Visit to Bethlehem & the West Bank

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Passover is already in the air. The supermarkets are displaying cleaning materials (including toothbrushes) and matzah and we recently got a notice at Mandel that following our usual Monday "tea time" in two weeks, we will be packing up the cups. Cafes and restaurants are starting to post notices about whether they will be open or closed during the holiday and people are talking about their vacation plans.

I'll describe the whole Passover phenomenon another time; this time I want to tell about my visit to the area around Bethlehem with an organization called Encounter. (www.encounterprograms.org) This was part one of a two part series through Mandel in which we spent two days speaking with Palestinians living in Bethlehem and the West Bank. The second part will be after Passover in which we will visit a range of Israeli settlements and speak to the people living there. Similar to my description of my visit to Hebron in November, I will focus on what I saw and heard myself, not on statistics or polemics, which I have no doubt you can find on your own.

But before I begin, I want to reflect a little on a seminar that was serendipitously held at Mandel this week. It was provocatively entitled, "What should we NOT teach?" There were four historians on the panel, two Israelis (Urit Ramon and Ayal Naveh) and two Americans (Jonathan Sarna and Sam Wineburg), who addressed various "dark chapters" in Israeli and American history and how they are taught or not taught. One of the themes that kept emerging was about the conflict in history education between cultivating a sense of belonging and striving to understand the truth. It is interesting that we fear that those two things are automatically mutually exclusive, that in order to belong to a particular worldview or group, we must limit the narratives we tell, or alternatively, that by telling competing narratives, we undermine our commitment to our own worldview or group. I don't believe that has to be true. In fact, one of the things I have always loved about Jewish tradition is its commitment to understanding the minority opinion, to the idea of "davar acher" (an alternative understanding).

So some of the things I saw and heard this week are sometimes understood as inherently undermining a Jewish or Israeli or Zionist worldview. I don't see them that way. I believe it is important to try to understand the truth, even difficult truth, AND I believe that I can affirm the worthiness of belonging to my particular group. The fact that that's not always easy for me - or for anyone - is just another sign that this is still an unredeemed world.

So on to the Bethlehem.

The complexity of movement in the West Bank was evident before we even left Jerusalem. Following the Oslo Accords, the West Bank was divided into three zones: Area A, which is under Palestinian control, Area B which is administered civilly by the PA and is under Israeli controlled security, and Area C which is under Israeli control. The Israeli government does not allow Israeli citizens to be in Area A, which includes Palestinian urban centers, including Bethlehem. So because we were a mixed international group (from a very wide range of political and religious backgrounds, as well), we had to stay in Areas B and C. West Bank Palestinians who want to go into Area C are required to get permits to do so, which are not easy to obtain. In addition, because the map is such a hodgepodge of the three zones, it is not simple to travel from one place to another. What this meant for us is that it is very, very difficult for Jewish Israelis and West Bank Palestinians to meet face to face. What it means for Palestinians is that what used to be, for example, a 20 minute drive from Ramallah to Bethlehem now took one of our presenters 2 1/2 hours.

We visited a number of sites, beginning at a school for K-8 graders called the Hope Flowers School that emphasizes peace and democracy education, including offering interfaith activities with Christian, Muslim and Jewish young people. We visited a farm called the Tent of Nations on a hilltop surrounded by settlements that runs various youth programs. We went to a Lutheran Church called Talitha Kumi, which is the site of a miracle in which Jesus raised a girl from the dead. (Talitha kumi means "Little girl, get up!" in Aramaic.) There we heard several panels of Palestinian activists; we also heard from Alex Kouttab, who is a communications adviser with the Negotiations Support Unit of the PLO. We played some interactive games with students at Bethlehem University and ate dinner at the Everest Hotel, one of the very few places where Jewish Israelis and West Bank Palestinians can easily meet. The non-Israelis among us had the opportunity to spend the night in the homes of families in Bethlehem. The next day, we went to Beit Sahour, which is known for the fields in which the shepherds saw the star which led them to the manger in Bethlehem, and heard from a panel of non-violent activists.

Overall I came away with three main impressions. The first is how important it is for people to meet face to face. Obviously we met with people who were willing to meet with us; the question of how representative these people were was raised by the participants. But the power of interacting with real people and hearing their real stories emerging from what are usually vast generalizations is also quite profound. I found what I heard to be inspiring and sobering. Here are some examples:

Leila Sansour, a film maker and founder of an organization called Open Bethlehem, first brought up the isolation felt by many Palestinians. She said that due to the physical obstacles around travel and the psychological obstacles of suspicion and hatred, "We end up talking to the worst of our own instead of with the best of our enemy."

Daoud Nassar, the owner of the farm, the Tent of Nations, wrote in several languages at the entrance of the farm, "We refuse to be enemies." He told us how the main road to his farm was blocked during the second intifada and that when he was once driving back home late at night, going the long way around with his sleeping children in the car, soldiers stopped the car and wanted to search it Daoud told them his kids were sleeping and that it would frighten them to be woken up by men with guns. The soldiers insisted, so Daoud woke up his children, telling them that the soldiers were friendly. Afterwards, he said, the soldiers apologized.

Siham Abu Awwad, who is active in a women's dialogue group of bereaved families of Jews and Palestinians killed in the conflict (one of her brothers was shot and killed by the Israeli army), said that if you throw the problems into the sea, they will learn to swim. The real issue is fear and the answer is to try to face our fears.

Sami Awad, a Christian from Bethlehem, learned about non-violence from his uncle. He studied peace and conflict resolution in the US and has gone to Auschwitz twice to try to understand the pain that Israelis feel. He said that real non-violence is also helping the other to heal from their pain. The second time he went to Auschwitz, he spent the cold November night in a children's barrack with an American Jew and a Turkish Muslim, all of them praying and trying to keep warm together. He runs an organization called the Holy Land Trust.

Yousef El-Harimi, a Harvard-educated professor of Islamic Studies, who stepped out of the panel for a few minutes to do his late-afternoon prayers, wryly commented, "I still believe in God, but I really like Nietzsche." (That was particularly humorous to us Mandel Fellows, who are currently studying "The Geneology of Morals" in our moral development class.)

One of the other Mandel Fellows, Nina Price, and I took advantage of the home hospitality opportunity and stayed with a Catholic family from Bethlehem. Hanna (the husband) and Hanan have three children and live just below the Bethlehem University in a modest home on a steep hill. Just opposite is Har Homa, which is variously described as a neighborhood of Jerusalem or a post-Oslo settlement, depending on your political view. They showed us a rabbit hutch; they raise the rabbits to sell for meat. They also have a few fig trees and an apricot tree, as well as grape vines. They let us taste their homemade wine (sweet and fruity) and fig and apricot jams (also sweet and fruity!). Hanna is a tailor; he used to work in a factory in Jerusalem but since the second intifada, he can no longer get there. So he finds work as he can and does exquisite embroidery to sell to tourists who come to Bethlehem. Hanan is a wonderful cook and also prepares her own olives and zaatar (a delicious condiment made out of thyme, oregano, sesame seeds and sumac). They built a lower room that Hanna can use as a sewing room and that they can rent out to people like us; I think it must be a significant source of income for them. Hanan spoke excellent English; Hanna spoke a little Hebrew which he had learned when he worked in Israel. Their oldest son just finished college and is holding three part time jobs working with electronics and computers; Nina and I suspected he supports the family as well.

The second impression that has stayed with me is the increasing isolation and fragmentation of Palestinian daily life. Much of that has to do with the "security fence"/"separation wall" which also has much to do with the building of settlements. One of the interactive games we played with the students was that the leaders read a series of statements in English and Arabic and if the statement was true of you, you took a step forward. The questions began with easy topics (I am wearing jeans. I have family in the US.) and got more difficult (A family member has been a refugee in the last 100 years. A friend or a member of my family has been injured or killed in the Middle East conflict.) There were a series of questions about the "security fence"/"separation wall." I was the only non-Palestinian who said that I saw the wall on a daily basis; it is clearly visible just off my balcony, along with the goats and the Peace Forest and the Jordanian mountains (on a clear day).

This wall has a much stronger significance to me after this visit. I saw for myself how there are villages and farming land that have been closely associated with Bethlehem that are now being completely cut off from the residents of the city. I saw how Bethlehem is surrounded on almost every side by settlements, so that people in Bethlehem can no longer easily travel to Jerusalem or Ramallah. And when Nina and I were taking a cab back from Hanna and Hanan's home, we asked the driver to show us a little of the city. He took us to see the Church of the Nativity (from the outside) and Manger Square and then as we were driving back to Talitha Kumi, all of a sudden, the road veered because right in the middle of the city there was the wall. Behind it is Rachel's Tomb, a sacred Jewish site, which is sectioned off from the rest of Bethlehem. It was shocking to see how part of the city is suddenly off-limits to its own inhabitants.

Finally, the last and perhaps most surprising impression I came away with is how much more civil the conversation was among Jews and Palestinians here than it generally is in the US. In fact, I was expecting the conversation to be hostile and angry and instead, it was courteous, respectful and open, even when we were talking about very difficult things. Encounter developed a very effective communication agreement to help guide the conversation on the Jewish side, but the Palestinians were not expected to abide by it; they may not have even known about it. Still, Sam Bahour, a business man who was born in Youngstown, Ohio but moved to Ramallah after Oslo and helped start the Palestinian telecommunications company, commented on the difference between conversation here and abroad. He said, "When you are hurt and on the outside, you are more susceptible to silo thinking." It left me wondering if there is any way to change the tenor of the conversation on campus. How ironic if we, living in the luxury of the US, cannot learn to listen to each other's truths in order to cling to our own sense of belonging!

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Photos

Hope Flowers School
We did an art activity with 5th graders at this K-8 school that emphasizes peace and democracy education.

Daoud Nassar
Daoud has turned his family farm into the "Tent of Nations," a meeting place for youth from different backgrounds. At the entrance is a sign in multiple languages that says "We refuse to be enemies."

Road block
During the 2nd intifada, the road that connects Daoud's farm to the main road and to Bethlehem was closed by the Israeli army.

Hanan and Hanna
Hanna, my host in Bethlehem, is a tailor. On the side he makes beautiful embroideries for tourists.

Hanna, Hanan and me
In their home in Bethlehem

Manger Square
A Palestinian police station is right on the square, as is a mosque. Christians are currently a minority in Bethlehem.

Non-Violence Activism Panel
Sami Awad, Ayed Ahmed Hoseen Morrar and Rula Salameh told us about their stories and their organizations.

Comments

[Glenda]

I read these each time and usually do not comment but this week it is so moving and phenomenal ! I hope you have printed copies of each and every one of these to keep for posterity ! You touch on so many issues of importance and meaning and this is an amazing chronicle of your year in Israel thanks for sharing it with us Glenda

[Jen]

Lisa, I agree with Glenda--this is particularly moving and phenomenal. The variety of people you talk about--that you have had the chance to meet and interact with--is awesome. And I really like your comments on teaching/learning from the seminar of what NOT to teach--definitely a provocative title! I think it's so true what you said about finding truth, and knowing that even "alternate" views don't necessarily undermine your own viewpoint or group. This is true in so many areas, from religion to science to politics. And you got to see the Church of the Nativity! So jealous! =)