NL in Nablus

A Last Story

2009-03-27T16:05:00.002+03:00

A last story, about Palestine, about Nablus, about my life here. Six months later, time to go home. After six months I still have no clue where to begin telling about Palestine. It seems the more I’ve lived here, the harder it becomes to explain what Palestine is all about. Palestine is no story, it’s an experience, it’s life. Maybe that can explain my recent absence on this blog.

Reflecting on the past six months, it has been more than worth it. My life in Nablus and especially my work as an English teacher have allowed me to comprehend Palestine even more than before. Nablus is a city where hardly any internationals come to visit and my work gave me the opportunity to interact with ordinary Palestinians. Not just to observe the Palestinian society, its culture and its problems, but to participate in it, to be part of it to a certain extent.

In my classes I didn’t deal with high-roller Palestinians, civil-society leaders. I was given the opportunity to get to know hundreds of common people. To hear about their lives, their goals and dreams. These are the people that are always talked about when you hear the term 'the Palestinian people'. These are the ones that are always discussed in the news and in the so-called 'peace' negotiations between Israel and Palestine. They are more than mere numbers or cases. They are more than an abstract concept or a political label (be it either terrorists or freedom fighters). They are more than lost souls that need our 'benevolent' western help and advice. They are not lost, even though they have suffered so much in the past century and continue to be put through unthinkable misery. They are not lost at all. In fact we are the ones that are being lost and the Israeli people is a people that is being lost.

They know what they are suffering and that they are suffering. They know what they are suffering for. They know who they are and they know their enemy and their struggle. They know exactly what is happening. And after all what has happened to them they still stand for what they believe in, firm and determined, because they know and they feel what they stand for is ultimately right.

I came to Palestine as an English teacher. But the people here have taught me. They taught me about perseverance, resilience, sumud as it is called. I felt how strong their roots are and I became aware that with strong roots nothing can uproot you. Nothing can deviate you from your goal. A tree in a storm is put under a lot of pressure, it will crack and moan, branches might break off, but if the roots of the tree are strong and healthy the tree will live through it, even though you might see it pushed to all sides by the heavy winds.

In Holland I feel we are like a tree that has forgotten about it roots and only wants to grow in the sky, bigger and bigger. But if then a small wind comes along we begin to groan as if the entire universe is coming down on us. We are unaware of our roots and unaware of our struggle, but in fact everyone has a struggle, as life itself is a struggle. We hardly stand for anything, as we’re not really sure what could be worth standing for.

And even though it’s a common tendency to either blame the Palestinians or to feel sorry for them, I can not do either one of them. I can not even feel sorry for them wholeheartedly. As controversial as it may sound, the general feeling I have is one of admiration (with of course some exceptions in individual stories). I admire the strong sense of belonging in Palestinian people, I admire that they are so well-aware of their identity, as the absence of these feelings inside of me gives me the feeling that I’m just wandering around, floating in a huge void. I’m the one that is being lost. I’m the one without a homeland, not them. Even though for the Palestinians the physical homeland has been and is being destroyed and denied to them, they have a homeland that still exists in the Palestinian mind. Far beyond the reach of the Israeli attempts to take it, control it and abuse it. The Palestinian roots can never be destroyed. I felt this here.

With strong roots you don’t need, or depend on, protection mechanisms, or external support. You will be able to endure the storm by yourself. The power comes from within and no can external mechanism can ever equal its power.
The Palestinians are fighting their fight largely without weapons, but still they manage to withstand the Israeli state that is armed to its teeth. Why and how? Because they rely upon real power: the power from within. Their roots and minds have shown to be strong enough to endure all the violence Israeli weapons and wars have inflicted upon them.

Israel on the other hand can not maintain is existence without violence, without weapons and without war and they are well aware of this. They know that they are weak. Everything they are, everything they stand for, everything they believe in: it’s all an illusion. A myth. There’s no such thing as an Israeli people or even a Jewish people. The Israeli bestseller from historian Shlomo Sand, based on extensive research, states that the idea of a Jewish people is an invention, created around a century ago for political purposes: the establishment of a colonial Zionist state in the land of Palestine. The Jewish inhabitants of the state of Israel mostly have no historical connections to the land and don’t have much more in common with each other than that they believe in the same myth.

I met Israelis and I talked to them. They give me the impression of a scared people. Traumatized, slightly paranoid that the entire world is against them. At the same time when I look at them they make me feel like they know that they are wrong. I’m convinced that deep deep down inside them, they are completely aware of the illusion they are and the lie they are living. In my eyes this is their ultimate fear: to come to accept that they are without roots, that they are lost. They continuously try to rationalize and argue this fear away, as well as externalize the fear on anyone that is not Jewish, with of course the Palestinians and other Arabs as the perfect scary monsters.

Israel has built all the available protection mechanisms around its dying tree. But no windshield is strong enough to keep up a tree that is without roots: a state that has been built on stolen land. You can not build a house without a foundation. You might be living in it comfortably for many years, under the impression that you have it made, but in the end it will collapse when even the slightest amount of pressure is put on it. The story of the three little piglets all of a sudden has come to show me great philosophical meaning.

But for the time being the windshield offers a little protection. Without that kind of protection the Israeli tree will collapse sooner than we hold possible. And not because the oppression and killing of Palestinians is effectively preventing Palestinians from murdering the Israeli people (the Palestinian have never shown any sign of blind hatred or anti-Semitic feelings towards Jewish people), no… without any protection the tree will collapse from its own weak roots. Without the ability to externalize the Israeli feelings of fear, without a common enemy that is out there ‘to hunt them down to the end’ it is almost inevitable that the Israeli people will have to look inward and see that in fact they are their own enemy.

This is why Israel attacked Gaza, this is why Israel can not allow itself to make peace with the Palestinians. And by peace I of course don’t mean the joke of the Oslo peace process, as this peace was only established to continue the occupation of Palestine by different means, to crush the Palestinian resistance by dividing them amongst themselves, and to ‘restore’ the Israeli image in the world, that was severely damaged when the world was observing the true face of Israel in the first Intifada. I mean peace without the upsetting taste of racism and Apartheid. Peace would mean that Israel can not maintain its existence, as Israel can not maintain its existence without their Apartheid ‘windshield’ and without considering the Palestinians as their ultimate enemy.

Let me end with expressing my eternal gratefulness for the past six months and for all the amazing people and life lessons I bumped into. I was given the experience to feel what all the academic concepts I’ve been taught in Conflict Studies really entail. Freedom, peace, violence, fear, anger, resistance and power were more or less abstract notions to me. I understood them from a distance (some more than others), but by being here I encountered them… I invited them inside. I know their faces now and I consider it one of the best experiences that has ever crossed my path.

The power of humour

2009-02-12T00:06:00.003+02:00

Palestine... how good it is to be back, how hard it is to be back. I've arrived almost a week ago from Egypt... but in this week I've seen it all again. I visited almost every city in Palestine: Jerusalem, Ramallah, Nablus, Bethlehem, Jenin, Hebron and on top of that I've ran into all the features of the Israeli occupation, again... The checkpoints, the settlers, the wall, the refugees, the violence, the roadblocks, the random arrests, the economic hardships of the Palestinians, the personal stories of traumas and suffering. It is all too much. All too much to mention in a blog like this. But let me try to give you a clue of what I've been through and of what people go through here on a day to day basis.

The second day I was back, I went to Bethlehem. When I was sitting in the service (the shared taxi) and we passed an Israeli settlement close to Ramallah, I all of a sudden heard the loud and upsetting noise of a stone against the window I was sitting behind. A stone. I saw a settler man standing in the distance looking at me very upset. I was too surprised to realize what had just happened and wasn't really shocked or scared, because it's just beyond imagination that such a thing can happen if you're simply sitting in a car.

In Bethlehem I visited a Palestinian family. During the nice chit-chat, the mother of the family recalled old memories of the first and second Intifada. How her children had been screaming every time her house was invaded by Israeli soldiers. And how one soldier one time tried to make the children feel more comfortable by trying to get the children to shake his hands. Normal stories, nothing special... at least not here in Palestine.
From the window of their building she showed me their neighbor's house that had been completely demolished by the Israeli army, because the father of that family had been a resistance fighter. The house was being rebuild with financial help of Hizbollah.

On friday I went to Bil'in to join in the weekly protest against the building of the separation wall that steals 60% of the land of the village. For four years now the villagers have been demonstrating against this, largely non-violently (except for stone-hurling by some local youths), largely without success... even though the Israeli high court has decided that the route of the wall needed to be changed a little in favour of the people in Bil'in.
Can you imagine that these people try to walk up to the wall every week. Every week with both hands in the air, and their fingers making the peace sign. Every week just trying to get to the wall, to talk with the soldiers, to let their voices be heard. Every week these attempts are met with the most outrageous violence from the side of the Israeli army. Tear gas granades are fired, often accompanied with rubber-coated or even live bullets, sound weapons are used to disperse the crowd, because Palestinians are not allowed to demonstrate... not even non-violently.
When I was there I walked up with the villagers and stood right next to the gate that prevents the Palestinians from reaching their land and the site where the wall is being built. After the Palestinian made it clear that they came in peace the Israeli soldiers made it perfectly clear that they just want the Palestinians to rest in peace and started firing tear gas granades right away. Please note that at this point not a single stone was being thrown by the protesters at the gate. After the first two tear gas grenades were being fired into the air, the next ones were being fired right at us... with a dazzling speed they came in our direction. Luckily everyone managed to escape them, because if such a thing hits you, you will suffer from serious burns.
A few minutes later most of the first ranks of protesters were hit by the teargas and had to pull back, including me. Quite a dangerous situation, because the teargas and the effects it has on your body make you completely forget about the entire situation around you. It burns on your face and you can not see and all you care about is to get rid of that feeling. But in the meantime the teargas is still being fired and you're not paying attention where it is being fired, because you've stopped to care. It was the first time I was being targeted and confronted with violence so directly. But I didn't realize that until I was lying in my bed at night. It felt so familiar, so normal. I wasn't scared at all. I just ran in all directions to escape the grenades as if it was the most common thing to do.
All my respect to the people that go through this process at least once a week.

In the past few days I went to visit Bethlehem and Hebron with some friends. We had rented an Israeli license plate car and went on the Palestinian road to Bethlehem (not through Jerusalem, because that is not allowed for Palestinians... and one of us was Palestinian, although with an American passport that contains a stamp stating that this passport is not valid in Israel!!) We were nearly in Bethlehem when we were stopped at the Wadi Nar checkpoint. The soldiers told us that we couldn't pass this checkpoint because of the Israeli car. Complete nonsense, because Israeli cars pass there all the time. But nothing worked on them, so in the end we had to turn around and go back. Rejected at a checkpoint. We had to go back all the way to a big Israeli settlement to use the (settler) passing there into Jerusalem (to reach Bethlehem inside the West Bank). Illegally smuggling the Palestinian in our car into so-called Israel. All this makes you feel like a criminal, even though we had no bad intentions and were not really doing anything wrong and we didn't even want to go inside 'Israel'. All we wanted to do was visit some nice places and hang out as friends do all over the world.

After that we went to crazy Hebron (the only city with violent Israeli settlers living inside a Palestinian city, terrorizing the local population)... always crazy, always violent and bizarre... so of course we ran into extraordinary situations here. But let me not go into all the details here. Just think of checkpoints around every corner in the old city, a lot of bizarre questioning by Israeli soldiers, such as: What is your religion? If you give the 'right' answer you can pass... and a Palestinian population desperate to survive and trying to persuade you to buy their products because there's simply no customers.

In the evening we visited Dheisheh refugee camp where we met with the amazing general generosity of Palestinian people. Living in the camp, right next to the entrance they had been through a lot. Torture, arrests, attempted assasinations, being held under (tank) fire, having Israeli soldiers "camp" at their roof, seeing their friends being killed... you name it.

When we went back to Ramallah there was a traffic jam about 1km away from Qalandia. After a while we came to realize that it was most likely something of a checkpoint. I had never seen such a thing and was a bit worried. We saw guys with flashlights, casually dressed wearing hoods and shorts. What was going on? Then we saw the guys, which seemed to be Ethiopian jews, checking people's passports and wearing machine guns. What the FCK?!? What to do? Turn around and risk being shot at? Wait our turns and risk being shot at? You just don't know what is possible. They didn't look trustworthy to say the least. The line began to shrink until there were only one or two cars in front of us and all of a sudden an Israeli police car drove by. It didn't stop, nor did it slow down... but the armed guys immediately got into their car and drove away as if nothing had happened. We were shocked. The most bizarre thoughts ran through our heads. Who were these guys? It seemed as if it were just settlers that had put up their own checkpoint and when the police saw them they knew they had to go. And as if the police didn't really disapprove, so they just drove by, giving them a silent sign to go, to prevent them from being arrested. I still don't really know, but it was pretty fcked up scary.

Today when I reached Huwarra checkpoint in the service from Ramallah there was a huge army presence around the checkpoint. I saw all different kinds of armed vehicles and wondered what was going on. When we approached I saw a shitload of soldiers surrounding a couple of blind-folded and handcuffed Palestinians. In the parkinglot I asked a man what was going on. He told me that a few settlers had begun throwing stones at Palestinians close to the checkpoint. Then the army came and the soldiers accused the Palestinians of throwing stones, giving them a "legitimate" reason to arrest them. Sadly this is quite normal as well. Whenever there's settler violence against Palestinians the Israelis like to put the blame on the actual victims of that situation.

And then there's still too much other stuff. Too much... literally. How to deal with this? How to deal with being exposed to the reality of violence and occupation. To be honest... a lot of times you don't really know, a lot of times you're quite okay, but in the deepest moments when you feel you've really been exposed too intensely there's one thing that helps: humour.

The power of humour is astonishing. Who told us that it is impossible to be scared and laugh your head of at the same time? Why can't things that are depressingly sad not be extremely funny as well?
The guys in Dheisheh camp told us their stories with so much humour, irony and charm that it was almost impossible not to laugh. I couldn't stop laughing when one of them told me when he had been dragged outside his house and tortured by soldiers, when he was not wearing much more than his underwear, he managed to sneak inside when they were distracted for a second to, as he said it, "put on some nice cloths"....
After our freaky ninja-settler checkpoint experience we were almost crying of laughter, because of what we had just encountered. Joking around about all the things that could have happened if the police hadn't passed by.

In Bil'in when me and a small group of not even 10 people went up again for a second encounter with the Israeli soldiers, we sat down behind a small wall... sitting in the sun, surrounded by beautiful olive trees and we were singing (Arabic protest songs)... singing and clapping and smiling... as the teargas grenades fired over our heads. A small bubble of sincere happiness in an extremely depressing setting of violence and prolonged injustice and suffering.

This is how I cope, this is what makes it all worth it. Laughing, enjoying, having fun, smiling. All the things that the Israeli army doesn't want Palestinians to do. This is the core of the Palestinian resilience I've talked about before... Sumud.. steadfastness... all made possible by the relativating power of humour.

The Gaza ceasefire - Time to reconsider

2009-01-28T18:12:00.005+02:00

As you might all know, a ceasefire in Gaza was established. Not because of benevolent considerations, but because it needed to happen. It was planned, as this entire military operation was planned well in advance. An Egyptian friend of mine informed me that the fighting needed to and would be stopped before the 18th of the month, because of the inauguration of Obama. I was not completely sure of his assessment, but he assured me that this was how things were about to unfold and I would come to acknowledge that he was right. And so he was... completely... a ceasfire: A time to reconsider the next steps, and to evaluate the outcomes and impact of three weks of fighting, with 1300 people being killed, 5500 wounded and about 100.000 made homeless.

Time to reconsider, for me as well. This ceasefire is my ceasefire, although my survival is not really at stake of course. Nonetheless,the three weeks of fighting have had its toll on me. Sometimes it's like the entire war in Gazais also fought out at the personal level. An invisible mini version of the war inside my head.
Over three weeks I've been fighting with my own weapons, even though their impact has been very limited at best, or even close to zero if I'm being honest enough to be realistic.

My trip to Egypt, to Al Arish and the Rafah border crossing have exposed me to the violence in Gaza and made it real for me. I saw, as far as I was able to see that the war was not just going on at the Al Jazeera tv channels. Wow... real war, with real victims, even though only a glimpse of it was revealed to me. I saw and heard the numerous explosions at the Rafah border, watching in shock how the rockets "slowly" fell down on Palestinian soil. Without being able to know the exact consequences , leaving it to my imagination to do the math.
This combined with hanging out with my Palestinian friends from Gaza, meeting others that were affected, hearing the stories, watching the news, travelling back and forth between Taba, Al Arish and Cairo, dealing with the fascist Egyptian police and just by being in the crazy jungle called Cairo, that is a lethal energy sucker itself, have left me beyond being emotionally and energetically drained.
It was time for a ceasefire, inside my head. Regroup, rearm, re-energize, reconsider altogether. My combat units had just completely destroyed all the civilians infrastructure in my mind, killing many of my civilians that were just against the fighting and that were only looking for ways to live a calm and simple life.
Now it's time to look for survivors under the rumble of the effects of war.

In the end there's not a lot of difference between physical and mental fighting. And even, and I'm truly shocked to say this as I never imagined myself saying such a thing, between fighting for a just cause and fighting for an unjust cause.
By that I mean: We should be completely aware that any fighting is violent and kills a lot, whether inside or outside yourself. My mental fight for a just cause, for Palestine, for Gaza, has created a lot of internal casualties and refugees.

When reading my own words, I'm surprised that these are mine. I've never thought about this, or like this, before and it is unfolding as I am writing this. Most likely way too deep for a simple blog like this... but as is Palestine itself... so whatever.

I don't mean to say that fighting for Palestine is useless or that I, myself want to give up my struggle for Palestine. I'm just saying that it comes at a price and we should not forget about that.

So time for a ceasefire. I'm currently in Taba right now and I've already been here quite some time, but I really need it. I went back to my friends at the beach camp and they've re-welcomed me with open arms. It has everything I need to get myself completely back together again: there's no people, no traffic, no noise. Instead there's the beach, the sea, the sand and stones, the sun, the moon and the stars and daily camp fires with cups of tea and laid-back conversations about life. But most of all, I refound myself there. Time to reconsider: Who am I? What do I want with my life? Why do I engage myself so deeply in this struggle? In the end I feel from inside that it's not my struggle, but why then do I identify myself so profoundly with it?? No easy answers available. But this place gives me so much new energy that in a few days I will be ready again to go back to Palestine and tackle these issues inside of me.

The Gaza experience in Egypt

2009-01-28T16:00:00.006+02:00

When I was in Al Arish I coincidentally met a Palestinian from Gaza in an internet cafe. Within the first 15 minutes he had already told me a lot of sensitive information about himself. He informed me that he had come to Al Arish through the tunnels that Palestinians have made under the border with Egypt. He showed my a wound on his arm...a result of his 'trip' to Egypt. He was working in the tunnels with several others, transporting food, clothing and medicines for the people in Gaza when the tunnel all of a sudden got bombed. Three of the people he was with got killed. He managed to escape to Egypt, where he went to stay with two Palestinian friends that were legally residing in Egypt.
He also told me how he had been in prison for 1 year and 8 months until five months ago. There he had been mistreated considerably, with the Israeli guards tying his arms and legs to a chair every day for 12 hours, 40 days in a row, forcing him to admit that he was Hamas and that he was making qassam rockets. The first being not true, but the second was. Damn... Welcome to Gaza, where violence is just interwoven with daily life.

In the days after, me and another volunteer from Nablus that had come to Al Arish as well, hang out with our newly made 'tunnelfriends' a lot. They helped us considerably, taking us to the border with Gaza and by just being nice and opening their house for us. We had so much fun, almost as if there was no war in Gaza. Their behavior seemed normal, they were laughing and joking around. In the meanwhile, the police was posting outside of the house, most likely because it's not normal for them to hang out with internationals, but possibly as well because they were Palestinians. Just enjoying life and hanging out is a tricky business here in Egypt and not entirely without risks...as I said: welcome to fascist Egypt, where the state determines who can be your friend.

So their house became like a happy little bubble, devote of the outside reality of the war in Gaza and the Egyptian totalitarian police. But as is the thing with bubbles, sooner or later they crack. And so did this bubble. The first little crack showed up the night me and Henry were invited to sleep in their house. When I woke up in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom I saw two of them sitting in a dark room, anxiously making telephone calls. The air was tense and I knew that something was wrong. When I walked up to them I saw the despair in their eyes, leaving not much behind of the happy "tough" guys from before, these were five-year olds in the bodies of grown ups. Israel was bombing the area where they lived and had destroyed their family's house. Never before have I seen fear in such a pure and intense way, but in their eyes it was there. They couldn't reach their family, because the telephones there were hardly working and with every attempt I saw their fear grow and their bodies shrunk. In the end they managed to get a hold of them, using my Palestinian Jawwal sim, instead of their Egyptian ones. The family was fine, home-less... but fine.

The final burst came after a few days. While we were listening to music the doorbell rang... within no-time the house was filled with Egyptian secret service agents questioning us. They arrested the Palestinians and me and the other volunteer were also taken to the police for interrogation. Serious trouble...

In the police station I was questioned first. The police man was quite nice and polite and assured me that we as internationals would be fine.. Yes of course, the perverse power of a Western passport. At a certain point the officer told me that I shouldn't be hanging out with Palestinians in Egypt in the future, because it puts me in danger. I replied that I wouldn't change my behavior. He looked at me slightly surprised by such straightforwardness. I explained him: I like Palestinians, they are great people and I don't think there's anything wrong with hanging out with them. He replied: yes.... I like Palestinians too, but...
AH! The Egyptian 'but'...BUT not really, BUT only as far as it pays. As I've said in my previous post, the official 'but' is: we need to protect the security of our country.... Yes... BUT, and I take full credit for this last but, this is not the entire story.

Many people would say that Egypt is tight friends with Israel. At first I thought like that too. But not really. Egypt only sucks up to Israel when it has a clear political or financial interest to do so... so not a case of true and warm friendship. Political opportunism at the expense of suffering Palestinian civilians.
Why would Egypt not open the border and why would Egypt allow Israel to bomb the tunnels connecting Gaza with Egypt? It seems irrational if you realize that Egypt would gain a lot from opening the borders and is gaining a lot from the illegal tunnel trade. Business in Al Arish is benefiting from the dire situation in Gaza. When the border was blown up last year people from Gaza flooded into Al Arish to do shopping and spent their money.

Israel knows that and that's exactly why Tzipi Livni, the monster herself, went to pay Hosni Mubarak (the Egyptian president) a visit with Christmas...only days before the Israeli invasion of Gaza. If Israel wanted to have Egypt's approval for this war it needed to 'compensate' Egypt for the financial losses this war would bring for Egypt, in terms of lost trade revenues. So you get this amount from the tunnels? We will double it if you can assure us that you keep the borders closed. Great! Everybody happy... and the Palestinians?? Ah.. well if anyone asks we will just say how much we like them... BUT not from upclose/ BUT from a distance/ BUT only when locked away. The Egyptian love for Palestine... heartbreaking...

So that's how the Egyptian police showed how much they liked my Palestinian friends...they locked them away. Me and Henry were put in the street after a few hours. We decided to take the morning bus back to Taba, because we had already planned that and we didn't know what else to do. In the bus I felt horrible... slightly guilty out of an irrational feeling that we caused these problems for them. One of their friends called me: Hi how are you? When I said not too happy... he didn't understand why. He didn't know what happened and apparently no-one knew. I tried to tell him that his friends were in serious trouble but he patronized me, saying that I shouldn't worry and it would probably be nothing. I told him that he needed to take me seriously and that I knew what I was talking about, but he just kept on 'shush-ing' me as if I was a little girl that needed to go to sleep. One day later he called me again slightly more aware of the situation... he asked me a lot of questions about what happened exactly and finally came to the conclusion that they were in deep shit. DUH! What have I been trying to tell you all this time? Some Palestinians can be so annoying for not taking women serious and treating them like cute little creatures that you just have to pet a little if they make any noise.

In the meantime he mobilized everyone to find out where they were. They also called the brother of two of the guys in Cairo. In the end... this brother and a friend of him spent 2500 pound (around 350 euro) and three days of putting pressure on the police. The result two of my friends were released from prison. In the meantime I had found that the one without the passport had already been sent back to Gaza.
When I was in Cairo, one of my released friends called me to tell that he was in Cairo as well. To see him again was great. I had worried about them a lot. Their entire lives seemed fucked... in a few days they lost everything: their house, their freedom, their future and everything else.

But thanks to the corrupt Egyptian police they were released from prison. Their brother told me that if he and his friend hadn't had spent all that money that they wouldn't be freed and they would probably have been locked away for a long time. I realized that in the end it was a good thing that me and Henri were there when they were arrested, because without us no-one would have known what had happened to them at all.... damn.
In less than two weeks I've had a rather fair introduction to what it means to be a Palestinian from Gaza. My head is empty now of words to describe how experiencing this and meeting these people has impacted me, so let me share with you a poem that I've written a few days ago:

Gaza - Beyond imagination
you are
bombed into my heart
so close and yet so far away
as if even my heart got uprooted
when I stood by and watched you cry
by the silent tears and passive fear of my friends
your damaged children
the night their house, their home was mutilated by F16's.
I was there and I wasn't.
A distant witness to your sorrow
as if distance makes the pain dissolve
it doesn't
as I saw in their eyes
you were there that night
present in their prayers
even though the world has tried to lock you away,
ignorantly
unaware
that you are so much more than a piece of land.
You are a spirit...
Oh, you abused daughter of Palestine
you remain safe and sacred,
no matter how violence has befilthed your destiny,
in the minds of your children
in the mind of justice
you are seen
I can promise you
I was there that night
even though I wasn't

Welcome to (fascist) Egypt!

2009-01-16T15:30:00.003+02:00

Welcome to Egypt visitors. This is the sign you'll find a few hundred meters after leaving the Rafah border crossing with Gaza. Visitors? What visitors??! Maybe they are talking about the few heavily bombed nearly dead Palestinians that are brought to Egyptian hospitals. But I don't think these people are capable of opening their eyes to see this sign of so-called Egyptian hospitality. The Rafah border crossing, operated by the Egyptians is closed and has been closed for a long time. Depriving the already deprived Gazans of yet another right: The right to flee violence and seek a safe shelter. This is not the only conflict in the world and in terms of fatalities not the most severe, but even in the bloodiest conflicts civilians are able and allowed to flee the war violence... whereas the people in Gaza can do nothing else but await the rain of bombs and pray that God will spare them, just for once, making this one of the most detrimental humanitarian disasters in this world.
No-one can go in or out... except for around 30 of the most seriously wounded people each day and a team of 10 aidworkers that got very lucky and was allowed to go in. And for the rest: no matter what a great docter or journalist you are. The doors remain shut.

So yes... welcome to Egypt. In the nearly ten days that I've been here I've been questioned by the Egyptian secret service 4 times and than I'm not even considering all the times I've been questioned at the many checkpoints that are now allover the country (mainly because of the situation in Gaza now... at least so I've been told). I was sent away from the hospital in Al Arish where I wanted to visit some of the victims with an Egyptian nurse that I had met on the beach. The secret service checked my passport, questioned me in detail and then send me away... as if visiting wounded people in hospitals is some terrorist act threatening the security of the state of Egypt.
Ironically, every time after they were done questioning me they told me: Welcome to Egypt! Uh?! You guys don't really make me feel welcome at all.... But indeed: Welcome to fascist Egypt. In such a short time I've met regularly with the true face of Egypt, beyond that of the pyramids, the beaches of the Sinai. This is Egypt as it is... welcome! A true fascist country, where the 'security' of the state is deemed more important than individual lives and any feelings of humanity, especially in the case of severe human suffering, are severely oppressed.
"Yes, people in Gaza are dying...but we need to safeguard the security of our country. This is our land, you know". This is how it was more or less literally said to me several times by different people.

Final Destination GAZA

2009-01-06T11:52:00.006+02:00

With the situation in Gaza totally spiraling out of control and my Israeli visa expiring I was faced with a difficult dilemma. I didn't want to leave Palestine and the situation in Gaza to go play the blond tourist in Egypt... but I had to leave. That's why I decided to go Egypt and try to get to Gaza, at least as close to Gaza as I can get, which means the Egyptian city of al Arish and the border town of Rafah (Rafah in Egypt... the town has been divided into an Egyptian part and a Gazan part)

Coming from Sakhnin, where a massive demonstration for Gaza was held by 100.000 to 150.000 Palestinian Israelis (in a town of 25.000 people) I took the bus to Eilat in Haifa at eleven in the evening.
The bus ride made me feel very nervous. Surrounded by Israeli people and society it almost made me forget about Gaza and about the purpose of my trip. It was like as if I was on a school trip, but then one with fat russian ladies sitting next to you, scaring the hell out of you with their occasional loud snor every 10 to 15 minutes. At every stop we made people came up to me, curious to find out where I was from and what I was doing. It's not nice to say that you're a tourist to their lovely country now with the situation in Gaza.
Driving past Beer Sheba, I was confronted again with Gaza. It was so surreal to realize that Gaza was close, while being surrounded by Western Israeli society where live was just going on as if Gaza didn't happen. But then two trucks drove by, both carrying two army tanks on them. No-one seemed to notice except for me. I was terrified. These tanks were obviously going to Gaza and obviously not for fun or peaceful purposes... Tanks are made to kill and even though the bus ride had made me forget a little that was what Israel was doing while I was trying to get some sleep on the bus to Eilat.

We arrived in Eilat at 5 am. So there I was in the bus station, having to wait for the Egyptian embassy to open at 9, to get my visa to get the hell out of this fascist country, where guns and violence are so normal and accepted. The public transport is filled with young soldiers going home or their army bases, often carrying their (huge) guns carelessly, as if it's some sort of accesory.. like a bag or a mobile phone.

While waiting I enrolled in several conversations with other people that were waiting. One guy told me in broken English that his friends are now inside Gaza. And that he believes in God, so that he hopes they will be okay. I didn't know how to react to that, so I just nodded, feeling disgusted and lonely, because my concerns were not the concerns of the people I was surrounded by.

A little later when I was standing outside to see the sunrise I met three Israeli guys. Two of them were here to go to court, because they had been smoking hash and the other was here with his cousin, to travel back to Belgium where he was studying. We had nice, stupid conversations about nothing, life, music etc. It was not until we talked about their army experiences that I found out that the Belgium guy was a Palestinian Israeli from Nazareth. The two Jewish Israeli guys didn't seem to matter at all, they were curious but after a few questions the conversation went on.
Knowing that one of the guys was Palestinian I felt a little more comfortable to tell about what I had really been doing in the past few months. I openly talked about how I had been inside the West Bank and how I liked cities like Ramallah and Nablus. One of the Jewish guys told me how he, when he was in the army, used to go eat humus and falafel in Ramallah after his army shifts. Humus and falafel... we engaged in discussions about where the best humus of the entire country could be found. The jewish guys claiming that it was in Akko, the Palestinian that it was in Nazareth and me saying inside the West Bank. The atmosphere was pleasant and everyone seemed open to listen to what the other had to say. When the subject changed to music again, one of the jewish guys began to sing a song of Umm Katum an Arabic artist. He was a big fan of her music.
Later on the cousin of the Palestinian also came outside and there I was... with two Palestinian Israelis and two Jewish. It reminded me that the conflict is not about two people hating each other. The people get along fine, if they are willing to leave their prejudices aside. It's the political level that has manufactured this situation of complete oppression of the Palestinian people.

After 9 o' clock we said goodbye and after I got my visa I went straight to the border crossing. I was somewhat nervous, but the girl sitting behind the desk was actually smiling at me for a difference. After she made a phone call that scared the hell out of me, I was free to go and cross to the Egyptian side. There I had more difficulties... Not because they were asking me the same difficult and annoying questions as in Israel, not at all... just because my visa number was not correct: they had two number 23's... welcome to Egypt! I couldn't help but laugh at their attempts to come across as professional serious guys. Even their moustaches gave me a feeling I had ended up in some sort of comedy show.

Outside I didn't really know where to go, since I hadn't really planned this trip. A bedouin cab driver that insisted on driving me (after thorough negotiations about the price) took me to the busstation where we drank coffee and had a look at the map of Egypt. It was not possible to go Al Arish straight. He told me I had to make a huge detour and change busses several times, but that I couldn't do it today anymore, since I would arrive there at night. I agreed to let him take me to a beach camp close to Taba on the coast of the Red sea.

At the beach camp I was welcomed by a young guy that ran the joint. I didn't see anybody else. Later I found out that I was indeed the only guest. The only other people there were the two other guys working there. While we had initially agreed that I would pay 20 pounds (3 euro), they told me at dinner that they not only didn't want me to pay for the food, but that I could even stay there for free. I was amazed. I had been warned by everyone to watch out for the Egyptians always trying to get money out of Western tourists, and here I was as the only source of income in a deserted beach camp not being allowed to pay. Maybe it was because I told them about my plans to go to Al Arish, or because I spoke a little Arabic. Anyhow, I was touched by their hospitality that wasn't different from the Palestinian hospitality.
I had a great time there, being on a deserted beach, with the beautiful red sea a few metres away. At night, I sat with the guys around a camp fire on the beach, drinking tea and talking about Palestine and the Arabic world. We sat under a palm tree hut until 4 am and finally fell asleep around the camp fire, with the relaxing noise of the sea. The next day I stayed with them as well, because I had missed my six o' clock bus to Suez. It was truly a relaxing and short vacation, being completely away from the stress of life.

With a promise to come back, I finally took the bus the day after. In the evening I arrived in Al Arish after a long and exhausting trip through the entire Sinai. I was shocked to see the many Egyptian checkpoints all over the country. Great... just another fascist country, where I felt for some reason that it was better to tell that I was going to Cairo. More stories about Egypt and Al Arish to come. So far it has been great and without problems, if only the Egyptians here spoke a little English...

Bleeding for Gaza

2008-12-31T00:58:00.014+02:00

After two days of feeling frustrated about not being able to do anything for Gaza, I went to Rafidia hospital in Nablus to donate my blood for the wounded and out of a general feeling of solidarity for the people of Gaza.

Armed with a bottle of juice and some chocolate bars to recover from my mission I walked Rafidia street, uncertain where to go exactly. In the previous days I had been a bit weary about how people in Nablus would react to me after Israel's killings in Gaza. Normally we get many "shaloms" (Hebrew greeting that is the equivalent of the Arabic "salam", both meaning peace ironically), so I expected to run into a slightly more hostile attitude of people in the street. Luckily I've underestimated the Palestinian friendliness once again, even though we still get the regular "shaloms", I haven't noticed any hostility towards me and so I didn't need to know where the hospital was exactly, because people were more than willing to show me.

A young guy in the street walked me all the way up to the blood clinic inside the hospital. At first the people there told me to come back the next day between eight and ten, but in some cases it pays off to belong to an exotic kind: Of course they couldn't send the "ajnabiye" away that has come all the way to give her blood for Gaza.

Besides me and the doctors there was no-one there and that added to the depressive atmosphere of the run-down hospital, giving it an air of serenity at the same time.
I had to wait a little before we could move to the procedure and overheard the staff in the other room talking excitedly about the "ajnabye", I was surprised to feel that apparently for them it was a major thing that I was there.

The doctor (or employee) that treated me was a very nice man and spoke English very well. He made me feel very comfortable and also very appreciated for doing this. We spoke about the situation in Gaza and about the situation in Palestine in general. He repeated the general vision that Palestinians have about the situation, their lives and their fate as a people: a nation that has been under siege for 60 years. Not just now, not just Gaza. Now it's Gaza... five, six years ago it was Nablus, Jenin, Ramallah. Every Palestinian where ever he lives, what ever he stands for is suffering from this siege.

His personal lifestory underlined this. He told me that he himself had been in prison for 10 years. He just got out 11 months ago. Not that he was a terrorist, nor a criminal. He told me that he had been a peace activist all his life. The reason he was imprisoned: he had convinced a young Palestinian guy that was going to commit a suicide attack in Israel not to take his life and that of some many other innocent people. By himself he had been able to stop this person and for this heroic action of great responsibility he was rewarded with ten years imprisonment, because he had been unwilling to tell the Israelis who this boy was. In his own words: " I'm not a collaborator". He saved Israeli lives, but instead of showing gratefullness, the Israelis made sure that people like him will think twice about making that "stupid mistake" again.
Welcome to the cruel reality of Israel, where even peace activists are seen as security threats that need to be locked away. Anyone that talks about or fights for freedom, regardless if they use non-violent means, is an enemy of the state of Israel.

He made me feel that I wasn't just giving my blood for Gaza, but that I was giving my blood for Palestine in general, for the Palestinian struggle to freedom. A free Palestine, not meaning free of Jews, but free of oppression. Unlike what people in the West are led to believe by Israel, the general Palestinian wish is not a state of their own: a Palestinian-only state where all the Jews have to be pushed out. Palestinians are not Israelis and are ready to embrace the notion of living together in one land. All they long for is freedom, as opposed to the Israelis that in general long for a Jewish-only state. The doctor talked about this with passion in his eyes, if only, one day... He told me he dreams of Palestinians living together with Jews.

While my blood was slowly dripping into the bag on the ground, he asked me if I was still feeling okay, as is of course part of the procedure. Even though my arm was slowly turning blue I was feeling better than ever. Being here, as an international volunteer in Nablus, there's many times that you feel completely useless, not being able to make any difference to the perverse reality people live in. Right there and then I felt my presence was anything but useless. Not only was I physically contributing something essential: my blood, my life liquid, a part of myself, one of the most precious and costly things you can give as a human being... The gratefullness that he showed me for donating my blood made me more aware than ever that, even though I might not always feel that way, me living next to Palestinians in Nablus is really a contribution in itself: Being there, showing willingness to listen to their stories, giving attention to their problems and their existence. Giving my blood, can actually be seen as a symbol of what I have been doing all along in Palestine: giving myself to this cause.

During the draining of my blood, he enthusiastically called his wife, to tell her about the "ajnabiye" giving blood. He told me his wife was too scared to do it, but this might be able to convince her "if even internationals are coming here to do this then she, as a proud Palestinian, should definitely do it as well." The whole situation made me smile: To see him talking to his wife, so delighted. He even asked me to say "hi" to her on the phone. There I was, with a needle sticking out of my arm, talking to the wife of some doctor in Rafidia hospital, making a difference.... at least a small one, adding some positivity in the live of an incredible human being that has spent 10 years suffering in jail, because he didn't want to give up the principles he believes in. And, hopefully, also in the life of a suffering human being in Gaza. His story and this experience reaffirmed my believe that the positive will always prevail in the end, even when surrounded by so much misery. He clearly made a difference in my life as well... adding some positivity when I was in a position surrounded by so much misery.

The Killings in Gaza: A West Bank Story

2008-12-29T02:10:00.004+02:00

Remember that day seven years ago. That day where all of a sudden everything you knew just seemed to fall apart, where shock and uncertainty where the only things left to cling to. 9/11... we all know where we were and more importantly how we felt.
12/27 or 27/12 was such a day too. The Palestinian version of 9/11. As anyone that hasn't slept in a cave for the past few days knows, Israel has relentlessly attacked Gaza, killing around 250 people on the first day only. It has been the bloodiest day in decades and came without warning (although there were many signs that Israel was planning a large attack on Gaza).

I freezed to the ground as I heard what was going on, my eyes stuck to the television in front of me. Is this for real? Is this really happening? Are they really bombing the hell out of Gaza?

Gaza is not that far away from here, but seeing those images it was worlds away. Fathers dragging the dead bodies of their little children through the streets. Piles of bodies inside the small rooms of the hospital, because there wasn't any room to put the bodies. At first I thought it was a pile of cloths, until I saw a hand sticking out. Crying women, crying children, smoke, people running, people screaming, the sound of ambulances, destruction and dust everywhere.... the clear image of a warzone.

At the same time, it wasn't worlds away at all. It was happening right here and right now. Life completely came to a stop inside the entire West Bank. Everyone automatically seemed to abide by an invisible curfew: a curfew of compassion. Sitting in front of the television trying to get an idea of what was going in Gaza. Sadly Israel was not only bombing Gaza, Israel was bombing the minds of all Palestinian people.
I suddenly remembered a facebook quote of a Palestinian boy from Nablus, saying something like: Every people live in their own countries. The Palestinian people are not allowed to live in their own country, the country lives in them. Palestine truly exists in the mind of the Palestinian people. From the faces of people I could tell that it wasn't Gaza that was being torn to pieces, it was them, their dream of Palestine that was torn apart inside their heads. Memories of the second and first Intifada became vivid again, old wounds...

The so-called Hamas-Fatah divide seemed to have ceased to be of any importance. One people, one enemy, one struggle. As the death toll rose the people began to look more and more depressed. Everywhere you go and everyone you talk to, it's all about Gaza. Often without even mentioning a word, Gaza is the topic, Gaza is just around us all in these past two days... it doesn't have to be named to be present.

Many people have stopped asking 'how are you?' and no-one says fine anymore. Not so good, not too fine are now the universal answers. Israel pledged that this was just the beginning, but everyone felt that already. This is really the beginning, but whether Israel will be able to control the outcome remains to be seen. The tension can be felt. Israel has gone too far this time. What will happen? It is all uncertain. That Israel will do whatever it takes is the only thing that is quite certain, because Israel has never shown much restraint in its wars. It certainly didn't show any restraint when it came to Lebanon in 2006.

But what will the consequences of the Israeli actions be?
There have been protests in Ramallah and other West Bank cities such as Hebron. There was also a protest in Nablus but it was rather small. Next to that there have been mass demonstrations all over the Arab world, in countries such as Yemen, but also in France and the U.K. Is this a sign? It might just as well not be.

There has been a period of national mourning imposed. All the shops were closed, although many of them were still doing business, even though they pretended to be closed. Instead of opening all the iron doors as is normally done, they only opened one. That's the Palestinian difference between a closed shop and an open one. But what will be done by the Palestinians and their so-called authority after this period of mourning?

A shitload of tanks has been mobilized at the military base outside of Huwarra checkpoint. Is an invasion of Nablus at stake? Rumours have been going through the city about it. But it might just as well be 'a security measure' or a deterrent', a measure of intimidation. Nothing is certain. That's the feeling that remains, even after the smog of the first few days has started to come down and things are starting to become more clear. 12/27 is really just another 9/11.... a major terror attack that imposed on us feelings of uncertainty.

Martyr stories and a marriage proposal

2008-12-17T00:36:00.014+02:00

Today when I was walking in the street I randomly ran into a student I used to teach. She asked me if I had time, to come to her house for a bit. Yes, yes... I know the Palestinian 'bits' by now, especially if someone invites you over. So of course I wasn't surprised when that bit turned into a very long, but enjoyable and extremely interesting night. I was even kindly 'pressured' into spending the night at their place (as is actually standard procedure, I know by now), but I told them that I had a meeting of Project Hope I had to attend later that evening and that I couldn't stay. Of course a first 'no' is never accepted here and I had to repeat it endlessly. Even when I was at the door, leaving and thanking them for the lovely evening (and all the food they managed to sneak in a bag for me to take home)they were still checking to see if I was really determined about my decision.

It's nice to see how people here are living, and a house always tells you so much about its residents. This particular house had quite a lot to tell, because it housed the family of Palestinian martyrs. Even before I had set one foot inside I was confronted with the tragic history of this family. There was a huge poster outside on the door and the girl Zahwa explained to me that all (around) 10 people on that poster were martyrs and family members as well. Martyr, in the West seen as synonym for terrorist, but I wasn't afraid or weary to go inside and meet these people, because I knew better. Martyr actually signifies anyone who sacrificed his life, in this case for the Palestinian struggle. Here it means anyone that has died at the hands of the Israelis or for the Palestinian cause is a martyr.
In the middle of the poster was the face of a young man, surrounded by small pictures on the side of all the other family members, among them three small children. Zahwa told me that this was her brother.

Inside, the living room was decorated with martyr posters and pictures of the killed family members everywhere. I was greeted by Zahwa's lovely parents and for the first part of my visit we hardly talked about the martyrdom in their family. They didn't tell, I didn't ask. We just enjoyed ourselves together. When Zahwa went into her room to pray, Zahwa's mother kept talking to me about her children, her village and other stuff old women like to talk about, in 'dazzling speed' Arabic. Most of the time I had a fair idea of what she was talking about, because I could understand some words, but that woman kept going on and on and on, leaving just enough time for me to quickly nod. Her father spoke a little German and we communicated in a bizarre mixture of English, German and Arabic.

Then Zahwa wanted to introduce me to her neighbors downstairs. I went with her and was greeted by another family. They were curious about me and immediately started asking me all these questions. I was sort of prepared, because this always follows the same pattern. First question: What's your name? Second question: How old are you? Third question: Are you married? Let's get straight to the point. If you say "no", this question is automatically and nearly always followed by the question: Would you like to get married in Palestine? These people are just incredible. The sole intention of my trip is to come here to get myself hooked up to a Palestinian man, because obviously in Holland there aren't any men around and I'm a woman so my only goal in life and all I care about is to get married, as soon as possible.
It's a tricky situation, since there's no correct answer. If you say no, than it's like: "But you have the perfect age to get married", or "you're already so old" and you have to go through endless explanations why you wouldn't want to get married. And of course you want to be, at least a little, polite. But saying yes is not an option because there's a major risk that they have a son, nephew or who-ever that still needs a bride. Any for many families that have things the traditional way it's all about marriage, the person who you get married to is of second importance. Of course it has to be an appropriate person but that criterium is quickly fulfilled.
So I've already fallen twice for the supposedly safe answer of "maybe", but that turned out to be treacherous as well. This time I said: "Well it depends on the person (I really thought I had saved myself there), it has to be a special person".

Then of course almost immediately the mother began to tell me about her 35 year old son that wanted to get married. Five minutes later the man himself walked in and I was immediately asked straight away if I wanted to marry him. Right in front of his nose. Talking about pressure... I hope that he didn't really notice my freaked out face when the mother asked me.
I could have known that talking about 'special person' was the stupidiest thing I could have done, of course the mother thinks her son is not just anyone and really special. "Yes I think your son is really special, even though we just said hello to each other". Last time my vagueness, really made a disaster out of the situation so I forced myself to be impolite, but clear. So I said: "No, not really". As said, a first 'no' is never accepted, so they told me that they could give me some time to think about it. Wow really?! That's generous. I could get some time to think if I want to marry a complete stranger.
They told me that he really wanted to marry a foreign girl, because he doesn't like Arab women because they're so close minded and western women are so open-minded. It can't help but being very cynical: that's all very nice, but if you can not even communicate with each other, because you don't speak each other's languages... how is that openmindedness going to help your marriage work?

In the end I tried to tell as straightforward as possible that I really didn't want to get married now. I think they got the point, but still kept luring me into this: "He has a taxi. He can take you anywhere you want. If you ever need to go somewhere, just call him". The taxi argument didn't exactly win me over. Nonetheless, the family was quite nice. It was just a clash between Western and Eastern customs and beliefs.

When we went back to the martyr house to have dinner with the parents of Zahwa, I sat right in front of one of the huge martyr posters. I couldn't help but feeling a little stared at. Zahwa and her mother noticing me looking at the pictures and began telling me, in pieces, the story of their family and of their son and brother Jibreel that had died as a resistance fighter.

Zahwa spoke with a deep love about her brother. The first thing she told me is that he used to be an excellent student in the university before he decided to become a fighter. Girls still come up to her to tell her how great her brother was. Not because he fought Israeli soldiers, but because he used to help them with their homework and protect them against guys harassing them.

I looked at the poster and read 'December 18th 2003'. It was December 16th, now it's December 17th. Tomorrow people will start reading his story, exactly 6 years after his life came to an end, nothing planned though. Jibreel, the hero. Every year in Nablus parades are held around the day that he died. Parades in sole remembrance of him. The television was on, and as we talked the Nablus channel was on. At a certain point Zahwa, seemingly unsurprised, told me: "Ah... this is about my brother". It was a short video of one of the previous parades they held for him. There I was, sitting at the couch of the family of a famous Nabulsi martyr. How surreal. I had been enjoying my time with them as if no such thing ever happened. That's the second thing Zahwa told me: "We try to live our lifes without sad. The important in life is not money, or nice buildings and houses. The important is love".

As she carried on talking I wondered how this had all come about. Soon it became the clear that her brother's fate had been closely connected to the deaths of the other people in his family. As over the years more and more family members got killed by the Israeli army, Jibreel grew more and more resentful towards the Israeli army. In one incident three young cousins got killed, because the Israeli army targeted the car the kids were driving in with their father, wanting to kill their father. The attack ended up killing the three little children, but leaving the father still alive. Collateral damage is the phrase we often use for that in the West, the price of war, covering up the injust and immoral character of such actions.

The decision to become a martyr was directly triggered by the death of his sister's husband, leaving her behind with three baby children. After that incident he was wanted by the Israeli authorities, for having made hateful remarks towards Israel. While trying to be a father to his sister's children, they kept searching for him, interrogating him. Often he couldn't leave his village, because they wouldn't allow him to pass at the checkpoint. He was put in jail and his family was threatened many times. That's when he decided to give in to violence, supposedly having said:
I would rather die as a martyr, fighting for my country, than spent my life in jail, living under miserable circumstances

And martyr is what he became after three years of fighting the Israeli army. Terrorist? Definitely not. He has never killed or attacked any civilians, unlike the Israeli army that killed so many of his familymembers.

On the night of his killing, he had carried a young fighter that got wounded on his shoulder to a safe place. The boy had told him to stay with him and not to go back. Jibreel didn't listen and went back. He walked right into an ambush. It was dark and he didn't know that he found himself surrounded by Israeli soldiers. In one of the buildings, there was a Palestinian woman seeing what was about to happen. Afterwards she told that she hadn't been able to warn Jibreel because there were soldiers everywhere. And that's how Jibreel came to his end. He got shot. Before he fell onto the ground, he reached for his pocket for a final sigaret. He lid it, inhaled, and looked at the woman with a big smile on his face. That's how Jibreel went down. Having embraced this fate already a long long time ago at the moment when he decided to go fighting.
His family didn't find out until they saw his dead body on the news, one of the familymembers recognizing the jacket he wore.

Zahwa told me how she's still being stopped at the checkpoint because she's wearing his picture around her neck and they know she's his sister: "Your brother is no martyr, he just died. He is dead." She keeps insisting on his martyrdom at the outrage of the soldiers. After having her entire family decimated by the Israeli army, her pride is all she's got. That's when I came to understand the posters. Without this pridefull idea of martyrdom they would really come to see how empty their hands are and how much they lost, how much they suffered and how the violence didn't bring them anything but further suffering. The glorification of martyrs is something they hold onto, to withstand, to hold on.

What an account. What a night. A marriage proposal and martyr stories, welcome to Palestine, the place where these absurdities can happen to you in just one night.

Palestine in a Frame

2008-12-14T11:47:00.012+02:00

Palestine is hard to capture in words, therefore this attempt to put it in a frame. Down here you'll get to see an impression of what Palestine is, for me, through my eyes and my camera's lense.

* Olive tree in the Palestinian village of Yanoon, under constant attack by settlers.
* A Banksy graffiti on the separation wall in Bethlehem.
* Raw meat everywhere in the lively souq of Nablus.
* Haram as-Sharif, or Temple Mount, with the Wailing Wall in front of it.
* Random juice stand operated by bedouin men in the desert near Jericho.
* Rent-a-cross business in Jerusalem: Play Jesus for a day.
* Waiting for a closed gate at Qalandia checkpoint.
* The girlschool of refugee camp Al Ein in Nablus.
* A taxi driver being stopped and questioned at Huwarra checkpoint near Nablus.
* Toy assault rifles for sale in Nablus.
* Having dinner 'villagers' style in the village of Beita, south of Nablus.
* Camel rides at the martyr's circle in the centre of Nablus.
* Palestinian children in the old city of Nablus.

Visa Battles and Settler Pogroms Part III

2008-12-13T11:44:00.009+02:00

As said in part II, after I somehow managed to convince the Israeli officials to give me a new visa, I went home, a little less naive as I came. If I spent too long here in this crazy country, I'm afraid not much of my 'precious' naivety will remain.

The bus to Ramallah was crowded and I had to stand all the way, driving on small bumpy roads. I was tired, after two short nights of sleep, but I was even more tired of Israel and its 'security policies'.

I couldn't wait to go back to 'easy' Nablus, where the worst hassle you get is comments in the street and ridiculous arrangements in the service to sit down all the women together to protect them from 'pervert' men.

In Ramallah the crazy circus began (or continued... depending on how you look at it). The streets were loaded with shopping people, because of the upcoming Eid al Adha holiday. In the service station, all the services were gone. Normally it is filled with yellow and orange vans waiting to take you. Now it was filled with people and lots of bags, waiting to be taken. I was handed a number (No I didn't have to file an application for that, or stand in line for it). I was surprised to find some form of organisation to exist in Palestine. And it actually worked. Whenever a service drove in, a man began calling the numbers that were up and this proved to be able to control the crazy crowd.

When I had finally mounted the service and was able to sit, I almost immediately fell asleep. After around 45 minutes, I woke up to check if we were coming close to Nablus. I didn't recognize the environment and saw us driving down a hill in line with several hundred other cars. In the valley there was a huge traffic jam. I asked the woman sitting next to me what happened and why we weren't driving on the normal road. She told me that she didn't really know, but that the service driver had to take this back road, because the other road was closed down by Israeli army vehicles.

Once we came closer we became aware that the traffic jam wasn't only the result of tons of vehicles trying to get back on the main road again. The main road was covered with army vehicles and when we came even closer I saw hippie-looking girls, with long hair and long skirts, standing on the road: Settlers. That's why the road had been closed by the Israeli army! But why, really why had the army decided to do such a thing? If there's people interfering in the public realm and obstructing the public safety, the state's institutions should in any normal case stop these people. You can't walk on public roads, especially on main roads, and the police will take you away if you do so. Not in this case. Because this involved Israeli settlers, the people weren't taken of the road, the (Palestinian) traffic was redirected instead, to prevent a confrontation with the settlers... Israeli officials prove time and again to be masters in creative solutions.

By then we were still under the impression that it was a small incident. It wasn't until later that we heard on the radio what had caused this trouble. In Hebron the army had finally decided to evict a big group of settlers out of a house in the city center. The Israeli court had ordered the eviction weeks before. This enraged Israeli settlers, not only in Hebron but over the entire West Bank and severe attacks on Palestinians, and to a lesser extent on the Israeli army, were the result.

When it comes to settlers the Israeli army has a long history of not acting against settler agression towards Palestinians. Every year's olive harvest is obstructed by numerous settler attacks on Palestinian farmers with Israeli soldiers standing idly by, in most cases. The Israeli army sees itself in a difficult position: taking sides against people from its 'own kind' or allowing indiscriminate violent attacks on Palestinians which portray a very dark image of Israel abroad.
Slowly the Israeli state has come to understand that the settlers don't really help Israel to sell its story to the rest of the world. The settlers have proven to be very bad PR agents. That's why in Israel the pressure is mounting to crack down on settler violence.

But so far, there's not much reflection of this in real life. In the rare incidences that the Israeli army has acted against the settlers, this has been widely covered in all the (international) media. The cases where the army fails to respond or even support the settlers in their behavior don't get the same amount of coverage.
This is top-level PR! While Zimbabwe is currently doing anything it can to deny the severity of their massive cholera problem, Israel is not even trying to deny the settler violence, because it knows by doing so it would make a complete fool of itself. Credibility is everything in PR and denial kills your credibility.
No-one seriously believes the Zimbabwean claims that there's no cholera crisis, instead it's better to do damage control. To say: yes it's true and then give it a twist you like. In this case: oh this settler agression!! But look how great we are trying to fight it.

If you live it from the inside, you know that this is not really true. Keep in mind that the Israeli government is heavily subsidizing settlers and (thus) stimulating Israeli people to live in settlements in the Palestinian territories. At the same time it is the Israeli state that ALLOWS (as in: gives the right to) every settler to carry a GUN inside the Palestinian territories. A Palestinian friend of mine that has been working and living in Israel for years (and has an Israeli ID!!), can not even take a simple kitchen knife with him in his car, even though he is a cook for profession.

Anyhow, when we slowly approached the settlers the service driver suddenly decided to take a dirt road on the left, driving by fields of crops, eventually leading up to a small village. Many cars were doing the same thing. As we were slowly bumping along the rocky and uneven road, the situation began to sink in: So this is now the main road from Ramallah to Nablus... welcome to Palestinian life, where your ethnic identity determines how you are being treated instead of labels such as 'perpetrator' or 'victim', let alone where you are being treated for your own behavior. What goes around, comes around. But here in Palestine, it takes a damn long time to come around...

The villagers looked quite surprised to see this parade passing by their houses. When we hit the main road again, for quite some time it seemed to be over. But just before Nablus trouble found us again. Right before Huwarra village there was another huge traffic jam. I still thought it had to do with the Eid buzz everywhere and with the previous jam that had just disrupted traffic.

So we waited in line... again. As with the previous jam, the movement was very slow and again cars started taking things into their hands. Palestinians master at creative solutions as well: creating roads where there aren't any. Our service driver proved to be quite an impatient guy and I loved him for that, because I badly wanted to go home. He followed some cars down this field, to reach a small dirt road running parallel to the main road. When we were driving on this road, we saw how long the traffic jam was and I was just relieved that he hadn't decided to wait his turn. Then the road ended and the cars in front of us drove through the fields again to get back to the road. Not our driver though. Whether he was truly creative or truly impatient, or just adventurous I don't know, but in any case the driver had decided to continue. All of a sudden we found ourselves driving through an olive orchard. Ah, Palestinian people... As we say in Holland: "Voor geen gat te vangen"(can't be catched by any hole). Somehow Palestinians always find a way, always manage somehow. Like in Gaza, when being confronted with massive food and medicine shortages they've started digging tunnels to get the stuff through.

When we were back on the main road approaching Huwarra checkpoint (to enter Nablus) another traffic jam was awaiting us. This together with the news on the radio made me realize that this was serious business and things were seriously going wrong.
Army vehicles were all around us and it made me wondering what exactly was happening at Huwarra. This time there was even less progress than in the other jams and we simply had to wait. The bus in front of us stopped and people were getting out of the bus and walking towards the checkpoint, which wasn't that far away anymore and which you have to cross by foot anyway. For some reason the people in our service didn't move, so I didn't as well.. not sitting next to the door and too tired to move anyway.

Thank god I didn't. When we finally approached the checkpoint we saw soldiers everywhere and we heard angry yelling. I realized that there must be something with settlers, but I wasn't able to see any or to understand what was going on. When we came more close soldiers started asked the driver whether we had place in our service. As it turned out every Palestinian at the checkpoint had to be transferred into a vehicle and for one time we could all pass the checkpoint by car. I looked on the right and saw Palestinian people standing, with a lot of soldiers trying to hold them back. But even though the people standing had a 'bring it on' attitude, I didn't see them making attempts to do anything. Then I looked left and I was shocked to see a huge crowd of young Israeli settlers. At their side no soldiers trying to hold them back though. I was quite intimidated by their aggressive looks and was glad I found myself in the car.

Seeing this I knew that all three traffic jams were created by settlers and I became quite upset. The army had the power to send these people away. With peaceful Palestinian demonstrations they show time and again that they are perfectly able to disperse large crowds and force them to leave a particular site. With Palestinians they don't refrain from using teargas, sound bombs, rubber-coated bullets and even live ammunition. Why were they sending away the Palestinian people as if these people were the ones that had come to the checkpoint for violence, while they were mere travellers?

The soldiers were just standing there like puppets, waiting for someone, some higher power to pull their strings. Then we drove through the checkpoint leaving this crazy situation behind and I got even more upset when I saw that the army had completely closed down the checkpoint from the other side. How were people supposed to get home now? Huwarra is a crucial checkpoint for many students studying at the university of Nablus, but living outside of Nablus. Every afternoon it's flooded with students wanting to go home. I was so offended when I thought of these people now not being able to return home, because the Israeli army doesn't want to send a group of aggressive settlers away. Of course a confrontation had to be prevented, but why are the Palestinians punished for it, while the actions were being committed by the settlers?

Later on I heard that my observations were true and worse. Stones had been thrown, cars had been burnt. In Hebron itself, the violence was even much more horrible. Click on this link to read about this: http://haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1043795.html

After two days of battle for a new visa, this was truly what I needed when I got home (and actually I wasn't even home yet...). At that point I had just completely had it with Israel and its people, disgusted. I was incredibly relieved once I was back in Nablus, surrounded by a sense of normalcy and no signs of settler violence. When I finally reached home I was angry, drained, slightly depressed, disappointed and overall very tired. That afternoon when I left Jerusalem I had thought that it was finally over, as I had mistakingly thought several times before. But this time I was also proven to be wrong. It seemed to me that the games they play with you never really stop, but I sincerely hope that this is not true.

Visa Battles and Settler Pogroms Part II

2008-12-08T01:55:00.012+02:00

The next day I went to ministry of interior again, with high hopes of getting my visa. I felt that not much could go wrong anymore, because I was helped by more or less friendly people, that showed their willingness to help me.

When I passed the security check I immediately walked up to desk number 1, as the guy had told me to do. The girl that had dealt with me was sitting there. She recognized me. The friendly guy was nowhere to be seen. When she was finished with the person in front of me, I went to sit down. She took the documents I had collected and asked me for my number. Number? I told her that her coworker had said to me that I didn’t need one, right under her eyes. She became rude and just kept telling me that I needed to get a number.

So I went to stand in line to get a number. The Palestinian man that had been standing behind me, and had a small chat with, also came up to the desk. Apparently she had told him the same. He was also taking by surprise that he had to take a number, it was not just me. He was clearly annoyed and started yelling at the people behind the desk. As I was silently undergoing their stupidity, he couldn’t bear any longer. Because I was in the same situation as him, he tried to help me cut in line and pressuring the Israeli people behind the desk to give me a number quickly. The numbers were just a hand-grab away.

When I went back to the desk, I was helped pretty quickly. The girl took a look at my receipts and for a moment she seemed to be okay with it. But then she exclaimed : “This is only for the last three days”. I couldn’t believe it… was she really the same person that had sat there yesterday and had clearly overheard what the guy had told me? I didn’t want to push my luck and try to tell her politely that that was what we agreed on just yesterday, and that I had explicitly told them that I was only able to provide them with receipts of the last few days.
She just ignored my comments and told me that with this she wasn’t able to give me a visa. I told her again that I was travelling and had just come back to Jerusalem. She asked me cynically: “So you only stayed in Jerusalem for three days?” She tricked me there, because when I told her that I had stayed in Jerusalem for three weeks in October, she just told me without any mercy that I needed to provide her with evidence of that. I told her that I couldn’t get her that, because it was a long time ago and I wasn’t whether the hostel could still provide me with that.
She obviously didn’t care. I had to get it. By then it was 11 and she told me I had to get back for 12, because after that they wouldn’t allow any people in. I looked her into her eyes, trying to find some sympathy and cried out: “Are you serious? I can never be back her before 12, it’s all the way up in the old city.”
I was incredibly disappointed seeing myself already returning to the ministry for a third day on a row, because of my bad luck with their closing hours. Half an hour extra would have saved me, and the day before I would have been able to make it as well. That’s when her steel cover began to melt a little and she told me that she could give me a special permission to come in after 12, but no later than one ‘o clock. She wrote something on a paper and she told me that she would inform the guards and that when I came back I had to address them and they would allow me to go in.

At the hostel, the staff wasn’t really happy with my request. I needed a declaration from them that I had stayed with them, which I obviously hadn’t. They were, understandingly, a bit wary about committing fraud for some girl they didn’t even know. I could have been a spy for all they knew. I could have gotten them in a lot of trouble. So they told me that they couldn’t do it, because if someone came to check their books it would turn out that they lied.
I wasn’t sure what to do next. I called my friend, he told me that he could help get a declaration from the other hostel without any problems, because his friend would definitely do that for me. I told him that I had already told the ministry were I had been staying. My friend asked me to give the phone to the manager, that was at that point trying to sleep in one of the rooms. I felt really embarrassed to walk into that room to ask him for this favor while he was half asleep. After a long time he finally agreed to sign the document and I couldn’t find words for the gratefulness I felt for these strangers that helped me out, putting themselves at risk, without anything in return.

Relieved that I would soon have my visa I headed back to the ministry. Again I was naïve for thinking that it had to be over soon. Welcome to Israeli bureaucracy from the top shelve. I arrived there at 12:30 and obviously the gate was closed. I addressed the security guards standing outside, expecting that it would get me in straight away. The young Ethiopian guys, however, were not really interested in helping me, but rather in having a nice little chat with me. I told them I was here before and that the girl had made me go out, but gave me permission to come in.
They had no idea what I was talking about. In reply they asked me where I was from and if I wanted to stay here. I told them I needed a visa now for three more months. “No”, they said, “that’s not what we mean. Do you want to stay here to live here”. I made clear that I had no such plans. They asked me why I didn’t want to live here. As a response I said that I already had gone through so much trouble just to get a simple three month extension that I really didn’t want to. They smiled “If you’re a citizen it is different”. It sure is…
After that they continued their bullshit talk, about going to Holland next week and other crap, and I played along, not wanting to give up my cover yet. I was getting a little impatient because they didn’t seem to make any gesture to get me in. I asked them again and they asked me the name of the girl. I told them I had no idea, because she didn’t say her name to me, but that she was behind desk number 1. That information was of no use for them, as if they weren’t people working in the same building as her, but just people passing by in the street.
I emphasized again how she had promised me to let me in and that she made clear that she would inform the security at the gate of my case. She didn’t and they didn’t care. And then they just went inside, leaving me behind, still thinking that were trying to arrange something for me from their little boot. After a while I realized they were just sitting inside doing nothing. The radio played the song ‘There can be miracles’ of Withney Houston and Mariah Carey, from the Disney film about Mozes. One of the guards sang a long, while I was sitting in the sun next to the security gate. I remembered the sentence of that story: Let my people go…. It kept repeating itself inside my head. I saw little Palestinian girls coming out of school, running by, happy… They looked at me with great curiosity. At that point I realized the complete absurdity of the entire situation I found myself in. Boundaries are fake, passports are fake, visa are fake and even ministries of interior completely sealed by security fences are fake. They are an illusion, that only exist because we believe in them, we believe them to be necessary and give them credibility. It was an absurd thought that this bad tempered woman that was inside the same building I didn’t have access to, was able to decide over my life. Without her permission, her ink stamp, I wouldn’t be able to stay in this land. How completely surreal that seemed at that point. I’m physically here, I’m standing on the land… How can some abstract notion change that. It is a bizarre world we live in.

After a while I guess the guards realized that I wasn't going anywhere... or they were just given orders to let me wait for half an hour. Anyhow one of them asked whether I had a telephone. I sure did. He told me I could maybe try to call the people inside: The association with ordinary people passing by in the street keeps coming back up. Professionality is some concept that still needs to be applied here. I told them I didn't have the number. What a surprise it was that they went inside to get it for me: wow, how incredibly thoughtful! When I dialed the number I was given two options: Hebrew and Arabic. I told this to the guards and they were like: "Just call again, press for Hebrew, the person that picks up will probably be able to speak English". So I followed 'their orders'. The phone rang and rang and kept ranging, but no-one answered. I informed the soldiers on this and finally they showed some willingness to help me. As if it was the easiest thing to do (and I guess it was) the guard took his portophone and contacted someone from inside. He came back to me and told me that they were now checking to see if I had the permission. Ten minutes later the light above the gate turned finally green.

But then I still had to go through the security and as told before they found new stuff that they wanted to confiscate from me(given back when leaving), even though they already had a plastic bag with my name on it.
After that I passed the 'number desk'... I just felt like resisting and I didn't take a number on purpose. 10 minutes later, when I was waiting, I decided to come back and get a number after all. I was tired and I could just imagine that girl sending me to get that stupid number. Not only was I tired, I was completely fed up with the sick games they've been playing with me. Welcome to sadistic Israel.

Finally it was my turn, AGAIN.. and I gave her the paper. I kind of knew that she had to have some comments on it and she did. She asked why the hostel didn't put a stamp. I had foreseen that. I had asked the hostel for a stamp, but they didn't have any. I had tried to attach the business card of the hostel to it, to at least have something, but of course... very unconvincing. I let her know that the hostel has offered to call them if there were any problems. She went away to 'consult' it with her supervisor. A long time passed. When she came back she told me that her supervisor was calling the hostel to ask why they didn't have a stamp....
Then finally finally the words that I had been waiting to here for two days now: We will give you the visa. BUT... (no....... no but's, I hate but's!) we will have to discuss for how long we will give it to you. And then she went away again. She came back with her supervisor and the supervisor began to ask me difficult questions, trying to catch me on a lie. The strange thing was that the girl and the supervisor were talking to each other in Arabic, between asking me the questions. After everything was finished they were talking to each other in Hebrew again. They apparently expected my Hebrew to be better than my Arabic. If only I really knew Arabic...

Then she started filing me in the computer and in the meanwhile she told me that they decided to give me the visa, but only for the duration of one month. She presented this to me as if she was doing me a huge favor, giving me something really big. 'This is our country and every day you spent here is dependent on our approval'. She didn't forget to mention that I had to renew it in one month and that I was not allowed to ever come back here again to renew my visa. At that point I couldn't care less and I was really hoping I never had to set foot in that building again.

I was the last person leaving the ministry and when I was walking through the corridors I couldn't help but mumble: Viva Palestine. Pathetic, but I felt the urgent need to express my beliefs right there and then. I felt if I didn't do that I might explode from all the lies that had been building themselves up inside my body.

Before I left they had saved me one last trick, even though I was given the visa already. I have to admit: "Well done there, in making people's lives as annoying as possible". The Dutch IRS has a slogan: We can't make it more fun, but we cán make it easier. This ministry seems to abide by the exact opposite: We can't make it more fun, but we cán make it more difficult.
When I had taken my bag from the exit and was walking away, it was only after a hundred metres that I realized that with these Israeli people I really had to check the bag they had just given back to me, to see if everything was in there. Was I surprised or not, when I found out that my eye shadow was missing? I don't know.
When I went back I told that the guard that my eye shadow was not in my bag. He asked me if I checked. I affirmed, but of course he just couldn't believe me for my word. He had me empty my entire bag on the pavement, until he was finally convinced. Then he went inside and got me my eyeshadow.

When I was walking away I was barely happy with my newly obtained visa, drained and amazed by this complete show they put up for me.

I went home and then had the most bizarre journey to Nablus ever... because of extreme settler violence, as if wasn't fed up enough already with Israel. More about that in PART III

Visa battles and settler pogroms...

2008-12-06T21:08:00.006+02:00

As many of you know I went to renew my visa this week in Jerusalem. It was the beginning of two days of being exposed to Israel and Israelis, and I have to be honest: It weren't the happiest days of my life.

A warning from the start: this story won't be short, for the simple reason that it can not be. A lot happened in these two days and if you'll feel drained after reading this story, you'll feel similar to the way I felt when I finally came back to Nablus thursday night.

It all began on wednesday morning, I had spend the night at a friend's place in Ramallah, because I had an early appointment in Jerusalem. I rushed out of his house at 7:30 in the morning, to be at my 8:45 appointment. I was expecting to be back in Nablus that same night, because my appointment was so early in the morning.

In the bus driving through Qalandia checkpoint I was slightly worried, because my visa had already expired. The annoyed looking, gum chewing Israeli girl soldier checked (type American uninterested, arrogant "what evah" teenager)my passport and didn't say anything. Okay... next hurdle, one step closer to a new visa.

In Jerusalem I hurried to be in time for my appointment in the Ministry of Interior in West-Jerusalem. With a red head I had my bag checked by the guard and walked through the metal detector. I ran up the stairs and was exactly on time. Of course all the appointments were a little delayed so I had to wait for 10 minutes. It gave my time to rehearse the false alibi I had come up with, because mentioning one word about Palestine would mean exit straight away.

When it was my turn, the mean looking lady helped me in a very pleasant way. She told me that I was in the wrong place. To be more precise: I had made an appointment for the wrong place. She told me that I had to go to the ministery of interior in East-Jerusalem. I was completely confused. How could that be? I had come to the ministry before and when I explained to them that I wanted to renew my tourist visa they had rudely given me this phonenumber that I had to call. The woman I got on the phone, after randomly pressing a 'one' upon hearing a Hebrew spoken tape (how ridiculous is that... how many people that want to renew their visa are able to speak Hebrew?!), also failed to mention me that I should go to East-Jerusalem. Even after she asked me all the complete details: what kind of visa I had and what it was that I exactly wanted. Why??
Anyhow, the woman behind the desk was friendly and she tried to explain to me where I had to go. She wrote down the address on a piece of paper and gave me good directions.

At least that's what I thought. But when I was close to the place where the ministry was supposed to be I began to doubt. It was supposed to be close to the Israeli police station in East-Jerusalem. So I thought naively, that if I would just go there, these police officers would be able to tell... because after all they are police officers and the ministry of interior is not just any place.
After I asked one of them, he answered me vaguely, and immediately began greeting this other police man that was approaching. He just ignored me! When he finally turned around again, he addressed me in underdeveloped English. I told him I needed to get my visa extended and that it was supposed to be close. He and his colleagues wanted to send me to the American consulate. In the end they told me they had no idea and that I should ask a taxi driver. For god's sake?!!! A taxi driver?! I had even shown them the streetname on the piece of paper I got, but all of them stared at it like cows. These were Israeli police men but they didn't even know the names of their "own" (occupied) streets...
After this encounter an hour of searching began, where I was misdirected by both Israelis and Palestinians. Even the supposedly all-knowing Israeli taxi drivers didn't know what I was talking about. At that point I felt a little despair, walking around with my expired visa.

In the end a Palestinian man drove me to the ministry and I soon found out why I hadn't been able to find it. This was the 'Palestinian' ministry of interior. It wasn't just randomly based in East-Jerusalem. All people waiting in line were Palestinians, except for me and some Aruban guy who I had a little talk with in Dutch. I'm still not sure whether the Israeli police men really didn't know the place or whether they just didn't want to know the place.
And I've read before about how Israeli taxi drivers aren't able to find any streets in East-Jerusalem. The Palestinians on the other hand didn't know where I was going, because the nice Israeli lady had written the streetname in the Hebrew version of it.. which is not the original name it is known by, by Palestinians from East-Jerusalem. Damn... welcome to the fucked up situation of Jerusalem: two cities in one, or better said> two worlds in one city.

So there I was at 10:30, at the 'right' ministry of interior. Apparently the West-Jerusalem ministry of interior is only for Jewish people. I had seen an American guy there, but he was Jewish as well (as I could tell because he was wearing his kepa). The two ministries couldn't have been more different, and by that I mean not only 'population' wise. The entrance to the ministry resembled that of the toughest checkpoints. Honestly, I've never had this much trouble entering any checkpoint. To begin with before I could go wait in line with the other people, I had to cross a turning stile. The light was red and it was closed. The guard told me, after I tried to push it a few times to see if it was really closed, that I had to wait until there was space. According to him it was full now... but I only saw around thirty women (men and women have divided lines) waiting and there was more than enough space to join them. Mean while next to me, the men were walking through the turning stile one by one.. apparently for them it wasn't full, eventhough the line of men was three times as big as the line of women. Welcome to the random behavior of Israelis.

After 15 minutes I was finally allowed through. I was finally allowed to stand in line with the other women, in this windy corridor. It made me wonder: How do they do this in winter, or when it rains? As I saw it, the openings didn't contain mechanisms to close in case of bad weather. In West-Jerusalem there was a security check as well, but it took two minutes of my time. Here the security check made me wait in line for half an hour. It was completely ridiculous. First I had to wait, until I was able to go wait in line, to be allowed inside to wait in line again, but this time for the thing I came here to do. And then I even forget to mention that inside there was another line for the information desk, the only place where you were able to get a number. The same paper versions we in Holland have in machines, where you just grab one and walk on.

At the security check I was asked to remove my shoes and walk through the metal detector. My bag was vigorously checked, but that seemed to be carried out completely random. I had my bag checked three times (because I went there three times in total)and every time they 'removed' different items from my bag, saying I was not allowed to take these items inside. However, the content of my bag was all three times exactly the same. The last time the girl checking me made me leave behind my eyeshadow... even though I had several other boxes of eyeshadow in my bag, and the first times no-one made a fuss about it. I guess she liked the color and just wanted to see if it looked good on her...

At the information desk I told them that I wanted to extend my visa. The guy gave me a form to fill in and a number. He told me that after that I had to go to desk number 1. But because he gave me a number I assumed (I don't know... is it that stupid?)that I had to wait until my number came up and then go to desk number 1. Otherwise why would he had given me the number?? So I waited. There were thirty people waiting in front of me and the progress in the line was dead slow. I had plenty of time to observe the people waiting and the Israelis behind the desks. It was quite funny to see the Israelis speaking Arabic with the people and they were treating them quite nice. I saw several smiling faces and it made me feel somewhat good to see this for once.
When I went to ask the guy at the information desk something, he asked me whether I had already handed in the form at desk 1. I replied that I thought I had to wait. He said that he had told me to go there and that they would call me than and that I didn't need to follow the number. Huh?! I was flabbergasted.
In the end the number was only to distinguish between the people who had handed in forms... who was entitled to go first, but the exact number didn't matter.

It felt weird to just go to desk 1 while they were busy dealing with someone and hand in the form. It seemed so disorganised. Around the desk around five or six people were waiting their turns, like vultures around their preys. It was a situation of fending for yourself and not caring about how long others had already been waiting there.

When I handed in my form, I was immediately addressed in Dutch by a man that was sitting next to the woman dealing with the applications. I was shocked, it was a bit creepy. I don't think he could have read that quickly from my form that I was Dutch... He was very nice and asked me some superficial questions, which I loved because they were perfect for my superficial alibi of being a stupid tourist.
He told me to go sit and wait again, until they would call me to the desk. So I did. In the meanwhile I had been in the ministry of interior for more than 3 hours already, without accomplishing anything.

When I was finally called, I was transferred to desk 2. The man who had all the time been sitting behind desk 1 transferred with me. I'm not sure whether he was interested in me, suspicious of me or just found it cool to practice his Dutch. Anyway, he was very very nice and made me feel like a normal human being. The girl sitting behind desk 2 was not that nice. She looked at me with a horrible look in her eyes.
They asked me a few questions, but I was surprised... I'd expected that they would have asked more questions and more difficult ones. It seemed to go quite well.
But then the girl told me that she needed evidence that I was staying in Jerusalem. I asked her what sense that made, since being a tourist, I don't have a permanent residence: that's what tourists do... they travel. I told her that I had only been in Jerusalem for 2 days because I came back from Haifa. She said that she didn't care about that but needed the evidence.

I was screwed, because I had already told them that I was staying in some hostel in Jerusalem. Now I had to get receits of the past days of that particular hostel. The girl also informed me that I had to prove that I was indeed taking a year of from college between my bachelor and master, by showing them a letter of the university stating that I would take part in one of their programmes. What?! I told them that I hadn't applied yet. But what do they need it for anyway?
The guy smiled at me and said that they really wanted to help me, but that their boss was just being difficult. It may sound stupid, but I actually believed him. HIM, not her... she seemed to want to make it as difficult as possible for me.
If I would give them the receits and a letter stating my motivations to stay in Israel, he told me, that would give me the visa straight away... I didn't have to wait in line again, I could just come up to the desk and they would give me the stamp.
I wanted to move quickly to not waste anymore time.. By then it was 14:10 and I had been busy since 8:45. I told them I wanted to go get the right papers straight away. They told me that it was not really possible anymore, since they closed the door at 3. Damn.. the old city was quite a walk away from there.

Afterwards I called my friend and he told me that one of his friends owned a hostel in Jerusalem.. unfortunately the wrong one. I didn't really know what to do. But he proposed to ask the guy if he could arrange anything for me at the hostel I mentioned. In the end these people from the hostels all knew each other very well and because of my friend they were willing to help me. I was saved!!
I had to wait two more hours, but after that I went to the hostel and got the receits that I needed. I was thrilled and thanked them from the bottom of my heart. But something in my head told me not to be too excited because with Israeli officials you just never know, even though they sort of promised to give me the visa... Unfortunately, the next day I proved to be very right on that... TO BE CONTINUED!!!

Checkpoint Experiences

2008-11-30T11:46:00.014+02:00

Last weekend I went to see Hebron. The only Palestinian city in the West Bank that has its center taken over by Israeli settlers.
To get there, and back, we had to pass many checkpoints, as usual. To get anywhere inside the West Bank you have to pass many checkpoints, for the safety of the Israeli people and the security of the state of Israel, yeah right...
The checkpoint system, spread over the entire West Bank, is one of the most pervasive features of occupation for ordinary Palestinians. Anyone, security threat or not (even though of course every Palestinian is seen as a security threat, just because of his identity), every Palestinian has to deal with the checkpoints. It can easily be argued that the checkpoint system doesn't benefit Israeli security at all, because it's one the biggest sources of frustration for Palestinian people.
But set aside that discussion, it's still a mystery for me how the security of Israel is threatened by the free movement of people between two Palestinian towns on Palestinian territory.
The suicide bomber argument is lame and hardly convincing. It's completely ridiculous that checkpoints inside the West Bank help prevent suicide attacks, as if Palestinians are just life-hating savages trying to seize every opportunity to end their lives, even if that means doing it in a Palestinian town.
What the checkpoint system does help to prevent is the development of young Palestinians and giving them good prospects for the future. The checkpoints limit their opportunities directly. Access to good, or just any, education is limited, which might let students, or their parents, decide to stop their (university) education.
At some point the Israeli army closed down the road leading to Bir Zeit university, for some vague security reason. Students could then only access their university by foot. At first they were very creative and brought donkeys, until the Israeli army prohibited the use of donkeys on that road as well (terrorist donkey is my lucky guess of the reason..). This caused many students to drop out of university because they had to walk for miles and especially in the cold winter this was more than some students could bare.
Not being able to fulfill your dreams or just the prospect of a meaningless future is encredibly frustrating. It makes you question the Israeli checkpoint system. What is more detrimental to the security of Israel: Young educated people being able to make something out of their lives, determine their own futures? Or trying to control a bunch of heavily frustrated youngsters that have lost all hope for a better future, by imprisoning them in the city they live in? To me it just seems that either Israel just completely lacks a long-term security 'vision', or Israel knows exactly what its doing and benefits from the radicalisation of Palestinian society (the latter of course being the cynical view, if that's too bitter for you: just stick with option 1).
And one small other comment on the 'security-argument'. The main reason that the number of Palestinian suicide bombers has dropped considerably in recent years is NOT because Israel tightened its grip on Palestinian society, by strengthening its security regime. The true reason is that Hamas has stopped propagating suicide attacks amongst its followers. Because Hamas came to realize how destructive these attacks were for the Palestinian cause: it led many young people to die, it left the families of these people homeless or severely punished by the Israeli army and most of all it diminished the (small amount of) leverage the Palestinians had on the world, by wiping out support and understanding for the Palestinian struggle. At the same time, people came to this conclusion themselves. It only allowed Israel to further crack down on the rights of the Palestinian people. Of course out of such a perverse act of despair nothing good can come forth.

Anyhow, in the two months that I've been living here in Palestine I've gone through a lot of checkpoints. Sometimes it's hard, sometimes it's easy. Sometimes they ask you a lot of questions, sometimes they don't. Sometimes they are nice, often they are rude.

In general, my checkpoint experiences are not that bad. This has to do with two things: Being an international the Israeli soldiers want you gone ASAP, they don't like onlookers. With internationals around their behavior towards Palestinians is much more humane than when there are no internationals there.
Secondly being an international you're like an attraction to the bored soldiers at the checkpoints. They like to know where you came from, or they just want to practice their English.

Here are the accounts of a few random encounters:

Beit Iba checkpoint (north-west of Nablus) - The moment we were about to get out of the taxi to go through the checkpoint it began raining like hell. We ran for the checkpoint, wading ourselves through (literally) a river of water. As we entered the checkpoint we were completely soaked. The two soldiers that were standing there seemed amused (not a big deal: in our own eyes it was an incredibly funny experience). They looked suspiciously at our passports and asked us where we were from. I was the last one in line. They sort of smiled at me, even though I was wearing my keffiyeh. After they asked me where I was from and I had started to walk away, one of the soldiers hesitantly mumbled: "eeh..have a nice day.. in...eeh.. Nablus". I was amazed. Was that truly friendly meant?? I had never before heard a soldier say such a friendly appearing statement. Were they flirting with me?? I was confused. Should I've been happy that they were nice for a change, or should I have been disgusted because this treatment is most likely based on racist distinctions?

Huwarra checkpoint - When it was my turn to be checked I handed over my passport to the soldier. He took it, but held it as if I had given him this piece of rubbish and had no idea why. He growld: "From where you are?". "Holland", I replied. "Huh??"... "Hol-laaand", I said again. "The NE-THER-LANDS". "Uh", was his lame reply, with the livelihood of a dead man. He handed me over my passport with the most careless gesture you can imagine. After that I was 'free' to go.

Huwarra checkpoint - While I was waiting in line with James (a guy from the UK) to go to Ramallah for a hiphop concert, some soldier came walking towards us. "Why on earth did you come here?? Why don't you go to Jerushaleim??". He said it sort of in a nice way, just completely amazed that two western people that he (thinks he)can relate to have decided to come to Nablus. I replied that Nablus is a very nice city. "No really.. why did you come here? This place must be like hell for you.." he almost screamed enthusiastically. I told him again that Nablus was really a very nice city to visit. Then it was our turn. The soldier checking our passports asked us: "Sorry but I really don't understand why you've decided to come here". The other soldier came standing next to him and yelled: "I asked them that too. Just stay in Jerushaleim.". I said to them both that Nablus is truly amazing and walked away, leaving them behind in great confusion. James remarked that we should have told them: "the only thing making Nablus like a hell for us is you guys".

Huwarra checkpoint - I was standing in line behind a man with two little children. The oldest was a boy and around three or four years old. It's hard to imagine what occupation looks like through the eyes of an innocent kid. I remember that being a child the reality looked far more sunny and unconcerned. I don't know whether that's also the case for Palestinian children. But anyhow, when it was their turn I heard the soldier talking to the small boy. He asked him in a very kind way what's his name was. When the little kid replied he made a nice comment about his name. The kid seemed to smile. I was touched. I've seen soldiers before with Palestinian children and it was shocking to see how cold they react to these children. This was the first time I saw a sign of humane and compassionate behaviour in an Israeli soldier. Suddenly it made me realize that these soldiers might have personal believes that differ completely from that of the army. Army service is obligatory so it doesn't say a lot about your convictions. It only says something about the absence of strong convictions that prevent you from joining this horrible institution.

Still I don't want to show too much sympathy for these soldiers. Many internationals put forward that it's the system that is entirely wrong, but that these young people do not really 'have a choice' or that they 'can not really help it'. I think that's bullshit, no matter what the social consequences are of your action I think you're always obliged to do what is morally just, or at least not to participate in what is morally unjust. Without operators the system is powerless and wouldn't be able to function... That's why I don't think they are really entitled to my respect.

Israel = Palestine

2008-11-16T00:21:00.018+02:00

Yesterday I went on a trip inside Israel with a Palestinian friend of mine that lives and works in Israel.

We went to see Haifa and Jaffa. Along the way to Haifa I couldn't help myself wondering about the Palestinian villages that have disappeared when Israel was established in 1948. It is estimated that 350-550 Palestinians villages where cleared of its population and destroyed.
Whenever I saw an open piece of land, or a forest I asked myself: Maybe there used to be a village here? With such a great number of villages erased of the map, I knew we would be driving by some of them.
Tonight I had a look on a map displaying the depopulated villages and I found out that we passed many that day... I wasn't being a cynic or a pessimist, unfortunately. Strikingly, in some cases there used to be a village in exactly the same area as where I assumed them to be when 'fantasazing' about it in the car. I turned out to be right, horribly.

Haifa was pleasant. Up on mt. Carmel where the Jewish colonization of Haifa began we had a very beautiful view of the city and a nice stroll. The area was green, clean and organised. No signs of Palestine, a completely different world: Western, with shockingly naked women in the street... but at least no people staring at us too overtly.

After that we went downtown to see the Arab old city of Haifa: Wadi Nisnas. All of a sudden Nablus didn't seem that far away. Even the smells in the street were similar to those in Nablus: Palestine inside Israel. During its 60 year existence Israel has gone through a lot of effort to erase the country it was build upon: from the map, from the minds and from history even. Israel claims that there has never been such a thing as Palestine or Palestinian people: A land without a people, for a people without a land.

Driving through Israel I came to realize that Palestine is still everywhere in Israel, although largely covered under a thick layer of time. Old buildings tell the story of the Palestinian people for anyone ready to listen, they were the silent witnesses to the nakba, that drove out 85% of the people living in the territory upon which Israel was established.

After visiting Haifa we drove down the coast to see Jaffa, once the heart of Palestine, now a sad but beautiful hub for tourists that quickly want to consume some culture before they head back to the beach or the main shopping street in Tel Aviv.
Seeing Jaffa broke something inside of me. I've never had any real emotional difficulty in Palestine seeing or experiencing aspects of the situation, the ongoing colonialization and destruction of Palestine and its people. Until Jaffa. It made me feel sick to my bones.

I was in complete awe when I saw it. The old city of Jaffa is the most beautiful, most charming town of Palestine that I have seen. Strolling through its little streets and harbour the past lingers around you. It's not hard to imagine how life must have been here hundred years ago. The sincere atmosphere of any fishermen village was present there. My mind coloured the alleys with older men going to prayer, women selling fresh fish in the streets and children running around.

However, not anymore. The nakba expelled the people of Jaffa from their homes. Of its 70,000 inhabitants only 4,000 were able to stay and these people were forced to live in one neigborhood designated to them by Israel. The old city is now inhabited by Jewish Israelis and is flooded with Israeli art galleries and fancy restaurants. Hurds of ignorant Russian tourists trample the town day in, day out.
I studied them with great curiosity when I was there. I wondered whether they were aware of the fact that this used to be a Palestinian town and a home to so many Palestinian families. Would they know that the place where they were having dinner used to be a house, where some person in some refugee camp in the Middle East still dreams of going back to? Still holding the key to its property even though Israel illegally expropriated him decades ago...

Every street in the old city of Jaffa, every building, every stone almost, screams history. How do people, that are not willing to recognize the Palestinian suffering, reconcile that with the fact that Israel has only came into existence sixty years ago? Is it not quite logic that if you walk in Jaffa that you would come to the conclusion that this town exceeds the existence of Israel by far and wouldn't you then start to wonder about the people and the society that were there before? And then wouldn't you be likely to think about how and why these people don't live here anymore? Why this town features the Israeli flag all over the place? Apparently not.

This town was alive long before the idea of Israel even came to the minds of the atheistic zionists that established the state of Israel. Atheistic meaning that they didn't base their claims to this land on some holy book. Israel was not given to the jewish people for religious reasons and Israel was also not given to the jewish people because of the holocaust and World War II. Long before Hitler rose to power had the jewish people began settling in historic Palestine, strengthened by the declaration of the U.K. (Balfour declaration of 1922!!) that a jewish homeland was to be erected in this area.

Jaffa was really more than I could bare. I still feel the anger inside and this entire blog is written with that feeling as fuel. I do wonder though why it is this particular experience that has made me so enraged. I honoustly thought that I had seen and experienced quite a lot already. When I was being attacked by settlers in Hebron I didn't even react this strongly.

Maybe it's the complete denial of history here, the complete denial of truth. At least inside the West Bank, with every feature of occupation you clearly see the rotten face of it. Checkpoints are grey, ugly and depressing, the same can be said of the wall. Soldiers don't come across as your average nice guys, to say the least and to see the tormented city of Nablus makes you aware that life here is serious business.

In Jaffa, I think, it's the disguise of beauty and innocence that makes me sick. It's the complete cover-up of the history of Jaffa, and the fate of its people that I can not live with. It's one big ugly lie, black to the bone, but wrapped up in gold.. if you don't come too close, you won't notice its deceitful smell of decay.

I felt so relieved when I came back to Nablus, truly absurd. Most people here experience going through the checkpoint to enter Nablus, as entering a prison. Nablus gives them a feeling of restriction. For me it's almost the other way around, I feel comfortable being in Nablus. I know as a woman here you can not go anywhere you want, you can not drink alcohol in public... I honoustly don't give a shit. I don't feel free in Israel where all that ís possible, where you can drive with 160 km an hour over the freeway, where there are no nightly army incursions. I don't feel free seeing restaurants of Mc Donalds everywhere. And freedom for me is not necessarily about going out on the street whenever you want, dressed in whatever you want. It is part of my sense of freedom but not essential.

I feel truly free in an environment that reflects the principles that I stand for. I don't feel free in an environment surrounded by fake, corrupt and rotten principles, where you have to suppress everything you believe in... a society that suppresses everything I believe in. Freedom is more than being able to consume freely. In its soul freedom is standing for what you believe in and having the space to do so.

In Israel I feel I have to disguise my entire identity. I have to lie about what I'm doing here, where I live, and of course I have to deny everything I deeply believe in just to be able to get in to this country. I'm not allowed to exist as I am in this country. The word Palestine is not allowed to exist, especially at the Israeli airport... it's a big taboo. But even through all this neglect, suppression and denial, Palestine keeps popping back up. Israel = Palestine. Even if you don't want to see the signs, it doesn't mean they are not there.

Daily life

2008-11-10T22:51:00.004+02:00

Over the past few weeks people have been asking me how my life is going in Nablus. I try to explain them in the best way I can what my daily life here is all about. Not an easy task I have to say. I'm uploading as many pictures as I can onto facebook to give people an impression, hoping vigorously that the core identity of Palestine can be transferred upon to people by images. At least images speak louder than words, but then there's the smell of life here, the noise... the chaos, the contact with people: friends, or random encounters in the street.
Not to forget about the essential question: do I even have a daily life here in Palestine?? And for the more philosophical minds among us: Is a daily life in Palestine possible?
Letting the past few weeks run through my head, my days don't seem to have much in common. Of course there are the common components that fill up most people's lifes, such as eating, sleeping, working... but the way that these are done and the way that leads up to them vary on a daily basis.

A lot has to do with living as a volunteer in a different country, without your daily rituals, friends and family. But a lot has to do with Palestine as well. The economic and political situation in this country teaches people not to predict and not to expect. This attitude runs through every layer of the society and it's quite bizarre how quickly you pick up on that as an international living here.
Palestine is a system of unpredictability (even though the word system might be entirely misfit, because it implies a level of organisation). Instead of trying to beat it by an overdosis of planning, it's much wiser to accept it as a reality and take life as it comes to you...
This weekend I was in the Palestinian village of Beita, staying with a family I know. I was in the car with them when the man slowly drove into another (parked) car because his brakes were not working correctly. The owners from the other car came immediately to see what had occurred. All the men talked to each other for a few minutes... all I could understand was a frequent use of the sentence 'mish mushkileh' = no problem. After that we just left as no-one really seemed to bother about what had just happened.

But anyhow let me at least try to give an impression of everything that daily life can entail here:

Yesterday I woke up, fed the baby cat we have recently adopted because it got run over by a car, went to my Arabic lessons across the street. Walked down town to get a service (shared taxi) to the new campus of the university... after this crazy taxi ride (although this seems to be a quite common experience) where the driver saw the road obstacles put up by the PA as a racing circuit, I found out that my class was cancelled because of strikes at the university.

After that I went to my class in Al Ein refugee camp where I teach 13 year old girls. Walking down to the school I experienced the occasional Fuck-you's and Hello-what's-your-name's, that are part of being an international in Nablus, from boys that had just finished school.

When I arrived at the school I found out that my local translator had been replaced. She had to resign from working for Project Hope because of problems in her home village. The class was very nice. The girls listened quite well today and were not as enthusiastic/crazy as they sometimes get. Too bad the headmistress had to come in and declare that she thought her students sucked at English and made many mistakes.

After leaving the class and the regular compliments of my students about how much they like my hair or dress, and after the 'I love you's' I went home today with one of the girls that had invited me to have lunch at her house. She insisted that I came, telling me her mother wanted to meet me and make me a special lunch.

All the other girls found out and I had to promise them to come visit their families as well. I'm completely being drowned with dinner invitations. The day before I had dinner with three students of my university class and the day before that day I took a ride from the checkpoint to the city in a car with a very nice couple. They drove me all the way home and asked me to come pay them a visit soon... which means: come eat, drink and enjoy!

Before we went to the house of the girl we paid a quick visit to the shop in her street, because she needed to buy me some candy... She informed me that she had told the shopkeeper about me and about the fact that I was coming today. When I entered the shop I was introduced and greeted as a father greets the friends of his daughter.

At the house of the girl I had an amazing lunch where the mother had prepared me a special traditional dish that they normally don't make unless it's ramadan. After the extensive lunch I stayed for tea, coffee, cookies, sweets and a very nice conversation. The mother of the girl spoke excellent English and had very openminded, liberal and intellectual political and religious views.

After several promises to come back and taking a box full of home-made cookies I went home, where I fed the cat again and played a little with it.. she's adorable. Then we all went to the office where we had dinner with all the international and local volunteers.. at least they had dinner, I just came there to hang around. That lunch had hit me hard that afternoon! The dinner was nice... we had a few laughs and after that I went home, fed the cat one more time, checked my email and went to bed.

This is just any particular day, randomly chosen and it doesn't represent experiences in any other days of the week. Any commonalities between them are just merely coincidental.
More daily life stories soon to follow!

Palestinian Children in Israeli Detention

2008-11-04T14:27:00.010+02:00

Since the beginning of the second Intifada in September 2000, over 2500 Palestinian children have been arrested, according to Addameer (a Palestinian prisoner support and human rights organisation). Defence for Children International puts this number even at 5900. At this time there are at least 340 children detained in Israeli prisons, while around 700 children have been arrested in 2007.

These children are often subjected to severe mistreatment and torture:

Palestinian child prisoners routinely face violations of their human rights during arrest,interrogation and imprisonment. They are exposed to physical and psychological abuse,amounting to cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment, and sometimes torture. They are denied prompt access to a lawyer and often denied contact with their families and the outside world. Some are held without charge or trial. They face substandard, often inhumane, conditions of detention, both in the facilities where they are initially held and interrogated and in those where they await trial and serve their sentence. Moreover,they are frequently denied access to proper medical care and denied access to proper education services. In many cases, the arrest, interrogation and imprisonment experience has psychological effects that extend far beyond the period of detention. (Defence for Children International Annual Report 2007)

On the site of Ma'an News (http://www.maannews.net/) I've found an impressive personal account of a twelve year old boy that has recently been detained by the Israeli army. The content might be shocking, but still I would like to share it with you:

Ni’lin – B'Tselem Report – Twelve-year-old Muhammad Salah Muhammad Khawajah is a student and a resident of Ni'lin, a village in the Ramallah district of the West Bank. His testimony about the night his home was invaded was given to Iyad Hadad on 18 September 2008 at the witness's home.

Muhammad: I live with my family in Ni’lin. We live on the ground floor of the house, my two uncles and their families live on the first floor, and my grandmother lives on the second floor. Last Thursday [11 September], around 3:00 am I woke up from my mother’s shouts. She was shouting, “Get up! Get up! The army is here!” My father wasn’t home that night. I got up and went out with her to the inner courtyard of the house. There were about 12 soldiers there and their faces were painted black. One soldier wore a black [balaclava] that covered his face. He sat on the stairs outside the house and didn’t take part. I think he was a collaborator who led them to houses. The soldiers were on the first floor. I heard them tell my Uncle Sami to direct them to our floor. One of the soldiers asked, “Where is Muhammad?” and I realized he was asking about me. The soldier told my uncle to call me, so he did. I started walking towards them. Two soldiers grabbed me and took me outside. I realized they wanted to arrest me. I was afraid, and began to cry, and called my uncle to come with me.

The soldiers cuffed my hands tight with plastic handcuffs, which hurt a lot. A soldier grabbed me by the shirt from behind and started walking and pushing me forward. The shirt was up against my neck and I couldn’t breathe properly. I tried to free myself, and he punched me in the back and pulled the shirt tighter, choking me even more. Another soldier also punched me and pulled my hair as we walked. I cried and called out for my uncle and my father. The soldiers hit me and said, “Quiet! Quiet!” They led me to an alleyway between the houses, where there are cactuses. We were walking by some cactuses and then one of the soldiers pushed me into them. The thorns pricked me in the hands and legs. The soldiers kept on pushing me forward and hitting me along the way. While we were walking children from the village began to throw stones at the soldiers. It felt like it was raining stones. The soldiers were confused. Some of them ran off, and the others pushed me to move faster, and I fell down. One soldier started dragging me along the ground, on my stomach, with my hands tied. The ground was full of stones, gravel, and dirt. He pulled me by my hands and I cried and shouted. He told me to shut up. He wanted to pull me faster, to get away from the stones. He dragged me a few meters, until we were behind a wall. It felt like my right knee and the palms of my hands were injured. My knee was bleeding. Some soldiers fired tear gas in the direction of the stone throwers. The grenade fell not far from me and I started coughing and crying. My eyes were burning. We started walking again, the soldiers pushing me from behind.

We got to a house in the village about 400 meters away and they broke in. It was the house of 14-year-old Abd Ar-Rahman Lu’ai Abd Al-Halim who goes to school with me. They arrested him and his cousin, 18-year-old Sufian Nawaf al-Khawajah.They took the three of us to the village center, about 400 meters from my house, and made us stand facing a shop with our hands raised. Abd a-Rahman and Sufian were handcuffed as well. The soldiers beat us and knocked us to the ground. We lay there and they stepped on us, on our heads and stomach, for a few minutes. Then they stood us on our feet and pushed us toward the entrance to the village. A soldier was behind each of us holding each one by the shirt. Every now and then the soldiers punched and kicked us. One soldier was angry at me in particular. He beat and strangled me, as if he wanted to kill me. I think some of the soldiers had been hit by the stones thrown by the children. I shouted and cried, I was so scared. It was still dark out.

They led us about one kilometer, to the junction that leads to the Nili settlement. There were lots of army jeeps at the junction. The soldiers blindfolded me and put me into a jeep. It was about an hour after they had arrested me. The jeep began to move. I didn't know where it was going. I sat on the floor of the jeep, without any soldiers next to me. After about half an hour, maybe an hour, of driving, the jeep stopped, and the soldiers took me out of it. I could see a bit through the blindfold. I didn't know where I was, but it was an army base. I saw another two jeeps pull up. They took Abd a-Rahman out of one and Sufian out of the other.Then they drove us somewhere else.

There they sat us down on benches, and after ten minutes they called us in for questioning, one after the other. Abd a-Rahman went first and his questioning lasted for about twenty minutes. Then I went into the room and they took off my blindfold. I saw a man in civilian clothes. He was stout, with a round face and fair skin. He was wearing a skullcap. He said his name was Captain Sasson and I also heard other people call him that. He sat me down next to his table and asked me questions about children from the village. He showed me pictures from a thick photo album, which had more than 200 photos. He asked me about some children again and again, and I told him I didn't know them. Then he stopped asking me about them and showed me three pictures of myself, holding a slingshot in a demonstration against the separation fence. I admitted that it was me, but I kept on saying that I didn't know the other children. Then he hit me in the back with a plastic stool. I cried and shouted, and he hit me twice in the leg with a wooden stick. A soldier who had a pistol on his hip ordered me to get up and face the window or the closet. There was a camera fixed in place in front of me. He took my picture, and then the interrogator told me to sign, with my fingerprint, a page with Hebrew writing. I don’t know what it said. The soldier didn’t read it to me. I assume it was a confession. I had to sign because I was afraid he would beat me. The interrogator took prints of all my fingers, and then told the soldier to blindfold me again. He took me out of the room and sat me down on the bench outside. The interrogation had taken about half an hour.

Then they took Sufian in, also for about half an hour. Then they put the three of us in a big patrol van, and after driving for about quarter of an hour, they took us out and removed the blindfolds. I saw a sign that said “Ofer,” and I realized we were in Ofer Prison. They took us into a room where they search people. They took off our clothes and a doctor examined us. They gave us bags with pants, a shirt, and flip-flops. They arrested Sufian and put him in a detention room. A policeman in a blue uniform [of the regular, rather than border police] spoke with the soldiers. I understood that he was telling them to release us. He said to us, in Arabic, “You are small children and should be released.”

They kept Abd a-Rahman and me outside the detention room and then returned us to the van. Our hands were still cuffed. After about twenty minutes, they brought each one of us a container of jello. They removed the cuffs and let us eat. About half an hour later, they put the cuffs back on. Two soldiers were guarding us in the van. We weren’t allowed to talk to each other. Whenever we said something, a soldier told us to shut up. It was very hot in the van, and we were sweating a lot. They didn't give us anything to eat or drink. They did let us go to the bathroom, removing the handcuffs and putting them back on when we returned.

We stayed like that until after the muezzin called worshipers to evening prayers around 8:00pm. Then they took us to another camp. I think it was the Beit Sira camp. At the camp, they gave us a chocolate drink and put us in a small room with green army mattresses. There weren’t any beds. The cuffs were loose now, so we took them off, drank the chocolate drink and went to sleep.

The next morning at 10:00 they put us in a patrol van and cuffed our hands again, but this time they didn’t blindfold us. They took us back to Ofer Prison and put us in the tent section, Department 2, which had eighty-three detainees, of all ages. Each department had four tents, with about twenty detainees in each. The detainees treated us well. They gave us candy, chocolate and potato chips. I felt comfortable. I fasted during the day [since it was Ramadan] and played soccer and tennis. The Department had TVs, one in each tent. I saw kids’ programs during the day and a Syrian soap opera, “Bab Al-Hara,” at night. A detainee helped me ask for the doctor to treat my leg. They took me to the clinic and the doctor put iodine on my knee wound and bandaged it.

At first, I was afraid and cried sometimes, because my family was far away. I’ve never been detained before. It was a new experience for me. I didn't know anything about detention before then. I don’t know why they detained me – the whole village and all the children took part in the demonstrations, so why did they pick me?

The adult detainees took care of me because I was the youngest detainee in the Department, and they decided to make me assistant to the sergeant of the Department. I would wake up every morning at 6:00 and call to the detainees: “Let’s go! Time for the count!” They would get up and then the soldiers would come in and count them. I stood next to the soldiers as they counted. The soldiers treated me with respect and asked the older detainees to take care of me. The Department sergeant always helped me. He was older than most of the other detainees and spoke Hebrew. We worked together, helping the detainees and submitting their requests to the prison officials and to the guards.

On Sunday morning [14 September] at 6:00am I was taken to court together with Abd a-Rahman. Before we left for court, they shackled our hands and legs with handcuffs and iron chains. When we got there, they put us in a small room to wait until the hearing began, at 2:00pm. We didn't ask for food or drink because we were fasting. When the time for the hearing came, they took us into the courtroom, the two of us handcuffed. My father was there and so was a man from B'Tselem. Later, I learned that his name was Iyad Hadad. Other people also came to the hearing, and it made me feel good to see them. I was very happy to see my father, but the soldiers didn’t let me hug him or even touch his hand.

An Israeli lawyer defended me. I don’t know her name. She asked that I be released on bond and the judge granted the request, but set bond at 3,000 shekels. My father didn't have the money, so we couldn’t pay. After the hearing, they took me back into detention. The next day, my father managed to borrow the money for the bond and I was released on condition that I return to a hearing on Tuesday [16 September].

I went home to my parents and family. I was very happy. I went to the medical clinic in the village because my neck and shoulder hurt, and also because of the scratches and wound to my knee. They examined me and treated me. They told me to rest for a week and to come back for follow-up. My father went with me to the hearing on Tuesday. The hearing was postponed until 21 October 2008.

Since I got released, I’ve had problems. I wake up at night in fear and I can hardly sleep. I went to a psychologist called Khaled Shahawan and he gave me medicine and sedatives. I feel that it’s hard to concentrate in school. Last year my grade average was 94."

The treatment of this boy is not only morally wrong, but even illegal according to international law. Israel is a party to the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) and to the UN Convention Against Torture (CAT). Amongst others these conventions say the following:

* In all actions concerning children, their best interests shall be a primary consideration
(article 3 - CRC)

* No exceptional circumstances whatsoever, whether a state of war or a threat of war,
internal political instability or any other public emergency, may be invoked as a justification
of torture (CAT – Article 2.2)

* No child shall be subjected to torture or other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or
punishment (CRC - Article 37 a)

* No child shall be deprived of his or her liberty unlawfully or arbitrarily. The arrest, detention
or imprisonment of a child shall be in conformity with the law and shall be used only as a
measure of last resort and for the shortest appropriate period of time (CRC - Article 37 b)

* Every child deprived of liberty shall be treated with humanity and respect for the inherent
dignity of the human person, and in a manner which takes into account the needs of persons
of his or her age. In particular, every child deprived of liberty shall be separated from adults
unless it is considered in the child's best interest not to do so and shall have the right to
maintain contact with his or her family through correspondence and visits, save in
exceptional circumstances (CRC - Article 37 c)

* Every child deprived of his or her liberty shall have the right to prompt access to legal and
other appropriate assistance, as well as the right to challenge the legality of the deprivation
of his or her liberty before a court or other competent, independent and impartial authority,
and to a prompt decision on any such action. Every child deprived of his or her liberty shall
have the right to prompt access to legal and other appropriate assistance
(CRC – Article 37 d)

Israel is in clear violation of these rights. Children are often put in prisons together with adults. The period that they can be denied access to a lawyer and held in incommunicado detention can be as long as 90 days. Children are not allowed to have contact with their parents and as said they are tortured and threatened frequently. One kid was even told: “If you don't confess, I will send you to somebody who will sexually abuse you. He has a huge penis.”

Next to that, it's interesting to note that this treatment of Palestinian (children) is in violation of the code of conduct of the Israeli Defense Forces themselves. It states:

* The use of force must be proportional.
* Anyone who surrenders can not be attacked.
* Soldiers must accord dignity and respect to the Palestinian populations and those arrested.
* Soldiers must give appropriate medical care, when conditions allow, to oneself and one's
enemy.

My Reality vs. The Reality

2008-10-19T23:59:00.004+02:00

Whenever people ask how I like it here or what I think of this country, I nearly always say that I love it here. At the same time I make these statements with a kind of embarassment. How perverse is it as a stupid Westerner to come to Palestine to tell Palestinians how wonderful and amazing their country is, while they live under such hardships? Even though most people really appreciate the fact that I look beyond the occupation, to see the beautiful society behind it, I still feel a bit uneasy sometimes. As a Western person you don't get to live with occupation in the same destructive way as Palestinians do. First of all, most of us are only here for a short period: for us there's a way out of here, so it's very easy to like it here. "OMG! It's amáááááááázing.... but yes... my plane leaves next sunday".
Then there's the humiliating system of checkpoints, which is not even nearly as bad for internationals as it is for Palestinians. At Qalandia checkpoint you're allowed to stay in the bus as an international. At Huwarra checkpoint you do have to through on foot, but you can take the 'humanitarian lane'.... which goes of course a lot faster. But sadly waiting for hours at a checkpoint is often a privilige of the lucky few, think of all those Palestinian people that don't even have access to these checkpoints.
And of course... money. As always this 'dirty commodity' plays a big role. For us life in Palestine is fairly nice. We get to go to places such as Jerusalem, Jericho, the Dead Sea, Eilat, Jordan... wherever... and even inside Nablus (or Ramallah, which is even better in this regard) we kind of live 'the good life': we visit nargilah places, go out to diner and whatever. Besides the issue of access many people don't even have the means to do these things because the occupation has killed the economy and has caused an alarming rate of poverty, that strangles many people's ability to live, even further.
And then there's the violence.... the most clear and direct signs that there's a conflict going on in this small piece of land. As a Western person you live in a bubble. You don't see the violence or experience it directly. You live in a reality that is completely different than that of any Palestinian. The violence occurs even beside you when you are sleeping. You know that it happens, you'll hear about it, but still it is not part of your system.
I find it very difficult to deal with to hear about all these horrible incidents of youngsters being killed, arrested etc. and not being able to comprehend it, to imagine it, simply because it's not part of my reality. I see this country as beautiful. I romanticize it. I've been to the lovely small village of Yanoun and I had the time of my life there. Of course I knew that I came there to protect the villagers from harassment by settlers, while just in that same period a 18 year old shepherd (or olive picker) from the village next door was killed brutally by Israeli settlers. But as I've told before 'to hear' and 'to feel' are different experiences.
In my reality Yanoun was peaceful, warm and that upsets me in a way because it's not the entire story. Yanoun is fear and agression as well and I just can not associate any of these with Yanoun. Many people wouldn't understand my 'complaining' and would say that I'm lucky for not having to see this violent side. In a way they're right... I wouldn't want to experience it first hand. But at the same time I feel bad about it.
I walk through streets in Ramallah, Nablus and Jerusalem with my naieve bubble around me all the time. For me these streets are made up out of nice memories & encounters, shopping people, relaxed atmosphere and so forth. I just don't realize that once they were the scenery of traumatic experiences. In Ramallah I've been walking up and down this road for ages and I only saw the huge martyr memorial sign once someone told me what had happened there. I just don't see it, the reality is not part of my reality.
The Nablus I live in is a completely different Nablus Palestinians are living in. I find this very hard to accept. I don't want to be blind for the reality, but I can not really help the fact that I am...

Lack of Luxury

2008-10-08T23:24:00.012+02:00

One of the things of my new life here in the Westbank is letting go of my Western mindset and letting go of the Western lifestyle that I have always more or less taken for granted.
To adapt to a more Palestinian way of living means embracing (little) annoyances, lowering your standards on comfort and dealing with the fact that you can not always have things your way... Life here contains many barriers, not just the Apartheid wall Israel is building on Palestinian land. Many things here need an iron mentality of 'I can deal with it, basitta'. Otherwise normal things such as travelling (not even abroad, but from one town to the next), walking on the streets, can become imbearable.

Of course the number one reason is the sickening situation of occupation. To see how it fucks up perfectly sane people is still hard to deal with from time to times.
Travelling takes just so much more time than in the West that it's shocking to see from hilltops that Jerusalem is really so close to Ramallah. You know it, you've heard it, you've seen it on the map... but even when you see it with your own eyes, it's still too crazy to comprehend.
In Nablus you can not leave your house after 11 pm,the Israeli soldiers that invade the city every single night might shoot you, because 'of course' anyone on the street at night is a security threat or at least a bit coockoo in his head.

But even the most small and meaningless everyday things are not in your hands anymore. Just one example: In Nablus there's quite a water shortage. The water runs now only once every 4 or 5 days. This is when the big black tanks that are located on each Palestinian are refilled with water, to be able to have water when the supply has been cut off. This means watermanagement in every conceivable way, because the supply is not endless.... as is ironically the case in the Israeli settlements situated all over the Westbank, some of them even surrounding Nablus. You can not imagine how disgustingly creative you will get to safe water to stand through until the next supply. I do not really want to share all the details, but I can say that taking a hot shower is a luxury I can only dream of at this point. Instead we stand in the shower and pour buckets of water over our bodies. Unfortunately there's also been some problem with the heating of the water in the past few days... so it's either cold or mixed with water cooked on the stove. I'll save the stories about the flushing of the toilets for the true dare-devils.

Tonight I really felt greasy and dirty and my hair color had turned into a funky shade of brown, so I decided that I really wanted to wash my hair. Another volunteer Nicole had similar thoughts, so we decided to wash each others hair in the bathroom... just like true American highschool girls. We cooked some water and it felt so great. We had created our own Palestinian spa.. it felt like toplevel luxury and I think that at that point it even was.

But actually the best part of the whole experience had to do with some other barriers we ran into in Palestinian society, that are not caused by the occupation (at least not directly caused). These barriers have to deal with adjusting to a conservative (pre-dominantly) Muslim society, where there's not much privacy nor really a lot of freedom to do things as you see fit. They way you dress has to be very moderate and very covered. You can not just go with the guys, whenever they have decided to smoke shisha or drink shay (tea) somewhere, because many places are only for men. You have to be sensitive towards how you address men you know and don't know in the street, you can not become too familiar with them. You can not always walk alone, but at the same time you can not walk with a man on the street at night, without people making judgments about you. Up till now it's still okay, we knew this before we came here and we're not fed up with it yet... but it's interesting to see that certain reactions towards these limitations come into existence: coping mechanisms, ways to deal with it. One of them is that the feeling of solidarity between the girls here increases considerably. You're more drawn towards each other, because each one is dealing with the same situation. Besides you feel like having girls nights out... we've heard of nargileh/shisha places for women and going to the hammam on lady's night (even though for women it's only until 3 pm while men are allowed to spend their entire evenings there) And washing each others hair is part of the same pattern of 'us girls against the world'.

Nicole had just told us yesterday about the way Persian girls hang out with each other in private. They tend to be very affectionate and clingy towards each other inside the private area of their bed- and bathrooms, because in public life there's no room for this kind of behaviour and certainly not when it comes to men. It's funny to see how quickly we are developing in copies of these Persian girls in this conservative society. We had the best time washing each other's hair, while laughing and talking, even though the dream of taking a warm shower still lingers on in our heads. One truly good reason to visit Ramallah very soon.

But what life teaches you here that even without luxury and privacy you can sustain yourself and not only that.... It can be pretty fun too. Once the deceitful Western mindset is gone you'll see and feel the charm of most inconveniences of Palestinian life. Every upside has its downside and the other way around. The rush of luxury in the West makes life sometimes extremely impersonal and harsh, while lack of luxury can bring compassion and solidarity. What is the better option in the end? It turns out, that it's not so black and white altogether...

The bizarre power of Palestine

2008-10-07T22:56:00.007+02:00

A week ago already I arrived back in Palestine. When the plane hit the ground I knew I was really back, I immediately felt the way I felt during my first visit to the holy land. It's hard to explain this feeling and I can not describe it other than the familiar feeling of Palestine.

It was weird to see that nothing had changed and that I recognized everything... as if I have two separate lives and I just took up my Palestinian life exactly the way I left it when I went back to Holland. The only thing that I needed to do was to remove the thin layer of dust it had collected in these two months. Everything just came back up, as if I have a drawer inside my soul with the tag Palestine on it. As if I just had to switch this button on to continue exactly where I had stopped. As if I hadn't had a life in Holland in the meantime.... that life immediately went into the background, to be shelfed and preserved for six months.

I've been telling many people that there's something magical about this country and I don't know why, when or how, but in the past week I've had so many little remarkable experiences that only underline this feeling.

Even the weeks before I went I had this. I randomly met a Palestinian guy in this bar in Rotterdam, in a very bizarre way and it turned out that his father lives in Nablus. It was kind of weird when I told this unexpecting guy that is exactly where I'm planning to spend the next coming six months. One of his friends is from Ramallah and when we began to talk it turned out that he used to live within a range of a 100m. from the place where I used to stay in Ramallah.

Then when I showed some facebook pictures of my previous trip the first guy recognized the girl that I tried to protect from haressment by Israeli settlers in Hebron. She used to work for his brother.

In Jerusalem this week I was looking at some books in a bookstore in East-Jerusalem when this woman started talking to my back in Dutch. At first I didn't even realize she was talking to me, or let alone that she was speaking Dutch. It turned out to be Meta Floor who had helped me out in Jerusalem during my first visit. Weeks before I had also seen her in Utrecht walking by the office of my internship organisation. At the first day of my arrival in Palestine last June, she asked me if wanted to join her for dinner with this local Palestinian family. I hesitated at first, because I had planned to call my classmate Elize to meet up in the old city. When we walked in to that house I was amazed to see Elize sitting on the couch of that family... apparently she was friends with the daughter of that family. In the weeks thereafter I managed to occassionally run into Meta twice in the streets of Jerusalem.

Yesterday I was walking in Ramallah when all of sudden I heard someone saying: Hey Nelleke. I looked up and it was Robert from the Dutch Palestine Committee, the organisation that has send me out to volunteer in Nablus. I even had no idea that he was in Palestine. He asked me if I knew this woman called Trees. I had just received this email of Olives & Tulips for Dutch people and Palestine and there was her name as well... but I had no idea who she was. He told me that it should be really helpful for me to meet her one day. All of a sudden he just ran across the street, just avoiding this car, to stop this woman. As it turned out it was the woman he had just been telling me about: Trees. She seemed familiar to me, but I couldn't place it. I assumed that I might have met her during my last stay. At the end of the conversation Robert mentioned that she is from Sahnin... and all of a sudden it rang a bell. A week before I went to Palestine I had seen this documentary about Palestinian people living in Israel and she featured in it. Quite remarkable.

Today I arrived in Nablus and one of the other volunteers immediately asked me if I knew Hammad. I did... Immediately I remembered that Hammad had told me that one of his friends from college in the U.S. was also going to Nablus, although he wasn't sure whether he would volunteer for the same organisation.

And there are even quite a number of other situations like this that I can describe, but I guess I made my point and I don't want to be boring. The extraordinary thing is that these kind of things used to never happen to me. In Holland I hardly ever meet people in the street, or people that know people that I know. Situations like these only happen to me in Holland when it comes to the subject of Palestine. Every weird, 'coincidental' meeting or experience directly relates to this country. It's mindblowing.... These little events convince me that going back is just something I had to do... as a sort of reassurance: small signs pointing in the direction of Palestine. For me it justs shows that this land exerts a strange kind of power on people.

It makes you wonder... why is this land considered to be holy land for three of the major religions of this world? Why has this land always been invaded by foreign forces? Why has there been so much fighting over this small piece of land? Why did the crusaders leave Europe in the Middle Ages to go conquer this far-off place they've only heard about before? Yes of course, religion and financial interests... but it doesn't really explain it all together. What ís the power of Palestine??

Choice

2008-09-22T00:30:00.018+02:00

A new blog for a new adventure. I'm writing this first post about my upcoming new life in Nablus from the secure environment of my bedroom in the safe and stable country of the Netherlands. Within a few weeks I will be back in the Holy Land with renewed spirit for a second episode of the battle called Palestine.
The first episode was in June and I managed to withstand the Israeli "security measures" and the whole conflict altogether. I did... although maybe not completely without injuries. I might have incurred a few scratches on my soul, but in general I'm fine. I'm Dutch. The difference is that for me it is a decision to go there. For Palestinians it's not a choice, it's life... even when they live at the other side of the world, Palestine is not a choice.
I must be crazy to give up my perfectly fine organised, stable and cozy life for the reality of brutality. When I sit here in my bedroom with the omnipresent peace (not only from the absence of violence, but also from the absence of that enduring cacophony of bizar sounds) to think things through, it seems that this time for me it's also not that much of a choice anymore.
I've let it into my heart, I've let it get to me.... how much percent choice is left?? The choice has already been made while I was still in Palestine, subconciously. It was not a choice about going back or not, it was choice about opening up to people, attaching yourself and allowing yourself to attach. About bridging distances and differences. About erasing all the bullshit that is surrounding life and embracing the core. At that time I didn't see it as a choice, I naively assumed that it was a natural process... part of the Palestine experience that all Internationals went through. I couldn't have been more wrong and to realize that has been so painful for me. Many of the internationals that have been to Palestine, or maybe even the majority (but I still want to preserve some of my naive optimism) has made the choice not to see, not to feel Palestine in its entirety. They reject Palestine by neglecting, or denying important parts of the reality of Palestine. I've experienced that they are eager to embrace and even glorify the suffering of the Palestinians, but are not willing to show the same 'commitment' for the more ugly sides of the Palestinian story. The sensitive political issues don't contain the 'x-factor'. They don't want to accept the correlation between the widely beloved suffering and the nasty outcomes of this suffering. Their language is that of reconciliation, peace, non-violent resistance, mutual understanding. There's no understanding, however, for violent resistance, out of fear of gloryfying terrorism. By doing this they completely obstruct reality. By giving too much priority to peace, they fail to see the importance of freedom... Should freedom not be, at least, equally important as peace? Can there even be peace without freedom? Peace can not be imposed and it can definitely not be imposed in a situation where injustice thrives.
To make the decision to see with sincerity, really how rotten Palestine has been made, is almost to make the decision to come back simultaneously. Chosing to attach means giving up the CHOICE to come back, it becomes part of who you are. For me to do this, feels as nothing more than a natural outcome of the flow of life itself.