Christmas in the Holy Land

Christmastime has never really been my favourite time of year. Don’t get me wrong, I enjoy the glut of celebrations: the Christmas feast; the New Year party; the Boxing Day madness; all the birthdays that seem to fall around the lot. What gets me is the jingles and the tinsel and the glitter and all the saccharine-snowy-festive-fun bullshit you get pumped with back at home. This, however, is a tired old rant, and one I won’t bore people with again.

Being in the Holy Land did change things a whole lot though. Most obviously, there was far less mention of it: Bethlehem and half of Jerusalem are in Palestine, and this is without doubt a Muslim country. Fairly obvious point, I guess, but it did make me think of all the psalms and songs people sing alluding to this region, without a thought for the disconnect between the reality of the situation and the popular imagery which has taken hold.

Regardless, we decided to go and busk in Bethlehem on the 23^rd - we figured that way there wouldn’t be too many tourists, and we had to at least see the place at Christmastime. Bethlehem itself is a beautiful little city, and in a far better condition than Nablus or Ramallah, flushed as it is with the tourist dollar. The shops sell an odd mix of Palestinian symbols and Christian trinkets, and the generic designer goods stores could have been in any European town. There is plenty of tack here, but what do you expect from the town in which Jesus was born? We found a place and set up busking.

We started in the main square and attracted a big crowd, but no one wanted to throw money past the scrawl of kids who’d gathered close; we tried the Church of the Nativity but were moved on; we tried one of the main streets and made a handful of shekels, but had to pause for evening prayer. We decided to move to a bar, whose owner said we could have two beers apiece if we played there for the evening. When we got there the place was empty, but he brought us beer, we set up on the sidewalk and started to play. We worked our way through a selection of Christmas carols interlaced with Irish jigs, and a fifteen-year-old kid joined us who played a mean Arabic drum. The owner brought more beer, then wine, and then more wine; he was Armenian, and happy to be drinking with us. The cafe stayed empty, the bottles piled up, and we played on into the night. We’d been there around six hours before we decided to leave; we hadn’t made more than a few shekels, but the wine easily covered our taxi fare.

Leaving the next morning we saw crowds of people arriving; just the tourists we wanted to avoid. There was a large procession of drumming scouts parading through the town centre, which was quite surreal, but not strange enough to grab our attention for any length of time. We regrouped, made it to the taxi station and organized a lift back to Nablus, stopping in Ramallah to pick up supplies for Christmas. The Eve was a day of rest and preparation, and Christmas itself was a grand old affair. There are about a dozen internationals left at the moment, about half from Project Hope and half working with the local music centre. We managed to put together a good feast (including turkey) and had a day which felt very far removed from the madness of Palestine. The evening rapidly fades to a blur in my memory, but I’m pretty sure it was a great day. The following night we curried the rest of the turkey and finished the scotch. Roll on New Years...

Protect the Village!

About 13km from Nablus are the small villages of Lower and Upper Yanoon. In fact, Upper Yanoon is barely a hamlet, but it lies in a valley between two settlements near the Jordanian Valley; that village, its connecting road and olive groves, are all that stops the settlements joining together and further strengthening the settlers’ grip on the West Bank. By exploiting the zoning regulations set out in the Oslo Accords, building the separation wall, and through settlement expansion, the Israeli government is pursuing a strategy of divide-and-conquer in the Palestinian Territories - you just need to look at a map of the West Bank to see how vividly these policies have fragmented peoples’ homes and lives. Villages like this are a common target for the settlers, who genuinely believe that this is their God-given land.

And so, the tiny village of Upper Yanoon is host to an international guesthouse, a home for volunteers who wish to protect the locals by providing international witness to the harassment. A group will come, stay for three months, live in the community, help with the harvest, and return; all the while their presence will discourage the settlers from their acts of vandalism. In the past, they have burnt trees and destroyed the road – the journey is actually 25km because of a detour around the hills – they have sabotaged the generators and they have even been as petty as to wash their dogs in the fresh spring water. This weekend it was time for one group to leave and another to move in, and we had to sit the house for the night.

The land itself is beautiful - rolling hills and olive groves – and had it not been for the mist we would have been able to see villages across the valley in Jordan. The sun was warm and the land was open, and that alone was a good enough reason to take a trip out of Nablus. As much as I enjoy this city, the high walls and the concrete can feel claustrophobic, and the shadows bring a chill now that winter’s rolled around. Sad to say, on our little excursion, nothing of interest really happened; these days the settlers largely stay away thanks to the international guesthouse. Our highlight was during one patrol when we got an anxious phone call from one of the previous volunteers. He said the mayor of the town had seen us scrambling up the side of valley – we wanted to see the view, we didn’t know it counted as Israeli land – and the settlers shoot trespassers. We clambered down through the thorns and headed home.

In Nablus, things are settling down for Christmas. The terms are coming to an end, classes are cancelled for exams, and many – in fact most – of the volunteers are leaving. Times are quiet, days drag by, and the nights are cold. Soon though, the holidays will be here, we’ll go to Bethlehem, bring back supplies for Christmas, and the New Year will pass over us once again. We’re at the lowest ebb of the long and dusty year, and so the days can only get brighter from here on in.

Happy Solstice everyone.

Down to Bil'in

“On the last day of summer, ten hours before Fall,

My grandfather took me out to the wall”

Friday was the 23^rd anniversary of the beginning of the first intifada, and several of us – along with a few hundred others – joined the weekly march at Bil’in in opposition of the Separation Wall. Marches have been held here since January 2005, and these non-violent protests have been a constant thorn in the side of the occupation. Regular marches against the wall began in the village of Budrus, where protestors were successful in having part of the wall diverted around the village, thus saving the families from having their olive groves annexed to Israel; in itself, this was only a small victory, however their success inspired other people throughout Palestine, Israel, and all along the border to create their own peaceful protests against the building of the wall. Today, the marches have moved on to Nabi Saleh, to East Jerusalem, and to Bil’in.

We joined the protest, and as always there were people from both sides of the wall. This time, alongside the obligatory Palestinian flags there were Argentinean and Brazilian banners flying; a show of thanks and appreciation of their recognition of an independent Palestinian state. The march started in the village, then proceeded the 500 yards-or-so to the wall; we were still over 100 yards away when the IDF started to launch tear gas at us. Everyone who’d not been on the marches before were warned that this was the normal run of things, that we should expect gas canisters and stun grenades and to watch out for rubber-coated bullets. The gas, they noted, had a nerve-agent in it which doesn’t actually choke you – it just makes you feel like you can’t breathe. If you have problems, just sniff on an onion, they said. I don’t think I’d taken my flatmate seriously when he said he had a bag full of them.

Despite over three hundred people starting off the march, only a few dozen made it to the Israeli line. With the wind in our faces, the tear gas was enough to deter most people. Many, though, had done it many of times before – several, every week since the beginnings in Budrus – and knew to just follow the wind and run towards the soldiers: they can’t gas you if you’re standing next to them, and the stun grenades are just flashes and bangs. We managed to break around the gas and come up from the side to join the Israelis and the Palestinians and the Press at the line. At first the soldiers looked suitably menacing with their shields and rifles, but the old Indian-looking guy (who’d told us he was from London) sat peacefully by them with his homemade “Repair the World / Keep Hope Alive” banner and made them look half like toys and showed them for the children that they were. Not one could have been more than twenty.

Whilst we were there, one soldier came up to us saying that this was a closed military zone and if we didn’t leave we would be arrested. We pointed out that it was in fact Palestinian land, but he ignored this. When he came back to give us the second warning he grabbed the German volunteer and, with another soldier, wrestled him away. He had done nothing wrong, but was arrested nonetheless. Given that we feared this would mean deportation for him we were very concerned, but there was nothing we could do; we carried on filming and dodging the grenades, before returning back to the town to regroup. We waited for an hour or so, but were told he’d probably be released after dark, and possibly somewhere around Ramallah. As we had no way of contacting him, we flagged a taxi home. Luckily, on the way back to Nablus we saw him walking down the road in the village – a huge relief – and shouted to the driver to pick him up. We stopped for a beer in a nearby hotel, and returned, tired but together.

Before the march I was interviewed by a Saudi Arabian news caster, who asked “What do you think will be achieved by today’s march?” Really, I don’t think anything could be achieved by one day’s protest. Indeed I don’t think much can be achieved directly by marching at all; what has been the great success of the marches is that they have united Palestinians with the huge number of Israelis who condemn the occupation. For many here in Palestine, the marches have been the first opportunity people have had to meet Israelis who are sympathetic to their position, and who are not dressed in body armour and carrying machine guns. The occupation will be beaten through cooperation, and the wall will be dismantled from both sides.

As it was an anniversary – and incidentally also International Human Rights Day – Friday’s protest made the news in Palestine; you can read the story on Ma'an News and PNN. When we returned home, Jonas checked his Facebook account and found a friend request from the soldier who’d arrested him. That, I think, gives a very clear glimpse of just how warped this conflict has become, with soldiers so young fighting at the command of fools who are so, so old.


- One of the volunteers here put together a video of our day trip to Bil'in. Click the links to Part I / Part II

Recognition and Failure

The shelling of Gaza has been resumed: last night, three airstrikes were carried out in the city and a school was destroyed. No one was injured, but they were forced to cancel classes.

One of the internationals pointed out to me that he’d noticed a much more dejected and desolate feeling in the air of late. I think I’d noticed it too, although I wasn’t sure whether it was real or just the wax and wane of daily life that was on a thin ebb. There is reason for people to be down at the moment: in the last week, the US officially stopped demanding a settlement freeze from the Israelis, signalling the final death of the current peace talks; politically motivated arrests by the PA are on the increase whilst Hamas and Fatah continue to bicker for power and influence; the bombs still rain on Gaza.

Tuesday was Islamic New Year, the day the prophet moved from Mecca to Medina, somewhere around fourteen hundred years ago. We took a taxi out to a village full of Roman ruins and sat in an ancient amphitheatre and spoke of the situation, far from the city and the local people. It’s good to get out of the city when you can – everything can break down to repetition otherwise – and it’s good to get out to the open countryside. The ruins were impressive, and the rolling hills and olive groves around Nablus are stunning, although the landscape is blotted by settlements. One, in all its vulgarity, stood out bright-green against the arid backdrop, with its sprinkler-fed trees, modern homes and electrified perimeter. I suppose you can get out of the city, but you can never truly get away from the conflict.

On the bright side, Brazil and Argentina have declared that they formally recognise the Palestinian state, drawn along the 1967 borders, and Uruguay will follow in 2011. Together, these countries make up the majority of Mercosur, the largest trading bloc in South America. At present, Israel is one of only two countries outside of South America which enjoys a free trade agreement with Mercosur (the other being Egypt) and as such the recognition of a Palestinian state will be seen as a great rebuff against Israel. The recognition may indicate a move toward ending this controversial trade agreement, and this would be seen as a great victory by many within the Palestinian Solidarity community, not least the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement. Such a move may be far off, but the announcements have provided a glimmer of hope that in the face of crumbling US leadership and the long dead Oslo accords, a fresh hope may be offered from a region which as yet has had few dealings with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Also, it finally rained a couple of days ago, which was a huge relief. The weather’s taken a turn, and it’s got a whole lot colder; it’s still t-shirt weather in the sun, but the nights bring a chill. I expect no sympathy from any of you poor bastards languishing in the UK freeze; I’m just telling it like it is. Spare a moment of thought though for those on the Gaza Strip, whose night times will once again be very loud, and very dangerous.

Update continued.

Yesterday was December, and it’s still dry in Palestine. It hasn’t rained once since I arrived, and the sun is hot in the sky. To those of you back in the UK, snowed-under and frozen-in, that may sound like paradise, but recently I’ve noticed another kind of fear in some of the locals. The fact is, if it doesn’t rain soon, next year’s crops may well fail, food prices will rocket and basic foodstuffs will simply be out of many people’s price range. I was told that last time the crops failed, a kilo of tomatoes went from 4-5 shekels a kilo, to almost 20. For a country in which many people live on the poverty line, this kind of 4-fold increase is too much to bear. The rain was late last year, and the summer was hard on the people. On top of the food prices, there is the ever present worry of water shortages: if the tanks run dry and the pipes are turned off, there will be no water in people’s homes. You can buy water in the shops, but shit doesn’t flush. The sweltering heat becomes rotten and oppressive, and everybody prays for rain.

The issue of the water supplies is one of the most serious, yet underreported, effects of the Separation Wall. When the wall was being built the international community criticised (albeit with muted voices) the building of the wall, and found it to be in several violations of the Geneva Convention. However, whilst it was widely reported that the wall was further violating international law by being built within the United Nations recognised Green Line (drawn along the 1967 borders) the reasons for this were more insidious than the mere “land-grab” that made the BBC headlines. As well as fragmenting communities, with the land the wall annexes invaluable water supplies, leaving the majority of the Palestinian water in the control of Israel, and as such 80% of this water is diverted to the illegal settlements. It is often asserted that the major battles of the 21^st century will be fought over water rather than oil, but already in Palestine water is being used as a weapon to choke people into submission.

Today, I joined the local library, and tomorrow a group of us are heading over to the wall at Qalqiliya with paints and a camera. Tonight, I’m heading up to the Samaritan village to buy half a case of communion wine from an inbred man of unusual proportions. Kicks, it seems, can be hard to come by...

Away in a foreign land and elsewhere

It’s been a little while since I got time to write anything for this blog; work is busy, we’ve been away, and frankly when I get the chance to sit down and rest I don’t often feel like going back to staring at a computer screen and tap-tap-tapping away. Still, I think it needs to be done, so now I have a break for a few hours, I’ll regale you all with an account of the last whenever over here at Project Hope.

For the holy festival of Eid the volunteers made a trek down to Egypt: to Sinai, the mountains and the Dead Sea. Even after only three weeks of working at Project Hope, I felt like I needed a break. Not so much to rest, but to get a chance to reassess and revaluate what I was doing here in Palestine. Being thrown straight into the teaching work left me with little chance to get my thoughts together, and with the constant struggle to deal with the situation on the ground and the need to face up to the facts of life here, it was easy to let time run away with you, and to live at the end of a fraying thread. The work itself is not overwhelming, but it leaves you with little chance for thought, which is something I got to catch up on down by the sea.

Passing through the border was easy; the crossing at Taba is one of the busiest (and laxest) crossings you can make to get in or out of Israel. No words from the guards, just queues, waiting and passing. You still get the feeling of being treated like cattle, but you get that everywhere; it didn’t have a look of an abattoir that the foot-crossing at Jerusalem has. To be there in the open desert away from Nablus was an amazingly liberating feeling: I hadn’t realised it before, but on top of the constraints of living in a city under occupation, the city is in a valley between two mountains, which gives Nablus an even more claustrophobic feel. You rarely see great distances, just blocked walls of concrete flats; occasionally, from the right kind of viewpoint, you can stare down the long valley stretching out toward the horizon. I don’t think I’d ever been so pleased to see the ocean, but this only sharpened the blow of knowing that I was doing something many of my friends back in Nablus would never have the chance to do. But you make of time what you can, and so I spent the week under the sea, amongst the coral, and trying to clean my mind of thoughts of Israel, Palestine, and this never ending conflict.

The trip back I made alone, as I had stayed on an extra few days in Dahab to dive. It was a great time, but like a fool I tried to make it back to Jerusalem on the Friday morning, and missed the bus so was stuck in Eilat on Shabbat. Eilat, I hear, was once a beautiful, deserted fishing village at the northern tip of the Red Sea; now, it is a bloated, vulgar tourist spot that made me think of Benidorm, but with the drunken Brits replaced by fat Israelis. I was forced to spend 50 shekels on a dorm in a hostel and had to listen to a German-Israeli whine on about how everything was so expensive here and so much better in Tel Aviv. He did have some good vodka, which took the edge off the conversation, but by 9.30 I had to force myself to sleep so that I didn’t have to listen to any more of his bullshit. I longed to get back to Nablus and the West Bank, or at least to get back to the Arab quarter of Jerusalem.

Back at the project, things carried on much as before. Classes were cancelled, classes continued, you learn more about the conflict and your hope is tested again. For one of the lectures we watched a documentary called Arna's Children about a theatre project in the camp at Jenin, and about the children who participated in the project, before the recent intifada and after. It is available on YouTube, and I highly recommend it. It’s the most honest portrayal I’ve seen about the life in the camps, and if you want an idea of what it’s like to work in Balata or Askar in Nablus, you only have to watch the film of the camps there in Jenin. They all saw heavy fighting – the worst in the West Bank – and all are full of kids whose childhoods have been peppered with bullets.

Last weekend we travelled north to see what had happened to that theatre project, and the work was inspiring. The old stone theatre featured in the film was destroyed several years ago, but a new building had been put together – I think largely funded by the UN – and they were working on their 3^rd or 4^th production. Their first, Orwell’s Animal Farm, got them into a great deal of trouble for casting the pigs as the Palestinian Authority – although I suspect none of the locals would disagree with this choice – and their second, Fragments of Palestine, won them a sell-out tour of Germany and Austria. They were asked to tour the UK, but were refused visas on the grounds that “they couldn’t provide sufficient proof that the actors would return to Palestine.” What sufficient proof would consist of I can’t imagine, and I suspect that the real reason for the denial had more to do with maintaining relations with Israel than with British immigration laws. Whatever the reason, it is Britain's loss. Their next production is a remake of Alice in Wonderland, and will run from January: it may be less controversial than the first or less poignant than the second, but after seeing clips of the others, I can’t wait.

More to follow...