Jessica's Journal: August 14th, 15th

August 14, 2003

A lot has happened (we’ve met lots of people, had lots of meetings, I’ve felt many things) and our days have been full. There have been a few chances to get to a computer, but it has been at night, and after long days I’ve opted for sleep instead.

I'm doing well. I am certainly confused, but I’ve decided that I just need to listen and learn and accept that I’m not going to find a definitive answer to any of my questions and I'm certainly not going to find a solution to a problem that so many people have been working on for so long. I don't think there is any such thing as “a solution” that can be applied. At least not "the correct solution.” There may be a solution that is chosen and worked towards, but it won’t mean that is the right one, just the one that was chosen. Eventually it may be that there is a specific solution or path of action that I chose to advocate for, but the biggest thing I am determining is that it is not particularly useful to view this situation (or any for that matter) in absolutes. There is always a need to allow for the fact that there will always be information that we don’t know and there is always an idea we haven’t thought of.

I have just a short time to write, as 8 of us need to use this one Internet connection. I am writing from the home of a very generous Palestinian family in the village of Beiytah, just outside of Nablus. We were supposed to stay in Nablus last night but the Israeli soldiers at the checkpoint would not let us through. They told us that we had the wrong stamps on our visas. We all have “B2” visas and the soldiers told us that we needed “B1” visas to get into and cities in the West Bank! This seemed a little strange to us for many reasons. We know many people who have been in Nablus and didn’t get any special visas, we even met an American coming out of Nablus as we were going in who didn’t have any special visa. Also, we had been in Bethlehem and didn’t have any problems getting in. We called the American Embassy to check on this and after a few phone calls found out that the “B2” visa we have is for tourists and a “B1” visa is a work visa. The embassy told us that we should be allowed to pass but if we couldn’t talk our way through there wasn’t a lot they could do for us immediately. As it was early evening, and would be getting dark in about an hour, and we had been waiting at the check point for 2 hours already, we decided to give up for the day.

On the way to the checkpoint we had ridden in a taxi with a Palestinian man who is a professor of mass communication at Bir Zeit University and he had given us his phone number and told us to come visit him sometime. We called him and he very generously offered us a place to stay at his house for the evening. If we hadn’t met him we would have had a very difficult time finding a place to stay. It is several checkpoints of travel between where we are and Jerusalem. In physical distance it actually isn’t far but the checkpoints make everything take a lot of time and you never know when they will be fast or slow. It is wonderful staying in this home. I slept on a swing on the top floor -- a balcony. It is wonderful.

I only have another minute or two, so I am going to send this. I have been taking notes and have so much more to say and I probably will spend a lot of time writing after I return. To sum up all of what I have seen so far I can simply say that I am very sad. Not hopeless, but very sad. There have been many happy moments on this trip. I have met many amazing Palestinians and Jews who in the face of all this mess still are doing wonderful things for their fellow humans, but despite these inspiring people, I am sad to see the level of devastation. And to speak truthfully, it is the Palestinians who on a day-to-day basis are experiencing the brunt of this conflict. I do not discount the fear and concern for safety that the Israelis experience, their fear is devastating and needs to be addressed and healed. The Isreali situation is different from what the Palestinians are experiencing: poverty, destruction of infrastructure, inability to do basic things like get employment or travel 5 kilometers. It breaks my heart to see Israelis and Jews, who I consider to be a part of me, implementing and carrying out the policies and actions that result in this sub-standard life for Palestinians.

Love and Peace,
Jessica

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Friday, August 15, 2003
Day 7 of the Indiana Delegation to Israel and Palestine

Synopsis of our day: We toured the old city of Nablus, traveled difficult back roads from Nablus to the Al Fara’a Refugee Camp and had “adventure” along the way, spent afternoon and evening visiting with the residents of Al Fara’a including taking a foot tour of area, seeing a ceremony put on by the Scouts, and staying overnight with our host, his wife, their 5 children, and 2 of the wife’s sisters.

Our day began with a tour of the old city of Nablus. Nablus, including the old city, is considered Area A according to the Oslo Agreements. Area A means that it is supposed to be solely controlled by the Palestinian Authority. Despite this, last night, like many nights, the Israeli army entered the old city and arrested some Palestinians. From the narratives we have heard from Palestinians thus far, it appears that the Israeli army generally conducts its attacks late at night and only infrequently during the day. Several people on the delegation heard gunshots and a loud explosion during the night. Being an incredibly sound sleeper, I slept through it.

We had two guides in the old city. Majde is a friend of Allah, the contact Bret had here in Nablus, who we met yesterday. Majde did not live in the old city, but spoke English and translated for our other guide. The other guide, Helme, lived in the old city and knew the recent stories of the people and places in the old city. The old city of Nablus is similar to the old city in Jerusalem in that it is a walled city with many old stone buildings. We weren’t able to get an exact date of how old the city was, but I'm pretty confident it was built in Biblical times.

This city was unlike the old city in Jerusalem in that it has experienced a lot of destruction and violence in the last few years and is in major disrepair. We saw many destroyed homes and 2 destroyed factories. One used to produce gold and the other soap. We saw the inside of a Turkish bath. It is a functioning business but wasn’t officially open due to the early hour. We were told that there were something like 5 Turkish baths in the old city but that only 2 were currently open due to lack of business (presumably due to the incredibly depressed economy in the West Bank). We then saw a door of a house that had had the lock blown off by the Israeli army the day before. The Palestinian family that lived in this home had already replaced it, but the destroyed door was leaning against the outside of the house and you could see the freshness of the soldering on the new door. Peaking in we also saw part of a hole in the wall of the same house. We asked why the army had come to this house and were told that they came to this house because they wanted to get to the house next door. Houses in the old city are built with shared walls and the Israeli army frequently enters and destroys a family’s home just so they can get into the neighbor’s house. We also saw the remains of an apartment building that was destroyed by an Israeli army bulldozer last year. We were told that the bulldozer was attempting to make a path for tanks that gave them easy access into the old city. I was a little confused by this as no path was available beyond the remains of this building, even for a tank. None of us speak Arabic, and while so many people here speak English well, it still isn’t their first language, and communication isn’t perfect. They did communicate quite clearly the nature of the small hole visible in the rubble: We were told that it was dug to evacuate people who were caught underneath when the bulldozer destroyed the building. Apparently several others weren’t as fortunate and died when the building was destroyed.

Seeing destroyed homes and hearing the stories of their destruction is powerful, but the most powerful part of the tour of the old city was meeting a little boy, 12-years-old, who had lost both of his eyes last year when the Israeli military fired on him. At that time, the city had been under curfew. “Curfew” over here is a little different than the definition we normally think of. When the Israeli army places an area under curfew it means that people can't leave their homes at all. Curfew is another word for an entire town being under house arrest. If you are Palestinian (as opposed to being an International) and you are on the street during a curfew, you risk being shot by the army. Anyway, last year while the old city was under curfew this little boy’s friend asked this little boy to come out and play and the little boy went out with him and was shot with some kind of bullet that sprays shrapnel. He lost both his eyes. We met with him and his family. They welcomed us into their home and gave us tea. The little boy told us what had happened to him. His father told us “Bush does not see this.” The little boy now has to go to an under-funded school in Jenin where they can teach blind students. His parents told us that many children have to share a single Braille book. Braille books need to be touched to be read -- the children can’t just crowd around and read over each other’s shoulders! They also told us that the little boy had to be carried on someone’s back to get to the school, as travel is very difficult for Palestinians. Most roads are closed to them, they are not allowed to take cars outside of their cities, and cabs are expensive in a place with unemployment rates that are somewhere between 60 and 75 percent (I’ve heard many numbers). Besides, even for the Palestinians who can afford cabs, they aren’t allowed through the checkpoints and you have to walk through those to the next cab. Due to all of this, for the average Palestinian traveling entails a lot of walking in intense heat, frequently over rough surfaces, even hills and mountains. It’s difficult for those who are well, let alone those who have disabilities. Like so many things about this trip, meeting this little boy seems to be an experience impossible to do justice to in e-mail.

As we left the old city we said good-bye to Helme and his friend who had accompanied us through much of the town. Majde and one of his friends accompanied us a little further and helped us get a taxi to our next destination: Al Fara’a Refugee Camp. There was a little confusion at first -- depending on how you pronounce the A sounds you can easily mispronounce the name of the refugee camp and instead say the name of a prison. As we were leaving we offered Majdee 100 shekels (about $20) for him having taken his morning to show us around, and for his cab ride back and forth. He absolutely refused.

We rode to the Al Fara’a Refugee camp in a limo-style Mercedes Benz taxi that the driver told us was purchased used from the United States. As I relate the story of our 2-and –a-half-hour journey from Nablus to Al Fara’a I just want to point out that the physical distance as the crow flies (or as the Israeli drives) is only about 20 km (12.5 miles). For my story to make sense you have to know that roads are segregated in the West Bank: there are roads that are for Israelis and roads that are for Palestinians. The roads for Israelis are called bypass roads and are generally as straight a shot as possible from a settlement into Israel proper.

These are new, well-maintained roads, which are part of an ever-increasing Israeli infrastructure in the West Bank. This ever-increasing infrastructure continues to complicate the issue of Israeli withdrawal and is evidence for the Palestinians that Israel does not ever intend to withdraw. Palestinian roads, on the other hand, are rough driving. The roads in the cities that are paved are in horrible conditions due to a number of factors: Israeli tanks drive on them and many have even been blocked with huge stones and piles of dirt by the Israeli army. There are 2 types of roads between Palestinian cities in the West Bank. The first are the main roads, which are “paved” but also have the checkpoints. (See previous e-mails for information on the difficulties of passing the checkpoints.) The second are back roads through hills and small mountains. These are unpaved and very rough. We took this second type of road to avoid checkpoints after our difficulty getting into Nablus and having heard that it can be even harder to get out.

Our ride started off smoothly and even included a quick stop at the driver's house where we were able to use the bathroom and were given some Kool-Aid-type drink. Strangely, there was a Ferris wheel and an airplane just a short distance from the driver's house, but his English was very limited and there was no way to ask about them. Shortly into the ride our driver spotted a “roving checkpoint” and pulled over until it passed. There was also a truck stuck in the road. After getting back on the “road” our driver appeared in a big hurry. Presumably he wanted to get going before the roving checkpoint returned. After just a few minutes the taxi got stuck on the top of a very narrow hill. We tried pushing the car but the back wheels weren’t even touching the ground. The radiator was also damaged and leaking.

Just then an Israeli Jeep began driving towards us and the driver got very nervous. The taxi had gotten stuck right on the edge of an intersection with a bypass road --- the type Palestinians aren’t allowed to drive on. The driver gave his ID card to Allison to hold. He apparently thought it was better to say that he left it at home then to risk having it taken away. (Apparently it is rather common for Israeli soldiers to simply take Palestinian's ID’s -- amongst other things -- away. Tonight I asked someone here in Al Fara’a what happens if your ID gets taken away and he said there is a hotline to call in Jerusalem [an NGO] and they help you get it back. I’m sure it’s not quick though and he said that they get it back most of the time, but that means that sometimes they don’t.) The Jeep drove right up to us and then turned around. We can only guess that they saw that we were Internationals and decided not to mess with us. The driver called his brother who drives a truck and he came and pulled the truck off of the peak. Everyone was in a big hurry as this was on a road forbidden to Palestinians. After they got the taxi moving the driver hurried us into the cab and drove a short distance (30 seconds) on the bypass road, then got back on a dirt road and drove another few minutes into a Palestinian village. There he and his brother fixed the radiator. In about 10 minutes the whole thing taken apart and put back together. It was pretty impressive. From the looks of the radiator, this wasn’t the first time it had been repaired. Similar to many of the places we have been, in just a few minutes a small group of children had joined us and asked us questions such as “what is your name?” and said “welcome” and “hi.” After getting back on the “road” the rest of the journey was “uneventful.” The condition of the “road” was still absurd. As Bret said, it was a great road for mountain goats.

When we arrived in Al Fara’a Refugee Camp, our host, Nedal met us with another cab, driven by his friend, and gave us a quick ride to his home. We met Nedal’s 5 children, his wife, and her 2 sisters, Iman and Abeer. Nedal told us we were the first Internationals to come to Al Fara’a in a year. We relaxed at Nedal’s and were fed a delicious and copious meal. Several people from the community came to visit, including Nedal’s father and I think his brother, though I have to be honest -- I feel asleep at this point and missed whatever happened. You’ll have to read someone else’s account of the next several hours.

I want to point out here that in the United States many people have a vision of refugee camps as being tent cities or something similar. The refugee camps we have been visiting have existed since the late 40’s. The refugees are from the 1948 war. They are Palestinians who used to live on land that is now in Israel. These camps have existed fifty-plus years and they now have permanent structures. They are, however, very crowded so people live on top of each other and lack many services.

After I woke I spent a little time with Nedal’s wife and her 2 sisters. They kept saying how happy they were to sit with me. They spoke just a little English and I speak no Arabic so we exchanged a lot of smiles.

Nedal and Djoko came back to get me around 7:45 pm and I met the rest of the group at the center for the Boy Scouts. The Scouts are, in fact, linked distantly with the Boy Scouts of America but I think it is only a symbolic link. They do their own program. At the center, we attended a small ceremony put together by our host Nedal and the Boy Scouts. Nedal works with a group called the Palestine Children’s Welfare Fund and coordinates the sponsorship of 12 children in the camp. He had bought gifts for the children with his own personal money and had us give them to the children. Then the Scouts put on a play about the importance of remembering where their families are from and after that they performed some traditional Palestinian dancing. We then visited with 3 men who run the local center for people with disabilities. At this point it was already 10 pm so we returned to Nedal’s and were fed dinner. The rest of the evening was spent visiting with Nedal, his wife and her sisters. They stayed up until 2 am in the morning and the sisters spent the night just to be near us.

Of the many things we talked about I found it most interesting when Nedal told us that he has friends in B’nai Barak, a neighborhood of Ultra-Orthodox Jews in Tel Aviv. He told me that when they hear that there has been some military activity in the area they call to be sure that he is okay.

Peace and Love to all of you,
Jessica