launching a creative non-violent battle as well.  They go out in the evening with noisemakers to remind the settlers on the hill above them that they are still alive and will continue to live even if the wall is constructed.  The response to these noise demonstrations has been the arrival of the Israeli army in the village at 2am with a noise machine, not to mention the response that happens during the protests - tear gas, rubber bullets, and live ammunition.  On Friday, the day of the wedding, there was a protest scheduled.  Palestinians were going to be joined by Israeli and International solidarity activists. Because of this the Israeli army put a curfew on the village. Nobody was allowed in or out and movements were limited within the village as well because it is divided into two halves by an army checkpoint. 

This gets me back to my co-worker.  She had to call and tell us that she wouldn't be able to make it to the workshop because she was stuck in Ni'lin.  The wedding was a somber affair as the bride was not able to make it to Ramallah to get her hair and makeup done and many of the guests were not able to arrive.  Not to mention the tear gas and ammunition in the air due to the fact that despite the curfew, and the inability of Israeli and International activists to join them, the village held one of their largest protests to date.  600 villagers participated.  The Israeli military responded.  24 people were injured, 3 houses were damaged, 4 Israeli activists and one news reporter were arrested for being present.  Ambulances carrying the wounded were not allowed to leave the village.  There were further plans for the residents of Ni'lin, joined by others, to repave one of their roads that was torn up by a bulldozer but I do not know if that is taking place tonight.  If the village stays under curfew, with people unable to go to work, visit hospitals, friends, and family and just live, then there will be a march on Ni'lin starting in a nearby village.  

I am writing this because it is important to know that non-violent protests and demonstrations are being held in towns and villages across the West Bank every week.  And I am telling you about my co-worker because I think people forget that this is a place where people just like you live just like you do.  They have weddings and the bride makes plans for her hair on this big day.  

I am also writing about this because people have been asking me about the attack in Jerusalem a few days ago. It is tragic for family members.  But I just don't think people realize that there are attacks every week that are much closer to me.  And they are not just at protests.  They are the child shot in Hebron and the 2 people shot the next day as they walked in his funeral procession.  They are the Palestinian shepherds that are run over by Israeli settlers' cars as they walk their flocks on the side of the road.  And of course the targeted assassinations. I know that a man taking control of a bulldozer and plowing it into cars right in front of news cameras is quite dramatic and terrifying.  But the systematic violence of the Israeli army and settlers in the West Bank, much of which is not caught on camera because of the restrictions placed on journalists and human rights monitors, is much more terrifying to me.