Here are two great commentaries from Christian Science Monitor that will hopefully make people think :)
"A one-state solution for Palestinians and Israelis"
If the aim of the peace process is to resolve the conflict properly, then only this approach tackles the root of the problem.
By Ghada Karmi / May 30, 2008
London
In 2005, I was invited to do something most Palestinians can only dream of: visit the house from which my family had been driven in 1948. Of all people, a New York Times correspondent discovered that his apartment was built over my old home.
When I met him there, the Jewish occupants who showed me around were almost apologetic, perhaps aware how that incident encapsulated the central story of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict: the expulsion of Palestinians and their replacement by Jews. Yet when I asked the reporter how he could still write articles that betray this reality, he was evasive.
His evasion is part of an industry of denial called the Middle East "peace process." This industry feeds the current international consensus on the two-state solution as the only "comprehensive" settlement to the conflict. But there's a better solution, one that's slowly picking up steam among Palestinians and Israelis: a one-state model.
The two-state approach is flawed on two major counts. First, Israel's extensive colonization of the territories it seized in the 1967 war has made the creation of a Palestinian state there impossible. Israel was offering nothing more than "a mini-state of cantons," as Palestinian Authority negotiators recently complained. This leaves Israel in control of more than half of the West Bank and all of East Jerusalem. With the Israeli position largely unchallenged by the international community, the only route to a two-state settlement will be through pressure on the weaker Palestinian side.
This leads to the second flaw: The two-state solution reflects only Israeli interests. It proposes to partition historic Palestine – an area that includes present-day Israel, the West Bank, the Gaza Strip, and Jerusalem – massively and inequitably in favor of Israel as a Jewish state. By definition, this rules out possibility of Palestinian return except to the tiny, segmented West Bank territory that Israeli colonization has created, and to an overcrowded Gaza, which cannot accommodate the returnees. Thus the "peace process" is really about making the Palestinians concede their basic rights to accommodate Israel's demands.
It also panders to Israel's paranoia over "demography," an ambiguous term that refers to the morally repugnant wish to preserve Israel's Jewish ethnic purity.
But the two-state solution's biggest flaw is that it ignores the main cause of the conflict: the Palestinian dispossession of 1948.
Today more than 5 million dispersed refugees and exiles long to return. It is fashionable to ignore this, as if Palestinians have less right to repatriation than the displaced Kosovars so ardently championed by NATO in 1999. As recognized by the Western powers then, the right to return was fundamental to peacemaking in the Bosnian crisis. It should be no less so in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Yet the present peace process aims to preserve a colonialist Israel and make Palestinian dispossession permanent. This is not only illegal and unjust, it is also short-sighted. As the early Zionist thinker Vladimir Jabotinsky warned in 1923, native resistance to dispossession is irrepressible and Zionism would only survive with constant force to quell it.
Israel has heeded the lesson well. With an oppressive military occupation ruling over the West Bank and Gaza, it has herded Palestinians into ghettoes and prisons, aiming to paralyze any resistance. The response to this brutality is misery, expressed by some in violence against Israelis, and continuing instability in the region. American collusion with Israel has led to growing anti-Americanism among Arabs and Muslims.
If the aim of the peace process is to resolve the conflict properly, then we must tackle the root of the problem: the creation of an exclusive state for one people in another people's territory. The strife this caused will end only when the Palestinian rights to repatriation and compensation are addressed. This cannot happen in a situation of Israeli hegemony.
A different approach that puts the principles of equity and sharing above dominance and oppression is needed: a one-state solution. In such a state, no Jewish settler would have to move and no Palestinian would be under occupation. Resources could be shared, rather than hoarded by Israel. Jerusalem could be a city for both. Above all, the dispossessed Palestinians could finally return home.
Indulging Israel is a dangerous folly that postpones solution. It harms Palestinians, the region, and long-term Western interests. It even harms Israelis, who are less secure in Israel than anywhere else. Palestinian and Arab support for the two-state proposal only reflects resignation to Israel's superior power and fear of US reprisal, not conviction. The two-state proposal is unstable and cannot replace a durable solution based on equity, justice, and dignity.
A decade ago, the unitary state idea was ridiculed. Today, as the two-state solution recedes, a one-state solution is the stuff of mainstream discussion. Now it must become mainstream policy, too.
Link: http://www.csmonitor.com/Commentary/Opinion/2008/0530/p09s02-coop.html
****************************************************
"Peace for Israelis and Palestinians? Not without America's tough love."
An Israeli student explains why the US should act on moral outrage over Israel’s discriminatory policies before it’s too late.
By Jonathan Ben-Artzi / April 1, 2010
Providence, R.I.
More than 20 years ago, many Americans decided they could no longer watch as racial segregation divided South Africa. Compelled by an injustice thousands of miles away, they demanded that their communities, their colleges, their municipalities, and their government take a stand.
Today, a similar discussion is taking place on campuses across the United States. Increasingly, students are questioning the morality of the ties US institutions have with the unjust practices being carried out in Israel and in the occupied Palestinian territories. Students are seeing that these practices are often more than merely “unjust.” They are racist. Humiliating. Inhumane. Savage.
Sometimes it takes a good friend to tell you when enough is enough. As they did with South Africa two decades ago, concerned citizens across the US can make a difference by encouraging Washington to get the message to Israel that this cannot continue.
A legitimate question is, Why should I care? Americans are heavily involved in the conflict: from funding (the US provides Israel with roughly $3 billion annually in military aid) to corporate investments (Microsoft has one of its major facilities in Israel) to diplomatic support (the US has vetoed 32 United Nations Security Council resolutions unsavory to Israel between 1982 and 2006).
Why do I care? I am an Israeli. Both my parents were born in Israel. Both my grandmothers were born in Palestine (when there was no “Israel” yet). In fact, I am a ninth-generation native of Palestine. My ancestors were among the founders of today’s modern Jerusalem.
Both my grandfathers fled the Nazis and came to Palestine. Both were subsequently injured in the 1948 Arab-Israli War. My mother’s only brother was a paratrooper killed in combat in 1968. All of my relatives served in the Israeli military for extensive periods of time, some of them in units most people don’t even know exist.
In Israel, military service for both men and women is compulsory. When my time to serve came, I refused, because I realized I was obliged to do something about these acts of segregation. I was denied conscientious objector status, like the majority of 18-year-old males who seek this status. Because I refused to serve, I spent a year and a half in military prison.
Some of the acts of segregation that I saw while growing up in Israel include towns for Jews only, immigration laws that allow Jews from around the world to immigrate but deny displaced indigenous Palestinians that same right, and national healthcare and school systems that receive significantly more funding in Jewish towns than in Arab towns.
As former Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said in 2008: “We have not yet overcome the barrier of discrimination, which is a deliberate discrimination and the gap is insufferable.... Governments have denied [Arab Israelis] their rights to improve their quality of life.”
The situation in the occupied territories is even worse. Nearly 4 million Palestinians have been living under Israeli occupation for over 40 years without the most basic human and civil rights.
One example is segregation on roads in the West Bank, where settlers travel on roads that are for Jews only, while Palestinians are stopped at checkpoints, and a 10-mile commute might take seven hours.
Another example is discrimination in water supply: Israel pumps drinking water from occupied territory (in violation of international law). Israelis use as much as four times more water than Palestinians, while Palestinians are not allowed to dig their own wells and must rely on Israeli supply.
Civil freedom is no better: In an effort to break the spirit of Palestinians, Israel conducts sporadic arrests and detentions with no judicial supervision. According to one prisoner support and human rights association, roughly 4 in 10 Palestinian males have spent some time in Israeli prisons. That’s 40 percent of all Palestinian males!
And finally, perhaps one of the greatest injustices takes place in the Gaza Strip, where Israel is collectively punishing more than 1.5 million Palestinians by sealing them off in the largest open-air prison on earth.
Because of the US’s relationship with Israel, it is important for all Americans to educate themselves about the realities of the conflict. When they do, they will realize that just as much as support for South Africa decades ago was mostly damaging for South Africa itself, contemporary blind support for Israel hurts us Israelis.
We must lift the ruthless siege of Gaza, which only breeds more anger and frustration among Gazans, who respond by hurling primitive, homemade rockets at Israeli towns.
We must remove travel restrictions from West Bank Palestinians. How can we live in peace with a population where most children cannot visit their grandparents living in the neighboring village, without being stopped and harassed at military checkpoints for hours?
Finally, we must give equal rights to all. Regardless of what the final resolution will be – the so-called “one state solution,” the “two state solution,” or any other form of governance.
Israel governs the lives of 5.5 million Israeli Jews, 1.5 million Israeli Palestinians, and 4 million Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza. As long as Israel is responsible for all of these people, it must ensure that all have equal rights, the same access to resources, and the same opportunities in education and healthcare. Only through such a platform of basic human rights for all humans can a resolution come to the region.
If Americans truly are our friends, they should shake us up and take away the keys, because right now we are driving drunk, and without this wake-up call, we will soon find ourselves in the ditch of an undemocratic, doomed state.
(Jonathan Ben-Artzi was one of the spokespeople for the Hadash party in the Israeli general elections in 2006. His parents are professors in Israel, and his extended family includes uncle Benjamin Netanyahu. Mr. Ben-Artzi is a PhD student at Brown University in Providence, R.I.)
Link: http://www.csmonitor.com/Commentary/Opinion/2010/0401/Peace-for-Israelis-and-Palestinians-Not-without-America-s-tough-love
Friday, April 9, 2010
Tuesday, April 6, 2010
Concerts, lockdowns, couchsurfing and more!
Wow I feel as though the last 3 months have been one long, rainy blur. I have never before in my life experienced the kind of rain that I’ve seen here. Because of all the hills, the water just flows down the streets in literal rivers. Kind of amazing, but not if you have to walk to work…
There are just so many things I feel like I could say about this part of the world at the moment. Well, to start with I suppose I should say that I am safe! Things were brewing and bubbling, that’s for sure, but we’ve gone back to a decent level of stability. But maybe I’ll get to all that later on…
The teaching has kept me busy. We’ve had a lot of concerts this past month: two concerts in mid-March, one in Bethlehem and the other in Ramallah. Our programme was the Schumann “Trout” Piano Quintet, and the Beethoven Second Piano Trio. One week later we traveled up to the Occupied Golan Heights and played another concert consisting of the Beethoven Trio, the first movement of the Beethoven “Kreutzer” Sonata (me on piano, my sister on violin), and two movements of the Brahms Piano Quintet. Finally, the following weekend we played a concert in Jerusalem (Beethoven Trio, Brahms Quintet) and then Ramallah (Beethoven Kreutzer, Brahms Quintet).
We were so badly hoping to play the Schumann again in Golan and Jerusalem, but since our bass player is Palestinian he requires special permission to travel through Israel. Due to the heightened tension here, all applications for permissions were postponed.
The trip to Golan was made with some other Conservatory colleagues to play a concert. Golan is incredibly beautiful! The Golan Heights used to belong to Syria before Israeli forces invaded and took over in 1967. As such, the Golan Heights contains many Israeli settlements with the purpose of securing land for Israel and boosting the Jewish civilian population in the area. Israel makes life hard for the Arabs who continue to live in the Golan by taxing them heavily on water: the Arabs have built water tanks to collect rain; the Israelis measure the rainfall and then tax the Arabs accordingly (can anyone say ridiculous?).
Golan is also full of land mines put in place during the 1967 war. These mines were generally placed surrounding the civilian populations and on agricultural land. In one instance, on a hill in the middle of the village of Majdal Shams, there is an Israeli military outpost surrounded by land mines. Heavy rains push these land mines down into the yards of the houses at the bottom of the hill. Despite Israel’s support and initiatives in cleaning up land mines in other countries, they are incredibly lackadaisical about removing mines in their own country (supposedly due to risk of injury to Israeli soldiers). Israel is not even prompt about erecting a fence to keep children or animals from wandering into dangerous areas – which is interesting, remarked one of my colleagues, considering how good Israel is at putting up fences!! Unfortunately, human rights organizations and the UN are both similarly uninvolved with this situation.
In these last three months I have been introduced to a really interesting concept: couchsurfing. There’s a website you can check out: www.couchsurfing.org and the idea is that you stay on people’s couches for free while you are traveling around! My roommate told me about the idea and asked how I felt about it. I figured, “Why not?!” So since January we’ve hosted almost 15 people from Sweden, Spain, Ireland, France, USA, Belgium, and the Netherlands! It’s really kind of neat to open up your home in this way. Nothing is expected of you as a host, and oftentimes your guests will cook you dinner or bring over a bottle of wine to be shared – always a plus! Anyway, if you like what you see after checking out the website, I urge you to open your doors and your hearts and experience something really cool.
At the end of February I attended the Idan Raichel concert in Jerusalem. Idan Raichel is an Israeli musician who I started listening to just before I moved to Palestine. I quite enjoy his music even though I don’t understand at all what he’s saying since it’s usually in Hebrew or Amharic (he’s heavily influenced by Ethiopian music). The concert was really entertaining, and I enjoyed myself despite being alone. Raichel is a self-proclaimed messenger of peace and tolerance and yet I wondered how many of the Israeli attendees that night, let alone Raichel himself, truly know what their government is doing to the Palestinian people! I hate to paint everyone with the same brush, but I wanted to share this thought that crossed my mind.
I had mentioned in my previous email a tour I took when I was with my parents. This was a tour through the area of Silwan. This small “village” is just outside Dung Gate of the Old City. Many Palestinians live there, or used to live there before they were forced out of their homes by Israelis. We met with one family whose home was slated for demolition. It was heartbreaking to think that these people are facing the possibility of losing everything they own.
(An excellent explanation of the evictions of Palestinians in neighbourhoods such as Sheikh Jarrah, Silwan, and more can be found at: http://desertpeace.wordpress.com/2010/03/12/expecting-a-third-intifada/ I strongly urge you to read this article. I will quote a brief paragraph to give you a taste of what is included:
“…government-backed Jewish organisations, mostly funded by wealthy Jews from the United States, have been creating a foothold in the Arab neighbourhood of Sheikh Jarrah where Palestinian families have been forcibly evicted from their homes in coordination with the police apparatus. Settlers claim that some homes belonged to Jews prior to 1948 while others were purchased in secret deals. When aggrieved Palestinians go to Israeli courts for redress, the Israeli judge routinely sides with the settler squatters.
Settler lawyers often claim that homes in such towns as Hebron and Jerusalem belonged to Jews during the British Mandate era. The same lawyers overlook the fact that tens of thousands of homes in what is now Israel belonged to Palestinian families whose members were either massacred, as in Deir Yassin, or ethnically cleansed and forced into exile, as happened in Jerusalem’s neighbourhoods of Lifta, Ain Karm, Talbiyeh and Al-Malha, to name a few.
When this writer asked an Israeli lawyer involved in efforts to arrogate Arab real estate in East Jerusalem why it was legal for Jews to reclaim their presumed property in the West Bank while it was not for Palestinians relative to property in what is now Israel, the lawyer said, “because we are strong and you are weak”. ”)
Our tour guide (an young Israeli pacifist who spent time in prison for leaving the military and who is an advocate for Palestinians and peace) also showed us an “archaeological” dig that was happening just outside the Old City walls. The dig is sponsored by ElAd, a dodgy right-wing Jewish organization. Now, of course, there are no problems with archaeological projects. There are, of course, problems with archaeological projects that force people to leave their homes (home evictions and demolitions), their livelihoods (taking over an area where locals used to sell their wares to tourists), or endanger life (weakening the ground to the extent where homes and schools have actually caved in). As well, this archaeological project has a specific agenda: discover evidence that supports Jewish presence eons ago so that the Jews can lay claim to the village of Silwan and take it over, saying this used to be the city of King David.
A good informative article on this issue can be found here: http://www.atlanticfreepress.com/news/1/5453-archaeology-becomes-a-curse-for-jerusalems-palestinians-.html
Okay I think it’s time to include a funny story at this point…So I had just finished shopping at the fruit market one day and was headed home when I walked by a fairly bedraggled man sitting against the side of a building. He was holding a grapefruit and he offered it to me. The sight of this just made me laugh and I shook my head “no” and walked away. On my way home I stopped in at a grocery store and before I entered the store I looked behind me and saw that the grapefruit-man had followed me all this way. So I ducked into the store, bought some eggs, and contemplated asking the store owner to tell this guy to beat it, but since it was the middle of the day I wasn’t too worried. I exited the store and just down the street is a road that goes sharply uphill on the left. As I walked past the intersection I looked up to see the grapefruit-guy standing a ways up the hill. I turn away but then hear something and what do I see…a grapefruit rolling past my feet. This guy had sent the grapefruit rolling on down to me. I didn’t pick it up, just kept on going, and fortunately the grapefruit man took off in the opposite direction…Very strange.
My sister left just this morning after spending the last three weeks here. She loved her time in Palestine. Together we spent time in Nablus, Ramallah, Golan, Jerusalem (including seeing the Israel Philharmonic and meeting Itzhak Perlman), Tel Aviv, Haifa (Baha’i Gardens – utterly beautiful), Jericho/Wadi Qelt (a lovely 6-hour hike), and a brief trip to Greece to renew my visa.
As I mentioned at the outset of my email, things were bubbling here for a while. This was due to a “lockdown” on the West Bank. Israel was not letting people into Israel even if they had the proper papers to enter, screening people before allowing them to enter the Old City in Jerusalem and restricting access to Al-Aqsa to men under the age of 50. The lockdowns occurred after Israel let it slip while Joe Biden was visiting that the Netanyahu government plans to build 1600 more Jewish apartments in East Jerusalem – this news greatly upset Palestinians and incited protests against the plans for the new settlements. Israel also declared the Ibrahimi Mosque in Hebron as a Jewish Heritage Site, provoking huge riots from the Muslim world.
For more info see this article: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/16/opinion/16iht-edcohen.html
I do wish these emails were less political in nature. However, the situation here cannot be avoided in conversation or in my thoughts and feelings. It makes one feel angry, useless, and bewildered! You want to help but have no idea what you can do. So in my own way I hope that these small insights into the reality of life for Palestinians can cause one to start asking questions and looking for answers!
Other good times: watching the Superbowl in Tel Aviv at 1:00 a.m.; performing the Brahms Piano Quintet with four amazing ladies; knafeh with Dani in Nablus; patches of poppies among rocks and olive trees; freshly squeezed orange juice; wearing sandals in March; perfecting banana muffins.
It’s been a great six months and I’m so happy I have another three months to continue to explore this amazing place. At the same time, I miss Canada so much and am yearning to go home.
Much love to all,
Hillary
There are just so many things I feel like I could say about this part of the world at the moment. Well, to start with I suppose I should say that I am safe! Things were brewing and bubbling, that’s for sure, but we’ve gone back to a decent level of stability. But maybe I’ll get to all that later on…
The teaching has kept me busy. We’ve had a lot of concerts this past month: two concerts in mid-March, one in Bethlehem and the other in Ramallah. Our programme was the Schumann “Trout” Piano Quintet, and the Beethoven Second Piano Trio. One week later we traveled up to the Occupied Golan Heights and played another concert consisting of the Beethoven Trio, the first movement of the Beethoven “Kreutzer” Sonata (me on piano, my sister on violin), and two movements of the Brahms Piano Quintet. Finally, the following weekend we played a concert in Jerusalem (Beethoven Trio, Brahms Quintet) and then Ramallah (Beethoven Kreutzer, Brahms Quintet).
We were so badly hoping to play the Schumann again in Golan and Jerusalem, but since our bass player is Palestinian he requires special permission to travel through Israel. Due to the heightened tension here, all applications for permissions were postponed.
The trip to Golan was made with some other Conservatory colleagues to play a concert. Golan is incredibly beautiful! The Golan Heights used to belong to Syria before Israeli forces invaded and took over in 1967. As such, the Golan Heights contains many Israeli settlements with the purpose of securing land for Israel and boosting the Jewish civilian population in the area. Israel makes life hard for the Arabs who continue to live in the Golan by taxing them heavily on water: the Arabs have built water tanks to collect rain; the Israelis measure the rainfall and then tax the Arabs accordingly (can anyone say ridiculous?).
Golan is also full of land mines put in place during the 1967 war. These mines were generally placed surrounding the civilian populations and on agricultural land. In one instance, on a hill in the middle of the village of Majdal Shams, there is an Israeli military outpost surrounded by land mines. Heavy rains push these land mines down into the yards of the houses at the bottom of the hill. Despite Israel’s support and initiatives in cleaning up land mines in other countries, they are incredibly lackadaisical about removing mines in their own country (supposedly due to risk of injury to Israeli soldiers). Israel is not even prompt about erecting a fence to keep children or animals from wandering into dangerous areas – which is interesting, remarked one of my colleagues, considering how good Israel is at putting up fences!! Unfortunately, human rights organizations and the UN are both similarly uninvolved with this situation.
In these last three months I have been introduced to a really interesting concept: couchsurfing. There’s a website you can check out: www.couchsurfing.org and the idea is that you stay on people’s couches for free while you are traveling around! My roommate told me about the idea and asked how I felt about it. I figured, “Why not?!” So since January we’ve hosted almost 15 people from Sweden, Spain, Ireland, France, USA, Belgium, and the Netherlands! It’s really kind of neat to open up your home in this way. Nothing is expected of you as a host, and oftentimes your guests will cook you dinner or bring over a bottle of wine to be shared – always a plus! Anyway, if you like what you see after checking out the website, I urge you to open your doors and your hearts and experience something really cool.
At the end of February I attended the Idan Raichel concert in Jerusalem. Idan Raichel is an Israeli musician who I started listening to just before I moved to Palestine. I quite enjoy his music even though I don’t understand at all what he’s saying since it’s usually in Hebrew or Amharic (he’s heavily influenced by Ethiopian music). The concert was really entertaining, and I enjoyed myself despite being alone. Raichel is a self-proclaimed messenger of peace and tolerance and yet I wondered how many of the Israeli attendees that night, let alone Raichel himself, truly know what their government is doing to the Palestinian people! I hate to paint everyone with the same brush, but I wanted to share this thought that crossed my mind.
I had mentioned in my previous email a tour I took when I was with my parents. This was a tour through the area of Silwan. This small “village” is just outside Dung Gate of the Old City. Many Palestinians live there, or used to live there before they were forced out of their homes by Israelis. We met with one family whose home was slated for demolition. It was heartbreaking to think that these people are facing the possibility of losing everything they own.
(An excellent explanation of the evictions of Palestinians in neighbourhoods such as Sheikh Jarrah, Silwan, and more can be found at: http://desertpeace.wordpress.com/2010/03/12/expecting-a-third-intifada/ I strongly urge you to read this article. I will quote a brief paragraph to give you a taste of what is included:
“…government-backed Jewish organisations, mostly funded by wealthy Jews from the United States, have been creating a foothold in the Arab neighbourhood of Sheikh Jarrah where Palestinian families have been forcibly evicted from their homes in coordination with the police apparatus. Settlers claim that some homes belonged to Jews prior to 1948 while others were purchased in secret deals. When aggrieved Palestinians go to Israeli courts for redress, the Israeli judge routinely sides with the settler squatters.
Settler lawyers often claim that homes in such towns as Hebron and Jerusalem belonged to Jews during the British Mandate era. The same lawyers overlook the fact that tens of thousands of homes in what is now Israel belonged to Palestinian families whose members were either massacred, as in Deir Yassin, or ethnically cleansed and forced into exile, as happened in Jerusalem’s neighbourhoods of Lifta, Ain Karm, Talbiyeh and Al-Malha, to name a few.
When this writer asked an Israeli lawyer involved in efforts to arrogate Arab real estate in East Jerusalem why it was legal for Jews to reclaim their presumed property in the West Bank while it was not for Palestinians relative to property in what is now Israel, the lawyer said, “because we are strong and you are weak”. ”)
Our tour guide (an young Israeli pacifist who spent time in prison for leaving the military and who is an advocate for Palestinians and peace) also showed us an “archaeological” dig that was happening just outside the Old City walls. The dig is sponsored by ElAd, a dodgy right-wing Jewish organization. Now, of course, there are no problems with archaeological projects. There are, of course, problems with archaeological projects that force people to leave their homes (home evictions and demolitions), their livelihoods (taking over an area where locals used to sell their wares to tourists), or endanger life (weakening the ground to the extent where homes and schools have actually caved in). As well, this archaeological project has a specific agenda: discover evidence that supports Jewish presence eons ago so that the Jews can lay claim to the village of Silwan and take it over, saying this used to be the city of King David.
A good informative article on this issue can be found here: http://www.atlanticfreepress.com/news/1/5453-archaeology-becomes-a-curse-for-jerusalems-palestinians-.html
Okay I think it’s time to include a funny story at this point…So I had just finished shopping at the fruit market one day and was headed home when I walked by a fairly bedraggled man sitting against the side of a building. He was holding a grapefruit and he offered it to me. The sight of this just made me laugh and I shook my head “no” and walked away. On my way home I stopped in at a grocery store and before I entered the store I looked behind me and saw that the grapefruit-man had followed me all this way. So I ducked into the store, bought some eggs, and contemplated asking the store owner to tell this guy to beat it, but since it was the middle of the day I wasn’t too worried. I exited the store and just down the street is a road that goes sharply uphill on the left. As I walked past the intersection I looked up to see the grapefruit-guy standing a ways up the hill. I turn away but then hear something and what do I see…a grapefruit rolling past my feet. This guy had sent the grapefruit rolling on down to me. I didn’t pick it up, just kept on going, and fortunately the grapefruit man took off in the opposite direction…Very strange.
My sister left just this morning after spending the last three weeks here. She loved her time in Palestine. Together we spent time in Nablus, Ramallah, Golan, Jerusalem (including seeing the Israel Philharmonic and meeting Itzhak Perlman), Tel Aviv, Haifa (Baha’i Gardens – utterly beautiful), Jericho/Wadi Qelt (a lovely 6-hour hike), and a brief trip to Greece to renew my visa.
As I mentioned at the outset of my email, things were bubbling here for a while. This was due to a “lockdown” on the West Bank. Israel was not letting people into Israel even if they had the proper papers to enter, screening people before allowing them to enter the Old City in Jerusalem and restricting access to Al-Aqsa to men under the age of 50. The lockdowns occurred after Israel let it slip while Joe Biden was visiting that the Netanyahu government plans to build 1600 more Jewish apartments in East Jerusalem – this news greatly upset Palestinians and incited protests against the plans for the new settlements. Israel also declared the Ibrahimi Mosque in Hebron as a Jewish Heritage Site, provoking huge riots from the Muslim world.
For more info see this article: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/16/opinion/16iht-edcohen.html
I do wish these emails were less political in nature. However, the situation here cannot be avoided in conversation or in my thoughts and feelings. It makes one feel angry, useless, and bewildered! You want to help but have no idea what you can do. So in my own way I hope that these small insights into the reality of life for Palestinians can cause one to start asking questions and looking for answers!
Other good times: watching the Superbowl in Tel Aviv at 1:00 a.m.; performing the Brahms Piano Quintet with four amazing ladies; knafeh with Dani in Nablus; patches of poppies among rocks and olive trees; freshly squeezed orange juice; wearing sandals in March; perfecting banana muffins.
It’s been a great six months and I’m so happy I have another three months to continue to explore this amazing place. At the same time, I miss Canada so much and am yearning to go home.
Much love to all,
Hillary
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