The Allenby Bridge

Now that I'm half way through it I realize that this is one of the crazier things I've done. I'm sitting in a bus. A large air-conditioned coach... alone. The bus itself is huge with spots for 50 people and it feels so strange to be in it alone. We're idling on the Israeli side of the King Hussein/Allenby Bridge.

I'm on my way to Amman - the capital of the "Hasemite Kingdom of Jordan"- where I will later make my way to Petra. I knew that I wanted to take this border crossing because of the historical importance of the location since before I came to Palestine. I (should have known it would be particularly difficult when I had to get my visa in Canada before I came here - unlike the other two Israel-Jordan border crossings where you can get the Jordanian visa when you show up there. The issue is that the Jordanians don't actually consider it an international border crossing like they do the other two points which cross into Israel and not the Occupied Territories. This made for a difficult experience.

I start my journey after my last Arabic exam. Its just before noon on Monday; first to Ramallah. then to Jericho. Outside of Jericho my servees is stopped at a checkpoint where I nearly die of suffocation in the windowless back seat of the stretch Mercedes. It's nearly 50 degrees outside in one of the hottest towns in the Middle East. All I can think of is Ghassan Kanafani's novella Men in the Sun. "Those poor bastards" I think to myself. Finally at the checkpoint the soldier, my passport in hand, calls out to me: "Mark?" Yes "Where are you going?" Jericho (this is the entrance to Jericho - he must have thought I was in the wrong place) "Are you Jewish?" (He must have thought I was REALLY in the wrong place!).

I make it into Jericho soon thereafter and have a hard time figuring out how to get to the Bridge. One of the (many) flaws in my Arabic is that I can say what I want fairly easily but can't understand the rapid-fire responses that I get. Frustrating. So I take it a Cabbie first tell me that we need to go (back) down the road that I just came from. Im not interested in going back through the checkpoint and ask if there is another way.

He takes me in the opposite direction for 5 minutes when we come to a gated checkpoint. "Ask the soldiers if we can cross" he tell me. I tentatively approach the gate and make my way under the security bar and up to the group of soldiers. The first doesn't speak English and passes my case off to a colleague who does. "Where are you going?" he asks jovially - apparently a random white guy in this place at this time is somehow comical - I can see it I guess. "I'm trying to cross the bridge". He laughs again and says "Ok you can cross".

I jog back to my cabbie and pay him. The soldier wants me to hitch a ride in the back of a tour bus that is going through the checkpoint while I am there. Holding on for dear life, I stood in the back of a an air-conditioned (thank God!) bus filled with Arab-American tourists as it wound its way through dunes and trenches. We approached an intersection and it dawned on me that the only way to really get to the Allenby Bridge is along a settler road - or through the gated checkpoint - the reason that soldier was laughing is that he must have assumed I got lost - or assumed that I had thought that the only way to cross the bridge was going through Jericho. The regular way to cross the bridge, I suddenly understand, is not through Jericho but through the Jerusalem on-ramps to the settler road that bisects the West Bank - the same road my friends and I took to Masada and Ein Gedi a week ago. That's why my cabbie first wanted to take me back in the direction I had come - he wanted to take me back to Jerusalem.

I arrived at the terminal after what was really a ten minute ride. I got off the bus and followed the passengers through two rounds of metal detectors and into a crowded and loud terminal before I'm told by the Israeli at the second security station that I'm in the wrong terminal. It seems I ended up in the Arab terminal when I should have been in the non-Arab (ie. White) building. He politely showed me to a set of double doors where I walked into a large open room. I'm was suddenly alone and I wandered up towards one of the three Passport control booths. The young pretty girl behind the glass (only one of the booths was occupied) pointed me back to another counter at the side of the room where I paid my $40 departure fee. Back at the booth I expected a hassle but didn't even get a question rom her. She looked at my passport, chatted with another young girl colleague who joined her in the booth (apparently someone actually using this terminal draws attention) stamp, stamp, smile, and I was through into a smaller waiting area. There were about a half dozen others waiting on the modular, molded plastic benches. Five minutes later and the passport girl had replaced a colleague at the One-Last-Needless-Documents-Check-Desk. I scanned the room blankly before I asked her: "How do I get to the bridge?"

Surprised by the question she called to one of the staffers who told me that I'd have to wait 10-20 minutes. So I waited, and the others were lead onto a bus - "but not you (me)" - said one of the drivers. After a half hour - some of it slightly panic filled - I was finally told by another teenage girl that I could get on the bus that had just pulled up.

So now I'm on the bus, alone, in the "No-Mans" land between Israel and Jordan.

***

I'm taken across in this giant tour bus, just me and the driver. We chat in Arabic until he starts asking me about something to do with money and a store at which point I tell him I don't understand (I don't) and eventually he desists. I think he was asking me to do something for him and then didn't believe me that I didn't understand him, thinking that I was trying to get out of doing this money-store thing for him. So we continued on in silence. Then he charges me 2 and a 1/2 dinar when we get to the Jordanian side. I know that he's ripping me off (the "2 dinar... no... 2 and a half dinar!" was a dead give away) but I'm so happy to be out of international limbo that I pay up without a much of a complaint.

The bridge itself was a bit of a let-down. Not 30m long it crosses a meek stream-of-a-Jordan River before ending back up in the desert. In the Jordanian terminal both passport officers (not the young pretty girls you find in Israel!) are smoking. I love it - it reminds me of the border between Chile and Argentina, in the middle of the Andes, where the border control guards chain smoke and drop ashes in your passport.

He asks me if I have a visa - I do - and with the help of the tourist police I make my way to a bus that (I hope) is going to Amman.

***

Pictures:

King Hussein and King Abdallah II welcome you to Jordan

The Jordan River from the Allenby Bridge

The Allenby Bridge

Khalas!

Well after exactly two years it's finished. This afternoon, after 36 hours of being awake, I sent in the initial submission of my Masters thesis. Titled: The Social Construction of Militancy in the Arab-Israeli Conflict: Masulinity, Femiminity and the Nation (I got stuck with that title). At a total of 135 pages it's 35 pages over the suggested length and 15 pages short of the absolute maximum. And that was the edited down version... yikes! Thats a lot of BS!.

Anyway, I'm going to put up some of my work (in condensed form) here to elicit some feedback. My goal is to rework parts of it and get it published this fall.

Now I guess I can get back to typing up those blog posts I wrote weeks ago...

Why Boycott Israel?

I'll (hopefully!) have my thesis done by tonight and be able to return to posting the last 5 updates from my trip... but for now... something to think about...

Why an Economic Boycott of Israel is Justified

Written by Norman G. Finkelstein

Friday, 07 July 2006

The recent proposal that Norway boycott Israeli goods has provoked passionate debate. In my view, a rational examination of this issue would pose two questions: 1) Do Israeli human rights violations warrant an economic boycott? and 2) Can such a boycott make a meaningful contribution toward ending these violations? I would argue that both these questions should be answered in the affirmative.

Although the subject of many reports by human rights organizations, Israel's real human rights record in the Occupied Palestinian Territory is generally not well known abroad. This is primarily due to the formidable public relations industry of Israel's defenders as well as the effectiveness of their tactics of intimidation, such as labeling critics of Israeli policy anti-Semitic.

Yet, it is an incontestable fact that Israel has committed a broad range of human rights violations, many rising to the level of war crimes and crimes against humanity. These include:

Illegal Killings. Whereas Palestinian suicide attacks targeting Israeli civilians have garnered much media attention, Israel's quantitatively worse record of killing non-combatants is less well known. According to the most recent figures of the Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories (B'Tselem), 3,386 Palestinians have been killed since September 2000, of whom 1,008 were identified as combatants, as opposed to 992 Israelis killed, of whom 309 were combatants. This means that three times more Palestinians than Israelis have been killed and up to three times more Palestinian civilians than Israeli civilians. Israel's defenders maintain that there's a difference between targeting civilians and inadvertently killing them. B'Tselem disputes this: "[W]hen so many civilians have been killed and wounded, the lack of intent makes no difference. Israel remains responsible." Furthermore, Amnesty International reports that "many" Palestinians have not been accidentally killed but "deliberately targeted," while the award-winning New York Times journalist Chris Hedges reports that Israeli soldiers "entice children like mice into a trap and murder them for sport."

Torture. "From 1967," Amnesty reports, "the Israeli security services have routinely tortured Palestinian political suspects in the Occupied Territories." B'Tselem found that eighty-five percent of Palestinians interrogated by Israeli security services were subjected to "methods constituting torture," while already a decade ago Human Rights Watch estimated that "the number of Palestinians tortured or severely ill-treated" was "in the tens of thousands - a number that becomes especially significant when it is remembered that the universe of adult and adolescent male Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza is under three-quarters of one million." In 1987 Israel became "the only country in the world to have effectively legalized torture" (Amnesty). Although the Israeli Supreme Court seemed to ban torture in a 1999 decision, the Public Committee Against Torture in Israel reported in 2003 that Israeli security forces continued to apply torture in a "methodical and routine" fashion. A 2001 B'Tselem study documented that Israeli security forces often applied "severe torture" to "Palestinian minors."

House demolitions. "Israel has implemented a policy of mass demolition of Palestinian houses in the Occupied Territories," B'Tselem reports, and since September 2000 "has destroyed some 4,170 Palestinian homes." Until just recently Israel routinely resorted to house demolitions as a form of collective punishment. According to Middle East Watch, apart from Israel, the only other country in the world that used such a draconian punishment was Iraq under Saddam Hussein. In addition, Israel has demolished thousands of "illegal" homes that Palestinians built because of Israel's refusal to provide building permits. The motive behind destroying these homes, according to Amnesty, has been to maximize the area available for Jewish settlers: "Palestinians are targeted for no other reason than they are Palestinians." Finally, Israel has destroyed hundred of homes on security pretexts, yet a Human Rights Watch report on Gaza found that "the pattern of destruction…strongly suggests that Israeli forces demolished homes wholesale, regardless of whether they posed a specific threat." Amnesty likewise found that "Israel's extensive destruction of homes and properties throughout the West Bank and Gaza…is not justified by military necessity," and that "Some of these acts of destruction amount to grave breaches of the Fourth Geneva Convention and are war crimes."

Apart from the sheer magnitude of its human rights violations, the uniqueness of Israeli policies merits notice. "Israel has created in the Occupied Territories a regime of separation based on discrimination, applying two separate systems of law in the same area and basing the rights of individuals on their nationality," B'Tselem has concluded. "This regime is the only one of its kind in the world, and is reminiscent of distasteful regimes from the past, such as the apartheid regime in South Africa." If singling out South Africa for an international economic boycott was defensible, it would seem equally defensible to single out Israel's occupation, which uniquely resembles the apartheid regime.

Although an economic boycott can be justified on moral grounds, the question remains whether diplomacy might be more effectively employed instead. The documentary record in this regard, however, is not encouraging. The basic terms for resolving the Israel-Palestine conflict are embodied in U.N. resolution 242 and subsequent U.N. resolutions, which call for a full Israeli withdrawal from the West Bank and Gaza and the establishment of a Palestinian state in these areas in exchange for recognition of Israel's right to live in peace and security with its neighbors. Each year the overwhelming majority of member States of the United Nations vote in favor of this two-state settlement, and each year Israel and the United States (and a few South Pacific islands) oppose it. Similarly, in March 2002 all twenty-two member States of the Arab League proposed this two-state settlement as well as "normal relations with Israel." Israel ignored the proposal.

Not only has Israel stubbornly rejected this two-state settlement, but the policies it is currently pursuing will abort any possibility of a viable Palestinian state. While world attention has been riveted by Israel's redeployment from Gaza, Sara Roy of Harvard University observes that the "Gaza Disengagement Plan is, at heart, an instrument for Israel's continued annexation of West Bank land and the physical integration of that land into Israel." In particular Israel has been constructing a wall deep inside the West Bank that will annex the most productive land and water resources as well as East Jerusalem, the center of Palestinian life. It will also effectively sever the West Bank in two. Although Israel initially claimed that it was building the wall to fight terrorism, the consensus among human rights organizations is that it is really a land grab to annex illegal Jewish settlements into Israel. Recently Israel's Justice Minister frankly acknowledged that the wall will serve as "the future border of the state of Israel."

The current policies of the Israeli government will lead either to endless bloodshed or the dismemberment of Palestine. "It remains virtually impossible to conceive of a Palestinian state without its capital in Jerusalem," the respected Crisis Group recently concluded, and accordingly Israeli policies in the West Bank "are at war with any viable two-state solution and will not bolster Israel's security; in fact, they will undermine it, weakening Palestinian pragmatists…and sowing the seeds of growing radicalization."

Recalling the U.N. Charter principle that it is inadmissible to acquire territory by war, the International Court of Justice declared in a landmark 2004 opinion that Israel's settlements in the Occupied Palestinian Territory and the wall being built to annex them to Israel were illegal under international law. It called on Israel to cease construction of the wall, dismantle those parts already completed and compensate Palestinians for damages. Crucially, it also stressed the legal responsibilities of the international community:

all States are under an obligation not to recognize the illegal situation resulting from the construction of the wall in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including in and around East Jerusalem. They are also under an obligation not to render aid or assistance in maintaining the situation created by such construction. It is also for all States, while respecting the United Nations Charter and international law, to see to it that any impediment, resulting from the construction of the wall, to the exercise by the Palestinian people of its right to self-determination is brought to an end.

A subsequent U.N. General Assembly resolution supporting the World Court opinion passed overwhelmingly. However, the Israeli government ignored the Court's opinion, continuing construction at a rapid pace, while Israel's Supreme Court ruled that the wall was legal.

Due to the obstructionist tactics of the United States, the United Nations has not been able to effectively confront Israel's illegal practices. Indeed, although it is true that the U.N. keeps Israel to a double standard, it's exactly the reverse of the one Israel's defenders allege: Israel is held not to a higher but lower standard than other member States. A study by Marc Weller of Cambridge University comparing Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territory with comparable situations in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo, East Timor, occupied Kuwait and Iraq, and Rwanda found that Israel has enjoyed "virtual immunity" from enforcement measures such as an arms embargo and economic sanctions typically adopted by the U.N. against member States condemned for identical violations of international law. Due in part to an aggressive campaign accusing Europe of a "new anti-Semitism," the European Union has also failed in its legal obligation to enforce international law in the Occupied Palestinian Territory. Although the claim of a "new anti-Semitism" has no basis in fact (all the evidence points to a lessening of anti-Semitism in Europe), the EU has reacted by appeasing Israel. It has even suppressed publication of one of its own reports, because the authors -- like the Crisis Group and many others -- concluded that due to Israeli policies the "prospects for a two-state solution with east Jerusalem as the capital of Palestine are receding."

The moral burden to avert the impending catastrophe must now be borne by individual states that are prepared to respect their obligations under international law and by individual men and women of conscience. In a courageous initiative American-based Human Rights Watch recently called on the U.S. government to reduce significantly its financial aid to Israel until Israel terminates its illegal policies in the West Bank. An economic boycott would seem to be an equally judicious undertaking. A nonviolent tactic the purpose of which is to achieve a just and lasting settlement of the Israel-Palestine conflict cannot legitimately be called anti-Semitic. Indeed, the real enemies of Jews are those who cheapen the memory of Jewish suffering by equating principled opposition to Israel's illegal and immoral policies with anti-Semitism.

Norman G. Finkelstein received his doctorate in 1988 from the Department of Politics, Princeton University, for a thesis on the theory of Zionism. He currently teaches political theory at DePaul University in Chicago. He is the author of five books, including Beyond Chutzpah: On the misuse of anti-Semitism and the abuse of history and The Holocaust Industry: Reflections on the exploitation of Jewish suffering.

***
Pictures:
A Palestinian Home in Bethlehem, surrounded by the 10m high wall on 3 sides.
Will Israel read the writing on the Wall?

Yad Vashem

This post was written August 2nd.

Yad Vashem is Israel's Holocaust Museum. It's where, unfortunately, the government brings its foreign dignitaries. Its perched atop Mt Herzl, named for modern Zionism's historical originator. I went there on Sunday. It was impressive and moving. By far one of the most well constructed and presented museums I've ever seen. I can't even fathom the amount of money it took to build it. And as I wandered amongst the teenage soldiers and looked at the moving artifacts of one of the worst moments in human history, I felt overwhelmed. I also felt deeply disturbed by it all. The content was, of course, troubling beyond description - and I felt a similar way in Anne Frank House in Amsterdam a couple of months ago. But also disturbing was the way the Holocaust was historicized into a Zionist narrative.

My friend al-Hawal, who went to Yad Vashem a week before I did explains it very well. I'll let him speak for me...

I go to Yad Vashem alone.

I have to take the bus again. Despite rumours of suicide bombers I'm not really afraid. I take the pedestrian walk through a pine forest to the gate of Yad Vashem. I pass through security. There is no entrance charge.

The main exhibit is overwhelming. It stretches through a long triangular prism which funnels you through a series of exhibits that begin with the rise of Hitler, the Nuremberg laws, the outbreak of war, the occupation of Poland, the establishment of the death camps, the destruction of European Jewry and the Allied liberation of Europe and ends with the Hall of Names - a circular archive that preserves the identities and records of as many of the Jewish victims of the Nazi's genocidal campaign as have been recovered through historical research. It is a tour de force. The recovery of these voices is breathtaking and deeply moving.

It is also a strictly "Jewish interpretation", as stated in the brochure, and perhaps more honestly, it is also in many ways a Zionist interpretation.

The antechamber contains a large triangular screen with a haunting and beautiful reel which moves right to left over the map of Europe. Superimposed on this map are drawings of Jewish culture and life before the war, tiny repeating excerpts of film and audio footage accompanied by the lament of strings reminiscent of Gorecki, echoing into the long hallway of the museum. Because of haunting images such as these, I was transfixed in the Holocaust Authority for some five and a half hours.

The relics of these communities which would be liquidated by the Nazis, the stories and diaries from the ghettos, the artifacts from the crematoria, the last testaments of the imprisoned - they had me struggling between a deep and reverent sense of sadness and a strong objection to the way in which these stories were placed within a subtle but powerfully Zionist historical polemic. For example, the beautiful installation showing Jewish life before the war was also rendered in a cold, colourless pallet of grey tones, the images were two-dimensional-like cut-outs or puppets caught in endlessly repeating cinematic loops. On the opposite end of the long hall, facing this composition is a balcony which opens to the clear blue sky and a "glorious"view of Jerusalem. The implication is that the Galut of Jewish experience in Europe - that is, Diaspora Jewish life is dead and gone, and Jewish national life in the State of Israel is the only living expression of history culminating in the aftermath of the Shoah. Israel is everything. Israel is all that matters now.

But I could just as well see Yad Vashem constructed around the words of Hannah Arendt, in her seminal reading of the trial of Adolf Eichmann in Jerusalem (subtitled "A Report on the Banality of Evil) in which she asks whether a crime against the Jews is not also a crime against all of humanity. Yet the prism of Zionist historiography has instead rendered the Holocaust an internal affair of the Jewish community, one that is used, sadly, to justify the actions of what is really a violent nation state. Does Aushwitz now serve as national justification?As Norman Finkelstein has said, and eloquently so, the 6 million Jews did not die as martyrs for the State of Israel. They were murdered by the Nazis because they were Jews.

The history of Zionism in pre-war Germany is similarly discomforting, as Eichmann himself reported a strong working relationship between the Zionist Organization and the Reich Central Office for emigration. The Nazis wanted a pure Aryan German Reich and the Zionists wanted Jews to colonise Palestine. Chilling, yes, but their goals converged and many emigres brought with them German manufactures whose sale channeled British currency into Germany as it struggled to revive the post post-depression economy. This is one of histories regrettable ironies.

And sadly, despite taking Jews to Palestine at a time when the world was closing its doors to Jewish refugees, including (and perhaps worst of all) Canada and the United States, it wasn't the Zionist Organization which saved hundreds of thousands of Jews by facilitating emigration. In the end, one can extrapolate from the maps in Yad Vashem which show Rommel's steady advance across North Africa that if it had not been for the allied victory at Al- Alemein, the Yishuv would have only served to have collected a great number of European Jews in one spot so that they would most certainly have been easily deported to the death camps - as we saw in the case of Axis-occupied North Africa. In the same way that Adam Czerniakow and the Judenrat are not examined critically by Yad Vashem, as they must be I worry about the footnotes of this Zionist narrative... the way in which the 2.2 million Poles exterminated by the Nazi Generalgouvernemnt are dealt with in the exhibit with this astonishingly reductive footnote:

"...and the Nazis terrorized Polish society."

It makes one feel embarrassed and disassociated with Yad Vashem's narrative discouse. It seems to suggest that our collective experience and resistance to fascism is a matter of individual ethnic or national communities as if we share no universal indignation at the imposition of genocide upon human beings under Nazi rule. In this way, Yad Vashem fails to reflect on some of these realities that might have been articulated by Jewish or non-Jewish humanists with equal eloquence and compassion.

Jerome Kohn writes,

"...one of the underlying reasons for the controversy created by Arendt's study of Eichmann was and remains the failure of many readers, both Jews and non Jews, to make the tremendous mental effort required to transcend the fate of one's own people and see what was pernicious for all humanity."

From my girlfriend Rachel,

"My Polish family were land barons, farm owners in Poland. My grandmother's family is from south of Krakow... Najbor was her maiden name, Czach is my papa's. We were Catholic.

During the Nazi occupation and leading up to it, we sympathised with the plight of the Jews and the Roma... and as the situation in Poland deteriorated we hid them on our land.. in huts and sheds on the farm.

I distinctly remember the story of my great uncle being beaten with a cane by a Nazi soldier for what we did. We also lost our land...

I was told this story by my bobcha in 1993. A young 11 year old me. This story forever changed my own sense of my family and who I am. In the years that followed I have tried to maintain this sense of inclusive histories, even as such narratives are accused of being nothing more than base comparisons of suffering. Instead, the idea of a "Holocaust" which stands separate from the multitude of other victims of Nazi race and political ideology, separates us and discourages our collective sense, as humans, of suffering and injustice."

And so I ask you if these stories and interpretations of collective resistance, despite race or nation, do not also deserve a place in the canons of official Holocaust memory? Are they not also authoritative? Does Zionism so strongly oppose these values that it must, in turn, silence them?

Despite all of this, the exhibits of Yad Vashem were powerful and impressive. The sheer depth of codification, preservation and contextualization of the genocide does indeed stand in clear defiance of Hitler's goal of liquidating European Jewry. I sat for some time in the Hall of Names, rooted to these archives, and the dome plastered with black and white photographs of innocent Jews whose lives were cut short by Nazi fascism and its heinous program of exterminating the Reich's unwanted elements.

As a historian of sorts I feel that what I have said needs to be said, and I await your reactions and criticisms with genuine openness. That I regret that Israel chooses to bring foreign diplomats to Yad Vashem before they participate in meetings, that I felt like I was the only non-Jew visiting Yad Vashem that day, that I had to share small rooms exhibiting violins and manuscripts of music from Warsaw Ghetto orchestras with a troupe of uniformed IDF soldiers being taken through the museum before they go off to bomb Lebanon, that I regret that once again the logic of being determined racially Jewish guarantees you citizenship in Israel but serves to exclude and oppress Palestinians from full participation as humans in a democracy that above all others should have repudiated such race-based laws- that I regret this I will not deny. Even so I will only wish for, and perhaps write about, a better world.

***

Picture

Yad Vashem's beautiful but troubling view of Jerusalem

One Point on Israeli Spin

This was written during Israel's attack on Lebanon three weeks ago.

If I hear another Israeli spokesperson try and remind us that "The Hezbollah needs to disarm as mandated under UN resolution 1559" or that Israel is carrying out its attack because the Lebanese Government refuses to implement Resolution 1559... I'm going to scream.

The rhetorical use of UN Security Council Resolutions (and them not being carried out) by the Israeli Government is one of the most laughable acts in this war full of tragedies.

I just want to remind everyone that Israel has no interest in fulfilling UN resolutions. Here are a couple of UN Resolutions that Israel has decided to ignore...

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Let me quote from the infamous Resolution 242 in particular. It calls for the "Withdrawl of Israel armed forces from territories occupied in the recent conflict".

The "recent conflict" being the 1967 June war and the "territories occupied" being the West Bank, Gaza Strip (and the Sinai) and the Golan Heights. Has Israel complied with this 40 YEAR OLD resolution? Of course not.

You can read ANY of the above listed Resolutions that Israel has decided to ignore AS WELL AS 1559 - the Resolution Lebanon has ignored and thus suffers the consequence of a 1000 civilian deaths... The UN official site: http://domino.un.org/UNISPAL.NSF/vCouncilRes

The Dead Sea

We drove back up the road to Ein Gedi, the Resort and Spa "town" on the Dead Sea, just inside Israeli territory. I put "town" in quotation marks because I never actually saw a town. We passed a resort and pulled into a parking lot adjacent to twined, single storey buildings, housing an ice cream and snack stand and public change rooms.

We changed into our swim shorts and headed down the concrete path to the calm waters of the Dead Sea. Having forgotten my flip-flops the soles of my feet burn as I quickly run down the path towards the lowest point on earth and what I hope for my feet's sake is a cool reprieve.

It's not much of a beach. In fact it's more like the shore of a lake somewhere in the Muskokas. No sand to speak of just grass and dirt up to a thin strip of rocks with calm waters lapping gently against their slippery sides. John warns us not to touch our eyes with our hands once they have the salt water on them.

We slide into the water and are quickly thrown up in an awkward motion that propels our torsos to the surface. I squirm around trying to get into a stable position. I'm on my back now and my feet are inches above the surface - I can't put them under the water if I tried. But as I adapt to my new surroundings the blaring sun of the Judean desert is making the sunscreen on my forehead sweat into my eyes. I can't see and it stings! I can't wipe it out of my eyes as I would without a problem if my hands weren't covered in salt water. Ahhh!

Patrick takes a couple of pictures of us floating in the Dead Sea. Every second is agony. Hurry up! say under my breath. He finishes and I quickly return to shore. Between the agonizing rawness of the bottoms of my feet with the corresponding walk of a hobbled man, and the difficulty in actually opening my eyes I am quite the site as I fumble my way to the shower. I'm squinting, walking on the sides of my feet and cursing the Dead Sea.

***
Pictures:
Wadis surrounding the Dead Sea

The Dead Sea from the top of Masada

Playing Catch-Up

I've just arrived into my new apartment in Toronto (thanks Danielle!) after spending a day in Ottawa and a day in Montreal meeting my Advisor and trying to get some administrative things finished before my August 31st Masters thesis deadline. I'm back now in the sterile and cold library at U of T about to do some of the corrections of my rough draft but I have the conclusion of my trip hanging over my head. Over the past few days so many people have told me they've been reading and keeping up with what I've been doing over the last number of months and I'm so happy people have shown an interest - especially if it leads to a bit more awareness of what is actually happening there.

I've also received a number of... "is your blog finished"? The answer is no.... I have to (at least) post the number of entries I've already written (mostly by hand). I also want to post a few of my concluding observations about what the trip has meant for me as a human being and I think that may take a little while. So I'll add more to the blog over the next few weeks - some of it things I've done and written over the last two weeks as I've had limited internet access (including a response to a comment by my friend aka. The Mad Rapper about the possibility of a one-state solution). I want to post some of my favourite pictures from my trip that some of you have yet to see. Maybe I can also post some of the writings of my friends whose names I can now use a little more liberally - Adam, Luke and John - or Majnoon, Maloomat and al-Hawal.

Well, to start, you can read everything Luke has written over the past few months on a blog he and a friend of his have recently started to archive his writings....

http://www.luke-in-palestine.blogspot.com/

So I will play catch-up over the next week or so - especially when I actually finish this thesis and send it off. Stay tuned!

Munther

About a month ago I wrote about going to see an oud concert in Ramallah and following the concert up with eating a pigeon. One of the three Palestinian men who took us four foreigners to the restaurant and treated us to our first pigeon experience was Munther. This is his story, as told through Luke.

"I met Muther Mahmoud Radwan in the PAS Program Office, the same location in which I presently sit. He struck me as incredibly tall and excessively skinny. He had chiseled features and a very striking face. That same face can hardly be found devoid of a broad smile which speaks to his welcoming disposition. After missing a few days of shaving his visage bore a distinct messianic pose, his Christ-like bearing instantly compels. He is 25. He is from a village called Nabi Elias south of Qalqilya, a city of 40,000 people surrounded by the illegal Separation Wall currently being constructed by Israel. He is in his first year of studies at Birzeit University, well behind the majority of his peers in terms of academic development.

When he was not yet sixteen, Munther was kidnapped and jailed by the Israeli army. Munther spent seven years in an Israeli prison.

To learn this fact struck me as very strange. Munther is so happy and jovial I have nicknamed him Abu Sayeed, The Father of Happiness. Everyone on campus is know to him, including students, teachers, and staff. His phone rings constantly. He has friends spread out from the Lebanese border to the Negev. He is well liked. He is extremely popular. He loves, absolutely loves, flirting and teasing local Palestinian ladies.

I heard rumor of a project being developed by Chris and Ron. They are making a movie to be accompanied by still photography, of prison stories from Israeli jails.(www.stricklyimaging.com) Ron's mission, as a Jewish American and product of a strict Zionist upbringing, is to remove the mask that is Israeli moderation as it is reported in our home country. He wants actual stories from actual prisoners on their circumstances, their time, and the lasting physical and psychological effects of Israeli prison. For this project, they need case studies.

I suggested Munther.

Because of his time in prison (which would have otherwise been spent in Secondary School) Munther speaks no English. When I introduced Munther to Ron and Chris it became apparent that translation would be necessary for the venture to go forward. I volunteered what remain today as my completely amateur services. Since I arranged the meeting, they were heartily accepted. I think Ron and Chris both think I speak much better Arabic than I actually do. Nonetheless, the date was set. Thursday afternoon. Munther's small flat here in Birzeit.

We meet Munther in the PAS office and accompany him to his home. Upon arrival we are welcomed by what seems to be the entire neighborhood. Youths and adults arrive from all sides of the street shaking hands and asking questions. "What is going on? Why is there a camera? Who is famous here? Will this be shown in the United States?"

The questions amuse me and Ron and Chris as well when I translate them. Still, they are very serious questions from the gathered crowd. Munther is about the share the darkest part of his life with us and it was assumed this would be big news everywhere, including in America. I explained that Ron hoped that this would be shown at small film festivals in the United States but for another six months or so. They seemed disappointed but there was little else that could be said. We sat on the balcony and drank tea. Chris and Ron arranged their equipment. Munther found a picture of Abu Ammar (Yasser Arafat) and the filmmakers decided to tape it up behind Munther's head. Munther remains a staunch Fateh supported, quick to criticize Hamas if asked.

The interview began.

Munther discussed his early childhood and life in Nabi Elias. He discussed his father's farm and their quiet existence in Palestine. Little by little, he reported, things began to change and life became more difficult. The First Intifada was difficult around Qalqilya as Israeli soldiers brutalized civilian populations. He was very young but remembers his friends and older brothers beaten in the streets and his family threatened. He described the sense of indignity that came with these actions as more and more Palestinian men were subjugated by Israeli soldiers, their livelihood and man hoods taken away piece by piece. The psychological effect of these policies seemed to weigh more heavily than the physical ones. Munther's face was no longer supporting a wide smile.

He described his teenage years and his political activism. Fateh was and is very popular in his village and around Qalqilya. He became a new recruit, a teen aged soldier running missions against Israeli soldiers on behalf of politicians who were seldom in danger. "Old men make war for young men to die in," I told him. "Suh" he said. "That's right."

He went on to tell of his subsequent capture and arrest by Israeli soldiers just prior to the breakout of the Second Intifada. He was a known fighter and they were trying to improve their military odds when tensions in the West Bank began to increase. He attempted to flee arrest and was shot in the leg. He was then drug to a local detention center were he was left, by himself, wounded and bleeding, for 22 hours. He was 16 years old.

From there he was taken to a hospital for treatment. He was bound for all medical procedures. He was removed back to a holding cell. For nine days he awaited some manor of trial or charge. For nine days none came.

During these nine days, Munther was denied food and water. He was made to urinate and defecate where he sat in a 1 by 1 and a half meter room, or alternatively, in an office for questioning. These sessions of questioning ring like all the most gruesome Hollywood movies you each may have seen.

His legs were bound to a chair. He arms were bound behind him. He was beaten with truncheons by two guards in his head, chest, neck, and back. He was beaten until he passed out from pain. He was revived and beaten some more. These sessions lasted two to three hours and occurred every day for the first several days of his imprisonment. He still bears the scars of these beatings today.

He was officially charged and placed in general detention. He served time with some of the most hardened resistance fighters in all of Palestine. He began his sentence when only 16. He watched the Israeli soldiers carefully, he listened to them. He speaks perfect Hebrew today as a result. Following a year or two, two of his brothers were also imprisoned. He confessed to me that the best times of his life in jail were being with his brothers and the other friends he made while in jail. His smile returns slightly when he says this to me.

Once, he became angry with an Israeli soldier. At this time, he was sharing a cell with 12 to 15 other prisoners. His anger boiled over at the constant abuse and harassment at the hands of the Israeli soldiers. He hurled a metal cup at an Israeli guard and hit him in the head with it. He was beaten severely as a result.

For the next two years, as punishment for his resistance to the inhumane treatment of the Israelis, he served his time in a one meter by one and a half meter room. He ate, slept, defecated, and urinated in the same room. He was not allowed to bathe for months at a time. He was beaten weekly. None of these beatings were accompanied by questioning. The beatings endured for the sake of punishment only.

We asked him about the current political situation. He responded with passion:

"What are we supposed to do? You are from America, if America was occupied and invaded, wouldn't you defend yourselves? Defend your homes? We are only protecting our friends and families. Our homes and businesses. We are defending ourselves against aggression. How does this make us terrorists? What should we do instead, welcome the settlers who take our land? I don't know of any people who would do that. This is where we are today."

Munther also spoke on his time today in the university:

"I know everyday that I am behind my peers. I am behind my classmates. I go to lectures and I see they all understand without study. I study for an hour, two hours and I still don't understand. The years I had when I was young are gone and I will never catch up. I am lost in that world, I am different. I know these things everyday."

Munther fought. He resisted. He defended his home and his family.

The Occupation is illegal. Settlements are illegal. Israeli targeting and killing of innocent civilians is illegal."

***
Picture
Munther at home - Photo by Chris Strickland

Out of Israel!

I've made it successfully out of Israel with relatively minor inconvenience. Yay! So I misled you when I said that I'd have updates for you today. You'll have to wait a few more days. But I still have posts on the Dead Sea (from two weeks ago!), my trip to Jordan including the incredible difficulties getting there and getting back. My visit to the Nabatean city of Petra. My lost hours in the twilight zone that is Eilat. My last day in Israel that I chose to spend in Bethlehem. And finally my experiences escaping from Ben Gurion international airport (not as crazy as I had expected). I'll also post a few stories that had to wait including one on the guy I ate pigeon with and my friend's impressions of Yad Vashem. My time here in Amsterdam ahhh..... you don't want to know about.

So now I promise... Updates soon.

And I'll see many of you in the near future! Days! Hours even!

Out of office autoreply

I've been out of Palestine for the past number of days. I'm back and I'll have a number of updates for you tomorrow.

Patience!

Why I hate the Toronto Maple Leafs - Reason 197

This is what I found on top of Masada.

And for all you Leafs Fans who support the State of Israel in their Occupation of Palestine... The Leafs haven't won a Stanley Cup since the year that Israel colonized the West Bank, Gaza Strip and Golan Heights in June of 1967. You want a parade down Yonge Street? Support Palestinian rights for self-determination and you might just get it! As it stands right now there will be no peace in the Middle East until Israel withdraws to the Green Line, nor will the Leafs win another Cup - sorry guys - that's a fact.

To Nasrallah with Love

I wanted to post some of the pictures that are causing some controversy among Israelis. They were taken in Kiryat Shmona as the IOF were launching shells at Lebanon. The controversy surrounding the photos has to do with context: the argument has been made that the parents of these children encouraged them to write messages. I don't know if this explains away what is happening in these pictures. I don't think it does. But you can be the judge.

Please check out Amnesty International's ceasefire campaign (the link is to the right of the screen). And also please check out http://www.ceasefirecampaign.org/

Masada

Crossing through my most hated place on earth - Qalandia Checkpoint - I saw three Palestinians turned away and I thought to myself: "This is a bad omen".

We were on our way to Jerusalem to pick up a rented car and make the hour and a half drive through the heart of the West Bank to the Dead Sea and the Herodian hilltop fortress of Masada. Our unexpected stop at Qalandia meant that we were late - the fact that they were turning Palestinians away who in all likelihood had the proper and necessary documents to enter Jerusalem was making me nervous about what sort of state of mind the Israelis might be in right now. Between the equally stifling nationalism and temperature of Masada and the relaxed atmosphere of the Dead Sea my anxiety would be eased.

We picked the car up from Green Peace Car Rental in East Jerusalem and we were quickly on the road with John behind the wheel. Getting onto Highway 1 was fairly easy and soon we were driving out of Jerusalem and past the first of the settlements. Highway 1 cuts directly across the West Bank from Jerusalem to the Jordan River a few kilometers south of Jericho where it meets up with another highway (90) that runs north-south along the river and the Dead Sea to the south. Highway 1 is also, in reality, a settler road.

After the 1967 war in which Israel began its brutal occupation of the West Bank, the Israeli government set up settlements throughout Palestinian territories and in particular along the Jordan River as advance warning posts against any possible Jordanian attack. Despite the Peace agreement between Israel and Jordan, Israel has maintained its illegal settlements along the river and elsewhere in the West Bank. Roads were built to connect these settlements and use of them is highly restrictive. They are modern, well lit and well defended roads that are used almost entirely by the Israeli Military and their settlers and are off limits to most Palestinians even though they lie entirely within the West Bank. Palestinian infrastructure, subject to continual attacks by the IOF (like the destruction of Nablus' municipal buildings I described earlier) has left their roads in a constant state of disrepair. Palestinians use Palestinian roads. Israelis use Israeli roads.

The modern Highway 1 led us to the modern Highway 90, Israel's longest highway that runs from the border with Lebanon in the north, to the point of the Negev in the far south, along the Jordan River and the Dead Sea. The fact that we drove such a distance in an hour and a half left us all a little shocked after spending the last few months traveling at an agonizing pace through checkpoint after checkpoint. The only time that we were stopped was at the place we assume would be the "border" between the West Bank and Israel proper, just north of the Spa town of Ein Gedi. We pulled up to the policeman and before we could speak he waved us through.

We drove past Ein Gedi - where we would return later in the afternoon for a "float" in the Dead Sea and moved on towards Masada. Lying 30Km south of Ein Gedi, Masada emerges from plain of flat desert between the Dead Sea and the towering Wadis of the Judean Wilderness. Declared a UNESCO World Heritage site in 2001, Masada is a plateau on top of a steep mountain 450 meters above the Dead Sea. 300m wide and 650m long, the plateau of Masada was built into fortress by King Herod between 37 and 6 BCE. Masada, however, takes most of its fame from the siege that was laid to it by the Romans, when it was the last holdout of the Jewish Zealots during the Great Revolt in 73CE. After months, the Romans completed a ramp up the side of the mountain at which point they attacked the wall and breached it. That night, so goes the story, the Jewish Zealots chose "death over slavery" and killed their families and each other until one man was left to kill himself. Josephus, the famous Roman chronicler of the Great Revolt recounts the speech made by the rebel leader to his people and this account has in many ways become extremely important for the contemporary State of Israel. So much so that members of the IOF's more elite units are actually sworn in to the military on top of Masada where they take an oath to "never let Masada fall again". Masada thus becomes a metonym for the State itself; any attack against Israel is an attack against the last group of Hebraic (thus "proper") Jews; allowing the enemy (Palestinians, Lebanese....) a victory means the redistibution, like in 70CE, or the total annihilation of the Jewish population. This mentality is totally ridiculous and seriously impedes any potential for peace in the Middle East.

The idea that the Zealots were "freedom fighters" is abundant at Masada - they are referred to as such in both the presentation video in the welcome center and in the literature provided for tourists. The irony that Israel is currently in a war with people who are widely described by their own population and others, as "freedom fighters" and alternately by their enemies as Islamic "Zealots" is not lost on the four of us as we wander the compound. We are aware of the problems in the historiography of Israel's national narratives and Masada brings so many of them out. But problematic visions of history aside, Masada is still an impressive site. To think that the Zealots had stores of food that could last them for years atop this barren hill and that they could watch below them as the Romans slowly built their ramp is chilling.

After spending an hour touring the site we decide to take the Snake Path down (we took the cable car up). The long winding path was steep at times and with the loose rocks under our feet it proved slow going. It took us 45 minutes to descend the path and at the bottom we collapsed under a canopy from exhaustion and the intense heat. I sat on the bench and tried to steady my legs as they wouldn't stop shaking. The tortuous climb down the mountain left me baffled as to how people actually climb up the same path. When I could finally stand we made our way back to the car where I was to do one of the mot dangerous things I can do in Israel: get behind the wheel - for our drive up to Ein Gedi and the Dead Sea.

Pictures:

Masada, the Snake Path and Cable Car from the Visitors Center

The view of the Dead Sea, The ruins of Roman camps, and the Visitors Center from the top of Masada

Links

Hey everyone, please check out the website of a colleague of mine here who has taken some excellent photos of Palestine.

www.stricklyimaging.com

I'll put the link up in the column to the side which includes links to more balanced and truthful reporting from both the war in Lebanon and Palestine in particular. If you're getting your Middle East news online you might as well get it from a Middle East perspective or at least supplement your cnn.com.

For detailed news from each area of Palestine check out...

http://www.maannews.net/en/

and for informative and persuasive information on the Occupation and the War in Lebanon...

http://electronicintifada.net/new.shtml

Please think about the way your news is being reported.

20 Things I Miss

Its 12:20 and I haven't eaten yet, my mind is wandering. In my Colloquial class the only thing that is keeping me from falling asleep is this little exercise...

Twenty things I miss...

1. The DR
2. Family and Friends
3. A large regular Timmy's coffee
4. Some cool weather... rain? some snow?
5. A pillow
6. Cooking in my own kitchen (though I live with excellent cooks!).
7. Wearing shorts
8. Strongbow or La Messagere
9. Bella Vista Pizza
10. A gun free existence
11. A washing machine
12. My dog
13. My CD collection
14. Mexican and Indian food
15. Timely commutes
16. The Toronto Star
17. Sleeping in
18. Guitar Hero (red.red.yellow.red.blue.whammmmmmyyyy)
19. The NHL
20. Going to over-the-top multiplexes like the Paramount

This just got me through the first half of the class. What can I do to distract me for the next hour and a half?

Nablus Pt.2

"Did he just chamber a round"? I ask Jundee. The former US Marine Corps Sniper standing in front of me confirms what I just thought I saw. Oh Shit.

We're standing in line at Hawara the obscene checkpoint for those wanting to leave Nablus. Within what is actually a holding pen - long and thin with a tin roof and bars that steer you and keep you in line - hundreds of Palestinians wait. There are two lines here. One on the right-hand side for women and old men (and the occasional foreigner) and one on the left hand side. The left-hand lane doesn't move. Lined up, crammed into the space are hundreds of Palestinian men between the ages of 16 and 35. They are the unfortunate ones: They will wait in line for hours. Jundee tells me that when he came to Nablus with another one of our friends a month earlier they ended up in the wrong lane - the left-hand one - and waited for three hours in the sweltering heat to pass through. Like Qalandia, those men must, one at a time, pass through a trunstile and show the proper documents to someone behind shrapnel-proof glass. Unlike Qalandia, standing behind them is a soldier with his M4 assault rifle pointed at their back.

In our right hand line-up, we lean against the concrete barrier that keeps us under the awning. to our right are the few rare trucks that have a special permit to exit Nablus. They are thoroughly inspected by a rather chunky Israeli soldier - a teenage girl.

In front of us are a dozen Palestinian girls and the odd man trying to get through with his sister or wife (it almost never works). There's a pushing match between some men to our left - in the left- hand lane. A young soldier jumps up on the bars and yells down at the men in Hebrew. They stop pushing but continue to exchange words. This place is on edge and all I want to do is get the hell out of here. The soldier stays on the divider, his rifle muzzle swinging gently over the shoulders of those in my line.

With the confrontation subdued, we stare forward. There are four teenage soldiers inspecting the papers of the women in our line. We wait. We wait.

The motion of his arm is quick but I've learned to stay on edge around these fucking kids and I see it. He's cocked his rifle - put a bullet into the chamber. He looks like the youngest soldier here. 18. I expect him to point the rifle at a Palestinian but instead he shoves the muzzle into the flak-jacketed chest of a fellow soldier. It's quick - and the rifle doesn't linger - he probably remembers his 2 week basic training (don't point a loaded gun at someone!?). He then points it into the air and begins to walk around like Stalone in Rambo. At one point the muzzle bangs against the lowest point of the awning and I cringe. A minute later I see a pretty Palestinian girl finally pass through the four soldiers and it occurs to me that this kid was showing off.

***

We're on the road between Nablus and Ramallah. Through two checkpoints, in a private cab we cruise along, the four of us and our driver. We turn a gentle bend and in front us is the rear end of an IOF jeep with its back door open. Leaning out of the back is an Israeli soldier with giant sunglasses and the smirk I've seen far too often.

We try to pass but he waves us back in. Other cars are passing us now and he's leaning back in the jeep and smiling his ass off at us. Our cabbie tries again and he waves us back. We're going slowly now. He's playing with us. Majnoon in the front seat wants to give him the finger but we're all nervous and tell him to calm down.

After ten minutes of this, the jeep pulls to the side and three soldiers jump out. They tell us to pull off to the side - into an open space. We do and behind us they wave in three more cabs - servees'.

We get out and are told to stand to the side by another, older soldier with frosted tipped hair. He yells at us all in Hebrew. There are 15 of us now standing shoulder to shoulder. They collect the 11 Palestinian IDs and inspect our passports. "What are you doing here?" They ask... "Traveling" We answer... "To Where?"... "Nablus".

The soldier with the grin is now perched above us up a little hill. The 11 Palestinians wander over to the side to a small mound of dirt, crouch down and light up cigarettes. They're jovial with the smirking soldier above them - jabbing at him with comments about his poor Arabic. "Ivrit and English - I'm Jewish!" He beams back at them.

They look at us and ask where we are from. We tell them and they extend the little welcome they can - "Ahlan wa Sahlan - Welcome to Palestine" they joke - "What can you do?... This is Occupation!" they say in the resigned tone that we've encountered everywhere in the West Bank.

The angry soldier with the frosted tips orders the women out of the cabs. Until then I hadn';t really noticed them. He asks a driver to translate the Hebrew. "What is under your jacket"? He asks motioning to a veiled woman - the only one of the five. "Nothing" she responds - he tells her to pat herself down. It gets tense as the proposition of an Israeli soldier asking the woman to remove her veil makes a bad but common situation something totally different. She pats herself down. It seems to satisfy Frosted Tips and we all breathe a sigh of relief.

After a half hour of standing in the sun they let us go. First the four soldiers pile back into the jeep and we all wait for them to leave. Apparently they have to leave first. Its a dance.

As we drive away, frustrated, we wonder aloud why they would want to keep four foreigners present to witness such a blatant act of occupation and racism. Our conclusion is that they know damn well that it doesn't make an ounce of difference.

***
"500 Shekel fine for riding without a seat belt?" We ask in disbelief. "Yes Yes" he responds. We're ten minutes down the road from our impromptu encounter with the IOF. Stopped at Atara - the last checkpoint before Ramallah - the border guard there was yelling at our cabbie. We didn't understand the Hebrew but as we drove away he explained it to us in Arabic. He didn't have his seat belt on. His explanation that we had just gotten back into the car from this last flying checkpoint was good enough to avoid what is equivalent to 125 dollars Canadian.

In a place where the Israelis are more concerned with Palestinians driving with a seat belt on, or pulling them over just to make their lives more difficult within their own territory, they ignore the real dangers. Last night a Settler gunned down a 50 year old Palestinian man and his 19 year old son as they drove south of Nablus. The man was killed, his son survived.

***
Pictures
Medical Clinic in Nablus
Palestinian Flag amidst the rubble.

Nablus Pt.1

I want to caution you that this might be my most anti-Israeli post yet... hard to believe? Let me tell you what I did today...

Jabal an-Nar - Mountain of Fire - is the nickname for the West Bank's most populous city: Nablus. Why Mountain of Fire? Nablus has been the city historically most difficult to govern. Fierce opposition to the Turks, the British and now the Israelis characterize how the city has been seen and treated by their successive rulers. (Uhhh... and it's hot?).

I wanted to visit Nablus, lying about 60km north of Ramallah, since I read Beshara Doumani's Rediscovering Palestine:Merchants and Peasants in Jabal Nablus 1700-1900 this past year in class. Its a socio-economic history of the town and its surrounding villages which I enjoyed and left with me a desire to see it first hand.

You can't actually drive to Nablus. You take a cab up and it lets you off at a place called Hawara. Hawara is actually a major checkpoint: kind of like a disheveled Qalandia. Going into Nablus is no big deal. You get out of the cab and simply walk a half kilometer through a fenced corridor around the installation which houses the soldiers checking people leaving. Like Jerusalem in reverse, the Israelis don't care who or what enters Nablus - only what comes out.

At the other end of the fenced corridor await dozens of taxis that take you into the city itself. A short ride later and we are in the Old City. Walking past - much to our surprise - a Kentucky Fried Chicken outlet (it was closed and sealed up) we navigate through the cars and people into the covered bazaar. The first couple of tables are music and DVDs (mostly pirated). Then comes the guy selling Palestinian nationalist trinkets (this is, in all honesty, surprisingly rare in Palestine). We stand and talk to him while looking at the dozens of necklaces with the images of different Shaheeds (martyrs). He shows me four that maybe I would like to buy... Osama Bin Laden?, Sheikh Nasrallah?, Saddam Hussein?, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi?. I tell him that I think Zarqawi was majnoon (crazy) and intentionally neglect to tell him what I think of the others. He gives me a dirty look but that seems to change when I start actually naming some of the faces I see. "Abdel Rantissi" - the Hamas leader who was executed by the Israelis in April 2004... "Sheikh Yassin" - the quadriplegic, "spiritual" leader of Hamas, executed by the Israelis a month before Rantissi.. "Yahiya Ayyash" - also known as "the Engineer" mythologized as the brains behind a suicide bombing campaign following the disastrous Oslo "Peace" accords, Ayyash was executed by the Israelis with a booby-trapped cell phone in 1996. My admittedly limited knowledge of a few icons of the Palestinian Resistance seems to absolve me of my offense to the psycho Zarqawi. We move on.

The Old City is clearly not geared towards tourists - Nablus obviously gets few - but is filled with fresh produce stands, butchers and clothing stores. We wander around, speaking to the odd local. I find Nablus to be quite a bit more welcoming than Jenin, even though both have suffered terribly under the Occupation.

We get spit out of the Old City back near the closed up KFC. Even though it's early we decide to get lunch where we enjoy the rest and cooler air as much as the food itself. We're going to be heading back towards Hawara where we can see the damage caused by an Israeli incursion a few weeks ago.

Three weeks ago the al-Aqsa Brigade killed an Israeli soldier as he and his unit entered Nablus on a foot patrol. The Israeli response was to surround the Muqata'ah (the government compound) which housed Police Headquarters with a small jail, the Ministry of the Interior and a large medical clinic. They fired tank shells into the buildings and called in an F-16 air strike. The siege killed a half dozen Palestinians including a boy in an apartment across the street.

Walking up to the destroyed buildings immediately reminded me of the photographs and video of news coming from Lebanon. It was a row of three buildings along one side of the street. The street side of the buildings had been reduced to rubble. The gentle slope of concrete and cement that rose from the destruction to the half of the building that remained standing gave the false impression of serenity to what was a truly horrifying scene.

Amid the rubble I found X-Rays, Medical Logs, Passport Applications. This was what was left of Nablus' civilian infrastructure. I can't really explain what it is like to stand at the foot of a five storey building and have half of it at your feet and be able to peer into the rest like a doll house.

***

Pictures

The Muqata'ah after the Israeli attack

Passport Application

Medical Logs

British MP George Galloway

If you have ten minutes to spare please check out this video of George Galloway, an MP from Glasgow and a well known celebrity in England being interviewed on SkyNews. His analysis of the War in Lebanon, especially as it relates to media coverage, is exceptional.

http://news.sky.com/skynews/video/videoplayer/0,,31200-galloway_060806,00.html

Jenin

We arrived in Jenin trying to climb a steep hill. The Cabbie had thought he would take us up through the hills to give us a good view of the city. It didn't work. As we got fifty feet up this hilly side street, the servees just couldn't do it and we coasted back down to the ground.

In the city center the first thing that struck me was not the noise and commotion - in fact in that way it reminded me of Ramallah. It was the martyr posters.

I have an academic interest in both "martyr" posters and graffiti. Part of my thesis includes some analysis of these artifacts of the Resistance. When I first arrived in Ramallah I took a couple of pictures of the three or four different martyr posters that had been put up around Manara Circle - the downtown hub of the city. As I became more acquainted with Palestine I realized that there were fewer posters than I had expected there to be, it turns out I was just in the wrong city. As my Professor - from the famously defiant and poor Refugee Camp Khan Yunis in Gaza - says: "Ramallah is Kit Kat"...

Ramallah is easy

Arriving in Jenin I figured he was right. We got a lot of stares - something that we have become used to by now. The staring is not an unwelcoming habit, but borne purely of curiosity. Jenin and the West Bank in general, unfortunately, don't attract many visitors. But something was a little different here. We knew it had something to do with 2002 - and the years since 1948 in general. Many of the refugees in Jenin are from Northern Israel, only a few kilometers away and within view of the Camp.

The stares were accompanied by the few bolder teenagers that ask us where we are from and what we are doing here, as they follow us around our relatively brief excursion through downtown. My new standard answer is: "baskun fi Ramallah" - I live in Ramallah. I tried this in Jerusalem last weekend and it worked perfectly. It was met with a confused look at first (I'm not trying to pass for a local - that's clearly impossible) but the combination of my admission and the fact its delivered in colloquial Palestinian Arabic makes my claim somewhat credible (which, I guess it is). But in the bazaars of Jerusalem, no longer would I be considered totally a tourist - an Ajnabee (a foreigner) certainly, but maybe not someone who would be taken as an easy mark for jacked up prices. In Jenin it evoked more questions - but the tone would be less suspicious an more curious.

And unless I dropped Ramallah we could get a few "Yahud?" - Jews? - or "Shalom!". Neither were attractive propositions in the context of what Israel has done to the people of Jenin.

So we walked around the downtown core. Then we veered towards the direction of the camp. As we passed out of the city, the posters continued. Many were group photos. At one point I said to Jundee, the former Marine, "You know your town has a lot of martyrs when you have to do group shots". Those four posters in Ramallah had been for four different men. Here, on some of the dozens of posters, there were five or six different young men.

Ramallah Kit Kat.

Jenin is not Kit Kat. We walked through the blaring heat for twenty minutes along a dirt road - none of us completely comfortable with what we were planning on doing. Passing accidentally through the depleted campus of the Jenin branch of al-Quds university we were confronted by a couple of students. Our discussions - facilitated by Maloomat's "Palestine" tattoo on his shoulder - were met with generosity as the three or four young men in their early twenties - maybe late teens - took us on a tour of the Camp.


What do I say about the Camp?

We walked past lots where homes once stood. Hundreds of martyr posters. Buildings riddled with bulletholes. New homes constructed with Saudi money. Up a hill we trudged for an amazing view towards the north and we were met by a ten year old with a refreshing bottle of cold tap water. After the hike it was wonderful and we passed it around amid emphatic thanks - it was hot beyond belief. And we collectively understood that without our tour guides we would have likely been unable to walk around the Camp. We stood there and took pictures of the view.

Surrounded by destruction, scars of violence, and human generosity, through the haze, along the horizon was Lebanon.

***

Pictures:

1. Four Martyrs - Paintings hanging in downtown Jenin.

2. A view of northern Isreal and the town of Afula from the hill in Jenin's Refugee Camp.

The Road to Jenin

Our trip to Jenin turned out to be epic. It brought the weight of the Occupation totally to bear on the five of us. It was a long and difficult day.

The Servees - with its seven seats - was filled with the five of us and a mother and her three infant children. For what turned out to be a brutal three hour trip - her three children were remarkably composed. I put it down to the "making routine of the absurd". The Occupation is not only morally bankrupt, but devoid of logic. Any North American child would have been in tears or demanding "are we there yet" in the cramped, sweltering heat of the taxi, stopped as it was every 16km for another long line to go through a checkpoint. Outside of Whitby, parents are sitting in their air-conditioned cars trying their best not to snap at their kids as they idle on the 401 on their way to soccer practice. Here, parents stare straight ahead or lie back as their kids fall asleep or play with the seat belt. The line of cars stretches around the bend for god knows how far. You could be here, waiting in line to be questioned by an 18 year old from New York about where you are from and where you are going for hours but instead of getting mad you lie back and let it happen. What else are you to do?

Five checkpoints up to Jenin.
Five checkpoints back to Ramallah.
All within the West Bank.
None between the West Bank and Israel.
80 km up. 80 km back.
6 hours.
checkpoint east of Nablus - over an hour in line.

At one point on the way up, our cabbie stops and picks up boxes of paint supplies. Sitting in the rear - at each checkpoint - we have to get out for fear of being overwhelmed by the fumes. We sit on the guardrail. Stare at the guardtower. Talk about the settlements we've passed. They're expanding - not shrinking as Olmert wants the world to believe. They're perched on hills above the roads. With their uniform red roofs they're like children with their tongues sticking out - adding insult to injury to every Palestinian on the road. Stuck at a checkpoint.

At one checkpoint the driver urges us to go up and talk to the soldiers. Maloomat and Jundee - the two blonde-haired Americans are our delegates. Showing the American passport gets us to the front of the line twice out of the ten checkpoints - the other times they are told to get back in the taxi. It makes us all feel dirty that we are using our passports and the colour of our skin (Palestinians with American passports are still treated like Palestinians - not Americans). But its at our drivers urging and the mother with her three kids certainly hopes it works. The first time it works we pull up to the soldier. He opens the door and asks us where we are from.
"Americans and Canadians" Maloomat says.
"Canadians?" he responds looking at the three of us in the back row - our passports in hand.
"Yes" we respond in unison.
"Canada is my country" he states with a broad smile. We are silent. Dumbfounded.
"Where in Canada?" he asks
"Toronto" Majnoon and al-Hawal answer. "Montreal" I say - just to keep it diverse.
"Where in Montreal do you live?" he asks with the smile back on his face.
"Downtown - St. Laurent" I answer.
"Bahh. I'm from Cote-St.Luc" he answers. "You know it?"

Of course I know it. Cote-St. Luc near where the mother of a friend of mine lives, has a large Jewish community. The main thoroughfare through the neighbourhood is lined with Jewish National Fund signs. Last time I was there I wondered how many of those giving blindly to what they think is a Jewish charitable organization are aware of what the funds are used for. I wondered if they knew that the JNF doesn't help "world Jewry" but puts it in danger.

I wonder why a kid from a well off Montreal neighbourhood has decided that he wants to move to Israel and join the IDF. To serve in the Occupied Territories ostensibly protecting Jewish Settlers who are the root cause of most of the conflict in the region. Settlers whose religious fanaticism continues to place Jewish people around the world in danger. I'm reminded of the draft of my own Masters thesis that I just finished and I wondered if a childish fascination with guns and power drove this kid from the comforts of Montreal into what could turn out to be a nightmare for him.



On the way back from Jenin - the only other time the American passports work - the soldier is from Paris and strikes up a conversation in French with Majnoon. "Paris!?!" Majnoon exclaims as we drive off. "You gave up Paris for this?!!!?"

Outside of Nablus we wait for over an hour in line. My friends strike up a conversation with an Architecture Prof from the University where we study. I stretch out in the back of the cab and try to drift off to sleep. The heat is brutal and I can't nap. I get up and take a picture of my friends from the side of the car. They're now sitting on the guardrail along the side of the road. I want to get the picture of them staring off to the front of the long line of cars. The picture I take contains more than that, I realize later. At the front of the line, is an ambulance. In my picture, you see my friends sitting there and when you zoom in you see two soldiers questioning a man covered in bandages standing outside of the back ambulance doors. I guess the treatment this man clearly needs is irrelevant. I guess they couldn't have asked him questions while he stayed in the Ambulance? He needed to be out of the van, standing in the heat, covered in bandages.

When we get up to the front of that line I figure out why he was made to get out of the Ambulance. The soldiers there are pricks. "Get out" they tell us in broken Arabic. We get out. "Line up" they tell us. The five of us line up. They look at our passports while still leaning against the cement barricade that blocks the way. Another soldier rips our passports out of the other soldier's hand. Apparently he wants to have a look as well. After a few minutes of standing there, in a line, watching them look at us, look at our passports, pretend to be finished only to look some more, waiting for them to (hopefully) return our passports to us and (hopefully) permit us to pass, they tell us to get back in the cab and we are allowed to go. The usual jokes about the absurdity of the checkpoints that come after most of them aren't expressed.

We've just been treated like shit - like a Palestinian is treated - and we know it.

***
Pictures:
1. Trying to sleep at a checkpoint outside of Nablus
2. Majnoon, al-Hawal, a group of students from al-Najah University trying to get to class, and a man, covered in bandages, being questioned by teenage IDF soldiers behind an Ambulance.

Jenin - Background

As my friends and I climbed into the Servees in Ramallah none of us really knew what to expect of the day. It would be the furthest away within the West Bank any of us had been. It was the closest we could be to the Lebanon border while remaining safely within the Occupied territory. It was a community known for its fierce resistance to the Occupation.

We were heading to Jenin.

"I have been in urban environments where house to house fighting has happened: Rwanda, Nicaragua, El Salvador, Colombia, and a city struck by a massive earthquake: Mexico city. The devastation seen in Jenin camp had the worst elements of both situations. Houses not just bulldozed or dynamited but reduced almost to dust by the repeated and deliberate coming and goings of bulldozers and tanks. Houses pierced from wall to wall by tank or helicopter gun ships. Houses cut down the middle as if by giant scissors. Inside, an eerie vision of dining or bedrooms almost intact. No signs whatsoever that that bedroom or dining room or indeed the house had been used by fighters. Gratuitous, wanton, unnecessary destruction. ChildrenÂ’s prams, toys, beds everywhere. Where were those children? I do not know, but I do know where the survivors will be in the future."

- Javier Zuniga Amnesty International's Director of Regional Strategy after entering Jenin refugee camp on 17 April 2002

The Israeli Defense Forces, only four years ago conducted Operation Defensive Shield in which it entered densely populated residential areas such Jenin and Nablus, and laid siege to both the Muqatta'a - Arafat's compound in Ramallah that I drive by nearly everyday - and the Basilica of the Nativity in Bethlehem (a subject I will address in particular in a later post).

Jenin had produced a disproportionate amount of fighters in the second Intifada and was thus subject to particular brand of Israel's now famous collective punishment. In early April of 2002, the IDF cordoned off Jenin City and Jenin Refugee Camp. They ordered everyone out of the Camp but like in Lebanon, not everyon understood or complied with this command. The IDF arrested dozens of men - stripped them to their underwear and dropped them in neighbouring communities and ordered them not to return to Jenin.

Amnesty International reports that the IDF then used Palestinian civilians as human shields (I guess Hezbollah aren't the only ones who do this?) to search each house for boobytraps that were planted by the 120 or so Palestinian soldiers that decided to stay in Jenin and fight. And as their tanks and foot soldiers rolled into the streets and alleys of the Camp they encountered heavy resistance. The IDF changed their tactics, and using the armoured bulldozers that have brought such misery throughout the Occupied Territories, they cut large swathes out of the camp. Homes were systematically destroyed and their occupants crushed to death. Journalists and humanitarian workers were denied entry into the camp and the world watched in horror as Apache Helicopters fired missile after missile into the densely populated residential area.

Jenin is a city that has been though a lot.

And it was into this camp that we were heading.

***

Picture:

Jenin: Hundreds of bullet holes in the side of a house

Read about Operation Defensive Shield...

http://web.amnesty.org/library/index/ENGMDE151432002