Walking in Bethlehem

My good friend Thomas, who's own birthright/world travel journal (not blog) was one of the things that inspired me to take my trip as I enviously followed along during the prior Minnesota winter, told me before my trip that I could not really understand the situation in Israel until I visited the West Bank and saw the occupation for myself. He was right: you can read books and articles about it, even see movies about it (Slingshot Hip Hop was another prod), but when you experience it yourself and spend time with people who live through it every day, you feel it in a completely different way. ___________________________________________________ When I arrive in Bethlehem, Jared (my host and Thomas's friend) is still on his way back from Ramallah, running late due to an hour-long delay at the checkpoint between the two cities. His roommate Baha lets me in, and it's not long before he's schooling me on the other side of the conflict, both past (he says Israeli authors rediscovered records of 32 strategically located Jewish massacres of Palestinian villages and large corresponding displacement that occurred before the war in 1948) and present (the reported 'mistake' of bombing a school in Gaza, the reported execution of a family in a house in Gaza before it was bombed). "Nobody asks what has been going on in Gaza for the past 8 years. The past 2 years." Baha works for the Olive Tree Campaign, which has planted tens of thousands of olive trees in Palestine to replace the 600,000 that he says the Israeli government has cut down, for no conceivable reason other than to cripple part of the Palestinian economy. I meet Jared and some of his friends over the course of the evening, and in between episodes of Black Books, they school me some more: e.g. I note that Bethlehem seems pretty low-key, and one responds that it is, but that the vibe is occasionally interrupted by Israeli authorities entering Bethlehem and kidnapping or killing a suspected dissenter. ___________________________________________________ Jared, who by all accounts has been working non-stop during the attack on Gaza at his news agency, has a rare day off the next day and is gracious enough to take me on a tour of Bethlehem, which as a town is hard not to love--amazing history, architecture, scenery, vibrancy, etc. Jared is extremely well informed about the politics of the region, so I pick his brain while walking through the streets. On the way to the Church of the Nativity, we talk about the economic situation in the West Bank: not only has the occupation systematically destroyed its economy, but in what seems like a cruel joke, a significant amount of both Palestinian tax dollars and humanitarian aid are apparently captured by the State of Israel, in effect funding some of this destructive occupation. We head into the church and spend a few moments at the spot where Jesus was born. We head back outside and Jared points out the covered bullet holes in a wall of the church where Israeli troops shot during the second intifada while Palestinian militants were taking refuge inside. ___________________________________________________ We then walk to the wall to divide Israel and the West Bank, which comes right up to now-vacant Bethlehem homes and businesses, and the to the adjacent Aida refugee camp. At the entryway to the camp is a sculpture of a giant key, which represents the desire of Palestinians to return to their old villages even after generations of displacement, and walk through a couple of the streets. I ask Jared how people survive in the camps and he says that, while foreign aid has been helpful, they mostly rely on a supportive family structure; nobody lets a family member go hungry. Our next stop is the Diyar Consortium, where we get a tour from Jared's friend Faith, one of the few foreign staff people. The consortium has an amazing number of different programs to enrich the lives of Bethlehem residents (arts, education, health, etc.) and employs about 100 Palestinians, but is also designed, according to Faith, "to show the world that Palestinians are not inept; that something else is the problem." ___________________________________________________ We head back to the apartment after the long tour, but Jared says he wants to show me one more thing before we call it a day, and we head out on a short walk to an adjacent hill. On the way down, he points out a beautiful, almost completed recreation center on the hillside where a bunch of kids are playing soccer, and then an abandoned and decrepit military base at the top of the hill. Apparently, a group of Israelis are aiming to get the blessings of the government to build a settlement there, and have been showing up regularly to scope out the land. The Jewish Settlements are generally small, but typically and intentionally fence off much more land than they need in order to relieve it from Palestinians--and the fence of this particular settlement would clearly take the recreation center out of Palestinian access, along with one of Bethlehem's only wells (water shortages are plaguing the West Bank) and a piece of land to soon be developed into a much-needed hospital. If the malicious and perverse intentions of the settlers were at all a question, a visit to the military base clears the air: blue graffiti covers its walls with stars of David and statements such as "this land belongs to the Jews." This strikes me as awfully aggressive in and of itself, but Jared tells me that it's relatively subdued compared to some of the Hebrew writing: "a good Arab is a dead Arab."