We have been told that there are some 500 NGOs in Bethlehem and right now it feels like we have visited most! Both the Bethlehem and Jerusalem teams are charged with keeping abreast of what is happening in the world of NGOs in their respective placements, which means visiting many of them and getting an update or a briefing on activities. The Wi’am Centre for Conflict Resolution, founded in 1995, was one which caught my eye. We have met with Zoughbi Zoughbi, the founder, and Lucia Talgeih, one of the employees. This centre began with dreams of addressing issues of peace and reconciliation within the Palestinian/Israeli conflict but soon began to change its focus to a more local level and addressing some of the needs within the Palestinian societal context. They train mediators to work in domestic disputes and community disputes. I was very impressed with the level of knowledge, training and education of the staff.
I hosted an interesting delegation of church people, Americans and one lone Canadian, who were here to examine corporate complicity in Israel’s military occupation and the economic impact of the occupation. In particular, they were interested in the biometric hand scanners made by EDS, a subsidiary of Hewlett Packard and used by the Israelis in Gilo CP. The Palestinian workers we see every morning are mainly blue collar workers traveling from Bethlehem to work in Jerusalem. They are often turned back at these scanners and are not allowed to go through the CP to get to work because their hand is not recognized from one day to the next. Of course, working manual labour does not help and damage to their hands happens fairly frequently. This delegation was meeting with EDS/HP later in the day and wanted to see first-hand how these machines were contributing to constant and gross violations of human rights in the CPs.
I gave them our best Gilo CP tour at 5:45 a.m. and was able to find an appropriate time to take them through the CP. It is interesting that after a few short weeks in the placement, going through the Gilo nightmare, becomes second-nature. All these gentlemen (with one exception) were very ill-at-ease and uncomfortable. I was unsure of how much time they had and kept asking if they should be getting back to the hotel. The leader of the group (who was the only one who had experienced a CP before) said that they had lots of time but the others couldn’t get out of there fast enough! I do hope they reported their discomfort with the experience to Hewlett Packard in the afternoon.
This picture is of poor quality (I have a lousy camera) but if you look closely you can see men running on top of the CP queue and then dropping into the line further up. This is extreme queue jumping.
In Tu’qua, a small Palestinian village with a big Israeli army problem, our job is to be there in the morning as the children of Tu’qua are traveling to school. We wait at the side of a very busy road as 1000+ students approach two schools, kind of criss-crossing in the middle of the road. The army is always present, sitting in their vehicles, watching. There does not seem to be any reason for their presence, except maybe to provoke or antagonize the village folk. Unfortunately, it is often too much of a provocation for the Palestinian youth (usually males) and they throw stones, setting about the much choreographed response from the army – tear gas, sound bombs and rubber bullets, if necessary. The day we were there was particularly quiet but we will continue to monitor the situation.
An Nu’man is another village where we perform the same function but in this case the children must pass through a CP and it is reported that they have been harassed and abused by the military. We usually monitor CP as the children return home and then follow them into the village for visits to families. Last week, as we approached the CP, the soldier was shouting at us from his watch tower to stop. We tried to ignore him but it became obvious we should stop because we were really irritating him. No sense in getting ourselves detained or arrested! The children passed and we wanted to follow them into the village but the soldiers would not allow us through the CP. This was something new for us as we had always been able to pass through. It turned out that an Aljazeera TV news team had preceded us to the CP and we surmised that their presence spoiled our chances of going through. Anyway, all was not lost because the TV crew asked my colleague, Phil, if he would do an interview with them. Great for the EAPPI program.
A friend from Tulkarm, Abdul Karim Sadi, visited me in Bethlehem and said I could travel back with him on Wednesday for my postponed placement visit to Tulkarm. However, his plans changed and I found myself heading out to Ramallah by Servis – Oh, happy day - my favourite mode of West Bank public transportation. By chance, a friend and driver, Muawya, was heading to Ramallah to pick up another fare and I was able to tag along with them back to Tulkarm. We were waiting for him in a coffee shop in Ramallah for quite some time because there had been a problem in Za’tara CP on his (Muawya’s) way to pick us up. A Palestinian police officer stabbed and killed an Israeli soldier in the CP and it had been closed for a long time. Unfortunately, that is the only way to return, so it was a long time getting to Tulkarm. We read later in Ma’an news that the stabbing appeared to be a random act by Palestinian who just snapped. Not surprising – I’m only surprised that it does not happen more often!
I had a totally wonderful, magical couple of days in Tulkarm. Re-connecting with the farmers and donkeys of Deir Al Ghusun, Suzanne and Jamal Hamed in Shoufeh, Adbulkarim and Basma Dalbah and of course, Muawya, Ismat, their three boys, and all his extended family. I had lunch with them on Friday and walked new baby, Omar, until he fell asleep. When it came time to leave, Muawya insisted on driving me back to Bethlehem (2 hours each way) and then, his father said he wanted to go too and then his mother said she wanted to go too and then Yousef (8yrs) said he wanted to go too, at which point Muawya drew the line, saying he would need to drive a bus to fit everyone in. So he and his parents drove me back. Fortunately, it was smooth sailing for most of the way and a CP, called the Container CP, was not busy. We had many calls from the locals in Bethlehem recently about this CP; it can be backed up for hours at a time. A driver called to ask us to go to the CP the next morning (Saturday) to see if we could do something because it was closed for 2 ½ hours. We called our contacts in Machsom Watch who said that they were on the case and we needn’t go.
How cute is Omar?
There is speculation that the IDF are tightening up on Internationals in the West Bank for some reason - not sure why – but we have noticed this in Gilo. On Sunday morning, my colleague, Phil, and I were doing our usual thing in the CP and Phil went to go through the hall from the metal detectors to the ID booths, something we do 4 mornings a week. Normally, we don’t take off our shoes, belts, vests, etc, but we simply show our passports and even though we beep, they allow us through. But on Sunday, they sent Phil back through the metal detector four times, each time having him remove more items of clothing but he was still beeping. Someone suggested it may be his glasses, so he took those off and finally went through. Unfortunately, at the end of it all, either the machine ate his glasses or the next person picked them up by mistake and he lost them. Later that afternoon we had to pass through Gilo to come into Jerusalem for our mid-term (Israeli exposure) week, and the four of us all received the same thorough treatment. Once again, who knows why, maybe to keep us off-balance just like they do the Palestinians.
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