Summer’s large brown eyes, framed with black mascara on long lashes, were listening to my questions. She had her hair covered to respect her family’s religious traditions, but her t-shirt showed a woman’s face made up like a cat with a black puff for a nose. My informal interview went on for an hour, during which we removed ourselves from the hub-hub of volunteers and visitors to the museum, and continued talking in another room.
I wanted to start with easy questions, so asked Summer where she is living. “I live in Beit Skariya in the middle of Gush Etzion,” Right away this did not make sense. How could her Palestinian village be in a settlement? So she explained that this very large complex of settlements, that together form the Gush Etzion Bloc that connects with West Jerusalem, has a hole in its middle where her village and 4 others continue to exist in spite of continuous efforts to dispossess them. These are agricultural villages and together once had 800 acres of land, but the settlements have confiscated all but 125 acres. Because the families in these 5 neighborhoods refuse to sell their land to the settlements, though they are offered huge amounts of money, they are embraced by Palestinians as resisters.
I knew immediately that Summer’s life at age 27 is defined by where she lives. “How is that for you?” I asked. She was quick to respond, the smile gone from her face,“I feel isolated, even during the big holidays. I can’t move around and visit relatives like everyone else can.” She went on to explain how there are now 2 checkpoints to cross to enter or leave her home - ever since there was a knife attack and a car ramming attack at the entrance to Gush Etzion back in 2014, when the number of such attacks on settlers by Palestinians spiked. She doesn’t dare walk through the checkpoints after dark, and doesn’t like having to ask a relative to come pick her up. But she works here in Bethlehem, and often has no choice but to travel late.
So Summer’s ID, which she must have on her at all times, reads “Residence: Gush Etzion.” Israel would rather she put her village name, but her father thinks that is a trap to use against them in Israel’s next move to take more of their land.
Next we talked about Summer’s education, because I wondered how she ended up here on the staff at the Palestine Museum of Natural History. She began her schooling in one nearby village and transferred to another in 4th grade. For 5th and 6th grades she was confined to her neighborhood due to the danger of traveling during the 2nd Intifada. A woman volunteered two rooms of her house to be classrooms for grades one to six. This is one of the ways Palestinians insisted on educating their children in spite of the violence caused by the occupation. For grades 7 to 10 Summer attended the public school where she had started elementary, but for eleventh and twelfth grades she enrolled in an agricultural high school. From there she was admitted to Hebron University and graduated with a BA in 2015. She is now studying for a Masters in Agribusiness at Al-Quds University in Jerusalem.
Its is probably clear that this much moving from school to school, including the “two-room schoolhouse” situation, would challenge most any child. Layer on top of that the fact that Summer, at a very young age, had to pass soldiers on the way to and from school, which meant being stopped, questioned, her schoolbag searched. She paused. “Were you scared?” Summer’s eyes began to fill with tears, and she cried. I apologized for causing her to re-visit what was clearly a traumatizing experience and said we could stop talking. But Summer wanted to continue. Maybe telling the story was more helpful than burying it.
“Has anyone else in your family gone to university?” No, she was the first, though now a younger sister is also going. To understand what this represents in Samar’s family, I needed to know about her siblings. She has 10 siblings from her father’s first wife who died of cancer. She is the oldest of five from his second wife. Her mother had been married before, had 4 children and then divorced. Divorcing and remarrying is highly unusual in Palestine, so I felt that Summer’s parents must be strong and interesting people. Summer thinks that she had more freedom than other young girls in her culture because of the spirit of resistance in her village and her family. They consented to her, a single woman, going far north to Jenin for an eight month course of study. To understand how much Summer has achieved, I will add that her father has been a farmer all his life, raising figs, almonds, grapes, plums and peaches. Her mother only completed 4th grade. Her aunts are illiterate.
And to understand how the occupation erodes the fabric of Palestinian life, I will add that the youth in Summer’s 5-village hold-out area must leave town if they want to start a family, because they are in Area C where Israel does not permit new building. Traditionally, when adult children marry, the family adds rooms onto their home for the new couple. She told me how one of her brothers is about to marry, and is secretly renovating the family home to accommodate him and his wife. Even such a renovation of an existing home, is illegal, and must be done undercover - not so easy when you are talking about construction materials.
Finally, only because it is closing time and we have to wrap up our conversation, Summer surprised me by the news that her 5 villages have petitioned Gush Etzion settlement to extend their sewage pipes into the villages, which apparently have no adequate infrastructure for wastewater. “What?!! The villages asked the settlement for a favor and the settlement is considering it?” Summer responded that not all settlers are violent, though some of them do attack her area and harm crops. Some settlers are normal people who understand the situation these 5 villages face and are willing to help. There is a settler woman who often gives her rides.
Samar says that settlers and soldiers (!) are also human beings - some good, some bad— well, maybe most bad, but still…
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