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

Mundane in Jerusalem

This post is generally directed towards those family members of mine who are interested in the more mundane aspects of my existence... or the slightly absurd in the mundane...like buying stamps in Jerusalem...

After the indulgences of a cigarette and bourbon fueled night in a bar in Ramallah, I decided that I needed some contemplative alone-time. Waking up late (another thing I needed) I made it to Jerusalem around noon to find what, since the start of the Lebanon Invasion is now a daily occurrence: A makeshift checkpoint of armoured horses and a couple of dozen soldiers and policemen halfway down the single block between the Arab bus station and the Damascus Gate that leads into the Arab section of the Old City. I manage to push my way through, while holding my Canadian passport high - this time they don't look at my visa. I've set myself a number of things to do today and the first priority is to get to a post office so I can mail some postcards and buy some stamps. The checkpoint that they've set up (50 feet from the last one!) outside of Damascus Gate prompts me to skirt the length of the Old City walls (instead of cutting through it) as I make my way towards Jaffa Road, the main street in Jewish West Jerusalem. I know that the Central Post Office is there and I can take care of these things - hopefully - its Friday afternoon and business hours are erratic as Shabbat approaches. The Post Office is housed in a huge building. I'd describe it as old, but Victorian-aged buildings in Jerusalem are positively modern. When I go through the main doors I'm immediately confronted with what is actually a small room. I pass through the metal detectors and I'm immediately in front of a small booth with two young security guards who instruct me to buy my stamps from the vending machine to my right and to mail my postcards from a box outside. With that mission accomplished (awkwardly) I return to the Old City through the Jaffa Gate that leads to the Jewish and Armenian Quarters - the policeman didn't even look up as I passed.

There were two other tasks that I had set for myself in Jerusalem: one was finding a book store where I could get my hands on a Colloquial Palestinian Arabic Dictionary (it was closed). The other thing I wanted to do on this trip was to go to the courtyard restaurant at the American Colony Hotel.

(You can read about the storied history of the hotel and take a look at some of the pictures at their website www.americancolony.com)

I walked up the half dozen blocks up Salahdin Street in the heart of Arab East Jerusalem and entered into the Hotel Compound through the driveway. The Courtyard itself was quaint, with a dozen of so tables spread around the gardens. The waiter, a middle aged Arab man seated me near the door and in perusing the lunch menu I was disappointed that there wasn't much of the lunch options that I could eat. Mostly sandwiches, I turned to the more substantial offerings. I decided that it may be the only time in the American Colony and that I should splurge so I ordered the lamb from the "Oriental dishes" section and a cup of coffee. The coffee itself was actually a tea pot of filtered coffee and after two months of Nescafe it was easily the best coffee I've had in a long long time.

The lamb was two thick chops with green beans and saffron rice with sundried tomatoes. It may have been my Arabic greetings, pleases and thank-yous to the waiters or what appeared to me the snobbish elitism of the other patrons (including a journalist that I recognized) that earned me a banana split on the house. All together the meal cost about $20 - a lot in comparison to the average meal here - but a steal in North America.

Ok... I warned you that this would be a boring post... serves you right for not heeding my warning. The detailed description of my meal was especially for my fiancee.

The rest of my afternoon, however, was less than mundane...

***

Picture

The Courtyard of the American Colony Hotel

Al-Quds

Leaving the American Colony satisfied if not completely stuffed, I made my way back towards the Old City for what had been the main reason for me to come to Jerusalem on what is really a weekend and not the best time to visit.

At the foot of Salahdin street is Herod Gate - one of the half dozen or so gates that lead into the Old City. It, along with Damascus Gate lead into the Arab Quarter, but unlike Damascus Gate, I've never been through Herod Gate. It was a lot less busy than it's neighbour to the West, and I wandered the narrow and confusing streets until I came upon cars - I hadn't known that cars could/or were allowed into the Old City, but I soon discovered that there are a handful of streets that cars can access.

I made my way to what I thought was my destination. The street was wider than most and I followed the few people I figured shared my task up a flight of stairs that ran flush with the road. I translated the sign from Arabic: Omariyyah College. The College is better known as the home of the Monastery of the Flagellation and home to the First Station of the Cross along the Via Dolorosa. This is the site where Pontius Pilate condemned Jesus to be crucified.

I grew up in the church. My mother was the secretary of the United Church down the street from our home and some of my earliest memories consist of hiding on the floor amongst the chairs in the sanctuary - of climbing the stacked chairs in their storage room - of looking over the books I found in the narthex.

The love I felt in reading a cartoon Bible given to me by my Aunt and Uncle when I was young gave me an unfair advantage against my Sunday School peers in our occasional and lively games of Bible Jeopardy. While I didn't know it then - it gave me my first taste of historical narrative that I wouldn't fully appreciate until I was in grad school. While I have drifted away from the Church - and I've openly disregarded religion to friends and family - the reality is that agnosticism, a sort of theological cop-out, has been just that for me: I don't know God - but I'm not convinced enough to say that he doesn't exist.

So I have a BA in Religion. I studied the Bible in all it's historical inaccuracies and self contradictions and it only confirmed to me what I had suspected in the stories of Joshua and of Moses. That it wasn't written by God but by men who edited their work down and patched it together in the same way I just finished my Masters Thesis. The engrossing stories of amazing feats, presented to me in colourful drawings that fascinated me so much as a child were just that: stories.

My partner Danielle, the brilliant and beautiful woman I'm about to marry has had concerns about my lack of faith in something - anything - for years now. Its not enough to stop her from marrying me - probably because I deflect her questions with a "I don't want to talk about this" but it's enough to make it an issue. She just wants to understand my feelings about something that I don't even really understand about myself.

So somewhere between my Historian/Anthropologist academic Self; my liberal but dedicated Christian upbringing; the questions from loved ones and my current state of emotional trouble in the face of injustice, I joined a group of Franciscan Monks in a mobile mass along the route Jesus took on his way to his death.

I listened through the noises of the busy streets to the descriptions coming from the loudspeaker in Latin, in Italian, in Spanish and in English. At each station they said prayers, performed liturgy and described in those languages what took place here.... "Here Jesus fell for the third time".....

It took an hour and it ended in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. There, in that massive building that I had found so amazing on my earlier visit a month ago, I finally waited in line to enter the cube on the spot where they believe Jesus was entombed. Beside me, in that crammed space a priest whose bag had an airline tag that told me he was from Rome, prayed alongside an American teenager. And as they did this I stood and stared at the surprisingly sparsely decorated tomb.

The whole procession was fascinating. What I couldn't help but think about was the intense juxtaposition between the noisy people in the street, the Muezzin call to prayer as our procession began, the heavily armed Israeli soldiers who followed us part of the way, the silence of the normally boisterous and quick to approach Arab boys. This was a city I had just recently called a "Shit-Hole" for the confluence of American Christian tourists, vapid North American teenage Jewish girls on summer vacation and the ubiquitous and enraging Soldier. Over the course of the hour I came to love Jerusalem despite its flaws and I momentarily let my anger go.

And it may have been any of those "selves" that took hold of me at each of the stations, it may have been the enormous emotional weight that comes with life here, it could have been anything; but at each station I leaned against the stones of a thousand year old wall and I cried.

I wiped my few tears, walked the hundred feet to the next station and cried again.

***

Picture

The Old City of Jerusalem - walking towards the Via Dolorosa

Hebron... Or "White Like Me"

I did something dumb. Totally dumb.

Abu Majnoon, Abu al-Jundee (These are the made up nicknames each of us have here) and I went to Hebron this morning and I forgot to bring my passport. We were in a servees (a shared, 8 person taxi) about to leave Ramallah when I realized my mistake. I had emptied my bag the night before and I forgot to put it back in. Stupid! I was panicking and A.M., in the front seat, told our driver who insisted that it wouldn't be a big problem. He was right in that it turned out not to be a BIG problem, but it was definitely a pain in the ass.

We were off. I was in the back of the van with two Palestinian teenagers... Tariq and Ali who were, I'm guessing 17. Servees are good ways to interact with random people and Palestinians, being by far the most engaging and generous people I've met (I'm not saying that my interactions are always perfect!) anywhere in the world. Usually I will be asked the standard: "what's your name", "where are you from", and then I'll be asked if I'd like to come to their village or town and visit with them, or go to someone's wedding. It's quite amazing.

As we approached the dreaded Qalandia (which, fortunately we were not going to have to go through) we passed a number of Humvees and Jeeps moving in the opposite direction. Tariq turned to me and asked where I was from. I told him Canada. Then he asked if I loved Israel. I made sure I understood his question (my Arabic isn't always good at helping me get nuance) and responded by saying "No I don't love Israel". His response didn't catch me as off guard as it would have a month ago. He told me that it was good that I didn't love Israel: An Israeli soldier murdered his sister.

He was from Tulkarm, a town in the north-west of the Occupied Territories, a town skirting the "separation Wall". Our conversation sort of ended shortly thereafter as the woman in front of me, as we approached the first checkpoint passed her infant son towards us. I quickly found that the plan was to put him in the baby carrier that was at my feet. As the baby lay at my feet, clutching and rubbing my middle finger, Tariq leaned over and asked if I'd close the blind beside me: we were approaching the checkpoint. That was the first sign of trouble.

The soldier spoke with the driver who then motioned back to us. Ali handed his green ID up to the driver who showed it to the soldier. Tariq was leaning back, trying to hide himself as best he could behind my shoulder. The soldier looked at the ID and we were waved through - it was a "flying" or temporary checkpoint set up indiscriminately at Israeli will. About a half hour later the baby was asleep at my feet and I was amazed that he could doze through the rugged West Bank roads replete with quick starts and sudden stops. We got to the permanent checkpoint half way through our trip, not far from the town of Abu Dees where this time we were stopped. The soldier opened up the sliding side door and took a look at us in the back. He asked for Tariq and Ali's ID and walked off. We sat there for fifteen minutes before the driver stepped out and went into the checkpoint hut. He spoke some Hebrew (likely a skill learned in Israeli jails... typical of former inmates) and was handed the boys ID's back. And we were off again. So far, no soldier has asked for MY ID... which in this case was a Provincial Drivers license. I cursed myself again and then knocked on wood.

An hour later we were driving through Gush Etzion Settlement Bloc. One of the larger Settlement Blocs, Gush Etzion was also known to be one of the more militant. We drove along the street and all of a sudden we come to a traffic light with Israeli teenagers and soldiers (both heavily armed) crossing the road... Like nothing out of the ordinary... except that they are in the middle of the West Bank surrounded by people whose land they had stolen and who do not want them there: a theme I would be reminded of later in the day.

We continued on for about a Kilometer before we came to another flying checkpoint where were stopped again. This time, an older soldier slid the side door open and asked for everyone's ID (except the women). I thought I was bucked. The worst case scenario, I reasoned, was that they would detain me while I sent A.M. back to the apartment to fetch my Passport and Visa. That would be the worst case scenario. I should have known though, that as much as the IDF do not want Westerners in the West Bank so that they can continue to do what they do without outsiders knowing, they wouldn't bother to hold me. No, today, as everyday, they were after young Palestinian Men. I remember reading in Amira Hass's book "Drinking the Sea at Gaza" that if you were a young man living in Gaza you had no hope of getting a work visa to provide for your family. They would only issue work visas to those over 40 and married. She said that Palestinian youths in Gaza were just "waiting to turn 40".

I showed the soldier my drivers license and tried to explain myself - "how will I see your visa" he asked derisively. I shook my head in resignation. He handed the ID back and I knew that it didn't matter. Ali and Tariq were taken out of the servees and lined up with the other group of young men, obviously removed from other taxis. We pulled over to the side of the road and with an ominous move, our driver turned off the car.

We waited there for a while. I looked back out the window a few times to see the soldiers speaking with Tariq. Eventually Ali came back over to the cab with another young man. They spoke with the driver and Ali got back in. A few minutes later though Ali was back out of the cab and the other boy was in his place, beside me in the back. Our driver got out, made his way over to the Jeep where Tariq was standing and spoke with the soldier there. I saw Tariq give the driver some money and then he was spun around by the soldier and frisked against the side of the jeep. They bent his arm back and I saw him grimace as they felt up and down his legs. As they were doing this, our driver got back in and we began to move on.

We came into Hebron quite quickly. I hadn't realized that we had been just outside when we were stopped for the last time. Hebron is quite large - in fact it's the biggest city (with all the surrounding towns) in the West Bank - and it took us a while to make it into the center of town. When we got there, A.M. asked our driver how to get into the old city and he directed us to take another (private cab). We did and after a short drive (it turns out we could have walked it - we in fact left the Old City and wound up in the center of town by accident) we were let out at the end of a dead end street. At a set of closed turnstiles, a friendly woman directed us to go around and she lead us the hundred yards to the right alley.

We walked along until we came to a set of turnstiles. We waited for a local to go through them (we're always a little hesitant to walk through turnstiles unless told to do so by a local or the IDF) before following him through. At the other end, behind cement barricades the IDF soldier there asked for our passports. I go through the same routine... this time telling him that I left it in my hotel room in Bethlehem (passing as a Christian tourist and not a West Bank resident). He lets me go through. On the other end is a road with a fence running alongside it. Twenty feet to the left are another set of turnstiles and metal detectors and I guess right that its the entrance to the Ibrihimi Mosque and the Tombs of the Patriarchs.

We approached the metal detectors apprehensively. A handful of soldiers stood around staring at us. A jovial looking Israeli policeman stood forward and told us that it was prayer time and that we could not go in (same routine I went through at the Temple Mount in Jerusalem). We tell him we'll come back and we turn around and walk past the checkpoint that we came through. Half way along the road I start to see posters plastered all over the place with the smiling face of Meir Kahane. Kahane was an American Jew who started a movement in the US called the Jewish Defense League and one in Israel called "Kach" which was eventually outlawed in Israel because of its violent ideology that advocated the (forced) expulsion of Arabs from historic Israel (which to some Kahanists includes the Sinai, Jordan, Lebanon, and parts of Syria and Iraq) and the establishment of a Jewish theocracy. Kahane was assassinated in New York after he was deported from Israel. But the ideology he created survives, especially amongst the militant settlers in Hebron.

And Baruch Goldstein was a Kahanist.

On February 25 1994, Goldstein, dressed in his Israeli Army uniform, walked into the Ibrihimi Mosque and opened fire with an automatic weapon upon praying Muslims. He killed 29 and wounded 125+. In the riots that followed throughout Israel and the Occupied Territories, another 30 Arabs were killed by the IDF while 4 settlers were killed by Arabs. Goldstein was an American from New York, who like so many other Americans, settled in the militant Settlements that are in and surround Hebron. The memory of Goldstein was present as I walked down that street in front of the Mosque where he killed so many and seeing his ideologue on a poster sent chills down my spine.

At the end of the street (50 feet) we came to the third checkpoint in less than 100 meters. There another soldier examined my drivers license and let me go. Before we knew it, we had walked into the Jewish Settlement in the Old City. I tensed up. We walked another thirty feet to an opening that looked up towards the mosque. We cautiously took out our cameras and snapped a few shots before we decided that we had had enough.

We went back through the checkpoint and back towards the entrance to the Mosque. The jovial policeman there stood in front of us and made small talk. Where are we from? What were we doing in Hebron? What did we do back home? A.J. a former Marine who works as a sous chef told him he cooked and the Policeman explained that he too was a chef. The Car-15 assault rifle around his neck and the pistol in his waist band told me otherwise. ("why aren't you in a kitchen then?!!?" I thought).

After fifteen minutes of waiting, watching the teenage Israeli soldiers talk on their cell phones with their boyfriends and girlfriends we were allowed in.

We walked through the metal detectors and had our bags searched. Once through we walked uptowards the Mosque, through a gate and not twenty feet later another pair of Israeli soldiers and metal detectors. Nonchalantly the teenager soldier looks through my bag; "Anything sharp?" - "No" - "Any knives?" - "No" - "Any guns?" - "No"- "Want one?". I was caught off guard. I hope he was joking.

The Mosque itself was unimpressive for A.M. who has been to three of arguably the most beautiful mosques in the world (al-Azhar in Cairo and Umayyad Mosque in Damsacus... Suleiman Mosque in Istanbul is also on that list) but I was impressed. The tombs of the patriarchs weren't what I was expecting. They are outside of the ground, in what look like large household oil containers - but covered in fabric and enclosed in a brick and barred cube. Issac and Rebecca's tombs (they're separate) are entirely within the Mosque, while Abraham's and Sarah are awkwardly placed against the walls - which apparently connects with the synagogue next door.

We walked around the Mosque some more and then made our way outside and back through the metal detectors. As we approach the last metal detectors two teenage boy-soldiers were playing monkey in the middle with the beret of a teenage-girl soldier. Their assault rifles, slung around their backs bounced up and down as they jumped around and I didn't know whether to laugh or cry.

AM told us that he wanted to try and walk around the main road of the Jewish Settlement. Two votes to one and we made our way back to the Arab quarter. Walking along one of the main alleys of the Old City we passby store after store that are shuttered up. One of the locals who was walking beside us explained that they've been closed for 15 years.

At one point we come to the spot that I had been dreading. Above our heads, chicken wire had been installed running the length of the street (Old City Streets in the Middle East are no more than twenty feet wide). Through the trash that had piled up on the wire I saw a half dozen little Israeli flags and one large one.

Because of those tombs that are in the Mosque, the Jewish tradition holds Heron as a very venerated place. After Israel began occupying The Werst Bank in 1967 an infl;ux of Jewish Settlers moved in around the city in a complex of settlements - all illegal under International Law - called Qyriat Arba. At some point Jewish Settlers established a foothold inside the Old City of Hebron. There, the most militant of the Settler Movement squatted in Palestinian homes when the occupants were out in at their jobs and refused to leave when they retuned. The Israelis, (most notably under Sharon) refused to evict them and instead sent in the IDF to protect the squatters. Now, the ratio is apparently 500 Settlers and 1500 Soldiers in Hebron. The Settlers, believing that Hebron (and all of the West Bank... and according to Kach... half of the Middle East) should be lived in by only Jews, began a campaign of hate crimes against the Arab Palestinian population. The Chicken wire was meant to protect the Palestinians in the Old City from the garbage and feces that are thrown out of the windows by the Settlers unto the Arabs in the streets below. I had known that this happens, but seeing it was emotional.

Outside of the Old City, we ate and made our way back home. Again, not having my passport was a problem, but not as much as it was on our way in. This time the cab was carrying two older couples who never attract attention from the IDF - we were waived through most of the checkpoints. Crammed into the back of the cab for the two and a half drive of just 60km I wondered where Tariq and Ali were now. The murder of Tariq's sister by the IDF, in a cruel twist actually puts him on a list that heavily restricts his movements. It seems that the Israelis believe that the families of murdered love-ones have no love for the Israeli military. The logic is that the death will be avenged in some way... shooting... suicide bomb. The murder of Tariq's sister made Tariq's life that much more tough. It seems that he didn't have a good enough reason to go from Tulkarm in the north to Hebron in the south.

Friends in Hebron? Family in Hebron? School in Hebron? Within his own country Tariq isn't allowed too far from home (80km). Israel has shit-throwing settlers to protect.

***

Pictures:

Ibrihimi Mosque and the Tombs of the Patriarchs - With Israeli Flag

Settler trash and chicken wire in the Old City - Also with Israeli Flags

Daily Things...

Here are some random observations about life in the West Bank...

The Sharons

The garbage system is fairly straightforward despite the fact that most civil servants haven't been paid in three months because of the West's refusal to provide any support to the Palestinian Government. Most municipal workers and policemen continue to work even though they aren't getting paid because they support their elected government even if they didn't vote for them. Anyway... basically you take your garbage out of your apartment to one of the dozens of smallish dumpsters that line the roads all over the place (every 200 meters or so?). The funny thing is that we call them "Sharon's" (Israel's comatose former Prime Minister and International fugitive from War Crimes charges) because each has been spray painted with his name in Arabic. I don't know if they were done so because they are short and fat and in green (Sharon in uniform?) or just because they are dumpsters. It's a phenomenon found all over the West Bank.

Wildlife

There's an array of wildlife here. The mosquitos look the same as those in North America but they fly faster and are harder to kill. The other night we were walking home and we saw a car pull over to the side of the road. We got closer and saw that a man was standing beside the road when the car raced forward all of a sudden in his general direction. Then we saw the snake and realized that the car was running it over. We passed by, and the man at the side of the road dropped a rock on its head and then kicked it. I'm guessing they don't like snakes here.

I've noticed that in every country I've been to in the third world there is a different species of random scavenging animal. In Latin America its almost universally dogs. My fiancee and I have a funny picture of us arriving in Honduras and there being an exhausted stray dog lying on its back at the foot of the welcome to Honduras flag pole. Hilarious. In Palestine it's cats. Stray cats that rummage through the Sharons for scraps of food.

Loud Noises

I've become fairly adept at distinguishing the sound of gunshots from fireworks. Both of which are nightly noisemakers that mark some sort of celebration.

Weddings

There are weddings here every weekend. Loud loud parties that last all weekend and late into each night.

Celine Dion

Restaurants play mixed CD's of cheesy mid-90's pop music. Celine is a favourite, Bryan Adams (I once heard "Everything I do I do for you" repeated a half dozen times while we were eating at a nice Ramallah restaurant) Whitney Houston... Strange....

I'll try to post more of these soon...