Alastair Mitchell

Bethlehem.

As I watched a documentary on television recently about the lives of the various Palestinian families of one particular street in Yaffa (now the Israeli town of Jaffa) - now spread across the globe following their expulsion in 1948 - I felt a new understanding of their loss.  This is because as my time here in Palestine nears an end, I am looking ahead to my future back at home and it seems the farther you go, and the longer you stay away from the place you regard as your home, the closer you feel to it.  This is all well and good whilst on a self-imposed year of adventure or discovery such as mine, but when you experience this longing for home after 60 years of enforced exile it becomes something different.  More than fondly remembering the landscape, and reminiscing over old photographs, more than imagining the smells, sights and sounds of everyday life in the former home, it becomes an identity in itself.  The Palestinians who live outside of Palestine, which hugely outnumber those inside, are perhaps in some ways more Palestinian even than those who managed to stay.  As Joni Mitchell sang in Big Yellow Taxi, “you don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone”.

With my departure from the conservatory appearing closer on the horizon, I am also now in the process of planning what I can for next year, so the new teachers can continue as smoothly as possible from where I, and the others also departing have left off.  It is one of the many sad consequences of the situation now in Palestine that few teachers stay for more than a year or two, and is a source of personal regret that I am unable to stay longer.

Some rare good news from the Middle East appeared today, with Lebanon finally electing Michel Suleiman as President after a year and a half of political deadlock.  The seemingly eternal instability of Lebanon had recently led me to believe that once again full-blown civil war was on the way, but now Lebanon’s future lies once again in the hands of the Lebanese.  Whether the countries that like so much to meddle in Lebanon will allow this to remain for long, remains to be seen.

Bethlehem.

The past few weeks have seen the annual practical exams at the ESNCM.  In preparing for these exams the students worked hard on the required music, and now that the exams are out of the way the year can be finished off with the learning of some new repertoire, as well as increased involvement in some of the chamber music groups.  At the end of the year there will be final concerts in each of the three branches, so it is with these in mind that new pieces are chosen, and new chamber groups formed.  This sudden change from working on tried and tested pieces and scales to discovering new music is a breath of fresh air, both for the students and staff alike.

George W. Bush’s recent visit to Jerusalem went by without much notice in the West Bank, and it’s most obvious result for East Jerusalemites was to slow them down on their way around the city.  With his presence, many roads around the centre are closed and in a city that is not particularly well served by good roads, this can have a large impact on the movement of traffic.
His other activity that caught my attention was his speech to the Israeli parliament, the Knesset.  Even by his standards, this was an unusually forthright diatribe that showed his obvious inability to act as a mediator between sides in the Israel and Palestine ‘negotiations’.  His very presence as a guest of one side, to celebrate the joy and history of one side, while ignoring the history and grief of the other on the very day they commemorate their catastrophe came as an acute demonstration of his dedication to only that one side, in this most one-sided of ‘conflicts’.  And when he described Israel as the United States’ closest ally and best friend in the world, and as a homeland for the chosen people, and when he asserted that Israel had worked tirelessly for peace and...fought valiantly for freedom, he added to that demonstration of bias with words of possibly greater bias.  From the perspective, or close to it, of those on the receiving end of Israel’s tireless work, and tireless it certainly has been, these statements come as both surprising and insulting.  They are surprising in that he made them despite his futile attempts to appear balanced in this context, and insulting to those who know they are lies: Israel is not, and has never been, any of the things he describes.

As well as lies, his speech also contained certain aspects of make-believe.  When presenting his vision of a future Israel, he envisioned a Middle East in which Muslims (as if they were the only naughty ones) would recognise the emptiness of the terrorists' vision and the injustice of their cause, and where Hizbollah, Hamas and Al Qaida (not in reality actually connected, yet) were defeated leaving free and independent societies.  And make-believe this certainly is, for there are no, and nor will there be anytime soon, free or independent societies here – particularly those free and independent of the county he represents.

But none of these comments will arouse much debate, neither here nor outside.  For here they have heard it all before, and in the outside world so used we are to hearing one-sided and unapologetic praise for Israel, the chances are few even noticed.

As the Israeli flags continue to increase in number around Israel in the run-up to the “Independence” celebrations, marking Israel’s 60^th birthday, the absence of the party spirit in Palestine is conspicuous.

The reason for this is that there is no reason to celebrate.  There is no aspect of the dispossession that can be looked back upon with joy.  No, from this side of the Separation Barrier the celebrations appear simply as salt in old wounds, and these are wounds that run deep, both in time and in feeling.  Wounds that have not grown tired with age, unlike their hosts.  The weary Palestinians look back on this particular anniversary with a mixture of sadness and fear - sadness for the past, fear for the future.  At the current trajectory, the 70^th anniversary will be being ‘celebrated’ from substantially worse conditions.

Looking back over the previous sixty years, the overriding sensation is of injustice – sensational injustice.  Also noticeable is the sense of failure.  Failure everywhere from the Palestinians’ failure to mount a successful resistance to Israeli occupation, from Israel’s failure in its original stated aim of creating a ‘safe haven’ for Jews – nowhere in the world is more dangerous for Jews than in Israel today.  When was the last time you heard of a massacre of Jews anywhere else?  After all the discussion, argument and impassioned debate, one question remains – what good has actually been achieved by all of this?  So therefore, what is actually being celebrated?

There is a well known joke that sums up the nature of Jewish holidays – They tried to kill us, they failed, let’s eat!  The same cannot be said for Palestinian holidays, perhaps because they are the ones who actually are being killed.  Slowly, discreetly, definitely.  For them, there is no reason to celebrate, no reason to eat.  The Zionist mantra that Israel was a land without people, for a people without a land has been a self-fulfilling prophecy, true in all but the name.  For it has turned out to be Palestine that will be left without a people, and the Palestinians that will be left without a land.