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Back in Nablus after two weeks of computer-free travel in Israel, I am learning to find my way to and from the important points in town, such as the Al Jasmeen Hotel which is a local hangout for foreigners, I've been told, and has great coffee and free wifi. Now that I've found my way here I can write a little about my recent travels. There has been a lot of contrast during these last two weeks between Tel Aviv, Jerusalem and Deisha, a refugee camp outside of Bethlehem in the West Bank.
After staffing a Shambhala Training
level in Tel Aviv I was planning to embark on a couchsurfing mission around Israel in order to meet Israelis and get some sort of a picture of Israeli society first hand rather than rely on other people's often opinionated accounts of how things are there. At first I was hesitant to tell Israelis in Tel Aviv that I was spending two months in the West Bank but after talking to one of the American participants at the Shambhala Training weekend I was confident that I could tell Israelis without making too much of a big deal about it (or getting a lecture). Although I met a few people who warned me that, in their view, travel in the West Bank was dangerous and stupid I was impressed that most of the Israelis I met not only didn't object to my coming to Nablus (Shechem, in Hebrew), but were glad to hear it and respected that I would come to Palestine. Now, after seeing a more conservative representation of Israel in Jerusalem and hearing about some of the other American teachers' experiences discussing the issue with Israelis, I recognize that I may have stumbled into the most open-minded slice of Israeli society. There are huge variations in the way Israeli people feel about Palestine. Many aren't as friendly as the Israelis I met. In fact, in the last two days since I arrived in Nablus, Israeli settlers have attacked Palestinians at Hawara check-point (the main entry into Nabluls and the one I used) after burning 50,000 acres of Palestinian farmland outside of Nablus. (I thought the air quality seemed pretty bad yesterday but assumed it was from the burning garbage). And, I am beginning to hear more about the extreme views of the Zionist settlers (and Christian fundamentalists who finance
them) who believe they are fulfilling a biblical prophecy by claiming a large chunk of this part of the world for themselves.
Yasser, my host in Deisha Refugee Camp, showed me the "10 cent" sheckel coin (not acceptable payment in Palestine even though they use sheckels) which has on it, behind a menorah, a map of a nation of an unrecognizable shape. This, I was told, is an outline of the future Israeli state which stretches from the Mediterranean coast down west into Egypt, covering all of Palestine and spreading south and east into Jordan, Syria and Lebanon. This struck me as akin to the illuminati thing people say about the pyramid with the eye on the US dollar bill but realizing that Israel was not yet a country 60 something years ago and today it has 78% of the land of historic Palestine and something like 150 settlement on the remaining percent inhabited by Palestinians, it doesn't seem that paranoid or crazy to think that Israel may one day cover all that land.
But, I have to say that I enjoyed myself in Tel Aviv. I sipped cappuccinos on Dizengoff Street and strolled the beach all the
way to Jaffa gorging myself on halva (halawa, in Arabic). I stayed with a young Israeli Shambhalian woman in a penthouse on the top of a building her family owns in one of the fanciest neighborhoods of Tel Aviv. I pretended I could live there in a world of safe sandwiches and halter tops but the mandatory bag checks at every store were a constant reminder of the lack of security people feel in Israel. Nevertheless, Tel Avivians are committed to having a good time despite the circumstances. We went out for "White Night" an annual celebration where everyone is supposed to stay out all night without sleeping. After winding through the crowds in the family-friendly spectacle along a lit-up boulevard we made our way towards a bar on the beach with thumping dance music and sat in chairs dug into the sand chatting and looking out at the night sea until 3am.
It was a complete turn around to arrive in Jerusalem on a Thursday before the beginning of Shavout, the holiday that celebrates the harvest of dairy products and milk (I was calling it "Cheesecake Day"). I spent two and a half days exploring vast areas of
Graffiti of Herzl
Says something questioning Zionism in a funny play on words of a quote of the founding father of Israelthe city on foot under the baking sun since all public transit was down for the holiday weekend. Ultra-orthodox families walking the streets looked not unlike the images I have in my head from elementary school of the pilgrims or Quakers. In many areas of Jerusalem this population is the vast majority and they post signs advising visitors to adhere to their conservative dress standards.
The bus trip to Jerusalem from Tel Aviv itself was pretty entertaining. The bus was crowded and I grabbed a spot on the aisle behind the driver. A woman with a scared dog boarded the bus at some point and as she paid the driver her dog made a poo right on the bus at the top of the stairs. No one seemed to be concerned with finding something to clean it up with and I had a front row seat to the ensuing spectacle as the two older Israeli women in the front row across the aisle from me publicly humiliated the woman who walked to the back of the bus with her dog. People continued climbing the stairs to pay the driver who remained silent as they all stepped right in the
pile of poo and tracked it through the bus. The two women across from me started going nuts screaming at the dog owner and the bus driver. After a few more people passed through the crap, the woman emerged from the back of the bus with some wet wipes and took care of it. This didn't seem to be enough for the older women who continued flinging insults at the woman with the dog until the bus driver told them to stop talking. My host, Lara, who I was traveling with (and her boyfriend Ishai), laughing, translated the whole episode into my ear from her seat behind me.
Among my itinerary in Jerusalem was the Old City which was incredible with its markets and stone alleys. I also did an official tour (so out of sync with my normal travel style) of Mt of Olives which is the site of the Ascension of Jesus and an Orthodox Christian site of the burial of Mary. The different Christian denominations believe she is buried in different places. It was strangely moving to touch the lumpy stone in the the temple floor while trying to see Jesus' footprint and imagining him rising
Israeli check point and "Apartheid Wall"
Between East Jerusalem settlements and outskirts of Bethlehem up to the sky (the dome was not yet built overhead at the time of the ascension, luckily).
Rather than making my way to the Dead Sea from Jerusalem, which had been the plan, I decided to start heading in the direction of Nablus, my final destination for 2 months of teaching. I sent off a couple emails and found a host in Deisha, a refugee camp outside of Bethlehem in the West Bank, a stones throw from Jerusalem (Al Quds, in Arabic). The distance was short yet I traveled far. Arriving in Deisha was like arriving in another world. Yasser, my host ran a sort of community center/informal school for local kids called Karama which means "Dignity" in Arabic, down the street from the UN run school with its blue and white flags. Since I only stayed for a day, I didn't find out as much as I would have liked about the camp and the programs there but it was easy to see that Yasser lives and breathes for Palestine and the Palestinian people. He brings in foreign volunteers to teach and help out at Karama and is eager for foreigners to come and see first hand
what life in the Deisha refugee camp is like. He was also eager to talk politics and curse zionism and its supporters. I glimpsed first hand the specifically Arab way of coloring spoken language as poetry in heated conversation. (Talking about Israel, Yasser said "If all Egyptians stood on the border and spit, there would be an ocean.") We stayed up late sipping Arabic coffee in the formal living room with pictures of family patriarchs hanging on the walls above us as we discussed general political issues of Palestine such as why Palestine is prevented from fighting for its independence as any other nation is allowed to do and how the majority of Palestinians have recently begun supporting Hamas, the religious and sometimes called "terrorist" party since the corruption of the secular Fatah party has become intolerable (the Palestinian president provided Israel with cement from his factory to build the still under-construction "apartheid wall" separating the West Bank from Israeli). Frankly, I felt a little freaked out by all this and the suffocating texture of the anger that sometimes seeped out of Yasser. But it's not difficult to understand why people hold the views they do. The apartheid wall is
finished in the area of the West Bank that I entered going from Jerusalem into Bethlehem and I saw one word painted on it as the bus drove in: Ghetto. It seemed to say a lot standing there alone on the wall.
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Dad
non-member comment
very cool
Kim- Grandma and I just looked at your latest blog entries. Amazing. By the way, I'm no longer getting email notification of postings. Wassup with that? Love, Dad