Friends School in Ramallah—June 27th

          Wednesday morning John and I walked from the ISM House through the hustle and bustle of Ramallah to the Friends School, a K through 12 now coed institution founded by Quakers in 1869. As soon as we entered the gate, we discovered an oasis. The classroom and administration buildings center on a plaza with the most beautifully flowering plants we have seen so far on the West Bank. They invite the visitor into a space that is quiet and peaceful. As we were happily roaming around taking pictures of the plants, a slim, pretty 17 year old girl greeted us—in perfect English—and struck up a conversation. She had spent a year as an exchange student at Sidwell Friends School in Washington, D.C. and was eager to talk with Americans. We could see right away that Jasmine (pronounced “Yasmeena”) as she introduced herself, had a poise and self-confidence that we hadn’t seen among other Palestinian youth. She looked us right in the eye as she spoke and smiled easily.

          We found out that Jasmine was at school during the summer recess because her International Baccalaureate curriculum (the IB diploma allows students to receive up to two years of credit at colleges and universities around the world) requires summer projects. Her friends from Sidwell (including Sasha Obama, the President’s daughter!) had encouraged her to consider American universities after she graduates, a path which she admitted she finds appealing. When we told her we were in the West Bank on a peace-keeping team, she said, “very cool” and proceeded to tell us that her Jewish friends at Sidwell “knew nothing” of the real situation of Palestinians until she described to them the harshness of life under the occupation. Her voice was tinged with sadness, as she reported this, but not resentment; it struck me that she was trying very hard to keep clear of the bitterness that so many Palestinians carry.

          Jasmine is lucky; her father has a good job working for an insurance company and can afford the $3,500 yearly tuition for her and her two brothers. But the school provides scholarships to 15% of its students and seems to inculcate exactly the values which we would expect of a Quaker institution: openness, gentleness, simplicity, and concern for others. The high school students are certainly aware of the demonstrations that occurred in Gaza in the last couple of months. On stark white pieces of paper taped at regular intervals along the walls of the secondary school are the names of the “Gaza martyrs,” as they are called—the 59 individuals, including an 8 month old baby—who were killed by Israeli soldiers at the border fence. Many students are involved in the school-sponsored community outreach programs, especially the electronic Arabic reading platform, where children can listen to stories being read in Arabic and practice reading them aloud themselves.

          “No, we’re not involved in the resistance here,” said Besan, the Communications Director for the Friends School and the next person we met, but then, as if to correct herself, she continued, “the occupation is part of everyday life.” Besan and Jumana, Assistant to the Head of School, looked about 10 years older than Jasmine (but were probably in their thirties) and were dressed just as simply—in blue jeans and white blouses. They had attended the school during the First and Second Intifada and credited it with making them feel “safe” during that tumultuous time. “It was a refuge,” Besan said, “life on the outside was frightening, but we would come in here and everything was the same as always.” The two women voiced the complaint that we have heard now, many times, on the West Bank, that they’re barred from seeing the sea and Jerusalem. Jumana said that her mother-in-law has family in Jerusalem whom she hasn’t seen in years; only now that she has turned 64 will the Israelis allow her to travel there. (“This is the only country where you want to grow old!” Besan interjected.)

          “We don’t have hope,” Jumana said, when I asked them about the future. “The Palestinian Authority? We put up with them.” But both women are clearly happy with their work at the school; Besan plans to send her daughters there. “But if Hamas comes,” she said,  we are moving to Australia!”  Before we left, Besan gave us directions to the Ramallah Friends Meeting and where to find “the best ice cream in Palestine.” I was somewhat reluctant to leave; the oppressiveness of life under the occupation in Ramallah had lifted for me during the hour and a half that we were at the school. But it made me happy to think that one of my memories of this beleaguered city will be the faces of these three women—so welcoming, so cheerful, and so determined to live with grace in the face of constant oppression. As we walked back to the ISM House to join the other members of the peace team, I thought to myself, “there is more than one way to resist.”

Welcome to Palestine

Our group split up for the first time on our second day in the West Bank. Scott and I decided to head back to Bil’in while the others stayed in Ramallah, catching up on work and emails. We had only been in Ramallah for a few hours, but we thought our presence was more valuable in the town than in the city. As the shared taxi pulled out of the Ramallah station, the hijab-clad woman sitting next to me wordlessly offered some of the pita she had just bought off the street. I smiled and mutely gestured that I was all set. “Shukran.”

After the short drive through the rocky hillside, we got dropped off at the local mosque. On the outer wall facing the street, a sign in Arabic was hung with a picture of Yasser Arafat on one side and Mahmoud Abbas on the other. After leaving our bags at the international house where we were staying, Scott and I took a walk through the town, retracing the tour we had taken the previous day with Iyad. On a nearby wall, someone had written in green and black graffiti, "Jerusalem is the capital of Palestine." As we climbed a small ridge, we turned and looked back when the adhan, the Islamic call to prayer, broke the silence. For the first time since being in the Muslim world, it sounded to me more like a sacred song, a hymn, than a recited prayer. The melodic incantation drifted up in the direction of the full moon, gleaming in the twilight.

Further along on our walk, we stopped near where the old wall had stood, looking out at the new one snaking through the hills. A few minutes passed, but we didn't talk much. What was there to say? As we joined up with road again, two young men walked passed us. “Welcome to Palestine,” the one in a hot-pink t-shirt called out to us. He took a few more paces and, without turning back around to face us, added as an afterthought, “Be careful.”

The road ended suddenly. Not more than 30 yards ahead, a 15-foot high concrete wall ringed with concertina wire stared back at us. The road here was scorched black from the demonstrations held at this spot every Friday afternoon to protest the settlement. I tried to imagine myself as a Palestinian. How would I cope with being forced to confront such a visible sign of my oppression every day? I didn’t know, and still don’t know, the answer. 

But then I peered into the settlement, picturing in my mind’s eye its residents deep in prayer. (Iyad had told us the day before that this was an Orthodox settlement. "They don't join the army," he informed us, twice. "Just praying.") My thoughts started to wander from one side of the border to the other. Over here, the Muslims bowed; up and down, shoulder to shoulder, touching their foreheads to the ground in unison. Over there, the Jews mechanically rocked back and forth, clutching their scrolls, mumbling under their breath in the language of the Bible.

There were no disturbances that night, no calls for us to come witness a raid. As I drifted off to sleep, I kept replaying a scene that had caught my attention during our evening stroll. From where we stood on the road, I knew that off in the distance, just out of sight, was the settlement. In the foreground, flapping idly in the breeze, was a Palestinian flag. It was torn in half.

West Bank Peace Team: Summer 2018, June 26

                                                  First Assignment: Bil’in

          After meeting in Jerusalem Sunday night and sightseeing in the Walled City Monday morning, we headed out to our first team assignment: witnessing to and perhaps mitigating Israeli invasions of the homes of resistance leaders which occur sporadically in the little village of Bil’in. The forced entrances are carried out well after midnight and our team had to be ready to arrive on the scene minutes after we were called. The first night there were no invasions, but our Palestinian hosts told us that they can occur twice a week or more.

          The village of Bil’in gets this “special attention” from the Israeli military because of their proud—and successful—history of resistance. Their weekly demonstrations, beginning in 2005, caused the Israelis to remove a portion of the Wall of Separation, which had divided the village in two since 2003, with 60% of their farmland on the other side of the wall. The protests, which had been organized by our host, Iyad Burnat  (who won the James Lawson Award for Nonviolent Resistance in 2015) involved hundreds of villagers, often joined by internationals, marching from the town center to the wall. In 2007, the Israeli Supreme Court decided in favor of the Palestinians, ruling that the construction of the separation barrier was illegal and finally, in 2011, the wall was taken down and re-constructed 500 meters back.

         On the recovered farmland, the people of Bil’in have put up greenhouses (donated by a Malyasian nonprofit) which allow them to raise tomatoes, cucumbers, okra, green beans, eggplants, and other vegetables organically. As we toured the rows and sampled the produce, Iyad explained that farming (they also grow grapes) is their most effective form of resistance today. “If the land is in use,” he said, “if people are working it,” the Israelis will be less likely to try to seize it again.”  The farmers tending the greenhouses raise the vegetables for profit, but also for free distribution to community members.

          We were all impressed by the greenhouse tour, but when we sat down later to talk with Iyad about the goals of the resistance movement, a somber tone prevailed. Sitting in a tent drinking thimblefuls of strong coffee which one of the farmers had prepared for us on his camp stove, we could look out past the Palestinian farmland, to the Israeli settlement just beyond it. The settlers’ homes, with their white walls shining brightly in the morning sun, included “swimming pools and beautiful gardens,” Iyad said, because the Israelis had taken over access to the local water, forcing the Palestinians to buy it back from them. There are now 70,000 settlers near Bil’in, “most of them,” he laughed ruefully, “from New York!” Subsidized by the Israeli government, they are free to travel throughout the country and abroad—unlike the Palestinians.  “A lot of those homes are empty,” he told us. 

         

When we asked Iyad what he envisioned for the future, he said nothing about a Palestinian state nor one state for Israel and Palestine with full membership for the Palestinians,  but only “a better life for my children.” After seeing the facts on the ground for ourselves, it seemed to us, too, that the Israeli drive to populate the West Bank with settlers (the goal is 250,000 in the settlement near Bil’in) will be inexorable and more and more of the Palestinians’ land will be taken, wall or no wall. At 44, Iyad has struggled against the Occupation his entire life; he has been jailed 18 times (the first time at 17 for two years) beaten, and now, he says, his children are being attacked. His three older sons have all been shot by the Israelis and one of them is currently in jail.

          Listening to him talk, I wondered if I would be as staunch as Iyad in his resistance to injustice. But there is clearly no turning back for him. He spoke passionately about the power of nonviolence: “nonviolence makes you strong,” he said. “When you confront the soldiers, you realize they are weaker.”He talked about teaching his children (who “have never been to the sea” and “have never seen Jerusalem”) “not to hate.”  “Love is stronger than hate,” he said. He didn’t share with us what sustains him in his work, but he alluded to it, “peace comes from the inside.” When he said that, for just a moment, I envied Iyad Burnat.