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
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