The Journey to Jericho

With the weekend approaching last week, Danny, Scott and I were trying to decide what would be the best way to entertain ourselves. Nick was going to Tel Aviv because he loves the beaches there, but we decided it would be more rewarding/fulfilling to check out the Dead Sea in the remaining few weeks of nice weather and figured we should go sooner rather than later. There is a new girl working with the international office too, Charline, who is from France and we invited her along as well. With our bags packed a desire to see more of the west bank, we all headed out early on Friday morning to catch the service taxi (8-person vans that handle commutes between major cities in Palestine). I’m not sure how long the drive is, but I’d say it was around or at least an hour. Somewhere towards the middle of the trip I encountered my first checkpoint that was actively stopping vehicle and we all had to get our passports out and hand them over.

As one Israeli looked over our passports, three others (all armed with assault rifles and very non-uniformily uniformed) peered in the windows at us. I’ve always been okay around guns, and around the military and I don’t mind being the center of attention but this made me really uncomfortable. I think it has to do with the fact that unlike the US military and other militaries I have been around and interacted with, I think the Israeli military is pretty unprofessional in appearance and behavior. They just look like thugs that raided the army surplus store and have pretty nice guns and are essentially the ruling deities of all actions in the west bank. I’ve always had a problem with authority but known my place and the proper channels to deal with discrepancies. The situation here though leaves me feeling powerless and without recourse for what is frequently very unprofessional behavior directed at everyone, including internationals.

Alas, we got back under way without issue and were once again rolling through the hills of the West Bank. The hills here are beautiful because they almost remind me of the mountainous central Washington area. They are covered in rocks and olive trees that seem to be in complete disarray until you realize that these rocks form mountainside terraces that have been here for God knows how long for the olive trees that are the heart of rural Palestine. It’s so beautifully simple, rustic and ancient looking all at once, while leaving me to marvel about the sheer amount of effort that must have gone into constructing this landscape by hand. I have to say though that the most striking physical feature I have seen yet in Palestine, and arguably in my life was the Jordan Valley. After rolling through these hills until I was comfortably adjusted to them, suddenly we rounded a corner to see the hills immediately fal away into deep, expansive valley that stretched nearly as far as the eye can see without a single bump or dip to the valley floor. It was like a poster separating two stacks of books if that gives any proper reference. The Dead Sea glittered in the distance as we crossed through Israeli military controlled land on our approach to Jericho.

My first experience with dental care in Palestine

Last week I seemed to have dislodged a filling but didn’t notice any immediate discomfort so I just carried on with my normal affairs. Over the course of the weekend however I began to notice a large amount of sensitivity on the tooth (upper right pre-molar) and some tenderness in above my gum line. I remember as I child I had gotten an abcessed baby tooth and recognized that it seemed like a similar sensation. I was alarmed to say the least, stuck in a developing country with no concept of my dental care and to be quite honest, without the resources necessary for emergency dental surgery. As somebody who already deals with anxiety issues, I was pretty worked up and in a fair amount of pain by the time work started on Sunday.

I asked steve about what I should do and we got sidetracked discussing the disparity between dental care between the US, the UK, and Palestine. The kind of work I needed was most likely a root canal and a crown, which in the states would run me upwards of 5,000 dollars since I don’t have dental insurance. In England, the same treatment would cost me about 400 dollars because of their national dental coverage. I think it’s absurd that people place so much importance on the issue of national healthcare in America considering dental care is just as vital to the health of the country and how it is completely ignored in all discussions. When I asked about my dental care options in Palestine Steve told me that I am completely covered by the university (along with healthcare) and that there was a university dentist with an office on campus that could see me immediately.

I want to just stop there and point out how incredible this is. Not only am I, as an intern, receiving full benefits but the university retains its own dentist to insure that I have easy access to care at work. I’ve never heard of such a simple and practical solution to taking care of employees and simultaneously investing in the health of the community. It really highlights how broken American health care truly is when you consider that I am in the dentist chair within five minutes of wanting care in the Global South.

I wandered over to the dental office and I will admit, we are not talking about first class facilities. I think my favorite part was that the mirror on the counter had some of the corners broken off and the chair had a distinctly yellow tinge to it that can only be a product of the 80’s…or maybe the 70’s. All the same the dentist was a friendly lady who got me into the chair immediately and within two minutes had my face numb and was ready to go to work. I’ll avoid all the details of the work since no one likes to hear about that business. Within twenty minutes I had my first of three appointments done. No paperwork, no appointments, no wait, no hassle. I’m not saying there are no trade offs to getting care in a developing country, but they seem like ones that I would happily exchange for the situation I came from to the situation I have now. In America I don’t know what I could have done or would have done- I don’t have exactly an emergency dental care nest egg. In Palestine, I got the care I needed, but more importantly than that I found a culture of compassion in health and dental care and that is greater than any technological advancement I could ask for.

Rafat and Arara (post one of at least two)

This is the sun setting over Arara, a mountain near the village of Rafat. We hiked up to it with our friends from Rafat and it amazes me how raw the beauty is here. Rough rocks sprout out from the red earth, the same rocks that have roman foundations carved out of them from thousands of years ago. All the plants here are thorny and lash at the legs, but it is still simply amazing what can grow in such a sparse landscape. Arara has an old volcanic crater near the top, which is odd considering nearly everything made from stone here is some kind of limestone. It's beautiful though watching the sun set over the white rocks as we hiked back down the mountain.

These are the olive trees around the village of Rafat. The village has I think around 2,000 people in it and it is absolutely beautiful. The people we so kind and generous that I still have an entire blog to write about it. Possibly tomorrow so stay tuned. It's amazing how beautifully simple village life is and how the Olive trees are the cornerstone of their lives. Everything revolves around the olives and the harvest, which is in the next few weeks here. I live the village and I want to go back soon

These were ancient ruins actually in the city of Rafat, just blending in with the surrounding homes. It's amazing how little the architecture can change here over the course of thousands of years and how long these stones have stood here. 

F*** Activists

I have other posts I want to get online, but this one has been on my mind since the film festival last night on the subject of activism.

First of all, the granola sitting next to me.  I realize that you think you are in touch with the earth and that your sandals leave less of an impact on the planet and blah blah blah. I also know you are a journalist and not technically here as an activist, but this is Nablus, besides being culturally unusual around here, sandals are down right stupid in Nablus. I use mine around the flat of course, but I would never walk down the street here in sandals, even Cody from Duel Survival would wear shoes here. There streets are littered with broken glass and are just completely unsanitary and unsafe to wear shoes, not to mention wholly unpractical- Nablus eats shoes like Palestinians eat limes. Buy some damn shoes and close your feet up on the streets here. Everyone, including yourself will be appreciative.

As we were all milling about outside waiting for the doors to the film festival to open I over heard one young woman telling her "horror" story about getting through security. She was pissing and moaning about how she was held for an hour while they copied her passport, and strongly questioned her. How are you so flabbergasted about this?You told them that you were coming to an occupied country! Just what the f*** (sorry mom) did you expect to happen? for them to roll out the red carpet and release doves on your arrival? It's just another case of western superiority complex and shows a complete disregard for the Palestinian people. West Bank Arabs cannot leave and see their ancestral homes and homeland in Israel Proper, and they are stopped for hours at a time moving between cities in their own occupied territories even. Until last year it took our students at An-Najah three hours just to get through a checkpoint and were the subjects of far worse treatment then an american activists. Palestinians can be held indefinitely without trial in Israel Proper, but you are standing here bitching about how you had a challenging time coming into the country. These people have no grasp on reality.

Worst of all is that these people seem to think they are helping and are actually the hipsters of the protest movement, constantly jockeying for a place as the most "protesty human-loving humanitarian protestor" like there is a goddamn medal for it. They fly halfway around the world because they have some kind of entitlement (in this case the money to do so and a sense of entitlement to come speak of Palestinian's behalf. At the end of the movie a rather prestigious panel of community leaders from both the armed and unarmed resistance, the director of the film's NGO and the university's UNESCO chair were all sharing their thoughts and fielding questions. Leave it to some dumb Americans to spend the whole time talking about "israel is such a bully" in low voices instead actually listening to what is said. Considering so many activists for Palestine also carry some planetary global environmental concerns, it is absolutely idiotic that these girls would fly halfway around the world to "experience" Palestine and would just talk all the way through the presentation and even a large portion of the movie. Apparently foreigners can fight the occupation by TALKING ABOUT FACEBOOK for twenty minutes straight. It's actually kind of disgusting.

These people come to Palestine because they also feel they need to understand the plight of the people here. But instead of cultural immersion and getting to know a range of people they spend their whole time in Ramallah, an international city. Here they can get in a few hours of protesting during their day and then get drunk at night with other internationals and stroke their egos about how helpful they are to the Cause of Palestinians. They don't leave the city of Ramallah to get into the villages, where even though I detest protestors they would be welcomed and loved with such amazing hospitality. They are nothing different than confused young people trying to find their place in the world and experimenting with how to express themselves, like the 15 year old girl who dabbles in lesbianism. Instead of coming here to show solidarity for a two week protestcation, there are so many ways of actually being productive and helping Palestine. Encouraging a legislator to come here, holding a rally in their country of origin, or (gasp!) performing a significant act of civil disobedience at Washington DC like a sit-in or a hunger strike could do so much and show solidarity. Stay home and donate the money that it would have cost you to fly around the world to a respectable NGO like Project Hope, or Families of the Bereaved. You'll help the Planet and Palestine, because if you come here for a week or twenty years, it is not possible for a foreigner to truly understand the plight of these people. At any time we can leave, we have rights as internationals and we are not systematically targeted for abuse by settlers and the IDF, but the same cannot be said of Palestinians. We will never never know the implications of knowing that our parents and children, as well as ourselves will be born into an occupied country and the emotional and psychological devastation that goes with that. We can't and we almost shouldn't try under some pretenses, lest we leave assuming we have a thorough understanding and are actually just as ignorant as someone who has never seen Palestine.

If you want to help Palestine, find volunteer work with a respectable NGO. Learn a skill, a trade, fight the brain drain that actually has an enormous negative impact on Palestine. Bring your education here and share it with the Palestinians. Even with a Master's Degree you can find many teaching positions here at the university level. Do research and provide valuable information because as one person at work says "no one needs to show Palestinians how to throw stones, they can do that well enough themselves." We must build the infrastructure of Palestine almost even before demanding statehood because without it, the world will just be introduced to a newly minted failed state without the means to help it's own people. For Palestine to succeed attention must diverted from security, to the rest of the peace process, the natural resource allocation, cultural divides, and political discord. Hell come here and teach them about Robert's Rules of Order so that everyone can interact with western politics when necessary, and foster in young people a concept of  government that functions smoothly.

 So activists, go home and take your dirty dreadlocks and urban outfitter clothes with you, Palestine needs a better friend than you if the people are going to succeed. Go fight injustice in your own country because an injustice anywhere is an injustice everywhere. Just as the holocaust could not have happened without the advent of colonial racism, the occupation and apathy of the world governments to take action against the Israeli occupation all have their own skeletons in their closets. Where is your love for the Native Americans, who are forced to still suffer humiliation and hold a place as second class citizens in our own country? It is not until we force countries to be accountable for their own sins that any of these countries will truly critique the actions of Israel with determination, but instead it is far easier for us to hide our own social suffering from view by pointing the finger at Israel. It's like the parent who secretly smokes cigarettes and then berates his child when he catches him doing the same. The problem is just as much us, if not more so, than Israel's. We are the enablers because we refuse to be held accountable for our own past. Only when we fully acknowledge the evil we have perpetrated and try to set that right, will we be able to stand before the world on a platform of moral superiority and dictate that evil must not be carried out against the less fortunate. Anything else is just posturing for the sake of posturing, Israel is not a Pariah, it is just a very astute student of the actions of so much of the developed world. Activism will not change that, the chants of developed world college students won't enact change. For every hour of protests in Palestine, we should do another two hours in our own country and follow that with a six hours of productive work to fight the sources and ideology of occupation. Get an education and share it with those who need it most in the areas that they need most. Teach the Palestinians to fish, don't just give them a Long John Silver's in Ramallah.

I have one more blog that I want to write that is quickly falling behind but I am leaving for the weekend and thought I leave you all with a picture of the sun setting over Nablus. Alhumdulillah!

A walk to savor

Both yesterday and today I missed my shuttle home. With my very sparse Arabic it was a little troubling the first time because Nick and my co-workers had left while I was out (more on that later) and I had never been really on my own in the country. Still, I figured, I didn't come here to hide from Palestine and decided to set out on foot. An-Najah National University has two campuses in Nablus and I work at the old campus which is further away from my place than the new campus but is on the same road. Knowing this I set off in the right direction unsure of how I would actually find the apartment. The heat is sweltering right now and the humidity is actually much higher than I expected, so I got quite a sweat going. It's important to mention that there are sidewalks in some places in Nablus, but they aren't very good and no one uses them. There is also no concept of rules of the road or traffic laws, but personally I think I prefer that to the US style of cars and roads and driving. I must have walked a least 1.5 to 2 miles before finally arriving at the new campus and called it quits and caught a taxi to Al Amriya, our apartment complex. I thanked the driver and walked down to our apartment complex to find out that we didn't have power and wouldn't get it back for a more hours. Welcome to the West Bank I suppose.

Today I actually chose to walk home because I pushed my work until a little past quitting time (3:30 here) and knowingly had missed the shuttle this time.So off I went in the direction of the new campus to catch a taxi there. I had brought my camera with me and decided to walk as far as the new campus again and take some pictures along the way. The terrain is very familiar yet foreign, like some alternate reality's version of the area around wenatchee. At a quick passing glance they seem very alike, but then you stop and look for a second and realize it's much rockier and has abundant shrubs and short, squat olive trees instead of apple orchards. I find it beautiful here and already have settled in quite comfortably, not entirely familiar with my new surroundings but eager to be apart of the land and people that is Palestine, the West Bank, and Nablus.

Pictures from the walk

work work work work

 My Arabic is terrible. It's important to start here because of the ramifications it poses for my ability to integrate and communicate in Palestine. After being woken up at 4:30 by the call to prayer that is piped out from mosques across the city, I fell back into a partial sleep until I need to get ready for work and catch the shuttle at 7:30. The prayers are quite loud, but it reminds of the Cheney trains, loud and caucophonic, but something that I am sure will soon become background noise to me while living her  I was able this morning to squeak out a few "sabah el kheer's" (good morning) to the individuals on my shuttle as I walked into my office at the university but still felt very foreign and out of place. I spent the first few hours reading  Haaretz.com, a relatively decent Israeli newspaper, and checking my email. I had sent an email to my boss Kherieh asking what I should be doing since I hadn't received an assignment yet, but as of this time have yet to hear back. She is out on maternity leave right now though and my co-workers in the office seemed to have nothing for me to do or little concern with my presence in their space. Eventually I was asked to help the Public Relations office by editing a press release about a recent visit by a Dean from Lancaster and happily obliged. There were few grammatical mistakes, but the wording, while comprehensible was obviously not by that of a native English speaker. The person who came to drop off the press release was a young man named Tariq, a gentle and soft spoken individual who had graduated from the university with a degree in English. I mad minor edits in the whole document, mostly employing my innate thesaurus to replace repetitive terms and slicken up the document. I found one sentence especially challenging though, because while I understood what it meant, the wording was cumbersome and was difficult to re-write. I sat trying multiple versions of phrasing until Tariq suddenly appeared at the office and informed that they needed the document quickly for a presentation that was going to be happening this afternoon in the auditorium. I asked for five more minutes and he complied, during which time I finally decided upon a phrasing that seemed to reflect some of my regular work back in the states. By no means do I consider myself to be a wordsmith, but I do think I have a talent for smoothly transcribing ideas in a way that appeals to readings that really bring out the concept behind the paper. I think it is best described as "schmoozing on paper" and was greatly honed during my work with IFC, the Fraternity, and ASEWU. By no means am I an author but more like the scripting version of a car salesman with morals.


I called Tariq and told that it was done and he came by the office to pick it up and thanked me generously for my help. He seemed like a really nice individual and even invited me to the presentation that was going on that afternoon that I had been preparing the document for, and I happily accepted.  I asked Yesmine, the person I have mostly been interacting with in the department, if I could attend the presentation and she said there was no point since it would be in Arabic and thus dashed my hopes of some form of stimulus in exchange for further office boredom. I really felt like an elementary school child trapped in a classroom who looks out the window longingly on a beautiful spring day. I would just stare out the window at the students sitting and walking all over the campus and so very much desiring to be a part of it all.

Nick came up from his office and was able to convince my co-workers to go with him to the presentation that I had been invited to. It turns out that the woman speaking was one of the few Israeli Arabs (Arabs that live in Israel Proper, not in Palestine) in the Knesset (Israeli legislature). I recommend reading about her here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haneen_Zoabi to get a full picture of who she is. Even though she was speaking in Arabic, I was lucky enough to actually be seated by Tariq, who translated for Nick and I. The Arabic language has this way about it that seems so much more emotive and passionate than any english speaker could ever be. She spoke about the need for Palestinian infighting and gave me a much clearer first hand account of how Arabs and Palestinians view the occupation and how Israel is trying to completely erase the concept of their identity and culture. Villages that had existed for hundreds of years with Arab citizens were being renamed with Hebrew. It demonstrates how Israel truly does not seem interested in peace, but instead the complete eradication of the historical presence of Arabs on the holy land. She spoke of how the Nakba, when Israelis pushed Palestinians off their land and began the greatest diaspora of the modern age,  is no longer taught in Israel. It would be like textbooks in america not mentioning how we took our land from Native Americans or the trail of tears. While it was sad to hear, the way she spoke incited a revolutionary spirit I think in everyone there, inspiring people to struggle, to preserve their culture, to embrace their heritage and never give in to Israeli oppression and occupation. I find that it is hard to talk about the plight of the Palestinians though because it is so complicated and the mass conception is crafted by such powerful rhetoric that now I truly see that you must be here to understand it. I was so thankful to have Tariq there to translate for me and afterwards he told me how much he enjoyed meeting me and that he would like to keep in touch. As soon as I get a phone here I'll have to track him down.