By Rochelle
Hello out there…
I have been here a week and a half now. Unlike my last trip here, I have been able to transition slowly to the change in culture and to really spend time with all the interesting people that are crossing my path while travelling. It has allowed for time to let the complexity of it all sink in and to figure out how best to get around without getting scammed by taxi drivers. I have become comfortable shopping, finding the best bread, freshest fruit and veggies, and determining which of the odd unidentifiable foods I enjoy. It is pomegranate season and there is fresh juice everywhere you go, so good.
It has also been wonderful to have a friend living here in West Jerusalem (where the majority of Israelis live in Jerusalem). Maya is going to Rabbinical school and she has given me a better perspective of the mentality in Israel that allows the occupation to continue. It is so odd to walk into West Jerusalem because all of a sudden
you are in a Western culture, like a street in America except for signs of Judaism are everywhere. Maya took us to the largest Holocaust museum. I have had a lot of exposure to this history through school and having travelled to the Anne Frank House, Dachau, and Holocaust Museum in DC, yet it is always shocking to imagine that humanity can allowed it to happen. They had video screens throughout the museum where survivors told powerful firsthand stories. Understanding this history is so important for all of us, so that we don’t repeat such atrocities and yet, I could not help but think of some of the similarities to todays Palestinian situation. When we walked into the museum the first quote on the wall was something like “A country is not only what it does but also what it tolerates.” Earlier today a 12 year old Palestinian girl was beaten by Israeli settlers on her way to school in front of human rights observers. The observers tried to escort her back to her home and then they were also attacked by the settlers. They called the Israeli police, and when they arrived they arrested the Palestinian girl and detained the observers. The museum ended without any reflection on today. Instead there was a celebration of the British mandate running across a screen calling for an Israeli state, without a single mention of the Palestinians that were about to lose their homes, land, villages, livelihoods. I know many Israelis today do not support the occupation and many are working in solidarity with Palestinians but it still is hard for me to understand how the occupation has come to be. I just feel like we as humans have this fatal flaw, when touched by tremendous suffering rather than having our heart fill with compassion and an inability to allow for others to have to suffer this same pain we end up perpetrating it. In the museum a video of an old jewish man described his cruelty in the camps, having suffered so much that he was harming others to take care of himself instead of standing together. Its so tragic.
Yesterday Serena and I went to a small village called Salim outside of Nablus in the West Bank. We had to go through two check points to get there, one of which we were almost not allowed through due to an Israeli soldier with an M16. We went to this village in order to pick olives with a Palestinian family with many organizations including Rabbis for Human Rights and ISM, the international solidarity movement. Last year during the olive harvest Israeli settlers* came down from a nearby settlement and killed two Salim villagers in their own olive grove. In the past few years settlers have destroyed hundreds of ancient olive trees by cutting them down or starting fires. It was a beautiful sunny day and the family was incredibly appreciative. Last week, Israeli soldiers set up a blockade to prevent the local villagers from accessing their groves, calling it a “closed military zone.” However due to the presence of internationals who approached the soldiers, the villagers were allowed in.
On our way back to Jerusalem we were in a service (a minivan style shared taxi) the sun set and the Ramadan fast was broken. Our driver pulled over and two passengers climbed out returning with juice and dates to share. Half an hour later we ran into a flying checkpoint (a checkpoint that is set up randomly on roads by the Israeli army without notice). Although those with Israeli license tags could pass freely we were stopped and ordered out of the vehicle. Standing on the side of the road they yelled at the Palestinian driver to go back to Nablus, checked our passports and searched the van. We were then ordered to get back in and were told to go back, that we could not continue to Ramallah. Our driver put it in reverse and parked on the side of the road about 50 meters back. We sat there for about twenty minutes until the soldiers waved us ahead. This time the soldier told our driver we could procede, unfortunately we could not understand what the soldier said but we heard “Americans” and “foreigners” and it seemed like we played a role in letting us pass. When we returned to the hostel we learned that there was a suicide bombing claimed by Islamic Jihad in an Israeli town killing 5 citizens in response to last weeks targeted assassinations of Islamic Jihad leaders in the Occupied Territories. Last night the Israeli military responded by bombing a bridge and roads in northern Gaza and announced further retaliation in northern Gaza and the northern West Bank is planned. And the collective punishment continues.
Being on the ground here so much of the story we are told repeatedly about this conflict falls apart. Like if the suicide bombers would stop the conflict would end. That ignores the destruction of the Palestinian economy, the daily acts of intimidation, the regular arrests without charge, detentions that can last for years, the inability for Palestinians to get permits to construct new homes for their growing families, the ID system and apartheid wall currently being built that keeps the Palestinians in Jerusalem from visiting their families in the West Bank or Gaza, and vice versa, all a result of the occupation. To analyze this conflict without looking at this larger picture denies, for me, the real root of Palestinian anger. I do not support their violent response but I also don’t know what their other opportunities to resist such tremendous injustices and human right violations are when our government continues to fund the occupation with out question and their non violent resistance is ignored internationally and often met with violence. I do not have the answers but hope that I can at least share a larger picture of the reality on the ground here.
Please don’t hesitate to respond with any questions or comments at rochelle@riseup.net Today we got word that we did in fact get a permit to enter Gaza, unfortunately all entry is shut due to Israeli raids. We will try to enter next week and are excited to continue the work of the sister city project.
with love and hope,
rochelle
*For those of you who do not know there are 446,000 Israeli settlers who live with in the Occupied Palestinian Territories and East Jerusalem, may of which are ultra-orthodox jews. This is illegal under international law. The number of Jewish settlers in the occupied West Bank has grown by more than 9,000 so far in 2005, according to the Israeli interior ministry. There was a lot of media coverage during last summers evacuation of 7,500 settlers from Gaza and a few hundred from the West Bank however there tends to be very little media coverage of repeated settler violence against Palestinians including, beatings, shootings, poisoning sheep and water supplies, destroying olive trees, etc.
The views and opinions of authors expressed on the ORSCP website and list serve do not necessarily state or reflect those of the Olympia-Rafah Sister City Project.
I have been in Jerusalem (Al-Quds) for over a week now and am feeling more comfortable with each passing day. I have been dividing my time between what feels like different worlds. One day in the Old City of Jerusalem, walking on the Ramparts, the wall of the Old City, one day at Yad Vashem, the Holocaust Museum in Jerusalem, one day breaking Ramadan fast with a Palestinian family in Ramallah. All of this taking place within a few square miles of each other.
Left: Graffitied on a house wall: Rachel who came to Rafah to stoped the tanks but the baldozer killed her and we remember her forever like…
