Alastair Mitchell

Bethlehem.

Since my previous post, much has been happening.  At the start of the month one of the piano teachers and I gave recitals in the Jerusalem branch of the conservatory and in the Goethe Institute in Ramallah, as part of a music festival organized by the conservatory, the Barenboim-Said Foundation and Al Kamandjati; all music education groups based here in the West Bank.  Following this, I then spent a week in Bir Zayt coaching our advanced students for a series of orchestral concerts in Jerusalem, Bethlehem and Ramallah.  After a slightly uncertain first performance at the spectacularly well-positioned Mormon’s University in Jerusalem (the backdrop of the stage is completely glass, and looks out over the Old City) the students gained confidence and the final concert in Ramallah was excellent.  It has been nice to observe the orchestra develop over the course of this year, and I hope I’ll be able to return to hear them playing even better next year.

After the orchestra course I had two free days in which to renew my tourist visa, which was due to expire on the 25th.  Normally, I only travel through checkpoints in the afternoon, but in order to make an early start on my way to Egypt I left the house at six-fifteen.  Because this is the time when most of the workers from the West Bank are trying to enter Jerusalem, the checkpoints are very slow at this time, often taking over an hour and sometimes several hours to pass.  Seeing the huge queue tailing back outside of the checkpoint complex and onto the road, I took the decision to go by another route into Jerusalem.  Nonetheless, it still took me over two hours to travel the five kilometres to Jerusalem.  I had forgotten the difference in checkpoints between when tourists and Palestinians use them.  Having been told the horror stories of hours waiting in the sun, and mothers giving birth while trying to get to hospital, some people who come to visit Palestine are pleasantly surprised by the checkpoint experience.  If they travel early however, it is an entirely different experience, and it is not a pleasant one.  To do this every day must wear you down unbearably.

From Jerusalem, I took a bus south to Eilat, where I crossed the border into Egypt and found a hotel.  Conveniently, the hotels in the Egyptian border town of Taba are just a minute or two on foot from the border crossing.  There was a strange juxtaposition in leaving the West Bank in the morning, then sitting at dinner in a resort hotel watching sun burnt British holiday-makers going up for seconds and thirds at dessert.  People-watching at its best.

Despite my now rather crowded passport page showing a year of comings and goings, the following day the border police believed my story without any persuasion necessary and I was quickly re-admitted with a 3 month visa.  After lunch in Eilat, I was back on the bus to Jerusalem and as we neared the Dead Sea a huge pillar of dark smoke grew on the horizon.  Because it appeared to be near the road, I first thought it might be a car accident, but it soon became clear it was far too large for this.  Then as we reached the location of the fire, we saw large areas of burning land.  At 400 metres below sea level, where the air is oxygen rich and the temperature in summer rarely falls much below 40 degrees in the daytime, this place must be constantly ripe for wild fires.

Once home, as I watched the sun set from my balcony in Bethlehem - the same sun under which I had been lying on the Rea Sea coast just hours before - it occurred to me once again how small the distances are here.  If you look at a map, you may be surprised that an area this small has caused so many problems for so many people.  Or, perhaps it is more accurate to say it is surprising that so many people have caused so many problems to such a small area.  When traveling around Egypt, Israel, Jordan and Palestine, one does not sense geographical differences, or even, with the exception of Israel, strong cultural ones.

The differences here are merely man made, but they seem the hardest ones to deal with.

Bethlehem.

I was discussing the American presidential party nominations with an American friend-of-a-friend in a Bethlehem restaurant just two nights ago, and she declared her support for Barack Obama on the basis that he was the most pro-Palestinian of the candidates.  I politely suggested that didn’t mean much, as none of them can be described as any such thing and sure enough, it didn’t take long after securing the Democratic Party’s nomination for him to show his true colours.  Just hours after winning the nomination, and speaking to one of the most forthright of pro-Israel organizations in the US (I’m being polite), the American Israel Public Affairs Council (Aipac), he said that Israel was “unbreakable today, unbreakable tomorrow, unbreakable forever”.

Fine, so far.  Meaningless rhetoric, you could say.  However, the next proclamation was neither meaningless, nor was it mere rhetoric. “Jerusalem will remain the capital of Israel and it must remain undivided.”

I have two complaints with this statement.  One is the intent, which is immoral, the other is its accuracy, which is false.  For something to remain, first it has to be, and Jerusalem simply is not the capital of Israel, and it never has been – this is Tel Aviv.  Jerusalem is also emphatically divided, right through its heart.  So what he meant to say, presumably, was “we will make Jerusalem the undivided capital of Israel.”   And this is a quite different statement altogether, becuase it is one that is an incitement to the further demolition of the tattered remains known as “International Law” which reveal Jerusalem to be occupied land.  Time to track back.

When the UN partitioned Palestine in 1947, Jerusalem was maintained as an internationally administered city due to its unique appeal to Jews, Christians and Muslims alike.  Within the walls of the Old City are important religious sites to all sides, such as the Western Wall, the Church of the Holy Sepulchre and the Al Aqsa Mosque.  To give this city into the control of only one side was felt to be too problematic.

As a result of the fighting immediately following the creation of the State of Israel, Jordan took control of the West Bank, and therefore of East Jerusalem and the Old City.  Jump forward 20 years, when during the Six Days War of 1967 Israel occupied Gaza, the West Bank and East Jerusalem and we see at which point in time Israel took control of this land.  History lesson over.

Now, we all know that one is not allowed, according to the now seemingly insignificant document known as The Geneva Convention, to gain territory through acts of war and therefore Israel’s “acquisition” (again, I’m being polite) of this land is illegal.  So how have we come to the point where an American presidential hopeful thinks it is in his electoral interests to claim that a criminal act of war, resulting in an illegal occupation, is a good thing that must be bolstered by making a United Jerusalem the Capital of Israel?  And, what exactly does he have in mind for the rather large number of people who live there who are not Israelis?

What has brought us to this, remarkable, state of affairs, is a thing known as “facts on the ground”.  You will have heard this phrase mentioned from time to time during press conferences debating possible solutions to the “Israel Palestine Conflict”.  When someone says that we must find a solution that takes into consideration the “facts on the ground”, what they really mean is “No, you can’t have your land back, because we’ve gone and built houses for Israelis all over it”.  Whether these houses are right or wrong, legal or illegal is not open to discussion – they are there, and that is enough.

When I hear people in the position of Barack Obama saying things like this, I don’t know whether to be more shocked at his beliefs themselves, or with the fact that these beliefs (and don’t forget they are beliefs which support illegal acts of war) will gain him support in his home country of the USA.  Many people are looking forward to the end of George W. Bush’s spell in the White House on the basis that it cannot possibly get any worse.  Don’t be so sure, no matter who is his successor.

I am reminded of Rudyard Kipling’s poem, My Boy Jack, written in response to the death of his son at the Battle of Loos, during the early days of the First World War.

This poem seems relevant not only because it was written in connection to the First World War, the conflict which long ago sealed Palestine’s fate until now, but because Kipling was correct.  Against the awesome forces he faced, Jack, along with the tens of thousands of others who died in the battle, stood no chance as he went over the top.

And against this wind, and this tide, Palestinians currently also stand no chance.  Though we might accept this fact, we must not accept that Palestine’s fate has been sealed forever - we must realise that it is a case of changing this wind blowing, and this tide.