Women in Black

What do you consider admirable?

To believe in something, and be so dedicated that you are willing to keep on fighting year after year is in itself a sign of conviction. To keep that spirit up even when people are yelling nasty things out of the window as they drive pass, or point fuck you, or even worse spit on you, shows a sign of dignity and inner belief in the just cause you are fighting for. To continue even when most of your friends are long gone, and not surrender to resignation shows a great deal of strength.

Today it was raining in Jerusalem, and many shops were closed due to the weather. The umbrella broke, and in the end looked like the skeleton of a tree with empty branches. Despite the rain and the wind, I was determined to join the ‘Women in Black’. Even now when my toes are frozen, and there is no hot water or heating in the room, I feel that is was a worthwhile decision. And honestly I am freezing! But if the women in black can do it, then so can I!

The ‘Women in Black’ is not some catch phrase on the movie Men in Black, in fact if you ask me which one came first, the women in black would win! These women stand in their black clothes, conducting a silent demonstration every Friday, holding up black hands calling to “stop the occupation” in English, Hebrew and Arabic. Everyone is not in favor of demonstration as a means to an end. It may be associated with radicals, or activists. Personally I had never participated in a demonstration before, a fact I was rather comfortable with. I am nonetheless proud to say that I took part in this demonstration. The message is simple; there is no condemning of one side or the other, no debate, no shouting and no hidden political agenda. Stop the occupation!

Did I mention that they are Israeli women in their 80’s that have been doing this since the first Intifada?

What a waste of land - sewage dumping

Imagine if raw sewage was dumped daily in the land where you are growing your lettuce, tomatoes, cabbage and onions. Would you eat your vegetables?

For the people in the village of Nahhalin, it has become impossible to use over 1000 dunnums of their land. Instead of growing their own produce to use in cooking, they instead buy vegetables someplace else. Unfortunately this is not the end of the tragedy. Not only can they not use the land, they are also running the risk of losing it if it is not being cultivated. According to the Israeli adoption of old Ottoman law, land that is not cultivated for a certain amount of time goes back to being state land.

I cannot tell you if the settlement of Beitar Illit deliberately dumps their waste in Nahhalin’s farm land, so that they later can confiscate the land and use it for themselves. That is an assumption I have no evidence to support. Yet I am telling the truth when I say that the UNOHCHR is among the actors concerned with the situation and asked us to document it further.

Last Saturday we, my team members and I, met with the Village Council and the Major of the village to listen to their complaints. Then we went down to the dumping site, and documented with photographs and water samples. The dark water leaves a very visible trace as it trails down the sand dunes from the settlement, and it is collected in the village spring which has turned in to a nasty dark color. Passing by the land was families on picnics and children playing, sheep herders and donkeys. An old man sat contemplating by the pool collecting the water from the spring, and there was a foul smell that the blossoming almond trees did not succeed in hiding.

 All I could think of was what a waste of land.

A home of peace

“Little by little we help them to build peace, it is very, very important.”

On the mountain slope below our house, you will find a half built large house hidden. It does not have any signs, and is very modest in its information. It sits there quietly, and it is not an easy road to find it, in fact we at first walk past it. With the help of our Palestinian friend, we finally find the Home of Peace.

Welcoming us are two impressive women, who have a certain dignity and glow about them. It is not for their veil, or fragility that they immediately demand your respect and admiration, it is because of their dedication to care for others. They have spent, 51 and 35 years working in the Holy Land, and never know what the next day will bring. Sister Rafaela came here in 1961, and remembers the Six days war of 1967. “The children suffered a lot. Absolutely, we had to be ready for accepting the children. Many of them had lost their parents, and were scared. We took the children in to the convents, the schools and our homes, the children needed help.”

“We start little by little, if you need more you pray some more and you will get it.”

Originally the home for the children was only in Jerusalem, but then they were given land by the Catholic Church to build a second home for vacation activities in Bethlehem. Bedouins were living on the land and Sister Rafaela explains how she felt bad for kicking them out. Instead they were given another piece of land, but the problems with the building did not end there. Then they started building the wall. It became difficult to travel, so the home instead became a permanent home for children in the local area. Rafaela comments on the negative development she has seen during her 51 years in the country and says “now it is like living in a prison without a roof.”

“At the beginning of the occupation people had hope. But now people are tired. We go to houses too, and see that they are destroyed. It is hard for the families to stay together, especially when they no longer have a home. We try to help all the children, and do not separate between boys and girls, or divide them in to age. How do you separate when they are together? How can you separate the ages, or the genders? If a girl of four comes with her eight year old brother, and they have lost their mother, then they must stick together! “

“This is not an orphanage, this is a home. It is not the same. Here we are a family, a home. One young woman, she is 21, she had her second baby and he was very little, only weighted 1.2 kilos at birth. It was difficult for the family, and she and her husband almost divorced. She wanted to send the child to us, but her husband refused. For him, like many of the parents, they have themselves been in an orphanage, and they remember nothing good. For her it was different and she said to her husband, I know this place, it is good. I, myself carried her as a baby on my arm, I used to fed her. We said it was best for her baby to stay with the family, but we tried to help in other ways. Before they almost got a divorce, now it is much better.”

I find the sisters providing not only a home of peace for children to take refuge in. It is also a home filled with love.

Settler violence with impunity

I am meeting for the second time with Khaled, and that in itself feels important. He has recently met with over 30 Non-governmental organizations, telling them the same story over and over again. Sadly together with my colleagues from EAPPI, we are the only ones still interested in his story. For the other NGO’s it is so common with settler violence they have moved on, and nobody has offered him any help. Whilst Khaled needs help we cannot give him, I still think it is important to talk about the settler violence that occur without any precautions other than the wall. The wall may protect the people living inside of Israel, but it does not serve the security of the Palestinian people being attacked by Israeli settlers. Khaled is still suffering, although it is two months since the incident.

“The vision in my left eye is not very good, and the doctors say I need three more surgeries in the next couple of months. I have psychological problems, I cannot sleep because I have nightmares and sometimes I have panic attacks. There is also a problem with my ear, where he hit me with the stick. What happened was a big shock, I cannot forget. I am always nervous and easily angry, I shout a lot and even my sons will not accept me. I am scared to leave the house, and I have no job just all of these bills. My lawyer said I will not be allowed to enter Israel or a settlement again. It is difficult to work, and I need to pay my medical bills. Even my boss did not call me afterwards, although he used to visit my house many times. It hurts in my heart. After the attack I changed my view on the whole situation. The settlers in general, they will be your friend when it benefits them, and when they do not need you they will throw you away.”

Khaled Hamamrah from the village of Husan, near Bethlehem has worked in the nearby settlement Betar Illit for the last twelve years. One Friday he was called in to clean up after a party in the school where he worked as a housekeeper. The events will be told mostly from his own words, because I believe my job is rather to let him tell his story, than for me to claim it as my own. In fact I cannot even begin to comprehend the pain Khaled went through:

“I started to work at 8 am and at 9 I was standing by the stove in the kitchen making my coffee. I felt something huge hit my head from the back. After that I fell down and could see that a masked man was hitting me with a stick with large spikes on it. I tried pushing him away but I could not, but I managed to take away a part of the ski-mask that covered his face. He started using a knife and hit me on my left eye. I thought he was going to kill me because I had uncovered a part of his face so I shouted out. Then he ran away. I crawled up the stairs to where my colleague was and then fainted. He called the Israeli ambulance but they did nothing, they thought I was dead. I was told the ambulance came after ten minutes, and the police came then too. The police started asking questions, but I was tired and could not answer their many questions which made them angry. I was just sitting in the Israeli ambulance but we never left, I saw that something was wrong because everything went so slow. Instead they called a Palestinian ambulance to enter Betar Illit, and it took another 20 minutes before it came. A Palestinian ambulance had never entered the settlement before, and why could they not take me in the first one?"

It is true that it is the Palestinian authorities that have decided that Palestinians should be cared for in Palestine. However, this may not be common knowledge in the West Bank, and the police questioning Khaled were not Palestinian as it was in what is referred to as the Area C of the West Bank under complete Israeli control.

“The strangest thing is that the police came with me in the ambulance, and the nurse had to fight with the police saying I was in a critical condition and not fit to answer any questions. The police asked if the attacker was Arab or Israeli, if I had seen the man who attacked me and if I had problems with settlers before. Then they took me to the hospital in Beit Jala, and I was in the hospital for two weeks. The nurse in the ambulance said maybe he will be dead, and there are many people in my village who think that I am dead now.”

I am sitting with Khaled’s family, and by now I have gotten to know his nephew, two sons, wife and mother pretty well. I feel guilty for asking them to repeat the story, and for not being able to do more for them. Khaled’s wife says “I am still in shock.” When I ask her how she feels she gets so upset she says “I cannot talk about it” and immediately leaves the room, but even then I can hear her cry. Khaled’s mother is sitting next to me, turning her praying beads in her hands, also visibly distraught. All I can offer is to hold her hand, trying to show that someone cares and give a little ounce of comfort.

The police never came back to ask more questions, so Khaled himself went with a Jewish friend to the police station to see how the investigation was going, after he was released from the hospital. “Me and my friend went to the police station to ask about the case and talk about the person who attacked me. Instead they arrested me for the night, and then the police station did not call again. If I did that to an Israeli I would spend the rest of my life in prison.”

Living in Palestine, A tourist in Israel

When you are living in Palestine, you should naturally be a tourist in your neighbor country. However for many Palestinians this is not an option. I am lucky to have the opportunity to go where ever I wish, and choose from many locations for my days off. As it was I decided to be a true tourist in Israel and explore what perception of Israel I would get if I excluded the political side and everything related to work.

One of the biggest clichés is of course to go and bathe in the Dead Sea, so together with a friend I went to Ein Gedi in Israel. The taxi dropped us off at the Central station, where we had to pass through a metal detector and scan our bags before entering. Everything was in Hebrew, so the atmosphere was very confusing and not very tourist friendly, enhanced by the large amount of soldiers walking around with their big weapons all around us. Obviously they are frequent users of the busses, and were also having days off. Yet there were also other people on the ‘Egged bus’, working in Israel but not necessarily from here, replacing the former Palestinian work force. Perhaps the most interesting passengers were the young woman with her baby who stopped and commented to the young soldier “Wait you are American, and you are serving here in the army? That is so cool!”

When the bus dropped us off in the middle of the desert, the first thing you realize is that you literally are in the middle of nowhere. When the bus has disappeared you see how beautiful the desolate place truly is. The people we met at the hotel and the spa, were very used to tourists and extremely helpful. Yet I was constantly looking for the real life, real people and after the ritual sulphur, mud and salt baths, we went to the public beach to watch the less touristy people. Needless to say there were mostly tourists, and we started walking towards the kibbutz for a reality check instead.

Distances in the desert appear much smaller than they are. Nobody walks, not in Israel nor in Palestine, and definitely not in the desert. Half way there we got a ride, because that is what you do the tourist guide normally working in Eilat said. We were dropped off as the Kibbutz pub/ restaurant and it was peaceful, quiet and clean. That can be said of the entire kibbutz, it all looked so normal once you had passed the gate and security control. A wooden deck, people typing on their computers and a group of local guys around 23-25 drinking beer. We went over and talked to them.

The distance between Israel and Palestine appeared much bigger than ever before. In Palestine there are not any resources to finance the tourist industry, collect garbage or many possibilities for us as two young women to talk so freely with men or to drink a glass of wine. However whilst tourism is not as commercial, it seems much more accessible and genuine, because the Palestinian people invite you into their homes and offer you their food and their time.

The day after I was shopping in West Jerusalem, which is the Israeli side. The main shopping street offered many opportunities to make insignificant decisions of unnecessary purchases. It made me feel in control, and it made me feel momentarily happy. Choices equal freedom, and we take it for granted that we can choose what we want for lunch or wear tomorrow, and after a month I was honestly rather bored with falafel . But the selection of choices are not the same in Israel and Palestine, there is not space or time to waste on the things that do not really matter. That is the true value of being a tourist in Israel, through a distance I could see not only where I want to be, but also what it is for me that matters; to live like the people, and understand the struggle and happiness in their lives, to see reality. Living in Palestine is a choice too.