Ben Gurion, bed-bugs and The Wire

I’m sitting in Terminal 1 of Ben Gurion airport. It’s like a fluorescent lit combination of service station and Dover ferry terminal. David Lynch could happily set an episode of Twin Peaks amongst the dormant security scanners, with the ominously named Cafe Terminal serving as a focal point.

Last night, back in the New Palm Hostel, the charm I’d sensed upon staying there eight days ago seemed to have totally vanished. The common room had been ripped out, replaced by skeletal, iron bed frames, dusty builders and the head-splitting flashes of a welding torch. I’d already been told that the New Palm used to be the slightly more salubrious neighbour of the Faisal Hostel, which was a hive of activism and provided second bedrooms for ISM crew (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Solidarity_Movement ). Alas, the Faisal has under gone a brutal make-over, and now resembles the Middle East’s answer to Ibis.

Perhaps the New Palm is also destined for sterilisation, but in the mean time, efforts seem to be underway to render it even grottier and less comfortable than its once legendary neighbour. It is hard to convey to atmosphere of the dorm I slept in last night. Suffice to say, eight bodies, countless itchy blankets, a dozen gigantic rucksacks and a semi-rancid smell wafting from the adjacent bathroom do not mix well in a space measuring no more than five by ten metres. Trying to block it all out by fixating on an episode of The Wire, I then became aware of a faint prickly feeling around my ankles. Suddenly, sickening memories of a previous bed-bug encounter came flooding back…

New photos on a new page

Images like this…

from an event today to mark the end of an UNRWA campaign to raise awareness of violence against women in Palestine…

can now be found here… http://skipmucky.wordpress.com/photography/

On Bethlehem.

It took an hour to drive from Jerusalem to Bethlehem two days ago. It’s a distance of 6 miles. If the Palestinian buses were able to use more direct routes, getting around wouldn’t eat up so much of the day. It’s a fact of life people have gotten used to. I, on the other hand, have arrived at almost every meeting late and grumpy. What an amateur.

Yesterday, I was preparing to take the same bus 21 back to Jerusalem, because it avoids the gigantic Check Point 300. That’s the one with the comforting images of the Church of the Nativity pasted by Israel on to the eight metre high concrete apartheid wall, to make the whole thing look more cuddly and reassuring.

Before I left though, my friend got a call from some other foreigners who’d taken the 21 and had been turned back at a smaller check point just outside Bethlehem, past Beit Jala. Refusing foreigners with valid visas passage into Israel is almost unheard of. Of course, Palestinians routinely suffer this kind of arbitrary restriction, but now the situation was flipped. My American friend, who’s lived in the West Bank for years, was visibly shocked.

A home away from home.

I think this ten-day stay in Palestine would have been significantly less enjoyable and more lonesome had I not been able to stay a few nights at the house of Ibrahim, on the Mount of Olives. I was told about his place in more or less the same words by two different friends, and it went like this… ‘Take a bus to the Mount of Olives in East Jerusalem, ask for Ibrahim’s house – everyone know’s him – and you can stay there for three nights without paying. Expect to find an eccentric crowd of fellow guests.’

Hello you…

Returning to Jerusalem Old City is like slipping back into a comforting dream, where everything’s familiar but yet appears unreal, and ringed with a mystifying aura.

Differences arise from being here during December, rather than the Autumn. It means that the city is grey, somewhat misty, and that the slabs paving the endless lanes are slick with drizzle, while before they were always dull and sticky with dirt.

I find myself no less taken aback to see Orthodox Jews travelling by foot on lanes dominated by Palestinian traders and shoppers. Obviously, the heightened police presence helps, but when two Yeshiva students begin to haggle with the Palestinian phone-dealer near my hostel, it serves as evidence for how easy it is for individuals to transcend collective identities for the sake of a good deal and a better day.

I trace familiar routes along market lanes. Hooded zippper sweat-shirts with thick flurry linings are in vogue this season. The same butcher is selling frozen beef cuts, frozen fish and school diner-style ‘meat’ in breadcrumbs from his street-side display. The confectioners seem busy but underwear and clothing shops are empty, owners pacing before their wares, chatting with neighbours and ignoring potential customers. Unlike in Syria, tourists are endemic here and I’m just another one of the dozens out today. I’m alone, others are in groups (matching orange hats) and some, like two Asian cyclists, move on wheels in lycra-clad pairs. Even they don’t attract attention. Evidently, we are nothing out of the ordinary.

My aim for the day is to see whether the Old Town CD sellers stock Palestinian hip-hop. The first two do, though they only have the same selection of three homemade discs, amongst hundreds containing love-songs and more traditional sounds. The guy at the third place hands me a different CD. ‘This is hip-hop’, he says confidently. On the cover, a gap-toothed old man stands alongside two younger, thick-set men in shiny suits. The title says something about Abu Zarad, and I have my doubts, but curiosity gets the better of me. Having had a listen, I can confirm there is no emerging grandpa rap scene in Jerusalem. Too bad.

Later, I exit the Old City on the eastern edge, past the Western Wall and al-Aqsa. Across the road I am confronted by a wooden facade painted with colourful depictions of Jerusalem’s touristic offerings. It’s new since last year and stretches away downhill to the left. Backing away to peer over the top, I make out the sprawl of Palestinian East Jerusalem, houses stacked on the hillsides, topped by water tanks and broken up by strips of open ground, strewn with household garbage. A sign on the wall declares that the Jerusalem Municipality is working to ‘secure and improve the safety of Eastern Jerusalem’. I struggle to understand exactly what this means, but the purpose of the facade is clear enough. Who wants to look at this dilapidated area? Who wants to face the demographic reality? Who wants to fathom the massive gulf between the development of East and West Jerusalem?

So, a day that began with a show of human commonality at the phone shop, continued with a stark reminder that governments can easily disrupt this, and work hard to institute and normalise deep division.

Really, I don’t even try to make this stuff political. But then it’s Jerusalem… What do you expect, for chrissake?

“It’s for security…”

It’s forty minutes past midnight. I’m sitting in the lounge of the New Palm Hostel, opposite Damascus Gate, Jerusalem. My plane landed at six thirty this evening. It only took just over an hour to leave the airport and arrive here. But, from just gone six thirty to around eleven thirty I was held at immigration for ’security’.

… pulled aside and questioned coming off the plane, handed through three security people in five minutes … all clear, have a nice trip … long walk to the immigration desk … funny look from the girl behind the glass, a male security guard immediately positions himself behind me … after incredulous looks, two elderly black women and I are led to a holding space in the far corner of the arrivals hall … passport disappears … led to the opposite side of the hall and a second holding space … the women are given entrance stamps, along with a steady stream of temporarily held Turks, Arabs and others whose passports I can’t glimpse … a TV playing basketball … questioned – why are you here? who is your contact in Israel? you were here before? … I don’t give the right answers … I’m not lying, just keeping it brief … the holding space is otherwise empty now … officers want more contacts – names and numbers – more questioning, a senior officer lays it out – tell us why you’re really here because we don’t believe you … you’ve been to Syria, so we have to make sure … for security … he uses the word ‘terrorism’ – the first person to explain (as far as they see it) why I’m seen as a threat … I’m an anomaly … bags emptied, scanned, picked through … the most thorough pat-down ever received … an officer tests my Arabic … don’t let my ineptitude come across as dishonesty, truly, I’ve been studying this for four years … it’s getting surreal … I realise all I have to eat is homemade fudge … more sitting … dozing … a free sandwich and water lead me to assume I’m there for the long haul … after ten minutes a new face hands me my passport … automatic thank you – no longer angry and indignant, but confused … was veering towards the exhausted conviction that I was going home …

And now I’m here.

“The Other Side of the Story” – Part 3/3

A new day. We rented bikes from the kibbutz cycle centre and found some dirt-tracks snaking through the surrounding country-side. That morning at breakfast we had heard several ‘Qassam’ rockets falling in the distance but our hosts did not seem concerned as we set out. We visited the original site of the kibbutz, a few kilometres closer to the Gaza border.  The 1948 settlers who built the plain, grey house, now abandoned and pot-marked with bullet holes, are heroes to modern kibbutz residents; seen as brave pioneers who defended the Zionist dream from the savage Arab (read Palestinian refugee) raids.

David, Debbie and I were sick of politics but it confronted us more and more the longer we stayed on the kibbutz. Another friend of Dani’s accompanied us that day. She too had the olive skin of Eastern heritage yet, unlike our host, she supported Zionist settlement in the West Bank. She told us of a desire to raise her family in a settlement like Beit El. This is the largest settlement in the Ramallah area with rows of clean white houses lining perfectly preened streets, whose lamps glow warm yellow at night. In the shadow of its razor-wire fortifications lies Jalazone refugee camp, lit by anaemic fluorescent strip-lights, where we spent time teaching English to children in grey classrooms with broken garden furniture and no heating. A second later talk had turned to forthcoming holidays abroad. It felt as though moral boulders were crashing about in my head.

“The Other Side of the Story” – Part 2/3

 

We were standing in the foyer of the factory, with its state-of-the-art machinery humming behind walls, printing most of Israel’s bills, bank statements and paper advertising. With the election of Israel’s first ring-wing Likud government in 1977, kibbutzim that did not diversify soon collapsed, unable to survive the growth of commercial agriculture. This kibbutz took on the challenge – as did many others – and today thrives as one of the richest, ostensibly socialist communities in Israel. We all knew that as our host’s community grew and grew, old neighbours 10km away had come to rely entirely on UN food aid, only occasionally enjoying electricity and likely unable to recall the last time they visited a bank.

That evening we dined with several hundred kibbutz residents in the communal hall. The dishes on offer seemed endless, mostly cooked in Eastern European or Mediterranean styles. There was wine and an enticing racket of conversation as the Shabbas drew to a close and the observant and non-observant relaxed together. To my left sat Dani’s parents, her father an Iraqi Jew and her mother Yemeni. Their families were both forcibly transported to Israel to boost the fledgling state’s population after 1948. Although they are as patriotic as Israelis come, there is a hint of unease in their voices as they tell their stories of lost roots. Moreover, the couple certainly have no illusions about the corruption and hawkish policies of their current government. This conflicted heritage, combined with strong liberal politics makes their welcome feel genuine and uncomplicated. They seem to realise the importance of neutral go-betweens like us and hope more will follow…

“The Other Side of the Story” – Part 1/3

 

Walking to our evening meal.

 

Following recent events in Gaza I want to write about the closest I ever came to that strip of land and to experiencing the life of an Israeli living beside it…

Having met Dani (not her real name) during our Negev road-trip, Debbie, David and I were eager to visit her and her family on a kibbutz located less than 10 km from the Gaza strip, theoretically within easy range of Qassam rockets. The kibbutz would be a massive change from our usual environment and would hopefully be the setting for some instructive and constructive encounters. As we left Ramallah, we knew certain friends at university we suspicious of our motives for the trip, and there were some we had avoided telling altogether.

I’m sure most will imagine the kibbutz as simple farm buildings housing a collective of long-haired idealists. First, forget those clichés. Instead, picture a slightly run-down Centre Parcs village, dotted with blue stars on white. Think chalets of varying size and age arranged in neat rows, secluded by verdant trees and tropical shrubbery. Think landscaped gardens with northern European-style play grounds and for each of these several basic bomb shelters; solid, elongated arches of reinforced concrete, book-ended by two slabs that leave enough room to enter from either side. The residential areas and adjoining open spaces cover several kilometres.

The Form of Oppression; Ni’lin Protests

 

 

The Friday protest at Ni’lin is widely considered the more intense counterpart to that held at Bili’in. Both towns are resisting the separation wall in one form or another. While at Bili’in that wall is already completed, and the protesters occupied with trying to remove it, at Ni’lin the situation is less developed.

An Israeli settlement sits atop one side of the valley that defines the current western extreme of Ni’lin. Before the settlement was illegally established, the land it occupies was part of the town. This valley ends in a U-shape, the curve of which remains no-man’s land during the protests, while locals stand along their ridge and IDF soldiers face them from the settler side.