Letters from a Nomad

Limestone, Goat Milk, and Desert Sunsets

2009-02-15T12:37:00.000-08:00

Here's a quick story for you. Nothing serious tonight - there hasn't been a lot of good news to share lately and with the political world here in a sort of stalemate and cooperation largely suspended, it seems best not to drag out the discussion for the present.

So on to happier topics. On Saturday, I went on one my weekly rock-climbing expeditions to Ein Fara, a beautiful natural park inside of Wadi Qelt. The Wadi is a gorgeous valley carved through limestone cliffs, starting just inside the West Bank, straddled by a Palestinian town and a Jewish settlement, and cutting its way through the Judean Desert hills toward Nablus and Jordan in the distance. With the sun setting over the white cliffs and an evening haze hanging over the hills in the distance, the place is nothing short of magical. Peaceful and tactile, with goat flocks wandering the hillsides and monks emerging from their monastic dwellings carved into the rock, it can transport even the burliest secular climber into the pages of the Bible.

It was a beautiful way to spend a peaceful Shabbat. I was just clipping into the anchors on my last climb when I looked down and saw a shepard (Abbud I think his name was) talking to my climbing partner. He had been steering a massive heard of goats through the valley and had wondered over to ask Zac what we were up to. Zac lowered me to the ground, and we spent the night hour chatting with him in a combination of Abbud's shaky Hebrew and Zac's broken Arabic. He told us how his father and his father's father had lived in this valley. He was 28 years old and lived with his wife (his first) in the Palestinian village at the top of the Wadi, where his 14 brothers and sisters and father, mother and father's other wife and his extended family also lived. He had a cave too in the wadi where he often slept when he was out with his herd. He asked us if we were thirsty and pulling over one of the passing goats showed me how to milk it. We filled up one of my water bottles with the most delicious milk I have ever tasted, warm and sweet and frothy. We talked for a while, about our families and the comparative difficulties of having 2 brothers or 10, and how some people had become afraid to come to the Wadi, particularly down further into the West Bank and since the conflict of late had started. Abbud told us that some people are good and some are bad - it doesn't matter whether their Arab or Jewish, it's just how it is. Zac carved a kolrabi with his camping knife and we washed it down with goat's milk, talked until the sky started to grow dim, shook hands with our friend, and wandered out as the sun was setting.

So then, here is some evidence for you of peace and goat's milk in the Holy Land.

Israel Votes For ??????

2009-02-11T12:24:00.000-08:00

I spent voting day with my professor Hagit's family in the town of Arad in the Negev Desert, on the road between Be'er Sheva and the Dead Sea. Voting day, as it turned out, was stormy in more ways than one. The first and long anticipated storm of the season descended on the Negev on voting day morning. As rains broke across Israel, the winds built in Arad, sending dust swirling into every corner of every house and rattling the pretty nectarine tree in Hagit's garden against her roof of her husband's photography studio. We watched the winds send clouds of swirling dust whirling through the wadi behind the house as we drove around the block to the local poll, established like many in a local kindergarten.

Ben-Gurion University was closed for the day, and most of the students had gone home to vote in the towns that they had grown up in -- Israeli being small enough that this is typically preferable to re-registering in a new locale, and absentee votes I believe can only be cast from overseas, by soldiers, or by those in the navy. The scene at the local poll was cordial and orderly. A few campaigners had set up around the corner from the kindergarten, barred from erecting their last ditch efforts to close to the voting station. Interestingly, most of the visible campaigning has come from the minor parties. Occasionally, a giant Livni face will appear on a poster hanging above a road. But generally, Likud, Labor (Avoda), and Kadima posters and campaigners have been relatively rare or at least very subdued. The most vocal and visible campaigning has come from parties that barely made it into the Knesset or failed to do so at all - the new Green Coalition for instance (which came just short of sending a member to parliament) and groups on the right like United Torah Judaism.

Inside the polling place, families line up quietly and look over a poster containing the tickets of the various parties -- squares with a letter or two or three symbolizing the party, with its name written out in smaller letters below. One party name had been crossed out in black marker, apparently barred from competing at the last minute. I watched Hagit and her husband and eldest son walk to the registration table, where volunteers checked their names off a list. They each picked up an envelop of party tickets and walked one by one behind a polling booth, sorted through the party tickets shielded from view, picked one, and dropped it in the box in front of the registration table. It's an interesting system, requiring hand counting and accomplished with strict rules and no ambiguity.

Hagit and her husband had voted for the Labor party, which was expecting a particularly poor turnout, due in part to a general shift to the right in Israeli politics and in part to more left-wing voters consolidating behind Kadima to elect Tzipi PM over Netanyahu. Hagit's son claimed to have voted for the Green Leaf (pro-marijuana) party, which had interestingly joined forces with the Holocaust Survivors to try to garner votes. While many of the young or politically seem to say that they're voting Green Leaf, it's questionable how many actually do, as the party has still failed to put a representative in the Knesset.

We returned to Hagit's house in time for the storm to hit and spent the afternoon huddled inside working as the rains raged around us, gushing through the wadi behind the house and darkening the desert skies. By five o'clock, the rains had knocked out the power, and we spent the evening eating and talking by candlelight. Flood warnings had shut down many of the streets, so I spent the night in Hagit's comfortable little family home, getting Hebrew lessons from her sons, political lessons from her, and photography lessons from her husband. The first poll-based election results were due to come in at 10pm and initial counts just after midnight. We sat in the dark as the first results hit the tv's, unable to check the news and not wanting to call others to ask. It was a rather beautiful moment, the political fate of the country still undecided. We expected the worst (which for us meant a rightward political shift), but for the moment, anything was still possible and we quietly hoped (though did not expect) that we might yet still wake to world that would surprise us.

And the morning results -- decidedly undecided. Kadima (Livni's party) had won 28 seats over Likud's (Netanyahu's party's) 27. Kadima's shaky victory had surprised many, though what it means is yet to be decided. First, while 99% of the votes have been counting, the 1 remaining % will come from soldiers and electing the remaining 4 or so Knesset seats. While the majority of these soldiers are between the ages of 18 and 22, they're still soldiers afterall and tend to vote to the right of center. So whether Kadima will maintain its lead in the final count is questionable. Secondly, voting day had brought out a decided rightward shift in Israeli politics. Most of the left-wing parties have come out with disappointing losses. Meretz, a smaller though very popular leftwing party, had lost about half its previous seats and its party head, claiming responsibility for the poor showing, had turned in its resignation. Hadash, the joint Arab-Jewish party, came out with 4 seats, and labor fell to a rather tragic fourth place, with 13 seats compared to Yisrael Beitenu's 15 (Lieberman's far-right nationalistic party).

The results have left both Livni and Bibi scrambling to put together coalitions with the 60 plus ministers that will give them the necessary majority in the Knesset. Whoever manages to form a coalition and gain the approval of the majority of the elected ministers will receive the nod from President Peres to act as Prime Minister. So while Israelis have elected their ministers, the meaning of the government that they have put into power as well as its principle leadership is still far from clear. Both Livni and Bibi are courting Lieberman's party (Lieberman claims to have made up his mind but isn't telling), and Labor has committed firmly to being part of the opposition, where it can try to regain some of its previous strength. Likud has turned down a rotating PM option - a power-sharing deal between Bibi and Livni, which has occured in the past -- saying that the electorate has given a clear mandate for the right to lead the government. With both Bibi and Livni claiming victory and ultra-nationalist parties like Lieberman's and Shas looking like they will be part of coalitions formed, the only clear result is the rightward political shift.

Not a happy day for the Liberals but not so suprising to anyone. It's a subdued time in Israeli politics, with a rather depressing lack of leadership and a poor voter turnout reflecting the general malaise. I couldn't tell you the number of times I've heard people wishing they had an Obama. Someone who could actually unite across the deep social rifts rather than just say the words and court the votes. Several months ago I stood in a bar at 5am, surrounding by weeping expats as Obama's victory became clear. This week, I sat with an Israeli family in the dark, not really wanting to see the results that the light would bring in.

The schisms are widening in Israel, from within and from without. And the struggle to define what this country means and what its future will look like drags on.

Israel Hits the Polls

2009-02-09T14:32:00.001-08:00

Tomorrow, Israelis head to the polls to elect their new Prime Minister and Knesset (Israeli parliament representatives). There's been quite a bit of political engagement here, and the currently very quiet Ben-Gurion University of the Negev (where I am working this week) along with most institutions in Israel, will be closed for national voting day (a lesson that the U.S. would do well to learn, in my opinion). In Israel, voters cast their ballots (that is, they lick and seal and envelop with the party emblem of their choice inside) for a party rather than a candidate, electing the PM and Knesset ministers at the same time. Israel tried direct elections for about five years under Rabin but did away with them after it seemed that they were accentuating rather than alleviating the divisiveness within Israeli politcs.

Political engagement in Jerusalem has been quite interesting. It often takes the form of a car or two parading through the streets, covered in posters and streaming signs behind, blaring political slogans as loudly as its loudspeakers will permit. Othertimes, a group of generally young Israelis claim a street corner or roadside and make as much noise and as much of a scene with their political posters as possible. One of the more interesting party demonstrations I have seen was by a group from representing the Green Movement, possibly Israel's newest party and, confusingly, one of several "green" parties (including the "Green Party" and the "Green Leaf Party" -- whose platform includes almost exclusively the legalization of marijuana). I am attaching a few pictures from this bicycle demonstration below -- a group of young Green Movement affiliates, along with one of their founders, Gershon Basin (with the red backpack), took over a Critical Mass bike protest, a monthly gathering to promote bicycling in Jerusalem. The event turned into a raucous Green Movement display, with stump speaches, loud streetside arguments with passersby, and traffick-stopping party affiliaties.

The most interesting political demonstrations in Jerusalem tend to take place at night, however. For the last week and a half or so, walking around Jerusalem after midnight on almost any given night, one can hardly enter a bar or walk through the streets without getting accosted by one to a hord of campaigners foistering their little leaflets and reasons on you. One night, my friends and I were stopped by several groups of Green Movement campaigners who, when we remained skeptical of their platform, routed us to a local bar outside of which the heads of the party were gathered. The party's PM candidate put his hand around my friend's shoulder and took him on a 20 minute stroll to explain his candidacy. I'm not sure that my friend was convinced, but I was rather bemused by the spectical. The thought of Obama or Clinton or McCain buddying up to students unannounced and unphotographed in a NYC bar is hard to conjure, but in Israel, particularly among leaders of the smaller parties, it's an every-night occurance during election season. The night before the local Jerusalem mayoral elections, I found myself drinking beer with the wild-haired Green Leaf party candidate, who was stumping his way around the local bars that night. In this small, word-of-mouth based society, being able to present yourself as that "chill guy I had a beer with at the Sira the other night" can be a pretty effective way to gain a network of votes.

Bibi (Benjamin Netanyahu, head of the right of center Likud party) looks poised to win PM tomorrow, though Tzipi Livni (head of centrist Kadima) may yet put up a tough fight. Ehud Barak (Labor) has been making noises about turning down another term as Defense Minister if Labor is not adequately represented in the new Knesset. Meanwhile, Lieberman's far-right and controversial Israel Beiteinu party has been polling disturbingly strong, given that they are currently most likely to be associated with recent overturned efforts to block Israeli Arab parties from participating in the general elections. On the left, the joint Jewish-Arab Hadash party (formerly Communist Party) will likely gain several seats (helped out by a number of my friends). The new and innovative Green Movement (seems to be strong among young voters) may turn out to be stronger than expected. While opinion seems to be that the generally popular young Left-Wing party Meretz has been declining in strength and popularity, due perhaps to lack of leadership, it may gain several seats as well. Word on the street has it that Green Leaf voters, for some hard to fathom reason, often forget to show up at the polls.

In general, most voters seem to feel that despite the array of options, there is a lack of real, strong leadership in Israel these days. None of the leading candidates seem to represent particularly compelling options, and while many of the smaller parties have innovative ideas and platforms, they don't have popularity and they, along with the bigger parties, don't seem to be putting forward the kind of compelling, rising star, Rabin-esque figure that this area needs.

So tomorrow, Israelis will drop their envelopes (no hanging chads here), even if for "the better of the bad." We'll see what happens...

The Politics of Health Care

2009-02-09T12:09:00.000-08:00

The New York Times published a troubling article this morning: "Palestinians Pull Patients from Israeli Hospitals." http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/10/world/middleeast/10patients.html?hp

This article profiles a rather dramatic shift in the policy of the Palestinian Authority, which has previously supported Palestinian patients seeking care in Israeli institutions.

Every day, hundreds of Palestinians cross the border into Israel with special permits granting them day and sometimes overnight access to an Israeli hospital. In 2006, according to the WHO, tens of thousands of permits, averaging 200 patients per day, were issued to Palestinians, allowing them to cross the border from the West Bank or Gaza and be treated within an Israeli health facility. Approximately 60,000 Palestinians from the West Bank were treated in Israeli, 2/3 of whom received received ambulatory care and 1/3 of whom were hospitalized. 2500 of these patients were children. Patients crossing the border are generally looking for specialized care for a condition such as cancer or diabetes, for which expertise in terms of both human resources and specialized facilities is generally lacking in the Palestinian Territories.

For a range of reasons, related in large part to the history of the development of the Palestinian health system when health care in the Territories was administered by Israel, the Palestinian health system is built predominantly around primary care and community health services. While access to these services can be quite good, secondary and tertiary health care services are largely lacking in the Palestinian Territories. While the Palestinian Al-Quds University Medical School in East Jerusalem trains Palestinian physicians, Palestinian health facilities generally do not have the capacity to offer specialized residencies. And while Israeli hospitals are open to Palestinians seeking residencies and fellowships, these training positions are often too lengthy, inadequately funded, or unattractive for Palestinian applicants. Furthermore, given the already competitive and squeazed Isreali medical education system, the few positions available to Palestinian applicants fall far short of what would be required to truly build capacity in a systematic way. Palestinian students can also look for training in Jordan and elsewhere abroad, but again barriers abound.

What's left is a situation which, for better or worse, demands cooperation and requires codependence. At the time being, the Palestinian Territories do not have the facilities and expertise to provide treatment to most of the patients being seen in Israeli hospitals, the majority of whom are there because those institutions offer best-in-the-world specialized care for a complicated longterm health condition. Withdrawing these patients as a political statement may indeed sacrifice their lives to politics. And as usually occurs, it will be the children and the most vulnerable who suffer the most.

The Palestinian Ministry of Health does spend about 16% of its budget in paying for the treatment of Palestinian patients in foreign institutions, including those in Jordan, Egypt, and primarily Israel. For a cash-strapped heath system, this amount is not insignificant and the expense of treatment in foreign facility may contribute to slowing the development of a self-sufficient Palestinian health system. Yet, it is also true that Israel subsidizes much of the care for these patients. Often Israeli hospitals themselves soak up much of the cost of treatment for Palestinian patients. In many cases, their care is subsidized by an Israeli NGO such as the Peres Center for Peace or Save a Child's Heart. Call it what you will, these cooperative efforts save lives. That these lives are Palestinian or Israeli is unimportant. Talk to any physician, for instance, at Israel's Hadassah Hospital in Jerusalem and they will tell you that when a person enters that hospital they are no longer Palestinian or Israeli or anthing else. They are a person in need of care, and they will be given the best care possible. Politics stop at the door.

I know Dr. Fathi Abu-Moghli, the Palestinian Minister of Health, and I know that he is a good man who cares deeply about the people for whose health he is charged. I hope that the way forward beyond this controversy can result in a new kind of cooperation -- cooperation in building a sustainable, independent health system for Palestine, the kind of institutions and resources that will be required in order for a two-state solution to be viable. The peace process is also an institution-building process: a two-state solution means that each must have institutions and systems that can stand on their own two feet and operate independently, though with some necessary ties. My experience has shown me the benefits of Israeli-Palestinian cooperation in health, medicine, science, and academia for both sides. These cooperative efforts build trust and bonds of mutual respect while benefiting both sides involved. They also increase capacity and create the civil society ties that two states living side-by-side in peace will require. I beleive that this kind of cooperation can encompass the politics that Dr. Fathi is expressing here rather than fall victim to it. The goal of building a Palestinian health system that is strong, advanced, and independent is a extremely worthy and viable one. Cooperation with Israel, as well as the neighboring Arabic nations, can and should help it get there.

Peace Now in the Holy Land -- An Obama-Era Possibility?

2009-02-01T00:31:00.000-08:00

Almost two weeks ago, I stood below the steps of the U.S. Capitol and watched Barack Obama take an oath, sworn in as an embodiment of change in American democracy. The shouts, the chants, the tear-filled eyes and genuine exhilaration in the air had transported me a lifetime away from my world of only several days before. As I huddled in a stairwell in Be’er Sheva, in the Negev Desert in Israel, the explosions I had heard came from Hamas rockets rather than fireworks and the tears were those of fear and pain rather than hope and pride. With violence now threatening to reignite conflict in the region, we in Israel and Palestine need the weight of American diplomacy and Obama-era diplomatic rhetoric to maintain peace on both sides.

Whether or not Israel and Hamas achieved their stated aims during the war in Gaza is questionable. Israel has not ended its blockade of Gaza, for which Hamas broke the ceasefire with Israel in December. Hamas’ hold among the Palestinian people and authority over Gaza does not seem to have been weakened by the Israeli offensive. While the Qassams have thankfully stopped falling, their infrastructure isn’t only material. It is also rooted in the will of a people who elected them in large part because they promised to provide services, like health care and food supply, which are severely needed in the area and which Fatah failed to deliver.

A large part of the professed Israeli strategy in the war was to inflict sufficient damage on Hamas in order to teach the people of Gaza a lesson. The Israeli campaign was meant not only to destroy the infrastructure for rocket launching and supply tunnels from the Sinai but to show Palestinians in Gaza that the policies they supported through voting in the Hamas leadership have brought about too painful consequences and thereby to turn the Palestinian people away from Hamas leaders. Though the jury is still out, it appears that this strategy has not succeeded. Rather, the common perception in Gaza appears to be that Israel was waging an offensive not solely against Hamas but against the population of Gaza for the crime of being Palestinian.

If there is anything that the past month has taught, it is that a violent response to violence is an ineffective strategic solution and a disastrous humanitarian policy. Far too much of the political rhetoric surrounding the offensive on both sides has an eye-for-an-eye flavor too it. One side promising to avenge the sins of the other. And everyone living in fear, insecurity, and under the shroud of violence as a result. On the strategic front, Israel has not succeeded in uprooting Hamas leadership. On the humanitarian front, the IDF has brought relative quiet to the South of Israel but has not entirely lifted the insecurity that hangs over the region. Relationships between the local Jewish population and Israeli-Arabs, including the Negev Bedouin, who are caught in the middle of the conflict, have also grown more tense. Meanwhile, the humanitarian toll on the Gazan side is beginning to surface as foreign journalists enter the Strip and document the “collateral consequences” of warfare.

As a Fulbright Scholar working in Be’er Sheva and Jerusalem on joint Palestinian-Israeli public health interventions, my primary concern is for the health and welfare of people in the region, regardless of their racial, cultural or national identity. Blockades limiting the flow of urgently needed medical supplies into Gaza and restrictions on the passage of Palestinian patients into Israel, where infrastructure and will exists to treat them, raise glaring red flags about the kind of moral and ethical example Israel wishes to represent in the region and its attitude toward the right to health of the Palestinian people. Health care is a privileged sector through which Palestinians and Israelis have always interacted on positive terms, in which concerns over physical welfare have superceded mistrust and overridden barriers to interaction. This is one area which both sides should be encouraging, and it is extremely unsettling to see joint efforts faltering because of mistrust and lack of institutional support. As we move forward beyond the violence, narratives of the many powerful joint Palestinian-Israeli efforts, particularly in health and medicine, need to be brought out and encouraged more than ever.

As in the days and weeks following September 11th, violence in the region has succeeded in opening up an opportunity for a different kind of path to be taken. The election of Obama, the appointment of Middle East envoy George Mitchell, and Mitchell’s early trip to the region signal a different level of engagement in the Palestinian-Israeli peace process by the U.S. Presidency, which for at least the past eight years has taken a better late than never kind of approach. Obama’s commitment to diplomacy, rhetorically and already in practice, needs to be translated into helping actors in this region wage a different kind of negotiation strategy. Rockets and bombs do not change hearts and minds, if they were ever intended to. They only feed a cycle of hatred, violence, and mistrust, and their harshest consequences are always felt by those least deserving – families and children on both sides whose lives become shaped around conflict.

Since its founding, Israel has represented a remarkable new kind of democracy in the region, a bastion for free speech, intellectual fervor, gender equality, law and justice. It is strong enough to defend itself, act on its ideals, and withstand criticism. As a true lover of Israel, a Jewish student and public health academic who has chosen for myself to live in the country, I feel an obligation to bring out my voice in the public debate about the actions of the country that has impassioned me. This, I believe is democratic patriotism, as Americans and Israelis have always understood it. Israel should be the “Light Among Nations” that it was founded to be by working with the full force of its strength toward peace.

Hospitals, Rockets, and a Lesson in Irony

2009-01-15T18:05:00.000-08:00

More on unpredictability...

I woke yesterday morning to blue skies and sunshine and strolled through Gan Sacher Park in Jerusalem to catch a bus down south to Be'er Sheva. A few people were out, lying on the grass in the warm winter sunshine. Dogs roamed around while their owners strolled slowly behind. And the gentle buzz of almost Shabbat life vibrated softly through the city. I phoned the secretary to the Ben Gurion University President to make sure that my meeting was still on -- it was cancelled at the last minute on Monday when an emergency, conflict-related meeting was called. But she assured me that all seemed well today and it would be safe to assume that I could meet with the President in the late afternoon as planned. Rolling through the green, rock-strewn hills leading south from Jerusalem, conflict felt forever away.

I have been working for the past several months to build a cooperative, joint initiative between the Israeli Ben-Gurion University of the Negev and the Palestinian University Al-Quds in East Jerusalem. Our initiative is putting together a team of Palestinian and Israeli academics, computer scientists, and public health practitioners to construct a joint website for health information outreach for the region. In the Negev region, I have been working with an inspiring group of young Bedouin women to run a needs assessment and internet usage analysis in the Negev Bedouin community, where we are creating a prototype website in the hopes that it will provide information in an accessible and non-stigmatizing way to target severe health concerns, such as infant mortality. The work has been inspiring. It has shown me people's extraordinary commitment to working together for a common and necessary cause across a divide which can seem insurmountable. I wish more people knew these narratives about cooperation in the face of conflict. The stories are countless, and they give a very different face to the lives of people in this region and the ideals that they live through.

And now for the irony...I stepped off the Egged public bus beside the Ben-Gurion campus to a warm winter day in Negev desert. Life felt like it was slowly starting to return to Be'er Sheva. There were notieably more cars on the streets and students roaming around campus then when I'd been to the city earlier in the week, a city that still felt ghostly, waiting. BGU had made the decision to call graduate students and last year undergrads back to campus to resume classes, though they are all being held in bomb shelters for the time being (less than pleasant). Attendance by these students had apparently reached over 50%, which is quite significant given continuing threats and abundant fears. As I opened my laptop to prepare for my meeting and glance at the news, I couldn't help but feel optomistic.

Until, of course, I saw the headlines. The IDF had shelled the UNRWA headquarters in Gaza, displacing hundreds of civilians seeking shelter, and the Al-Quds hospital in Gaza City was engulfed in flames after being caught in the crossfire. As my advisor at BGU, the Director of Epidemiology, had anticipated, it was only a matter of time before a hospital and what remains of health care infrastructure in Gaza would be hit. It was almost unavoidable. I had spent the previous afternoon at the headquarters of Physicians for Human Rights-Israel, working with them on a fundraising campaign to purchase and deliver urgently needed sanitary equipment and medical supplies to Gaza. The fourth shipment of medical equipment had gone out the day before, laden with supplies including 5 ICU beds and baby formula. But mostly with prosthetic limbs. An entire truck nearly full to capacity with prosthetic limbs, and not nearly enough to meet growing needs. Hard even to think about. It paints a stark and heart-wrenching picture.

An hour later, I was sitting in the office of the university President with my advisor and mentor for our health outreach project. We were discussing how best to keep cooperation and dialogue going with our Palestinian colleagues during the present times. We were optimistic. We were thinking ahead to what the joint project could mean, the difference that it could make for all sorts of communities in the region.

And then the sirens went off.

We rushed into the stairwells -- the nearest "safe area" -- and huddled with the rest off the office staff. Waited, and listened. They were much more used to these occurences that I. Often the sirens go off several times a day. Often the alarms are false. Only rarely can you hear the rockets hit. Usually someone brings chocolate, and everyone waits quietly, hopes, prays, assumes they will be fine.

"Echad ... shtayim ... shalosh." We counted as the rockets hit, close, too close. I'm not usually given to panic, and it takes a lot for me to feel truly threatened, but this time, I was scared. We were all emotional. We heard the sirens wail, hoped that they hadn't struck campus (found out shortly afterward that they had hit just north of us, wounding six). Rumors had been circulating that Hamas may be attempting to target Soroka Hospital, the literal lifeblood of the Negev, serving the entire population in the South of Israel. The consequences of such an event are unthinkable. Like the situation in Gaza. Too stark to believe, even when it slaps you in the face.

We tried to continue our discussions from before, but somehow the rockets had made a mockery of our words. The ambulances wailing outside, the audible commotion. The pictures coming in from Gaza. The account of the workers at PHR. It's become just too much, leaders tearing at each other, catching the innocent in their crossfire. It's always the children that suffer the most, on both sides of the line.

I rode the bus back up north, hoping that the sirens wouldn't go off, allowing the silent tears to fall. When the sirens wail, the bus stops and its passengers unload quickly, lie on the side of the streets, cover their heads with their hands. The traffic wasn't moving. I never thought that my professors would be giving me lessons in how to protect myself from shrapnel.

I am amazed and inspired by the way that the professors and staff at Ben Gurion University and colleges like it in the Negev have continued their commitment to their work despite the daily sirens, the depressing atmosphere, the fear and insecurity. We had always thought that the Negev was immune, but no longer.

I think that it is important that people outside (and inside) of Israel know that there isn't consensus in Israel on what is going on in Gaza. There is a lot of fear, and at the bottom of it everyone wants to live in safety, in peace, without the sirens and the constant nagging insecurity. There are very smart people who feel strongly that there were other, better options, that diplomacy could have been possible and that there are ways forward beyond the violence.

More later, but for now, praying for a ceasefire, praying that the voices for peace grow louder, that you lend yours, that cooperation can continue beyond this. Cooperation is a narrative that we can't let go of. Even when the violence is so blinding.

Here's something that you can do now. Help Physicians for Human Rights-Israel purchase and provide urgently needed medical and sanitary supplies to civilians in Gaza. Visit our Facebook Cuase page and decide to act now -- join, invite your friends, donate as you can. Go to this link and engage : http://apps.facebook.com/causes/187475?m=7e3959a1&recruiter_id=384744

Complacency just isn't an option. Even when you close your eyes, the reality doesn't go away. You can still hear the sirens wail.

Down the Rabbit Hole

2009-01-10T16:06:00.000-08:00

Sometimes life in today's Israel can be so bizarre, so entirely unpredictable and spontaneous, that the imagination of the Holy Land trounces anything Caroll's could have produced. This mixed up messy place -- the only bottom line here is predictable unpredictability. Its nuances inspire, its wounds make one weep, and complacency and routineity are, for me at least, entirely impossible.

For example, I offer a few snapshots from my past week:

Sunday: Visited a Palestinian professor with a British Lord in a West Bank village. Had to hitchhike home with the British Lord and a Palestinian boiler-maker due to border closures but was held up in route by a small altercation at the checkpoint and a minor brawl between two colliding truck drivers. Judging by the lengthy line of cars and trucks, the trickle of Palestinians being allowed across the border that day was moving slower than ever due to extra heightenings of the heightened seurity screenings. Thanks to profiling, we sailed through when our turn came at long last, with a nod and a smile. Spent the afternoon meandering through a coptic monastery with a visiting friend and eating hummus from the quietly famous stand outside Damascus Gate, served in a hipster coffeeshop in West Jerusalem.

Monday: Spent the afternoon and evening at a friend's moshav (small agricultural community) between Jerusalem and Tel Aviv. Picked lemons, nana, and parsely, wandered the little orchards and visited the family olive press, cooked dinner with homegrown vegetables, cheese, and labeneh, watched the stars come out in the chill winter sky, and saw the hills nearby from where one can hear rockets explode in the not so distance.

Tuesday: After working all day on a Palestinian-Israeli health outreach project, danced to funky electronic mixed beats in a cave-like bar with a mixed up group of Israeli friends and a small pack of roaming dogs.

Wednesday: Depressed by conflict and complacency (and the media's general lack of attention to the discourse and dissent that does exist -- thank you to Haaretz for giving it some real space today: http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1054265.html), started looking for ways to contribute to Physicians for Human Rights - Israel's efforts to deliver emergency medical equipment and services to Gaza. They have called for 700,000 USD urgently needed to provide lifesaving services to injured civilians caught in the conflict. See http://www.phr.org.il/phr/ for how to help. Also -- commisserated with the likeminded on the walls of Jerusalem's climbing gym and the floors of a hippies-only no nice clothes allowed reggae party near the Old City.

Thursday: Ran away for the afternoon to Ein Fara national park in Wadi Qelt, a deep valley running through the West Bank. The Israeli-owned park inside the mostly Palestinian-owned West Bank boasts some of the best and best developed rock-climbing in the Middle East. We cranked our way up limestones cliffs, shrouded in an other wordly silence and a warm winter sun, watching rock hyraxes play in the canyon below. Over one lip of the canyon and just beyond view, a Jewish settlement with its tell-tale red-roof homes glowed in the sunshine. Hardly a stone's through away, the minarets of a Palestinian village began to glow neon green as the sun lowered in the sky. From the walls of the canyon across from us, a few black-hooded monks emerged from dwellings hewn into a rock, threading their way to the monstery below. Below, the gushing Ein Qelt desert stream tumbled over, around the rocks, making its way through the valley and all the way to Jericho far off in the distance.

Friday: Left Ein Fara again, mid-afternoon after a dip in the fresh winter stream. The park closes early for the Sabbath - the hyraxes need their rest too. Breezed through the checkpoint and looked behind to see "the wall" snaking across the desert hills, 8 solid meters of concrete slicing across a landscape of biblical beauty. Biked to Mahane Yehuda shuk just in time to buy some hummus before the shabbos callers came out, black-clad ultra-orthodox men blowing their horns at us to shut down all commerce and signal the official onset of Sabbath rest. Ruthless and unyielding, they stalk through the shuk, "shabbos!" ringing from the already empty stalls. I bump into some friends, and we walk the empty alleys with a few of the city's poor and hungry, rumaging through discarded boxes of oranges and lemons. Already, Jerusalem is silent -- the cars are gone and I walk home through the middle of the empty streets, watching the Old City walls glow as the sun sinks beneath the horizon. No one in West Jerusalem is allowed to be alone for the Shabbat meal, and like the giant extended family that surrounds me, I cook and eat and laugh with friends and welcome in the day of rest. Shabat shalom -- feeling peace and wishing it was there for everyone.

Shabbat -- The sun shines winter warm and children play in the streets, their parents secure that no cars will come. Set up slacklines in Gan Sacher park with an Israeli climber friend and welcome in a flood of picnickers trying their luck at "tightrope-walking." The last little religious boy leaves with his dad, and my friend and I sit on the slacklines, drinking the local Goldstar brew and watching the sunset. In Tel Aviv for another friends' mother's performance art show - all in Hebrew but mostly children's stories, simple enough for me to relatively understand, and complete with a feast of cakes and cookies for all in the audience, baked by the actors as part of the show. Back in Jerusalem in time for an art and music website launch, 5 DJ party, in yet another cave-like Jerusalem bar, complete with two musician friends who live in old school buses in the forest and nearly as many dogs as people.

Another week now, deeper deeper down into the rabbit hole. I certainly couldn't have dreamt it. Who knows what tomorrow will bring??

Rockets in School Today

2009-01-07T07:44:00.000-08:00

My professor in Be'er Sheva just called to tell me that a rocket landed next to my dorm at Ben-Gurion University. The warning sirens went off, and as far as we know, no one was hurt, though we may not have windows for a little while.

Strange to be living in a "war zone." Sitting in my cosy bedroom in Jerusalem, the sun has just set, and the only sounds are of dogs barking in the distance and an occasional car on passing on the street outside. The "situation" has affected my work - it seems almost silly to talk about Palestinian-Israeli cooperation under the circumstances, though we keep trying. It has affected my friends, some of whom have been called into the reserves. It has affected the atmosphere - fewer people around at times, more tension, more stress, more sadness. But it seems to me that it's easy to live in a bubble here or anywhere, to carve out normalcy and close your eyes to the images. My professors keep working at Ben-Gurion. The sirens go off, and they head into a safe room. But they keep working.

In Gaza though, there's no escape. Last night, 40 people, women and children mostly, tried to escape by hiding in a school building. There were no sirens for them, and no place to go if there had been.

It's hard for me to accept that there was no other way. I'm hearing more vengeance rhetoric than strategy. I'm seeing lives destroyed to protect others. While the rockets fall, the toll is always harshest for those who are caught in the crossfire. Somehow, the moral compass seems to be blowing in the wind.

Whatever your political views, here is a way to help. Physicians for Human Rights - Israel is leading the effort to provide immediate medical relief services to civilians in Gaza. They are in desperate need of financial support. Lives are lives, and there are a lot of them right nextdoor to me hanging in the balance.
http://www.phr.org.il/phr/

2009-01-02T00:02:00.000-08:00

January 2nd, 2009: It's a strange New Year in Israel.

On the last day of last year, my plane touched down in Ben-Gurion Airport, bringing me back home to Israel after two weeks of traveling and trekking through SouthEastern Turkey. Three months and eleven days before, I had walked through customs to begin my work as a Fulbright scholar. I was nervous then, unsure of the world that I would enter, the people I would meet, the issues I would begin to understand and invest myself in. This time, the uncertainty was of a different variety. Only days before, Israel began it's airstrike on Hamas in Gaza, the drizzle of rockets into Israeli border towns became a downpour, and images of wailing Palestinian mothers, horrible horrible bloodeshed, and faces distorted by anger and fear began to monopolize the media. We had watched it all on little tv's in Turkish villages, the only foreigners around, unsure of what was being communicated and what the narrative was behind it all. This time, I walked out the airport doors into a world that I thought I was beginning to know but which had become more obscured to me than ever.

It was on the way home that the sms messages started coming in. "You're not in Be'er Sheva, are you?" My friend Jeffery Donenfeld had come back from Turkey with me to spend a few days in Israel, and we had decided to head to Jerusalem rather than to the Negev town that I have been working in. We were driving through the hills of Jerusalem in our shared mini-sherut as two rockets fell on and outside the city I'd been living in. The sirens went off and no one was harmed.

New Year's under the circumstances was difficult to engage with. New Year's has never been a significant celebration in Israel, as Israelis had already usured in the new year by the Jewish calendar on the holiday of Rosh Hashana several months before. Walking through the streets in Israel, you are more likely to be wished "Sylvester Sameach" (Happy Sylvester), after the patron saint of the Gregorian Calendar New Year's Day, emphasizing the celebration's Christian underpinnings.

On New Year's eve of 2009, Jeffrey, my British-Israeli friend Michael, and I caught a sherut to Tel-Aviv and followed a "peace on all sides" protest march through the streets of the city. 100, maybe 200 people marching and banging drums, chanting in Hebrew, and asking for an immediate end to the violence. The reactions were mixed. Some argued, most walked by, heading to the plans they had already made. The crowd stopped only once, pausing to count down the last seconds of 2008 in Hebrew. "Happy New War." We walked to the side, unsure of where we fit, what to think, how to engaged. We ended the night back in Jerusalem, sitting with my friend at the DJ station of a little cavernous bar as the first hours of the new year drifted in.

Life in Jerusalem carries on as before. More soldiers are about, and East Jerusalem has been under strikes and boycotts. Things feel a bit more tense, a bit more subdued. I'm continuing my work as I can, but it's difficult now. Al-Quds University in East Jerusalem is closed. Some of my meetings have been canceled. I'm off to chair the most important organizing meeting my project has seen yet. We'll see who is able to come and what we are able to conclude...

A Slice of Tranquility in a Sea of the Complicated

2008-11-22T14:26:00.000-08:00

This afternoon, I rode my bike to the Damascus Gate, the main entrance to the Muslim Quarter in Jerusalem's Old City, and wound my way over the ancient stones of Via Dolorosa to the Austrian Hospice. Outside Damascus Gate and along the narrow passageways into the Old City, the bustling, hawking, noisy, chaotic life of East Jerusalem filled the air and shoved me this way and that as I picked my way along the smooth stones. Today, on Shabbat, all of West Jerusalem is silent and still. Nothing is open, save a few places that you'll only find if you know what you're looking for. But half a mile and a world away, East Jerusalem is bustling with life -- children chasing each other through the grass outside Damascus gate; women sitting in the middle of Via Dolorosa with their piles of leafy vegetables, parsley and nana (fresh mint) arrayed around them; men pulling hot pita out of ovens and others sailing down the Old City smooth-stoned streets on tires pulled behind laden carts; vendors of all sorts shouting prices and deals in the la-la-la singsong sounds of Arabic.

I managed to brush past nearly all of them and arrived at the Hospice only a 5 shekel bag of nuts heavier. A giant, heavy, and very locked wooden door faced me, and I nearly walked around the entire city-block sized complex before a kind woman, sweeping the alleyway in front of her home, told me how to get inside. I found the bell she had described and rang it. From the close-quartered hustle and bustle of one of Jerusalem's most crowded alleyways, I pushed open the doors into a space of indescribable and mesmerizing tranquility.

I am convinced that the garden patio in Jerusalem's Austrian Hospice is one of the loveliest man-made spaces in the whole world. I spent the afternoon in the tranquil, tree-shaded garden, sipping cappucino and savoring delicate apple strudel while reading my books, warmed by the soft Jerusalem sun streaming in through the trees -- delicate fern-like droopping branched trees and palm tress and cacti and pines. The rooftops of Jerusalem climbed upward beyond my view, piled atop each other, made of sacred stone older than imaginable and adorned by domes, crosses, and satellite antennae. I could still hear the cries of children in the streets, the patter of a thousand footsteps, voices of those buying and selling. The close-quartered chaos of the Old City. But seated at my pretty tiled table, beneath the trees and between the flowers, I was wrapped in tranquility, the chirping of the birds, the sun playing with its shadow through the old stone arches, around the flowers, and along the walls of the Hapsburg hospice. Occasionally, a white-robed nun walked by and smiled at me. Once or twice, the strains of song drifted into the patio - a touring church group singing inside; monks chanting from the alley below.

I climbed the stairs through the heavy old building, founded in 1857 for the Austrian Consul and as a protector of the Catholics and Ashkenazi Jews. From the rooftop, the whole world stretched into view. East and West. The Old City and the neighborhoods, hills, and valleys beyond. The defining golden Dome of the Rock, echoing yesterday with the prayers of Muslims observing their holy day, and practically touch it the Kotel (Wailing Wall), its plaza today full of Jews observing the Sabbath. Mount of Olives, Mount Moriah. Churches, synagogues, mosques. A thousand rooftops on a thousand homes on the foundations of thousands more, built over by conquerors and centuries and time. It's impossible not to feel God in this place, or awed by what dreams of God have inspired.

Yesterday, I strolled barefoot through the Mediterranean sands in Tel Aviv as the sun was setting, danced till dawn at a reggae festival, and fell asleep against my friend and his puppy dog as our Arab-driven mini-sherut sped into still silent and slumbering West Jerusalem. Today, I studied Hebrew in a Catholic Hospice in the Muslim Quarter of an ancient city, bought tahina from Ramallah, pita warm from the oven, and fresh vegetables from street vendors, before biking home through streets empty and silent in religious observance, rode my bike to my climbing gym (closed because of a popular post-Sabbath football match in the stadium it occupies), and typed a report on Palestinian-Israeli cooperation in science in a German Colony beit-kafe (coffee shop) with the only drip coffee I've found in the city. Tomorrow I go to Be'er Sheva in the Negev Desert to visit unrecognized Bedouin Settlements and work with a local Iman and a group of academics on their the Israeli Bedouin's terrible infant mortality problem.

A typical weekend in Israel, what a crazy place. It can make your blood boil, it can confuse you relentlessly, and it will probably haunt your dreams. But it's impossible not to love. Something about it -- the air, the sun, the soil. The absolute spontaneity and unpredictability. The white rocks, blue sky, and dusty rolling hills. The everywhere art and music, the long-haired religiously unreligious hippie types, the homes of so many kinds of prayer, the history and meaning inscribed into every last bit of dust. It sucks you in and inspires to distraction. Impossible not to love. Maybe that's the problem.

Across the Wall

2008-11-16T03:02:00.000-08:00

I'm sitting now in the lovely garden patio outside Hebrew University's national library at its Givat Ram campus. Aside other academics - professors, students, visitors - I sip my Nescafe and sift through the pile of books beside me. There's a mix of people here on the quiet patio -- students in jeans, young women dressed in funky loose-clothed Israeli style, a few old ladies lunching beneath their wide-brimmed heats, a smattering of men wearing yarmulkes and others with long side curls and the characteristically dark Hassidic garb. Birds are chirping, the sun is shining, the fall air feels crisp and clear, and for the first time in several days, I can breathe easily. The tranquility of this space, the intertwined nature and wonderful cleanliness, feels a world away from where I have been. From the stress of humanity, the piles of rubbish, the enveloping scents of sweets and spices, the mad suks (Arabic markets) full of rotting vegetables and strewn with animal parts, the song-like call to prayer drifting out over the desert hills...from the other side of the Wall.

I spent this past weekend in the West Bank with my Finnish friend Anna, my former roommate and kiwi picking partner from Kibbutz Baram in the north of Israel. I had been to Ramallah only once before, and then enclosed in a taxi and driven straight to and from the Ministry of Health office. Anna had never been but was as interested as I. So we decided to make our first real West Bank excursion together, starting with Ramallah, moving to Bethlehem, and seeing what experiences we ran into along the way.

Our trip began at Damascus gate in East Jerusalem, where we found our way after some friendly help, to a little "bus station" full of "servees taxis," or shared vans -- similar to the Israeli sheruts -- that wait until full and take passengers to a specified destination for a fraction of the usual cost. It cost us NIS 6 ($1 = NIS 3 = 3 Israeli Shekel) a piece (about $2) to make the 20km, 30 minute trip to Ramallah. Our van threaded its way slowly through the crowded, narrow streets of East Jerusalem, into its outlying neighborhoods (passing the Helen Keller School along the way), and finally to the 8m high West Bank wall which, with some stops and starts, snakes along the desert hills to cut off East Jerusalem and Israel proper from the West Bank. We sailed through the checkpoint without a glitch (not much security on the way in). As we drove along, I looked back at the graffiti sprayed across gray concrete. Things like: Free Palestine, CONTROL + ALT + DELETE, God will judge what you have done, Stop the Apartheid... Some rather beautiful artwork. Some I'd rather not put into writing.

The road to Ramallah is not so different from East Jerusalem - more crowded and chaotic perhaps, the buildings made more of crumbling concrete and less of Jerusalem stone. Gashes were carved out of the hills, perhaps to sell the stone for building or to make way for roads. Both sides of the street were littered with garbage -- not just strewn but piled high and haphazardly. And the areas off of it appeared dense and poor. I could identify some buildings as homes, some as little shops or businesses. Many others were rather ambiguously identifiable. Most of them seemed to be in some state of disarray.

Our drive ended next to the suk (Arabic market) in Al-Bireh, the administrative center contiguous with Ramallah that houses most of its government offices and NGO centers as well as the suk and market area. Otherwise, there is little difference in appearance between the two adjoining towns. Generally speaking, Ramallah refers to Ramallah and Al-Bireh in common nomenclature. Ramallah generally seems smaller than its inflated representation through the media. The Palestinian Bureau of Statistics puts its population at about 118,000, with Al-Bireh adding another 38,000 or so residents. Without getting lost or caught in a crowd, one can walk across its commercial area in 30 or 40 minutes. Its streets are relatively wide and lined entirely, manahattan-style, with buildings -- shops, cafes, the ever-present sweet shops. Even with a map, we found ourselves constantly getting lost. Streets intersect each other at random angles, sizeable roundabout are inserted everywhere, and street names are generally not present (and most often only in Arabic when they are). To us, Ramallah seemed like a place of semi-structured and generally agreed upon chaos, even when compared to the noisy tension of Jerusalem. This is partially due to the garbage. There is quite literally garbage everywhere -- strewn, piled, on sidewalks, in the market, heaped in spaces between buildings, piled high on the otherwise pretty hills outside the city. Coming even from East Jerusalem, the general poverty in Ramallah smacks you in the face.

More than anything, the suk embodied the chaos of the city. Venders crammed together sold massive piles of vegetables, fruits, olives, spices. Men pressured us to buy their plastic coke bottles full of olive oil, their bunches of herbs or bags of nuts. Rotting fruit squished unavoidably inside my flip-fl0ps and the occasional rotting animal part made me catch my breath. The suk makes it seem like all of the West Bank is saturated in nuts, olives, fruits and vegetables (particularly bananas. Bananas were everywhere). Beside the meat section (large hung and piled hacked at slabs of animal) was a square surrounded by stalls and haphazard rooms and chocked full with mounds of stuff. Clothes mostly. Piled high or simply strewn about, vendors shouting next to the mounds, men and occasionally women pushing each other to sort through the heaps. I've been to my fair share of chaotic markets, but I think it's safe to say that this one took the prize. We ate lunch in a little stand on a side of the square -- a pile of pita and delicate long pieces of deep-fried falafel along with generous plates of hummus and foul (delicious ground bean dish), drowned in olive oil and dotted with spicy green paste. Pickles, onions , and a mound of lettuce. Sweet black coffee afterward. A feast for two for 20 shekels.

The streets around the suk were full of men's smoking establishments (another theme of Ramallah -- we saw very few women outside. A few shopping during the day, not one on the streets after sunset, and none inside the smoking cafes). Big, undecorated, white-walled cafes full of men -- older men mostly, some as young as 30 perhaps. Many wearing full robes and kaffiehs, smoking nargileh pipes in silence from the corners of their mouths. Others playing backgammon around plain plastic or metal tables. Some outside, puffing away silently and watching the crowds walk by. We walked inside a few to use the (very dirty) squat toilets (water jug only for left-hand style washing, it seemed), and were generally welcome inside though obviously entirely out of place.

Aside from the rubbish heaps and shisha, the other theme of Ramallah was sweets. Sweets shops are ominpresent, abounding with little densely sweet baklavah type desserts, cookies, giant flat pies for slicing off eggy-honey-sticky deliciously gooey desserts. Other shops are full of candies - chocolates, hard candies, chewy Arabic sweets crammed with pistachios. And then there are Ramallah's two famous ice cream shops, with their sweet stringy gummy flavors (they use resin in their ice cream, which creates its gummy texture, and will give you a little bowl full of spoons of as many flavors as they can fit inside).

We walked down a shop-lined street as the sun was setting (many shops close early on Friday apparently but reopen with vigor on Saturday) and watched the rippling hills of the desert valley light up in shades of orange. The hills were wonderfully peaceful after the chaos of Al-Bireh and the suk. We could hear children playing oustide of those cavernous, empty-looking multistoried homes, and glimpsed the shadow-like figures of the occasional vale-clad woman walking the streets. Ramallah felt nice there- - peaceful, livable, breathable. The call to prayer filled the hills as we walked, blanketed in sunset, not sure where to head, what world we were in, what to think of it all.

Ramallah is home to both the West Bank (formerly WB and Gaza) administration as well as the Palestinian arts and literati scene. A few cafes (generally with a smattering of NGO-type foreigners in them) had posters advertising a poetry event, Palestinian hiphop festival, and international film series at Al-Qasaba theatre. After nargileh and dessert at Ziryab cafe (seems to be the epicenter of the tiny literati scene, at least from the posters outside and the calm, and wireless, inside), we made our way to Al-Qasaba to see a Jordanian english-subtitled documentary, Recycle, along with about the only foreigners we had seen thus far in the West Bank. We headed into a bar/cafe nextdoor after the film with the 15 or so others from the theatre and, coughing like novices on the strong shisha, listened to the post-cinema Western crowd pass judgment. The bar could have been in Tel Aviv, with its hip music and lighting, western menu, and plentiful nargileh. Though Western, its patrons seemed less like tourists (of which we saw hardly a handful during our stay in Ramallah) and more like workers from NGOs or West Bank organizations. The rest of the night, we wandered the streets, wondering where the supposed Ramallah nightlife scene took place. We found a few western-type cafes with a few western-type people inside scattered in random places throughout the city. Generally, though, with the exception of falafel stands, everything was closed and the city had the feel of a somewhat decaying ghost-town, spontaneously overrun by rambunctious groups of young Palestinian men who wandered the streets or swerved around and around them in crammed cars. We thought that it might be that the handful of establishments which stay open at night cater to those who can pay. And those who can pay tend to be the handful of intrepid foreigners. Meanwhile, the locals-- particularly the burgeoning young male population -- take over the free and empty streets and probably spaces beyond our view.

After a night in a cheap, mostly clean, and with the exception of two other young Brits, entirely empty hotel, we woke early to the loud chaos of the streets and the nearby suk, found our way to a sweet shop for a sticky breakfast and black coffee, and headed off to Bethlehem. With the Wall in the way, the fastest route to Bethlehem these days (for those who can swing it) is through the check points into East Jerusalem, where a service taxi at a nearby station will take you to the nearest checkpoint. Bethlehem also is only 20km or so from Jerusalem, but it takes longer because passengers must get off the taxi at the border and walk through security control at the checkpoint. The Lonely Planet is not far off when it says that this checkpoint resembles a maximum security prison.

The most interesting part of our day in Bethlehem was probably the taxi ride there. On Saturdays, shared taxis don't run on the West Bank side of the Wall, and getting to Bethlehem requires a lot of haggling with the group of taxi drivers who wait there for people like us. We negotiated NIS 20 for the two of us for the 7km ride to Bethlehem but in the end couldn't get away with less than 50 with a striking detour built into our trip. Our driver decried the situation, the poverty, the harshness of life, and I think actually cried when we told him for the 20th time that we didn't want an afternoon long tour of the surrounding biblical sites (for NIS 60). Finally, we agreed with him that he would drive us through Dheisheh refugee camp, 3km from Bethlehem and crammed with 11,000 Palestinian refugees. The camp looked something like a partly-developed slum. Tiny streets wove up the hillside, crammed on both side by little homes, poorly constructed but with some degree of permanency, and a few shops full of cheap household type things. A number of people, mostly children and young men, were in the roads, some of them doing construction work. And lots of graffiti, some of it beautiful, some of it frightening (including the only swastikas I saw in the WB) lined the way.

Bethlehem is beautiful, though we found it a little less interesting, despite its obvious religious, cultural, and historical importance. The Church of the Nativity is the oldest continously operating church in Christianity (established around 338 AD), and the milk grotto chapel, where Mary's milk dripped onto a rock, blessing the grotto where she hid with the baby Jesus, was one of the more interesting I've seen. There were a fair number of tourists clustered around the holy sites, but in the narrow, shop and suk-filled, seething streets of the old city above it, we saw hardly any. Despite the odd fly-ridden animal part scattered on the ground at the suk, Bethlehem is cleaner than Ramallah, and the tourist-supported city tries hard to cultivate a visit0r-friendly image that Ramallah does not. We witnessed a celebration in the Nativity square in the center of Bethlehem, where the one millionth visitor to the Palestinian Territories received, alongside the Mayor and Governor and festive crowd, a 3 night stay in a Bethlehem hotel, for him and his wife. Buses arrived at the celebration, full of locals and wreathed in flowers and garlands.

The difficulty of re-entry into Israel seems to depend on the checkpoint. Coming back from Ramallah, a soldier boarded our bus, checked the id's of those who seemed to be Palestinians but gave the two of us no more scrutiny than a glance and a nod. Coming back from Bethlehem, we found ourselves crammed into a jostling crowd of tourists and Palestinians, all fighting to get through the rotating gate at the same time. Tourists show their passports and pass their items through the Xray machine without a problem. Palestinians show id and permit and have their hands scanned and fingerprints id'd. A man in front of me got turned back, permit apparently not valid enough.

Back on the other side, I walked Anna to the central bus station, through the streets of West Jerusalem. The Sabbath had just ended, and the city was still calm and silent. A few shops were just beginning to open. The bits of careless liter, the eye-sore construction work in the middle of Jaffa Rd paving the way for the 2010 Jerusalem tram system -- the various things about the crowded city that can feel jarring seemed entirely insignificant. Everything is relative, and a trip to the Other side certainly puts it all in perspective.

This is not the place to speculate or pass judgement. I've meant only to describe my reactions, observations, and experiences. The poverty was obvious and overwhelming, but so was the friendliness of most of the people we met. There were the usual jeers of men at times, but we never really felt intimidated, unsafe, or compromised. And there are signs of slowly growing infrastructure, or its capacity at least to grow. Schools, some left over from pre '48 and Jordanian annexation. Newer ministry offices. Bits of commerce. A little but growing art and literary scene. Amid lots and lots and lots of garbage.

That is what we found on the Other side of the Wall.

Snapshots from the Past

2008-11-06T23:47:00.000-08:00

It's been nearly a month and half since I arrived in Israel, and to say that I've experienced and learned a good deal since arriving is a pretty dramatic understatement. I can't recount all of the experiences that I've had during this time, but I do want to provide some snapshots here of the evolution in my thinking about the area and the various communities and geographies I have wondered through...

23 September: Port Inn, Haifa
I'm in a pretty garden patio in back of the Port Inn hostel in downtown Haifa. A gropu of very American college boys is talking too loudly about lap dances "someting about them being "not so cool") at a table on the other side fo the patio. Ben and I left Be'er Sehva late yesterday, after I spetn the orning trying to arrane the logistics of my study adn work here. By teh time we left, it was after 3pm, and we were both grumy on our train ride to Natanya.

I'm still working out exactly how to engaged in my primary work goal: supporting Palestinian-Israeli public health cooperation by creating a program in health information technology and new media. It's a lofty goal, and I'm keenly aware of my cultural and political ignorance here, my general outlier status -- as soon as speech happens or an interaction takes place, I'm instantly outside. And I tend to be impatient about perfecting my arrangements immediately. Ben Gurion University in the Negev is a fabulous university, with a stated community and public service orientation and rooted in the sociocultural complexities of the Negev Desert in the south of Israel, home to its 150,000 Bedouin and much of its ever-growing new immigrant population. At the same time, much of my work will be centered around Jerusalem, and I find myself pulled there not just strategically, but for its color and complexity, its people and politics, and its endlessly overlapping layers of story and history and meaning. Part of my difficulty here is located simply in something like immigration syndrome and culture clash -- at this point all I can ask of myself is to absorb as much of the language and local knowledge as possible and have faith that I'll gain clarity and belonging as my year unfolds.

Next, there's the tension within me wiht regards to my relationship with Israel (this is going to be a more contentious topic of discussion throughout, so be forewarned). Israel is a hard country ot get to know, and it's very protective of itself and its version(s) of history. It aspires to be and feels Middle Eastern and European at the same time. It struggles to be on the right side of history, while at the same time there's a general feeling off oppression and ostracism that seems shared by the Jewish Israeli collective -- we are here because there is no place else. Accept Israel and Isralies and they will embrace you with open arams, stuff you iwth hummus and invite you to dine at their table for the Sabbath. I've neer had so many friendly strangers stop to help me just by looking quizically at a map. At the same time, the oppose is true if you find yousrelf on the wrong side, or at least it puts you in a difficult position because any admission of moral ambiguity leads back to certain questions about Israel's right to exist and the correctness of all it has fought for and achieved. And even if I want to think of myself as open-minded, taht's a question that as an American Jew, I have a gut-chelnghtingly hard time allowing myself to even consider. It must be somehow possible to criticize or critique without raising existential questions.

To a very real extent, I think that part of my task here will be tring to explore as many stories and versions and face of the prism as possible.

THE SHORE OF THE KINNERET
Tonight, on a rocky shore on the mystical Sea of Galilee, I found a friend camped in a sukkah on the beach, and together we explored our way through a moonlit 8th Century CE Palace. Wrapped in warm autumnal night air, we wandered through giant rooms with still standing walls of massive stone -- limestone piled on basalt, composite 130o year-old concrete filling in the gaps, giant pillars, and the broken but still perfect marble plating of walls and floors with designs still visible. Floors are tiled and patterned, covered over by a thin layer of sand. We crawled through tunnels and poked our way into rooms half excavated, climbed ancient stone walls and sifted through the sand to find pieces of broken clay pottery, smooth and perfectly carved and shaped. The top of an altar-like inset space in a great room had a symbol carved into it, like rays of a sun. Small pillars that look more like rayed pyramids were scattered around rooms, and ancient drainage tunnels ran through their floors.

We discovered the astounding cleverness of its 8th century builders - - notched stones to protect from earthquakes, the geometric center stones of massive arches, indentions in the floors to create hinges for enormous closing doors, knotches in the walls to hold the marble plating in place more securely. We sat in an ancient stone bath tub, all of one limestone piece, and looked at the stars, dulled only slightly by the distant lights of Tiberias across the waters. We discovered owl pellets and still perfect skulls of tiny animals. We tracked jackels into their tunnels and listened to their packs yelping in the distance, and we followed the trail of a porcupine into a tunneled room until we couldn't get any further. We ate the sweet fruits fallen from date palms growing from the Holy Land in the middle of an ancient palace at midnight on the shores of the Galilee. And we wandered home through its waters, warmer as you wade deeper, and felt the mysticism and the spirit of the place infusing us as we walked.

Israel today is a complicated and contested world, full of competing story lines and overlapping claims. In a land without certainty, there is truth - in the magic in the night air of the Galilee, a sunset over the ancient walls of Akko, a lone olive tree on the rocky slope below Jerusalem. Here there is spirituality enough to go around.

Baracked

2008-11-06T08:04:00.000-08:00

36 hours ago, I stood in a crowded bar in Jerusalem and watched Barack Obama accept his election as the 44th President of the United States and the first to truly break the mold of the identity of this office. A day later, I and my friends who have supported Obama are still glowing from this success and even those who had been more ambivalent about his candidacy seem to recognize the significance of this day in history.

As I stumbled my way sleepily and smiling through the crowds heading to work, I paused for a moment to sit on a street corner and try to capture in writing the sentiment of the moment. Needless to say, I was too tired by the time I finally made it home to post this online, so I'm going to do it now, as if it were yesterday, because I think the experience of that moment and the sudden knowledge of its significance is important to remember:

Election Night, 2008

5:45AM, Mike's Place
It's nearly 6am, and I'm perched on a bar stool in Mike's Bar, in a little alley off of Ben Yehuda Street in downtown Jerusalem. The place is packed with Obama supporters and cameramen, and the air fills with claps, cheers, and blinding flashes as the blue state results filter in. I gave an interview in French a few minutes ago to Canadian National Radio in Quebec, and I've had photos snapped in my face all night long. Ronni, Hillel, Sarah, Ronni's roommate -- they'd been here with me before, wrapped up in the earlier stages of the experience. Ronni and her roommate stayed until 4am, and we enthusiastically chomped down fries and roared with pride and elation as Ohio went for Obama. They've all gone home now, though, but I'm staying as long as I can take it, fueled by cheap burekas and greasy french fries and the guilt of being too far away and not ever having done enough. No one wants to be left out of a moment that shaped history, that will be remembered, and so I'm staying as long as I am able, for connection to the excitement, the change, the moment, the responsibility... 9 more electoral college votes to go...

8AM, Street Corner, Ben Yehuda
All night in a crowded Jerusalem bar, the results came in at 6am, and we emerged bleary-teary eyed from exhaustion and emotion with Barack as our President, pride and assurance in our hearts. We counted down 3...2....1.... to the close of the Western state polls, and when they did, we heard the news, there on the screens and the lips of the commentators. Barack Obama elected President. Barack Obama elected President.

The sky is bright blue already and the sun is warming the night-chilled air. The road crew is out here working in the streets, the diggers are already digging, laying the tracks for Jerusalem's 2010 tram system. A man sweeps the steps above me, students, and business people walk to work and class. It's a new day in Jerusalem and in the world, and there is so much work to be done. But it's the "yes we can" that matters today, the sense of possibility, the knowledge that the world can, does change through collective action. And so we can begin together, to build our dreams and mold our collective future. Today, we will always remember. Today, as Americans, we are proud.

MORE LATER...

Touch Down Tel Aviv (Belatedly)

2008-10-30T07:15:00.000-07:00

It's been over a month now since I arrive in Tel Aviv's Ben Gurion International Airport. I'm flipping through the pages of my journal and looking back into the blur of confusion, anticipation, and ignorance that accompanied me off the runway and into one of the most important, contentious, and fascinating region's of human history.

Though I contemplated doing so since accepting my Israel Fulbright Fellowship last spring, I've been reluctant to set up a blog and release my thoughts into the public domain for a number of reasons. First, I approach journaling as an extremely introspective and private experience, through which I sift through my thoughts and reactions and formulate the premature seeds of opinion. Blogs and diaries are often blurred, and in the age of uber-connectivity, I'm reluctant to release my premature and personal experience-based reactions to a vast and invisible community.

Second, the area in which I'm living is one of the most complicated, contentious, and multi-faceted zones of human existence. The centrality of this region to human existence is evidenced by everything from the bible, to the archaeological remains that dot the landscape, to the maps and kingdoms drawn and redrawn, to today's out of proportion onslaught of media coverage. Perhaps the linguistic turn theorists are right -- it does seem that there is no such thing as truth in today's Israel, only competing narratives and endlessly overlapping streams of stories and assertions. In a landscape the size of New Jersey, every piece of land and every hewn stone seems to have been claimed a thousand times over. This region gives the concept of legitimacy a whole new level of importance and complexity. Given the impassioned contentiousness of this area, I'm reluctant to add my own half-formulated viewpoints to the mix and make innocent or ignorant statements that could be taken as assertions. Words and claims here it seems must be chosen carefully.

My third reservation pertains to the general concept of blogging. Though I'm very supportive of and interested in the idea of citizen journalism and the empowering possibilities that this web-based medium can give to individual voices, I've been reluctant to engage personally. In part as mentioned before because a journal for me is a personal experience and I tend to guard my words and assertions closely before releasing them to a public I can't see and whose reactions I can't gauge. The careful editing and rewriting that goes into journalism and publication becomes almost impossible or irrelevant with this medium. The nature of the blog, which falls somewhere between public diary, published experience, and international citizen journalism would make a good subject of a media studies dissertation. In any case, what's clear is that it represents something new in medium and in reach, with beautiful and problematic possibilities, and I've been cautious about taking part until compelled by a reason that makes the medium particularly applicable to my experience and needs. Finally, given my tendency toward long sentences and journal-long journal entries, there's my fear and suspicion that blogging would become too time-absorbing or stressful, my entries too long to merit reading, and that the upkeep of a blog would negate or compete with the private journaling that is a very important part of my daily life.

So why the blog then? In the end, I decided to create a blog for both utilitarian and experimental reasons. Not being a big fan of sending out frequent mass emails, I can't possibly keep my friends and family as updated as I would like on my experiences abroad without recounting the same stories over and over in long emails and hand-exhausting letters. I hope that by writing a blog that encapsulates some of my daily experience and thinking, I'll be free to write communications that are more personal and frequent to my close companions. Second, the complicated nature of the region as I described above could be approached in two ways: either by withholding premature reactions or by diving into the stream of thoughts and opinions coming from every which way about the area. I do believe that a diversity of public opinions is vital and as I tend toward strong opinions and quirky, rather adventurous experiences, I'm going to experiment with adding my voice to the mix. There's the inevitable danger that by releasing so many voices, we lose our ability to filter. Nevertheless, technology creates new filters and in the end I don't expect that my blog will do anything more than makes some of my stories available to the friends I want them to reach. Finally, journals tend to disappear over time and some of the stories and thoughts that I write in them are narratives that I would like to share with others. This blog is my attempt then to share what have been and I hope and expect will continue to be some very interesting and unique experiences. I recognize the great privilege and fortune I have to spend a year in this area. I hope that this blog can be seen as one small in way in which I can give back.

So the bottom line is this: This blog comes with the disclaimer that it is inevitably and inherently one-sided. It is not meant to be anything more profound than a recounting of personal experience and some of the thoughts that it induces. If assertions are made, they shouldn't be taken as anything more than the premature and experience-based reactions of a quasi student. If entries are too long, feel free to skim. Dialogue about your own experiences and reactions if you are inclined. Frequency of postings will most likely be variable. And entertainment value is maybe hoped for but not promised.

With that, I'm releasing this blog into the uberscary and exciting public domain. Time to throw caution and skepticism to the wind and engage with a new and potentially powerful possibility. So happy reading and welcome to my year as a nomad and my wanderings in the Middle East. Enjoy! :-)