Communication

One of the biggest struggles that I have had here is communication. Sometimes it's language, like when people follow a sentence of mine with "Okay" and nothing else, a sign that is usually used by native English speakers to indicate the conversation is over. Sometimes it's cultural, like when I am standing near Zoughbi waiting for him to be done a conversation - a clear sign to me that I need to talk to him - only to have him finish one conversation and walk right by me (I'm assume that he thinks that I'm just hanging around being relational with people). Sometimes it's a little more complicated. Yesterday and today is a good example of that.

To help you understand this scene I need to go back a few days. One day I was in the office when one of the staff asked if I was going to Jericho. I had heard about the trip a while ago but had forgot about it. I went to the guy that was organizing the trip and asked him about it. I quickly realized that something was wrong and excused myself from the conversation. I then was taken off to the side by the first coworker and told not to tell people that I heard about the trip from him. There are two ways to take this information. First, I accidentally went through the wrong channels. I should have asked Zoughbi first and then went to the staff who was organizing the trip. This is a mistake that I have made before. The culture of the office is very similar to clan society: any significant conversations need to happen with the head first. Second, I was not supposed to know about the trip at all. I went with this option, because I figured it was safest. I also knew that it was Wi'am's womens group that would be going, and while I have traveled with them before this was going to be a multiday retreat. I decided not to talk to Zoughbi about it, in case that might get the first coworker in trouble, and the topic never came up again.

That conversation happened sometime last week. I showed up to work on Monday and quickly realized that the trip was that day. The strange thing was that when I saw these two coworkers and Zoughbi, they all asked if I was going on the trip. When I said no, they said "that's too bad." This was a little frustrating. It was now that I realized that the office was going to be mostly empty for the day, because almost everyone else went on the retreat. I worked until lunch on an assignment that I did not understand, but had no one that I could talk to about it.

At lunch time Zoughbi showed up. He asked me if I wanted to go swimming in the afternoon. I said yes, and started to pack my things because we were leaving "in 5 minutes." Twenty minutes later we were driving home. We got home and I asked if I had enough time to eat lunch. I was then told that we would be only leaving at 8pm. I went home and ate some lunch and at 1:30 I was told that we would be leaving in an hour. At 2:30 we went to Jericho, by taxi - luckily I had brought some money - and arrived at the same retreat that the rest of Wi'am was at. I ended up swimming in the pool at the retreat hotel.

The story continues in the morning, when on Tuesday I was told to meet Zoughbi at 8am. When I arrived at 8:05 he looked up from his work and said, "O you are awake."

This story is not indicative of my overall experience here, but it is a condensed highlight of the biggest issue that I have faced here. It has been frustrating but I hope that this story is illuminating, not ranting.

Week Seven Review

The lack of posts this week has been more due to my fear of not attending social gatherings than anything else. A lot of things have been continuing to happen and I fear that missing out would be more than just a lost opportunity, but a slight to the invitee. I plan on posting a few more than none this week. As long as I don't accidentally eat peanuts again...

On Saturday after returning from a game of wheelchair basketball, we decided to stop for some ice cream. Asking for a sample of one flavour and deciding he liked it, my friend handed it to me to try. It was only after I bit through the first peanut that I realized this might not have been the best idea. In the end, I didn't die. Nor did I use any preventative measures. Maybe my parents have been hiding this secret from me, to keep down my access to low cost protein. I plan on testing this hypothesis soon by trying to eat my way out of a collapsing tunnel of peanut butter.

Wheel chair basketball was really great. One of our Palestinian friends coaches a team and he showed us the basics. We played four on four for about two hours and scored four baskets combined. We sucked. But it was tons of fun!

Before that, on Friday, we went to a Palestinian home in the mountain to help out and get a good meal. We worked to clear away grass and weeds from the trees before digging small troughs to catch the water. It was a full day that included home-made fruit leather, a fantastic meal, some cards (with commercial break that included getting water dumped on my head), stories about Bethlehem, poor theological arguments and some tank shell casings that we left from the last invasion.

Sunday involved going into Jerusalem to visit the Holocaust Museum. We left at 12:30pm and arrived there at 3:30pm, including a 40 minute wait at the walking checkpoint. We only had an hour and a half to explore but it was still a very powerful experience. I did not know that Warsaw was such a major point of Jewish deaths in the holocaust. At one point there was a man beside me in his soldier uniform, who could not have been older than 20. As we both looked at an emotionally-capturing recreation of the Warsaw ghetto, he started to cry.

This short line took us 40 minutes, on a Sunday. I have
heard that the waits can be two to three hours. 

Week Six Review (2 days late)

Even though I have posted my weekly updates on Wednesday instead of Monday for the last two weeks, does not mean anything more than maybe I am trying to get an extra two days out of my trip. It also might have to do with the fact that Monday afternoon was spent playing soccer outside with kids in the heat: without a hat, sunscreen or water. The resulting bout of minor heat exhaustion (not heat stroke) caused me to go home and sleep for half a day. I am now recharged, rehydrated and ready to review the week...

Things at home have gotten a lot more active. With the arrival of Zoughbi's three sons and wife, the relatives have been stopping by quite often. This has resulted in a revival of the basketball hoop out back and the learning of a number of Palestinian games. My favourite is called Tap. It's like 21 except that anyone can go for any rebound and if you catch and shoot the ball without touching the ground, the other team goes back down to zero. We've played it with two or three teams of two.

As my experience on Monday dictates, the heat has started to become a bit of an issue. It is currently 32*C at 4:10pm. It is common for the temperature to reach 30 degrees before 10am. Luckily most of the buildings are made of stone, which takes a long time to absorb the heat. The interesting part is that some of the evenings have been quite cold. Last week I actually woke up and had to throw on pajama pants.

I've been drinking a lot of Coca-Cola since I've been here, mostly because we have a two liter bottle everyday for lunch. Now Coke has a lot to answer for in the allegations against it, but it holds a unique place in Palestine as it has an important factory in Ramallah. I have heard it said that drinking Coke in Palestine is like "drinking the revolution." Revolution tastes much better too, because it uses real cane sugar instead of corn syrup.

A walk in the park

As much as at home as in Palsetine, I often find myself participating in things that I have no idea about. Despite the fact that I am unaware of where I am going or what I am doing, I generally find a way to go along with it for a good time. This happened this morning.

I was told that there was a trip. I was originally told that the trip was on the 27th, then on Sunday, then Saturday. On Friday afternoon I got a call from Saleba, that I did not understand at all. After asking him to repeat himself four times, I just decided to say thank you and pretend I understood what he was saying. Luckily, he also called some other people and everything worked out fine. Because of this though, when we met for the bus in the morning, I had no idea where we were going or doing. Originally I thought we were going to Jericho, then Ramallah.

The bus showed up with a lot of kids on it. 40-50 of them, all between the ages of 7 and 15. It turns out that we were joining the Scouts on a trip. Myself, the Americans and a few of our Palestinian friends quickly formed the Blue Monkeys troop and stepped onto the bus. On the way there I tried some of my limited Arabic with the children and we told riddles. I pulled out my favourite one: a dead man in the desert beside a rock. Luckily my Palestinian friend knew it already so he could field the questions. I actually understood some of their questions. I now know enough Arabic to confuse young children.

We eventually got to our destination, where we were dropped off by the bus before it immediately drove away. We were in the middle of the desert. But it turned out okay. After a short walk down a hill we arrived to a natural river. It was really cool because we were surrounded by barren landscape expect for this strip of rich vegetation:

The view from where we were dropped off

Lagging behind with Jad and other friends

Noticing a signed that said "Do not drink" I asked my friend
if it was serious. He said no. He also told me he was joking after
I finished. Looking forward to Palestinian Beaver Fever. 

I tried to catch some of these fish but they were too quick for me

One really cool thing that I learned during this trip: during certain times of year, water will actually flow out of many points of the mountain. Apparently it looks like the rocks are actually seeping water. When I thought of the Moses story, I always thought of a medium rock - something comfortable to sit on - not a mountain. Now, after seeing these mountains and this stream that seems to come from no where, it makes the miracle much more believable without reducing the wonder.

Another interesting part of the trip was that even though this area was in the West Bank, there were a number of Israelis. I made a point of trying to say hi to all of them (even the naked guy in the pool) and most of them said hi back to me, but I didn't have any chance for conversation. It is interesting that these people seemingly do not conform to the amount of fear they are supposed to have from their Arab neighbours. It is also interesting that this is a place where Palestinian and Israeli citizens could officially or unofficially meet each other. I did not think that there was such a place outside of the peace process or civil society.

Another way to monitor

This is mostly for my parents, but if any of the rest of you cannot get enough of what I am doing and threaten to write me emails if I don't have online activity every few days...well now you can keep on eye on the Wi'am facebook page. I have been told that on top of being the new photographer, I am also supposed to upload as many pictures as I can. Basically, that is another area that you can see pictures and get limited glimpses of what Wi'am is doing.

Also, I love you Mom.

Week Five Review (2 days late)

Since moving in with the Americans, it has been a busy couple of days. Combine that with the less than stellar internet in the new apartment and it combines to only two posts in the last week. Even now the internet is not as good at work and considering that I have two people sitting behind me, I feel a lot more self conscious about blogging in the middle of the work day. But because they're in a meeting right now...

I made two mistakes. The American students are actually from Goshen college, you know the one that has decided to stop playing the National Anthem. Also, Zoughbi has three sons.

My favourite memory from this last week was when I was in a northern city called Nablus. I was walking around the market with a friend of mine from work. Behind me, a guy on a bicycle was trying to get past me. He said some things in Arabic but I did not understand. My friend moved me out of the way, but as the biker passed, he asked my friend if I was French, in a not too polite way. (This was all in Arabic and later translated to me). My friend said no, he is a Palestinian like me.

On Friday night I went to a concert for a band called CultureSHOC. It was pretty interesting and I liked the music. They played a lot of their own stuff but also "Pump It" and "Sweat Dreams." The strangest part was immediately after the show, when the entire theater cleared out in a about 30 seconds. There was no call for an encore and even the band was gone. When I turned around from chatting with the people I came with the place was empty. The lobby was also desolate when we got out there. Apparently this is a very common cultural response.

This last week has been an interesting one at work. It started by struggling to find meaningful things to do, to sending hundreds of emails a day. I am currently working on sending Wi'am's biannual newsletter to all of their contacts. I can send it to 100 people at a time and the sever can only handle a certian number of emails per day. I am on day 4 now, averaging 15 emails a day (1500 people). I am at the Ds.

On the weekend I went to the Bethlehem Nativity Meuseam. They have hundreds of nativity scenes from all over the world. These were my favourites:

I have been unofficially named Wi'am photographer. This will come as a surprise to most people who have seen my work. I would say that this is an indictment of Wi'am lack of choice, rather than their ability to assess talent. Maybe they saw this photo though:

The other day we had a small conference on Palestinian nonviolence. I spent some time looking around the internet afterwards and found these two articles. After I read them I spent some time reading the comments posted, followed by the blogs and articles that those comments linked to. I am feelings physically distraught now. Partially because of the hate, but also because of the sound religious and political arguments that are so convincing. I do not want to become someone who denounces arguments without facts, but I am exceedingly frightened by the results of these arguments. They are based upon setting up two sides and creating self sustaining arguments about the other side. Part of what is making me so sick is that I am reading a parallel story about the Boston Bruins and Vancouver Canucks in the Stanley Cup playoffs. (I suggest you check out the articles titled "On Stanley Cup Final coverage and the problem of bias" and "Irresponsible coverage leads to irresponsible fan behaviour" at PiTB if you don't know what I'm talking about). Hockey is a competitive game and people want their team to win, but it is not the same as fighting over land and resources, survival and oppression. But in both cases people are demonizing each other and misquoting the opposition to gain an edge. If the Cancuks and Bruins were locked in a conflict where people were dying, now much louder would the hysteria be? Are we only one good news story away from hate?

I need to stop reading internet comments.

Some partially thought out thoughts on Israel/Palestine

Before I came here, I honestly did not know much about the conflict. I thought that I knew the basic facts, but it turns out that I was wrong about that too. This post is a number of things that I have found extremely helpful to think about while I have been here, sprinkled with a bit of my opinion about them. I hope it is helpful to others like myself, who balance their concern with their ignorance.

One of the most important things to notice, is the way that some of the key questions of Israel/Palestine are phrased. The debate is often guided and maintained in two separate spheres: moral and political/legal. I question such as, "Is Israel justified in using force to defend itself?" is a moral question. The question, "Does Palestine exist?" is a legal one. Now this may not be a significant issue to many people, we are very comfortable with our tendency to separate things into the specific area of knowledge but I want to explore these two questions within and outside the frameworks we commonly give them.
Let look at the first. To start, the answer is that yes, Israel is morally allowed to defend itself with force. It has a right to defend itself, specifically its innocent citizens, against any type of attack. All nations do. I would like to bring up two points. One, the question "Does Palestine have a moral right to use terrorism (specifically targeting civilian populations) to defend itself?" It is strange that this question never gets asked, at least in the West. It is also strange that one is self-evident while to suggest the other is foolish. Many reasonable people note that the conflict is dynamic and complicated and that there is no clear aggressor. Then why is one side have a disproportional amount of deaths? It is clear that there is a disproportional amount of power. If it was true that Palestinians wanted to, and had the power to "push the Jews into the sea" would Israel be morally justified in using a nuclear weapon to defend itself? What about if the question of defence is put into legal terms. Well that is much easier. The UN has routinely condemned the occupation of the West Bank, Gaza and the building of the separation wall. Palestinians, like all countries, are also legally entitled to defend themselves with armed resistance from a colonial power.
What about the second question. It also has an easy answer. The answer is no, Palestine does not exist. It has never legally been a country. It has never had sovereignty. It even rejected UN Resolution 181. The problem with this answer though is that it is quickly translated into two things. That there never was a Palestine and that there is no such thing as Palestinians. Both of these statements are false. The only difference between the truth and the lies is power. Palestine is not a country because it is not recognized by people of power. Did you know that the land of Palestine was given to the British after WWI to help run the country? Did you also know that while the areas of present day Jordan, the creation of Israel is based on a document called the British Mandate, The reason that Palestine is not sovereign is because they have not been recognized by the UN. A good way to look at Palestine and Palestinians is to compare them to Indigenous people of North America. It is true that they never had a sovereign nation, but they were a people who lived on the land long before an outside colonizer arrived. Considering that most of the people reading this are probably from North America, I hope that I do not need to spell out the moral catastrophe of European colonialisers dealing with indigenous people.

It is very interesting to equate Indigenous people with Palestinian people. One of the common arguments that I have come across is: "Why should Israeli go back to the 1967 boarders, they won the territory fair and square in the war?" This is often followed up with: "Should the Americans give back their territory to the British?" No, they should give it back to the Native Americans. This is a very simple but powerful argument. Because if we dare to argue against it, we must also accept the normative power that we have placed on violence and war to shape our own countries. Do we dare to support the indigenous Palestinian population, and fear the repercussions of our own indigenous populations crying hypocrisy against us?

I used to think that Palestinians only wanted to have a state of their own - that a two state solution was the best possible answer for all of the issues. I have learned from Palestinians on the ground that many of them want a one state solution, but they do not see this as practical. They want a one state solution because Palestinian refugees want to go back to where their villages where, before they were evacuated and destroyed in 1948. In fact, it is seen as one of the primary means of justice; one of the common phrases on signs or painted onto the wall is "No Peace Without Justice." The Palestinians that I have talked to think that a two state solution might be a good step to build trust towards working for a one state solution.

Before I came here, I knew two concrete things about Israel: One, It is a pillar of Jewish heritage and struggle, two it is an island of democracy within the Middle East. It took me a long time to realize that maybe these things are not exactly compatible. To hold them both up as values of the society, it would be necessary to always have a clear Jewish majority in every section of the country. Otherwise a democratic election could choose someone who does not agree with Jewish values, or God forbid, isn't Jewish. If a country wanted keep up the idea that these two pillars were equal values, they might need to bring in large amounts of people that already agree with the the more important value, and remove large portions of the population that do not agree with that value. It is funny because a lot of the Israeli rhetoric is that the Palestinians (they usually just say Arabs, remember that Palestinians don't exist) only want the destruction of Israeli. Though that is not at all the message that I have received from EVERY Palestinian that I have met, maybe Israeli is right. The refugees want to go back to their home and if they are allowed, it would either destroy the Jewishness or democracy of Israel.

I have a lot more to contemplate but I figure that I need to get this out before I delay any longer thinking about  these issues. There will be more posts like this.

Week Four Review

Today is exactly one month from the first day that I arrived in Israel/Palestine. So far it has been a very powerful experience and I plan to share some of my more significant thoughts soon. For now though, I can tell that you're dying to be updated on the insignificant issues of the last week...

My internet has been down for a couple of days. That should mean that I wasn't able to properly communicate with the outside world, but considering that I didn't really try...meh. It does mean that I missed game two of the Stanley Cup Playoffs. I even work up at 3am hoping that the internet would be back, but no luck. I have since caught up on highlights though.

I thought that I was going to be moving tonight, but at this rate it looks like I'll be moving tomorrow. The American students are arriving early Wednesday morning and so I am moving to allow three women to take this apartment. I will be moving in with five other guys.

In the next few days, the number of international volunteers at Wi'am will grow to ridiculous. Currently I am one of four, with one Finish and one American woman joining us recently. The American students are a total of eight and then there are two other volunteers coming soon. On top of that, Zoughbi's wife and two sons are going to be coming home from American soon. It's going to be a little crowded in the office.

Things at the office are going well. Some days my work is insignificant but I fill my free time by trying to identify bias in news articles and learning about Zionism and Palestinianism. A good example is this morning, when I read about the protests along the boarder in Al Jazeera and then a very different account in the Jerusalem Post. I think I have started to become addicted to reading internet comments though. The poor arguments and vial hate are intoxicating.

Today I found out that I am a child. Or at least that is what people are saying about me. I was also asked by a friend - in a curious way - how much alcohol and drugs I did. Looks like someone local has been reading this blog! But I might also have to cut down on the joking around. The Palestinian culture is one of few personal secrets and a lot of gossip. I was told that being thought of as a child is actually a compliment, but they failed to attach an adjective of childlike behaviour that comforted me. In the end, I should probably care more. This is something that I often do for fun in Canada, but is it culturally inappropriate here?

To comfort myself and those who might worry about that last paragraph, I think that I am getting along very well with most people. Honestly, I think that the fact that I'm willing to say stupid things or make a fool of myself and then laugh at it is quite entertaining to most people here. They certainly encourage me when I try to dance like them. I think they find it amusing to have a foreigner who is quite different from their socialized properness. I might be wrong though. I'll let you know if I get stoned to death. 

The Role and Context of Wi'am

A little while ago my friend asked me to give a more detailed outline of what Wi'am does. I am going to try and do that here. I hope to put together at accurate representation of the organization that I am working with right now, but these are my own opinions.

The two things that you need to know to understand Wi'am: role and context.

Wi'am is firmly planted within the role of a grassroots organization. This means that Wi'am works with local people and other small scale organizations. The metaphor of a triangle is useful here (I am stealing this metaphor from John Paul Lederach) and it fits our society's style of hierarchy. At the top of the triangle are Presidents and Prime Ministers. They have the power to get the official deals done, but they are often constrained by intense pressure from the media, the international community and  their constituents. They are not able to take risks or even deviate from what their populations expect them to do. In the middle of the triangle are the other important leaders of a society, such as the religious, scientific or economic leaders. These people have the power to influence both the upper and bottom levels of the triangle, but while they often have an interest in peace, they do not have the same need that the masses do nor the pressure of the official leaders. At the bottom of the triangle - the largest section - is the grassroots leaders such as the small organizations or the leaders of clubs, groups or unions. This group is primarily concerned with the daily needs of its members. This concern is often their mantra for peace because there is little time to be spent debating the universalism of peace.

Within this triangle, there are two major forms of motion. Vertical motion is the culture within a particular society. Considering that we are looking at peace, it is the idea that either a culture of peace or a culture of violence (most likely something between the two) is present within the society. As the society reacts to the conflict, the culture can change from the bottom up, or from the top down. Messages of hate or peace can be professed from the leadership downwards or fostered from the grassroots upwards, just as concrete activities will influence the culture. The other type of motion is horizontal motion. This is the idea that because they are in a conflict, each society is engaged in a complex reaction with the other. Positive horizontal motion - if you are trying to create peace - would be formal or informal meetings between the two people groups. This is mostly easily done in the middle section of triangle, the section that is often called civil society, but it happens at all levels. This type of motion is most commonly enacted to create a common understanding between the two people, but it is also done to identify useful strategies to pressuring other parts of the society towards peace.

Being on the bottom of the triangle means that Wi'am is strongly teathered to its context. While it does meet with other organizations, including some Israeli ones, it knows that it's place is with the people.The context of Wi'am is one that is not easy to begin to understand. The suffering and steadfastness of the Palestinian people is quite remarkable. This steadfastness is not without its limits though, and because of this, Wi'am must be very reactionary to its context.

I would say that almost 90% of Wi'am work is reaction to issues that arise from displaced anger and various forms of oppression. When people cannot determine their own future, have no concrete securities for their basic needs, live under threat of physical and structural violence and live within a physiological prison created by a very real 10 metre high wall, it is not uncommon to have unusually high rates of domestic abuse, depression and internal violence. Wi'am's programs are largely centered around trying to make Bethlehem a more livable place. Mediation, a children's summer camp (with aspects of trauma healing), job creation and empowerment for women, and a youth group that promotes nonviolent resistance are their core activities. The only activity that you could argue is not directly reactionary is raising awareness, which is done through hosting groups and international volunteers.

Essentially, Wi'am is an institution that should not need to exist. It is not providing any essential aspects of a society that would not already be present or given if the society is healthy. And yet, it has been open for the last 16 years.