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August 4, 2006 - Carrying Wood

Photos of our Tisha Ba'av action mentioned in this report: http://community.webshots.com/album/552838558jiEfjj

It is said in the Quran that when the prophet Mohammad began to disturb the status quo by working for economic and social justice, many wealthy people tried to get in his way.  There is one story I have heard a couple different ways in the past week, so apologies if I do not portray it entirely accurately (I have not read it).  One way I heard the story is that there was a woman who did whatever she could to stop Mohammad from what he was doing, and that she literally stopped him on the road by building a roadblock out of wood.  The other way I heard it is that a group of people was building a fire that they intended to throw Mohammad in, and that this woman was mainly responsible for gathering the wood to keep the fire going. Either way, they call her “hamelet ilkhasheb,” or “the wood carrier.”

Last week when Condoleezza Rice came to town, an Arabic news station announced, “The wood carrier has arrived.”  She is trying to block all roads to peace and justice, my friends tell me.  She is adding wood (and oil) to the fire, opposing a cease fire in Lebanon, my friends tell me.  So the name is apt.

Yesterday I felt a bit like a wood carrier myself, although the purpose of my wood carrying was to disturb the status quo, rather than to maintain it. Yesterday was Tisha Ba’av, the Jewish holiday of mourning.  It is supposedly the anniversary of the destruction of both the first and second temple, as well as the crushing of the Bar Kochba revolt against Roman occupation.  The holiday has come to encompass not only these events, but everything bad that has ever happened to Jewish people.  It is, traditionally, a day of mourning for Jews who have died.

A group of five U.S. Jewish people took the responsibility to mourn seriously and extended it to mourn for the people who are dying today as well.  We made a flyer/sticker saying “Today we mourn exile, persecution, destruction, and occupation for all people,” followed by a list of dates: destructions of the temples; crushing of the resistance against Roman occupation; expulsion of Jews and Muslims from Spain; the Nazi holocaust; the Nakba (“catastrophe”) of 1948 for the Palestinian people; the Israeli occupation of the West Bank, Gaza Strip, and East Jerusalem; the Israeli invasion into Lebanon in 1982; the Israeli massacre of civilians in Qana, Lebanon in 1996; the beginning of the construction of the Annexation Wall; Israeli re-occupation of Palestinian cities; and the current Israeli invasions of Lebanon and Gaza, as well as the continuation of policies of occupation, destruction, and murder in the West Bank.  There was a photograph of this week’s massacre in Qana on the flyer, as well as a call for Israel and U.S. to respect international law and human rights for all people.

Three of us made our way to the old city of Jerusalem, more heavily policed yesterday than most days.  The road to the Kotel, thought to be the outer wall surrounding the temple from 2,000 years ago, was packed with people. We handed flyers to people along the way, and hung stickers up on our way into the old city.  We tried to cover every place we saw “Arabs out” or “Death to Arabs” but there were too many, we only had 40 stickers, and we wanted to save a few for later.

We arrived at the Kotel, a place I had a fraught relationship with even before I began to question Zionism.  The dividing wall between men and women had been extended all the way through the plaza for the day, as they were expecting so many people.  The women’s side was packed, since it’s only about 15% of the whole area.  The men have more room to pray on the other side.  People were crying, praying, leaning on the wall, placing their prayers into its cracks.  I peeled a sticker off its backing and approached the Kotel.  I took my glasses off, just in case I were to get attacked.  I waited a few minutes before I found a place to squeeze in and touch the wall.  I said the beginning of the Mourners’ Kaddish, the Jewish prayer for the dead, and placed the sticker on the wall.  The woman to my right glanced over, but everyone seemed too caught up in their own prayers to notice me. I walked away slowly and another woman quickly took my open spot, put her arm on the wall over the sticker seemingly without noticing it, and prayed. For just a few minutes, the sticker became part of the Kotel, part of the scene.  Mourning for all death and not only Jewish death.

We returned to the plaza and hung a few more stickers.  People began to notice, began to read.  A few people approached us asking if we were Jewish and why we were not ashamed of ourselves for being traitors to our people. Others read it and moved on.  One group of Canadian women loved it and chatted with us for a few minutes.  It turns out they are on a CPT (Christian Peacemaker Teams) delegation.

After the stickers were mostly gone, we began to flyer, thinking our work was mostly done.  “Do you read English?” I would ask people, and then hand them the flyer.  We were almost out of the plaza when a woman approached us and began to yell about her friends who are soldiers and have died in Lebanon in the past few days.  Another woman began to yell about how she hasn’t been to her home in the north for more than a week because of fear from Hizbollah rockets.  I listened to these women, to both their suffering and to the hateful venom that was coming from them about Arab people in general, and I did not feel hatred in response.  I am not usually above hatred or violence in my heart, and these women were saying much more racist and hateful things than I have heard in a long time, but for some reason I felt only sadness and even pity.  And a sense of righteousness.  Every time one of them would say, “This is not the time or place to mourn others.  We can only afford to mourn our ‘brothers’ right now,” I knew that we were doing the right thing.  That this was exactly the time and place to mourn everyone because what sense does it make to mourn the soldiers who died trying to occupy southern Lebanon without mourning the people they killed in the process or the context surrounding the situation?  It seems quite clear that if Israel stops sending soldiers to Lebanon, they won’t be dying there. But I didn’t say this.  Out of respect for the women’s actual suffering, I did not say this.  I simply said that we think it is important to mourn all people who are dying.

There were political arguments, there were discussions of facts, but not as much as I would expect.  More than this was an expression of suffering and stories of pain.  We got people to feel, and judging by the number of spectators and people who came up asking for a flyer because they wanted to see what the commotion was all about, we got people to think as well.  To some degree, we stopped people from going about their normal business.  To some degree, we added wood to a fire that needed stoking.

We left the Kotel area, borrowed a prayer book from one of the hundreds of people who were entering or exiting the Kotel, and said the Mourner’s Kaddish.  Our wood carrying for the day was finished.

July 30, 2006 - Stop the Massacres!

I'm visiting my family in Dheisheh refugee camp.  I'm on the phone with a friend (about 10 minutes ago), trying to figure out plans for the day, and discussing the case of a Palestinian man who was badly beaten by settlers last night and then arrested for being beaten.  My host father walks by and said "55 people murdered in Lebanon, another massacre in Qana!"

I hear televisions going on in the neighborhood. I walk inside and sit down on the couch in front of images of dead children.  It looks like the images I've seen of other massacres in the area, in Sabra and Shatila, even in Qana so many times.  It looks exactly the same.  Does it matter that this one happened from the air, that the Israelis are no longer killing quite as many people in on-the-ground combat because they're afraid of losing some of their own? Does it matter that someone pressed a button instead, demolished an entire building on top of its inhabitants.  The number of dead will grow. 55 have been found so far.  Many more are believed to be trapped under the rubble. Probably dead.  If they're alive, they'll die soon, since neither rescue equipment nor ambulances are allowed on the roads.  Israel will bomb anything that moves if it doesn't have a "safe passage" guarantee, which isn't easy to come by if you're talking about trying to save Lebanese civilians.

I can't believe we're letting these massacres happen again.  In Lebanon, in Gaza, on a smaller scale in Nablus and Jenin this week.  I see more press coverage of European and American citizens being evacuated from Lebanon than what is happening to the Lebanese who must stay.  Israel has killed close to 1,000 people in the past month (mostly in Lebanon and Gaza, almost entirely civilians).  The response to this mass murder has been disproportionately tiny. About 50 Israelis have been killed, and that includes soldiers.

If my language is severe, it's because the situation is severe.  I don't think it's possible to be more extremist than the situation itself.  And to think that those with power (namely the US) are pushing for more and more death, that Condoleezza Rice is calling the murder of civilians the "birth pangs of the new Middle East"... it's disgusting!  And to think the media is reporting this war as a war of self-defense on Israel's part.  I can't even imagine how anyone would say that Lebanon started this war.  Lebanon as a country is barely even involved in this war, and has been begging the world for a cease-fire.  They've barely even responded to Israeli aggression. Hizbollah, yes, they've responded to massive bombing by firing rockets across the border.  But Hizbollah is not the Lebanese government, is not the Lebanese people, and is not the target of the Israeli army.  A vast majority of the hundreds and hundreds murdered in the past few weeks have been civilians.  Israel's excuse: "There might be a Hizbollah fighter in your neighborhood, you chose the wrong place to live."  Can you imagine an entire city being bombed because one criminal is suspected to be living in that city?  There is one word only to explain the acceptance of this collective punishment: racism.

I don't know what else to say.  Please don't accept the premises that CNN and BBC base their coverage on.  This is pure and simple murder.  And the US is the main supporter.  Please do everything you can to protest what is happening.  There is no risk you can take that is more than the risk each Lebanese person is taking simply by living in Lebanon today.  There is no risk you can take that is more than the risk each Palestinian person is taking simply by living in Gaza today.

I'm still listening to the news coverage in the background. A very angry Lebanese man is screaming something about George Bush.  I am embarrassed to be American.

-Hannah

P.S. If you're confused about sequence of events, this is a good timeline of what has happened daily in the current Israeli war on Lebanon: http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/35772526-C1A8-4599-868C-E513C4F29C9B.htm. In general, I recommend the websites of Al Jazeera and Ha'aretz for detailed information about what is happening in this region.

July 21, 2006 - Daily Pilgrimage

For photos relating to this report, see http://community.webshots.com/album/552434280awoKqs. Most of the photos are not mine.

1:45 am:
Najah knocks on the bedroom door.  It’s time for the three of us to wake up. She’s probably slept for two hours at most, we’ve slept for about three. She’s dressed and ready to go, ready to begin her daily commute from Dheisheh refugee camp in Bethlehem to Jerusalem.  A distance of six miles becomes immeasurable.  I am reminded of dozens of West Bank Palestinian friends who have told me that we in the United States live closer to Jerusalem than they do.

Najah has worked at an old age home in West Jerusalem for thirteen years.The first seven years she was able to reach work with little difficulty. Then the second Intifada came, and with it came checkpoints, roadblocks, and a strengthening and enforcement of the system of permits and ID cards.  So she began to leave earlier for work.  Then came the Wall, first in little sections around Bethlehem, and now completed.  Then sections of the Wall east of Jerusalem.  And now she’s left with one opening in the Wall that is not yet complete.  She says when it is complete she’ll find new ways to get to work, that it just may get even more difficult and expensive.  I can’t imagine it getting much more difficult than the four hours of driving and walking that she does each day, but a lot of things here are unimaginable until they happen.

Najah usually leaves for work around 3:00 am, to arrive by 7:00 or 8:00. Because we are accompanying her, we leave instead at 2:00, because the first car we take needs to return to pick up the rest of the women Najah usually travels with.

2:00 am:
We walk out the door into the night, and get in the taxi that is waiting for us.  We drive out of Dheisheh, out of Bethlehem, through a few more villages and then a massive valley, the circuitous route that West Bank Palestinians must take to go anywhere north these days, since they are not allowed in any part of Jerusalem, east or west.

2:25 am:
We arrive at “Container” checkpoint.  One large truck full of goods is stopped in front of us.  We don’t see any soldiers.  They’re probably sleeping, we decide.  We sit and wait.

2:40 am:
A number of shared taxis drive through from the other side of the checkpoint.  It seems the soldiers have waved them forward.  The truck in front of us goes through and we do too.  The soldiers are inside a small building, laughing with each other.  They barely glance our way as we drive past.

2:45 am:
We arrive at our first destination, the taxi drops us on the street and turns around to go back for the other women.  Several vans are parked on the side of the road, waiting to fill up and then veer off the road onto an agricultural path through the village’s olive groves.  According to Israel, this Palestinian village is half in the West Bank and half in Jerusalem.

A few drivers are hanging around.  Most workers have not arrived yet.  We sit and wait.

3:20 am:
A car full of women and men arrives and the car we’re waiting in quickly fills up.  Older women bring heavy sacs of vegetables that they’ll sell in the market of Jerusalem’s old city.  The people and vegetables pile in the car and we begin to drive a road that we’re told is impossible to drive in the winter.  It’s bumpy, rocky, dirty, and steep, and simply does not stand up to rain.

3:30 am:
The car drops us in what seems to be the middle of the path, on the outskirts of the village’s houses.  We begin to walk.  The older women on their way to the market pile their vegetable sacs on their heads and walk just a few meters before stopping at a place where they say another taxi will eventually come for them.  They can’t walk further with all their goods.  The rest of us continue on our way, seven Palestinian women, one Palestinian man, and three internationals.  We walk on the path for a minute or two, and suddenly the group turns and walks down the stairs onto somebody’s porch, then out through their yard, down more stairs, and so on.We silently weave in and out of people’s porches and gardens, avoiding the checkpoint that is directly above us. We can hear the call to prayer beginning from the mosques in the distance. Najah tells us this is the place that soldiers often throw tear gas and sound bombs at them, that we’re lucky it’s not happening to us today, probably because we’ve come a little earlier than usual.

We continue to walk, up and down on uneven paths in the dark.  The women are sure of their steps, having done this walk so many times.  The other internationals and I are less sure, and stay near the back, probably holding the group up slightly.

4:00 am:
After about a half hour of walking, we arrive at the main road, where soldiers tend to patrol.  The women and man run across the street and towards a bus that is waiting, engine on. They jump on the bus and it starts to move.  The woman in front of me is whispering, “Come on, get on, hurry, we’re moving.”  Najah and my friends are still behind me, so I tell the woman I’m waiting for them.  The bus begins up the street, and suddenly people are emerging from all directions.  They are running onto the bus from behind each olive tree, each stone, each house along the road.  Within the span of 100 meters or so, the bus goes from nearly empty to overflowing with people. It speeds off.

I turn around and walk back to Najah and the others.  She walks over to a nearby house, goes through their gate, and sits on the couch on their porch. The army drives by and we duck.  Najah borrows my phone and calls the first taxi driver to make sure the other women had been picked up, dropped off, and are on their way to the spot where we now waited.  We sit and wait.

I ask Najah if the people whose yards we sneak through know about it.  “Of course,” she says. “Sometimes they take us in when the army comes looking for us.”  She tells us that the army threatens them with a fine of 10,000 shekels (more than 2,000 dollars) for harboring “Arabs without permits,” but they do it anyway.

We see jeep lights on a road below and Najah tells me it’s the “security road” next to the path of the Wall.  We see more jeep lights coming our way, and again we duck.  It is clear that the army is not trying very hard to catch people.  There is nothing sneaky about their patrol.  We spot them from a distance and hide if necessary, and they simply drive up and down the road every few minutes.

4:45 am:
Another bus leaves suddenly, completely empty when it starts moving and then quickly filling up with people emerging again from the trees.  We have missed the bus.  Two other buses wait, one large and one small.  Najah decides to get in the bus, so as not to miss it when it leaves.

4:55 am:
A jeep is driving down the road.  Najah gets out to run back to the house where we’ve been hiding, tells us to stay because we have passports and it won’t matter if the army sees us.  The jeep stops at the larger bus in front of us. We can’t see what they’re doing.

5:00 am:
People begin to tentatively get on our bus, Najah comes back, and the bus starts to go, hoping to drive past the other bus and the jeep without being stopped.  No such luck.

A soldier stops our bus and Najah quickly takes her ID out of her purse and hides it in her shirt.  The soldier boards the bus and asks for IDs.  There are only a few of us on the bus at that point.  My friends and I have passports so we’re fine.  Najah tells the soldier she left her ID at home. She doesn’t want it taken or her name recorded.  The soldier tells her to get off the bus and go home.  She gets off, and we start to get off with her.  The soldier tells us we can stay.  The people on the bus tell us we can stay.  We wait a minute and then get off.  We see Najah, and she says, “Get back on, hurry, I’m getting back on.”  We’re perplexed, but we board the bus again, and she comes with us.  She has just walked around the bus. The soldiers are still right there, right behind us. They choose not to notice.

The bus begins driving, and once again the people are running towards it from all directions.  It becomes crowded, and people are yelling, “Go, quickly, let’s go!”  “No, wait for those people who are running this way!” The bus drives slowly enough that most of the people who want to get on manage to do so.  The door closes and we speed off.

5:15 am:
We arrive at Damascus Gate in Jerusalem without encountering any more checkpoints.  We get off the bus and see the two older women with the vegetables arriving at the same time.  Their taxi did come after all.  They ask why we’re so late.  Najah tells them we missed the first bus and had to wait.

A woman approaches us and greets me warmly, then turns to Najah and says, “I told her to get on the bus with me, I said ‘Come, daughter, let’s go’ but she didn’t come.”  I smile and say, “I was waiting for Najah, I wanted to go with her, but thank you.”  She turns to us and says, “I watch the news each night and I weep.  Children are dying, Arabs and Jews, and I just weep.”  We listen, I offer her the cake Najah bought us for the journey, she offers us the bread she just bought, and she continues:

“I am 70 years old and I have seen war all my life.  In 1948 I was a young girl.  My brother was four years old.  My mother strapped him to her back, took my hand, and led us out of our village.”

She pauses.  I ask her where she is from.  Elar.  A destroyed village very close to Bethlehem, where she now lives.  I ask her name.  Fatima.

5:30 am:
Najah tells us it’s time to go, to walk up the street to catch the Israeli bus to where she works.  We say goodbye to Fatima and begin to walk.

Najah removes her hijab (Muslim head scarf) and replaces it with a Jewish head covering, to look instead like a religious Jewish woman.

5:40 am:
The bus comes and we get on, riding out of East Jerusalem and into West Jerusalem, though the buildings are all old Palestinian neighborhoods and thus virtually indistinguishable from each other except for the newly placed Hebrew signs in West Jerusalem.

5:50 am:
We get off the bus and we’re in the Bukhari neighborhood, a religious Jewish neighborhood right next to the even more famous religious Jewish neighborhood Mea Sharim.  Najah tells us the Bukhari area used to be part of the Bab al Amoud (Damascus Gate) neighborhood of Jerusalem, before 1948. Part of the area is also the land and buildings of people from the village of Lifta.

We see a few Orthodox Jewish men on the street but it’s still too early for most.  One market vendor is beginning to set up.  Najah greets him and tells me that all the market vendors in the Bukhari neighborhood are Arab, and all the people who live here are Jewish.

She shows us the building where she works, but we don’t get too close because she says they won’t let us in and she doesn’t want to get in trouble.  She shows us back to the bus because she has an hour before she needs to begin work, and thus an hour before she can even enter the building.  We part ways and get on the bus back to Damascus Gate, where we will then take another bus to the West Jerusalem neighborhood where one of us lives.

6:30 am:
We have left the second bus and are walking towards the apartment where we’ll crash for a few hours.  We are across the street from the apartment. I see Palestinian people and wonder if they live in this neighborhood or if they just work here.  We are walking past a house and a Palestinian woman says hello.  We look over and it’s Fatima, the 70 year old woman we have spent half of the morning with.  She is washing the stairs of a building. “This is where I work,” she says.  “This is where I live,” my friend says. Fatima will be washing the stairs of a couple buildings and then cleaning a third house before going back home.  We invite her to come over after work. She thanks us and we part ways.  We know she won’t come.

7:00 am:
We are inside the apartment.  We change into pajamas and get into bed.  Our work for the morning is over.  Najah’s is just beginning.

July 22, 2006, an update:
Dear friends,
I forgot to include something about money in the story I sent out yesterday, so here's the follow-up:

Najah makes about 80 shekels a day (about $18) for about 5 hours of work.
She spends 32 shekels on transportation.
So she takes home 48 shekels per day (though she only gets paid once a month).
Her oldest son is in university and needs 30 shekels per day for transportation.
She spends 10 shekels on bread.
That leaves her with 8 shekels per day for everything else.

She says she would need to take home about 100 shekels per day to have what they need.  Her son's college tuition is about $1600 per year, and her daughter will graduate from high school next year so she'll theoretically be starting university too.

I've heard the statistic that something like half the Palestinian population lives under the international poverty line, which is about $2 per day.  $2 per day here gets you virtually nowhere.  Even $18 gets you virtually nowhere.  The Palestinian economy is too closely tied to the Israeli economy for a few dollars to mean anything.  Yet somehow people manage to survive. There's a lot of sharing, a lot of debt, and a whole lot of resourcefulness.

July 16, 2006 - Juha's Nail

“We have in Arabic a story about Juha’s nail.”

This is how Issa began.  Issa, one of my favorite people in Palestine, the
person I go to when I’m feeling violent and angry because his presence is so
powerfully actively peaceful.  One of many nonviolent activists who have
been severely affected by occupation, shot and paralyzed by the Israeli army
five years ago while he was trying to help children in his village find
safety in their homes.

We were discussing the current situation in Gaza and Lebanon, the future of
Palestine/Israel, hopes and fears and dreams and solutions.

“We have in Arabic a story about Juha’s nail,” he told our group, and began
with one of his many pearls of wisdom I’ve been privy to over the years:

Juha had a house.  A man asked if he could buy the house, and Juha said,
“Sure, I will sell you the entire house, except for one nail.”  The man was
a bit perplexed, but agreed.  What difference could one nail make?

So the house was sold, Juha moved out, and the man and his family moved in.
A few weeks went by, and the man heard a knock on his door.  It was Juha,
coming to visit his nail.  This began to happen more and more, and when the
man complained, Juha said, “This nail is mine, and I have the right to see
it any time I want.”  Juha came during the day, during the night, when the
family was out, and when the man was sleeping with his wife.

One day Juha came to see his nail, and the man and his family stormed out of
the house in frustration, saying, “Take your nail and take your house!  I
don’t want it!”

The story ended, and Issa waited a moment before continuing.

“We can’t have a partial solution,” he said.  Israel cannot keep offering
partial solutions to Palestinians, and in the meantime taking more and more
from Palestinians.

The problem, as I see it, is even more insidious than this.  The problem is
that the “house” was not Israel’s to begin with.  The house belonged to
another family that was forcefully removed, mostly to the lawns of other
houses.  Those who remained in certain rooms of their house were beaten and
broken so much that they agreed to let the new family keep the majority of
the house.  The new family agreed in theory but continued to knock down
doors and build new ones, forcing the old family into tiny corners of their
house.  Every few years, the new family “generously” offered back one half
of one bedroom, and another half another bedroom.

All the hallways and doors will of course always be under the control of the
new family, for security reasons.  The new family has guns, the old family
cannot.  Security reasons.  The new family eats all the food, uses all the
water, and arrests or kills anyone who questions this.  Security reasons.
The old family members are allowed to leave and not come back.  They are not
allowed to have visitors or new inhabitants.  Security reasons.

It is not surprising that some Palestinians are starting to say to Israel,
“Take your nail and take your house!” and storming out.  It is not
surprising that some choose to stay, remembering the initial takeover of
their house and vowing not to disappear altogether.  It is not surprising
that some choose to defend themselves by force.

It is not surprising that some Palestinians responded to continuous Israeli
attacks on civilians in Gaza by kidnapping a soldier.  It is not surprising
that Israel used this as an excuse to unleash a war against the Palestinian
people and government.  It is not surprising that the small amount of
attention raised about Palestinian political prisoners inspired others to
carry out similar actions, that Hizbollah is demanding the release of
Lebanese prisoners from Israeli jails the way Hamas is demanding the release
of Palestinian prisoners from Israeli jails.  It is not surprising that
Israel is destroying the infrastructure of Lebanon and bombing civilians.
It is not surprising that they claim that Hizbollah missiles and rockets are
manufactured in small villages and therefore the Lebanese population should
carry the responsibility for the death of their people when Israel attacks
indiscriminately.

It did surprise me, though it probably shouldn’t have, to hear that Israel
dropped thousands of flyers on southern Lebanon warning people to leave
their villages, and then fired directly on the trucks as they were fleeing
north, killing entire families.

It did not surprise me to hear from a Palestinian friend in Haifa that she
had to turn on Lebanese news to see any reports of Lebanese casualties, and
that when she turned on CNN they were speaking only about Israel and from an
Israeli perspective, ignoring the people of Gaza and Lebanon except when
talking about the rockets and missiles that a few of them have responded to
Israeli attacks with.

Racism is so entrenched in global policy and consciousness that many people
don’t even question attacking an entire country as a response to the actions
of a few people.  When they try to question, to pass tame resolutions in the
UN saying “Maybe Israel shouldn’t respond quite so drastically,” the US
vetoes them.  People here know this.  They know that the United States and
Israel are the pariahs of the world community, and they know why.  They know
that one day it’s going to come back and bite these countries in the ass.  I
imagine the whole world knows this, that most people are waiting patiently
and others may take active steps toward this eventuality.

I don’t know how to turn this course around, I don’t know if it’s too late
to do so.  I do know that I will continue this work, continue to support
those whose voices are silenced, and trust that if the tables are ever
turned, I will be given refuge here in Palestine.

And meanwhile, the US and Israel continue to try to sell the world and
Palestinians the houses they stole from them, except for one or two nails.

June 29, 2006 - 1948, Every Day

Dear friends,

After a week of traveling with a Birthright Unplugged group, I’m sitting in
a beautiful apartment in Ramallah, watching the BBC report about Israeli
incursions into Gaza.

And staring at a blank computer screen.

What is happening to the Palestinian people is so wrong, so clearly wrong,
that it’s hard to know what to say.

Because I can’t just start at the Israeli bombings and cutting of
electricity, food, and water, and the abduction of more than 25 Palestinian
parliament members and a third of the cabinet, which is in response to the
killing of two Israeli soldiers and the kidnapping of one, which was in
response to the killing of dozens of Palestinian civilians, including Huda’s
family on the beach.

I can’t just start at the lack of salaries for one third of the Palestinian
population, which is a result of the government having no money to pay its
workers, which is a result of the banks refusing to transfer money into
Palestine, which is a result of the United States’ direct threats to banks
and the rest of the world’s complicity in that, as well as the worldwide
boycott against the democratically elected Palestinian government.

I can’t just start at the world’s unequal and mostly unconditional support
for Israel, the media’s participation in the propaganda war, the fact that
the law of force has consistently trumped the force of law, as a Palestinian
friend often says.

I can’t just start at Israel’s refusal to engage in real negotiations with
Palestinians over the years, the constant expansion of settlements and
working out of agreements with the US that are then offered to Palestinian
negotiators on a take-it-or-leave-it basis.

I can’t just start at the military occupation of the West Bank, Gaza Strip,
and East Jerusalem in 1967, which continues until today.

The truth is that 1948 is a tragedy unfolding every day.  The expulsion of
at least 800,000 indigenous people from their land, and the establishment of
a state based on religion and ethnicity, is an injustice that plays out in
each moment of each day in this land.

This is not a political doctrine.  This is not rhetoric.  When I say that
the events of 1948 continue to unfold each day, it is not a figure of
speech.  Yesterday I sat in the living room of a man who was in first grade
when Zionist forces came to the outskirts of his village and began to shoot.
 He recalls bullets flying over his head, the killing of two of the
village’s residents and the resulting fleeing of the rest.  He remembers his
father gathering up the family and the donkeys and leaving their ancestral
lands, only to flee a few kilometers to where he now lives, as an Israeli
citizen with fewer rights than other Israeli citizens because of the simple
fact that he is not Jewish.  He spoke about the land in the village, the
places he played at 6 years old, and his eyes welled up with tears.

We then went to visit his village, Al Lajun, which has been taken over by
Kibbutz Megiddo.  We walked with him and two men in their 80s, along paths
whose stones had been the stones of the houses.  Each place we walked, one
of these men, who were in their 20s in 1948, would point and say, this is
where the Jabrin family lived, this is where Mahajne lived, this is where
Mahamid lived.  The pomegranate tree remains, the cactus remains, but the
rubble from the houses has been flattened into the landscape and covered
over with pine trees planted by the Jewish National Fund.

The people from this village, even those who are Israeli citizens living
just 10 minutes away, are disallowed from returning to their land.  1948 is
a tragedy happening today.

I sit in refugee camps with people who dream of having the right to choose
where they live.  1948 is a tragedy happening today.

I find myself in a conversation with a Jewish Israeli man who runs a
restaurant and bar in a building that used to be a mosque.  He knows the
village’s history, he knows that the former inhabitants of the village, the
builders of the village, live just up the hill in a new village unrecognized
by the Israeli government.  He knows all this and he says that the past is
past, that we must think about the future.  Which is what most people with
power say.  After you have stolen something, after an injustice in which
force has made you the “winner” and someone else the “loser,” it makes sense
that you would want to forget the past.  1948 is a tragedy happening today.

So as the Israeli tanks assemble on the borders of Gaza and begin a massive
incursion, I think also of Adnan’s tears as he remembers a pre-Israeli
incursion into his own village.  And I wonder how we can talk about one
thing without talking about everything.  And yet I wonder how we can deal
with anything when we’re trying to deal with everything.  The state of
Israel will not become secular or democratic by tomorrow, or next week, or
next month, or next year.  How do we stop this incursion into Gaza, or the
next one, or the starvation of the Palestinian people by the world
community?

I don’t have clear answers.  I’ve been pondering effectiveness and
frustrated with myself and the Palestine solidarity community for not
figuring out how to mount an effective campaign about anything.  Because
things here only get worse and worse for the Palestinian people, and the
Israeli government is quite skilled at keeping the Palestinian community in
crisis mode.  And the rest of us in reaction mode.  So if Israel kills
dozens of people in Gaza in the next few days, and then they stop, the world
will thank them for stopping, justify collective punishment, and forget
about anything that happened before.

So what can we do?  In general, we need more creative and public actions,
everywhere, to draw attention to the political crisis here that has led to a
humanitarian crisis.

In the short term, let’s figure out how to get money here.  Friends who have
never asked me for anything before are starting to ask if I can help them or
find others to do so.  I have a critique of aid work and bandaid solutions
both in theory and in practice, but when my friends can’t afford food and
medicine, I’m not sure whether this critique can stand.

In the long term, please please please figure out how to isolate Israel from
the world community, to force them to stop what they’re doing.  I think the
boycott/sanctions/divestment movement has some potential.  It has worked in
other places.  Pressure your local supermarkets to stop buying Israeli goods
or at least to label them so that consumers can choose which oranges to buy.
 Pressure your universities, religious institutions, companies, and
municipalities to stop investing in Israel Bonds, Israeli companies, or
American companies like Caterpillar who continue to supply Israel with
weapons.  Pressure the US government to let the banks transfer money into
Palestine, to pay the public school teachers and all other government
employees who have been working without pay for 4 months.

And if you have any creative ideas, please let me know.  We can work
together.

June 16, 2006 - Did You See Huda?

“Did you see Huda?”

Everywhere I go, this is the first question people ask.

“Did you see Huda?”  They are asking if I’ve seen the pictures.  They are
asking if I’ve seen the footage of the 12-year-old girl pounding the sand
next to her dead father’s body.  They are asking if I know that this girl
lost her entire family while trying to have a nice day at the beach.  They
are asking if I know that the occupation in Gaza is more intense than ever,
that the Israeli government/army murders more and more people each day
without consequence, that the world continues to blame Palestinians for
engaging in a democratic process.

“I saw her, yes.”

Twelve people killed that day, 6 the next, 14 the next.  And the shelling
and bombing continues.  Fatah blames Hamas, Hamas blames Fatah, and young
men from each party find themselves fighting each other in the streets of
Ramallah as the cars drive around and the drivers laugh and say, “For about
2 hours each day it’s like this, then everything goes back to normal.”

I learned how to say “divide and conquer” in Arabic the other day.  The
Israeli government must be sitting back and laughing over how well things
are going for them these days.  Israel murders civilians, annexes land,
builds the Wall, prevents money from entering Palestine, watches the
Palestinian population slip into dire poverty and begin to fight each other,
and the people have yet to rise up with violence against Israel.  Or even
any kind of effective nonviolent campaign.  People are talking, sure, but
that’s about it.  They are talking, and they are trying to survive (its own
form of nonviolent resistance).  They are talking about how Olmert and
Peretz are worse than Sharon and Mofaz, how people are unable to live now,
how they don’t know how they will continue with no salaries and no cooking
gas.

That’s right, there’s no cooking gas in much of the West Bank now (I don’t
know about Gaza but can only imagine things are even worse there).  One
Israeli company supplied all the cooking gas for the West Bank, and
announced last month that they would no longer do so.  Most people I’ve
talked with have no idea why.  My friends in Dheisheh refugee camp said
something about the Palestinian Authority owing money to the company and
this is punishment.  I have no idea whether that’s true or not.  Either way,
the people are suffering.

I was talking with my friends about the importance of boycotting Israel,
both a worldwide boycott and a Palestinian boycott, and we repeated a
conversation we’ve had many times before.

“We can’t boycott Israel,” they say.  “We can’t live without Israel.”

“You can boycott some things,” I say.  “You don’t need to buy Tapuzina
[Israeli juice]; you have Marawi [Palestinian juice].”

“Sure,” they say, “we can buy Marawi, but what will that do?  All the basic
necessities come from Israel.  They’ve taken our water and now they sell it
back to us, the electricity is from Israel, the gas is from Israel, what can
we do?”

And so, in the absence of any hope for change from external political
campaigns, they blame Hamas.  Not everyone, but some people.  They tell me
that Hamas is unwilling to compromise with Fatah, Hamas doesn’t want a
solution, even that Hamas is starting to become corrupt like Fatah was.  Or
maybe not exactly like Fatah was, but apparently many Arab and Muslim
countries have offered money to Palestine, and there hasn’t been a way to
get it here.  The United States has threatened banks that transfer money to
Palestinians and people who have tried to bring large sums of money through
Rafah have been turned away (so much for an “open border” that’s supposedly
not controlled by Israel).  So individuals have been bringing small amounts
of money, not enough to help all the people, so Hamas takes the money and
distributes it to Hamas members in the form of small relief items (again,
I’m not sure how prevalent this is, it’s just what I’ve heard…).

And meanwhile, everyone says, meanwhile the children are suffering.  “I
didn’t vote for Hamas,” one friend told me, “and my children certainly
didn’t vote for Hamas.”  “It doesn’t matter,” I say.  “Even if you did, why
is that a reason to make you suffer?”  It’s strange to find myself defending
Hamas to my Palestinian friends, but of course I’m not suffering from a lack
of basic necessities.  Most people here are more practical than ideological,
so of course they’ll think about all possible ways to change their
situation.  They can’t change American foreign policy, they can’t change
Israeli policy, so they look closer to home and wish that Fatah and Hamas
could come to some agreement that might be accepted by the world.

I’ve asked people what they think of the proposed referendum.  Most seem to
think it won’t lead anywhere, for one reason or another.  One friend spent
ten minutes trying to convince me of something I already believe: that
consensus is the best way to make decisions.  If Fatah and Hamas agree on
something, he said, there is some hope.  If the proposal goes to the people
without the approval of Hamas and Islamic Jihad, even if 99% of the people
vote for it, one person blows himself up in Tel Aviv and Israel will call
all Palestinians terrorists and Palestinians will find themselves in a
situation they all too often encounter: They will have made huge
compromises, put in writing their willingness to give up some of their
rights for the sake of peace, and this will become the new status quo, the
new bottom line, as Israel continues to refuse to give up anything because
not every Palestinian individual is behaving as they think he should.

Of course, all of this is my thinking, my construction of the political
story based on conversations with people who aren’t all thinking this way
right now.  They are thinking about where there next meal will come from.
They are wondering when their next paycheck will come.  They are trying to
figure out how to get from one place to the next through roadblocks,
checkpoints, rising gas prices, and a permit system that is more restrictive
than ever.

And they are thanking God for what they still have, thanking God that they
are not Huda.

Did you see Huda?

November 9 and beyond

November 16, 2003

Dear friends,

It's strange to be writing from a different computer today, from a different
house, from a different country. That's right, I'm back in the US, and
other than suffering from a bit of a cold, I'm doing pretty well. As
promised, here is the final e-mail of my 2-month trip. [For those of you in
Baltimore, Philadelphia, and Boston, drop me a line if you want to know when
Iíll be speaking in your town, or if you want to help me schedule a speaking
engagement.]

I've spent the past couple days in Boston, reading and hearing about all the
wonderful anti-Wall activities that happened there on November 9 in honor of
the International Day of Action against the Wall. And then it struck me how
incredible it is that I was actually at the Wall on November 9. My entire
trip has been a blessing, and I thank all of you who made it so.

 

We had several planning meetings for November 9. Would we go to a place
where the Wall is completed? Where it's not yet started but scheduled to
come? Would we do direct action? Demonstration? Vigil? Fatima and the
newly formed Salfit Women's Committee against the Wall decided on a
demonstration in Mas'ha. We would march silently along the path next to the
fence, approach Muniraís house with signs, and visit her and her family.
This may seem simple and non-confrontational (we didn't physically tear down
several meters of fence, the way some Palestinians, Israelis, and
internationals did in a town near Jenin), but the action was incredibly
powerful. Many of the 50 women who participated had never seen the Wall,
and almost none had seen the concrete part. There were tears in some of
their eyes as we approached and Munira came out of her house to wave across
the gate. Two soldiers tried to stop us from crossing, but the women in the
front stood their ground and simply shook their heads as the soldiers yelled
in Hebrew, "Go back!" After only a minute, the soldiers moved aside and we
finished our journey to Muniraís house. Munira greeted the women, some of
whom she knew and some of whom had never been to Mas'ha. People gathered in
a circle holding hands as Fatima spoke to the crowd. A few people tried to
hang the signs on the Wall, but it was wet with rain from the morning, so we
hung them on Munira's house instead. When we dispersed, there was a sense
of peace and satisfaction, and at the same time a sense of deep sadness and
anger, accompanied by the energy to continue to resist the construction of
the Wall. I was sad to have to leave the following day, but hopeful that
this could be the beginning of a grassroots movement against the Wall in the
region of Salfit, which will be so drastically affected by the
already-approved Phase 2 of Wall construction. *See end of e-mail for
pictures of the Nov 9 action.

I go back and forth between despair and hope when I think about Palestine.
On the one hand, Palestinians' lives have been so disrupted by 36 years of
occupation, and 3 years of intensified occupation that is worse than ever,
that I don't know whether the infrastructure even exists anymore for a
viable independent state. At the same time, the fact that people continue
to live, continue to survive and enjoy life, despite this intense
occupation, gives me immense hope. It's difficult to describe exactly how
life continues to function in Palestine at times. It's difficult to
understand how even during closure, we can somehow get from place to place;
how when there are very few cars on the road, a taxi pulls up just as it's
getting dark; how people seem to communicate with each other without words
and the necessary elements of people's lives get figured out day by day by
day. If they can live like this, I think, imagine how they could live with
the noose removed.

As I sat on the plane and flew across the Atlantic, my eyes filled with
tears. I was remembering only the beautiful, magical parts of Palestine,
and none of the ugliness. I remembered the party on my last night, when
Fatima and her five children joined us for dinner and helped to cook the
meal. Shams, the oldest daughter, filled the room with her beautiful voice,
which both Fatima and Shams agree is the only trait she inherited from her
father.

I remembered the last time I visited Ayman's family, and that when I
announced my departure, 5-year-old Aya grabbed my hands while 6-year-old
Ramee locked the door to keep me in. I remember the care with which their
mother wrapped the olives and olive oil she gave me to take to my family in
the US.

I remembered walking by Zajid (our not-yet-3-yr-old neighbor) a couple weeks
ago, and hearing him say ìTfaddaluî to me and a friend of mine as we passed
the house. ìTfaddaluî is a very adult thing to say, and in that context
generally means, "Come join us for tea."

I remembered all these snapshots and I thought, there is such joy in this
life. To a certain degree, I think the lack of control over one's future
brings a necessary joy to each moment. I do not wish to over-romanticize
(though I hope youí'l cut me a little slack if I did so on this plane ride
home), and I certainly do not wish to mask the tremendous suffering of my
friends and others in Palestine. But their lives are more complicated and
more full than the newspapers would have you believe. Indeed, the
resistance present in their insistence on life is the strongest and most
sustainable form of resistance that exists.

So I do have hope. The women in Salfit are organizing. Internationals
continue to go to Palestine to show solidarity with the Palestinian people.
Four more high security officials in Israel have denounced the occupation
and Sharonís policies. Some people who are accustomed to power are starting
to realize that itís impossible to control every aspect of their own lives
(not to mention several million other peopleís lives). This admission of
lack of control can open so many doors to justice.

May we remove the guise of security from Israel's policies, and think
instead, ìHow can Israel act in a just way that will lead to a long-term
peace?"

May Palestinians retain/regain hope in change, and act accordingly.

May the resistance of daily life continue, and may magic blossom.

With deep love for this fragile world of ours,
Hannah Mermelstein

*Pictures from November 9 action in Mas'ha:

Silently marching:
http://community.webshots.com/photo/95457641/100342975dIWdAu
Still marching, next to the fence:
http://community.webshots.com/photo/95457641/100343089MMCfFt
Nijmie (IWPSer), Palestinian women, and children holding hands and signs:
http://community.webshots.com/photo/95457641/100346121rXShgN
Munira (with 2-year-old son) greeting the women who came (Wall in
background):
http://community.webshots.com/photo/95457641/100343170OUSuAX
Fatima speaking:
http://community.webshots.com/photo/95457641/100346398IekwnY
Munira and family at door to their house, signs attached to stairs and
walls:
http://community.webshots.com/photo/95457641/100343238VEypaq
A sign from the action, and a good final picture:
http://community.webshots.com/photo/95457641/100343347rQqSqF

---

International Womenís Peace Service: www.iwps.info

November 8, 2003 Whose trees are these?

At 7:00 this morning, Kate and I accompanied our neighbor Mariam to her
trees that had been cut by the nearby settlement, Revava. She wanted to
bring the branches back for firewood so that she could make bread. We
arrived at her land, and began to gather the wood. About 5 minutes later a
loud alarm went off. It sounded like an amplified car alarm, but we thought
we had probably stepped in front of a settlement sensor. When it continued
for 5 minutes without any sign of security or army, we thought perhaps it
was a car alarm after all. About 10 minutes later, however, a jeep pulled
up nearby and three soldiers marched towards us. They informed us that we
were trespassing and we explained that this was the land of the woman who
had come to gather her wood. "Whose trees are these? I asked the soldiers.
They gave us many reasons why we couldn,t be where we were: We were within
a certain number of meters to the settlement, we had crossed a road to get
where we were, etc. Of course, the land and the trees are much older than
the settlement and the road, but these soldiers would only recognize the
arbitrary borders and rules that Israel has created.
We explained several times that if the soldiers just left us alone, we
would gather the wood and leave within a half hour. The English-speaking
soldier responded with, "Get the fuck out of here. "That,s not a very nice
way to talk to people, I said. "It,s a very nice fucking way! he
responded. I was impressed with his English grammar, but unimpressed with
the way he was treating us. The soldiers continued to hassle Mariam because
she had not brought ID with her. She explained that she didn,t know
soldiers would be there and merely left her house for a short trip to gather
her wood from her land. "Shut up, the soldier told her in Arabic (this
seemed to be the only Arabic he knew). We asked the soldiers, "What,s the
problem? The English speaker responded: "A woman blew herself up in a
restaurant in Haifa. Remember? "Okay, I said, "but none of us did that.
If you think we,re here to blow something up, check our bags.
The back-and-forth went on for a little while, and at some point the
soldiers made the decision that we were not allowed to leave (remember, they
originally told us to leave the land). "This is ridiculous. Why are you
doing this? Don,t you have anything better to do? we kept asking. Finally
one soldier said, "I,m bored. "So you,re harassing us because you,re
bored? I asked. "Yes, he said very clearly. I couldn,t believe it. We
often notice that soldiers give us a hard time when they,re bored, but never
has one actually admitted this to us. "Would you do this to your mother? I
asked. "No, he said. "My mother doesn,t blow things up. "Neither does
this woman, I replied, as calmly as I could. "But maybe her children, he
said. "And maybe your mother,s children stand around scaring people with
guns, I said.
We tried everything we could, but if a group of soldiers is bored and wants
to harass people, they can do it here with impunity. By a stroke of luck,
the army seemed unable to get a hold of the police (maybe it was to our
advantage that today is Shabbat), and finally they said they would let us
go, informing us that if anyone ever came back to the land, they would
arrest the people. [One soldier also told Kate that he has seen her too
many times and will make it his personal business to try to get her out of
the country]. Two soldiers followed us closely as we made our way back
through the fields, and when I turned around to look at one of them, he
began to tap his gun loudly. When we reached the road they said, "Come
here. We turned around and one said condescendingly, "This is a road. You
cannot cross this road We walked away, and Mariam explained that her
heart was beating fast and she had been extremely afraid. All the way back
to her house, she had her hand on her chest and periodically laughed
nervously. She invited us in, and from her house we looked out at all the
land that has been gobbled up by settlements and settlement roads. "I can,t
make bread without wood, she told us again. We told her we would try to
contact a group that could obtain permission for her to go to her land one
day. This is something we hesitate to do, because on principle we do not
ask the army and the government for permission for people to be where they
have a right to be. Every time we ask permission, we legitimize the
occupation a little more. But of course, when people are hungry, the issue
becomes more complicated

The soldiers today seemed to have pure malice in their hearts during our
interaction, but I hope they too will tire of the occupation. We often say
that if all Palestinians refuse to cooperate, the occupation will not
survive. It,s also true that if all soldiers refuse to participate, the
occupation cannot survive. Yesterday, on our way home from a visit to the
Christian Peacemaker Team (CPT) in Hebron, a soldier at a checkpoint asked
us what we were doing. "Visiting, Kate replied. "What are you doing? "I
don,t know, said the soldier, and he really seemed to mean it. "That,s the
problem, said Kate. The soldier did not reply.

According to CPT, the curfew situation in Hebron is far better than it was
last year. We asked why they think curfew has not been imposed in Hebron in
almost 3 months. They speculate that it is so difficult and absurd to try
to enforce that the reservists have refused to do it. Unfortunately, the
400 settlers of Hebron continue to hold the city hostage, and 160,000
Palestinians live under constant fear from both settlers and soldiers. The
settlers of Hebron are a different breed altogether. Never have I seen so
much Hebrew graffiti saying "Death to Arabs. One African American member
of CPT showed us a wall directly across the street from their house.
Written on it was: "White Power. Kill Niggers. It had been crossed out,
probably, he said, to avoid the perception of settlers as racist. If there
was any doubt, though, we later saw this:
http://community.webshots.com/photo/95457641/98924008EzhuQj. In case the
picture is too dark for you to read, it says, "ARABS TO THE GAS CHAMBERS
and is signed by the JDL (Jewish Defense League).
For the most part, the visit to CPT was actually quite pleasant, and it was
good to get to know another group with a similar long-term presence model as
ours. I am too tired from today,s events and the recounting of disturbing
encounters, however, to write anymore now. Tomorrow I will be participating
in activities for the International Day of Action against the Wall, and
Monday I leave. I,ll spend 3 days in Paris at a meeting about Palestine,
and then return to the US. I,ll write one last e-mail sometime in the next
week. For now, take care. Please keep everyone in this region in your
hearts and minds, and send them strength, hope, and empathy.

Peace,
Hannah

---

November 2, 2003

Dear friends,

I realize it's been over a week since my last update, but I have a good
excuse: we had a power outage last week, and we're still recovering. I've
also been away for a few days visiting friends in Israel. But now I'm back
in Haris for my last week (I can't believe it's almost over), and I'm ready
to work again.

In this report, I'll give you a few short stories, snapshots from this past
week, some accompanied by photographs. The general setting: 1) Ramadan
began last Sunday, which means no eating, drinking, or smoking (sadly this
seems to be the most difficult for people) during daylight hours.
Everywhere we go on the streets, kids ask, "Sayme?" (Are you fasting?). I'm
generally honest I say we don't fast in our house, but we do when we're
out in the villages. 2) Winter began on Wednesday evening (the night of the
cold windy rain and our power outage), but now it seems to have gone away
again, if only temporarily. 3) Closure technically ended shortly after
Sukkot, almost 2 weeks ago, but it seems the army is sporadically enforcing
something quite close to closure. Our stretch of road between Haris and the
Zatara checkpoint continues to see sporadic flying checkpoints and a
relatively constant army presence, and at Zatara itself there have been
hundreds of people waiting at times, something quite unusual for Zatara.

And now for the stories

Qalqilya: We heard last weekend that there would be a large Palestinian
demonstration at the checkpoint in Qalqilya (like near many cities, a
severely restricted checkpoint), and we decided to go to support it. We
arrived only to find out they weren't letting any internationals into the
city. Interestingly, the reasoning given to me by one soldier was that my
visa was only good for Israel, and this wasn't Israel. I asked if I needed
permission from the Palestinian Authority, and he said, "No, from the IDF."
"I thought you said this wasn't Israel. Why do we need permission from the
Israeli army?" didn't seem to work as a negotiating strategy, so we
retreated for a while. Suddenly the noise level increased and I looked
across the checkpoint in time to see two soldiers swinging fists at people.
We heard a loud noise and weren't sure at first if it was gunfire or a sound
bomb (also known as a "stun grenade"). It turned out to be the latter. The
commotion went on for a couple minutes and finally we managed to get a
soldier to explain to us his version of what was happening. "Two
journalists were making a problem," he reported, "so then there was some
violence that happened from the soldiers." He tried to shirk responsibility
a bit by stating this in the passive voice, but at least he admitted that
the soldiers began the violence. At this point the army closed the
checkpoint altogether. An ambulance pulled up and we saw two women
clutching each other inside. When the army opened the doors to check it, we
saw that one of the women was in labor. The soldiers didn't seem to care,
and initially told the ambulance it couldn't go. Finally, after taking
their time checking IDs, the soldiers let the vehicle pass. It seemed like
hours, but was probably a matter of 5-10 minutes. I was just glad I didn't
have to witness a baby being born at a checkpoint, something that happens
far too often here in Palestine.

Marda: Back again Kate and I went to Ayman's family's house for dinner last
Monday, a wonderful treat. I had the 5 children draw pictures for me on
pieces of cloth, which I'm hoping to do with a few other children I know and
put into a small quilt when I get home. Here's a photo of three of the boys
sitting amongst thousands of olives in their house:
http://community.webshots.com/photo/95457641/97848278buWAfY. We left town
after dark, hoping to find a Palestinian taxi but expecting we might have to
hitchhike with a settler. Just as we were leaving, the army pulled into
town. They usually patrol the streets, but don't often go into villages
unless they're declaring curfew. Sure enough, this is just what they did.
We followed them into town, but the jeep moved faster than we did on foot.
When we got back to the center of town, some people were running from house
to house and on small stretches of road, trying to make it home safely.
Others seemed unconcerned and roamed the streets freely until they heard
jeeps approaching. One teenage boy came to me and tried to convince me to
come to his house because it was unsafe for me to be in the streets. I
tried to tell him the danger applied more to him, but he wouldn't leave. He
calmed down a bit when I told him I was from a peace organization (maybe it
gave him a bit more confidence that I knew what I was doing), but I still
had a hard time convincing him to go home. The situation seemed relatively
mellow, and Kate and I decided we may be doing more harm than good at that
point, because several Palestinians were trying to take care of us instead
of themselves, so we left. We phoned a yellow-plated driver we know and he
took us home.

Azzun checkpoint: Yup, the same one I've written about many times. We
stopped by just to see what was going on and to show a few new volunteers
what it looked like. There were 7 men being held, and we gave them the
phone number for an Israeli organization that helps in these situations.
The soldiers approached to ask what we were doing, and Kate immediately
handed them a Yesh G'vul brochure (this is the primary organization that
promotes refusing military service). They read it cover to cover before
crumbling it up and throwing it on the ground. I pointed out that there was
a newly-installed dumpster for trash, but the soldiers ignored me. Finally
one said, "What about the US occupation in Iraq?" I told him I opposed that
as well, and he said, "Then go to Iraq." Kate responded that she's planning
to (she is), and he said, "Go as soon as possible." He remained relatively
nasty for the few minutes we stayed, but he was not threatening. It started
to rain and I approached the soldiers again, pointing out that 7 Palestinian
men were sitting in a field in the rain. One said, "Well, we're standing in
the street in the rain." "So you can both go home, you and those men," I
replied. The nasty soldier answered: "I will decide when to let them go.
Rain, snow, whatever, they will stay here. We need to punish them." I told
him that these men aren't terrorists and he agreed. "But," he said, "we
have to punish them. They have to learn that they can't work in Israel." I
posed one last question: "So if they can't work in Israel, why can you work
in Palestine?" He actually smiled for a split second, but then told me
again to go to Iraq as soon as possible. We decided our work there was done
(we had distributed the appropriate phone numbers to the Palestinian men and
made our presence known to the soldiers), so we left.

On the road to Mas'ha: After our visit to the checkpoint, we began to walk
up the road towards the village of Mas'ha, the first place in Salfit to be
touched by the Wall, and the site of the large peace camp last spring and
summer. On the way, we saw the following graffiti on the side of a bus
stop: http://community.webshots.com/photo/95457641/97848461IFgean. Several
posters were pasted on top of each other, but the bottom clearly reads,
"Transfer = Peace and Security." We see plenty of racist graffiti like this
in Palestine, but then we noticed something else on the same bus stop.
Inside, on the glass part, was this:
http://community.webshots.com/photo/95457641/97848732EJJeLy. Translation:
The Occupation = terror. I picked up the phone and called an Israeli friend
from Black Laundry who I knew had been picking olives in that area the week

before. I explained the sign and asked if he had anything to do with it.
"I can't really answer that on the phone," he replied, "but I believe it was
done last week Keep your eyes open, there may be more." Well, we didn't
see anymore, but that one sighting was enough to inspire another great idea.
When we approached Elkana, the settlement right next to Mas'ha, we noticed
a hill of dirt at the entrance with the name "Elkana" written in Hebrew with
rocks. "I think that should say Kibosh [Occupation] instead," I declared,
and 5 minutes later the sign looked like this:
http://community.webshots.com/photo/95457641/97849478uSMLOi. (I forgot to
take a "before" picture, but I'm sure when I'm there next week it'll be back
to its original state, and I can take one then.)

Mas'ha: Munira and Hani live with their children in a house that is stuck
between the fence of Elkana settlement and the almost-completed Wall. Their
village of Mas'ha is on the other side of the Wall. As I have explained
before, the Wall is a 30-foot concrete wall in certain places, particularly
cities (Jenin, Tulkarem, Qalqilya), and everywhere else it is a series of
fences and ditches and security roads. The Wall through Mas'ha is mostly
fence, as can be expected in a small village. Upon arriving on Wednesday,
however, we noticed something new. Was it a large metal structure?
Construction? As we got closer to Munira's house we froze in our tracks.
Right in front of the house was about a 120-foot stretch of 30-foot-high
concrete wall, just like the wall that surrounds Qalqilya. On both sides of
this wall was fence, but directly outside their door, obstructing Munira's
and Hani's view of their village, was this monstrosity. There is clearly no
reason for this other than spite. Was it because of the peace camp earlier
in the year? Or was it simply the fact that Munira and Hani had stayed in
their home, defying Israeli hopes and expectations that they would move? We
entered the house and sat with them for a while. Hani told us they had no
idea the concrete wall was coming until it popped up one day two weeks ago.
We briefly discussed the potential for protest, specifically the
International Day of Action Against the Wall on November 9 (anniversary of
when the Berlin Wall fell). They seemed skeptical of the effectiveness, but
open to the possibility. Pictures: 1) This picture is dark, but you can see
the Wall on the left (and where the concrete part begins and ends), and the
house on the right:
http://community.webshots.com/photo/95457641/97848819RVBlnz 2) Just for
scale, here's a picture of me sitting in front of the Wall:
http://community.webshots.com/photo/95457641/97848953kzKxAO.

J'barra: A few of us went to visit Azmi on Thursday. This is the man whose
house is threatened with demolition because the Wall (fence, in this area),
has come right past his house. We got a ride into town and to the security
road, at which point we got out and began to walk the last kilometer to the
house (only military vehicles and Azmi are allowed to drive on the security
road). We were about < of the way there when we heard a jeep approaching
from behind. I was mildly worried until the jeep began to speed up slightly
and I guessed that it would drive past us. Instead, it sped up more and
then veered to the right and screeched to a halt to cut us off. I figured
this unnecessary move wouldn't mean good things for our near future. Sure
enough, the driver of the jeep told us we weren't allowed to be on the road.
I told him we were going to visit Azmi (I figured he knew this already),
and he said, "Well you could have gone through the olive groves on the other
side of the barbed wire. You can't be here." I tried to reason that we'd
be off the security road much quicker if we went to Azmi's house than if we
turned around and walked back, but the soldier wouldn't hear it. "I'll call
Azmi to come pick us up, then," I said. One man said that was fine, but the
driver said, "No! Only he can drive on the road. He can't take anybody
else!" No reasoning seemed to work with this man, and finally he said, "If
I see you go towards that house on this road, you'll be arrested," and drove
off. He screeched into Azmi's driveway and yelled something before
continuing up the road. We decided to turn around and go back to the break
in the barbed wire, where we would climb through the olive groves to get
back to Azmi's house. This took almost an hour, but we did find our way
there and were greeted by Azmi, his wife, and one of his sons. They quickly
took us up to the porch, because apparently the soldier had threatened Azmi
with "doing something to him" if he saw us there. While still in the
backyard, however, I noticed a large new structure that Azmi and his son
were building. "A new house?" I asked. "Yes," replied Azmi. If they knock
down that house, we'll live in this one." Whether this plan will work or
not remains to be seen, but I think Azmi figures that the army will at least
have to go through the hassle of getting another demolition order and
engaging in another legal battle if they want to demolish the second house.
Small acts of resistance like this give me hope or at least a little laugh.
View from Azmi's porch to the "new house" in the yard:
http://community.webshots.com/photo/95457641/97849260QtWpvD.

I have several more stories I can tell, but I'll combine them all into one:
I have spent the last couple days in Israel, and I have to say it was
relaxing, stressful, angering, comfortable, and confusing. I saw so many
soldiers on Friday, obviously on their way home for Shabbat. Most were
women who looked no more than 15 but were most likely between the ages of
17-19. They talked on the phone to friends about where they were stationed,
and I saw their humanity. I realized that a part of me had managed to
ignore the humanity of certain soldiers in the West Bank. It's easier this
way, of course. If I were constantly to acknowledge the humanity of each
soldier, I would want to shake each one and say, "Look around! Look what
you're doing! Look what you're part of!" It's easier to disengage. I admit
this not because I'm proud of it, but because it's interesting to me how
quickly my mind has done this. How must Palestinians feel about the
soldiers? And the soldiers about the Palestinians?

So I spent Shabbat with a good friend from home, and about 30 people in her
program who mostly asked questions like, "You're working with Palestinians?!
Aren't you scared?!" and "They know you're Jewish and they haven't killed
you?" These are intelligent people, but they have never been exposed to
life in Palestine. Some have visited settlements, but none have any
relationship to Palestinians. I went to services with them, ate dinner, and
sang songs after dinner. I read the lyrics to these songs I grew up with,
and noted the extreme nationalism in them, which at its worst was explicitly
racist and at its best merely denied Palestinian existence. I thought about
the Jewish liturgy and the little I know of Palestinian narrative, and
thought, "Well okay, it makes sense in some ways that each group has an
ideal vision of the entire land to its own group." But where does
compromise fit into that? The majority of each group is willing to
compromise. Most Palestinians say, "Okay, we'll give you the 78% of
historic Palestine that was occupied in 1948. Just give us the 22% that was
occupied in 1967." And most Israelis, according to polls, would also be
willing to do this. Meanwhile, Sharon is building a wall through the middle
of the West Bank that if completed as planned, would take over 50% of the
land (leaving Palestinians with just 10% of historic Palestine) and would
divide the West Bank into three separate enclaves. And, due to
fearmongering, it seems that most Israelis support the Wall (even though
they say they don't support settlements, and the Wall is being built
specifically to annex the settlements into Israel)

Well well, that's quite enough for now. If this seems confusing, it is.
Nothing is simple here. I have more observations about Israel (more beggars
on the streets of Jerusalem than I've seen before, etc.), but we can discuss
these in person when I get home. I'm hoping to show pictures and speak to
many groups, so please contact me if you're in Philadelphia, Baltimore, or
Boston, or if you're able to transport me to your city.

Until next time,
Hannah

IWPS website: www.womenspeacepalestine.org

October 18, 2003

Dear friends,

My past three days have been quite busy and quite varied, and I would like
to give a short account of each day. In brief Thursday we picked olives
again in Marda, Friday was an action outside Ariel planned by queer
Israelis, Saturday was a fun olive-picking day with wonderful energetic
women in Tulkarem. And as always, the subtext is the occupation

Thursday:
I woke up at 5:30 am, the usual time for olive-picking days. We had
arranged for a taxi driver from Ariel to come for us at 6:15 he,s a
non-Jewish Iranian refugee who had applied for asylum through the UN. He
requested to live in the United States and they sent him to Israel (at least
this is what we understood). He was sent straight to Ariel and now lives
there with a bit of guilt. Because he has a yellow license plate (Israeli
citizenship), he is able to drive us around during closure, so we have
called him quite often during the past few weeks of almost constant closure.

We met the farmers at Marda, and one 78-year-old man named Abu Hassan
quickly adopted Dunya and me and led us up the hill to his land.
Immediately he began to speak Spanish (yet another man who has spent much of
his life in Venezuela). Halfway up the hill we realized that he did not
intend to pick that day. Because his land is so close to the Ariel fence,
he has not been there for a year and had no idea whether his trees would
have any olives. He wanted us to accompany him that morning for safety as
he checked out the situation, and would bring his family back the next day
to pick.

Abu Hassan,s land is right next to a huge trash heap trucks from Ariel
settlement come through the fence and dump their waste onto Marda,s land.
Aside from this trash and the looming settlement above, the land is gorgeous
and from the top of the hill one can see the beautiful Palestinian landscape
for miles around. Indeed, Abu Hassan,s trees had olives, although not as
many as last year (the harvest comes in two year cycles). Two brothers were
picking right next to him, so after Abu Hassan left, we spent most of the
day with these brothers (Husam and Hasmi). Husam speaks excellent English,
although he only spent one semester in university (he couldn,t afford more).
He claimed that he learned his English from television, and I must say
that if this is the case, I,m extremely impressed. At one point after Dunya
and I finished a conversation with each other about our coworkers and their
attitudes with army officials, Husam turned to us and asked, "What does
irreverent, mean? Apparently, this was the only word in our conversation
that he had not understood.

The day passed quickly, full of discussions about racism and poverty in the
United States, potential Palestinian resistance against the Wall, religion
and culture, and more. People in other parts of Marda faced problems from
the army, who told them they could only pick more than 500 meters away from
the Ariel fence. Our particular family, however, picked in peace and
enjoyed our company as much as we enjoyed theirs.

On our way out of the village, Ayman stopped me and kidnapped me with what
one IWPSer has named "brutal Palestinian hospitality. Seriously, though, I
did enjoy myself at their house (this is the family I previously referred to
as my favorite family). The only disturbing moment was my entrance, upon
which I found 6-year-old Ramee playing a computer game called "Gulf War.
All I managed to say was "Unf mish kwayiss (violence is not good).
Watching a Palestinian child play with fake tanks and guns on the computer,
in a game portraying the US invasion of Iraq, was not a good end to the day.

I returned home, only to get a call from Abu Rabia about two problems: 1)
Three farmers had been arrested in Mas,ha that day because they were
attempting to access and harvest their land. 2) Two people had just been
shot in Qarawat Bani Zeit, and the soldiers were not letting the ambulance
through the checkpoint to the Salfit hospital. We made calls and did what
we could I have not heard about the people who were shot, but I know that
the farmers were released from Ariel prison and presumably got home safely.

Friday:
"Women settlers! In Ramat-Gan it,s a lot easier to be a lesbian!
Thus read the press release and flyer that Black Laundry distributed on
Friday at the action at Ariel settlement. The launderesses, as we like to
call them, are by far my favorite Israelis that I have met (even if their
subtlety is beyond some people's comprehension). They are "lesbians, gays,
and transgenders against the occupation and for social justice." The
purpose of the action was to draw attention to Ariel, because this
settlement is the primary reason that the Wall is planned to cut 20
kilometers inside the West Bank and devastate the entire Salfit region where
we live.

The Black Laundry women showed up in stewardess drag, intending to set up a
passport control booth and stop cars entering Ariel. The general message:
"Hey tourist, your visa is up. Go back to Israel. [Incidentally, one
launderess did not attend the action because she is uncomfortable with the
concept of a Jewish state and thought the action,s message might suggest
otherwise]. Before we actually set up, the police were there, asking
whether we were Black Laundry, how long we would stay, and what our signs
said. They weren,t particularly thrilled about the signs in Hebrew,
Russian, English, and Arabic saying "Ariel is not in Israel. Before we
knew it, several police cars and army jeeps were there, announcing that they
would arrest us in 5 minutes. They produced an army order declaring the
entrance to Ariel a "closed military zone (they did not appreciate our
questioning why it was only closed to us and not to settlers), and we
started to move away. We got outside Ariel and moved 200 meters away, as
one cop ordered us to do. Suddenly, the rules had changed, and the cops
decided we couldn,t stand where we were standing, and we were not allowed to
move (didn,t leave us many options, eh?). They ordered us to get into the
police cars and army jeeps, and they would transport all 15-20 of us to the
checkpoint at the Green Line (1967 border between the West Bank and Israel).
We tried to call a taxi, but finally they shoved us into the cars. They
drove us quite a bit past the checkpoint into Israel, but it was certainly
better than other scenarios we could have imagined. At the end, we ended up
spreading out along the side of the road with our signs. Most cars slowed
down to see what the signs said, and as a result we received a few beeps of
support, several obscene gestures and words, and even a swerving car
threatening to hit two women.

We stopped at 3:00 pm so the Israelis could catch the last bus back to Tel
Aviv (buses stop running on Shabbat). Although we did not do the exact
action we planned to do, I consider the action a success for several
reasons: 1) So many policemen and soldiers spent their afternoons
threatening us instead of interacting with Palestinians. 2) The police and
army presence certainly caused people to slow down upon entering Ariel. 3)
We were apparently important enough for a special army order to be issued.
4) We actually sparked a counter-protest (one settler returned with a giant
Israeli flag about a half hour after driving past us). 5) Any excuse to
hang out with the Black Laundry folks is great! (www.blacklaundry.org)

Pictures of the action:
http://community.webshots.com/photo/95457641/95456761dGaBPP
http://community.webshots.com/photo/95457641/95456920ZbmxFP
http://community.webshots.com/photo/95457641/95457920CHKxJE

Saturday:
Today four of us went to Tulkarem to help women harvest in a village that
had been having problems. Because closure is still in effect, we had to
walk the first few kilometers to the Qarawa roadblock, where we found a
Palestinian car. When we reached the Jbarra checkpoint and got out to get
another taxi, the soldier informed us that we could not turn in the
direction we wanted to turn because we did not have a "B+ stamp on our
visas. We protested that we had been there many times before, and I asked
if this order was in effect only today. He said, "No, it began on Friday.
We have no idea whether this B+ visa really exists or not, but we did manage
to get through after talking with 4 different soldiers. Our theory: during
closure, the soldiers are extremely bored because nobody tries to pass
through. When we show up it gives them something to do, so they all want to
hassle us a bit before letting us go. At one point, one soldier checked our
bags and still refused to let us go. I asked, "If you,re not going to let
us through anyway, why do you check our bags? "You might be coming to blow
us up, he responded. "Okay, but we,re not, so can we go? said Kate and
so on.

We thought we were going to a town because the army wouldn,t let people
through the Wall, but we arrived and discovered that the Wall did not cut
through the town of Shufa, and they were primarily concerned about settlers.
We went with 10 women from PARC, in order to help one specific woman with
her land. PARC, the Palestinian Agricultural Relief Committee, is part of
the People,s Party, the Communist party that is the main rival to Arafat,s
Fateh party. These specific women have been organizing against the Wall,
and are obviously a very tight group of friends. As soon as we got in the
bus, they started singing and laughing, something I have not heard many
women do in Palestine (it is not generally considered appropriate for Muslim
women to be so loud, and especially to sing). We met some wonderful women,
one of whom is the manager in the Qalqilya office of the Disabled Union of
Palestine (I,m not quite sure this is the official name, but this is how
Ruwayda explained her position to us). Ruwayda was absolutely amazing
walking up steep and rocky terrain with her crutches and laughing the entire
time. http://community.webshots.com/photo/95457641/95459022yasaTy

We picked for a few hours, and the fun never ceased.
http://community.webshots.com/photo/95457641/95460305iRmtyW I did not
understand most of the Arabic, but we did figure out that they were talking
about their husbands much of the time. I also learned a few lines of some
of the songs they sang about their land, peace, work, etc. On our way
back, one woman,s husband called her and said the army had just come through
and declared curfew, so the shops were all shutting down. By the time we
got there, however, things seemed to be back to normal. We spent an hour in
Ruwayda,s house and met about 20 of her family members (it is a 5-story
building with 3 different homes, and more people than I could keep track
of). The family was really lovely, and the children were interested in us
but didn,t merely gape as though we were from another planet (which is
sometimes the reaction we get from children). When we left, we again had
trouble getting through the Jbarra checkpoint, but once we did it was
remarkably easy to get home. As always, our driver stopped every time he
saw another taxi, so they could ask each other what to expect in the stretch
of road ahead.

We all walked in the door with smiles on our faces this was the best day
we had had in Palestine, we agreed. The community of strong women was
indescribably energizing. Apparently, it was too good to be true, because
when we got home we read online that a half hour after we left Tulkarem, a
16-year-old Palestinian boy had been shot and killed by the army. We called
our friends, who seemed to be doing okay.

As if the killing wasn,t enough to bring us down, I called the Olive Harvest
coordinator in Marda to confirm that we would be coming tomorrow. We hardly
got through the hellos when he said, "The army is driving through the
village announcing on a loudspeaker that we cannot leave our houses.
Curfew in Marda?, I thought. Sure enough, that seems to be the case. We
are not certain of the reason, but rumors have it that some children may
have thrown rocks at an Israeli car outside Marda, and the car lost control
and crashed. Regardless of the situation, we will go to Marda tomorrow
morning either to pick olives or to monitor the situation if curfew is
still in effect.

I think these three days may be simultaneously the most confusing and most
normal days I have had. On the one hand, closure has been intense and
Palestinians are as restricted as ever. On the other hand, I have gotten
used to seeing no Palestinian cars on the road and living daily with the
occupation, and my time with Palestinian people has been absolutely joyful.
Thank you all for reading. As always, feel free to e-mail me with any
points of clarification. I know I include a lot in these reports, and not
every incident is thoroughly explained.

And now, for your Arabic words of the day:
Here at the IWPS house, we have coined a few phrases of our own.
1. Bezabtly "bezabt means "exactly, and what better way to explain the
concept than "bezabtly?
2. Banaatis "banaat means "girls, so Carolyn has decided that "banaatis
means "girlies (this is how Carolyn addresses us).
3. People my age may not understand this reference, since I didn,t, but
remember the show "Get Smart and the phrase "Good thinking, 99? Well,
every time somebody has a good idea now, we say "Fiqra kwayyisa, tisa
w,tisiin.

That's all folks.

Sending love around the world,
Hannah

---

September 24, 2003

Yesterday afternoon (Tuesday, Sept 23), Kate, Carolyn and I from IWPS were on our way to visit Zahra, an amazing Palestinian woman who has been politically active for years (and was in prison for 11 years for this reason). We stopped at Azzun / Oranit checkpoint, the last checkpoint on a major road in the West Bank before entering Israel, because we heard they had been having problems. We thought we would check out the situation and be on our way within a few minutes. Little did we know we would spend 3 hours there. During that whole time, only about half of the 70 detained men were allowed to leave.
We could easily have driven by without noticing. The road is slightly elevated from the olive grove on its side, behind large piles of rocks. Because we were looking, we noticed the men, but upon first glance, did not imagine that so many would be detained. Clearly they had been there a long time ö sprawled out on the ground under trees, some playing cards, some just sitting and looking exhausted. We began talking to people, and they told us that some men had been there overnight, possibly even for two days. Most had arrived on their way to work that morning (it was now 4:30 pm). Most did not have the appropriate work papers, and instead of sending them home, the border police took their IDs and told them to go sit in the field as punishment [Note: Soldiers and border police wear similar uniforms. I will try to portray the story as accurately as possible in this report, but there were times when I was unsure who was who]. One man, Muhammed, was trying to get into Israel to visit his son in the hospital, and a border policeman reportedly handcuffed him tightly, hit him on his face with his gun (one of the most common abuses), and made him sit under the hot sun on the road.
One man had his money taken from him by a border policeman whotold him that money made in Israel should stay in Israel (I find it interesting that many soldiers make the distinction between Israel and Palestine when it serves their needs, and
in the same conversation will say, "Itâs all Israel"). I stood there listening to story after story and understanding more and more the manifestations of collectivepunishment. Most of these men came to this checkpoint knowing they may be taking a risk, but they were so desperate for a dayâs work that they tried to get through anyway. Meanwhile, the border police and soldiers kept talking about Arafat, suicide bombers, and other people they considered security threats, as though their fear justifies detaining 70 Palestinian men who are simply trying to make a living. "We want to live in peace," the Palestinians repeatedly told me, clearly aware that this is not the image the world has of them. Majdi, the man who spoke English the best, told me that he used to have hope that Israelis and Palestinians can live peacefully side by side, but after the murders and house demolitions of people he knows in his hometown of Nablus, and especially after this experience, he does not think itâs possible.
As a stubbornly optimistic person, I had to argue at first. We talked about the need to teach peace to children, but Majdi said, "We teach peace, we try to teach peace, but as long as this situation continues, our children will look at us and tell us weâre liars." How can I respond to this? The men tell us all they want is to be able to live in peace, and I try to tell them that most Israelis want peace, too. They look at me with incredulity and a settler drives by and screams "Get rid of the Arabs!" Meanwhile, the police and soldiers are taunting people ö honestly, acting completely childish ö and the one the Palestinians call "Top Killer" is saying he wants no Palestinians in Israel. His nickname apparently comes from the detail in which he describes his work to Palestinians ö explaining how he would like to shoot them and has shot people before (we canât know whether the stories are true or not).
Clearly, many Israelis would not approve of this behavior, but it does seem to me that openly racist statements are quite common coming from Israelis, particularly in Palestine (settlers, soldiers, police). In contrast, I explain to Majdi that I am both Jewish and American (right after he tells me that Israel and the US are two places with one government), and he says, "It doesnât matter what you are, the question is what do you want?"
But I must return to the events of the afternoon· We gave the detainees the phone number for Hamoked, an Israeli organization that tracks arrests, checkpoint detentions, and more. We made a few calls to media, but apparently they do not tend to come unless thereâs blood. I was astounded that this desperate and humiliating situation was not severe enough to attract attention.
Finally, Carolyn suggested we make a banner, and I remembered that I had a sheet in my bag. Kate had a can of spraypaint, so we took it out and suddenly there was a spark of excitement from the men standing around us. They immediately understood what we were intending to do and wanted to make up slogans and paint the banner themselves. We discussed briefly our thoughts for the banner, and then stepped back and let them argue about their message.
A couple of minutes later, the banner read, "Freedom only" in English and Arabic, and "We want peace, where is our right to live?" in Hebrew. The men held up the banner and the soldiers approached them, telling them to put it away. The Palestinian men argued briefly ("Whatâs the problem? We want peace, it says we want peace").
When it became clear that the soldiers were not happy with this explanation, Carolyn and I took the banner to the road and held it up. The soldiers then told us that
we couldnât do this because there were more than 50 people and therefore we were having a demonstration. Carolyn responded with, "No, there are only three of us" referring to Kate, Carolyn, and me. Apparently the soldiers were tired of arguing, and left us alone. We held the banner for a while, and most cars slowed down to see what it said. A few yelled or gestured at us, but most simply looked and drove by. Ishmael, a man who lives right next to the checkpoint, brought us tea and talked a little about his own problems. When he told me he hasnât had electricity for years, I pointed above his house and said, "But there are electricity lines right there." "Theyâre Israeli lines," he responded. "Whoâs going to give me electricity?"
At one point, the soldiers handed back a few IDs.
We asked when the rest of them would be allowed to go, and they responded that they had let the older men go, and had orders to keep the rest (about 60) until
midnight. Finally, they started returning more IDs. It was getting dark and we had to leave if we were to make it to Zahraâs house at a reasonable hour, so we said goodbye to the 30 or 40 men who were still there. I would have liked to have stayed until they were all released, but we were already late and it is almost impossible to get a car at night. Of course, this means that many men who would be released would have to walk home. This morning, a few IWPS people went back to that checkpoint, and found that 12 people had been there all night. I have no further information now, but clearly we will continue to watch that checkpoint.
I have so many more stories Iâd like to share, so many fascinating and nuanced conversations with Palestinians, anarchist Israelis, settlers, and soldiers. Thereâs always more to say, more analysis to give, more emotion to share· but thatâs all for now. Thank you so much for reading. I cannot know how my actions will affect situations here or anywhere, but I am confident that the more people hear stories about life in Palestine and Israel, the more likely peace becomes possible.
Salaam, Shalom,
Hannah

Pictures can be seen at: http://community.webshots.com/user/hmermels