Thinking about Palestine

Why do Palestine and Israel play such a big role in the news. I heard a few people tell me while I was in Palestine that nobody cared about the Palestinian people, that everyone simply ignores the unjust political situation taking place. I can understand why one might think this, given that nothing ever seems to change and, while discussions of boycotts sometime take place in Europe, nothing ever really happens. But on the other hand the Palestine/Israel situation gets a lot of attention in the press. Why? Is it a crossroads of civilisations? East meets West? Does Europe feel involved given its historical role of driving out the Jewish people and drafting contradictory peace deals? Does the twisting and turning narrative of the drama draw us in? Did anyone really even see Fatah and Hamas uniting, given that a week before they united any Fatah supporter in Gaza and any Hamas supporter in the West Bank was getting thrown in jail? Can anyone predict what will happen next?

What about me? Do our own views become identity markers? "I'm a Palestinian supporter." Why am I so drawn to the politics here? Why not focus on a situation closer to home, like Indonesia's butchery of West Papua? The political significance and absurd degree of conflict in the Middle East makes it a target of political and historical study. Let us not shy away from denying it is interesting.

When I was young my favourite history topic was World War One. Was there an innocent party involved in what became a globally significant conflict? France wanted revenge on Germany, Russia wanted a warm water port, the Ottomans wanted to be great again, Germany wanted to be as powerful as Britain, Britain wanted to stay clear at the top, and so everyone joined in with Austria-Hungary and Serbia's arm wrestle. There were no good guys, only bad guys, and populations suffered as a result. Isn't the same thing happening today in the Middle East? Isn't Syria the centre of a global conflict of self-interested parties from which entire populations of innocent people are being devoured (http://www.worldcantwait.net/index.php/features/iran/7902-robert-fisk-syrian-war-of-lies-and-hypocrisy)? Isn't history repeating itself? Wasn't World War One my favourite history topic at school? Didn't Chris Hedges write a book called 'War is a force that gives us meaning'?

Back to the Israel/Palestine narrative. I can't work out whether it is fear or power that motivates the Likud party to operate the way it does, but i think the two have blurred together. If ever a country did not trust anybody it was Israel. Can anyone blame them after one glimpse at history? Safer, surely, to keep Palestine as powerless as possible. Perhaps this fear is motivating the expansion of settlements throughout the West Bank, the demolition of neighbouring Palestinian houses and farms and the seizure of most available water in the Jordan Valley for the settlers' swimming pools. Or maybe that's power? Or a realisation that it gets very hot and dry in the Jordan Valley in the summer. One thing I do feel clear on; if fear is a factor, it is not justified to alleviate that fear through the means of political muscle at the expense of an entire people.

Whatever the reasons, it is clear the occupation is not sustainable. It cannot last. Either a one state solution or a two state solution is inevitable. Is it? Really? I heard many people say this, and many news reports suggest the same thing. I agreed. Until about a week ago, when I suddenly started to wonder what made it so unsustainable. Why can't it just continue? Isn't that exactly what the government is trying to do? And aren't they doing it just fine? It may end, it is hard to predict what will happen next in this page turner. But it seems a reasonable argument to just assume it will keep on going if Israel want it to. Once again my thinking has changed, and it took me about 1 minute to find an article that explains my new feelings better than I can: http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/25/opinion/cohen-israels-sustainable-success.html?_r=0

I wonder whether the Pope's recent action in Bethlehem is the only appropriate way to address the wall. 

Lately I've been worried about Robert Fisk. I wonder if he has been a political journalist in the Middle East and a war historian for too long. I worry that he has read too many stories of people behaving badly.

I am currently residing Iraqi Kurdistan, but I am getting distracted by a lot of questions.  

Some final escapades in the holy land

It sounds profound in theory. The place where it all began. The holy city during what is for Christians the most holy time of the year. But really, Easter in Jerusalem is just kinda annoying. It's super crowded and touristy and near on impossible to find what one needs during Easter - a time of quiet and a community to share it with. Every second person seems to be carrying a cross around the place like its a backpack, while every other person is wearing a blue or red or yellow cap to signify which tourist group they are apart of. But maybe I should just stop complaining and be glad that I got to spend some time in a place that I have been reading about since I was a young lad. I take comfort from the fact that Jesus' first action in Jerusalem was to trash the local temple, which, one could say, he deemed to be too touristy.

Easter Friday, between the Old City and the Mount of Olives.

Inside the Old City. Most Fridays (mosque day), soldiers do not let men under 50 visit the Dome of the Rock for prayer. So the men get as close to the walls as they can to hear the message and pray. 

Queuing for the Church of the Holy Sepulcher on Easter Friday. We did not even try to get near it.

On Easter Friday I said goodbye to Nablus and spent the last 2 weeks of my time in the land escapading around with a few friends. As you may have worked out from above, Jerusalem was the first stop. Finding accommodation at the last minute in Jerusalem during the Easter season was, obviously, extremely difficult, but we managed to find a word of mouth spot called 'Ibrahim's House' in East Jerusalem, where we were able to stay for a few nights. Ibrahim's House was well known amongst the locals, and presented itself as working for peace in Palestine/Israel and existing as a place where people from around the world could find sanctuary and in return offer a donation. The thing was, I have no clue how the place was doing anything remotely constructive in relation to peace building, and the recommended donation amount was actually higher than most (far better) hostels around Jerusalem. Nonetheless, we had a place to stay, even if we did have to walk 30 minutes straight up the Mount of Olives from the Old City to get there. 

The Dome of the Rock and the Western Wall. Two contested holy sites.

Finally managed to get into the Temple Mount. A close up shot of this impressive mosque.

Muslims pray on the Temple Mount, between the two main mosques on the site - The Dome of the Rock and Al-Aqsa.

This friendly family blocked their ears as they walked so they did not have to overhear Church bells ringing nearby. Sigh. 

As seems to happen with every West Bank volunteer, doing a spot of traveling around Israel at the end of your stay is an uncomfortable experience. Life just carries on as normal, seemingly oblivious to the occupation that is taking place next door. As you walk around the Old City as a tourist, it is impossible not to remember that the people you have just spent the last 3 months with are not allowed to visit this most sacred of places. Most volunteers end up just giving up their travel and returning to Nablus, or anticipating the flight home. We were, thus, not particularly upset to leave Jerusalem after Easter and head to Jericho.

Jericho is about 10 degrees warmer than Jerusalem, even though it is only 20km away. It is one of the lowest cities in the world and lies on the shoreline of the Dead Sea. We did the usual touristy activities, which mainly consist of visiting monasteries and ruins, and even managed to fit in a trek on a day that was not excruciatingly hot. Unfortunately we forgot a few essential supplies; shisha pipe, good food, fresh water. But we managed to buy bottled water at outrageously inflated prices, survive off crackers and peanut butter, and make a pipe out of the local greenery for our lemon and mint tobacco. We also managed to spend a day swimming in the Dead Sea, which was as unusual a feeling as one expects it to be, and camp a night under the stars. Unfortunately the Dead Sea has no sand, only rocks, so the sleep was not the comfiest.  

Overlooking Jericho. It is a pretty small place.

Some ants hard at work.

Local wilder-beast.

A monastery located in the middle of our trek.

Sunrise at the Dead Sea.

A view from Mazada - the last Jewish stronghold during the Roman exile.

I never made it to Galilee in the North of Israel. Toward the end of my trip I started wondering how I could miss such a biblically important spot, and started contemplating catching a bus to spend a couple of days in the region rather than heading to the Jordan Valley for the next stop on our itinerary. The Jordan Valley, as I have already stated but yet to explain fully as promised, is perhaps the site where the occupation is most debilitating to the locals. Plenty has been written by the United Nations on this particular area and the negative impact the occupation is having - one need only Google United Nations and Area C. In the end, I decided that a final visit and farewell to people in the Jordan Valley made a whole lot more biblical sense than a touristy visit to Galilee. So I have never seen the land where Jesus grew up.

The last remaining Kafia factory in Palestine. The rest all get their stuff made in China. These machines have been churning out Kafia's since the 60s.

On the 29th April I flew out of Tel Aviv. It was touch and go, being seconds away from missing the airport train after being accused of carrying a knife in my pack by security, and getting grilled with questions at customs about my Jordanian visa, which the Jordanian embassy in Ramallah had kindly decorated with the word 'Gaza' numerous times for some unknown reason, but I got through. Stories of going through security in Israel take too long to explain, so I won't even try. Suffice to say I progressed through more unscathed than expected. My time in the 'holy land' had come to an end. I was now moving toward the next destination in my journey.   

Leaving Nablus

The month of April saw my time in Nablus come to an end, and a chance for one final trip around the West Bank and Israel before departing on the 29th April. Nablus had become a very comfortable place for me to live by April. I continued to teach at the university a couple of times a week, teach a bit of guitar to some enthusiastic students, forget all the Arabic I would learn within 24 hours, and instinctively play the oud like a guitar, despite the patient reminders from my teacher Ali to play the oud like an oud.

I also had the opportunity to run in a marathon in Bethlehem, well, 10km of the marathon. I was probably more unfit than I had been in ten years, but I managed to finish the race. It was a special event to be apart of; only in the West Bank would a marathon involve running through refugee camps alongside an enormous security wall, dodging cars driving through the runners and witnessing a bus block off all surrounding traffic after rear-ending itself reversing down a steep concrete hill. I think, too, only in the West Bank would a marathon need to be two laps of a half marathon due to organisers being incapable of finding 42 continuous kilometres of Palestinian land. You can read about the race here: http://palestinemarathon.com/

No marathon preparation is complete without a quick stop off at Taybeh brewery the day before the race. Taybeh is Palestine's only beer, and it is pretty good.

Andre at the start line the night before the race, visualising what is to come.

The West Bank side of the separation wall, in Bethlehem.

Palestinian street graffiti on the separation wall. 

Some young Palestinians who insisted on me taking a photo of them. 

A few of us also had the opportunity to celebrate passover in a Samaritan village. Nablus is home to the remaining Samaritans, being the location of their holy site - Mount Gerazim. On arriving to the village we were very quickly invited to the house of a local Samaritan leader, and it was interesting to hear his account of their people. Samaritans see themselves as Arab, and use Arabic as their first language. They follow the first five books of the Bible - the Torah, but do not follow the remaining 33 books of the Hebrew Bible. They see Mount Gerazim as a holy site rather than Jerusalem. They are a small community who intermarry, and recognising that this is thinning the blood a bit too much they have began 'importing' girls from countries such as the Ukraine. They have lived peacefully alongside the Muslims and Christians of Nablus for centuries, and there is no hint of zionism in their thinking. They also celebrate a fairly brutal passover, which involves the lighting of fire pits, the sharpening of knives, the dragging of sheep, the singing of songs, and, eventually, a considerable amount of blood. It is one of those festivals that sounds good to attend in theory, but is not particularly nice to witness when you are there. Witnessing it we did though, and while most visitors had to watch from afar behind iron fences, we were allowed into the inner sanctuary of the celebration, reserved for special guests and Samaritans. How, you ask? The owner of the nearby Samaritan pub, the only pub in Nablus, saw us and invited us in. I guess we did frequent the pub quite often...

Waiting for the festival to commence in the village - the anticipation...

This was a strange sight - a sheep being dragged to the slaughter. It was scarily human like. 

This kid started questioning the fate of his new friend. 

This lady is ready for action - notice the cleaver coming out of her pocket. The sheep looks on with great fear.

Singing is a big part of the event. This man is singing Culture Club's 'Do You Really Want to Hurt Me' over a Karaoke backing track. 

Some local Samaritans discuss the slaughter that is taking place in front of them.

Inappropriate selfie. 

Nablus is a beautiful city, and it was sad to say goodbye. But I had a flight to Istanbul on the 29th April, along with plans to head East to Iraqi Kurdistan for 2 months, and I wanted to spend a bit of time traveling before I departed, so on the 18th of April I packed my bags and headed to Jerusalem with a few friends. Over the course of my stay I developed some pretty strong political feelings, but there is more to Nablus than just politics, and I want to do it justice. One of the best things about Nablus is that it has avoided the aggressive and dishonest nature that tourism had created in locations such as Jerusalem and Bethlehem. People in Nablus did not see you as a walking wallet, or an opportunity to charge exorbitant prices. If people you didn't know invited you into their shop for tea, it was because they wanted to give you a cup of tea. If people charged you ten shekels for a taxi ride, it was because that was the cost of the ride for anybody (sure, there were exceptional stories I occasionally heard, but very rare). It is a safe and friendly city in which people enjoy being affectionate to each other. I had my fair share of hospitality over the course of my stay, which was often very humbling.

There are many people I will miss. It was sad to say goodbye to Ali, whom I visited often to teach guitar and learn the oud, and whose open door policy led to an interesting home environment of many comings and goings. I will miss the many intelligent and insightful students I taught at An Najah Academia, and I pray Palestine finds a way to use the talent it has within its walls, for unemployment and brain drain is rife. In particular I will miss Sala, the only person I could find as excited to see The new Noah film as I was (not that it will ever play at a theatre in Palestine). I will also miss my adult English class, who called me Mr Jon and took me out for Kanafa and defended me when one local decided we shouldn't be eating together. I will miss the senseless use of horns and the preference to scrape one's car alongside a wall in absurd passing maneuver down a narrow alleyway rather than to reverse to a more appropriate spot to allow a car to go past you. Well, maybe not that. I did develop some pretty strong feelings about the gender inequalities in Palestine, and I did, on occasions, find the surge of conservatism throughout Palestine disheartening. But the kindness and natural generosity of the people of Nablus is my lasting impression, and if I could sing the praises of any city throughout Israel or Palestine, it would be Nablus.