Two Farmers, Two Stories, One Occupation

October 17 - Today our group picked for three different farmers in the Makhrour Valley. I was helping "Im" Mohammed, also known as Jamila Ilayan. She needed help with her 60 trees because settlers come to harass them. Israel's military occupation does not allow her to bring a tractor to plow under the trees - part of the maintenance they need, but she can hire a mule for the job. Her biggest problem is that she can't construct the simplest shed to store her tools or to take a rest from the sun. Every gardener and farmer needs tools. Just to pick the olives one needs tarps to spread under the trees to catch the olives, ladders to climb to the higher branches, buckets to collect olives from the tarps and ground, and sacks in which to put the buckets full of olives to take to the olive press. That is the bare minimum. One should also bring pruning sheers and a small saw, not to mention water and hopefully food for the mid-day meal. Without a shed in which to store most of this equipment, it must be transported back and forth every day in a car or truck.

Im Mohammed used to be able to come by foot, a half hour walk from her home, and it was pleasant. She and her family liked to stay sometimes until dark or even to spend the night in the small stone shelter that has crumbled to the ground because even maintenance is not allowed. Nor would the night be safe anymore. The settlers see to that. A poster I saw today said, "You are free to do whatever I tell you to do."

There were many volunteers today, we internationals and a lot of Palestinian university students from E. Jerusalem, Beit Sahour and Bethlehem. The young men climbed up in the olive trees and belted out traditional songs, making us forget for a while why we were needed there. I met one woman who had been a professional athlete, a competitive swimmer on a team representing Palestine. She was just back from a year in Spain, getting a degree in sports education. Anyway, all together we were able to finish harvesting this farmer's trees, which otherwise would have taken a week and required hiring farm laborers.

PICKING IN WADI FUKIN, POPULATION 1,100.

If you live in Wadi Fukin and want to go to the nearest center of commerce, which is Beit Jala, you have to pass under the Israeli super highway via a tunnel. It is symbolic of the status of Palestinians who are allotted a subterranean passage --easily blocked off by military order --while Jewish Israelis travel above ground on roads only they can use. . Likewise, we international volunteers had to go through the tunnel to get to the village to pick olives.

Beitar Ilit settlement, now boasting 52,000 residents, is built on Wadi Fukin land, and it continues to swallow Wadi Fukin, as new construction moves down the side of the hill toward the spring-fed valley below where the village grows its fruits and vegetables. Settlers send their kids to play under the village's olive trees in order to provoke the ire of the villagers and to make the statement that they are taking over this whole area. Soldiers appear immediately to protect the settler children.

Abu Saadi has trees right near this creeping monster, and the settlers try to prevent him from harvesting them. Today, he preferred for us to pick trees a little away from Beitar Ilit's buildings in order to avoid a confrontation. But his kids are afraid to venture into the valley anymore.

Wadi Fukin will lose an additional 1480 dunams (370 acres) to the new settlement that Netanyahu just announced he would build in this area. Israel claims that the 4000 dunams it is confiscating from 5 villages to build this new settlement is uncultivated land. But by what rule of nature or men must you cultivate every piece of land you own? Yet Israel passed a law in 1950 to assure that any land not cultivated for 3 years should revert to the State. Then all they had to do was make it impossible to get to that land in order to expropriate it. End of story.

Well, not quite. There is more. Settlers recently dug up Abu Saadi crops and trees, and Abu Saadi has to pay the bill for this destruction! The rationale behind this bit of madness is that the farmer planted in the buffer zone between the village and the settlement. Since this buffer zone keeps changing with the expansion of the settlement, Abu Saadi didn't know its boundaries -- as if it were legal for Israel to have built the settlement and its buffer zone in the first place.

One Man's Reaction to Gaza's Suffering

Fadi is not your average Palestinian, not that I can tell you who is. Just he has a great sense of humor that he uses to flavor his astute analyses of world affairs and his efforts to make a difference for his country and his family. One example of the latter is that for the last 2 years he accepted an invitation to participate in a dialogue program sponsored by Holy Land Trust, a large NGO in Bethlehem. He opened his home to Jews who had come to Jerusalem from abroad and wanted to meet Palestinians. They came for dinner, conversation and to spend the night. The idea was to let them see Palestinians as real people and thus change their attitudes towards them. Fadi thinks he may have made an impact in this way, but after what happened in Gaza, he simply has no stomach for hosting Jews any more. He thinks they know what Israel is doing in their name, and he wants them to do something about it, not come to his house to talk about it.

P.S. Fadi knows there are Jewish Israelis doing good things. He mentioned the Army Unit that spies on Palestinians using the internet, and how some of the soldiers in that unit refused to partake of that activity.

P.S.S. Fadi is a father of 4, ranging in age from 24 to 14, a hospital receptionist, a loving husband, and a superb soccer player. I first met him when I was a paying guest in his home in 2008.

Tensions Mount

JOURNAL # 15 - wi'am's OSAMA
Osama is a Christian in the best sense of the word. He is devout, he serves his community, he is generous, and he believes in non-violence. He tells us he has hope, and I realize he has more hope than I do.  At the same time, he said, "We are tired. We are sick of the occupation. Israel is creating more apartheid, and in the short run there will be more 'domestic problems.'"  Osama thinks that changes will happen soon due to social media, which raises awareness which leads to action.  He derives hope from the BDS movement, from articles he is reading , from Jewish prophetic voices, and a belief that this cannot last forever - that the Wall will fall.  I asked what will be left of Palestine when the Wall finally falls.
 "Nothing."  Settlements have become the "normal". They have the land and water and power. Palestinian villages are not the normal anymore..  These conditions plus the dead economy are creating a vice grip of tensions.  Women take it out on their children. Men take it out on their wives and children. Fights break out over nothing. Everyone is in debt and can't afford to pay back their loans. Osama himself sometimes works 20 hours in a day, not just at Wi'am, (a Christion NGO serving the poor) so he can so he can keep ahead of the bills. But it means he's never home.  In addition, there is a brain drain as five thousand Palestinian students study abroad every year and only 20% of them return home. This is a brain drain.
On the question of whether there will be a Third Intifada, Osama and most people I talk to say no - at least not a violent one.  But Israel may be trying to provoke one by allowing Jewish presence on the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound, the third most holy site in Islam.  Osama thinks this behavour will cause some fare-ups of violent resistance and transform the conflict into a Jewish-Muslim conflict "which is very dangerous."   The Knesset is about to pass a new law making it legal for Jews to be on the Al-Aqsa compound.  Then the Israeli army will be able officially to arrest anyone who resists this presence. Faced with detention, the resistance will weaken.
 I ask what will happen once Jews have free access to the Al-Aqsa. Osama thinks they are moving toward  building a synagogue in one corner of the of the compound's garden.  Jews have been pressing for this to happen since 1929, but the British Mandate government gave authority over the mosque to a Muslim entity called the Waqf, and, by agreement with Israel,  Jordan now controls the Waqf.  The Knessets' new law will essentially negate that authority.
There is no doubt that Israel is playing with fire by the way it is handling the Al-Aqsa Mosque and compound. The only question is, how much will the fire consume?

Suddenly Israel Welcomes Palestinians

October 29 - Last night I was with Fadi and Abeer in their living room, sipping herbal tea, and sharing conversation with them, their other American guests, and occasionally one of their young adult children.  Abeer said that she had applied to her church for a permit to go to Jerusalem this Friday for a major Lutheran church holiday. Typically such pernits are for one day only. What she received was a permit lasting 3 months and allowing her to go anywhere in Israel she wanted, even to stay overnight, as long as she didn't come by car. At first I couldn't believe my ears.  Abeer showed me the paper permit and translated its contents from Arabic.
Why is Israel suddenly opening its borders to a free flow of (only Christian?) Palestinians, when just last week I was interviewing a married college graduate whose husband had to sneak illegally into Israel to find work?  My mind was swimming, as we all sought to answer this question.  We came up with several overlapping reasons, none of them complementary to Israel.
First, Israel's economy is in bad shape and will benefit from Palestinians shopping, especially during the upcoming Christmas season.  Second, during Gaza Palestinians boycotted Israeli products on a broad scale.  That boycott is effectively nullified if Palestinians go do their holiday shopping in Israel.
Third, travel into and out of Gaza has been severely restricted, such that family members have not been able to see each other for years.   By giving Christians in Gaza permission to enter and stay in Israel AND the West Bank and East Jerusalem,  maybe, just maybe, some of them will not want to return to their imprisonment in Gaza. years.  In that scenario, Gaza would become exclusively Muslim, and thus more easily isolated by propagandists as a terrorist enclave.
Fourth, happy Palestinian shoppers will forget about the attacks on Gaza.  For Fadi this would be the worst outcome of the new permits.
Fifth, if Palestinians spend their money in Israel, they will not spend it in Palestine, further undercutting the already devastated economy.
Sixth, but probably not last, desperate Palestinians will use the 3 month period to get temporary jobs inside Israel (even though work is not permitted under these new regs).  This fact makes it harder for churches to take a principled stand against the permit. If churches oppose the new regulations for the reasons I have just stated, they will also be blocking a possible source of income for families that are really hurting financially.
Further, Israel  might have made this move as a way to drive a wedge between Christian and Muslim Palestinians, something they have been doing by other means in an effort to divide and conquer.
We should keep in mind that the Christian population of Palestine, once as high as 10 %, is now at about l.2% and they continue to emigrate in disproportionately high numbers.  Some of my Christian friends say that from forty-five to eighty Christian families from the Bethlehem area left Palestine  just since  the recent war on Gaza. They worry that soon there will be no more Christians in the land of Jesus' birth.
I later learned that just last Sunday, (Oct. 26) the Knesset voted to allow  Palestinian males over 60 and females over 50 to enter Israel without a permit, just by showing their ID. Even lacking details about how this will work, it sounds like another corollary to the new "leniency" with dubious motivations.

Educated, Activist Women Amira and Deena

Amira founded Al Mirsat (The Anchor) in 2011, operating out of her house. It is a center for boys and girls ages 14-18 who are directionless and/or potential school drop outs. She goes to local schools and recuits about 20 kids each September.

To support their return to school and develop their enthusiasm for leaning, Amira got them to adopt a prominent building in the Old City and do research on it. She introduced them to libraries and got them using photography and sketching to document their findings.

Amira graduated from American University in Beirut, Lebanon as a Political Science major. Then became a History teacher, then got her masters in Education. She comes from a well-known family with a long history of involvement in the culture and development of Palestine.

Deena's family also has a proud history. Her childhood home is now a large museum. Both women are in their 60's and are very active in their communities, looking for ways to serve the less privileged and support victims of Israel's aggressions.

We talked about ISIS. Amira and Deena believe that the U.S. created ISIS to destabilize the Middle East. They said that Edward Snowden has written about this - which I didn't know and must look into.

It counts for something that these educated activist women give Hamas credit for standing up to the fourth largest army in the world when Israel attacked Gaza last summer. They think the unity government between Hamas and Fateh may hold up this time. Fateh seems to have the upper hand, but has implied that they will allow Hamas to be a shadow government. The ceasefire agreement with Israel must open the borders of Gaza and allow for unrestricted access to the West Bank, or Hamas will have failed. Amira is most angry with Egypt for not opening the border with Gaza.

My friends informed us that the Israeli Defense Minister just pronounced that there will never be a Palestinian State; there will be a demilitarized entity with limited self-rule. As for one state or two states, Deena said there is already "de-facto" one state, and reminded us that the PLO (Palestine Liberation Organization, founded in 1965 to resist the State of Israel), always called for "one democratic state." Absent either two states or a democratic state, disaffected Israelis are emigrating to Germany and the U.S., "and we'll be left with the Zionists and ISIS." She added, "You can't make sense of a situation that doesn't make sense."

　

Important Data Explaining Zionism's Goals & Strategies

Our olive picking group heard a presentation by BADIL Resource Center for Palestinian Residence & Refugee Rights. BADIL describes itself as a "lobby for Palestinian refugee and internally displaced rights," and emphasizes that it is a "rights based" and not a "humanitarian based" organization (www.badil.org). Lubna, an American-Palestinian, gave an excellent power point talk describing nine distinct Israeli policies designed to displace Palestinians from within Israel, sometimes called the "on-going Nakba." (www.ongoingnakba.org) She asked us to keep in mind two questions as we listened to her: l) Is Zionism racism? and 2) Is Israel a Jewish or a democratic state?


BADIL represents two classifications of people: Refugees, and Internally Displaced Persons, but both are forcibly displaced persons, and as such are 66% of Palestinians, both inside Israel and in the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem. That is, two-thirds of Palestinians have been forcibly removed from their original homes, and only one-third continue to live in the home of their choice. BADIL defines "forcibly" as resulting from armed conflict causing eviction or flight, and from the imposition of conditions to make life intolerable.

I won't try to duplicate Lubna's talk, but share some details from my notes.

**Israel cannot legally claim "the right to defend itself" against Palestinians, because it is an occupying power with the responsibility to protect the population under occupation.

**Between 1922 and 1947, under British Mandate rule, 150,000 native Palestinians were displaced. In 1948, 750,000 were displaced to create a Jewish state, an event Palestinians call the "Nakba", or Catastrophe. In 1967 450,000 more were displaced during the Six Day War. Since 1967 displacement in smaller numbers constitutes the on-going Nakba.

**In order to create a nation-state, Zionists presented Jews as an ethnicity, not as a religion. Thus there are "ethnic Jews" which include "religious Jews".

**Three obstacles to the Zionist goal of a state in all of historic Palestine: a) the presence of an indigenous population; b) land ownership; and c) the need to colonize (settle) the whole area. To confront these obstacles, the Zionist leaders crafted "Plan Dalet", which went through 13 drafts in order to find the best way to displace the native population instead of massacring them. One result was the depopulation (evacuation) of over 500 villages, most of which were quickly razed to the ground so there would be no possibility of return of the Palestinian villagers. Plan Dalet is a strategic plan still being carried out today in one form or another. Some Christian villages were treated a little less harshly in order to avoid international condemnation.

**To deal with Palestinian property rights, the new state of Israel passed laws declaring that anyone who had abandoned their property (even if fleeing from war) forfeited the property, and anyone who was internally displaced became a "present absentee" with no right to return to their home. The language itself tells you something about the twisted logic that gave Israel control over 78% of historic Palestine, even though the U.N. partition plan had only granted 55% of the territory for a Jewish state.

**The "Israeli Nationality Law" distinguishes between Jews, who are "nationals", and non-Jews (i.e. Arabs) who are "citizens". Fifty other laws discriminate between these two groups. However, the legal definition of "Jewish" is left vague. It is "as determined by the State." This allows the Zionists to manipulate definitions to suit their colonizing needs. For example, when one million Russians applied to enter Israel, they were accepted as Jewish, even though at least 200,000 were known to be Christians.

**Gaza is surrounded by a buffer zone that reaches 3.5 to 5 kilometers into Gaza to include 40% of the richest agricultural land. No one is allowed to enter this zone, let alone farm it. Many Palestinians have been shot at and killed trespassing into the buffer zone.

**Oslo granted fishing rights to Gazans up to 20 kilometers into the Mediterranean. In 2002 this area was reduced to 12 miles, in 2006 to 6 miles, and in 2009 to 3 miles. Given the loss of a sewage system due to Israel's bombs last summer, raw sewage is dumped into the Mediterranean, undoubtedly polluting the fish in this limited area.

**According to BADIL, 60% of Palestinians would chose to return to their original lands and villages, given the opportunity.

Who is a Zionist? A Zionist is anyone who believes in the Zionist Project, which demands that the whole of historic Palestine, between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea, and between Lebanon and Egypt, be an exclusively Jewish state.

Olive Trees vs Military Orders

Jab'a is a rural village on the Green Line, the supposed border between the West Bank and Israel. We picked olives there for the farmer Abu Firas. In past years he has been the recipient of olive tree saplings from the JAI program that is now sponsoring us to help with the harvest. He needed those saplings to replace the 170 mature trees that Israel uprooted to build the military checkpoint on the border. The saplings were planted on another plot of land, However, they were also uprooted. Again volunteers came to plant more saplings. After the second planting, soldiers returned with the bulldozers and this time issued a military order not to plant anything else on that plot of land, nor try to cultivate it in any way.
Abu Firas will soon be losing another 200 dunams (50 acres), as Jab'a is one of the 5 villages whose land will be among the 4,000 dunams confiscated for the new settlement that Netanyahu announced in September. Of the original 13,000 dunams (3250 acres) belonging to Jab'a there will be only 1,000 left (250 acres).
I asked this farmer what future he sees coming for his sons. He hopes he will have land for them to inherit. He hopes for peace and justice, but, "I see the opposite." Then he asked, "What is justice?" and answered quixotically, "The Qur'an teaches love between the three religions."
On our way out of Jab'a, our bus stopped so we could view the border checkpoint. The olive trees on the Palestinian side did not produce any fruit this year, so it is possible they were poisoned. The trees and land on the other side, though once belonging to Jab'a, are no longer accessible by the previous owners.

Recognition? Of What?

The British Parliament voted October 12th 274 to 12 to recognize Palestine as a state. Sweden had already done so. Cheers! -- at first. Then came the analyses from those who see the bigger picture. Among them was Miko Peled, son of an Israeli General, who has become an anti-Zionist. In a beautifully written essay he asks if these votes will free Palestinians from home demolitions or any other of the horrors of the occupation, for surely the Swedes and British would not pass a hollow vote that leaves everything as it is or allow more settlements, or keep the Wall in place. http://mikopeled.com/2014/10/14/sweden-and-britain-have-spoken-by-miko-peled/



And what State are they recognizing? Palestine is not a state. It does not want to be a state in the condition it is in. So doubts arise in the minds of my Palestinian friends. They have heard a lot of words over the past 47 years of occupation and during the last 20 years of "peace processes", but they have not seen any freedom.

Just this afternoon of October 26 I was talking to Samer, a 41 year old father of 2. He, his parents, siblings, wife and 2 children all have U.S. citizenship, but he has chosen to live in Palestine where he was born. I found him at his workplace, a park and playground that serves the city of Beit Sahour and surrounding villages. He is the director, but he was at the snack bar and didn't seem busy. After introducing myself, I asked what he thinks of the situation as it is today. "Very bad. There is no work and no peace. Nothing has changed over the years, and nothing is going to change." His expression revealed his discouragement even more than his words. He explained that no one comes to the park anymore because they are afraid. Israeli soldiers come into the park every day and demand that everyone show his or her ID. This is very intimidating and unpleasant for the average person.

I asked if there was anything he would want me to tell my friends at home. "There is nothing to say." He offered me coffee and went to prepare it. He sent another man to serve it. Evidently, he had said his last words on the subject.

College Grads in Rural "Area C" Assess Their Future

JOURNAL # 8 - COLLEGE GRADS IN RURAL "AREA C" ASSESS THEIR FUTURE

"How does the occupation affect your lives?" I asked Asma and Ibtisam, two college grads who cannot find work. They live in rural villages near the southern city of Hebron. Asma’s family’s land has been cut in half by the Wall. They can still access it, but get harassed by soldiers. But Asma wanted to talk about something else.

"The problem we have is our men have to work in Israel in order to feed their families." Her expression showed her displeasure. Some 47,000 Palestinians get work permits, but the majority enter Israel illegally, going around, over or through the so-called "security barrier". (The work is almost always in construction.) Ibtisam’s husband is one such man. He has no work permit, but sneaks across the Green Line into Israel, sometimes to Beer Sheva and sometimes as far as Tel Aviv. "How does he know when there is work to go to?" I asked. Palestinians who live inside Israel call their contacts in the West Bank. "How long does it take for them to get to Israeli jobs?" It can take up to 12 hours to get to a work site, depending on whether they find soldiers at a checkpoint and have to wait til they are distracted before dashing across whatever barrier is in place. I have learned that thousands of Palestinians get across the Wall or through the fence every day in order to go to work --proof that the Wall is not the reason there are no more suicide attacks inside Israel.

Ibtisam’s husband started working illegally in Israel at age 16 to help support his family. That was 15 years ago, and he is still doing it, supporting his aging parents and now his wife of four years. Ibtisam married after she finished college.

Asma's 18 year old brother also tried working illegally in Israel, but after having to run from soldiers once, he quit. Since the transit to and from work is so risky, most men stay away 2-4 weeks at a time, leaving wife and children alone. Sometimes soldiers raid construction sites in Israel and arrest any Palestinians they can catch. The penalties are 2 months in prison and 4000 shekels fine for the first arrest, 6 months and 6000 shekels for the 2nd offense, and 12 or more months and 12,000 shekels for the 3rd. (4000 shekels equals about $1090)

Asma then surprised me with the information that if you have children, you can get a permit to work in Israel. While I was trying to digest this bit of information, Asma continued providing additional pieces to the puzzle. It costs money to maintain a permit. Israel collects 2,000 shekels a month from each permitted worker. A full time salary in Israeli construction might be 6000 shekels. After the "tax", the remaining 4000 is enough to provide the basics for a family of 4 or 5 children. So Israel collects a lot of money and gets a skilled labor force with a pretty good assurance that the laborers won’t try to stay permanently in the country. I had heard that Israel is making a bundle from enforcing the occupation, so now I have new data to support that thesis.

Asma and Ibtisam shifted the conversation from blaming their problems on the occupation to blaming the Palestinian Authority (PA). "They don’t provide jobs. 85% of college grads don’t find work," says Ibtisam. "I graduated in Math from Hebron University and wanted to teach school. But there have not been any openings for 4 years. It is common knowledge that you have to have connections to get a job, even in a hospital. I don't have connections." The Arabic word for such pull is "wastaa." With gracious sarcasm, they call it "Vitamin W."

Even though Asma was at the top of her class at Al-Quds University, majoring in Physics, the job she got as a teaching assistant barely covered her carfare for the hour commute, so she quit. Instead, she did what many young people feel is their only chance for a future. She applied for (and received) a full scholarship to study abroad. "The PA gets a lot of money from abroad, but they don’t help the people. In fact, today and tomorrow there is a national teachers’ strike because teachers have not been paid for two months."

I asked the young women about solutions to the dilemmas they face. "We need leaders who will help the people, not like Abbas (current Prime Minister of the West Bank) who gets a lot of money and doesn’t help." Last summer Asma met some injured people from Gaza in at her local hospital. They told her that life in Gaza is good, because foreign money is distributed among the people.

At this point, Nur, the student volunteer who had been quietly working in the same room, chimed in. "We don’t need to wait for leaders to act. We can start businesses and employ people and not depend on the political parties. We should see where the money is and invest it in Palestinian companies." To this Asma replied that half of her village is rich and half is poor. She once approached a rich man and asked him why he wasn’t building a factory to employ people instead of building more apartments. He didn’t answer her.

Another stress, faced by college students, is pressure to join one of the two major parties, Fateh or Hamas. Sometimes they are threatened with "problems" if they don’t join. Asma said she refused to join either party. "I didn’t care. I am a strong woman," she added with a broad smile.

Small Bites: History, Settlements, BDS & Pal Christians

A bit of history according to Sergio, our guide from the Alternative Tourism Group: "Jerusalem was a city of pilgrimage for three religions and thus a mixed city until 1948, when the new State of Israel divided it into West and East and expelled all the Arabs from West Jerusalem. Then in 1967, before the Six Day War was over, Israel took advantage of the chaos of war to expel 6,000 Arabs from the Jewish Quarter of the Old City, and tore down 600 apartments to make a plaza in front of the Western Wall.

The boundaries of Jerusalem were redrawn in 1967 to encompass the lands of 27 surrounding villages, but to exclude the village centers where most of the Palestinian population lived. By 1973 Israel had gerrymandered the boundaries to ensure a 72% majority of Jews in Jerusalem, and has striven to maintain these percentages. However, so many Jews have left West Jerusalem and the Jewish Quarter of the Old City, that their percentage has shrunk to 60%. In part, the exodus is due to the 42% rate of poverty in West Jerusalem. Settlements in Jerusalem, even huge ones like Pisgat Ze'ev have failed to correct the balance.

With 80,000 residents Pisgat Ze'ev is a stone's throw across a small valley from the Shu’fat Refugee Camp, the only such camp inside Jerusalem’s borders. The living conditions in these two cities are radically different, the settlement homes being tree lined and well watered, while the camp is dry and dirty. Forty thousand Palestinians are crowded inside the Wall that surrounds the camp, 12,000 of them refugees. Thanks to the Wall, Israel can ignore what happens inside the camp, even the presence of West Bankers living illegally with their Jerusalem spouses. However, this lack of attention also means that there is absolutely no police protection against theft or the thriving drug trade. Residents pay taxes to the Jerusalem Municipality -- at a higher rate than in Pisgat Ze’ev -- but services are not provided - no garbage collection, no road maintenance, no water connections. Only a medical clinic. You may wonder why they bother to pay taxes. Well, if they want to go out of Su’fat, they must go through a checkpoint where their ID will be scanned to see if they have paid their taxes. If not, they cannot just run home, pay the bill and come back. They will be arrested and held til they pay the bill.

Now here’s a curious twist to the generally segregated settlements: 4,000 Palestinians live in Pisgat Ze’ev,(!) not entirely comfortably, due to hostile gangs of radical Zionist youth, but helping to fill vacant units in a capitalistic system.

You won’t find a McDonalds in a settlement because of the strength of the Boycott Divestment and Sancions (BDS) movement. McDonalds doesn’t want anyone picketing a segregated burger. BDS has also succeeded in causing Soda Stream’s revenues to plunge because this company IS located in a settlement. As a result of our boycott pressure, Soda Stream decided to leave the settlement but now they cannot afford to!

Palestinian Christians, 1.5% of the population of Palestine (30,000 people), hang on by a thread. According to one of my Christian friends in Beit Sahour, many left Palestine after the war on Gaza, and many more had already left due to the lack of opportunities for their children. However, there is a determined core who refuse to leave. Unifying under shared Christian values, they issued a call (2009) to all Christians everywhere to pray and to act to defend Palestine against the occupation and on-going Zionist expansion, and to refute the theology and politics of Christian Zionists. Through this "Kairos Palestine" document they are saying to the world, especially the Christian world "We are here. Do not forget us." Their appeal can be summed up in one sentence, "Occupation is a sin against God and humanity."

Hanna and Her Non-Existant Daughter

I am jumping ahead in my somewhat chronological journaling to tell you what I experienced today, a story of one family's encounter with Israel's attempts to drive Palestinians away or to make them literally invisible.

When I called Hanna, she was happy to hear from me after my year's absence from Palestine. She invited me to visit her, but said she would have to come pick me up because she no longer lived in Beit Sahour on account of her daughter's identity papers. I wanted to ask why this move from her family home where I had stayed last year, but there was only time to make our arrangements to get together the next day.

When she came to get me, she wanted first to show me her workplace, where she is director of a facility that serves severely retarded adults. I was impressed with the quality and number of services for their 16 clients, but more about that later. As soon as we got back in Hanna's car, I started to try to make sense of the family's problem. But in fact it makes so little sense that Hanna herself had difficulty explaining it. Her 18 year old daughter, Yara, who has just begun her first year of law school at An Najah University in the North, has no identity papers, which means she doesn't exist.  The family has had to move to the Israeli side of the Green Line in order to start the process of establishing Yara's existence by getting her an ID.

The move happened just 20 days ago, and Hanna is exhausted and angry. Listening and to her and asking many clarifying questions, I learned that Yara has no birth certificate, apparently because she was born in the West Bank to a father who has a Jerusalem ID. Without papers, Yara cannot get a passport nor any other document, including a college diploma. In exasperation Hanna said, "Last night I was crying. You can't make plans for the future. There is no hope. Why do we have to move out of our home, away from our friends and neighbors, far from my son's school and my work. and pay rent and taxes that are far higher than even Israelis pay?" Hanna is angry, but she has made the move for her daughter's sake

While the neighborhood they moved to is inside Israel, it is inhabited by Palestinians, who are second class citizens of Israel and cannot get building permits. Hence, the very building Hanna and family have moved into, could receive a demolition order any day. BUT, they must reside in it for two years before they will hear from Israel as to whether their application for an ID is successful or not. Hanna herself will also apply because otherwise the family will not be able legally to live together in the same place. Meanwhile, Hanna lives illegally in her new apartment!

More Restrictions & Less Privacy

Ibrahim, age 13, needed to go to a hospital in Jerusalem for a badly broken leg. He lives in the West Bank, so his parents had to apply to the Israeli authorities for a permit to get into Jerusalem, using the doctor's order as proof of their need. But such permits are granted for only one day. Ibrahim needed 3 days of hospital treatment. His parents could not legally stay with him, nor legally come back to pick him up upon discharge.

My friend Iyad Bournat, an activist in the village of Bil'in (bilah-een), was denied such a medical permit for his 16 year old son, who had suffered nerve damage in his thigh from an Israeli bullet wound, received during a non-violent demonstration against the Wall. But the necessary treatment was not available in West Bank hospitals, so Iyad smuggled his son into an East Jerusalem hospital that was willing to accept the risks involved. However, as I have explained, Iyad could not stay with his son, but had to leave him to face the surgery alone.

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Israel is trying to ethnically cleanse the city of Jerusalem of all its Palestinian inhabitants, bit by bit (so as not to be so noticable by the international community) either through new laws and regulations, or by injecting Jewish settlers into Palestinian neighborhoods, or by evicting Palestinian families and demolishing their homes. One of the laws controls who can carry a Jerusalem ID, which makes a Palestinian a legal "resident" (not a citizen) of the city. The Jerusalem ID gives a Palestinian the right to travel into the West Bank and to anywhere inside Israel, so no one wants to give it up. This ID can be revoked if the Palestinian is absent from the city for more than 3 years, or has a residence somewhere outside of the city and can't prove that his main home is in Jerusalem, or if he gets a foreign passport. If one owner-member of an extended family lives abroad, he loses ownership of his share of the Jerusalem home, which then gives settler organizations a foothold to take over that share of the home.

# # #

The ciricculum in public schools in the West Bank and E. Jerusalem has been occupied as well. Israel just imposed a cirriculum change on Palestinian schools to eliminate any reference to the "Nakba", Palestine's holocaust. What for Israel was the "War of Independence", for Palestine was the " Disaster." Not to mention it is to deny an essential part of history that has shaped the life of a whole people. If a school principle refuses to comply with the change, his or her school is made into a private Israeli school employing Palestinian teachers. Thereafter, the school cannot use any textbooks published by the Palestinian Ministry of Education, nor any book carrying the Palestinian flag in its logo.

# # #

During our tour of the Old City, we could see Israeli flags flying from rooftops. One of those rooves also had a surveilance camera. Our guide, Daoud, told us that the camera includes a microphone of such high sensitivity that it can hear private conversations in surrounding homes. How do they know this? Because men have reported that they were arrested and charged with something they had told only to a friend or relative in the privacy of their home. The offense might be the violation of one of the many regulations I have been telling you about, such as traveling without a permit. The purpose of such surveilance is not to break a crime ring, but to find pretext for expelling another Palestinian from East Jerusalem.

Daoud took us into a cramped apartment building which had twelve tiny apartments consisting of one room and one window each, facing onto a narrow passage or central staircase. Settlers had occupied 6 of these apartments, placing young males in each one, and rotating them out every three months - revealing that their purpose was to establish a Jewish presence, not to live peacefully with their Muslim neighbors. The young males behave in ways that purposely disrespect and disrupt the customs and routines of the Palestinians.. We came upon a charred area, where the Palestinian residents had set fire to one of the apartments. An old woman had died without anyone to inherit her apartment. This was the only way they had of keeping it out of the hands of the settlers. I could understand why a Palestinian family might accept selling their apartment to Israeli Jewish settlers in order to escape the severe overcrowding and extremely unpleasant environment. Yet many people resist this seduction in order to protect their neighborhood and city from the settlers.

Next Daoud took us to see something no tourist will even learn about. It was a section of the Muslim Quarter where the building foundations were so badly cracked that the residents of 27 apartments had to be evacuated. The cause of the damage is the on-going digging Israel is doing underneath the Old City without warning nor telling anyone why they are doing it. However, well-informed people like Daoud think it is in part for archeological exploration and in part to build tunnels "for security", i.e. to control the population. I don't know what happened to the 27 displaced families.

Putting settler activity in perspective, Daoud explained that before '48 only 30 out of 3000 properties in the Old City belonged to Jews - Jews who spoke Arabic and were integrated into the society.

Stories of Oppression and Resistance

On the first day of the Olive Picking Program, we went to the village of Al-Walaja. I have written about this village before, as they have a dramatic story of displacement due to Israel annexing their lands after the war of 1967. But today we stopped on the outskirts of the village at the home of Omar, his wife and three children. As Omar has legal title to his land since before '67, Israel cannot just remove him, though he is a big thorn in their side. His house and small plot planted with olives sits on the proposed path of the Wall. He refuses to accept the blank check Israel has offered him to buy him out. So, Israel has built a little paved road and tunnel that will go under the wall and up to Omar's entrance, so that the family will be able to dive under the wall when they want to go anywhere. Of course there is a gate at the entrance to the little tunnel in case Israel wants to keep Omar at home, or from reaching his home, for any reason.

After a while of picking olives with my group of 30 internationals and Omar's relatives , I sought out Omar to ask him some questions. How did Israel's war on Gaza affect the West Bank? Omar thinks that the war got the disillusioned youth engaged in a good way as they turned out for demonstrations and started to boycott Israeli goods. Everyone collected blankets and other items to send to Gaza. The demand from the street was not only against Israel's aggression, but also that the Palestinian Authority unify Palestine and end the separation between the West Bank and Gaza caused by the divide between the two major parties, Fateh and Hamas. They also voiced impatience with the Palestinian Authority for its delay in going to the U.N. and International Court of Justice to end the occupation of the West Bank and seige of Gaza.

# # #

In the afternoon our program included a tour of Bethlehem. Our guide Iyad talked about how the Wall was not built for security, but to take land. The Wall, which Palestinians call the Apartheid Wall and Israelis call the Separation Barrier, is onlly 60% finished, so how does that protect Israel? Further, it is not on the 1967 Green Line border with Israel, which is 472 km long. The unfinished Wall is already 770 km long, because it reaches its greedy fingers way into the West Bank, separating Palestinians from Palestinians, and separating Palestinians from their own agricultural fields. In the process, it swallows a large swath of land, uprootiing trees on the way. Just outside Bethlehem city limits, a new segment of the Wall is going to take the beautifully terraced grape vineyards and olive orchards of the Cremisan Monastery and Winery, plus the property of 55 Palestinian families, and put them on the Israeli side of the Wall. Because of the Wall and the Israeli settlements, Bethlehem City is surrounded, cut off from 87% of its territory. What this means in human terms -for the residents of Bethlehem and its adjacent suburbs of Beit Jala and Beit Sahour -- is harder to describe.

You can't leave Bethlehem without going through a checkpoint, and you can't return without passing a huge red and white roadsign that says to Israelis that they are in mortal danger if they cross into your city. If you are a worker with a permit to work in Jerusalem, your sister city just a few miles North of here, it means arriving at the largest, most fortified checkpoint at 3 or 4 a.m. in order to get through in time to reach your workplace by 7 or 8 a.m.. All checkpoints are a humiliating experience. If you want to go to a wedding, a doctors appointment, your university or a cultural event outside of Bethlehem limits, you cannot be sure how long it will take to get there in terms of hours, or whether you will get there at all. If one of the checkpoints is closed, no reason is provided; you must turn back. The same applies for the return home. And since you are not allowed to go to Jerusalem without a permit, you must drive around it if you want to go anywhere to the North. This is an extra 20 miles on a dangerous road. And, and, and. Everyone can tell you a similar story of how their life is made miserable, frightening or expensive by the presence of barriers and soldiers.

# # #

On Monday, we got a tour of the Old City with a young Palestinian tour guide, whose knowlege spoke well of the two years of training he had received. Daoud gave us a lot of geo-political history, including how the city got divided along religious or ethnic lines during British rule, as part of the process of colonization. I learned that some of the places that are flying the Israeli flag inside the ancient Muslim Quarter are "security settlements" -- not residences, but army guardposts used to spy on the city's inhabitants, and to encourage more Jews to move in and eventually take over.

I was startled to learn that for the last 4 months the threat of a Jewish assault on the Al Aqsa Mosque has taken a stride forward. The settler movement, backed by the Israeli government, intends to occupy the entire acre where the mosque and its lovely gardens are, destroy the mosque and the guilded Dome of the Rock building (from whence Mohammed ascended to heaven), and "rebuild" the Jewish temple there. New regulations, enforced by Israeli soldiers, prohibit Muslims from entering Al Aqsa until after 11:00 A.M. Before 11:00 only Jews and foreigners are allowed entry . In other words Muslims are forbidden to visit the second most holy place in their religion, even Muslims who live right next door to it, while tourists and Jews are ushered in by Israeli soldiers who are posted at all six of the entrances to the compound. The icing on this poisonous cake is that there is a campaign in the United States to raise money to build the new Jewish temple.

Profile of a Palestinian Woman

In order to protect my new friend, I will not use her real name. I will call her Noura. I asked her to start her story with her grandparents and parents, but she started with her birthdate of February, 1948. She is the 6th of 7 children. The five older ones were born in Haifa where her parents lived in an apartment provided by the private school where her father worked as the watchman. Her mother was married at age 13, and had a total of 9 children, two of whom died. Sometime in January, 1948 the British military came to their door and told her father to take a week's vacation. They packed a bag and went to Zebabdeh, on the other side of Palestine, where they had relatives. A week later, her father started the trip home but was stopped in the city of Nazareth. He was told to sign a paper, which he did, and in return was handed a card which said he was now a refugee and couldn't go home - ever. His brother refused to sign the paper, and as a result had no status and was forced to leave to Lebanon.

Shortly after, Noura was born in Zebabdeh while her parents became farmers. Noura went to the village school which went up through grade 6. To continue her education, she was sent to a charity boarding school 3 hours away because the family could not afford a daily commute to the nearest public school in Nablus, which was only an hour away. For three months Noura endured a feeling of total abandonment. The other children received visits from their parents, who brought them gifts or treats, but Noura's parents did not visit. Finally Noura broke the rules and secretly scaled the surrounding wall and asked a passing stranger to mail the letter she had written to her father saying, "I am dying." Her father was alarmed when he received the letter and came immediately. Though this clever and suffering child was scolded for sending the letter, her father visited regularly after that. In three years, when Noura completed 9th grade, she returned to Zababdeh. A year later, her older brothers were able to pay for her to attend 11th grade in Nablus and 12th in Jenin, where it was a little cheaper. Perhaps her parents and brothers realized that Noura was a gifted child, because her eldest sister never went to school and married at age 13, and the second daughter married at 15 or 16.

After high school, Noura had to find work. She moved in with a sister in Beit Jala near Bethlehem and got a job taking care of children in an orphanage, but didn't like it. She became a receptionist at a nearby large guesthouse/conference center. Soon she was able to rent a room in order to be independent of her sister. At about this time, when she was 23, a local man noticed her and proposed to marry her. She met him under supervision of her sister, and agreed to his proposal. So she called her father, who came to give his approval and make wedding arrangements. However, Noura's brothers said that their cousin Saeed, then teaching in Hebron in the South, was also available to marry, and would be preferable to a stranger. When Noura heard this, she felt the same way as her brothers. She would rather marry her cousin, whom she had known since birth, as they were born in the same town on the same day, just two hours apart!

Noura and Saeed got married the next year, 1973. They lived in Bethlehem, each continuing in their work places while having their first two daughters. Then Noura was able to get a job at a church in Jerusalem, where her brother was working. Again she was a receptionist, at the church's guesthouse, in addition to cooking, cleaning and serving as a guide to the guests. During this time she had two sons. She worked there for 30 years, achieving through the church, permanent Israeli-issued permits for her and her husband to travel between the West Bank, where they live, and Jerusalem, even though Noura no longer works in Jerusalem. Most West Bank residents cannot get into Jerusalem because Israel wants to reduce the Palestinian population of occupied Jerusalem. Until today they have this rare flexibility, which also facilitates Noura's latest line of work.

Noura now works with fair trade women's craft cooperatives. The women do the beautiful Palestinian emboidery, and Noura does the finishing work, fashioning purses, wall hangings, place mats, pillow cases and so on, using the emboidered pieces. She receives some of the handiwork by mail from women in Gaza, and she exports special orders to Europe. Being able to get back and forth to Jerusalem makes this work possible. After all, to do "fair" trade, one must be able to "trade," something that is harder and harder to do under the restrictions of the occupation.

In 1967 Noura was still in Zebabdeh but not going to school. She was harvesting wheat with her parents when someone came running and crying out, "The war has started!" The village government issued guns to her brothers, without any training. On the third day of the Six Day War, they saw warplanes overhead and suddenly a massive wave of people came running over the hill, fleeing the bombing. Noura's father told his sons to take the girls and go to Jordan, just a short distance away. But the son's refused, saying that if they were to die, they would all die together, not like in '48.

Soon a tank drove up. Noura thought it was Arab military who had come to save them, but it turned out to be Israeli soldiers, who ordered them to put up a white flag. Her brothers threw their guns into a well in order not to be caught with weapons. Nevertheless, two of her brothers were taken away by the soldiers. Shots were heard, and then no news for 21 days as to the fate of the two brothers. Noura feared they were killed, but finally one and then the other returned home.F

During the First Intifada in 1987, Noura kept her children in the house and did not allow them to go out and throw stones at the soldiers. She did not believe in such violence. But at one point soldiers came and searched the house, believing stones had been thrown from there. Noura met them with calm disdain and invited them to search the house. Finding no evidence, they left without further incident. At another moment, during the 45 days of curfew that Israel imposed to crush the Intifada, there was no bread in the house. Noura sent her 10 year old son to the store around the corner, hoping he could make it out and back without being seen. But the soldiers did see him, stopped him and came to the house with him. Noura was terribly frightened, but refused to show it, and argued with the soldiers until they backed off. "I didn't break the curfew, just we didn't have any bread, and the children are hungry. I sent a boy, and all he has with him is bread. But go ahead and do whatever you have to do." Actually, she was ready to die to protect her son.

One final example of the fortitude of this Palestinian woman: Even with a permit to go to Jerusalem, she has to go through the crowded checkpoint along with hundreds of men trying to get to their jobs. One day the mash of men pushing and screaming and fighting for their place in line was more than she could bear, and she started to cry. When she finally got to the soldiers who checked permits, she asked to speak to the checkpoint officer in charge. They told her to come back at 4:00 p.m. and the officer would be there. Of course, when she returned, they pretended that the officer was not there. She insisted they give him the message that there must be a separate entrance for women. Evidently he did get the message, and a separate passage for women was created; but it functions according to the whim of the soldiers on duty that day.

I think Noura has another 100 stories, but with these we know that this Palestinian woman will continue to defy the odds, speak up for her rights and not give up easily - or ever.

Days 2-5: Homecomings

Days 2 - 4,  October 8 -11
Having successfully written and posted my first blog from here, I am up to day 2. (Today it is day 9).  As I don't have to head to Nablus until noon, I am able to take my traveling buddy Doris to see the YABOUS CULTURAL CENTER in East Jerusalem, but outside of the Old City. It is open, but there are no funtions or exhibits going on so we look for signs of life in the basement offices.  Mona, the office manager, welcomes us and offers to show us around.  While we see the conference room (under rennovation) the movie theater that seats 80 in comfortable chairs complete with cup-holders, the exhibition hall where local artists can hang their work,  and the lecture hall, I ask Mona some questions. Their many cultural projects receive funding from abroad, but salaries have not been paid since last June. Norway had been covering that cost but had to shift its priorities from this center to the urgent needs in  Syria.  So the 11 staff members are living without any income, which is hard to imagine.  In spite of this hardship, they refuse to solicite money from any U.S. organization because they boycott the U.S. - an interesting twist on the BDS movement. (BDS is Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions, a campaign launched from Palestine in 2005 and picking up steam in the U.S. in the last couple of years. It is based on the South African anti-apartheid model of the 1980's and 90's.)
Next on my agenda was to get to Nablus to see Mohammed and his family, take care of PHF business, and be with "my family". Mohammed picked us up at the bus station and we went directly to the offices of the PALESTINIAN HOUSE OF FRIENDSHIP (PHF) to sort out how to spend our two days together.  Since I am a member of American Friends of PHF, I came with a list of tasks to accomplish with Mohammed. But first I asked about his now adult children. Raya was home from Turkey with her twin baby boys and 3 year old daughter last summer for one month. Now she is back in Turkey and has started her coursework for her PhD in public health administration. Her husband has not yet found work there, but provides essential child care while Raya studies.  Yazan, now 27, graduated from An-Najah University on September 18, with a major in business administration.  His graduation was a significant victory for him, since his studies were interrupted twice by arrests and jail time for the crime of being a young adult male in a country under military occupation.  Prison and torture took a toll on Yazan's outgoing personality, but I am happy to report that he has recovered his ability to smile, and that he has confidence in his ability to persue a career in business.
Majed, almost 20 and a junior at the university, was not home because he was in Germany for a 10 day student exchange program. He was one of only four students selected to represent An-Najah University in this program. I talked to him on the phone and could hear that he is loving this opportunity to be with his German peers, be interviewed by local newspapers and meet members of Parliament.  Twice before this he traveled alone to Turkey to visit Raya. He is coming into his own as a mature, cosmopolitan adult as well as having achieved popularity among rap musicians in the West Bank.  He and 3 friends have a  band called Behind Bars Band which has performed in Ramallah and Nablus. Majed is very serious about his music, which he sees as an essential avenue for expression of thoughts and feelings of youth under occupation.
After completing our PHF work together, Mohammed drove me to my Palestinian sister's home on the other side of the city. She is Ensaf, but prefers to be called Im Wafa, or Mother of Wafa, her oldest son.  Her husband, Yaser, is Abu Wafa, father of Wafa. Abu Wafa speaks a litte English and I struggle to communicate with the whole family with my few words of Arabic.  But love conquers all, and we have a great reunion.  Abu Wafa once told me that he would never have met Mohammed if it weren't for me, because they are from different class  backgrounds. He was deeply moved that "Doctor Mohammed" would honor his family with a visit to each other's homes.  Now they routinely speak on hoidays and inform each other of major family events, like Yazan's graduation and the injury just sustained by Abu Wafa's yougest son, 18 year old Mohammed.  He broke his foot at the construction site where he was working, and had to wait almost a week for a surgeon to come to Nablus from Ramallah to operate.  Luckily, the operation went well in spite of the delay.  Because I am part of this family, Im Wafa allowed herself to break down and cry when only I was present- a brief release of tension over her son's accident - a brief demonstration of the emotion that lurks under the surface, hidden from self and others as they endure the pressures of their daily life.
News in this family, whom I have known for 12 years, is that the eldest daughter is pregnant with her 4th child; Deena, 24, the next oldest daughter and my favorite, finished her teaching degree last Winter , another great achievement for this working class, refugee family, can't find work as a teacher, so is thinking of going to beauty school to learn hair dressing and make-up, where there is always a demand. She is married, but has no children and is bored at home alone.  Her younger sister, Diana, is pregnant with her second child. Dareen, age 9, at the top of her class in 4th grade, is very smart, so I hope she will learn English easily and can then translate for us!
Abu Wafa was working 5-6 days a week last year in his trade as a clothes presser,  but this year has little work due to a decline in the economy from the war on Gaza and the flood of Chinese products in the markets. Im Wafa continues to work full time as a Religious Studies teacher in a public school.  I didn't see Wafa, 32, this year, but assume he continues to work in construction to support his wife and 3 children.
Abu Wafa on the current situation in the West Bank:  He is not afraid, but is fed up with Israel. Checkpoints and travel restrictions have been reinstated since Gaza.  Meanwhile, there have been many demonstrations in Nablus against Israel's attack on Gaza, and people have collected blankets, food and money to send there. When injured Gazans have come to Nablus hospitals, people here visited them, since their Gazan relatives were forbidden to come.
When it was time to leave Im Wafa and the family, Mohammed came to drive us to the bus station to depart from Nablus.  We were assisted to get a seat in the crowded public transport van by a tall thin man who happened to be going, as we were, to Ramallah and then on to Bethlehem.  We eventually started talking to him and learned that he is a tour guide who had just dropped a group in Nablus and was returning to his home. Doris asked him if he knew Johnny A., a tour guide from Beit Sahour, and, sure enough, they are best friends!  Part of his story is that he had been a student at the American University in Jenin ( in northern West Bank), but did not continue there  because the checkpoints between there and his home city of Bethlehem (southern West Bank), made the travel time of 8 or 9 hours each way unbearable.  So he enroled in the Lutheran College Tour Guide program in Bethlehem and received his certification after two and a half years. It is a rigorous course to prepare to tell tourists accurate details about all they are seeing - whether historical, religious or political. Ramsi also told us that one of his two brothers just completed undergraduate studies in Cyprus and now must decide whether to come back to Palestine, where there are no jobs, or stay in exile in order to make a living somehow.   These are some of the difficult decisions that face young Palestinians today, and one always wonders how it would be if there were no military occupation placing limits on opportunity.

First Day in Palestine: Old City of Jerusalem

It is impossible to know where to start.  Whether to go over my notes from the last 10 days or tell the stories from my host family or write a blog about changes here since last year, etc.
It is a sunny, warm Fall day in Beit Sahour, and I took the day off by not joining the group's tour of Hebron where I have been many times.  I needed to write, and for that I need to concentrate. I will go  back to day one.
October 7 - My first morning at the Austrian Hospice in the Old City of East Jerusalem I sat at the breakfast table with a young blond woman from Ireland who is teaching piano at the Edward Said  National Conservatory of Music's Nablus campus.  So I started to think about connecting her with Mohammed and PHF.  She lives in Ramallah, and commutes 5 days a week to Nabus.  I told her about PHF and she said she would welcome the possibility of volunteering her skills. Later, I gave her info to Mohammed, who was also pleased with the prospect of bringing another resource to PHF.
After breakfast I started my chores of renewing my 2 cell phones (one for Israeli-controlled E. Jerusalem and one for the West Bank telecommunications system) and changing money. My usual money changer was no longer there, so I had to accept whatever rate I was offered at another place. Oh well. My Palestinian newspaper man was not in his stall due to the Jewish holiday of Shucrot (sp?)which interrupted publication of the English language Ha'aretz and International Herald Tribune.
When finally free to enjoy the rest of the day, I wandered around the Old City. First I stopped to greet the man who runs a small shop selling lose cookies and candies. He surely makes a meager income from this place, but is always pleased to see me and chat a little about the occupation and U.S. politics, and I am always pleased to pick out about 10 of the most interesting or yummy cookies which serve as my snack food for a few days.  From there I strolled along the bustling market street, trying not to bump into too many people or carts using the same narrow space.  This took me through the Muslim Quarter and on into the Christian Quarter. I ignore the souvenir shops as they change from Palestinian Muslim to more Christian trinkets, and anyway I am not wanting to buy anything, now that I have already found a bracelet that identifies me as favoring Palestine.  I walked slowly, taking in the products of ordinary life, from kitchen utensils to meat to vegetables to clothes.
At a crossroads I take a right turn and decide to seek a small museum I have visited  before. It is harder than ever to locate it, as its single door to an old residence is almost hidden by the shops on either side. I ask a shopkeeper for help, find the place and ring the bell. Luckily, someone is there and  buzzes me in, even though they usually only open by appointment.  This is Mujoud Cultural Center & Museum under the auspices of the Arab Orthodox Society, the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate of Jerusalem and the Waqf of Jerusalem, and it preserves many artifacts and photos from Palestinian life before 1948. The director, Noura Kort, knows the history of each object and the value of protecting her heritage in this way. I ask about the space behind the museum, and she shows me that it is still there - about an acre of open land (!) that at one time was a water reservoir serving the whole community including the Patriarch's private  bath which was adjacent to the pool.  The water was piped in from the beautiful Suliman Pools, a few kilometers away, now an archeological treasure that is in ruins.
In 1967, when Israel occupied and illegally annexed East Jerusalem, it drained this pool and left it empty, to fill up with garbage until last year.  Finally, the museum's supporters prevailed upon the Jerusalem Municipality to clean up the lot, and it now appears as bare land surrounded   by apartment buildings on all sides. If my technological skills and time allowed I would insert a photo here for you to better appreciate the victory it is that this tiny enterprise has managed to keep this space out of settlers' hands.  Noura comments that Obama has not deserved the Nobel Peace Prize and it should be revoked. She tells me, by way of criticizing U.S. policies, that yesterday a U.S.  bomb killed a leader of the Kurds whom we are supposedly supporting against ISIS.  In contrast to this behavior she tells me the story of the first Muslim conqueror of Jerusalem, Omar, who had the option of enslaving and/or killing the captured Christian population or taking a nonviolent approach. He chose the latter, and signed an agreement which is still visible on a stone monument, that Christians could continue to live and practice their religion under his rule if they would pay a tax or tithe. In his wisdom, he refused the invitation to enter the Church of the Holy Sepulchre to pray, as he knew this would set a dangerous precident. Instead, he picked up a stone, threw it some meters away from the Church, and built a mosque on that spot.
As I walked back towards the Austrian Hospice, a shopkeeper stopped me, saw my bracelet, and wanted to talk. Usually this is a trap to get you to buy something, but somehow he communicated an honest desire to chat, so I accepted his invitation to enter his store and sit down. After about 10 minutes of reviewing the politics of the occupation, he said was impressed and surprised by how well informed I am.  He hoped I would stop by again, and maybe I will.
At this rate, I will never get though my jounal, but I love to tell you these stories, and I hope they make Palestine and Palestinians  become real to you. To be continued.