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Palestine Trip 2: Facts on the Ground
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Morgan Davie
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May 09, 2004 04:09 PDT
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(Photos are up at http://www.apocalypse.gen.nz/palestine/)
Friday April 9, 2004
The call to prayer sounds like a cross between an air raid siren and a
Leonard Cohen song, and it sounds at the first touch of dawn, which is way
to early for us. We sleep uneasily after that, not quite believing where we
were.
Breakfast with Sabine and Jean-Guy - pita bread and houmous and cheese and
meat. Nothing gets you in a local mood like diving into the local
breakfast. Then ATG people Samer and Sarah appeared and we were out.
BEIT SAHOUR
Samer drove us around Beit Sahour, and we started to see the things we'd
only read about before - the settlements, the bypass roads. The closeness
of them is shocking. From the street outside our hotel you can see a huge
settlement, Gilo I think, which is still being worked on. It's literally
just across the valley. It is built inside the 'green line', on Palestinian
land, and it is staring the population of Beit Sahour in the face every
single day.
Bypass roads, as well, are a revelation. They carve through the west bank
sheathed in barbed wire and electric fences, and as they go they chop up
communities, cut off farmland and orchards, and necessitate the demolition
of Palestinian homes. We see a group of five homes that are hemmed in by
bypass roads; all will be demolished eventually. The families just have to
move. Nearby, a bypass road loops around an olive orchard, cutting it off
completely from the locals.
I have been reading about bypass roads and settlements for years, but until
I saw them I didn't really understand what they were and what they meant. I
didn't understand how powerful they were - the power of, as the saying goes,
'facts on the ground'.
AIDA CAMP
We visited a refugee camp in Bethlehem, Aida camp. It has evolved from a
hilltop covered with tents in '48 into an alley-network of cramped
tenements. Kids called out greetings, ran down for photos. Everyone
greeted us warmly: "you are welcome."
There were signs of conflict. Bullet holes in the wall of a school. Ruined
walls and buildings. A factory's blue corrugated wall ripped open by a
missile, the interior now dormant.
Alongside Aida is a field. Across the field is Gilo settlement. The
separation wall enters the field from two directions. Soon, new
construction will join the wall together, and cut off this view.
We walked up to the end of the wall nearest Aida and some Israeli troops
appeared from the other side. We walked away and they paced after us.
Being followed by a force of uniformed men and women carrying weapons is not
a nice feeling. They came up to the fringe of Aida proper and then watched
us for a while before going back. "They are not allowed here but they come
and go as they please. They do whatever they want."
It is hard to keep hope alive here. The Al Rowwad centre
(http://alrowwad.virtualactivism.net/) keeps children busy with theatre and
art projects. They have toured theatre pieces through Europe. The director
of Al Rowwad, AbdelFattah Abu-Srour, earned a PhD in France but turned down
the right to stay there: "If I had it, the temptation to leave here when it
got difficult would have been too great."
JERUSALEM
The Holy City on Good Friday. It was incredible. Jerusalem's Old City is a
network of narrow streets, some of them built over so completely that you're
effectively underground. It twists and turns and is full of colour and
culture - ultraorthodox Jews in their enormous hats, orthodox Jews in their
traditional garb, Arab women in hejab, Christian priests and nuns and monks
in full dress, salesmen and touts of all stripes, tourists, pilgrims,
soldiers, us. It was an incredible place, unlike any place I've been to or
seen. Probably it's unique.
We sat in on a talk given by Rabbi Arik Ascherman of Rabbis for Human Rights
(http://www.rhr.israel.net/), which was centred on RHR's work in solidarity
with the Palestinians.
Then we just explored. We ended up walking the Via Dolorosa, the path Jesus
took with the cross to Calvary (as defined, of course, in the middle ages)
to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, which was a confusing dark cave housing
a mad melange of different Christian traditions, each pitting prayers and
incense against the others in trying to carve out a space for their
individual flavour of the divine. Down below the Church was a deep chamber,
the tomb of Jesus in Catholic tradition. (In Protestant tradition, it's a
few hilltops over.)
Its easy to forget that in amongst this best-guess mythplanting, there is
truth - Jesus did preach here in Jerusalem, he did die here. The Temple did
stand here - one wall, the Western Wall, remains.
Okay, it's a bit harder to prove that Mohammed and his horse rode up to
heaven from the Rock on Temple Mount. But I'm happy to give them the
benefit of the doubt.
That evening we went to the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem. On Good
Friday, passing from Jerusalem to Bethlehem, the spot where Jesus was
crucified and rose again to the spot where he was born. Quite an Easter -
and not a chocolate egg between us.
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