The last two days have brought me to Bir Zeit (pronounced bir zayt), a small university town near Ramallah. This is because the advanced orchestra of the conservatory is performing a concert in Manger Square on Christmas Eve and these two days are a chance for the students taking part from all three branches of the conservatory to get together and rehearse. The concert is being performed along with a visiting choir from America and includes around 20 minutes of music from the Messiah by Handel as well as some John Rutter carols. The first day was for the orchestra alone, including sectional rehearsals then the choir joined us this morning.
I imagine that for some of these visitors this is the trip of a lifetime – they are an amalgamation of church choirs, so the religious side of being in the Holy Land at Christmas means a lot to them, and their enthusiasm about our students is incredible. Once the choir and orchestra had had a chance to meet, we left for Bethlehem to do a rehearsal on the stage in Manger Square, in order for the lighting and sound engineers to do their work. The choir had booked out a large venue in Bethlehem for us to join them for lunch, and despite leaving Bir Zeit at the same time, it took our bus around two hours to get through the Qalandiya checkpoint due the fact we were transporting Palestinians and not Americans and by the time we arrived in Bethlehem the choir had already eaten. While they were waiting for us, they organised a standing ovation stretching from the door all the way to the centre of the hall and the sight and sound of 200 people welcoming our students in this way was quite something.
Since leaving Bethlehem two days ago, it has changed noticeably. Walking back home from the rehearsal I passed many tourists, some Santa Clauses, as well as several shops that don’t usually open. Seasonal trading is to be expected, but I hadn’t realised it would mean shops appearing seemingly out of nowhere. The atmosphere is good though, and it is nice to see Bethlehem coming to life a little – it would be better if it were allowed to come to life permanently, however.
On arriving at the infamous Huwwara checkpoint, the most noticeable thing are the throngs of waiting taxis. The reason that this checkpoint has such a notorious reputation is that it is the only entry or exit point for the entire city of Nablus, and is well know as one where the army treats the Palestinians badly. As Nablus is considered one of the West Bank’s most militant places, the Israeli army enter the city almost every night, on incursions to attack the militias who are based here. Also, Nablus is a town from which local youths are not easily permitted to leave, and therefore is one of the several Palestinian towns or cities that resemble open air prisons.
Surrounded by the dead - the youth of Nablus are trapped.
The drive from the checkpoint to the city centre takes around 5 minutes in a taxi, and takes you past the equally infamous Balata Refugee Camp, where we would finish our day. But first, after the one and a half hour drive from Bethlehem a coffee stop was required so we headed to the Old City, and met with a friendly restaurant owner who despite not normally selling coffee, ordered some for us from a neighbouring shop.
As we sat in his restaurant, he spoke with us about the situation in Palestine and he had many insightful views. He praised our accompanying friend, who is studying English at Bethlehem University, making the point that successful nations must cultivate their intellectuals in order to make progress in the world.
Nablus is renowned for it’s knafe – a syrupy-sweet pastry dessert similar to Baklava but made from Goat’s cheese - and just around the corner we found the shop thought of as being the best in Nablus, and therefore Palestine. We watched as they cooked the knafe in large round trays, before covering them and turning them over using their heads like a circus balancing act.
As we watched this process, a man came to us and said ‘If you want to see something, come.’ I suspected this was an attempt to sell us foreigners something and went with the words ‘No thanks’ ready on my lips. He pointed down the narrow road, to where a funeral was taking place. We arrived just as the main group of people taking part approached, chanting various slogans, including the ubiquitous ‘God is Great’, passing us by carrying the body of Sulaiman Al-Qassas, a member of the Al-Aqsa Brigades who had been killed the previous day. Not for the last time of the day, our timing was impeccable.
From the sombre and tense atmosphere of a politically charged funeral, we walked farther down the same street to visit a 700 year old Turkish bath. Unfortunately, Tuesdays are for women only so while our female companions entered the bathing area, we stayed by reception and chatted with the manager who in finest Palestinian tradition served us hot, sweet tea. Of course, it was on the house.
From the Turkish baths, we walked to the site of what I think is best described as an ancient coaching inn. This small courtyard had been under development as an area for some small shops, with a central area for putting on open-air concerts and other cultural events. This excellent initiative was being funded by the EU – until Hamas were elected and the international boycott put a stop to such projects. A city such as Nablus is in desperate need for cultural and artistic projects such as this, and the prevention of progress in this way as a result of an election result disliked by Western nations is in nobody’s interest.
We then returned to our friendly restaurateur for lunch, before visiting an olive oil soap factory. As we stood upstairs, amidst circular columns of stacked soap blocks, we heard the sound of a nearing commotion. On looking outside, we saw it was a demonstration celebrating the 40th anniversary of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine.
After negotiating some rather slippery soap-covered stone stairs, we were down on the pavement, watching as this impressive sight passed by in front of us.
We then took a taxi out of town, into the Balata Refugee Camp. This camp was established between 1950 and 1952, to accommodate the refugees from the ethnic cleansing carried out two years earlier. Initially it was designed to house 5000 to 6000 people in tents and covered 1 square kilometre. It now houses 24000 people, and still occupies the same 1sqkm of land. This makes it one of the densest concentrations of humans on the planet, with an average living space per person of 10.6 square metres. And for those of you whose maths lessons seem a distant memory, 10 square metres is a space that is for example 2 metres wide and 5 metres long – not 10x10.
Back in 1952 the accommodation in the camp was in tents, as no-one expected to be staying very long. Gradually over time the residents have put down firmer roots, beginning with single storey houses, onto which additional floors have been constructed over the years. This lack of forward planning means that the buildings throughout the camp resemble stacked boxes in a factory and with weak foundations designed for single storey houses, this is a place ripe for disaster. Should there ever be a serious earthquake here, as there was in 1927, the survival rate would be shocking. Walking between these tightly packed concrete buildings, you lose a sense of the sky above you – it seems like the upper storeys are hanging over your head.
This is one of the 'main' roads. The side streets are even narrower.
In addition to the physical problems of having so many people living so close together, the following figures demonstrate the problems of caring for such a community.
• Balata has three school buildings, which operate five schools using a shift system, which serve 4500 students. Class sizes average 50-55 and illiteracy has increased from 22% in 1988 to 27% in 1997.
• Balata has one UNRWA run clinic that serves all 24000 residents. UNRWA services have been declining over the years, and international funding is insufficient to keep up with the worsening conditions.
• Unemployment is estimated at 70%.
• As a result of daily military violence, since September 2000 150 refugees have been killed, over 600 detained and 1200 injured.
Perhaps, above all the very obvious problems with such a place, the aspect of Balata that is most disturbing is the culture of violence. With illiteracy and unemployment levels so high, with nightly invasions by the Israeli army, is it a surprise that some of the 24000 residents turn to violence to protest their situation? As one walks around Balata Refugee Camp, the sight of martyrs’ posters and the names of the dead on the very walls that display the holes from the bullets that killed them make an uneasy mixture. After an hour here, I confess I felt it in my stomach - how it must feel to grow up here, I cannot imagine.
Travelling past the ‘Bayt Jibrin’ Camp in Bethlehem, I glance over to the small first floor flat of the family whose land we are going to visit. The problem for them, and the reason they live in a refugee camp, is that Bayt Jibrin is land that was taken by the Israeli army during the ethnic cleansing carried out in 1948.
Around half an hour’s drive away, Bayt Jibrin, or ‘Bet Gevrin’ as it is now signposted, is an area that lies not far from Bethlehem, yet the new generation of the family are not able to see it. Since the second Intifada, when Israel stopped allowing most Palestinians into the land it occupied in 1948 and particularly since the construction of the separation barrier, these people have been confined to the area they now inhabit, the area they were forced into over sixty years ago. So, in order for them to see what their homes looked like, we agreed to go and take some photographs of the areas in which they used to live.
Even before we arrived at Bayt Jibrin, I came to understand better why this is land that was fought over. As you travel West from the Jerusalem and Bethlehem area, you drop in altitude and the land becomes more fertile, flat and better irrigated – all things that make it good for farming, or producing crops.
This is valuable land, and the families that lived here prior to the ethnic cleansing were, I suspect, among the wealthiest of Palestine. The few buildings that still stand today indicate this both in their size and their quality of build. These houses of Jerusalem stone were built to last, and standing on the slopes overlooking the fields were surely the pride of their owners - life here was good. Overlooking the fields back in 1948 was surely better than now too. The addition to the area of an Israeli filling station does not improve the view.
Over the past few months, I have stood in the ruins of various houses, most of which have been recent demolitions courtesy of the Israeli army. But standing in the ruins of an entire community, scattered rocks lying all around, conjures different feelings.
Of course I could identify with the individual suffering, particularly as we were going for lunch at the home of one of these many displaced families, but more striking was the sense of emptiness. I took many photographs, too many to post, but what best captures the spirit of this place are these short videos I took. The first is taken in a house that was owned by one of the cousins of this family. It is one of the few still standing, and is now in the grounds of a kibbutz that we followed another car into, in order to avoid the electric gate. Before being asked to leave, I filmed inside this house and at the end of the video, the football pitch of the kibbutz can be seen. What are the children who play football here told? Whose house was that? - they must ask. I’d like to know the answer they get, because it seems to me that if you knowingly play football in the garden of someone who was ethnically cleansed from his land, you may as well dance on his grave.
The second video is taken in the ruins of ‘The Summer House’ - the eerie silence portrays the complete desolation, while the ruins all around betray the Zionist lie that prior to the creation of Israel, Palestine was ‘A land without people, for a people without a land’.
Of all the places I’ve visited around the West Bank so far, this is the strangest. Hebron, or Al Khalil in Arabic, is an ancient city, on whose narrow streets traders have been doing business for generations. During the build up to the creation of Israel in 1947, when tensions were rising between the locals and immigrant Jews, it was here in 1929 that there was an Arab revolt, resulting in the murder of 67 Jews. Following this massacre, the British removed all Jews from the town but since the 1967 occupation of the West Bank Israeli settlers have been returning. Nowadays, there is an Arab population of 166,000 with around 700 Jewish settlers stationed in the middle of the town, with another 12,000 in surrounding settlements. The settlers that live in the centre of Hebron are not only outnumbered by locals, they are also outnumbered by Israeli soldiers - for each settler, there are four Israeli soldiers.
Settler children taunt local children, from the safety of a military checkpoint tower.
The confrontational nature of these settlers that live provocatively in the centre of this town is demonstrated by the memorial plaque near the grave of American-born Israeli Baruch Goldstein who in 1994 murdered 29 Palestinians as they prayed in the Ibrahimi Mosque. The plaque reads "To the holy Baruch Goldstein, who gave his life for the Jewish people, the Torah and the nation of Israel.”
What makes this city such an unusual place is where the settlers have chosen to position themselves. In most places throughout the West Bank, one can see Israeli settlements on hilltops and these are normally totally isolated, insular places. But in Hebron, the settlers have moved in above the shops on the main street, and to protect themselves from stones, bricks and other general rubbish being thrown down on them, the locals have erected a wire-mesh protective ceiling to the street.
Once the protective wire was put up, realising there rocks were not reaching their targets, the settlers began throwing down less pleasant substances that would fall through the wire, such as oil and flour as well as human urine. In addition, they have blocked the sewers so their waste emerges through the manholes on the street below, rather than draining away. The pile of 'dark matter' resting near the middle of the street in the above picture is a result if this.
They also use more direct action to drive away the locals. We spoke with one man, who was holding out with one of the few shops remaining in business in the area, who showed us where the settlers had actually welded shut his door while he was out.
So now, unable to enter his home he rents a flat along the street. This added expense on top of falling tourist numbers, both from abroad as well as from within Palestine means his survival time here is surely limited.
One characteristic of the people of Hebron is that they want to talk. Everywhere we went, everyone we spoke with desperately wanted to tell us what was happening. The people here know that no one outside of their town realises what is going on - Tell the world what is happening here, bring them to see. Sometimes people would launch into 10 or 15 minute long monologues – it is obvious they miss talking; it’s obvious that people don’t come here from outside anymore.
But above all of the many stories we heard of intimidation, violence and provocation from the settlers towards that local people, the thing that is most striking is the sense of decay. This is a town that is dying. As the call to prayer resonates around the deserted streets, there is no one to hear it. As the shop owner waits for customers, there is no one to buy from him.
These people are watching helplessly as their lives, and the lives of their children are slowly, deliberately, and consciously drained from them in front of their eyes. They know what is happening, even if no one else does.
I was glad to see that Israel has released some more prisoners – only 10,000 more to go! The bit that isn’t reported is that they are still arresting people in large numbers. For instance, some people who live in one of the refugee camps told me that one of the other families from the camp were having a son released. So, the other son went to the checkpoint to meet his brother as he was let free, and as they released his brother, they arrested him.
It is the mothers who feel this the most. As I sat in the house of one such ‘incomplete’ family, while others spoke of what they expect will happen to the missing member, the mother sat silently, removed from everyone and everything, wearily shedding tears when the conversation inevitably turned to the conditions of the prison in question. Unfortunately, the prison in question has a bad reputation. And this family would know – they’ve heard it first hand from their eldest son.
Prisoner releases are usually celebrated loudly here. All day, cars adorned with flags of varying allegiances were being driven in convey around Bethlehem, people hanging out of every imaginable space, sitting on the roofs wielding olive branches, firing shots towards the sky and playing music on their car stereos.
It must be great to be released, because being detained is surely awful. It is great to be free, because many are not.
