Wayward Anneke: October 2017

Soldiers escorting Israeli settlers through the Palestinian Old City of Hebron

Church of the Nativity, Bethlehem's famous church built on top of "the stable".

A poignant piece of art by Banksy on the Israeli apartheid wall in Bethlehem

So our first real taste of active, physical occupation (aside from East Jerusalem) was Bethlehem. Some of the most important places we visited here were the Wi’am Centre for Restorative Justice and the Lajee Centre in the Aida Refugee Camp.

Both the Wi'am Centre and the Lajee Centre are successful and productive Palestinian-led civil society organizations.

The Wi’am Centre for Conflict Resolution

http://www.alaslah.org/

Explaining to us how the Wi'am Centre works on restorative justice and conflict resolution between local Palestinian families. They look at collective responsibility, rather than blame or guilt for problems that arise. This process of conflict resolution rehumanizes the conflicting parties in the other's eyes, which is an essential aspect of reconciliation.

Lajee Centre for young people in the Aida Refugee Camp

http://www.lajee.org/

Explaining how the centre provides refugee youth with educational, cultural, social, developmental opportunities. The programs are shaped by the particular needs, interests, and skills of the youth in attendance.

PLEASE watch this short video made by the youth at the Lajee Centre. It's incredibly well-made and they can tell their own story much better than I can.

A military turret on the wall blackened with gunfire

The refugee camp came together to memorialize the names of all the Palestinian children who have been killed by the Israeli military

Exploded tear gas canister, made in Jamestown, Pennsylvania

Rubber bullets

Why not just show a bunch of the discharged ammunition used by the Israeli army on the Palestinians, later collected by this Palestinian organization.

- We spent an extended amount of time in Hebron, where CPT is active. Hebron is a very old Palestinian city and one of the most industrial cities in the country. It is where many famous Palestinian handicrafts are made, such as Phoenician glass, kufiyas, leather sandals, olive oil soap, and many other things for which Hebron is famous. Unfortunately, as Israel makes it increasingly difficult to export Palestinian products, many of these businesses find themselves going out of business. Also home to the Ibrahimi Mosque, the tomb of Abraham and Sarah, this Palestinian city holds religious significance to both the Islamic and Jewish religions.

A man melts the Phoenician/Hebron glass into shape

A store with the finished products

Noah smiling away outside the glass factory, owned by the Natsheh family

Camel Sandals - a worldwide famous leather "old world" sandal brand that is based in Hebron:

http://camelsandals.com/

Kufiyas - evolved into a symbol of solidarity with Palestinian people, the kufiya was originally a type of scarf worn by Palestinian farmers. Now, Hirbawi is (I think) the only entirely Palestinian-owned company left that makes them:

https://www.hirbawi.ps/

https://www.kufiya.org/

During one of our first days here, myself and two other members of our delegation found ourselves in a tight situation.

While the three of us were wandering around on a lunch break, we found our path back to the CPT office blocked by a row of Israeli soldiers. Walking back the other way, the path had been blocked off that way as well by the time we got there, another blockade further in the distance. Between the two blockades was a “no-go” zone that was completely empty. Apparently, the soldiers blocked the street in order to find three boys who had supposedly thrown rocks. Arresting two of them already, they were blocking the street in search of the third (ineffectively so, they were more likely trying to send a message). Trapped between the two soldier blockades, we watched what happened between the Israeli soldiers and Palestinians trapped with us inside the blockade.

Abby, the other woman with us, speaks Arabic and some Hebrew, so was able to understand the communications around us. When one of the soldiers tried to speak to a Palestinian child, Abby frowned and leaned over to me.

“His Arabic is so poor,” she commented, “he’s trying to ask ‘what is your name’ but is actually asking ‘what is my name’”. This is strange how little Arabic the soldiers know, considering they are working in the middle of Palestine, an Arabic-speaking country. Also, Israel is a country completely surrounded by other Arabic-speaking countries – you would think they learn at least some amount of Arabic in school. I mean, it is just a tiny portion of Canada that speaks French, yet I could probably at least carry out a small conversation, let alone say ‘what’s your name’. It really feels like a mentality of both isolationism and imperialism that would lead a state like Israel to not teach their children Arabic.

When one soldier got annoyed with a child repeatedly demanding to pass, the soldier scoffed, “No, cannot pass. Or else I kill you.” What was horrifying was the grin on the soldier’s face – he was joking, but the threat was real. He had license to kill that child if he passed the blockade.

At one point, a loud sound went off on the street ahead of us, so we jumped up and bolted to the middle of the road to see clearer. In the distance, we could see a cloud of tear gas billowing up from the ground, people running away from it covering their eyes and noses and coughing.

At one point, we were getting quite tired as we’d been waiting slightly over an hour already. Suddenly, we heard frantic shouting not far from us. Looking up in horror, we saw the soldiers angrily shouting and pointing their guns at a man walking straight through the “no-go” zone between the two blockades. Everyone began shouting and gesturing frantically at him, multiple assault rifles pointed directly at him. Heart pounding, I stared in silence and horror, terrified of what the soldiers would decide to do. Eventually, he made it through the other blockade and walked up a path, shouting at the soldiers the whole time and the soldiers shouting back.

One of the more terrifying realizations of this experience was how candid everyone is around these weapons. Most of the Palestinians were not at all scared of the foreign soldiers, this type of militant disruption being a regular part of their life. The majority just appeared somewhat annoyed, an attitude of ‘ugh this again?’ being the overwhelming attitude. At one point, one of the soldiers nearest to us wanted to readjust his helmet, so he handed his gun to a fellow soldier to hold. As they passed the gun by the strap, I noticed that for a moment I was staring straight down the barrel of an assault rifle.

Just chilling around some dudes carrying automatic rifles... Actually, this was during a "settler tour", where roughly 30 soldiers escort around 10 or so settlers around the Palestinian-controlled areas of the Old City.

This is something that should never be normalized. But it is here in Hebron.

Don't overdo it now... just a massive f***ing tank in the middle of the street.

The occupation is more visible in Hebron than anywhere else we've seen. The settlers are more radical and ideological, the Palestinians are more highly persecuted and watched by Israeli soldiers, the Israeli military checkpoints are more intense, the number of settlements is higher here, and the division is more pronounced than anywhere else.

A Palestinian home confiscated by Israeli settlers and decorated Israeli colours and flags

For the life of me I can't figure out how to rotate this photo, but it's basically just an empty street. Shuhada Street was once the most bustling market street in Hebron, but it's since been shut down by the Israeli military and now, as you can see, it is completely bare.

These nets are to stop/collect trash thrown at Palestinians from Israeli settlers. Many Israeli settlers occupy the upper floors of buildings in which Palestinians still live in the downstairs. The Palestinians use the back doors onto this street and the settlers exit from stairs on the other side of the building.

An illegal synagogue set up on Palestinian-controlled land by settlers across the street. Rather than use the synagogues already in the settlements, some settlers deliberately set up makeshift synagogues on Palestinian-controlled land as a statement.

Let's take a brief break from lousy occupation to really appreciate something incredible: Palestinian food. People were incredibly generous and kind, either offering us food or getting excited when we would eat something Palestinian. And the food was absolutely delicious.

Laila was kind enough to invite everyone to her home for a large meal of maklubeh. She'd made a huge pot that we all sat around in a circle and enjoyed. Laila works with the Hebron Women's Cooperative

Oh my goooosh that food. Falafel, sooo many different kinds of salad, pickled vegetables, pits, hummus (so much hummus), shawarma, literally everything delicious. Also the incredibly refreshing mint lemonades that were everywhere.

Okay, back to occupation.

In addition to documentation, one of the important roles CPT plays in Hebron is their school patrols. Historically, as the number of Israeli military checkpoints increases around Palestine, the number of students attending school decreases (fancy that). Every morning and evening, CPT members arrive at the checkpoints to count the number of children passing through on their way to and from school. They also record the number of bag checks, body searches, and other disruptions. (Click here for their actual website)

Parents walking their sons to the checkpoint for school

A group of young women on their way to school

Pushing one-by-one through the turnstile as soldiers carefully watch them

Fascinating: when the turnstile broke down, a soldier came out after a while to see if he could fix it. Even though he opened a gate to the right of this photo while he did this, children often still waited behind him instead of going through the open gate. When occupation is ingrained, children learn that the cost of potentially making a wrong move out of convenience is far higher than waiting a little longer at a checkpoint.

Just shepherding ma' sheep down the street

On Fridays, CPT also monitors the number of people attending and leaving the mosque. As checkpoints go up, mosque attendance also goes down (again, just faaancy that)

While waiting outside the mosque, Mohammed invited Barbara and I to sit down for some coffee outside his shop. Self-attributing his incredible English skills to tourists and Arnold Schwartznegger movies, Mohammed was more than happy to chat with us. Both Mohammed and Barbara are such direct and self-spoken people with an incredible sense of humour that lead to this probably being one of the most enlightening and also hilarious conversations of the entire trip.

Another large role CPT plays in Hebron is supporting many local organizations through both promotion and tourism.

The Hebron Rehabilitation Centre

Visiting a school funded by the Hebron International Resources Network. It is incredibly difficult to get any sort of authorization from the Israeli military to build anything (even schools). However, after several years, they were finally able to achieve permission to build the school and, alas, here it is.

Another valuable tool they have at their disposal is a strong foreign presence. In tiny Bedouin towns like Umm Al Khair, a foreign presence is needed to prevent hostile settlers from throwing rocks and bulldozing their corrugated metal houses. Also, while the Israeli military requires a permit to bulldoze solid, permanent buildings, corrugated metal buildings are considered impermanent and can therefore be destroyed without a permit. Having already demolished the majority of their permanent concrete structures, the military no longer requires permits to destroy their homes. Read more about Umm Al Khair HERE. As these demolitions and rock-throwing most often occur at night, many organizations arrange for foreign groups to spend the night in one of their shelters. A foreign presence greatly decreases the chance of violence on any given night.

This lovely fellow showed us around his village and explained the village's experiences with the settlers and the military.

You can see the modern-looking settlement houses in the background. They stand in stark contrast to homes built from sheet metal and cloth in this village.