Autumn Days

Many jets have flown overhead in the last couple of days, the most since I’ve been here. More than any of the other volunteers can remember, it seems. They come and go every day, but since yesterday their presence has been almost constant. Often they pass faster than sound, and so leave the crack of a sonic-boom in their wake. In most countries, the army has the decency not to fly supersonic jets over civilian airspace, and certainly to not fly them so low. But this isn’t most countries, nor – in the minds of the IDF at least – is the airspace civilian. And so I was woken from my sleep with the latest blast from the latest plane to fly crashing over Nablus. It is disconcerting just how much the boom sounds like a bomb, but the double crack – of the nose and of the tail of the plane – is quite distinctive, and so you just carry on with your day.

Classes continue, and I’m trying to prepare a proposal that will allow me to give lectures and hold debates on global health and social justice. Over the last week many classes have been cancelled due to the university elections, and so much of the talk has been of the partisan politics engulfing Palestine. However, it can be difficult to follow the political situation here; strictly, the volunteers are prohibited from discussing politics with their students.  More difficult than this though is that when you do talk to people, often you are confronted by a complete sense of apathy and an unwillingness to talk about the situation. I guess that’s quite understandable... My local guide today – who has just joined the project – was telling me just how ironic he thought the name Project Hope was: he is 22 years old and about to finish a degree in Pharmacy, but with no Jordanian passport he has no hope of leaving the country. From his house in the hills he can see the ocean, but he could never go there; next week it is the festival of Eid ul-Fitr but, here, there is nothing to celebrate. He was 5 years old when the Oslo Accords were signed, and only 12 at the start of the second intifada.

In the national context, it is important to remember that democratic elections were held in Palestine in 2006, but the people voted for Hamas, and this was unacceptable for Israel and the US. Heavy sanctions were imposed until governmental power was transferred to Mahmoud Abbas’ Fatah party, which divided the government and undermined the Palestinian position in the peace negotiations. Given the various warring factions, it is difficult to visualise how a stable government – and one that is acceptable to both the Palestinians and the international community – could be formed. Fatah officially controls the West Bank, but are blighted by their continuing failure to end the occupation and their internal corruption; Hamas control the Gaza Strip and enjoy significant support in the West Bank, but are not recognised by the international community, much less by Israel. Further, Fatah have ties to the US whilst Iran has ties to Hamas, and so whilst Iran and the US dispute on the wider international front, they fight by proxy in Palestine: I heard someone liken the the political allegiances to two kids playing on their Playstation, with Hamas and Fatah as the fighting computer characters. Here, though, peoples’ lives are real, and the civilian cost is more than just game points clocked up far away from Washington and Tehran. The jets still roar past in the sky.

Photographs...

The entrance to the West Bank

A lighter part of the fence

Inside a spice factory

A view over Nablus

New Askar refugee camp

Olive picking

I've finally found somewhere that has a decent internet connection here, so I may be able to upload photos from time to time. Here are just a few I have on my computer at the moment.

Into November.

A week’s gone by in Nablus already, and I think I’m finding my feet. The classes are haphazard: they’re often cancelled, and the students’ English is never as good as they say, but at least they’re grateful you’re there. It seems Project HOPE has a good name in this city. In 2006, when the Israeli army invaded Nablus, Project HOPE was the only international NGO to stay here. There were two kidnappings, but that was the peak of the second intifada when the situation was very volatile, and both ended well. Now, the city is peaceful and friendly; the local volunteers are eager to help and to learn English from the internationals, and the internationals need their help to be guided around the winding paths of the Old City and the refugee camps.

Before I arrived here, I was very unsure of what I would find; before leaving the UK, the occupied Palestinian territories of the West Bank and Gaza were just newspaper articles and pictures on Al Jazeera. Already though, the city of Nablus is beginning to feel like a home. There may be demolished buildings, dozens of pictures of martyrs on street walls, and more flags than you’d see at a Tea Party rally, but there are few soldiers in the centre (those there are work for the Palestinian Authority) and whilst you remain within the city the checkpoints and other provocative signs of occupation feel far away – perhaps not far away, but much less threatening.

And that, maybe, is what leads to the conflicting feelings of freedom and suffocation here. Whilst (at the moment) there are few troubles, every aspect of life is affected by the occupation. Although electricity flows right now, people are aware that at any time, and for whatever reason, it can be cut. Large aquifers which supplied water to Palestinian land were annexed by Israel when they built the security wall and, now, whilst all their water still flows into the West Bank, 80% of it is diverted to the illegal settlements: on one side of the wall farmers make a good living growing oranges in the Middle Eastern heat, yet Palestinian farmers are forced to rely on growing olives as they are able to withstand the long periods of drought. Palestinians have no hope of entering Israel, and no hope of leaving Palestine unless they can procure a Jordanian passport. When the checkpoints were closed, if you said you were from Nablus or Jenin – two of the sites of the greatest resistance during the second intifada – you would almost always be denied passage.

But life goes on, and people do what they can. The resilience here is spectacular. I have always been a fan of political discussions, but here they rarely end in shouting or disagreement or anger but, worse, they end with an awful hopelessness, as one becomes more and more aware of the entrenched and unmovable position of both sides. The extreme minority on each side of the divide will never be quiet, and will never give up an inch of the land they believe is theirs. The peaceful majority – and I believe it is a majority, on both sides – will struggle to get their voices heard over the lunatic fringe. The Palestinians, though, are not so bleak: they tend to remain positive amidst all the trials. I don’t know if they believe that peace will come, but they must remain hopeful. No one should be forced to live in the way they are in Balata or Askar (or any other of the 62 year old refugee camps) and the equal dignity of all human beings – codified in the UN Declarations of Human Rights, and ignored by Israel – should not be taken away for mere political gain.

I have some classes to prepare now, and on Thursday I’ll be starting to give guitar lessons in Balata. Life just goes on.