Last week we had work off for the Muslim holiday Eid al Adha (Festival
of Sacrifice). Eid al Adha is a celebration of when God asked Abraham
to sacrifice his son Ismael, and right before Abraham did so, God
intervened and said he could sacrifice a ram instead. Now it is
traditional for each family to slaughter a goat or sheep, uttering the
word "bismillah" before slitting its throat. They split the sheep
into three parts. One part is eaten by the immediate family, one goes
to the extended family, and the last is given to less fortunate
members of the community. It is essentially the middle eastern
version of Christmas, although the historical reasons for celebration
have nothing to do with each other. Everyone visits family, gives
presents, and eats lots of good food. My three month tourist visa was
on the verge of expiration so I had to use the week to leave the
country and hopefully get a new visa upon re-entry. Although it is
technically possible to get an extension at the ministries in Tel Aviv
or Jerusalem, it is very difficult for internationals who are not
actually tourists to use these offices. A couple of girls who are
part of our program recently went to the ministry of tourism office in
Jerusalem to try and renew their visas, and they were asked to prove
that they had stayed in hotels within Israel, and show that they had
reservations to do so in the future. After three days of arguing,
waiting, and trying to substantiate a fabricated story, they were
issued 2 week visas.
After hearing about this, a few of us decided to go to Jordan and
hopefully obtain an additional 3 month visa by simply crossing the
border, waiting 4 days, and re-entering. We started the journey at 8
am last Sunday. When we arrived at Huwarra checkpoint, the sight of
short lines was a pleasant surprise. The previous three days at
Huwarra had been a madhouse. Two days before, the checkpoint had been
closed because settlers had come down from the hilltops and attacked
Palestinians, in what Israel's president described as modern day
"pogroms." The settlers had promised violence across the West Bank to
avenge the Israeli Army's eviction of settlers from a house in Hebron,
and they were making good on that promise. In the previous days
setters ransacked villages, burned cars and houses, and threw rocks at
passing cars and mini-buses. Dozens of people were injured, and a
number killed when their cars ran off the road following barrages of
stones. In this context, many people did not question the legitimacy
of the Israeli Army's claim that checkpoints were closed for security
reasons, but people also wondered why the army was so adept at
protecting the settlers, but utterly incapable of protecting the
Palestinians. Closing checkpoints during Eid al Adha proved to be an
especially volatile situation because thousands of Palestinians were
trying to leave the city to spend the holiday with family in nearby
villages. I'm sure you can imagine the frustration people in the US
would feel if all entry and exit to major cities was cut off during a
week before Christmas.
Anyways, the day before there had been hundreds of people waiting at
Huwarra. At times the Israelis stopped letting anyone through, and
after a bit people started to trickle through, only to stop again
shortly thereafter. As I reached the middle of the line, people in
the back started pushing against everyone in front. The Israeli
soldiers quickly raised the barrels of their guns to prevent a rush of
people coming towards them. Kids started screaming and crying because
they were being crushed between everyone, unable to push back.
Mothers with infants raised their children into the air to prevent
them from being smashed. One of the kids that was near me disappeared
from sight, and his father started yelling "Get back! You're going to
kill my son if you keep pushing." Elderly people tried to exit the
line, and they started to stream down the narrow channel separating
the concrete barrier from a high fence. A hunchbacked elderly lady
held onto the concrete barrier beside me and started walking towards
the front of the line. A soldier ran over and told her to stop. She
kept moving and the soldier raised his gun at her. I lost my temper
at started yelling at the soldier. "She's 80 years old and can hardly
walk, just let her through the fucking checkpoint." He gave me a
quizzical look, like I had no right to interfere, and started yelling
at me in Hebrew. Other soldiers started to walk over from the road
crossing. I started yelling back in English and pointing to the kids
that were being crushed by the mass of people. The second soldier was
much more reasonable, and he let some of the old people follow the
lady through the newly inaugurated checkpoint line. After three hours
at the checkpoint, we were allowed to pass. Getting back into Nablus
later that night proved to be another disaster. Settlers had gone on
another rampage shortly after we cleared the checkpoint, forcing the
IDF (Israeli Defense Forces) to shut the whole area down. We ended up
driving through olive groves and down dilapidated back roads because
soldiers closed all the main roads into Nablus. The bus driver
eventually convinced soldiers at a checkpoint reserved for truck
shipments to let the bus through.
The next day, the checkpoint was not crowded and passing through it
was not very difficult. We took a bus to Ramallah and then
Jerusalem. On the bus from Ramallah to Jerusalem we met an American
Palestinian girl who had just quit her job as a senior analyst in a
brokerage firm to come see her parents and try to find work with a
local NGO. We had a very interesting discussion with her, especially
concerning the treatment of women in Jordan and Palestine. The role
of women here is very complex, especially following the second
intifada. The middle east, and Palestine in particular, has become
increasingly religious and more "conservative" in the last decade.
Why this has occurred, I am not quite sure. One factor may be the
national identity crisis that many nations in the middle east have
gone through following the collapse of secular nationalist movements.
I think there are different factors in each country, but the emergence
of Islamic Nationalism seems to be the overarching theme. The word
"conservative" as it relates to women is most often used here as a
euphemism for the repression of women. When I lived in the states, I
thought of the hijab (Muslim head covering) as the symbol of a pattern
of repression. Most women in Nablus now wear the hijab, although
when you see pictures from Palestine 30 years ago, this dress is
noticeably lacking. Following lengthy discussion with women here, the
hijab seems to be a trivial issue. Every woman I have talked to
insists that she has chosen to wear it, in accordance with cultural
and religious traditions. The major issues they are concerned about
have to do with jobs, education, social discrimination, and marriage
inequality. Over 70% of the people going to the An Najah university,
where I teach professional development classes, are women. Women
comprise the vast majority of the people who graduate and do
exceedingly well academically, and yet they are openly discriminated
against in the job market. Frankly, work force discrimination against
women is rampant. They are asked questions in interviews that would
generate lawsuits in the US. I know many women with pharmaceutical
and other doctoral degrees who never anticipate being able to utilize
them. The traditional marriage engagement process merits an entire
discussion, and to put it gently, I think it's archaic. Living here
has certainly been a crash course in moral and cultural relativism.
Despite endless arguments by male friends, I still strongly disagree
with the notion that the repression of women is acceptable given the
"social context." The organization I work similarly holds that gender
discrimination is inexcusable, and we have a number of programs
designed to provide opportunities for women who would otherwise be
left out.
Anyways, we wished our new friend goodbye, and made our way across
Jerusalem to the central bus station. There are probably more guns in
the Jerusalem bus station than any other bus station on the planet.
Every third person in the station seemed to be carrying a weapon. We
had two hours to wait for our bus to the south of Israel, so I bought
a used book by a mountaineer who famously cut the rope of his partner
while climbing in Pakistan ("Into This Air," is the book by the guy
was cut off, a great book and movie if you get the chance to read it).
Eventually the bus came and as soon as the driver got out he seemed
like he was in a rush to leave. We walked on and asked him to drop us
off before Eliat, at the Yitzak Rabin border crossing. He curtly told
us that it would be a 45 minute walk from the highway to the border,
and advised us to go to Eliat and take a taxi instead. We insisted on
being let off at the crossing, and eventually he relented. Shortly
after parking, the bus was full, and about to be on its way. A woman
came out of the bus station, apparently pleading with the driver to
wait, as her husband was still inside the bus station. He told her
no, and she ran off the bus, frantically looking for her husband. The
bus driver started to pull away, you could see the woman in the
station shouting for her husband to hurry up. The bus started to
leave and the couple emerged from the bus station and started chasing
after it. The driver looked at them without remorse, he continued
driving until one of the station attendants put his hand out,
signaling for him to stop. Shortly after leaving the Jerusalem
proper, we entered the northern Negev desert. The side of the highway
was dotted with villages, the houses looked like temporary shelters.
The small communities looked more destitute than some of the refugee
camps. As we approached the Dead Sea, the bus driver started jamming
some Abba, we all watched him sing in the large rear view mirrors.
The bus driver stopped at a number of hotels along the Dead Sea, and
soon there were a number of people standing up. At the last stop some
old German tourists got on, and after no one offered their seat, my
Dutch colleague Truda and I let them sit in ours. Standing up felt
like a sickening version of surfing as the bus wound its way south on
the highway along the Dead Sea. Eventually we stopped at a rest stop
and everyone was allowed to get out for a few minutes. Five minutes
later the bus driver was telling everyone to get back on the bus. We
got on and the bus left almost immediately after. The bus driver
cruised past the bathrooms to give the occupants a cursory warning.
"Anybody in there, we're leaving" he said, honking, but not bothering
to stop. As we were about to turn onto the highway, he looked back
and said, "is everyone here?" Well everyone that's here is here,
everyone else is probably in the bathroom you just drove past.
Satisfied that his role call was complete, he turned back onto the
highway and continued south. to be continued.......
Sincerely
mike
Wednesday, December 17, 2008
Askar Clean Up
Marhaba,
We just finished a clean -up project at one of the UNRWA schools where
we work, in Askar refugee camp. It was a good example of the
difficulties you face in doing just about anything. This school has
what was once a beautiful garden. When we were in the headmasters
office talking about cleaning up the trash and pruning the bushes, he
called in the janitor and asked him to take us to the garden. "Which
garden" the janitor asked. The headmaster told him, "our only garden,
the one in back." The janitor started laughing. After years of
neglect, it was more like a jungle dumpster than a garden. We then
went down to the staff room and hung out until the janitor came back
with trash bags. We started talking to one of the teachers about our
project. The teacher talked about what a shame it is that
Palestinians don't seem to have any reservations about littering. "I
think it's a cultural problem" he said as he threw flicked his
cigarette butt out the widow. Huh. I often hear, "we have bigger
things to worry about, environmental degradation is a trivial matter."
Anyways, the janitor came back with a bunch of "garbage bags." They
were no bigger than grocery bags, and I thought to myself, we're going
to need 500 of these things to clean up the jungle dumpster. As soon
as we went outside, it started pouring rain. We stopped cleaning
after a few minutes, and went up to talk to the headmaster about what
days we could come. We agreed on coming on Sunday, Tuesday and
Thursdays after school. The following Thursday I bought some real
garbage bags, gloves and a hand pruner before going back to the Askar
school with two other volunteers. The headmaster told us that because of the elections, he had
to lock the school, so we would have to come back another day. After
some negotiation we managed to get him to wait half an hour, so we
could at least start. We came back on Sunday, he had another excuse
why he had to shut the school. We said look, if those times aren't
good for you, we can arrange something else, but you're making this
quite difficult. He said coming during the day would be better. A
few days later we came back, we came into his office and he said,
"sorry, today is really not good." As politely as possible I
explained, we're coming here to pick up your garbage for free, in
fact, it's at our own expense, and you're making it extremely
difficult, do you want this to happen or not. After that day I was
ready to never go back. Two later an Irish friend and I went to the
school in the morning. I didn't stop to talk to the headmaster. We
went to the garden and started picking up trash, pruning bushes and
trimming trees. A few kids chipped in to help. We got 9 bags of
trash out of a 300 square foot area. After hearing that some ajnabees
were out picking up trash, the headmaster came out to see what was up.
Since that day, he has been much more helpful. He now brings us tea,
bread, and kids to help.
The next day we went back, there were already kids picking up trash,
with one exceptionally helpful kid in charge. We developed a core
group of kids to help, and lead the effort once we were gone. These
kids have every reason to be concerned about other things, but for
whatever reason, some of them were really dedicated to beautifying the
garden. Of course, problems didn't end with the headmaster. Kids
threw rocks and spit at us from the upper levels of the school. One
kid stole my hand pruner and cut a water pipe. One day we left right
as school was let out and there was a veritable riot in the street.
It took a teacher with a big stick to fend the kids off. I've started
a similar project at another UNRWA school, and we're trying to get the
ministry of interior to cover some of the costs, and institutionalize
the idea of keeping Palestine clean.
In other news…
Things are getting a little tense in Nablus. Today, no one is allowed
to enter or leave the city after last nights clashes. Yesterday, a
couple hundred Israeli settlers were forcibly evicted by Israeli
soldiers from a Palestinian house they had occupied a year ago in
Hebron. After attempted negotiations, 600 Israeli soldiers carried
out a supreme court order to remove the 250 settlers from the
compound. Settlers throughout the West Bank are livid about the
eviction, and attacks on Palestinians have risen sharply. Yesterday,
settlers descended on the main checkpoint (Huwarra) in Nablus to seek
revenge. They set fields on fire, flipped cars, threw rocks, blocked
the roads. Palestinians responded by throwing rocks. The Israeli
army started to tear gas everyone and arrested a few people. Settlers
have vowed to ratchet up the conflict with both Palestinians, and the
Israeli army.
Sincerely,
Mike
We just finished a clean -up project at one of the UNRWA schools where
we work, in Askar refugee camp. It was a good example of the
difficulties you face in doing just about anything. This school has
what was once a beautiful garden. When we were in the headmasters
office talking about cleaning up the trash and pruning the bushes, he
called in the janitor and asked him to take us to the garden. "Which
garden" the janitor asked. The headmaster told him, "our only garden,
the one in back." The janitor started laughing. After years of
neglect, it was more like a jungle dumpster than a garden. We then
went down to the staff room and hung out until the janitor came back
with trash bags. We started talking to one of the teachers about our
project. The teacher talked about what a shame it is that
Palestinians don't seem to have any reservations about littering. "I
think it's a cultural problem" he said as he threw flicked his
cigarette butt out the widow. Huh. I often hear, "we have bigger
things to worry about, environmental degradation is a trivial matter."
Anyways, the janitor came back with a bunch of "garbage bags." They
were no bigger than grocery bags, and I thought to myself, we're going
to need 500 of these things to clean up the jungle dumpster. As soon
as we went outside, it started pouring rain. We stopped cleaning
after a few minutes, and went up to talk to the headmaster about what
days we could come. We agreed on coming on Sunday, Tuesday and
Thursdays after school. The following Thursday I bought some real
garbage bags, gloves and a hand pruner before going back to the Askar
school with two other volunteers. The headmaster told us that because of the elections, he had
to lock the school, so we would have to come back another day. After
some negotiation we managed to get him to wait half an hour, so we
could at least start. We came back on Sunday, he had another excuse
why he had to shut the school. We said look, if those times aren't
good for you, we can arrange something else, but you're making this
quite difficult. He said coming during the day would be better. A
few days later we came back, we came into his office and he said,
"sorry, today is really not good." As politely as possible I
explained, we're coming here to pick up your garbage for free, in
fact, it's at our own expense, and you're making it extremely
difficult, do you want this to happen or not. After that day I was
ready to never go back. Two later an Irish friend and I went to the
school in the morning. I didn't stop to talk to the headmaster. We
went to the garden and started picking up trash, pruning bushes and
trimming trees. A few kids chipped in to help. We got 9 bags of
trash out of a 300 square foot area. After hearing that some ajnabees
were out picking up trash, the headmaster came out to see what was up.
Since that day, he has been much more helpful. He now brings us tea,
bread, and kids to help.
The next day we went back, there were already kids picking up trash,
with one exceptionally helpful kid in charge. We developed a core
group of kids to help, and lead the effort once we were gone. These
kids have every reason to be concerned about other things, but for
whatever reason, some of them were really dedicated to beautifying the
garden. Of course, problems didn't end with the headmaster. Kids
threw rocks and spit at us from the upper levels of the school. One
kid stole my hand pruner and cut a water pipe. One day we left right
as school was let out and there was a veritable riot in the street.
It took a teacher with a big stick to fend the kids off. I've started
a similar project at another UNRWA school, and we're trying to get the
ministry of interior to cover some of the costs, and institutionalize
the idea of keeping Palestine clean.
In other news…
Things are getting a little tense in Nablus. Today, no one is allowed
to enter or leave the city after last nights clashes. Yesterday, a
couple hundred Israeli settlers were forcibly evicted by Israeli
soldiers from a Palestinian house they had occupied a year ago in
Hebron. After attempted negotiations, 600 Israeli soldiers carried
out a supreme court order to remove the 250 settlers from the
compound. Settlers throughout the West Bank are livid about the
eviction, and attacks on Palestinians have risen sharply. Yesterday,
settlers descended on the main checkpoint (Huwarra) in Nablus to seek
revenge. They set fields on fire, flipped cars, threw rocks, blocked
the roads. Palestinians responded by throwing rocks. The Israeli
army started to tear gas everyone and arrested a few people. Settlers
have vowed to ratchet up the conflict with both Palestinians, and the
Israeli army.
Sincerely,
Mike
Hamas and the Situation in Gaza
Aila w Sadiqi,
I'm sure many of you have recently heard about the Israelis blockade
of Gaza and the humanitarian disaster that continues to unfold. Every
article I've read about this issue has been atrocious. The journalism
about the crisis in Gaza, and the situation here generally, is worse
than it was before the war in Iraq. Journalists were so excited about
covering the war, they neglected their responsibility to question the
administrations "facts" and motives.
The current situation in Gaza is largely a product of what happened on
January 26th, 2006. On that day, Hamas won a majority in the
Palestinian parliament. Specifically, they won 70 seats in a 136
member Parliament. This happened despite the fact that the US
secretly funneled 2 million dollars to the coffers of Fatah (the other
major political party). Hamas won the election for a number of
reasons. The most cited reason is that corruption in Fatah reached
epidemic proportions, and Palestinians wanted to punish them for
lining their own pockets at everyone else's expense. Hamas also
gained a lot of respect in Palestinian society for developing and
running a series of very effective social welfare programs. Many
Palestinians were also frustrated because Israel failed to abide by
most of its obligations under both the Camp David and Oslo Accord
peace frameworks, while Palestinians continued to act in good faith
despite the lack of reciprocity.
Following Hamas' victory in Palestinian elections in 2006, the US and
Israel pursued a policy agenda designed to start a civil war within
Palestine. Israel arrested 27 parliamentarians before they served a
day in office. This brought the total number of the Palestinian
parliamentarians in Israeli jails to 40, a third of the entire
parliament. There was also a campaign to arrest many of the
ministers, a fourth of whom were also put in prison. In addition to
arresting newly elected Hamas parliamentarians, Israel and the US
started shipping truckloads of weapons to Fatah militias. Israel,
with the support of the US, gave Fatah the green light to start
assassinating Hamas politicians and party members. Can you imagine
this happening in the United States? What would you think after
reading the headline "A Day After Democrats Win a Majority in the
Senate, Russian Forces Seize 33 senators and 106 House Members."
"Russians Give Republicans Tanks to Destroy Democratic Headquarters,
and Donate Sniper Rifles to Kill Senators." Israel and the United
States successfully started a civil war, rendering the elections
meaningless. To protect themselves from being killed or imprisoned,
Hamas' leadership fled to the Gaza strip and took over.
The Gaza strip is a small area, geographically distinct from the West
Bank, completely surrounded by a wall. For the Israelis, taking out
the remaining Hamas leadership literally became like shooting fish in
a barrel. Israel stopped short of eliminating all of Hamas'
leadership for a number of reasons. In short, Israel uses the myths
about Hamas to legitimize the conflict narratives that best serve
Israel. When Hamas was founded in 1987, both of Israel's secret
services, the Shin Bet and Mossad, supported its early development.
Israel initially supported Hamas as part of a divide and conquer
strategy, namely, to stand in opposition to the PLO (Palestinian
Liberation Organization) and Fatah. The Israeli secret service also
admitted supporting Hamas because they wanted to give "a religious
slant to the conflict, in order to make the West believe that the
conflict was between Jews and Muslims." Khaled Meshal, the current
leader of Hamas, constantly reiterates the fact that this conflict is
not about ethnicity or religion: "Our message to the Israelis is this:
We do not fight you because you belong to a certain faith or culture.
Jews have lived in the Muslim world for 13 centuries in peace and
harmony; they are in our religion "the people of the book," who have a
covenant from God and his messenger, Muhammad (peace be upon him), to
be respected and protected. Our conflict with you is not religious
but political. We have no problem with Jews who have not attacked us —
our problem is with those who came to our land, imposed themselves on
us by force, destroyed our society and banished our people."
People argue that Hamas should be excluded from the political process
for two reasons, that is to say, they refuse to recognize Israel, and
have killed civilians. Virtually every news outlet continues to
peddle the Israeli accusation that "Hamas doesn't recognize Israel."
It is true that in its founding charter Hamas refused to recognize
Israel, but their politics and ideology have changed significantly
over the past 19 years. In 2005 Hamas declared it would stop armed
struggle if Israel simply abided by previous agreements and recognized
the 1967 borders. The real question is, does Israel recognize
Palestine? Israel continues to steal land that even the Israeli
supreme court says isn't theirs. A third of Palestine's
parliamentarians are festering in Israeli prisons. Israel and the US
organized, armed, and funded a group known as the "dahlan faction," to
overthrow Hamas after they won the elections. The Israelis have
divided the West Bank and Gaza Strip into a series of open air
prisons. A recent Israeli military strategy document, printed in the
Israeli paper Haaretz, said that Israel should try "preventing
elections in the PA (Palestinian Authority), even at the cost of a
confrontation with the US and international community." They are
readying themselves for the forced dissolution of Palestine's entire
government. Israel is not just calling for Palestine to be wiped off
the map, it is carrying out that agenda on a daily basis. The
Israelis are literally destroying Palestinian homes, political
institutions, and any chance of having a viable state, all while
starving the people into submission.
The next reason cited for banning Hamas is its use of terrorism. If
we use the common definition of terrorism, namely, the use of violence
for coercion, nearly every nation on the planet would be involved in
terrorism, the Bush doctrine being the clearest example. What I mean
to say is that terrorism is a subjective designation, there are no
standards for its application, and when there are standards, they are
applied selectively. Every Israeli Prime Minister and President for
the last 60 years has the blood of civilians on their hands.
According to an Israeli commission (Kahan Commission), the former
Israeli prime minister, Ariel Sharon, bears "personal responsibility"
for the massacre of over 2000 civilians in the Sabra and Shatila
refugee camps. The commission determined that he should resign and
never serve in public office again. At the time he was forced to
resign, but he later went on to become prime minister from 2001 to
2006. Ariel Sharon was responsible for a massacre comparable to 9/11
in terms of civilians killed, and he received 18 billion dollars in
aid from the US during his time in office.
We're paying the Israelis 3 billion dollars a year to trample all over
human rights, and US policy goals in the middle east. If Israel is
really our friend, it's time we show the government some tough love,
and start by withholding aid. If you really care about your alcoholic
friend, do you buy them another bottle of jack daniels or sign them up
for treatment. We need to take Israel to rehab whether they like it
or not.
Sincerely,
Mike
I'm sure many of you have recently heard about the Israelis blockade
of Gaza and the humanitarian disaster that continues to unfold. Every
article I've read about this issue has been atrocious. The journalism
about the crisis in Gaza, and the situation here generally, is worse
than it was before the war in Iraq. Journalists were so excited about
covering the war, they neglected their responsibility to question the
administrations "facts" and motives.
The current situation in Gaza is largely a product of what happened on
January 26th, 2006. On that day, Hamas won a majority in the
Palestinian parliament. Specifically, they won 70 seats in a 136
member Parliament. This happened despite the fact that the US
secretly funneled 2 million dollars to the coffers of Fatah (the other
major political party). Hamas won the election for a number of
reasons. The most cited reason is that corruption in Fatah reached
epidemic proportions, and Palestinians wanted to punish them for
lining their own pockets at everyone else's expense. Hamas also
gained a lot of respect in Palestinian society for developing and
running a series of very effective social welfare programs. Many
Palestinians were also frustrated because Israel failed to abide by
most of its obligations under both the Camp David and Oslo Accord
peace frameworks, while Palestinians continued to act in good faith
despite the lack of reciprocity.
Following Hamas' victory in Palestinian elections in 2006, the US and
Israel pursued a policy agenda designed to start a civil war within
Palestine. Israel arrested 27 parliamentarians before they served a
day in office. This brought the total number of the Palestinian
parliamentarians in Israeli jails to 40, a third of the entire
parliament. There was also a campaign to arrest many of the
ministers, a fourth of whom were also put in prison. In addition to
arresting newly elected Hamas parliamentarians, Israel and the US
started shipping truckloads of weapons to Fatah militias. Israel,
with the support of the US, gave Fatah the green light to start
assassinating Hamas politicians and party members. Can you imagine
this happening in the United States? What would you think after
reading the headline "A Day After Democrats Win a Majority in the
Senate, Russian Forces Seize 33 senators and 106 House Members."
"Russians Give Republicans Tanks to Destroy Democratic Headquarters,
and Donate Sniper Rifles to Kill Senators." Israel and the United
States successfully started a civil war, rendering the elections
meaningless. To protect themselves from being killed or imprisoned,
Hamas' leadership fled to the Gaza strip and took over.
The Gaza strip is a small area, geographically distinct from the West
Bank, completely surrounded by a wall. For the Israelis, taking out
the remaining Hamas leadership literally became like shooting fish in
a barrel. Israel stopped short of eliminating all of Hamas'
leadership for a number of reasons. In short, Israel uses the myths
about Hamas to legitimize the conflict narratives that best serve
Israel. When Hamas was founded in 1987, both of Israel's secret
services, the Shin Bet and Mossad, supported its early development.
Israel initially supported Hamas as part of a divide and conquer
strategy, namely, to stand in opposition to the PLO (Palestinian
Liberation Organization) and Fatah. The Israeli secret service also
admitted supporting Hamas because they wanted to give "a religious
slant to the conflict, in order to make the West believe that the
conflict was between Jews and Muslims." Khaled Meshal, the current
leader of Hamas, constantly reiterates the fact that this conflict is
not about ethnicity or religion: "Our message to the Israelis is this:
We do not fight you because you belong to a certain faith or culture.
Jews have lived in the Muslim world for 13 centuries in peace and
harmony; they are in our religion "the people of the book," who have a
covenant from God and his messenger, Muhammad (peace be upon him), to
be respected and protected. Our conflict with you is not religious
but political. We have no problem with Jews who have not attacked us —
our problem is with those who came to our land, imposed themselves on
us by force, destroyed our society and banished our people."
People argue that Hamas should be excluded from the political process
for two reasons, that is to say, they refuse to recognize Israel, and
have killed civilians. Virtually every news outlet continues to
peddle the Israeli accusation that "Hamas doesn't recognize Israel."
It is true that in its founding charter Hamas refused to recognize
Israel, but their politics and ideology have changed significantly
over the past 19 years. In 2005 Hamas declared it would stop armed
struggle if Israel simply abided by previous agreements and recognized
the 1967 borders. The real question is, does Israel recognize
Palestine? Israel continues to steal land that even the Israeli
supreme court says isn't theirs. A third of Palestine's
parliamentarians are festering in Israeli prisons. Israel and the US
organized, armed, and funded a group known as the "dahlan faction," to
overthrow Hamas after they won the elections. The Israelis have
divided the West Bank and Gaza Strip into a series of open air
prisons. A recent Israeli military strategy document, printed in the
Israeli paper Haaretz, said that Israel should try "preventing
elections in the PA (Palestinian Authority), even at the cost of a
confrontation with the US and international community." They are
readying themselves for the forced dissolution of Palestine's entire
government. Israel is not just calling for Palestine to be wiped off
the map, it is carrying out that agenda on a daily basis. The
Israelis are literally destroying Palestinian homes, political
institutions, and any chance of having a viable state, all while
starving the people into submission.
The next reason cited for banning Hamas is its use of terrorism. If
we use the common definition of terrorism, namely, the use of violence
for coercion, nearly every nation on the planet would be involved in
terrorism, the Bush doctrine being the clearest example. What I mean
to say is that terrorism is a subjective designation, there are no
standards for its application, and when there are standards, they are
applied selectively. Every Israeli Prime Minister and President for
the last 60 years has the blood of civilians on their hands.
According to an Israeli commission (Kahan Commission), the former
Israeli prime minister, Ariel Sharon, bears "personal responsibility"
for the massacre of over 2000 civilians in the Sabra and Shatila
refugee camps. The commission determined that he should resign and
never serve in public office again. At the time he was forced to
resign, but he later went on to become prime minister from 2001 to
2006. Ariel Sharon was responsible for a massacre comparable to 9/11
in terms of civilians killed, and he received 18 billion dollars in
aid from the US during his time in office.
We're paying the Israelis 3 billion dollars a year to trample all over
human rights, and US policy goals in the middle east. If Israel is
really our friend, it's time we show the government some tough love,
and start by withholding aid. If you really care about your alcoholic
friend, do you buy them another bottle of jack daniels or sign them up
for treatment. We need to take Israel to rehab whether they like it
or not.
Sincerely,
Mike
Dead Sea Adventure continued...
Salaam Aleikum,
...As soon as the camels saw me they sprinted in the other direction.
So much for my dreams of catching one and riding victoriously to the
Dead Sea. I started walking again and saw something else rustling in
the bushes. Two young camel shepherds came running out, gave me a
quizzical look, and then started running after the camels. After they
rounded up the camels, I walked over to the older one and started
chatting. After saying hello and apologizing for scaring the camels,
I asked him how to get to the Dead Sea. He pointed southeast, the
direction I was headed before coming across the camels, and said
something I didn't understand. Ma Baaref (I don't understand) I kept
telling him. Very frustrated, he finally started yelling and pointing
"la, hadak khatar, khatar, khatar." "No, that is danger, danger,
danger." I later found out that the direction I was walking is
heavily mined, full of mountains exponentially bigger than the sand
hills I had been climbing, and full of gun toting settlers who would
not take kindly to my presence. I asked him where the nearest road
was, and he pointed east. I started off again in the direction he
pointed. About an hour later, I found the road that I had been
walking on before I made the desert detour. When I arrived back to
the road the Dead Sea was not far. I continued walking towards the
Dead Sea on the road, thinking I would be on the beach within the
hour. When I arrived at the northern tip of the sea, I discovered
that the entire area was a closed military zone. Wonderful. I had
been walking for 6 hours, it was getting dark, and an end to the trek
was nowhere in sight. I started walking down the road, holding my
thumb out. People kept passing by, looking at me, and pointing their
thumbs down. This kinda pissed me off…if you don't want to pick me
up, fine, but don't boo me as you drive by. After another 45 minutes
of walking, a guy stopped and picked me up. He was a nice Israeli guy
on his way to a big party in the Negev desert. Eventually I asked
him, "what's with people giving me the thumbs down as they speed by?"
He said that they were indicating that they weren't going where I was
going. Huh. This might be understandable, but there's only one road
that goes along the dead sea, so "going a different way" was
impossible. Anyways, I asked the guy to drop me off at the nearest
abandoned beach that wasn't a military zone. He said that going to
just any beach probably wasn't a good idea because there are huge
"salt holes" in the ground covered by a thin layer of sand. He told
me that many people fall into these holes and are swallowed by sand.
A few minutes later we came up to a military checkpoint, and he told
me that the beach below it was probably free of sandy death holes.
Wonderful, anything else I should know about? Do the soldiers shoot
tear gas at campers who sleep in? I thanked the guy who picked me up,
got out of the car, and walked by soldiers down to the beach. At the
bottom of the steep hill leading to sea was a guy trying to get his
new Audi A8 unstuck. It was hard to feel bad for this guy. He drove
a car that isn't suited for a dirt road down a long steep sand dune.
When I got closer, he started talking to me in Hebrew and was
motioning for me to come help him. Normally I would have been happy
to help, but there was no way the two of us were going to get his car
out of the massive hole he'd dug with his tires, let alone up the sand
dune. I tried explaining my thoughts about the situation. Buddy,
you're going to need a helicopter to get that thing out of here. He
was not convinced. He started to get in his car and signaled me to
get behind and push. I shook my head, waved goodbye, and continued
walking towards the Dead Sea.
There was a little light left so I set my stuff down, put my swimming
suit on, and jumped into the Dead Sea. Don't ever jump into the Dead
Sea. It felt like someone poured napalm into my eyes and nose. I
tried to open my eyes and navigate back to shore but the pain was
veritably blinding. I stood there for about 5 minutes until my eyes
recovered enough to open. When I recovered my sight, I went back onto
the shore and sat for a while. Normally I'll have a temporary lapse
in judgment followed by long periods of rational behavior. That day I
experienced total system failure. Eventually I got back into the
water and enjoyed a nice float. People say that the Dead Sea is like
the ocean except the high concentrations of salt make you more
buoyant. I would hardly call what's in the Dead Sea water. When you
go in feet down, you float with much of your chest out of the water.
That evening I laid in the water and watched the Jordanian hills
change colors as the sun set. Right above where I was camped was a
place called Qumran, the area where 2 shepherds accidentally
discovered the Dead Sea scrolls.
It got chilly when the sun dipped below the horizon, so I got out and
sat on the beach for a bit. I was exhausted from all the walking that
day, so I laid out my blankets and tried to go to sleep. I had not
anticipated ravenous mosquitoes. I covered my entire body with
clothes and tried a number of things to keep them from biting my face.
After three hours of slapping myself in the face, I'd had enough. I
ripped a branch off a tree, stuck it in the ground, and draped my
blanket over it to make a sort of head tent. This manky contraption
actually worked really well. I slept soundly till the next morning.
If there was any doubt that the other campers were Israelis, the
swimming suits, or lack thereof, made their nationalities abundantly
clear. Right after I woke up, a couple naked guys walked through my
campsite. Good morning gentlemen. A girl wearing a g-string went
down to the beach with her dad. I've become accustomed to living a
city where most girls don't even show their hair, so this was a bit
shocking.
I ate breakfast and swam for a few hours. There were some pretty big
waves, and it was fun to just lay down in the water and ride the waves
effortlessly. I packed up my stuff and started walking to the bus
stop. On there way I saw a few signs I hadn't noticed on the way
down. "Warning, Do not stay on the beach after nightfall, risk of
west Nile virus." "This beach is Administered by the Judea and
Samaria Council." The Judea and Samaria council is made of people who
think that all the land from the Jordan river to the Mediterranean sea
belongs to Israel. Unfortunately, a lot of the Israeli settlers have
very extreme interpretations of their religion. They believe that
Judea and Samaria, the name of the West Bank in ancient times, was
promised to them by God. The religious extremists in Israeli society
see God as a real estate agent, and specifically, they think
territorial references that God made 2000 years ago have some sort of
modern legal standing. I wonder how the sub-prime mortgage crisis
has affected God? God must have lost billions, there are probably for
sale signs all over heaven. People have probably gone down to
purgatory to cut back on their expenses until the biblical economy
picks up. If I were God, I'd bring peace to the Middle East to
restore confidence in Roman Empire real estate markets. So let me get
this straight, this land is holy, so you need to confiscate it at
gunpoint? Oh, and don't mind the locals, they'd be happy to move
their 500 year old communities to accommodate your extremist religious
beliefs.
I walked to the bus stop at the top of the hill. The Audi still
hadn't moved. I discovered that because of Shabbat, the weekly Jewish
holiday, buses weren't running. Here we go again. I started hitch
hiking. I waited for half an hour and no one came so I started
walking again. Shortly after I started walking, some people picked me
up. They were two Israelis, one from Tel Aviv, and one from
Jerusalem. We had a very pleasant conversation for the first 5
minutes. Things went south after the girl who was driving asked where
I was going. I told them that I was going to Jericho and living in
Nablus. "Are you a Palestinian sympathizer," the girl shouted at me.
The kids I teach live in refugee camps that are 60 years old, they've
been left destitute by the entire world. They have no identity.
Surely, you have sympathy for them? She stopped the car and told me
to get out. I got out, grabbed my stuff, and she sped off. I kept my
thumb out, but no one else picked me up. Five hours of walking later,
I was on the outskirts of Jericho.
I walked up to the Israeli checkpoint, showed them my passport, and
was waved through. Two hundred yards up the road is a Palestinian
checkpoint. They stopped me and we shot the breeze for a while. I
was exhausted and sweating profusely by this point. The Palestinian
police stopped the next bus that came by and asked the driver to give
me a ride the rest of the way into town. The driver agreed and gave
me a ride to the city center. I met my buddy Hasan for dinner, and we
went to some of the ruins around Jericho. Hasan took me to the
mini-bus center, and I caught a ride to Ramallah, where I could catch
another mini-bus to Huwarra checkpoint outside Nablus. The mini-bus
had to stop at three checkpoints where the Israeli army checked all of
our ID's. When we arrived in Ramallah, me and a kid I had been
talking to, Rajul, got off and started walking to the next bus
station. A block later, I checked my pockets to make sure I had
everything. Fuck, where's my passport? I looked everywhere. It was
on my lap in the mini-bus, and it must have fallen on the floor when I
stood up to leave the mini-bus. I explained the situation to Rajul
and he responded, "moshkeela kabir," big problem. We turned around
but the bus had already left. He started leading me around town to
possible stations where the bus might be. We ran around for 45
minutes, Rajul always asking people at the lots if they knew anything
about this bus. Eventually we were directed down an alley where a
bunch of taxi and mini-bus drivers were hanging out. He explained the
situation to one of them, and they started furiously calling people,
asking Rajul for descriptions of the guy. More than 15 of them were
yelling at each other and chain smoking, but I wasn't sure if they
were getting anywhere. Sometimes the only words I understood were
ajnabi (foreigner) and passporta. Eventually, one of them told the
others to shut up and looked at me "Michael John Coogan?" Yeah,
that's me. Yeah, Mahmoud has your passport, but he's halfway back to
Jericho. In any other country, this wouldn't be such a serious
problem, but I need my passport to go anywhere here. It's impossible
to travel in the West Bank without it, and going to the embassy in Tel
Aviv without a passport would be virtually impossible . One of the
taxi drivers grabbed the other guy's phone, and told the bus driver
to stop and leave the passport at the nearest store. He then offered
to take me to go get it, asking only that I pay for gas to get there
and back. Of course. I thanked Rajul with every Arabic expression I
could think of…without his generosity, persistence, and patience, I
have no idea what I would have done. We hopped in Ayman's 20 year old
stretch Mercedes. Ten minutes outside of Ramallah there was a bad
traffic jam around the Qualandiya checkpoint. Ayman started cursing
and I asked what was wrong. He explained that it was 8:15 and if he
didn't get me back to Ramallah by 9, I would miss the last bus to
Nablus. All of a sudden he veered off the road and started driving on
the shoulder, two tires on the pavement and the other two big rocky
ruts. We nearly took out the mirrors of passing cars. He was
romping his livelihood to get me back to Ramallah in time to catch my
bus. When the shoulder ended he cut across two lanes of bumper to
bumper traffic and started driving in the oncoming lane. He'd swerve
off the road every time we were about to have a head on collision. We
finally arrived at some store in the middle of nowhere where the other
driver had left my passport. Ayman ran back with my passport and
Robinson Crusoe, which I'd also left on the bus. He sped back to
Ramallah, and dropped me at the bus station just in time to catch the
last mini-bus. Again, I used every expression I knew to thank him,
and tried to offer him more than just gas money but he refused.
A few minutes into the next mini-bus ride, I started talking to the
guy next to me. He lives in Askar refugee camp, one of the camps
where I teach. The conversation with him is another story. The girls
in the back of the mini-bus interrupted our conversation and asked me
to open the window. It was freezing out, but I must have smelled
terrible. Dead Sea sulfur, two days of walking through heat, it must
have been bad. They clearly preferred shivering to sitting in a warm
stinky bus. I got back to Nablus safely, no thanks to my own judgment
or presence of mind. Aside from the many questionable decisions, I
had a great time and met lots of wild characters. I don't plan on
going back to the Dead Sea anytime soon.
Masaa el Khair,
Mike
...As soon as the camels saw me they sprinted in the other direction.
So much for my dreams of catching one and riding victoriously to the
Dead Sea. I started walking again and saw something else rustling in
the bushes. Two young camel shepherds came running out, gave me a
quizzical look, and then started running after the camels. After they
rounded up the camels, I walked over to the older one and started
chatting. After saying hello and apologizing for scaring the camels,
I asked him how to get to the Dead Sea. He pointed southeast, the
direction I was headed before coming across the camels, and said
something I didn't understand. Ma Baaref (I don't understand) I kept
telling him. Very frustrated, he finally started yelling and pointing
"la, hadak khatar, khatar, khatar." "No, that is danger, danger,
danger." I later found out that the direction I was walking is
heavily mined, full of mountains exponentially bigger than the sand
hills I had been climbing, and full of gun toting settlers who would
not take kindly to my presence. I asked him where the nearest road
was, and he pointed east. I started off again in the direction he
pointed. About an hour later, I found the road that I had been
walking on before I made the desert detour. When I arrived back to
the road the Dead Sea was not far. I continued walking towards the
Dead Sea on the road, thinking I would be on the beach within the
hour. When I arrived at the northern tip of the sea, I discovered
that the entire area was a closed military zone. Wonderful. I had
been walking for 6 hours, it was getting dark, and an end to the trek
was nowhere in sight. I started walking down the road, holding my
thumb out. People kept passing by, looking at me, and pointing their
thumbs down. This kinda pissed me off…if you don't want to pick me
up, fine, but don't boo me as you drive by. After another 45 minutes
of walking, a guy stopped and picked me up. He was a nice Israeli guy
on his way to a big party in the Negev desert. Eventually I asked
him, "what's with people giving me the thumbs down as they speed by?"
He said that they were indicating that they weren't going where I was
going. Huh. This might be understandable, but there's only one road
that goes along the dead sea, so "going a different way" was
impossible. Anyways, I asked the guy to drop me off at the nearest
abandoned beach that wasn't a military zone. He said that going to
just any beach probably wasn't a good idea because there are huge
"salt holes" in the ground covered by a thin layer of sand. He told
me that many people fall into these holes and are swallowed by sand.
A few minutes later we came up to a military checkpoint, and he told
me that the beach below it was probably free of sandy death holes.
Wonderful, anything else I should know about? Do the soldiers shoot
tear gas at campers who sleep in? I thanked the guy who picked me up,
got out of the car, and walked by soldiers down to the beach. At the
bottom of the steep hill leading to sea was a guy trying to get his
new Audi A8 unstuck. It was hard to feel bad for this guy. He drove
a car that isn't suited for a dirt road down a long steep sand dune.
When I got closer, he started talking to me in Hebrew and was
motioning for me to come help him. Normally I would have been happy
to help, but there was no way the two of us were going to get his car
out of the massive hole he'd dug with his tires, let alone up the sand
dune. I tried explaining my thoughts about the situation. Buddy,
you're going to need a helicopter to get that thing out of here. He
was not convinced. He started to get in his car and signaled me to
get behind and push. I shook my head, waved goodbye, and continued
walking towards the Dead Sea.
There was a little light left so I set my stuff down, put my swimming
suit on, and jumped into the Dead Sea. Don't ever jump into the Dead
Sea. It felt like someone poured napalm into my eyes and nose. I
tried to open my eyes and navigate back to shore but the pain was
veritably blinding. I stood there for about 5 minutes until my eyes
recovered enough to open. When I recovered my sight, I went back onto
the shore and sat for a while. Normally I'll have a temporary lapse
in judgment followed by long periods of rational behavior. That day I
experienced total system failure. Eventually I got back into the
water and enjoyed a nice float. People say that the Dead Sea is like
the ocean except the high concentrations of salt make you more
buoyant. I would hardly call what's in the Dead Sea water. When you
go in feet down, you float with much of your chest out of the water.
That evening I laid in the water and watched the Jordanian hills
change colors as the sun set. Right above where I was camped was a
place called Qumran, the area where 2 shepherds accidentally
discovered the Dead Sea scrolls.
It got chilly when the sun dipped below the horizon, so I got out and
sat on the beach for a bit. I was exhausted from all the walking that
day, so I laid out my blankets and tried to go to sleep. I had not
anticipated ravenous mosquitoes. I covered my entire body with
clothes and tried a number of things to keep them from biting my face.
After three hours of slapping myself in the face, I'd had enough. I
ripped a branch off a tree, stuck it in the ground, and draped my
blanket over it to make a sort of head tent. This manky contraption
actually worked really well. I slept soundly till the next morning.
If there was any doubt that the other campers were Israelis, the
swimming suits, or lack thereof, made their nationalities abundantly
clear. Right after I woke up, a couple naked guys walked through my
campsite. Good morning gentlemen. A girl wearing a g-string went
down to the beach with her dad. I've become accustomed to living a
city where most girls don't even show their hair, so this was a bit
shocking.
I ate breakfast and swam for a few hours. There were some pretty big
waves, and it was fun to just lay down in the water and ride the waves
effortlessly. I packed up my stuff and started walking to the bus
stop. On there way I saw a few signs I hadn't noticed on the way
down. "Warning, Do not stay on the beach after nightfall, risk of
west Nile virus." "This beach is Administered by the Judea and
Samaria Council." The Judea and Samaria council is made of people who
think that all the land from the Jordan river to the Mediterranean sea
belongs to Israel. Unfortunately, a lot of the Israeli settlers have
very extreme interpretations of their religion. They believe that
Judea and Samaria, the name of the West Bank in ancient times, was
promised to them by God. The religious extremists in Israeli society
see God as a real estate agent, and specifically, they think
territorial references that God made 2000 years ago have some sort of
modern legal standing. I wonder how the sub-prime mortgage crisis
has affected God? God must have lost billions, there are probably for
sale signs all over heaven. People have probably gone down to
purgatory to cut back on their expenses until the biblical economy
picks up. If I were God, I'd bring peace to the Middle East to
restore confidence in Roman Empire real estate markets. So let me get
this straight, this land is holy, so you need to confiscate it at
gunpoint? Oh, and don't mind the locals, they'd be happy to move
their 500 year old communities to accommodate your extremist religious
beliefs.
I walked to the bus stop at the top of the hill. The Audi still
hadn't moved. I discovered that because of Shabbat, the weekly Jewish
holiday, buses weren't running. Here we go again. I started hitch
hiking. I waited for half an hour and no one came so I started
walking again. Shortly after I started walking, some people picked me
up. They were two Israelis, one from Tel Aviv, and one from
Jerusalem. We had a very pleasant conversation for the first 5
minutes. Things went south after the girl who was driving asked where
I was going. I told them that I was going to Jericho and living in
Nablus. "Are you a Palestinian sympathizer," the girl shouted at me.
The kids I teach live in refugee camps that are 60 years old, they've
been left destitute by the entire world. They have no identity.
Surely, you have sympathy for them? She stopped the car and told me
to get out. I got out, grabbed my stuff, and she sped off. I kept my
thumb out, but no one else picked me up. Five hours of walking later,
I was on the outskirts of Jericho.
I walked up to the Israeli checkpoint, showed them my passport, and
was waved through. Two hundred yards up the road is a Palestinian
checkpoint. They stopped me and we shot the breeze for a while. I
was exhausted and sweating profusely by this point. The Palestinian
police stopped the next bus that came by and asked the driver to give
me a ride the rest of the way into town. The driver agreed and gave
me a ride to the city center. I met my buddy Hasan for dinner, and we
went to some of the ruins around Jericho. Hasan took me to the
mini-bus center, and I caught a ride to Ramallah, where I could catch
another mini-bus to Huwarra checkpoint outside Nablus. The mini-bus
had to stop at three checkpoints where the Israeli army checked all of
our ID's. When we arrived in Ramallah, me and a kid I had been
talking to, Rajul, got off and started walking to the next bus
station. A block later, I checked my pockets to make sure I had
everything. Fuck, where's my passport? I looked everywhere. It was
on my lap in the mini-bus, and it must have fallen on the floor when I
stood up to leave the mini-bus. I explained the situation to Rajul
and he responded, "moshkeela kabir," big problem. We turned around
but the bus had already left. He started leading me around town to
possible stations where the bus might be. We ran around for 45
minutes, Rajul always asking people at the lots if they knew anything
about this bus. Eventually we were directed down an alley where a
bunch of taxi and mini-bus drivers were hanging out. He explained the
situation to one of them, and they started furiously calling people,
asking Rajul for descriptions of the guy. More than 15 of them were
yelling at each other and chain smoking, but I wasn't sure if they
were getting anywhere. Sometimes the only words I understood were
ajnabi (foreigner) and passporta. Eventually, one of them told the
others to shut up and looked at me "Michael John Coogan?" Yeah,
that's me. Yeah, Mahmoud has your passport, but he's halfway back to
Jericho. In any other country, this wouldn't be such a serious
problem, but I need my passport to go anywhere here. It's impossible
to travel in the West Bank without it, and going to the embassy in Tel
Aviv without a passport would be virtually impossible . One of the
taxi drivers grabbed the other guy's phone, and told the bus driver
to stop and leave the passport at the nearest store. He then offered
to take me to go get it, asking only that I pay for gas to get there
and back. Of course. I thanked Rajul with every Arabic expression I
could think of…without his generosity, persistence, and patience, I
have no idea what I would have done. We hopped in Ayman's 20 year old
stretch Mercedes. Ten minutes outside of Ramallah there was a bad
traffic jam around the Qualandiya checkpoint. Ayman started cursing
and I asked what was wrong. He explained that it was 8:15 and if he
didn't get me back to Ramallah by 9, I would miss the last bus to
Nablus. All of a sudden he veered off the road and started driving on
the shoulder, two tires on the pavement and the other two big rocky
ruts. We nearly took out the mirrors of passing cars. He was
romping his livelihood to get me back to Ramallah in time to catch my
bus. When the shoulder ended he cut across two lanes of bumper to
bumper traffic and started driving in the oncoming lane. He'd swerve
off the road every time we were about to have a head on collision. We
finally arrived at some store in the middle of nowhere where the other
driver had left my passport. Ayman ran back with my passport and
Robinson Crusoe, which I'd also left on the bus. He sped back to
Ramallah, and dropped me at the bus station just in time to catch the
last mini-bus. Again, I used every expression I knew to thank him,
and tried to offer him more than just gas money but he refused.
A few minutes into the next mini-bus ride, I started talking to the
guy next to me. He lives in Askar refugee camp, one of the camps
where I teach. The conversation with him is another story. The girls
in the back of the mini-bus interrupted our conversation and asked me
to open the window. It was freezing out, but I must have smelled
terrible. Dead Sea sulfur, two days of walking through heat, it must
have been bad. They clearly preferred shivering to sitting in a warm
stinky bus. I got back to Nablus safely, no thanks to my own judgment
or presence of mind. Aside from the many questionable decisions, I
had a great time and met lots of wild characters. I don't plan on
going back to the Dead Sea anytime soon.
Masaa el Khair,
Mike
Dead Sea adventure
Marhaba,
Truda - " I was walking down the street and heard a guy say something,
and Abed started laughing hysterically." Abed "Yeah, someone called
Truda a standing camel." Me "Thats pretty rude, isn't it?" Truda
"No, Abed said it was a compliment, they were trying to say I was
pretty." Abed "Not just pretty, they were trying to say you have an
amazing shape, like a coca cola bottle."
Dead Sea Adventure
This last weekend I decided to get away from the 17 people I live with
and go to the Dead Sea. I wanted to go super low budget, so I packed
the blankets from my bed, some leftover food, a swimming suit, and my
trusty infomercial towel. I arrived at the mini-bus station on the
other side of Huwarra checkpoint early in the morning. I found the
bus to Jericho, and asked the driver how long he thought it would take
to fill up. "Not long, inshallah." Everything here is inshallah, God
willing. I talked to people at the bus station until I ran out of
arabic, and then sat in the bus and read Robinson Crusoe. One of the
last kids to get on the bus was a kid from one of my classes at the
UNRWA school. I didn't recognize him until he yelled "teacher mike!"
He sat next to me and we chatted for a bit. Five minutes after
leaving Huwarra the bus driver stopped at a store in a nearby village.
It seems in addition to transporting people he runs a small rice and
sugar delivery business.
The next checkpoint was only a few miles down the road. People here
often measure distances in checkpoints. Nablus in 4 checkpoints from
Jerusalem. Jericho is 7 checkpoints away from Nablus. At every
checkpoint the bus driver and soldiers have a discussion, then we all
have to hand over our IDs. Sometimes we are told to get out while
soldiers search the bus. When that happens, usually a few people are
detained at the checkpoint. I have no idea what happens to them after
that point.
As we drove south east through the hills, there were numerous Israeli
settlements dotting the Palestinian hills. The Arabic word for
settlement is mustowta, which roughly translates to colony, a much
more appropriate designation in my opinion. After about 45 minutes we
were driving along hills overlooking the Jordan valley, which divides
Palestine from Jordan. We descended the monstrous sand dunes towards
Jericho, the oldest continually inhabited city on the planet. It is
believed that people have been living in Jericho for 10,000 years.
Jericho stands in stark contrast to its surroundings because of the
natural springs that nourish countless exotic trees. A list of the
conquers and residents of this town reads like the who's who of
ancient history. A block from the mini-bus station is the 2500 year
old sycamore tree that Zacchaeus the tax collector allegedly climbed
to get a better look at Jesus. After taking a gander at the tree I
caught a taxi to the checkpoint outside of Jericho. The taxi driver
assured me that I could catch a bus the rest of the way to the dead
sea.
I met two Belgian girls at the bus stop with their thumbs out. After
talking for a bit they told me that they had been there for 3 hours
and no bus had come. Shortly thereafter a car full of Israelis came
by and picked them up. The Belgian girls tried to invite me into the
car but the guys inside made it clear that I wasn't welcome. Here's a
zone c travel tip that I learned the hard way. Most Palestinian
transportation doesn't run on friday because it's a religious holiday.
On saturday, the Jewish holiday, most of their transportation stops
running as well. To you prospective middle eastern travelers, don't
travel in Palestinian territory controlled by the Israelis on
weekends.
Maps indicate that the top 25 km of the dead sea, and the territory
surrounding it, are part of Palestine. In reality, Palestinians
aren't allowed to go to the Dead Sea, or the territory surrounding it,
because it's been confiscated by Israel. This fact on a larger scale
is part of what frustrates Palestinians. All the roads in the West
Bank are full of checkpoints, making most journeys take much longer
than they should. The West Bank is also full of roads and
infrastructure that are reserved exclusively for illegal Israeli
settlers. Throughout the West Bank there are shitty Palestinian roads
running underneath newly paved Israeli roads that link the settlements
together. The notion of apartheid could not be more clear. The
settlements use the Palestinian's already small water supply.
Palestinian roads that used to lead to Palestinian villages are now
exclusively for illegal settlers, who evicted the villagers from their
homes at gunpoint. In other cases, the government planned, built and
stocked the illegal settlements with people as part of their "facts on
the ground policy." The roads Palestinians can travel on take
absurdly long detours. It would be like driving from arizona to
southern california via wyoming.
Anyways, after waiting at this bus stop for 45 minutes, I went to buy
an extra bottle of water from a nearby gas station. I could see the
Dead Sea and figured "it can't be that far..." That afternoon I made
a number of questionable assumptions. Sometimes it hard to believe I
have a college education. After walking down the road for a couple of
hours I had another bright idea. The road made sort of a right angle
on it's path to the sea, and I figured if I walked directly towards my
destination, this little expedition would end a lot faster. My short
cut went through a desert, the name of which I don't know, but for
these purposes we'll call it the "big ass hot mountainous desert from
hell." I walked through this desert for a couple hours before I saw
any sign of civilization. Terrain that looked flat, was not. The
dead sea, which looked so close, had disappeared from view shortly
after I left the road. I began to think about all the warnings not to
leave designated trails around the Dead Sea because of the copious
mine fields that have never been cleared. On the bus I had just
finished reading the part of Robinson Crusoe where he is looking back
on life after being stuck on the island for a 25 years. He was living
the high life in Brazil, but was convinced by a friend to embark on a
journey to Papua Guinea to fetch some slaves. Their ship crashed in a
storm and he was the sole survivor. Robinson had lived on the island
alone for a long time, and he started to think that the trivial amount
he saved on slaves wasn't worth the risk. He concluded that the
danger averse component of decision making comes with age. It only
took me 5 hours to realize that walking through this god forsaken
desert was not worth the $4 I saved by not taking a taxi.
After slogging up another sand dune I saw a faint trail. I followed
the "trail" for some time until it led down into a dry creek bed with
a few trees. As I fought my way through some brush I saw a bunch of
camels. They started to run at the sight of me
maa salama,
Mike
Truda - " I was walking down the street and heard a guy say something,
and Abed started laughing hysterically." Abed "Yeah, someone called
Truda a standing camel." Me "Thats pretty rude, isn't it?" Truda
"No, Abed said it was a compliment, they were trying to say I was
pretty." Abed "Not just pretty, they were trying to say you have an
amazing shape, like a coca cola bottle."
Dead Sea Adventure
This last weekend I decided to get away from the 17 people I live with
and go to the Dead Sea. I wanted to go super low budget, so I packed
the blankets from my bed, some leftover food, a swimming suit, and my
trusty infomercial towel. I arrived at the mini-bus station on the
other side of Huwarra checkpoint early in the morning. I found the
bus to Jericho, and asked the driver how long he thought it would take
to fill up. "Not long, inshallah." Everything here is inshallah, God
willing. I talked to people at the bus station until I ran out of
arabic, and then sat in the bus and read Robinson Crusoe. One of the
last kids to get on the bus was a kid from one of my classes at the
UNRWA school. I didn't recognize him until he yelled "teacher mike!"
He sat next to me and we chatted for a bit. Five minutes after
leaving Huwarra the bus driver stopped at a store in a nearby village.
It seems in addition to transporting people he runs a small rice and
sugar delivery business.
The next checkpoint was only a few miles down the road. People here
often measure distances in checkpoints. Nablus in 4 checkpoints from
Jerusalem. Jericho is 7 checkpoints away from Nablus. At every
checkpoint the bus driver and soldiers have a discussion, then we all
have to hand over our IDs. Sometimes we are told to get out while
soldiers search the bus. When that happens, usually a few people are
detained at the checkpoint. I have no idea what happens to them after
that point.
As we drove south east through the hills, there were numerous Israeli
settlements dotting the Palestinian hills. The Arabic word for
settlement is mustowta, which roughly translates to colony, a much
more appropriate designation in my opinion. After about 45 minutes we
were driving along hills overlooking the Jordan valley, which divides
Palestine from Jordan. We descended the monstrous sand dunes towards
Jericho, the oldest continually inhabited city on the planet. It is
believed that people have been living in Jericho for 10,000 years.
Jericho stands in stark contrast to its surroundings because of the
natural springs that nourish countless exotic trees. A list of the
conquers and residents of this town reads like the who's who of
ancient history. A block from the mini-bus station is the 2500 year
old sycamore tree that Zacchaeus the tax collector allegedly climbed
to get a better look at Jesus. After taking a gander at the tree I
caught a taxi to the checkpoint outside of Jericho. The taxi driver
assured me that I could catch a bus the rest of the way to the dead
sea.
I met two Belgian girls at the bus stop with their thumbs out. After
talking for a bit they told me that they had been there for 3 hours
and no bus had come. Shortly thereafter a car full of Israelis came
by and picked them up. The Belgian girls tried to invite me into the
car but the guys inside made it clear that I wasn't welcome. Here's a
zone c travel tip that I learned the hard way. Most Palestinian
transportation doesn't run on friday because it's a religious holiday.
On saturday, the Jewish holiday, most of their transportation stops
running as well. To you prospective middle eastern travelers, don't
travel in Palestinian territory controlled by the Israelis on
weekends.
Maps indicate that the top 25 km of the dead sea, and the territory
surrounding it, are part of Palestine. In reality, Palestinians
aren't allowed to go to the Dead Sea, or the territory surrounding it,
because it's been confiscated by Israel. This fact on a larger scale
is part of what frustrates Palestinians. All the roads in the West
Bank are full of checkpoints, making most journeys take much longer
than they should. The West Bank is also full of roads and
infrastructure that are reserved exclusively for illegal Israeli
settlers. Throughout the West Bank there are shitty Palestinian roads
running underneath newly paved Israeli roads that link the settlements
together. The notion of apartheid could not be more clear. The
settlements use the Palestinian's already small water supply.
Palestinian roads that used to lead to Palestinian villages are now
exclusively for illegal settlers, who evicted the villagers from their
homes at gunpoint. In other cases, the government planned, built and
stocked the illegal settlements with people as part of their "facts on
the ground policy." The roads Palestinians can travel on take
absurdly long detours. It would be like driving from arizona to
southern california via wyoming.
Anyways, after waiting at this bus stop for 45 minutes, I went to buy
an extra bottle of water from a nearby gas station. I could see the
Dead Sea and figured "it can't be that far..." That afternoon I made
a number of questionable assumptions. Sometimes it hard to believe I
have a college education. After walking down the road for a couple of
hours I had another bright idea. The road made sort of a right angle
on it's path to the sea, and I figured if I walked directly towards my
destination, this little expedition would end a lot faster. My short
cut went through a desert, the name of which I don't know, but for
these purposes we'll call it the "big ass hot mountainous desert from
hell." I walked through this desert for a couple hours before I saw
any sign of civilization. Terrain that looked flat, was not. The
dead sea, which looked so close, had disappeared from view shortly
after I left the road. I began to think about all the warnings not to
leave designated trails around the Dead Sea because of the copious
mine fields that have never been cleared. On the bus I had just
finished reading the part of Robinson Crusoe where he is looking back
on life after being stuck on the island for a 25 years. He was living
the high life in Brazil, but was convinced by a friend to embark on a
journey to Papua Guinea to fetch some slaves. Their ship crashed in a
storm and he was the sole survivor. Robinson had lived on the island
alone for a long time, and he started to think that the trivial amount
he saved on slaves wasn't worth the risk. He concluded that the
danger averse component of decision making comes with age. It only
took me 5 hours to realize that walking through this god forsaken
desert was not worth the $4 I saved by not taking a taxi.
After slogging up another sand dune I saw a faint trail. I followed
the "trail" for some time until it led down into a dry creek bed with
a few trees. As I fought my way through some brush I saw a bunch of
camels. They started to run at the sight of me
maa salama,
Mike
Welcome to UNRWA
Salaam Aleikum,
I guess I've written a lot about the situation here, and haven't talked much about what I do on a daily basis. Right now I teach some classes and assist the english departments at two UNWRA (United Nation Works and Relief Agency) schools. The UNRWA is the division of the UN that's responsible for Palestinian refugees. I also teach a conversational english class each day to older students from An Najah university. Abdullah, a teacher who was initially very skeptical of my presence at the UNRWA schools, has become one of my best friends in Nablus. The first day we came into the school, there was an awkward and almost detrimental mis-communication. The headmaster and Abdullah thought that my colleague and I were there to tell them how to teach, or introduce some revolutionary new technique. "You have no idea the difficulties we face" they said, alsmost in unison, after our sometimes overzealous translator finished speaking. I spent a great deal of time explaining that made a serious error in communicating Project Hopes mission, and it was absolutely not the case that we were there to teach them anything. Our main mission was to expose the kids to conversational english, as they recieve a lot vocab and grammar lessons but there is virtually no speaking component.
I have to say that the UN schools, especially the one in Al Ayn camp, feel more like prisons than schools. The Al Ayn camp school is surrounded by huge concrete walls with barb wire fences on top. All the classrooms have big steel doors, metal bars on the windows, and there is a dirt yard in the middle where the kids go for break. There is a shocking level of violence in the UN schools where I work, both between the kids, and in terms of the administration punishing the children. It's difficult to talk about, and I am sort of ashamed to work at a school where corporal punishment is still the norm. I've brought the issue up at Project Hope and with teachers I know well at the UNRWA schools, and the prevailing belief is that this is the only feasible way to keep things from spiraling out of control. I refuse to hit kids and sometimes I pay the price. I have one class with 23 kids, and now that they know I won't strike them, some of them think they can do what they please. I can't kick them out of class for fear of what the disciplinarian will do to them, so it's been tough to find creative ways to make some of them behave. As one of the other veteran UNRWA teachers said, "having a class with over 50 kids is more like containing a demonstration then conducting a class." Things aren't all bad there though, the place is full of wonderful teachers and students who are desperate to learn. Thank god only two of my six daily classes at the UNRWA school have more than 45 kids. It is certainly understandable that a lot of the kids have behavioral problems and lackluster study habits. The intifadas (palestinian uprisings) were largely based out of the refugee camps where they grew up, meaning that those are also the places that the Israelis invade and raid on a daily basis. In short, they grew up and continue to live in a war zone, and experience the sharp end of the occupation.
My day usually starts at 6:15. I put on my slacks, shirt, and a tie if it's not too hot. As soon I get a little more comfortable with the administration I'm going to bring up the discipline issue in these meetings because I can't bear to watch the commonly accepted methods anymore. This weeks meetings have been especially contentious because the teachers are trying to get UNRWA to move to a 5 day work week. Last week the teachers went on a sort of strike and announced they wouldn't be showing up on Saturday, which most people have off. It seems the UNRWA administration is trying a divide and conquer strategy. The UN does some wonderful things, but it's administration seems to act like that of any bottom line driven corporation. For instance, the teachers also asked for a cost of living salary increase. The employees of the UN here have formed a union here comprised of employees from all the different divisions (health, education, sanitation...). The UN administrators figured that if the division of health employees went on strike, they would be virtually be forced to satisfy the COLA demands. They had a meeting with division of health leaders and offered them a 28% increase in pay if they abandoned their colleagues. They offered the division of education a 6% COLA increase, except for the head masters, who recieved a 12% increase in hopes that they would quell the ensuing mutiny. Anyways, it's sort of a sad state of affairs, but I'll spare you from more of the banalities that consume teachers lives here.
Right now I have 3 45 minute English classes, ranging from the 4th to 7th grade. I love my first class. There are 16 nice and fairly studious 4th graders who are very fun. Every morning when I come in they all stand up and say "Good morning uztazz." Some of them call me ustazz (teacher), but a few of them refer to me as Mr. Mike. One of the classes I assist in, a fifth grade level class is supposed to have an art component to it, so that can get interesting. Last week I made the mistake of telling them to draw their favorite things. If you haven't already guessed, many of them drew guns. One especially creative kid made an oragami gun and started pointing it as his classmates. I'm a little more specific now. When classes are over at 1:30 I usually walk home, eat lunch, and prepare to go to my next classes, depending on what day it is. Initially I taught 2 english classes to students from the local university, An Najah, but demand skyrocketed after the first week, and it's not much use having more then 20 students in a conversational english class. Now I have a 1 hour classe every night, five days a week. I usually don't get out of there until 7pm because the students want to discuss just about everything. Working long hours doing things that I wasn't trained to do, often in a foreign language, has been difficult. The students enthusiasm has kept me from losing my mind. The learning curve is steep, but I'm finally starting to get the hang of teaching.
This month has been especially hard because a few families I know desperately need help picking olives. Most of them live in what is called "zone c," which means that they need permission from the Israeli govt to go onto thier land to pick olives, and usually they only get a few days, and can't get very much done without help. There is also the issue of settlers attacking them while they're picking olives, which has been especially bad this year. If there is a foreigner there to pick with them, the settlers usually refrain from beating up the villagers because they don't want their criminal acts broadcasted to outsiders.
Last week at Bashars village was hard work. Usually I go for both friday and saturday, but didn't go this friday because it was the 7th day after the death of majeees mom, so they went to the mosque to pray for her. I showed up late on friday night, said hello to everyone, and sat in an english class that Ahmad was giving at his house. Ahmad teaches 4 groups of 4 students each night. He is a very good teacher and probably knows more than I do about the English language. When we woke up early the next morning Majee discovered that the donkey hero had run away. Apparently he'd worked very hard the day before, and had was tired of dragging carts of olives around the hills surrounding Beit Lid. I can sympathize, I've probably picked 200 kilos of olives, and I can't say that it's terribly fun anymore, but the family is so wonderful, the decision is easy. Majee said Hero went to go find his "wife." Last time I was in Beit Leit, he explained that most donkeys are sexually undiscerning and horny animals, but Hero would only "sleep with" one other donkey in town. "I think Hero is the only monogamous donkey in Palestine" Majee said with a big smile. At luch we sat under the olive tree and sang mostly american songs. Palestinian men are crazy about emotional love songs from the west. Ahmad started singing Celion Dions "My Heart Will Go On," and eventually we all let down our guard and joined him. Thinking back on that moment always makes me smile...can you picture a bunch of arab men sitting under an olive tree in rural Palestine singing the most emotional song in Titanic? I'm here to tell you, it happens.
I really appreciate all of the kind and supportive e-mails. I couldn't ask for a better family and group of friends.
Sincerely,
Mike
I guess I've written a lot about the situation here, and haven't talked much about what I do on a daily basis. Right now I teach some classes and assist the english departments at two UNWRA (United Nation Works and Relief Agency) schools. The UNRWA is the division of the UN that's responsible for Palestinian refugees. I also teach a conversational english class each day to older students from An Najah university. Abdullah, a teacher who was initially very skeptical of my presence at the UNRWA schools, has become one of my best friends in Nablus. The first day we came into the school, there was an awkward and almost detrimental mis-communication. The headmaster and Abdullah thought that my colleague and I were there to tell them how to teach, or introduce some revolutionary new technique. "You have no idea the difficulties we face" they said, alsmost in unison, after our sometimes overzealous translator finished speaking. I spent a great deal of time explaining that made a serious error in communicating Project Hopes mission, and it was absolutely not the case that we were there to teach them anything. Our main mission was to expose the kids to conversational english, as they recieve a lot vocab and grammar lessons but there is virtually no speaking component.
I have to say that the UN schools, especially the one in Al Ayn camp, feel more like prisons than schools. The Al Ayn camp school is surrounded by huge concrete walls with barb wire fences on top. All the classrooms have big steel doors, metal bars on the windows, and there is a dirt yard in the middle where the kids go for break. There is a shocking level of violence in the UN schools where I work, both between the kids, and in terms of the administration punishing the children. It's difficult to talk about, and I am sort of ashamed to work at a school where corporal punishment is still the norm. I've brought the issue up at Project Hope and with teachers I know well at the UNRWA schools, and the prevailing belief is that this is the only feasible way to keep things from spiraling out of control. I refuse to hit kids and sometimes I pay the price. I have one class with 23 kids, and now that they know I won't strike them, some of them think they can do what they please. I can't kick them out of class for fear of what the disciplinarian will do to them, so it's been tough to find creative ways to make some of them behave. As one of the other veteran UNRWA teachers said, "having a class with over 50 kids is more like containing a demonstration then conducting a class." Things aren't all bad there though, the place is full of wonderful teachers and students who are desperate to learn. Thank god only two of my six daily classes at the UNRWA school have more than 45 kids. It is certainly understandable that a lot of the kids have behavioral problems and lackluster study habits. The intifadas (palestinian uprisings) were largely based out of the refugee camps where they grew up, meaning that those are also the places that the Israelis invade and raid on a daily basis. In short, they grew up and continue to live in a war zone, and experience the sharp end of the occupation.
My day usually starts at 6:15. I put on my slacks, shirt, and a tie if it's not too hot. As soon I get a little more comfortable with the administration I'm going to bring up the discipline issue in these meetings because I can't bear to watch the commonly accepted methods anymore. This weeks meetings have been especially contentious because the teachers are trying to get UNRWA to move to a 5 day work week. Last week the teachers went on a sort of strike and announced they wouldn't be showing up on Saturday, which most people have off. It seems the UNRWA administration is trying a divide and conquer strategy. The UN does some wonderful things, but it's administration seems to act like that of any bottom line driven corporation. For instance, the teachers also asked for a cost of living salary increase. The employees of the UN here have formed a union here comprised of employees from all the different divisions (health, education, sanitation...). The UN administrators figured that if the division of health employees went on strike, they would be virtually be forced to satisfy the COLA demands. They had a meeting with division of health leaders and offered them a 28% increase in pay if they abandoned their colleagues. They offered the division of education a 6% COLA increase, except for the head masters, who recieved a 12% increase in hopes that they would quell the ensuing mutiny. Anyways, it's sort of a sad state of affairs, but I'll spare you from more of the banalities that consume teachers lives here.
Right now I have 3 45 minute English classes, ranging from the 4th to 7th grade. I love my first class. There are 16 nice and fairly studious 4th graders who are very fun. Every morning when I come in they all stand up and say "Good morning uztazz." Some of them call me ustazz (teacher), but a few of them refer to me as Mr. Mike. One of the classes I assist in, a fifth grade level class is supposed to have an art component to it, so that can get interesting. Last week I made the mistake of telling them to draw their favorite things. If you haven't already guessed, many of them drew guns. One especially creative kid made an oragami gun and started pointing it as his classmates. I'm a little more specific now. When classes are over at 1:30 I usually walk home, eat lunch, and prepare to go to my next classes, depending on what day it is. Initially I taught 2 english classes to students from the local university, An Najah, but demand skyrocketed after the first week, and it's not much use having more then 20 students in a conversational english class. Now I have a 1 hour classe every night, five days a week. I usually don't get out of there until 7pm because the students want to discuss just about everything. Working long hours doing things that I wasn't trained to do, often in a foreign language, has been difficult. The students enthusiasm has kept me from losing my mind. The learning curve is steep, but I'm finally starting to get the hang of teaching.
This month has been especially hard because a few families I know desperately need help picking olives. Most of them live in what is called "zone c," which means that they need permission from the Israeli govt to go onto thier land to pick olives, and usually they only get a few days, and can't get very much done without help. There is also the issue of settlers attacking them while they're picking olives, which has been especially bad this year. If there is a foreigner there to pick with them, the settlers usually refrain from beating up the villagers because they don't want their criminal acts broadcasted to outsiders.
Last week at Bashars village was hard work. Usually I go for both friday and saturday, but didn't go this friday because it was the 7th day after the death of majeees mom, so they went to the mosque to pray for her. I showed up late on friday night, said hello to everyone, and sat in an english class that Ahmad was giving at his house. Ahmad teaches 4 groups of 4 students each night. He is a very good teacher and probably knows more than I do about the English language. When we woke up early the next morning Majee discovered that the donkey hero had run away. Apparently he'd worked very hard the day before, and had was tired of dragging carts of olives around the hills surrounding Beit Lid. I can sympathize, I've probably picked 200 kilos of olives, and I can't say that it's terribly fun anymore, but the family is so wonderful, the decision is easy. Majee said Hero went to go find his "wife." Last time I was in Beit Leit, he explained that most donkeys are sexually undiscerning and horny animals, but Hero would only "sleep with" one other donkey in town. "I think Hero is the only monogamous donkey in Palestine" Majee said with a big smile. At luch we sat under the olive tree and sang mostly american songs. Palestinian men are crazy about emotional love songs from the west. Ahmad started singing Celion Dions "My Heart Will Go On," and eventually we all let down our guard and joined him. Thinking back on that moment always makes me smile...can you picture a bunch of arab men sitting under an olive tree in rural Palestine singing the most emotional song in Titanic? I'm here to tell you, it happens.
I really appreciate all of the kind and supportive e-mails. I couldn't ask for a better family and group of friends.
Sincerely,
Mike
Problems as UNRWA schools
Marhaba,
There have been a number of interesting developments at the UNRWA schools recently. Tensions have been rising between the staff at the UN schools and the parents of the students. As far as I know, there is nothing like an american school board, so direct interaction between parents and teachers is limited. Conflict between the teachers and parents builds up over simple issues because of an official forum for both parties to express grievances and propsose solutions is non-existent. Recently a row has developed between the UNRWA staff and the parents over "grade inflation," and by this I mean students recieving grades that don't necessarily reflect their preformance in school. This is a rather common phenomenon in the US, although it occurs for different reasons. There is also a problem here, and around the world for that matter, of parents and students focusing so much attention on grades that the whole notion of education is obscured by this superficial and often meaningless competition. Perhaps "grade inflation" doesn't fully capture the the problem, but in short, teachers are either too fed up to fail students and face the consequences, and/or they face pressure from bureaucratic administrators to pass a certain number of students so the UN can claim they aren't running schools where more students are failing than passing. I am frankly becoming more disgusted with the UN administrators here by the day. Yesterday they docked the teachers pay by $50 because of they took took a two day weekend. The teachers rightly argue, the PA (Palestinian Authority) has two days off, the country the UN administrators are from have 2 days off, virtually every country in the world has a two day weekend, why must these teachers work six days a week (especially when everything is closed on the one day they have off). The teachers even added extra hours to the five day week to compensate for the two day weekend. The UN's attitude is basically, look, you work for UNRWA, why don't you ungrateful natives just shut up and appreciate the fact that you have jobs here.
Many of the teachers I know refuse to give students grades that they didn't earn, a philosophy that is much different then some of their predecessors. A number of the parents came in complaining that their kids used to get high marks in previous years, and it must be this teachers fault that their kids weren't doing as well. The issue got so bad that the teachers were receiving threats from some of the parents that if their kids grades weren't higher, something may happen to them. I found this quite insane. If you wonder why the marks are bad, look at your child's book and help him/her with the homework that seldom gets done, and correct what's wrong. There is of course the problem that many of the parents don't know english, so how can they help their children with it, but grades are bad in every class, even religion, so frankly it's hard to excuse the parents from all responsibility. Anyways, I could not believe how they dealt with the situation. One day a guy whom I'd never seen before came into the school to meet with the teachers. He talked with them at great length, and eventually left. I thought it seemed odd at the time because he definitely didn't look like the administrators that typically come through. Apparently this man is a famous Palestinian resistance fighter. He is wanted by the Israeli authorities and still plays an active role in the militant Palestinian resistance. He came in because of his "street credibility" within the refugee camps, this one in particular. The respect he gained within the community for fighting Israelis apparently made him a sort of ambassador. The teachers presented their case to him, and he in turn explained their position to the parents. This meeting seemed to accomplish what weeks of negotiation could not, the grade problem in this instance was largely resolved. He made it clear that the teachers were simply doing their jobs, and they were not to be harmed or harassed. I doubt the UN has any idea that this goes on, nor should they, as they are famous for inundating problems with worthless bureaucratic solutions. Will more paperwork will solve this social, cultural, economic war stricken mess? Apparently bringing in someone who's on Israels most wanted list solved the problem, who knows, maybe that's what it takes.
In my last e-mail I made a reference to my disgust with corporal punishment at the school. I've recently gone from being an adamant opponent, to standing on the fence, ready to jump onto the side of its advocates. This is an extremely difficult issue, one which I'm in no place to make a decision, but I certainly have a little better perspective. Perhaps an explanation is in order. This week I started giving classes after school at the UNRWA schools to kids who wanted to participate. There are a number of inherent difficulties with after school classes, the first being that both the kids and teachers are slightly fed up with school, and would frankly rather be other places. The second is that the UNRWA administration and teachers all leave the school, so there is no authority to turn to if things go awry. Although I asked that only 15 kids be allowed in these after-school classes at first, they signed up 30. OK, no problem, I can deal with that. At the beginning of the lesson everything was going well, the kids were behaving, raising their hands, conversing in english, grasping concepts, all the things that make a teacher enthusiastic. Thirty minutes into the lesson all the kids left my colleagues class and started to come into my room. Part of this was the teachers fault, as this guy tends to think he can wing it, and seldom prepares lesson plans that are well organized and engaging enough to keep the kids attention. Anyways, after kicking a number of these kids out of my class more than once, I resorted to using my foot as a doorstop to prevent them from coming into my classroom (there are huge steel doors, but no locks). As you can imagine, it's difficult to conduct a class with 30 kids while standing at the door trying to keep it shut. Eventually the kids outside organized a mob large enough to overpower me and push the door open. Once the door was open they started to flood into the classroom. I began yelling at them in arabic to leave and eventually got them outside, but not before they started to get my class stirred up. After calming my class down, we continued with our lesson. A few minutes later I went to the back of the class to help one of my students and an older kid came in through the door. The intruder was probably 16 or 17 years old. He pushed the kid holding the door shut aside and started talking to a student in the front row. Before I could walk to the front of the classroom, the intruder picked the student up by his shirt and decked him in the face, knocking him back into a desk. The student he hit was half his size and probably 6 years his junior. You would think this guy would then run out of the classroom, sensing he'd done something wrong. Nope. He stood there as I ran to the front of the class. After making sure the student was alright, I turned to the guy who hit him, got nose to nose with him and made it very clear that he needed to leave the class. He moved back a few steps, and motioned like he was going to hit me as well. I was at my wits end. I picked him up by the arms, took him outside, set him down against the wall, and let him know what I was thinking. When the headmaster and teachers found out how some of the kids had acted, the older kid in particular, they were furious. They demanded to know who punched the kid and threatened to hit me. I pointed the kid out and asked that he please not be punished in the traditional way, with a long plastic pipe. The disciplinarian reluctantly agreed, made him apologize, and dragged him out of the faculty room by his ear. Apparently the disciplinarian knew the students family very well, and began to tell me about him (I don't want to use his real name, but I'll call him Waleed). When Waleed was was 6 years old his father died of natural causes. Three years ago, the Israeli army broke down the door of Waleed's home, and came in looking for his brother, who was a year older than him. They found Waleed and his brother sitting at the living room table. A soldier shot his brother in the chest and then again in the neck. The soldiers then searched the house while Waleed watched his brother bleed to death on the living room floor. When Waleed is finished with school at 2:00, he goes to work until 10 pm, and then returns to his home in the refugee camp. The truncated version of Waleed's life brought tears to my eyes. The emotional pain he goes through on a daily basis is beyond imagination.
It is hard articulate how difficult it is here sometimes. On a conceptual level, I came here to help these kids that have suffered relentless injustice. Known as "the intifada generation," they have lived lives that I cannot begin to understand. On a realistic level, here I am dealing with kids whose lives can't be changed as easily as I once thought. Things have happened to them that can never be rectified. Teachers use violence to discourage it. Fighters serve as liasons between parents and teachers. Posters of martyers are emblazoned on every street. Every night after curfew the Palestinian police disappear. The Israeli military wind down the switchbacks in their armoured cars and roam the city, treating the place and its residents like they're in a war zone. Maybe they are. Perhaps my students are unwittingly growing up to be the next generation of soldiers in a war that seems to have no end.
Sincerely,
Mike
There have been a number of interesting developments at the UNRWA schools recently. Tensions have been rising between the staff at the UN schools and the parents of the students. As far as I know, there is nothing like an american school board, so direct interaction between parents and teachers is limited. Conflict between the teachers and parents builds up over simple issues because of an official forum for both parties to express grievances and propsose solutions is non-existent. Recently a row has developed between the UNRWA staff and the parents over "grade inflation," and by this I mean students recieving grades that don't necessarily reflect their preformance in school. This is a rather common phenomenon in the US, although it occurs for different reasons. There is also a problem here, and around the world for that matter, of parents and students focusing so much attention on grades that the whole notion of education is obscured by this superficial and often meaningless competition. Perhaps "grade inflation" doesn't fully capture the the problem, but in short, teachers are either too fed up to fail students and face the consequences, and/or they face pressure from bureaucratic administrators to pass a certain number of students so the UN can claim they aren't running schools where more students are failing than passing. I am frankly becoming more disgusted with the UN administrators here by the day. Yesterday they docked the teachers pay by $50 because of they took took a two day weekend. The teachers rightly argue, the PA (Palestinian Authority) has two days off, the country the UN administrators are from have 2 days off, virtually every country in the world has a two day weekend, why must these teachers work six days a week (especially when everything is closed on the one day they have off). The teachers even added extra hours to the five day week to compensate for the two day weekend. The UN's attitude is basically, look, you work for UNRWA, why don't you ungrateful natives just shut up and appreciate the fact that you have jobs here.
Many of the teachers I know refuse to give students grades that they didn't earn, a philosophy that is much different then some of their predecessors. A number of the parents came in complaining that their kids used to get high marks in previous years, and it must be this teachers fault that their kids weren't doing as well. The issue got so bad that the teachers were receiving threats from some of the parents that if their kids grades weren't higher, something may happen to them. I found this quite insane. If you wonder why the marks are bad, look at your child's book and help him/her with the homework that seldom gets done, and correct what's wrong. There is of course the problem that many of the parents don't know english, so how can they help their children with it, but grades are bad in every class, even religion, so frankly it's hard to excuse the parents from all responsibility. Anyways, I could not believe how they dealt with the situation. One day a guy whom I'd never seen before came into the school to meet with the teachers. He talked with them at great length, and eventually left. I thought it seemed odd at the time because he definitely didn't look like the administrators that typically come through. Apparently this man is a famous Palestinian resistance fighter. He is wanted by the Israeli authorities and still plays an active role in the militant Palestinian resistance. He came in because of his "street credibility" within the refugee camps, this one in particular. The respect he gained within the community for fighting Israelis apparently made him a sort of ambassador. The teachers presented their case to him, and he in turn explained their position to the parents. This meeting seemed to accomplish what weeks of negotiation could not, the grade problem in this instance was largely resolved. He made it clear that the teachers were simply doing their jobs, and they were not to be harmed or harassed. I doubt the UN has any idea that this goes on, nor should they, as they are famous for inundating problems with worthless bureaucratic solutions. Will more paperwork will solve this social, cultural, economic war stricken mess? Apparently bringing in someone who's on Israels most wanted list solved the problem, who knows, maybe that's what it takes.
In my last e-mail I made a reference to my disgust with corporal punishment at the school. I've recently gone from being an adamant opponent, to standing on the fence, ready to jump onto the side of its advocates. This is an extremely difficult issue, one which I'm in no place to make a decision, but I certainly have a little better perspective. Perhaps an explanation is in order. This week I started giving classes after school at the UNRWA schools to kids who wanted to participate. There are a number of inherent difficulties with after school classes, the first being that both the kids and teachers are slightly fed up with school, and would frankly rather be other places. The second is that the UNRWA administration and teachers all leave the school, so there is no authority to turn to if things go awry. Although I asked that only 15 kids be allowed in these after-school classes at first, they signed up 30. OK, no problem, I can deal with that. At the beginning of the lesson everything was going well, the kids were behaving, raising their hands, conversing in english, grasping concepts, all the things that make a teacher enthusiastic. Thirty minutes into the lesson all the kids left my colleagues class and started to come into my room. Part of this was the teachers fault, as this guy tends to think he can wing it, and seldom prepares lesson plans that are well organized and engaging enough to keep the kids attention. Anyways, after kicking a number of these kids out of my class more than once, I resorted to using my foot as a doorstop to prevent them from coming into my classroom (there are huge steel doors, but no locks). As you can imagine, it's difficult to conduct a class with 30 kids while standing at the door trying to keep it shut. Eventually the kids outside organized a mob large enough to overpower me and push the door open. Once the door was open they started to flood into the classroom. I began yelling at them in arabic to leave and eventually got them outside, but not before they started to get my class stirred up. After calming my class down, we continued with our lesson. A few minutes later I went to the back of the class to help one of my students and an older kid came in through the door. The intruder was probably 16 or 17 years old. He pushed the kid holding the door shut aside and started talking to a student in the front row. Before I could walk to the front of the classroom, the intruder picked the student up by his shirt and decked him in the face, knocking him back into a desk. The student he hit was half his size and probably 6 years his junior. You would think this guy would then run out of the classroom, sensing he'd done something wrong. Nope. He stood there as I ran to the front of the class. After making sure the student was alright, I turned to the guy who hit him, got nose to nose with him and made it very clear that he needed to leave the class. He moved back a few steps, and motioned like he was going to hit me as well. I was at my wits end. I picked him up by the arms, took him outside, set him down against the wall, and let him know what I was thinking. When the headmaster and teachers found out how some of the kids had acted, the older kid in particular, they were furious. They demanded to know who punched the kid and threatened to hit me. I pointed the kid out and asked that he please not be punished in the traditional way, with a long plastic pipe. The disciplinarian reluctantly agreed, made him apologize, and dragged him out of the faculty room by his ear. Apparently the disciplinarian knew the students family very well, and began to tell me about him (I don't want to use his real name, but I'll call him Waleed). When Waleed was was 6 years old his father died of natural causes. Three years ago, the Israeli army broke down the door of Waleed's home, and came in looking for his brother, who was a year older than him. They found Waleed and his brother sitting at the living room table. A soldier shot his brother in the chest and then again in the neck. The soldiers then searched the house while Waleed watched his brother bleed to death on the living room floor. When Waleed is finished with school at 2:00, he goes to work until 10 pm, and then returns to his home in the refugee camp. The truncated version of Waleed's life brought tears to my eyes. The emotional pain he goes through on a daily basis is beyond imagination.
It is hard articulate how difficult it is here sometimes. On a conceptual level, I came here to help these kids that have suffered relentless injustice. Known as "the intifada generation," they have lived lives that I cannot begin to understand. On a realistic level, here I am dealing with kids whose lives can't be changed as easily as I once thought. Things have happened to them that can never be rectified. Teachers use violence to discourage it. Fighters serve as liasons between parents and teachers. Posters of martyers are emblazoned on every street. Every night after curfew the Palestinian police disappear. The Israeli military wind down the switchbacks in their armoured cars and roam the city, treating the place and its residents like they're in a war zone. Maybe they are. Perhaps my students are unwittingly growing up to be the next generation of soldiers in a war that seems to have no end.
Sincerely,
Mike
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