Summer Reflection

After spending four months studying nursing at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, I spent the months of June and July living in Beit Sahour, Palestine. Beit Sahour is a beautiful town just down the road from Bethlehem and home to the shepherd's fields where angels proclaimed the birth of Jesus 2000 years ago. There I spent two months volunteering at the local Medical Center and studying Arabic at the Bethlehem Bible College through the Palestine Summer Encounter (PSE). PSE is an internship that was created through a partnership between the Holy Land Trust and the Middle East Fellowship. The Middle East Fellowship is a non-profit U.S. based group that aims to build bridges, understanding and partnership between the West and the Middle East through service and learning programs. There are three overarching goals of the Holy Land Trust (HLT), a Palestinian organization, that form the basis for its programs. The organization seeks to support the Palestinian community in achieving political independence by ending Israel’s Occupation of Palestine through nonviolent resistance. HLT hopes to build an independent Palestine “founded on the principles of nonviolence, democracy, respect for human rights and the peaceful resolution of conflicts.” Finally, the group engages in advocacy work to promote international awareness of the Palestinian situation.

I had two roles this summer as a participant in the Palestine Summer Encounter: One, to be a medical assistant at the Beit Sahour Medical Clinic and two, to serve as an international witness to the situation of the Palestinian people. I lived with a beautiful Palestinian couple and their 10 month old daughter (with grandparents, nieces, cousins living right upstairs in the same building). My host Dad works in an olive wood shop carving small pieces to sell in the shops near the Church of the Nativity and in the Old City of Jerusalem, while my host mom is a 1-3rd grade teacher in Bethlehem. I was truly welcomed into the family and I could not be more thankful for the hospitality I received.

As a fourth year nursing student I was given the opportunity to assist in the emergency room of the local clinic, under Ibtisam, the head nurse. While each day I would take temperatures, blood pressures, give injections, monitor IV bags, and draw up lidocaine for yet another cut wound from an olive wood work shop, the medical tasks of my volunteer work are by far the least memorable and life-changing of my summer in the West Bank. I constantly struggled to improve my Arabic speaking abilities and to pick up more phrases to help me with my work at the clinic: sending patients on their way with a smile and “Salaamtek” (‘peace and safety with you’ or ‘get well soon’). Outside of clinic work, I took Debkah lessons (Palestinian traditional dance) and attended various family celebrations and weddings with my host family. On the weekends, I traveled with the other Palestine Summer Encounter participants to different cities and villages in the West Bank to meet with peace and advocacy organizations, both internationally based and Palestinian. We met with city leaders, religious leaders and civilians who spent their daily lives struggling to fight for their basic rights to life and liberty. We heard and witnessed the terrible hardship of life under occupation, even touring refugee camps in Nablus, a city that has been a hotbed of violence in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

I found quickly that Palestinian people love to tell their story and love nothing more than to share with someone new, an outsider, who can spread their story outside of the prison that they live in. Whether it was a doctor in the clinic or a shop keeper who insisted I sit with him and have tea, I became a sponge to absorb countless stories of hardship and frustration, of lost hope and hope regained. I somehow became so important to these people, a type of ambassador. Sometimes the weight was hard to bear, and I felt as though I was unworthy to be entrusted with such a message that needs to be relayed to the world.

The people of the West Bank live under the occupation of the state of Israel. It was perhaps most disturbing to find that they live without any recognized identity: a life without any true security, a life under constant stress. The people I encountered are uniquely Palestinian in custom, tradition, culture and language, and yet, to be Palestinian is not a recognized nationality: there is no country of Palestine. They are certainly not Israeli because a Palestinian cannot set foot beyond that great looming concrete wall that is continually being built around them, separating them from Israel proper. Not only does the wall effectively seal them off from Jerusalem, it has taken away acres and acres of farmland and has separated families and friends, even fathers from daughters. Nor can a Palestinian travel freely within “Palestinian” territory. There are constant checkpoints manned by Israeli soldiers set up even on Palestinian only roads, where they must get out of their cars and wait for their Israeli issued identity cards to be checked, meanwhile they are often harassed or turned back to where they came from without explanation.

The HLT is true to its mission in placing participants into the heart of Palestinian life, immersing us in the culture of the West Bank. They did not require anyone to participate in any of their non-violent actions, and this was left to the discretion of the participant. The program allowed for independence and for us to really experience, look, touch, see and feel, what living in the conflict is like for the everyday Palestinian. I heard and witnessed stories of harassment from the soldiers and saw the bullet holes from the beginning of the second Intifada in my host Dad’s old house. I traveled the roads with my “magic blue passport” (as I now refer to my privileged US passport) and went places where my host family can only dream of going. I watched my host mom start to shake when the army jeep would ride by and I thought of the day when my host sister would realize the kind of life she was born into. I thought about my US tax dollars that helped Israel fund the Separation Wall that is turning Bethlehem into a ghetto. The same dollars helped pay for the rubber bullets and tear gas shot at me when I marched with the villagers of Bil’in. We marched non-violently with our hands in the air calling for Israel to uphold their own Supreme Court decision made three years ago to change the course of the Separation Wall so that it does not steal the village livelihood, over 60 percent of the farmland of Bil’in.

I spent one night sleeping over at the Hebron Girl’s Orphanage with members form Christian Peacemaker Teams (CPT) and the International Solidarity Movement (ISM). The orphanage was raided back in April by the Israeli Defense Forces and is threatened with closure. CPT are trying to keep an international presence there so there is someone to witness and call the press on the fateful night when the soldiers show up to weld the gates shut to this home for over 200 girls and school for 650. We toured the bakery that once supplied the bread for the orphans until it was destroyed and the threadbare basement that was once a job training center and form of income for the girls who learned sewing and embroidery there. The $200,000 worth of equipment was recently found dumped in the city dump. Thankfully, that night proved uneventful aside from being woken at 4am by an unusually loud call to prayer (the orphanage is located directly next to a minaret). Even so, our small international group was able to stand along-side these orphans in their distress.

A particularly memorable part of my volunteer work was spending a week holding free clinics in nearby villages and refugee camps with a team of American doctors and nurses as well as Palestinian nursing students from Bethlehem University. The doctors were able to bring large amounts of medicines and supplies from the States. We went to one village that is very close to Bethlehem but it takes over 45 minutes to get from there to the nearest hospital because of the Wall and the segregated roads. The clinic we partnered with regularly had a few doctors and nurses, yet the clinic itself was threadbare. Working as a team with Palestinian staff, we were able to see over 50 patients that day and had to turn others away. I believe that sustainable health care needs to involve follow up and partnership and the empowerment of the local people. However, even through such a short interaction such as this, the solidarity we shared with our fellow professionals in Palestine was incredible. I was able to become very close with the two Palestinian nursing students who helped us at the clinic and we are still in touch, sharing with each other over e-mail the challenges of nursing school and our hopes for the future. The experience was also startlingly eye-opening: the lack of access to health care had allowed many treatable conditions to become debilitating and near fatal for many of the people we saw that week.

As I have returned back to the States to begin my last year at the University of Pennsylvania, I am still processing my summer experience in the West Bank. I am slowly discovering how this summer has greatly influenced my study and career plans. In the immediate sense, I would like to share my experiences with other Penn students and my friends and family. This semester I plan to be involved in a student group at Penn called Students for Justice in Palestine. This group strives to create awareness of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and encourage people to look beyond the often biased (to one side or the other) media coverage and hear two sides to the story. In a more general sense, I am now more passionate than ever about working with vulnerable populations both abroad and in the United States, particularly refugees and displaced persons. After returning home from my summer in Palestine, I took on a work-study job at the Lutheran Children and Family Service where I set up health screening appointments for refugee families who are being resettled into the Philadelphia area. I have changed my focus in nursing to Psychiatric Nursing in hopes that I can some day work with refugees who are suffering from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, depression and other mental illness as a result of their experiences.

Through my time in Palestine, I have gained immeasurably valuable experience in cross-cultural healthcare and in advocacy work that I believe translates to my work here in Philadelphia, a city that is so beautifully diverse yet also wrought with social injustice. I hope to continue learning Arabic and would love to return to Palestine in the future or to another place in the Middle East to work with refugees.

The Olive Harvest.

Violence Escalates In West Bank

What do you want to be when you grow up?

This is a blog from July 2nd that I never ended up posting because of slow internet connection:

On Sunday our group from HLT went to Nablus. First stop: one of the refugee camps that houses over 35,000 refugees. Perhaps pictures are better than words to describe the living conditions of the people in the camp, yet pictures cannot attest to the smell, the nauseating heat and the constant violence that permeates the life of these Palestinians.
The refugees are not permitted to expand their houses outward, though their numbers increase: they must build up and in between. As the sun goes down everyone must return home as the Israeli soldiers stage frequent raids, assassinations and arrests throughout the night. During the raids of 2002 and 2004, the people could not even stand near their own windows or they would be shot.
As we slid sideways between the houses children seemed to pop out of every corner and crevice: they joined the parade eager to see this funny group of internationals touring their home. The children of Nablus, especially of the camps, become very psychologically disturbed as a result of their living conditions and the constant violence. Most have seen someone be killed- often members of their family such as their father or brother.
We were told that if you ask many of the kids what they want to be when they grow up, they will not tell you they want to be a doctor or a teacher or a singer: they will want to be a martyr, a freedom fighter.
It makes my heart weep to think of these beautiful little children growing up into such a life, where martyr memorials posted on every corner proclaim "we will never forgive, we will not forget."
We visited a center for the arts nearby that is working to give these children a better outlet for their pain and suffering: art, music and traditional dance (Debkah). I was truly glad to visit such a place that hopes that there can be some kind of redemption for these children from this life...

occupation no more?

Friday morning I went with some friends to protest against the wall in Bil'in Village. We woke up early and caught a service from Bethlehem to Ramallah and then caught another shared taxi to Bil'in. We wound our way down Wadi Nar (literally "hell road" or "road of fire") and were questioned at the illegal checkpoint about where we were headed and what we are doing here in Palestine: "We're just touring around," we said- my friend and I slouched in the back seat to conceal our Nakba t-shirts and Palestinian flag bracelets...

The residents of Bil'in have been struggling to protect their land and livelihood from confiscation and destruction for years. Bil'in was the first village in which the persistent protests and non-violent actions against the building of the wall through the village produced some results:

"In a high-profile ruling of 4th September 2007, the Israeli Supreme Court concluded that the already built Separation Barrier in the West Bank village of Bil’in is illegal. The Court noted that the existing route was designed to accommodate plans for the future expansion of the settlement of Modi’in Illit and for the construction of a new 3,000 housing-units neighborhood therein, despite the fact that some of these plans require further approval before they can be realized. The judges ordered the State to redraw the barrier, so that the new route shall not take into account planning schemes not yet finally approved. In the ruling, the Court emphasized that “in light of the continuous harm to the residents of Bil’in… the respondents should consider, within reasonable time, an alternative route”. (underline added)"

Unfortunately, this "alternate route" has not been realized and villagers continue to endure attacks from settlers on their land. Just the night before we arrived in Bil'in, some settlers from the nearby settlement invaded a Palestinian's house and burnt several rooms of the house. These settlers will go unpunished for their actions. Bil'in villagers are still struggling to resist the confiscation of their land that is under continued threat as Israel continues to expand the nearby illegal settlement.
When we arrived in Bil'in we gathered with internationals, Israeli activists and Palestinians as Friday prayer let out. We began the march down the hill by the olive trees to the fence the soldiers set up to block the protesters from reaching the wall. We turned away from the road and marched among the olive trees, our hands in the air, shouting"1,2,3,4 Occupation NO More!!" We had barely started marching (and were no where near the fence) when the tear gas canisters started flying in every direction. We kept our hands in the air to show we were not armed- but the soldiers kept firing, some even straight at head level. When you see the tear gas rockets coming at you, the first instinct is to run, but I learned quickly that the key is to keep your eyes up to see where it will land so you can decide were to run. I am thankful for my sunglasses and scarf that I tied around my nose and mouth. But still there is only so much tear gas that one can take before it becomes unbearable to keep your eyes open and to even breathe.
Choking and sputtering we tried to re-group and that is when they started firing rubber bullets and sound grenades.
The protest wound to an end as some were injured by excessive tear gas and rubber bullets. We gathered by the large olive tree at the top of the hill and the man who has been a leader in the protests every week for the past few years thanked us internationals and Israelis for coming to join in solidarity with the villagers of Bil'in.
What we experienced at this protest was nothing to what these villagers have endured. They are continually harassed, their land is taken and destroyed and when they try to protest, they have been shot with live ammunition.
Click here for the article about the protest

There is a certain guilt I feel when I tell my family that I am going to Jerusalem for the day because I feel like I am somehow flaunting the fact that they can not go there.
I can't say how many times here I have questioned why I was born to hold this magic blue passport that lets me go where ever I want. I have never really thought about how precious my freedom of movement is until being here in Palestine. There are checkpoints and walls that separate families and friends, Palestinians from Palestinians. Many people here have never been able to swim in the Mediterranean (which I have swum in several times in the period of the past 5 months) or even get to the Dead Sea (half of which is technically in the West Bank according to the Green Line).
I returned from a day at the Dead Sea a couple weeks ago and my host mom asked me how it went. I told her about the fun of lounging in the sea and spreading mud all over ourselves; how we almost weren't allowed in because our bus driver was Palestinian (we had to do some negotiating with the soldiers at the checkpoint). She was happy that I had a good time, but there are no words to describe the look on her face as she said, "Well, we can never go there."

I spent Saturday with a friend in Ramallah. We wandered through the markets downtown, grabbed a coffee at "Stars and Bucks," the Palestinian knockoff of Starbucks (in its own way it is so much better). We each got a new piercing and did a bit of shopping. I really had a blast speaking in my broken Arabic to the shopkeepers-inshallah I am improving my language skills every day.
We wandered into a gold jewelery shop and the owner was so happy to discover that we are living in Beit Sahour and volunteering with a group involved in non-violent resistance, that he sent an employee out to buy us a cold drinks from the store next door and welcomed us to his home for dinner the next time we are in Ramallah. He told us of the difficulty of movement for the Palestinians, that they cannot even go to the beach for the day. He was eager share with us the world's misconceptions about Islam and assure us that it is, in reality, a peaceful religion that respects other religions and holds Jesus in very high esteem.
My friend was able to get in touch with her friend who lives just outside of Ramallah- They met at a youth peace delegation in Egypt four years ago. It was great to see them reunite after so long. We did a little more shopping, stopped for ice-cream and then went back to her house in a nearby village.
The landscape just took my breath away as we wound up a road surrounded by hundreds of olive trees. We picked some peaches from the trees that lined the driveway before going inside the house. From the upper balcony on a clear day, you can see to Tel Aviv and the Mediterranean Sea in one direction and then to the mountains of Jordan in the other.
There is something about this land. It is hard to describe what it is exactly, but it has this enchanting quality-so much blood has been shed over it.
As always, when welcomed into a Palestinian household, we were offered several cups of coffee and tea and were fed until we were about to pop.
Before leaving, we listened to our friend's mom speak about her experience since the Nakba ("Catastrophe" in Arabic referring to 1948-when Israel declared independence and Palestinians were expelled from their lands). She told us the story of her Aunt who was displaced from her home in what is now Ein Kerem, Jerusalem and forced to live as a refugee- her house still stands and is now occupied by and Israeli family. She told us of her husband's land surrounding their house that was stolen by the nearby Israeli settlement: How the water resources are being channeled to these settlements while Palestinians often go days without water. Her husband had to spent ten years working in the States in order for the family to keep their land and their house because there is very little employment in Palestine- she raised her children alone those ten years.
But in the end, she spoke of her hope: that Occupation will not last forever and Palestine will one day be a nation. It was so inspiring to hear her speak of this hope- Even I have fallen into periods of despair here in Palestine and I am only witnessing the situation -she has endured it her whole life.

We took a shared taxi home from Ramallah after it got dark. There is a checkpoint between Ramallah and Bethlehem (despite the fact that it is a Palestinian only road in the middle of the West Bank). As we were passing through, the Israeli soldier happened to shine the flashlight in the car and saw me and my friend in the back. He started yelling for us to stop- Several soldiers ran over to the car and yelled at the driver:
"Where are you going?!"
He replied calmly, "To Bethlehem"
Then they turned to us- blinding us with the flashlight-
"Where are YOU going"
"to Bethlehem"
"Where are you from"
"Bethlehem"
Again the soldier asked, "Where are you going?!"
(By this point I was getting a bit fed up)
"We are going to Bethlehem. We LIVE in Bethlehem"
"Where are you from?"
"America, but we live in Bethlehem!"
"Do you know where you are going?"
"YES. WE LIVE IN BETHLEHEM!"
"ok, have fun," we heard them remark sarcastically as they slammed the door.
We drove away and everyone in the taxi burst out laughing.
A perfect end to an awesome day.

Life goes on.

I am finding that in the few free moments I have to sit down and write about my time here in Palestine, I am at a loss of words. Perhaps because it takes too much mental, emotional and spiritual energy to write about my experiences here. When I first arrived, I wanted to shout about all the injustices I see here , to expose what is really happening on the ground: what the rest of the world just can't see through such the limited lenses of the media. But it gets harder and harder to only speak the oppression and the suffering without rejoicing in the beauty of the people and the culture here in Palestine that cannot be marred by the ugly wall that closes in on all sides.
Everyday I wake up to a rooster and the man yelling "caik caik! ...caik caik!" outside my window. I sit and have delicious thick-as-mud coffee with my host mom before heading out for the day. By the time I huff and puff up the gigantic hill that takes me to the old city of Beit Sahour, I meet the "caik" man pushing his cart of bread and a woman sitting on the ground with a spread of grape leaves for sale. I hold my breath through the alley where they keep chickens and sell fakous (a mix between a zucchini and a cucumber, famous here in Beit Sahour). This week I bought a kilo of fakous for 5 shekels and brought them in to the clinic for the staff- just a meager offering for their continued kindness- they are constantly giving me food and tea.
After spending the morning at the clinic, I catch a rickety old bus up to the Bethlehem bus station and then hop in another shared taxi to get the Bethlehem Bible College where I have Arabic class. The heat is sometimes unbearable sitting shoulder to shoulder in that taxi... and perhaps I feel slightly more claustrophobic as we loop around next to the Wall and the Azzeh Refugee Camp that houses thousands within a half square kilometer. I find that you can't quite escape from the presence that wall , the watchtowers and the graffiti that continually asks "Where is the Peace?"
I love walking through the market from the bus stop in Beit Jala to Manger Square in Bethlehem. I don't have to buy anything, but just to walk through and take in the sights and sounds and smells is enough. When I practice speaking Arabic with shopkeepers and they find that I am living here in Beit Sahour and volunteering, I am not just a tourist but a friend... By the time I reach Manger Square I am full from sweet tea and coffee and great conversation.

At the clinic yesterday one of the doctors asked me how I find the people of Palestine. I replied that I love the people, that they have welcomed me as family. He said "then you must go home and tell them that we are nice, the Palestinian people. People do not know this."

wedding bells

My host mom's sister got married last night.
I borrowed a dress from one of the women in the family (I don't know who exactly) after trying on several to no avail- apparently I am taller than most women here.
My host cousin decided he would pay for me to get my hair done. (He also later decided to be my body guard for the evening). My host mom did my make up: I don't think I have ever worn so much blue eye shadow in my life.
The wedding party was a blast. After the church ceremony we all proceeded to the reception hall- There were about two hundred people, which is a small number of guests, considering my host mom had over 600 people at her wedding. Inevitably the guest list grows as my host mom put it, in Beit Sahour "if you are not family, you are a neighbor or a friend."
When the bride and groom arrived everyone hit the dance floor and they were quickly lifted up on chairs above our heads as everyone clapped and danced to the live band.
There was so much food, music and dancing. I think I may have done some permanent damage to my feet from dancing in such high heels, but it was well worth it!
We finally stumbled into bed around two-thirty in the morning...

Margaret Thatcher.

I think this exact conversation has repeated itself about 10 times in the past week, not including 4 times today:
(Meeting someone for the first time)
Me: Marhaban! (Hello)
Reply: Ahlan wa sahlan! Kief halik? (Welcome! how are you?)
Me: mabsuta, shukran (I'm good, thank you)
Reply: Shoo Ismik? (What is your name?)
Me: Margaret
Reply: Margaret Thatcher!!

Home. بيت ساحور‎

This past week has been a whirlwind of experiences and I have hardly had a spare moment to process any of it! I am now living in Beit Sahour, Palestine, home to shepherd's fields where the angels proclaimed the birth of the Saviour 2000 years ago.
I will spent the next two months volunteering at the Beit Sahour Medical Center and studying Arabic at the Bethlehem Bible College. I am here on a program called the Palestine Summer Encounter that was created through a partnership between the Holy Land Trust and the Middle East Fellowship.
I live with a beautiful Palestinian couple and their 10 month old daughter (with grandparents, nieces, cousins living right upstairs in the same building). My host Dad works in an olive wood shop carving smaller pieces, while my host mom is a 1-3rd grade teacher in Bethlehem. I have been truly welcomed into this family and I cannot be more thankful for the hospitality I have received from all the people I have met here in Palestine.

***

We met with ICAHD, the Israeli Committee Against Housing Demolition on Sunday and went on a tour with them throughout East Jerusalem to witness the situation there. We wound our way from West to East Jerusalem noticing the marked change in scenery: there is a grave lack of municipal services (trash pick up, street lights, paved roads, sidewalks etc...) throughout East Jerusalem- despite the fact that its inhabitants pay the same taxes to the same municipalities as their neighbors on the West side of the city.
In addition, the Israeli government has been systematically (or rather arbitrarily) demolishing the homes of thousands of Palestinian families living in East Jerusalem and the West Bank since 1967 . Under the current system, it virtually impossible for Palestinians to obtain building permits for their own land. Often a house will be demolished, citing that is built on an area zoned as "empty space." Once the land has been sold to an Israeli, the zoning of the area is changed to allow for building on the land. We stopped outside one demolished building that, only two years ago, housed 35 families. No alternate housing is given to these families who lose their homes. They often will stay in a tent on the site of their demolished house until they can be taken in by family.
The incredible injustice of this system is just unbelievable.

(April 14, 2008)

"Yunis Sbeih, his wife and eight children had lived in their home for four years in the East Jerusalem neighborhood of Anata. This morning while Mr. Sbeih was consulting with his lawyer about a home demolition order he received four days ago, his wife called to say that bulldozers had arrived at his home....
By the time the activists arrived, the police and Israeli Army had cordoned off the house, giving the family just half an hour to remove their belongings. Then the giant jackhammer attached to the bulldozer began its ugly work, systematically destroying the fruit of decades of Sbeih family savings....
Once the house had been completely destroyed the jackhammer turned its attention to the surrounding trees, and the recently poured concrete slab that was intended for an addition to the original home....
While all this was happening the hapless family was forced to sit nearby, surrounded by soldiers and police, and watch their whole life collapse. Was this a terrorist family? Had a family member committed a heinous crime? No. The Sbeih family story is similar to thousands of other families in the Jerusalem area who are trying to build lives for themselves and their children." -Fred Schlomka (ICAHD)

***

I am just blown away by the beauty and resilience of the people here. It is a very hard life under the Occupation and yet life must go on, even as the world seems to close their eyes and turn away from the reality of what is happening here.

Israel's dilemma over sick Gazans

Will anyone pay attention?

Israelis exume Palestinian graves in Yaffa, demolishing 500 buildings 17.05.08 - 16:32 Fadi Yacoub / exclusive / PNN – The Palestinian town of Jaffa on the coast inside Israeli boundaries is in serious trouble. The Municipality of Tel Aviv announced it would evict residents and destroy 500 Palestinian buildings. Bulldozing activities have also begun on what are now the ruins of graves. Corpses are being exhumed from Arab cemeteries, not just in Jaffa, but also in Jerusalem. The Israeli administration is working its policy of ethnic cleansing; there is no other way to put it. The cultural heritage of Palestine is being destroyed, along with the lives of the native inhabitants. Instead of revitalizing the buildings, they are destroying them to make way for high rises and Jewish Israeli homes, as Dr. Nazmi of the Riwaq Center has told a PNN editor. Refat Turk, a Palestinian member of the Tel Aviv Board, said, “There is a cemetery for Muslims and one is 80 acres wide, filled with agents have confiscated 40 dunums of the country and the Supreme Court ruled that those acres will go to a Jewish company to invest in building There is an illegal deal ongoing.” Palestinian Muslims and Christians are facing the same fate. He pointed out that left no difference between Muslim and Christians in the case of expropriation of land or houses. Turk said, “I will try to do everything I can in this country that calls itself a democracy. There are streets in need of rehabilitation, but the requests go unheeded. We tried at least to rename some of them, those that are in Palestinian neighborhoods, to Arabic names such as ‘Taha Hussein, Nizar Qabbani, Umm Kulthum,’ and other Arab names instead of the Jewish names for the streets and have submited requests that have been rejected by the authorities." There are demonstrations taking place to at least save the graves that are being confiscated. On Saturday from dawn until 4:00 there are “tractor shovels with big bulldozers digging up the graves and corpses and skeletons,” and protests along with it. Turk said, “No one is paying attention, we have no media covering it.” He concluded by saying, “Our lives are very difficult here.”

hope persists

I found these words of Desmond Tutu to be extremely encouraging and strikingly reflective of my own heart right now. I could not have said it better myself...

"Whenever I am asked if I am optimistic about an end to the Israeli/Palestinian conflict, I say that I am not. Optimism requires clear signs that things are changing -meaningful words and unambiguous actions that point to real progress. I do not yet hear enough meaningful words, nor do I yet see enough unambiguous deeds to justify optimism.
However, that does not mean I am with out hope. I am a Christian. I am constrained by my faith to hope against hope, placing my trust in things yet unseen. Hope persists in the face of evidence to the contrary, undeterred by setbacks and disappointment. Hoping against hope, then, I do believe that a resolution will be found. It will not be perfect, but it can be just; and if it is just, it will usher in a future peace...

From my experience in South Africa I know that truth-telling is hard. It has grave consequences for one's life and reputation. It stretches one's faith, tests one's capacity to love, and pushes hope to the limit. At times, the difficulty of this work can make you wonder if people are right about you, that you are a fool.

No one takes up this work on a do-gooder's whim. It is not a choice. One feels compelled into it. Neither is it work for a little while, but rather for a lifetime - and for more than a lifetime. It is a project bigger than any one life. This long view is a source of encouragement and perseverance. The knowledge that the work preceded us and will go on after us is a fountain of deep gladness that no circumstance can alter.

Nothing, however, diminishes the fear and trembling that accompany speaking the truth to power in love. An acute awareness of fallibility is a constant companion in this task, but because nothing is more important in the current situation than to speak as truthfully as one can, there can be no shrinking from testifying to what one sees and hears.

What do I see and hear in the Holy Land? Some people cannot move freely from one place to another. A wall separates them from their families and from their incomes. They cannot tend to their gardens at home or to their lessons at school. They are arbitrarily demeaned at checkpoints and unnecessarily beleaguered by capricious applications of bureaucratic red tape. I grieve for the damage being done daily to people's souls and bodies. I have to tell the truth: I am reminded of the yoke of oppression that was once our burden in South Africa.

I see and hear that ancient olive trees are uprooted. Flocks are cut off from their pastures and shepherds. The homes of some people are bulldozed even as new homes for others are illegally constructed on other people's land. I grieve for the land that suffers such violence, the marring of its beauty, the loss of its comforts, the despoiling of its yield. I have to tell the truth: I am reminded of the bitter days of uprooting and despoiling in my own country.

I see and hear that young people believe that it is heroic and pious to kill others by killing themselves. They strap bombs to their torsos to achieve liberation. They do not know that liberation achieved by brutality will defraud in the end. I grieve the waste of their lives and of the lives they take, the loss of personal and communal security they cause, and the lust for revenge that follows their crimes, crowding out all reason and restraint. I have to tell the truth: I am reminded of the explosive anger that inflamed South Africa, too."

-Desmond Tutu, former archbishop of Cape Town, South Africa, to see his full article published in the Boston Globe click here

watch, wait and pray

In Hebron today a group of 200 orphaned girls are anxiously waiting. They are waiting for the footsteps of the soldiers. They waiting for a verdict:
Will they be evicted from their only remaining home?

Israel has ordered that the orphanage, run by the Islamic Charitable Society, be closed on April 1st (an eviction notice was given just 30 days ago). Israeli soldiers have already conducted several raids of the supply warehouse that contained food for the orphans and the offices of the Charitable Society, taking with them an estimated $200,000 worth of supplies. Several shop keepers who rent space from the Islamic Charitable society are also threatened with losing their livelihood. The Islamic Charitable society offers social services to over 7,000 children- services that are all subject to threatened raids and closures.
The orders for closure are based on the claim of suspected links between the Islamic Charitable Society and Hamas, although this claim has been refuted by the board members of the Charity.
There is an appeal currently going through Israeli Supreme Court that will run out in 2 days.
Here I truly recognize my inability to understand. I do not understand why orphans should be collectively punished for the actions of extremists. I do not understand the type of fear that enslaves Israel to make it possible for those in power to justify actions such as these in the name of "security."
Some of my fellow international friends from the Jerusalem area and members of the Christian Peacemaker Team in Hebron spent last night with the girls and their teachers, in solidarity with them and in protest of the threatened eviction. When they arrived they met over 100 yelling women and girls followed by the men, protesting in the streets. If the situation continues through the week I hope to join them.
Are we not to plead the case of the orphan?

Right now the courts remain silent.
Please join me in prayer for this situation, for these little ones, that justice and mercy will prevail.
For more on this story...
Palestinian-orphans-protest-after-their-facilities-are-raided-by-Israeli-troops April 1, 2008

When Charity Ends at Home (Haaretz.com)

An opportunity for my dear friends in the Philadelphia area to listen to a narrative that has been silenced for too long...
Students For Justice in Palestine present Palestine Awareness Week:
http://www.pennsjp.com/iWeb/Palestine%20Week/Palestine%20Week.html

Blessed are the peacemakers...

It is scary to try to see the world through the eyes of the "other." What is even more frightening is realizing, not on a surface level, but in your inner core, that you truly do not understand his point of view. It is when you realize that the bias or lens through which you see the world prevents you from knowing exactly what it is that the other person is saying, that dialogue can begin.
It is far better to know that you do not understand, than only to educate yourself about the other, believing that by education you have the perfect ability to see the situation as they do. It is at this point that you realize your ears have been closed to what the other is truly saying, in spite of now being able to list the facts of his grievances by memory. You have only reacted to his narrative- you have not digested it and felt it with him . It takes great vulnerability to reach this point of knowing your inability to understand. But this does not mean you have to abandon your roots or beliefs to get there. In actuality you must know yourself very well to realize how great you are lacking in knowledge and understanding.
In other words, it takes great humility to work for peace with an enemy and even greater humility to love him.

a day of mourning.

I woke up early today and headed to Old City to attend a service at the Lutheran Church of the Redeemer. It was quiet in the Old City this morning, Arab shops were all closed in mourning and in solidarity with the people of Gaza. The death toll has risen to 100 in Gaza and others were hurt and killed in protests today throughout the West Bank and occupied East Jerusalem.
We heard report sent from one of the parishioners who is working as a surgeon in Gaza and the news is devastating. She reported the difficulties of tending to the dead and wounded in Gaza with limited resources available after Israel has blocked entry of goods to Gaza since July. She told of one Palestinian man who was tending to his goats when he was hit causing him to lose his legs. He is young, newly married with young children. It will be very difficult, if not impossible for him to receive any kind of prosthesis, to regain any sort of livelihood.
The current raid on Gaza cannot be called anything but horrific, it MUST stop. I am thankful that finally the international community is beginning to open their mouths, but to what avail I do not know. Is it enough just to speak of justice?
A rabbi who was attending the service as a tour guide for a Christian group from the UK stood up at the end of service and stated that he found the church was remiss for not including the residents of Sderot in the prayers today. (The residents of Sderot and the surrounding region have endured Hamas rocket attacks for the past seven years leaving them in a constant state of fear and anxiety, killing and wounding some.) I am glad he stood up. We must remember while we mourn and pray for our bothers and sisters in Gaza today, that the Israeli people too are mothers and fathers and sons, daughters, friends, sisters and brothers.
My mind is swimming and I can't even begin to focus on schoolwork. My classmates and have been talking about changing our bus commute (we spend about two hours a day commuting across the city on Egged lines) so that it is not during rush hour.
I do not want to proceed, however, in a spirit of fear.

reality.

I spent this Sabbath day lounging in the sun, reading for my nursing classes, determined to truly rest and purposely did not turn on my computer. It was a beautiful day. However, I got back from a nice jog this afternoon only to read the news of massive Israeli attacks on Gaza today that left over 45 Palestinians dead including civilians and children. I read the report on NPR (from the AP), the Jerusalem Post and Aljazeera-all have a slightly different twist but all three reported the possibility of a massive ground IDF attack on Gaza in the near future. The words "genocide" and even "holocaust" are being thrown around on the ground and it makes me wonder when the outside world is going to listen.

Chief Palestinian negotiator Ahmed Qureia said Palestinian leaders, including President Mahmoud Abbas, recommended suspending peace talks at a meeting Saturday in the West Bank town of Ramallah.

"I think it will be suspended," Qureia said. "What is happening in Gaza is a massacre of civilians, women and children, a collective killing, genocide," Qureia added. "We can't bear what the Israelis are doing, and what the Israelis are doing doesn't led the peace process any credibility." (for full NPR story go to http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=18323622)

Israel is waiting for Hamas to stop rocket fire into southern Israel before they will stop their attacks on Gaza, while Hamas says the same in reverse. When will they both realize (or at least care) that they are destroying the lives Palestinian and Israeli civilians caught in the crossfire? It is not a zero-sum game, but everyone acts like it. If this ground attack takes place there is going to be a huge backlash and I can only pray that it is a peaceful uprising.
God have mercy.

Would that you, even you, had known on this day the things that make for peace!

I have been living here in Jerusalem for over a month now. I have opened up my blog to post about ten times to no avail- I am simply overwhelmed with the weight and number of profound experiences here that I cannot seem to find a place to start to spill them on paper-let alone on the internet.
How might I describe this place I am in? Jerusalem, Israel, Palestine.- It is a beautiful city, a heavy city- weighed down by tension- political tension, religious tension, a collision of faiths, a collision of the secular with the holy. Continually I must ask where my place is in all of this as an international observer, a student, a nurse, a follower of Jesus. I have been swinging between great despair and frustration and great hope in the face of the situation here, to the point that I feel slightly bipolar. Seeing the reality of checkpoints, the separation wall, the weary eyes of those who have endured here for so long, the great fear and ignorance that oppresses even the oppressors, just makes me so upset that I want to run away from it all- only to find that I cannot be silent about it.
Therefore, I will speak about what is going on here in Israel, or at least around this area of Jerusalem. This is what I see and hear, what I have learned and experienced- there will be many holes in it, for it is an immensely complex situation, but I will share my thoughts in hopes of getting a word out about what is going on here.

***

I am taking a class on conflict resolution at Hebrew University. I am not sure what to expect from it but I am at least finding the reading interesting, despite being mostly theory based...

“Classical conflict resolution, in some views, applies only to symmetric conflicts. In asymmetric conflicts the structure is such that the top-dog always wins, the under-dog always loses. The only way to resolve the conflict is to change the structure, but this can never be in the interests of the top-dog. So there are no win-win outcomes, and the third party has to join forces with the under-dog to bring about a resolution...From another point of view, however, even asymmetric conflicts impose costs on both parties. It is oppressive to be an oppressor, even if not so oppressive as to be oppressed. There are costs for the top-dogs in sustaining themselves in power and keeping the under-dogs down. In severe asymmetric conflicts the cost of the relationship becomes unbearable for both sides. This then opens the possibility for conflict resolution through a shift from the existing structure of relationships to another." (Miall, Ramsbotham, Woodhouse, Contemporary Conflict Resolution)

I find myself asking, has it yet become unbearable for both sides? Are we at a point here in Israel and Palestine where the conflict must be transformed and existing structures challenged?
Apparently, "Conflict Transformation" is not the mainstream way to approach the field of conflict resolution in Israel, it is considered on the more "radical" end of the spectrum because it challenges existing power structures. There is division among peace groups who are critical of each other's method of approaching the struggle for peace. Should we challenge the attitudes of society, the cultural violence (prejudice, justifying the violence)? Or is it best to go straight for combating the structural violence (the marginalization, policies of power that oppress)? What about simply trying to stop the physical violence?
In the apartheid struggle in South Africa, success came in the ability of all of these groups to work together, recognizing that all these facets of conflict must be addressed.

I believe in transformation here.

Today I stopped on my walk home from class to pray. Looking out on the night scape from Mount Scopus, over the sprawling city, the Dome of the Rock reflecting the city lights, I prayed a prayer for hope, not despair, for courage to speak truth in love, for justice and mercy to prevail in this city and for the first time in a few days I felt great peace.