Hebron

I go to Ramallah twice while in the West Bank, on the second occasion successfully navigating the city on my own (baby steps...) and getting my visa to Jordan. The city itself is bustling, and the occupation is barely perceptible while I'm there, but the road to Bethlehem is full of reminders: olive tree stumps, settlements with over-reaching barbed-wire fences, and a checkpoint where me and my guide on the first trip are stopped for an ID check along with the five Palestinians in our van. Thankfully for us, we are sent back on our way in time to catch Obama's inauguration, but I imagine that dealing with this inconvenience every day--and being subject to the whim of IDF guards-- would be frustrating. ___________________________________________________ The ride to Hebron also ends up providing some context to the occupation, although in a different way. Baha's brother Ala, my tour guide on this day, stops our conversation to translate the radio playing on the van: a woman in Gaza is talking about going on Gaza's radio station to convince those in areas of attacks to leave their homes--that their lives are more important--but then had her own home destroyed and has had some second thoughts about her own message. Later we discuss the predicament of the tens of thousands who have lost their homes in Gaza. Israel can, in fact, pretty much claim or destroy any home in Palestine, with or without the pretext of war, if they find a reason, and they do so liberally. To rebuild a new or lost home, one has to pay a relatively high sum of money for a permit from Israel--again funding the occupation--or expect their home to be destroyed again. Israeli settlers receive subsidies from this same government to live in some of the same areas. ___________________________________________________ In contrast to Ramallah, Hebron is brimming with tension. Settlements have not been built around the town, but rather cutting across the center, virtually on top of Palestinian homes and businesses. The several hundred settlers are forthright that they eventually want to drive the 200,000 or so Arabs from the city, and demonstrate their intentions with physical assaults and by throwing their trash and dirty water down on the businesses they overlook. I'm reminded more than once that these settlers do not represent all settlers--many are peaceful and simply are taking advantage of subsidies or other benefits--but their system is supported by the Israeli government and military, and I would venture to say most Israelis are at the very least passive towards their existence. ___________________________________________________ Hebron is physically divided between Palestinian and Israeli control. Ala takes me to the Ibrahim Mosque, which has been divided into a Muslim and a Jewish section ever since the massacre by Baruch Goldstein, but is in the Israeli controlled part of town. We go through security and hand the Israeli guards our IDs in order to enter. The guards have a lot of questions for me. "Are you Muslim?" "No." "Are you Christian?" "No." "Are you Jewish?" ".........Uh, my father is." Ala didn't tell me I was supposed to pretend not to be Jewish, I think intentionally just to show how the soldiers would respond, and I got caught between telling the outright truth and lying outright, which as usual did me no good whatsoever. "What about your mother?" "She was raised secular." "Well, she has to have a religion." Three different soldiers pepper me with similar questions, and after holding our IDs for several minutes, we are eventually told we are not permitted to enter the mosque. Oh well. ___________________________________________________ We stop by an organization called the Christian Peace Team on the way back to the center of town, and one of the workers takes us on their roof to view the geography of the city. The area outside of the central Israeli settlement, under Israeli control, is desolate. Hundreds of Palestinian shops were forced to close because shoppers could no longer go there peacefully and because a curfew is enforced by the IDF after 6 PM. The woman from CPT tells me about the organization, which mostly works in the villages, protecting shepherds and schoolchildren from settler assaults. We talk about the occupation for well over an hour. ___________________________________________________ On the way back to Bethlehem, I ask Ala what he thinks the solution is, and without hesitation, he says a single, secular state. "I'm not against Judaism. Anyone can live here. I'm just against a Jewish state." The idea seems ludicrous considering the past century of history and how many people on either side of the conflict have done everything they can to suppress such a vision--but as someone who occasionally bends towards idealism, a big part of me is drawn to his answer. Two segregated states seems like such a weak result that doesn't address the root of the problem. I think back to the quote from "Arab and Jew" with which I began my writing, and think about what would happen if Israeli and Palestinians were coerced to grow up together before they could be taught opposition. It's totally hopeless, but I think about it anyway, and I imagine some type of vision that initially seems ludicrous is necessary for Palestinian activists--or maybe anyone living in these circumstances or who lives with the hope of true coexistence in the region--in order for them to keep from going off the deep end. ___________________________________________________ I was deeply impressed by the personalities and the collective resolve of all of the activists I met, both Palestinian and international, and I would have loved to spend more time with them. The activism wasn't a surprise to me though. The part that really blew me away was the hundreds and hundreds of Palestinians I saw in streets and stores and organizations who were doing their best to live prosperous and active lives and to maintain their positivity and normalcy in the face of the wall and the checkpoints and the settlers. I'm not generalizing here--people I met were almost without exception positive and especially good-natured, and given what weighs most of them down every single day, it's an awesome thing to see. I mentioned this to Jared the night before I left, and he observed (I think astutely) that this approach to life here is its own form of resistance. It's just such a crying shame that, on top of being oppressed, these communities have such an incredibly false reputation as violent and abrasive--such an injustice of its own.