Jessica Kirzner and Daniel Crane partic­i­pated in Encounter in April 2009 during a year of study in Jerusalem; at the time, Daniel was in his first year of Rabbinical School at Hebrew Union College, and Jessica was studying at the Rothberg International School of the Hebrew University while pursing a Ph. D. at Columbia University.  They posted these reflec­tions on their blog, Journaling in Jerusalem.

MONDAY, MAY 4, 2009
Encounter Trip

This past Thursday and Friday, Daniel and I took part in a program through Encounter, an orga­ni­za­tion that brings Diaspora Jewish leaders to meet with and learn from Palestinians. Amidst a group of about 40 rabbinical and canto­rial students and students engaged in other forms of Jewish learning, we trav­eled to Bethlehem (which is located in the West Bank, about 15 minutes from Jerusalem) to listen to speakers, visit sites, and meet Palestinians. Our trip leaders empha­sized that the purpose of the trip was not to provide a neutral perspec­tive but to allow us to hear these perspec­tives, which may not be easy to access from within Israel, and to have this expe­ri­ence. They also empha­sized that what we saw was just a small percentage of what there is to see in the West Bank – we went to no refugee camps and heard from no mili­tants, for instance. Nevertheless, the trip was extremely educa­tional. I have not yet had time to fully process every­thing we saw and expe­ri­enced, and in fact we have a concluding meeting tomorrow night to help us think about how to process these things, but I wanted to share with you some of what we saw and heard. Please bear in mind that much of what I am writing will be from the notes of the presen­ta­tions them­selves, which were not meant to be neutral presen­ta­tions and may contain opin­ions with which I or you disagree (though there will be much in this account that I think we can all agree on, too). I have not double-checked the facts that were presented to me yet, and I am presenting it all as it was told, to the best of my ability. Among the valu­able expe­ri­ences that I won’t have time to write about was the oppor­tu­nity to meet students from many different areas of American Jewish lead­er­ship, an oppor­tu­nity that would have been valu­able even without the rest of the trip but which was made addi­tion­ally powerful because of the circumstances.

The trip began as we drove past the Green line and into the West Bank, to Bethlehem. Bethlehem is a Palestinian city in the West Bank with a popu­la­tion of about 50,000 people. It is in the District of Bethlehem, which includes Beit Jallah, Beit Sachor, and surrounding villages (a popu­la­tion of 170,000). Since 1995 Bethlehem has been governed by the Palestinian National Authority. The main source of income is tourism, both because it is the birth­place of Jesus and because it is the loca­tion of Rachel’s tomb. The popu­la­tion is majority Muslim, but it also is home to one of the largest Palestinian Christian communities.

Our first stop was the Hope Flowers School, a private school devoted to the teaching of peace, democ­racy, and justice. Ghada Issa, the co-director of the school, spoke to us of the school’s history and it’s current situ­a­tion. Daniel and I had med Ghada Issa before, on our IEA encounter, which we blogged about earlier this year. Ghada’s father, Hussein Issa, founded the school. He was born in 1947. In the 1948 war his family lost their land and prop­erty and were evac­u­ated to a refugee camp where they lived in a tent. During this time, Hussein’s mother passed away and he became an orphan. Hussein even­tu­ally went to univer­sity and became a social worker, and in 1984 he started a small kinder­garten because he believed in change through educa­tion with peace and democ­racy as its theme. This, according to Ghada, was quite new for Palestinians. Hussein adopted the notion that conflict cannot be stopped if the educa­tion focuses on retal­i­a­tion, and he wanted to take the kids out of the circle of violence. He began with 22 chil­dren in a rented garage, but this expanded rapidly. In 1989 he turned the kinder­garten into an elemen­tary school. His project was unpop­ular among many, and in the early years fanatics burned the school’s busses and accused Hussein of being a collab­o­rator with the Israelis, which was consid­ered a terrible charge. Teaching with the aim of coex­is­tence was seen as compro­mising the ideals of retal­i­a­tion and return to the land of Palestine. Nowadays the school has gained accep­tance in the commu­nity and the minister of educa­tion accepts and honors the school. The students are Muslim and Christian boys and girls aged 4–13 (grades K-7; they are adding a grade 8 next year). For every program they first train teachers and parents before they begin working with kids, so that the kids will have a home envi­ron­ment that supports the work they are doing in school. Some of their special­ized programs deal with trauma and learning disabil­i­ties, as well as with inter­faith exchange and Hebrew language learning. Students are from the city and greater area of Bethlehem. They follow the same curriculum and text­books as other Palestinian schools, but at areas that empha­size retal­i­a­tion teachers are encour­aged to step out of the text­book and create other learning expe­ri­ences. In addi­tion to the regular curriculum, the school hosts extracur­ric­ular activ­i­ties such as drama and theater, and exchanges with Israeli schools. Their inter­faith programs are both Muslim-Christian and Palestinian-Jewish. They also sponsor two summer camps, one in the UK and one in the US, that bring Israeli, Palestinian and US/UK students together to build friend­ships in more neutral terri­tory. They host inter­na­tional volun­teers to work at the school and bring new perspectives.

Ghada told us that it is very hard to do this work: “We really suffer to imple­ment the programs that we have, espe­cially after the second intifada.” 60% of the kids in the school are from refugee camps surrounding Bethlehem, and do not have a comfort­able home life. The school is located in “area C” in a buffer zone next to new expan­sions of the Jewish settle­ment of Efrat, the Israeli security/separation barrier (the infa­mous wall/fence), and next to a mili­tary guard tower. The Israeli govern­ment has threat­ened to demolish part of the school three times and the school had to summon inter­na­tional support – the demo­li­tion has been put on hold but not cancelled. Because they are in Area C, they don’t have a license to build and the land is controlled by Israelis, which explains the demo­li­tion threats. In 2000–2002 the road to the school was block­aded. Many people inter­vened to help with this including the US consulate, and the block­ages were removed, though the road remains in poor shape. The Israeli mili­tary pres­ence in Bethlehem continues to be disrup­tive to the lives and educa­tion of the kids in the school. Kids have been trau­ma­tized when their homes were searched at night by the Israeli mili­tary. Ghada also described an episode during which students were outside in the school’s yard and when a soldier in a sniper tower started shooting in their direc­tion – presum­ably at a target nearby and not at the school itself. Although no one was injured during this inci­dent, it took a long time for the school commu­nity to recover from it. Economic dete­ri­o­ra­tion after the second intifada led to increased unem­ploy­ment because parents who had previ­ously worked in Israel could no longer cross the border between the West Bank and Israel. The parents stopped being able to pay tuition and the school suffered. Yet, during the second intifada 56% of the schools students suffered from malnu­tri­tion, so the school had to provide addi­tional services and with the help of external grants they were able to provide hot meals for their students. Before the second intifada tuition was enough to pay the oper­a­tional costs of the school but now the school needs addi­tional funding in order to func­tion. Also after the second intifada the number of exchanges went down due to travel restric­tions – the best bet is to find a neutral loca­tion, such as in Britain, the US, or Germany, where students from Bethlehem and Israel can meet. The actual cost of each student is $880 a year, but students pay $250 a year in tuition, which includes text­books, uniforms, and trans­porta­tion. Public schools (those run by the PA and those run by the UN) are free, but the quality of educa­tion is poor and there can be as many as 60 kids in one class­room. The Hope Flowers School has a good rela­tion­ship with other public schools – the ministry of educa­tion gave Hope Flowers a contract to imple­ment a learning needs program in 90 public schools in the West Bank. Graduates of the school come back to the school for extracur­ric­ular activ­i­ties, to use the computer lab and to go to summer camp. They can use any Hope Flowers facil­i­ties for free, and in this way the school stays connected to their alumni. There are currently 350 students enrolled in the school – before the second intifada they had 600 students and imme­di­ately after the intifada the enroll­ment was at 200.

After the presen­ta­tion, we had an oppor­tu­nity to meet some of the kids, and to color with them. Daniel and I sat with some chipper little girls (about 8 or 9 years old) who asked us to do their portraits (which we did rather unsuc­cess­fully) and prac­ticed their English on us. We didn’t have very long with them, but it was nice to have an oppor­tu­nity to meet them regardless.

We then went back on the bus to go on a tour of Bethlehem, led by Sami Awad, the director of the Holy Land Trust, an orga­ni­za­tion devoted to nonvi­o­lent activism. Sami wove his personal narra­tive together with infor­ma­tion about Bethlehem and the Separation Barrier. Sami’s father’s family became refugees in 1948 from Musrara, Jerusalem. His grand­fa­ther was killed while raising a white flag over homes to indi­cate that civil­ians were living on the site of the conflict, and although he was killed his raising the flag allowed his family to be saved. All fami­lies in Musrara were evicted during the war. Sami said that before 1948 there was peace between Jews and non-Jews living in that area – when his father was a child he had Jewish friends. Sami’s father and his family grew up in orphan homes and he was sepa­rated from his mother and siblings. Despite all this, Sami’s grand­mother was devoted to the idea of recon­cil­i­a­tion. Sami’s mother was from a Christian family in the Gaza strip. There are now 2,500 Christians living in Gaza. His mother’s family’s apart­ment building was bombed in the recent conflict and the family was able to escape five minutes before their apart­ment was shelled. Sami himself was born in the US in Kansas city, where his father was teaching. The family returned to Bethlehem when Sami was 6 months old because his father was offered a posi­tion as the prin­cipal of an orphan school in Bethlehem. Sami grew up in Beit Jala, where his daily expe­ri­ence included Israeli soldiers and settlers with guns. He was afraid of these people who mistreated Palestinians and he grew up in hatred and in fear, although he was also influ­enced by his grand­mother, who continued to hold to her values of peace and recon­cil­i­a­tion. He had to learn how to balance these conflicting feel­ings. Sami’s uncle, Mubarak Awad founded the Palestinian Center for the Study of Nonviolence after studying the work of Ghandi and Martin Luther King, Jr. During a time when the PLO lead­er­ship was located outside of Israel his work was accepted by some but rejected by many others. Through his uncle’s work, Sami began to learn how to deal with anger without resorting to violence. In 1987 during the first intifada, Sami’s uncle employed nonvi­o­lent strate­gies – boycotts, protests, civil unrest. In 1988 Sami’s uncle was arrested by Israel and was put on trial. He was deported from the country and is allowed to come back once a year to visit family. He is consid­ered threat­ening because of the power of his nonvi­o­lent tactics. Sami began to study nonvi­o­lence in earnest after his uncle’s depor­ta­tion. He went to Kansas University and majored in polit­ical science, and he earned a Masters in Peace and Conflict Studies from American University. While in Washington, DC he worked with his uncle at his orga­ni­za­tion, Nonviolence International located in DC. After Sami completed his educa­tion, he returned to Bethlehem to found the Holy Land Trust. The Holy Land Trust was founded during the Oslo Peace Process, which was a time of a lot of hope for the end of the conflict, but Sami felt that the process wasn’t helping the Palestinian people, espe­cially because of the nature of settle­ment. The premise of a two-state solu­tion was under­mined as the Israeli govern­ment built settle­ments and moved settlers in order to compli­cate nego­ti­a­tions. There were 200,000 settlers in the West Bank in 1993 and 420,000 in 1999, and there are now over 500,000 settlers in the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and the Gaza Strip. Of these, only East Jerusalem is offi­cially Israeli terri­tory. Sami believes that Palestinians have been margin­al­ized in the peace process.

Sami began by talking about the refugee camps in the Bethlehem area. The camps were estab­lished after the 1948 war and they began as tent dwellings because the people assumed they would return to their homes inside of Israel. The refugees were from the south­west coast and middle areas of Israel, between the West Bank and Gaza. There are 3 refugee camps in the Bethlehem area – the largest holds about 15,000 people, and the smallest holds 1000, which is the smallest refugee camp in the PA. If resi­dents can afford it, they are allowed to move out of the camps. The UN provides food and educa­tion. People stay in the camps for symbolic reasons –they don’t consider them­selves resi­dents of Bethlehem but wish to return inside of Israel and being in a refugee camp means that the issue remains on the table – this is espe­cially true for the older gener­a­tion who lived through the 1948 war. People also stay in the refugee camps because there is a lot of poverty there and with the poor educa­tion they receive it is hard for them to find jobs that will allow them to be in the finan­cial posi­tion to leave the camps. Nevertheless, refugees in the Bethlehem area live a better life than those in Lebanon, where job restric­tions include a list of 40 jobs they can’t have. Unless another solu­tion is provided for them, resi­dents of refugee camps feel that the only answer for them is to return to their pre-1948 homes. At one time there was a 20 meter fence around the camp with only three ways for pedes­trians to go in and out because after the first intifada there was a lot of stone throwing and gunfire on the main road. In 1993 with the Oslo Peace process, the PA gained control of the area and the fence was taken down, in part to discourage Israeli traffic through Bethlehem. According to Sami, the borders of Bethlehem have been redrawn since the 1990’s and they now confine Palestinians to resi­den­tial areas so that the Israelis can build more and so that the fewest number of non-Jews as possible are left within the Jerusalem district. He told us that in 1997 Israeli bull­dozers started uprooting trees in a forest they had prior declared a nature reserve in order that Palestinians would not build there. Bethlehem is surrounded by Jewish settle­ments and confined by walls and fences that prevent farmers from going to their fields, and people from accessing their prop­erty. The barrier consists of concrete walls in resi­den­tial areas and fences moni­tored by watch towers in open areas. In 2002 there was shelling and shooting between Bethlehem/Beit Jallah and Gilo. Militants (Christian and Muslim) came to Beit Jalah to partic­i­pate in the fighting, and many build­ings were shelled by the Israeli tanks and destroyed.

Sami assured us that the nonvi­o­lent move­ment is growing, albeit modestly, among Palestinians. Supporters of nonvi­o­lence confront mili­tants aggres­sively, asking what violence has achieved for the Palestinians – ethics aside. Engaging in violence has not been for liber­a­tion or freedom but for retal­i­a­tion and revenge. They are training mili­tants in nonvi­o­lence so that they will begin to see its value as a strategy.

We went to see the sepa­ra­tion barrier. In Bethlehem, the barrier takes the form of a tall concrete wall. We visited the part of the wall that sepa­rates Bethlehem from the reli­gious site of Rachel’s tomb which has a mosque and a syna­gogue, but from which the Muslim commu­nity is now sepa­rated. Sami said that the sepa­ra­tion wall means that for the first time in history Jerusalem and Bethlehem are sepa­rated from each other. This is a problem for the church, so a gat was built so that once a year, on Easter, the patri­arch of the Greek Orthodox Church can make his annual pilgrimage on the historic route. The gage is also used for the Israeli military.

We made our way slowly around the wall, looking at graf­fiti – some of it quite artistic, and some of it more sloppy. I noticed several crossed-out stars of David, but much of the graf­fiti was not anti-Semitic in nature. Many of the slogans were written in English and they read “when oppres­sion is law resis­tance is duty” “dark­ness cannot drive out dark­ness hate cannot drive out hate” “justice is a collec­tive effort not a gift” “might is not right” “Is it nothing to you all you who pass by?” “Israeli idiots I do not want to feel hate what are you doing to me?” “warning: our dreams blast through this apartheid wall” “Where is the USA’s professed democ­racy now?” as well as pictures of cats, camels, faces, and even menus of nearby restau­rants. One partic­u­larly clever quote read “I want my ball back. Thanks” (I suppose someone was playing a partic­u­larly impres­sive game of base­ball and hit the ball way out of the court…)

One of the most striking things about the wall is that it cuts very closely to the resi­den­tial areas – perhaps this is for secu­rity, or perhaps it is to take land, depending on who you ask. The wall weaves around the homes. One home we passed is surrounded by the wall on three sides. The resi­dents are not allowed to open the shades on their upper floor windows and may not go on their own roof without special permis­sion from the Israeli govern­ment. The house is located on what was once a main street with markets, restau­rants, commerce, and tourism. There are stores and homes on the other side of the wall and the Palestinians who own them cannot access them. Sami told us about the economic impact of the wall – it has resulted in the loss of agri­cul­tural land that is now being taken by settle­ments, a loss of tourism, and a loss of move­ment of people and prod­ucts between Gaza and the West Bank.

Sami told us that many Palestinains continue to believe that the way to end the conflict is through violent resistence, and they honor peple who were killed by cele­brating them as martyrs. Sami feels that “It is up to us to do the things that do not allow the Israeli govern­ment to justify why they need to build the wall [ie. stop violence so that secu­rity won’t be a concern] Nonviolence is not just an answer for me, it is the answer.” Sami feels that the Israeli commu­nity will be able to defeat the extremist views in their own society if the Palestinians do the same. Thus, Sami’s nonvi­o­lent resis­tance is not only for the Palestinian commu­nity but for the sake of Israelis as well. He wants Palestinians to remove them­selves from a pattern of blaming and complaining and victim­iza­tion and to get out of their homes and engage in actions with the inten­tion of healing. He acknowl­edges that trauma also exists within the Israeli Jewish commu­nity. The Palestinians feel that they are the victims and want pity from the world for it, but Sami feels that Israelis have a rhetoric of fear because of the Holocaust and that both groups are victims and should stop seeking pity and start seeking healing for them­selves and for each other.

After lunch and mincha services, we heard from George Saadah, Deputy Mayor of Bethlehem, prin­cipal of the Greek Shepherd’s School and member of the Bereaved Families Forum and from Salah Ajarma, the Directorof the Lajee Center in Aida Refugee Camp.

Salah Ajarma is a Palestinian refugee from the village of Ajur and has lived his entire life in Aida Refugee Camp near Bethlehem. When he was 14 years old, Salah was arrested by the Israeli author­i­ties for the first time and spent two years in Israeli jail. Afterwards, Salah helped estab­lish the Palestinian Students Union in the Bethlehem area and across the West Bank. He grad­u­ated from the Future College in Ramallah in 1992 with advanced degrees in jour­nalism and media, and has exten­sive media and jour­nalism expe­ri­ence with orga­ni­za­tions throughout the West Bank. From 1995 to 1998, Salah was the Manager of the Palestinian Prisoners Society for the West Bank. He was also in the Fateh Youth Organization, and repre­sented it inter­na­tion­ally on several occa­sions. While working as a free­lance jour­nalist in 2002, Sallah sought refuge with other civil­ians in the Church of the Nativity and for the following 40 days he was one of the 220 people inside the Church during the “Seige of the Nativity.” He is now the Director of the Lajee Center in Aida Refugee Camp.

The Aida Refugee camp holds people from 27 villages, more than 2000 chil­dren and more than six million Palestinians live in refugee camps. The Lajee Center is devoted to changing life in refugee camps and focuses on what is needed for the next gener­a­tion. The camp is crowded and there are two schools with 900 students in the girl school and 700 students in the boy school and not enough room for all of them. The commu­nity center orga­nizes art and music activ­i­ties, picnics, libraries, computers, dance ‚etc. Many chil­dren other­wise wouldn’t have oppor­tu­ni­ties for orga­nized recre­ation. The orga­ni­za­tion was begun in 2000 and more than a hundred inter­na­tional volun­teers have come to work in the center since then, some of whom have been American Jews. Last year the center hosted four American Jews and it was the first time that kids in the camp had met Jews who weren’t soldiers, “They taught the kids that there were good people who are Jewish.” After the second intifada, people in the camps felt less safe because soldiers come into the camp and the camp is surrounded by a wall. The soldiers search the camps from house to house. 27 people were killed by soldiers in the camp. The camp is a closed mili­tary area. Salah feels that he wants to empower young people in the camp to decide about their own future. They believe in Palestinian rights, International rights, and human rights: “Justice is for everyone and there is no peace without justice.” Salah described an inci­dent during which there was a shooting in the camp. For two hours the kids were hiding, and two chil­dren were injured in the street. He also told of a time when a woman knew that her house was going to be searched and as she went to open the door to her home the soldiers bombed the door down and she was injured. Her chil­dren asked the soldier to help the mother because she is not a terrorist and they told the chil­dren that because she had five chil­dren who could grow up to be a terrorist, the woman was a threat. So, the chil­dren want to have a good future but under the occu­pa­tion it is diffi­cult. It’s been quiet since 2002, and no Israeli soldier has been injured in the camp, but more than 2000 Palestinians have been in Israeli jail since 2002 and many have been killed. Salah said, “We don’t feel that the Israeli govern­ment wants peace between us, but when you build people it is between the people and not the govern­ments.” And so he continues to believe that peace is possible.

Salah also spoke a bit about his expe­ri­ences in an Israeli jail. He said it is hard to be active and develop commu­ni­ties when so many young people are sent to jail. Sometimes when they stay in jail they develop rela­tion­ships with soldiers and talk about peace, and some­times the jail can be like a univer­sity and people learn a lot there. Nevertheless jail is a big problem and the number of young people who are sent to jail is an indi­cator that Israelis aren’t serious about peace.
Salah crit­i­cized Israel saying that all funding in Israel is for secu­rity for the Israelis without caring about the Palestinians. The PA are like guards for the Israelis and also don’t care about the Palestinians. People are frus­trated with both governments.

Salah said that he would accept a one state solu­tion because he does not believe that a two state solu­tion is the answer any longer. He said that he knows that people can live together – for instance there are people of many different back­grounds living in New York City and they do so peace­fully. The problem has to do with land and settle­ment. In Haifa people of different back­grounds live together. According to Salah the people who make the prob­lems are the Israeli lead­er­ship. A one state solu­tion could solve all of the prob­lems – the Palestinians could return to their orig­inal homes if they want to, the settlers can stay where they are, and everyone can learn to live together. He gave an example of the kind of social injus­tice that is common­place in his life – water restric­tions are severe in Bethlehem – people get water once a week in the summer and it is expen­sive. It is much less expen­sive for the settlers, who have constant access to water.

Salah addressed the ques­tion of the media, saying that the Israelis are very rich and can play with the media so that it supports their views. Palestinians are afraid to talk to the media because they might be put on an Israeli secu­rity list and be forbidden from visiting Jerusalem. This seemed an inter­esting perspec­tive as many Israelis feel that the media is slanted in the oppo­site direction.

George Saadah, the Deputy Mayor of Bethelehem, began by telling us about his respon­si­bil­i­ties as Deputy Mayor – he manages city infra­struc­ture, build­ings, roads, and is currently preparing for the Pope’s visit in May. He was born in Bethlehem as were gener­a­tions of his family before him. Because Bethlehem is the Christian capital of the world, 60 cities have adopted it as a twin city. Its economic income is from tourism, industry (esp textiles) and lime­stone (“Jerusalem stone”). George told us that since 2000 the polit­ical improve­ments that began with the Oslo accords stopped. George has also been the prin­cipal of the Greek Shepherd’s School for ten years and encour­ages students to talk about achieving justice through democ­racy, human rights, and dialogue with others.

George was born during the Jordanian occu­pa­tion in Bethlehem and grew up there. He grad­u­ated from USC-LA as an aero­space engi­neer and came back to Bethlehem in 1984 but couldn’t find work in his field of study although he had expe­ri­ence working for the USAF and NASA. He worked with heating and air condi­tioning before becoming a computer teacher, and then a prin­cipal. He was married in 1996 and had two daugh­ters. In 2003 he was driving with his wife and two daugh­ters, when he saw three army vehi­cles parked by the road, but didn’t see any soldiers, so he kept driving. As he was driving, the soldiers shot more than 300 bullets at his car. He was shot with nine bullets, one of his daugh­ters, Marianne, was shot in the knee, and the other, Christine, was killed. She was the 404th child that was killed that year. The army blocked the area and prevented the Palestinain ambu­lance from coming. Magen David Adom came ten minutes later. He later learned that the Israeli forces had been ambushing three suspects and George’s family had simply been caught in the fire. Shortly after the event, the Bereaved Families Forum called George and asked him to meet with them. Eventually he agreed and met them at a restau­rant. They were a group of Israeli Jews and Palestinians who had lost their chil­dren in the conflict. They shared their stories and they continue to share their grief together and come to terms with it and work to live together under justice. George described the Bereaved Families Forum as a group of people who support one another because they feel grief together, “We know what’s ruined our lives…we reach a point where we are forgiving.”

George feels adamantly that the wall won’t bring secu­rity for Israel or stop any action against Israel. The solu­tion is to have peace, which means ending the occu­pa­tion in order to build a secure future for everyone. It’s no good to build a wall and be surrounded by enemies – better to build bridges and be surrounded by friends because walls won’t bring secu­rity, peace will. Building a wall means that Palestinians are all in a prison – an open prison from which they can’t leave without a permit. George feels that the solu­tion is in the hands of the Israeli govern­ment. They have the power to make a secure state for Jews by making friends instead of enemies. They are strong and have an army and planes and Palestine doesn’t have this. The Palestinians will recog­nize Israel if Israel will give them a state. The Palestinians would agree on many things but Israel keeps putting up obsta­cles because they want the whole area – a two state solu­tion is the only solu­tion and not following it only hurts Israelis too. When asked if he would agree with a one state solu­tion, George said, “We don’t mind to have one state. We don’t mind to have two states. We want a solution.”

George agreed with Salah with regard to the media – “The media outside is controlled by Israel and biased toward Israel because it is Western.” When an Israeli is killed it is all over the news, but not so for the Palestinians. Lately the media, with internet tech­nolo­gies, has begun receiving these mate­rials and it is getting better. Many people are learning what is happening here and changing their ideas. But before it was impos­sible to crit­i­cize Israel in the Western media.

After we heard from George and Salah, we went into small groups to process together what we had heard. Many people were struck by the conflicting narra­tives and oppo­site­ness and simi­larity of the Israeli and Palestinian narra­tives of victim­iza­tion and a sense that everyone is against them. Many of us were also struck by the wall and its effect on the society.

In our small groups we were joined by some Palestinians for a poetry work­shop where we wrote in our respec­tive languages poems that were about our homes and wove them together. This activity was a bit too much like middle school for me, but I think some groups felt more posi­tively about it.

We went to dinner with all of the host fami­lies at a restau­rant deco­rated like a tent. We sat with our host family, whose names were some­thing like Rudaya, Jerais, and Yusra, as well as Rudaya’s sister and her husband, and a few other students. The family was warm and eager to talk with us. The dinner ended with dancing and drum­ming, all together. Two two-year old Palestinian kids were dancing together and it was adorable.

Then we left the group to go with our host family for the night – our host family is Palestinian Christian and stems from Beit Sachor (next to Bethlehem) where they still live. Daniel and I climbed in to the back of their beat-up old car while they sat in the front with Yusra on their lap. There were no seat­belts. We drove a short distance to Rudaya’s family’s home in Beit Sachor so that we could spend the evening with her parents. When we arrived we were greeted by Rudaya’s youngest sister, who is 22, and invited into the beau­tiful home. The kitchen was huge and the living room expan­sive with two sets of couches for greeting guests. Rudaya gave us a tour of some of the pictures on the wall – the walls were covered with beau­tiful portraits of family weddings, baptisms, and other events. On one wall there was a picture of Rudaya’s grand­fa­ther, father, and a cousin who fell in the 1967 war, fighting on the Jordanian side. In addi­tion to the beau­tiful portraits, there were many pieces of artwork, including carpentry work that Rudaya’s father did himself, a beau­tiful chan­de­lier, and a giant metal picture of Jesus which lit up when switched on. Jerais also works with wood – he makes olive wood hand­i­crafts which are sold to tourists – so it is a little funny that we met two carpen­ters in Bethlehem of all places. Rudaya is a primary school English teacher. As we were in the home, we met first Rudaya’s father, who was already dressed in his silk patterned pajamas, her sister and brother, another brother and his wife and three chil­dren, and her mother – it was a family reunion involving a lot of hugging and affec­tion, tea, coffee, and sunflower seeds, and conver­sa­tion. One family member spoke Hebrew and several others knew English, so Nessa, Shelley, (the girls from our group who were staying with Rudaya’s sister) Daniel and I, spoke in some mixture of Hebrew and English as jokes in Arabic flew over our heads and danced around the room. They asked us about life in America as a Jew, and we talked about American movies, and about living in Bethlehem. They talked about travel restric­tions and how diffi­cult it is to get into Jerusalem from here, about a Syrian-Jewish friend who lives in Jerusalem that they seem very proud to be close to, as well as about their work and everyday lives. When we asked Rudaya’s father about the oud that was sitting next to the couch, he took it out for us and played exquis­itely. Finally, late at night, we left Rudaya’s parents’ home and went to her home, which was also spacious and beau­tiful, and covered with portraits on the walls. It was immac­u­lately clean, too. We sat and talked for a short while before going to bed. In the morning we woke up to eggs, pita, spreads, and date-filled cake for break­fast, and Jerais drove us back to the hotel where we were to meet our group, with many encour­age­ments that we should come back again to visit and that we were welcome in their home.

At the hotel some partic­i­pants had already gath­ered earlier to pray shacharit. We joined them in a confer­ence room where we took a little time to share our expe­ri­ences from our home stay. Daniel and I said a few words about the fun we had at Rudaya’s parents’ house, and others told similar stories. It seems that the general sense of these stories was that the fami­lies we stayed with were nice, they were open and modern and well-off, but they also faced hard­ships in living in the West Bank – restric­tion of move­ment, confis­ca­tion of prop­erty, mili­tary pres­ence, etc. One family told a story of a teenage boy who was shot in the leg by a soldier who thought his car was suspi­cious. The ambu­lance took a long time to come, and the boy told a partic­i­pant of our program that he believes it took such a long time because the soldiers wanted him to die. Whether that was the case or not, I think it is pretty remark­able that someone who believes the Israelis want him to die is willing to open his home to Jewish Americans. Though one Encounter partic­i­pant heard from her host family, “I don’t hate Jews, I hate Israelis.” It seemed to me though that most of the host fami­lies, who host Encounter students several times a year, do it because they have a desire to tell their stories, because they think meeting us is a step toward peace, and because they believe in encoun­tering people who have access to insti­tu­tions that can imple­ment change. Having met with them, perhaps our respon­si­bility to work toward change is made more concrete.

Our next presen­ta­tion was of a polit­ical nature. We heard from Hamed Qawasmeh from the UN Office for Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. Before I begin relating the infor­ma­tion we heard from him, I would like to note that his was the presen­ta­tion with which most partic­i­pants felt most uncom­fort­able, and the views I am about to relate do not repre­sent my own views on the situ­a­tion. His presen­ta­tion focused on the situ­a­tion in the West Bank. In 2007, the Palestinian Territories had a poverty rate of 57.2% (45% in the West Bank and 79.4% in Gaza). In 2001 the rate was 35.5%. In 2008 22.6% of people in the Palestinian Territories were unem­ployed (19% in the West Bank and 29.8% in Gaza. The West Bank has a popu­la­tion of 2,444,500, while the 149 Israeli settle­ments bring the Israeli popu­la­tion of the West Bank to 450,000. The West Bank is 5,600 square kilo­me­ters. (for more statis­tics you can go here, here, or here or from a Palestinian perspec­tive look here)

There are many imped­i­ments to move­ment for resi­dents of the West Bank. They include check­points, trenches dug into road (espe­cially around Jericho), road gates and road blocks, earth mounds (sand and rocks in the road, mostly near Hebron), and road barriers. Today there are 630 total closures, in 2005 there were 376. There has been a 59% increase in closures since the Access Monitoring Agreement was signed, and a massive increase in settle­ment since the Annapolis Conference . With regard to the barrier, Hamed believes that Palestinians oppose the route of the barrier more than the barrier itself. About 35,000 Palestinians will be caught on the “wrong side” of the barrier – the barrier goes into the West Bank to capture Israeli settle­ments on the Israeli side of the barrier and in so leaves many West Bank resi­dents on the Israel side of the barrier. Hamed projects that soon a series of tunnels will sepa­rate Palestinian move­ment from Israeli move­ment, further entrenching and insti­tu­tion­al­izing the limited move­ment of Palestinians. He believes that the frag­men­ta­tion for the West Bank due to closures, nature reserves, settle­ments, Israeli mili­tary areas, and the sepa­ra­tion barrier are decreasing the tenability of a viable two state solu­tion. All of these measures are becoming insti­tu­tion­al­ized and as time goes by and things continue to change toward more settle­ment and restric­tions, Hamed believes that these measures are getting close to being irre­versible. Nevertheless, there is a sense that pulling out settle­ments could cause the same secu­rity prob­lems that it did a few years ago with Gaza.

One point Hamed empha­sized was that any two-state solu­tion would have to give the Jordan Valley to the Palestinians. It is the bread basket of the West Bank and a central part of a viable Palestinian state, but much of it is currently a mili­tary closed area.

According to the UN, all settle­ments are illegal, as they consti­tute the transfer of a popu­la­tion by an occu­pier into an occu­pied land, which is illegal according to the Genevas conven­tion – what’s debat­able here is the status of “occu­pa­tion” and whether it applies in this case. Hamed made it very clear that the UN does not seek to be a neutral force in this issue. They consider Israel to be an occu­pier during an occu­pa­tion that is becoming increas­ingly perma­nent, and the UN is here to protect the rights of the occu­pied. Hamed cited UN Resolutions 338, 242, and 194 to support this statement.

Hamed’s presen­ta­tion involved a lot of maps layering different statis­tics with regard to barriers to move­ment and to popu­la­tion and settle­ments. You can get a taste of it here.

After we heard this presen­ta­tion, we took a bus to the Tent of Nations, an orga­ni­za­tion that hopes to be a meeting ground for people of different back­grounds and perspec­tives. It is located in Area C, near the Palestinian Village of Nahaleen and surrounded by three Israeli settle­ments. Daher Nassar purchased the land in 1924 and he planted, culti­vated and produced olives, grapes, and figs. His family lived in caves. Daher had ten chil­dren. 30 years ago Daher passed away and the family continued living here and opened the place for anyone to come, meet, and be in nature. In 1991 the land was under the threat of confis­ca­tion and even now it is being consid­ered by the Supreme Court. They have docu­ments from the Ottoman, English, and Jordanian periods illus­trating their owner­ship of the land. They have expe­ri­enced some diffi­cul­ties from road blocks which make it hard to trans­port goods, and they also don’t have permits to allow them to have elec­tricity or running water – instead they collect rain­water in cisterns and have elec­tricity for two hours a day from a gener­ator. They don’t have permits for new build­ings, and if they do not culti­vate the land it will become state prop­erty. Ten years ago they estab­lished the Tent of Nations to build bridges between people. International and local visi­tors come to the Tent of Nations and they include long term and short term volun­teers, groups of students who stay on camp grounds, summer camps for Muslims and Christians, and local and inter­na­tional exchange programs. There is a women’s program that serves the Nahaleen commu­nity – women can come for free educa­tion. Nahaleen is very conser­v­a­tive and women are taken out of school at a young age, so the Tent of Nations opened the center for women to take English, computers, and health educa­tion as well as to socialize and to make and sell hand­i­crafts. The family that owns the Tent of Nations is Christian and their rela­tion­ship to women is more western/liberal than that of the resi­dents of Nahaleen. The women’s program began four years ago and in the begin­ning men in Nahaleen were very opposed to this but after a year the commu­nity began to support it and now even the men are calling to register their wives to come to classes – which is bitter­sweet because the program has more support from the commu­nity but the men aren’t allowing women to take the initia­tive to choose to come to the classes or not on their own will. As we were taking a tour of the Tent of Nations, we were told that a long time ago settlers from the Israeli settle­ment of Newe Daniel came to the Tent of Nations and uprooted trees and destroyed water cisterns. A British Jewish orga­ni­za­tion sent volun­teers to replant the trees. More recently, the Tent of Nations has had good rela­tions with Newe Daniel and have devel­oped a friend­ship with a couple who lives there and hope that the couple will be their advo­cates in Newe Daniel. In addi­tion to the peace work that happens at the Tent of Nations it is also an organic self-sufficient, envi­ron­men­tally conscious working farm that gets revenue from selling is agri­cul­tural prod­ucts. After the sepa­ra­tion barrier is complete the Tent of Nations will be cut off from Bethlehem (which is 10 minutes away) and it would take more than three hours to get there. This will make it hard to bring goods, machines, etc. and to find markets for the produce of the farm. They are trying to find inter­na­tional markets for their prod­ucts, and next year some friends in Germany are donating wind­mills and solar panels to help the farm with more elec­tricity. In the mean­time, the settle­ments that surround the farm are growing and seem to be aimed at connecting together and perhaps even­tu­ally taking over the land where the Tent of Nations is now located.

After lunch at the Tent of Nations, we went home to Jerusalem via check point 300, the check point specif­i­cally desig­nated for Palestinians. Palestinians may not drive their own vehi­cles through the check­point, so they take taxis to the check point, walk through, and take taxis on the other side. The check point feels like a inter­na­tional border crossing – it is a large struc­ture with metal fixtures outlining where we should stand in line, put our bags through x-rays, etc. We came at a time when it wasn’t very busy but we’ve heard that there can be tremen­dously long lines to get through. As we were going through secu­rity the soldiers gave us a hard time, telling us that we shouldn’t have gone to Bethlehem because it is dangerous.

We returned to Jerusalem and debriefed a little – we also had a Sunday night closing session in which we took some time to process what we’d seen and heard and talked about possible next steps. What’s striking to me about all of this is that it is really around the corner from where I live – it took almost no time to get back from the check point to Independence Park in Jerusalem. There’s a lot I don’t know about all of this and I defi­nitely need to learn more (and will accept book recom­men­da­tions!), and I recog­nize that what we saw was only a very small part of all that there is to see, but I am very glad to have gone on the trip.