An American Geographer...

1967

2011-05-27T12:21:00.002-04:00

From Juan Cole's excellent blog, Informed Comment:

Netanyahu’s argument for not going back to 1967 borders is that it is inconvenient. He says that the 1967 borders are indefensible. This assertion is a logical fallacy, known as special pleading. You can’t launch a war and annex your neighbor’s territory because you fear that your own presents security challenges. Lots of countries are unhappy with their borders. Saddam Hussein annexed Kuwait in 1990 in part because he felt that the British had erred in not giving modern Iraq a deep water port, which made Iraq ‘indefensible’ and put it at an economic disadvantage. Pakistan believes that its failure to secure the headwaters of the Indus Valley rivers in Kashmir in 1947 puts it at a permanent disadvantage vis-a-vis India and makes the country overly vulnerable (‘indefensible’). Netanyahu’s immoral argument that a country just has to take by main force whatever it feels will make it more secure is astonishing and is a standing danger to world peace if it were taken seriously by other countries.

Israel enjoys a tactical and strategic superiority over its neighbors; its military is both better-equipped and better-trained than any other force in the region, and it enjoys access to all the benefits of being a staunch US ally. The 1967 borders weren't "indefensible" in 1967 (Israel won the 1967 war. QED.), and are even less "indefensible" now.

Camera shyness

2011-05-20T09:55:00.003-04:00

I'm trying to get people willing to appear on-camera briefly to talk about how they imagine/understand/picture Jerusalem and the people who live there.

But most of the people I have asked don't want to appear on-camera--mainly because, they say, they don't know anything about Jerusalem.

So I'm putting out an all-points bulletin; I need help. If you know anyone who would be willing to talk on-camera about Jerusalem for 60 seconds or so (and, importantly, have never been to Jerusalem themselves), please refer them to me or give me their contact info. We can do it on or near campus just about any weekday.

I'm even contemplating bribing... er, compensating people with food.

Other blogs

2011-05-18T20:21:00.004-04:00

Professor Juan Cole from the University of Michigan, a past president of MESA (the Middle East Studies Association), has a blog of his own that is worth reading.

He's got his slant on things, and is very stridently political on the blog. But the guy is extremely well-read, has a ton of experience in the region, speaks Arabic, and his blog makes for an all-around interesting read.

Plus, he links to a lot of Daily Show stuff, so if you don't have time to keep current on the Daily Show, you get the best of the bits that involve the Middle East and/or foreign policy.

And while I'm linking to other blogs of interest, Professor William Cronon of the University of Wisconsin also started a blog. Alas, the very first post he made prompted a poop-storm (keeping the language PG) of epic proportions. Cronon is an environmental scientist and geographer (we claim him as one of our own), is brilliant, and his initial post--and the reaction to it--is so deeply disturbing that I consider it a must-read for anyone who is interested in American politics, or the higher education system in America.

Seriously, go read Cronon's blog post about ALEC. Regardless of your political affiliation or inclinations, it's Stuff You Should Know™.

Tamkeen

2011-05-18T09:15:00.003-04:00

quick links about Tamkeen--which is a USAID-funded initiative spanning several Middle Eastern countries, with the goal of fostering democratic institutions, civil society, and youth leadership and empowerment.

More information from the principal contractor, Chemonics
A view of some of Tamkeen on the ground, from The Al-Ma'mal Foundation for Contemporary Art
One of the products of Tamkeen

Pyalara questions

2011-05-17T23:11:00.001-04:00

I noticed Pyalara's donors don't include USAID. What are the reasons for this; is there a relationship between Pyalara and USAID (including a dysfunctional one)?
Pyalara looks and sounds a lot like the Tamkeen project; is there any relationship between these initiatives?
How does the (internal) Palestinian political climate--that is, the contest between Hamas and Fatah, the corruption and graft endemic in the PA, etc.--influence and shape Pyalara? Is the idealism of creating "future leaders" tempered by reality within Palestinian politics?

Reading Response: May 18

2011-05-17T20:25:00.000-04:00

Today's theme... well, there isn't one coherent theme. This is probably appropriate to the times, as the events in and around Israel/Palestine recently don't necessarily have one coherent theme, either. What I mean by that is that the Palestinians who demonstrated at the Syria-Israel border and the Lebanon-Israel border did different things, for different reasons, from protesters in East Jerusalem. Yes, the end goal of everyone might be the same, but the methods and the paths to that goal were different.

So what am I talking about?

Alona Nitzan-Shiftan's chapter "Seizing locality in Jerusalem," from the title alone, would appear to a geographer as a very straightforward tract on how different groups claim space in the city. But, obviously, she wasn't writing it for geographers, because the chapter instead revolves around the co-opting of "traditional" (or "native") Palestinian architecture by a movement of Israeli architects. However, what Nitzan-Shiftan sees as an inversion of structure and form imposed upon the landscape--wherein conqueror takes up the symbols and methods of the conquered--is actually, to me, a straightforward co-opting of culture by a colonial power. We see numerous examples of this aping of indigenous culture by colonial powers, producing something hybridized and not truly "indigenous" or similar to culture in the imperial heartland. Look at the architecture of the British Raj in cities like Lahore, Delhi, and Calcutta; the "mission" style in the American southwest; the baths and seraglios created by Turks (Seljuk, Ottoman, Mamluke, etc.) in Arab cities like Cairo. The creation of a colonizer/colonized fusion of culture, often expressed in architecture, to me seems to be a common occurrence.

Nitzan-Shiftan reads the sabra movement, in its abandonment of Modernism and its taking up of an "Arab" ideal, as something of an unconscious colonial apologia--as Modernist architecture looked/felt alien to the landscape of the state of Israel, the sabra designers sought a more authentic, a more fitting style for the land. Of course, this "fit" and "authenticity" was expressed in the native dwellings of indigenous Palestinians, and so by taking up this more "authentic" style of design, the sabra architects were actually affirming the place of Arabs, the "belonging-ness" of Palestinians to the landscape.

Though maybe I'm reading too much into the chapter--Nitzan-Shiftan repeatedly alludes to sabra architects and their efforts as a "yearning to be 'of the place,'" that is, the form and design ideas aped native building (or evoked Biblical or Mediterranean themes) because of the dislocation of Diasporic Jewry, and the need for Israelis to feel at home in what was, to them, the ancient homeland they had lost. A more cynical reading might argue that this "yearning to be 'of the place'" is coterminous with a need to establish "facts on the ground," that is, the more "authentic" the look and feel of a community, the more valid one's claim to the land, stretching back to antiquity.

I've noticed that I'm using a lot of quotation marks, commas, and shifty, vague terms like "look" and "feel." And then, there in that sentence, I've done it again: more commas and more quotation marks. That's a central problem when we're dealing with something ans inchoate and slippery as "culture." And isn't architecture, in a very fundamental sense, an expression of culture? Taking up notions of how a nation should build and what suits the landscape as well as human function, and then creating tangible icons of the nation and how its people function--that is architecture. Based on, and reflecting... or perhaps refracting culture. Then again, what is "culture"? More slipperiness and ambiguity.

I will say this: architecture is both an expression of, and expressive to, a nation's culture. Israel today sees itself as a fusion of Occident and Orient, and this is at least partly due to the uptake of native and Western design. Sort of like Disney's Epcot Center, or the Strip in Las Vegas--where you can walk through little compartmentalized versions of a dozen different countries, each designated by a style of design and some recognizably "authentic" landmarks--you can make a place feel a certain way, simply by building that way. To be clearer: build a shopping mall with stone, throw a few arches and shady promenades, maybe a dome somewhere, and it is "Middle Eastern." The shopping mall doesn't have to be in the Middle East, or evoke the Middle East for any purpose other than to divert shoppers' imaginations, so they feel like they're buying an "authentic" Middle East experience instead of just a new pair of shoes. One shopping mall designed in such a fashion is a gimmick; a hundred shopping malls, apartment complexes, suburban communities, and governmental buildings designed this way create a cultural notion that the place is the Middle East.

And so it went with the sabra architects. They were as much creating a connection with the landscape as they were forging an Israeli identity, an identity of having one foot in the West and one in the East. I would argue we hear that identity expressed every time someone invokes Israel as "the only democracy in the Middle East." But that's a can of worms for another occasion.

Oh, one last bit on Nitzan-Shiftan: for anyone interested in doing a doctoral dissertation, take careful note of the last block of text from the lead paragraph on page 232:

Why should architects Israelize a contested city with architectural forms of another nation? Moreoever, once such espousal of the Palestinian vernacular took place, what were the mechanisms that enabled Israelis to separate it from the culture that produced it in order to make it constitutive of 'an Israeli architecture'?

Those are research questions, folks--the big, sprawling, "what is going on?" and "under what conditions can this happen?" questions that you can build an entire dissertation around.

some wall/settlement pictures

2011-05-16T13:27:00.003-04:00

I have a stash of photos I use for class lectures and presentations, and, unfortunately, I don't have any metadata to accompany them.

So, I'm posting a link to a PDF that includes these pictures and some of my own that I had handy, showing the wall, settlements, and some of the immediate effects thereof.

I've put as much source data as I have. If there isn't a caption on a slide, it's because I have no idea who shot it, where it was shot, or when--except that it was definitely earlier than 2006, and possibly before 2004 (but after 2000).

As I don't own the rights to many of these pictures, I converted everything to a PDF, and am restricting access to the file. If the slideshow doesn't load, or you're getting a "no access" type message when you click on that link above, let me know and I'll see about fixing whatever is going wrong.

Setting the discourse

2011-05-16T12:06:00.004-04:00

Today's Jerusalem Post is instructive: the Palestinian protests and border "incursions" are relegated to a story well down the page. The stories with higher precedence and higher position on the page?

Abbas: Enough time before September to renew peace talks
Father of kidnapped soldier criticizes Israeli gov't for giving PA tax revenues it is entitled to
Fatah & Hamas start talks in Cairo
German prosecutors appeal release of Demjanjuk
ICC prosecutor wants Qaddafi arrested
Shuttle Endeavour launched
Likud Knesset leader tells Netanyahu West Bank settlements should be annexed
Israel to file UN complaint against Syria & Lebanon for border incursions*
350+ hurt in protest of Israeli embassy in Cairo
Thai princess comes to Israel to promote cooperation
LA chef makes world's largest felafel
Israel (music) festival celebrates 50 years
Countdown to a Palestinian state
J-Post correspodent argues that Hamas-Fatah deal is not a "game-changer"
Some comparing bin Laden raid to Entebbe

And then, finally, there is a story directly discussing the Palestinian protests. Of course, this is the J-Post--not exactly the most Palestinian-sympathetic paper you'll find.

*I'm not including this as a story about the protests, because this is more about Israel's reaction. Israel gets triple-ironic points for going to the UN to complain, when it still is in violations of UN resolutions as well as ICJ decisions.

Well, how about Haaretz, then? Well to the left of the J-Post, maybe Ha'aretz isn't buying into the discourse of "the border incursions are Syrian challenges to Israel's integrity!" instead of looking at the Palestinian protests in totality...

Yup, top headline:

Netanyahu: Palestinians want to destroy Israel, they are no partner for peace
boom!
Haaretz isn't minimizing yesterday's events, but they're caught up in Netanyahu's reframing of them. Right below the lead story is another one:
U.S. accuses Syria of inciting Israel border clashes
....and there we go.

Haaretz has a lot of coverage on its homepage about the Palestinian protests, but sadly, not only are they repeating Netanyahu's spin (as a headline), it shows that the US has bought the smoke-and-mirrors. Never you mind what my left hand is doing, says the magician to his audience, just watch my right hand as I pull a rabbit out of my hat! Meanwhile, the magician's left hand is busy stacking a deck of cards for his next trick.

"We urge maximum restraint on all sides," said White House spokesman Jay Carney. As if unarmed people climbing a fence are as culpable as soldiers firing live ammunition across an international border.

Reading Response: May 16

2011-05-15T10:44:00.000-04:00

Sadly, the first thing that struck me when reading "Old and new walls in Jerusalem" was that the editing process at Political Geography must have gone haywire. PG is the flagship journal of political geography, and one of the most important and influential journals in human geography. But Klein's article was full of grammatical & spelling errors, and it was organized poorly (not to mention the literature review section was hard to follow and didn't really say much about how Klein was presenting his argument). Ansi Paasi is a very prolific and well-known geographer who specializes in borders and identity, and repeated misspellings of his name (Klein called him "Passi" in the text and in his references) really grated on me.

That said, Klein's stumbling through the rich trove of geographic thought on borders and boundaries did communicate some important ideas--even if others have articulated these ideas more clearly and trenchantly elsewhere (e.g., Paasi 1998, Newman 1998, 2002, 2003, 2006... in fact, come to think of it, it's odd that David Newman isn't cited more in Klein's paper, as Newman not only is a preeminent geographer, editor-in-chief of Geopolitics, and a scholar who writes exhaustively on borders and boundaries, but Newman is a faculty member at Ben-Gurion University, and frequently writes on Israel/Palestine issues--including via Op-Ed pieces in the Jerusalem Post).

First, borders aren't simply locations in space: they are social processes, and even further, they are social institutions. Saying that, we can posit the reverse, as well: social processes can be conceptualized as borders. Klein touches on this, particularly when he discusses the ethnic divisions within health services (both for employees and for patients) in the Jerusalem metropolitan area. It's worth noting that most, if not all, of the border processes Klein discusses are one-way: for example, Klein notes that it is not an uncommon occurrence for a Palestinian doctor to work in a hospital in West Jerusalem, but it would be very unusual for an Israeli/Jewish doctor to work in East Jerusalem.

Next, Klein touches on the notion that borders are far from static--they are fluid and change with the political climate. So, when a Likud administration is in power, there are stronger barriers (and more of them) to movement and circulation (circulation being an old geography term, borrowed from French, that encompasses economic and social activity), and then when a Labor or Kadima administration comes in, those barriers change.

It is interesting to note that Klein sees the "taboo" on a united Jerusalem being broken through permanent status negotiations. I was never aware that serious talks were undertaken regarding Jerusalem and its final borders--I had thought that Jerusalem was such a complex, contentious issue that it had been pushed to the end of negotiations, that is, after all the other stuff got resolved. I suppose that the mere mention of a possible end-state for Jerusalem would indeed seem to break the "taboo," but the latest Netanyahu administration would seem to have re-instated the taboo. And, given progress on settlements surrounding Jerusalem, and evictions/demolitions in East Jerusalem, it would appear that Netanyahu wants that taboo to be stronger than ever--to the point of never being broached again.

I found it interesting when Mount Scopus was brought up--I had taken a bus tour of Jerusalem, and the narration on the tour was (expectedly) jingoistic: the Israelis on Mount Scopus were portrayed as noble survivors, standing watch and operating the hospital under the most trying conditions, holding out against Jordanian/Palestinian violence and recriminations (I find that this mind-set informs a lot of the settlement movement, as well). But if/when Palestinians "hold out" against the Israeli siege, their portrayed as stubborn refuseniks, obstacles, and/or cowards.

The final point in Klein I feel worth noting is the total lack of responsibility Israel takes in regards to East Jerusalem. Treating Palestinian areas like slums, withholding trash removal and policing Palestinian areas only to keep crime and violence from reaching Jewish areas (and not to enforce laws and pursue criminals who engage in Palestinian-on-Palestinian violence)... it smacks of the experience of Diasporic Jews in European ghettos.

Klein, along with Bernard Avishai, comes across as scathingly opposed to the occupation and the continued Israeli appropriation of East Jerusalem. It's something that amazes me in politics outside America--in the US, such strident opposition to the regime, particularly concerning national security, would provoke such a backlash (by the true 'patriots') as to all but stifle any real debate on the issue. In Israel, however, there are loud & prominent voices opposing the occupation and the subjugation of the Palestinians, and these voices are not silenced or even seemingly discriminated against. Of course, at times it seems that advocates of Palestinian rights are shouting their voices raw and accomplishing little. But at least there is a vocal opposition to power.

Peteet's study of graffiti is notable for a host of reasons, not the least of which is her conceptualization of graffiti as not only a vehicle of communication, but a shaper of those who participate in it (the viewer and the writer). But beyond that, I find it troubling that graffiti was so dangerous. I did not know how deep the oppression was before Oslo; I didn't know that Israeli censorship applied to all "publications... brought in, sold, printed, or kept in someone's possession in the West Bank unless a permit has been obtained for them."

That is stunning. Any publication or writing was subject to this censorship and confiscation.

I'll just let that sit there. The fact that if the IDF found a book that they didn't like--for any reason--they could confiscate it (and charge the owner), as every publication, under this order, required a permit. Even a copy of the J-Post, or Ha'aretz (more likely the latter than the former), would thus require a permit. This order by itself provided carte blanche to the IDF to stop and arrest just about any Palestinian. All you have to do is find one bit of printed paper--a pamphlet, a map, a photocopy of some document--and they've violated the order.

OK, aside from that...

Peteet is analyzing something critically important; though it isn't too much of an innovative thought to see graffiti (particularly in the Occupied Territories) as a form of political expression and even political resistance, it is an innovation to see that graffiti as a self-reflexive dialogue within the Palestinian community. It's all too easy, all too common, for us (as scholars, or just as people) to see political movements as monolithic: e.g., it's "the Israelis" versus "the Palestinians." Peteet shows that the Palestinian resistance wasn't singular; it was multifarious and fractious and contentious, even as it was united in opposition to the occupation.

There's a lot more to Peteet, but I don't want to beat a dead horse on this (plus, this is a long post already). I'd just suggest that anyone interested check out more graffiti.

It was Blogger

2011-05-15T10:30:00.002-04:00

Apparently Blogger was the source of the problem, and was down for several days for many people, and not working right for others.

But that's over, and now my posts are starting to show up, kinda.

Blogger/Browser technical issues

2011-05-11T08:22:00.003-04:00

Ever since Windows installed some "critical security updates" last week, I've been having some issues--issues that came to a head yesterday. I spent most of the day trying to figure out & fix some major problems on my computer, and then when I thought I had everything fixed, apparently either Blogger or my browser doesn't like me, because my recent posts have gotten garbled up, lost, and/or delayed in posting. I'll work from another computer and see what I can do to fix things. Sorry for the delays.

Imagining Jerusalem

2011-05-10T23:14:00.000-04:00

Imagining Jerusalem: Multimedia Presentation

Abstract

Building on Edward Said’s notion of “imaginative geographies,” in his book The Colonial Present, geographer Derek Gregory analyzes the tropes and modalities of modern colonialism, bound up in assumptions and assertions based on “imaginative geographies” of the Middle East and South/Central Asia.

Geographers have dedicated a great deal of attention and scholarship to the elements of Said’s imaginative geographies: from notions of identity and nationality, to perceptions of out-groups and the militarization of borders between groups. Israel/Palestine is a bubbling cauldron of all these geographic curiosities—and no wonder, given Said’s Palestinian heritage.

This project, then, aims to illustrate and depict the geographic imaginary of Jerusalem, as held by non-Jerusalemites. Through short interviews, what Jerusalem is and what it means to Americans will be explored—and Jerusalem itself will be populated by these “imaginative geographies.”

Presentation (rough) outline

I. Introduction (~3 minutes)

A. Powerpoint—background on Said & Gregory

B. Application to Jerusalem as object of desire and contest

II. Vignettes (~4 minutes)

A. Description of research method

B. Interview clips

III. Conclusions (~3 minutes)

A. Creation of “imaginative geographies” through contrasting distance and attachment

B. Implications of these constructions on American foreign policy, as well as contemporary Jerusalem

Research method

Interviewees will be chosen from pool of bystanders and students involved in various Israel Independence and Palestinian Nakbah events on the OSU oval. This is a nonscientific, and deliberately nonrandom sampling, in order to solicit opinions and ideas about Jerusalem from people who have vested interests (and therefore who have constructed imaginative geographies in the first place) in Jerusalem as a city and an object of the Israel/Palestine dispute. Interviewees will be asked a series of closed- and open-ended questions, including:

How many people live in Jerusalem?
How large an area does Jerusalem encompass? (further prompted by “smaller than Franklin county, about the same size as Franklin county, or larger than Franklin county?”)
How many Israeli Jews live in Jerusalem?
How many Palestinians live in Jerusalem?
Can you name some places in Jerusalem that are important to you?
What is the status of Jerusalem at present?
What does Jerusalem mean to you?
What does Jerusalem mean to Israelis?
How would you fit in Jerusalem
What does Jerusalem mean to Palestinians?
What do you think will be the eventual resolution to the dispute—that is, what will Jerusalem look like?

Interviews will be done on-camera and recorded for editing and display in IS 501 final project, and interviewees will be informed of this prior to interview. Interviewees will not be asked their names, occupations, residency status, religion, marital status, sexual orientation, etc., and interviews, once edited and inserted into multimedia presentation, will be used solely for the purposes of an IS 501 student project and no other research. Unedited interview footage will be deleted, and the edited and finished final presentation will be shown exclusively to the IS 501 (Living Jerusalem 2011) students and instructors, and for no other purpose.

Questions for Yonatan Gher

2011-05-10T21:38:00.000-04:00

By my reading, the LGBT community in Israel can be conceived as more secular and less religious, and therefore less inclined to support Likud (and more pro-Labor). One of the hallmarks of Israeli democracy is the reliance on coalition government, which, especially to outsiders, seems to privilege tiny minority interests--as these very small parties command power in the Knesset far exceeding their actual representation (I'm thinking specifically of parties like Shas, who can get pretty powerful concessions from majority partners in coalitions, just to get the smaller parties on-board). So all that said, how monolithic a political bloc is the LGBT community? How opportunistic is the LGBT community in supporting one party or another?
Why is JOH in Jerusalem, rather than Tel Aviv? Geographically, the two cities are very near each other, and it seems that Tel Aviv is a better social climate and less provocative to religious hardliners.
On that note, what constitutes "too much" for Jerusalem--that is, how prominent a presence (or demonstration) can JOH have in Jerusalem before it is considered too radical for religious hardliners?

Bonus: In regards to West Bank settlements, are they "hostile" to the LGBT community? I imagine that, especially in settlements founded by/for the religious right, there wouldn't be a very visible LGBT presence, and that sexual orientation might be one of the few things that created out-migration from the West Bank settlements.

Journal (my visual passport)

2011-05-10T17:49:00.001-04:00

This is an experiment, using images to convey some idea of who I am, without me writing or explaining any of it. Well, except to say that this starts in my home, in the present, and then works outward & backward. These are all shots taken by me, over the last eight years.

Reading Response: May 9

2011-05-08T21:50:00.000-04:00

I think in my hyperverbosity (my spell-check is telling me that I made up that word, and if so, hooray!) in my questions for Galit Hasan-Rokem expresses a lot of my response to the readings for today, and I don't want to repeat myself too much here.

So I'll talk a bit about recent history and its absence from narratives about Jerusalem.

Like we noticed in Armstrong, it seems that the recent history of Israel/Palestine is often given short shrift: the ancient history, with its religious monuments and milestones, takes up much of our understanding of the region and the current situation. Alternatively, we think about the wars of the 20th century--1948, the Suez Crisis, the Six Days War, 1973, the invasion of south Lebanon, the (first) Intifadeh...and, more recently, the Al-Aqsa Intifadeh, 2006, and Operation: Cast Lead.

What's lost is much of the history during the reconciliations and negotiations of the 1990s. It's as if history didn't happen when there was hope and potential for a peaceful resolution. When the 1990s do get mentioned, it's often in the context of obstacles to the peace process--cafe & bus bombings, settlement construction--as if history is only made up of a series of "flashbulb memories" and spinning newspaper headlines.

Which is why Suad Amiry's vignettes are so critical to understanding not just the lives of Palestinians under occupation (and during closure), but this portion of "missing" history. As an aside, it really threw me off-balance, reading Amiry and recognizing landmarks and roads in Ram'allah.

What is most important is that Amiry is filling in the gaps in the dominant narratives of Israel/Palestine--not just the gaps in history, "filling up" the void of the 1990s, but also "filling in" the void of what people's lives were like--particularly Palestinian lives--on a day-to-day basis.

Questions for Galit Hasan-Rokem

2011-05-08T13:38:00.000-04:00

As we address the details and lived experiences of people within contested Jerusalem/Israel/Palestine, and explore the setting of Jerusalem and all the multifarious complications and complexities of life there, here are three questions for Galit Hasan-Rokem:

Jerusalem inspires a great deal of literature, reflecting deep emotions that individuals and groups invest in the city. You yourself say that "Jerusalem is my home. I love it and ache for its dead and its living inhabitants." Are these emotions, is this attachment to place, purely a function of the place being Jerusalem? In other words, why don't we see a corpus of literature (both fiction and scholarly nonfiction) about the deep attachment to and longing for, say, Nazareth? (I understand the historical, religious, and nationalist disputes at the heart of Jerusalem's contestation, but what I'm going for here is why Jerusalem has been romanticized while other places have not.)
Following up on that, how does self-identity figure into this attachment to Jerusalem? What does it mean to have one's relationship to Jerusalem bound up into one's concept of self and belonging to place?
Again returning to the quote above ("Jerusalem is my home. I love it and ache for its dead and its living inhabitants"), this is certainly a feeling that a great many people would feel comfortable expressing and owning. What does it mean, as Jerusalem annexes more of the surrounding area, as settlements like Ma'ale Adumim are included in the metropolitan area of Jerusalem (and Bethlehem is excluded, despite being about the same distance from the Old City), to long for Jerusalem? Are we indeed talking about the Old City and peoples' desired attachment to it? Does being a "Jerusalemite" thus give one a claim to the Old City--rather than the Knesset, or suburban West Jerusalem, etc.?

Bonus question!

How is this longing for, and claiming of, Jerusalem delimited in time? Diaspora Jews would say at Passover seder "Next year, in Jerusalem!" Is that a claiming of Jerusalem? Before the first waves of European immigration, can we say that the local Palestinian Arabs really claimed Jerusalem , or longed for it? In other words, aren't we talking about the idea of Jerusalem, bound up in specific sacred geography, rather than the actual municipality?

Reading Response: May 2

2011-05-01T23:18:00.000-04:00

The three chapters from Salim Tamari's Mountain against the Sea provide a brilliant counterpoint to top-down political narratives about the Israel/Palestine dispute. One of the primary weaknesses of the dominant political narrative is one of scale: the actors in the dispute are groups and their political leadership; Tamari's chapters re-introduce the individual as the site and the object of these larger geopolitical narratives. In other words, Tamari skillfully demonstrates the lived experiences of people who were the pawns of geopolitics, the very people who were most affected by the dispute, querying sources and individuals far removed from the circles of power, from the typical descriptions of Jerusalem before and after the 1948 war. What results is a very different picture of Israeli/Palestinian relations--indeed, a completely different topography of Jerusalem.

In chapter 5, "A Musician's Lot," Tamari lays out his fundamental departure from "conventional narratives" about Jerusalem. As history books tend to short-hand the city into the quarters (Jewish, Christian, Armenian, and Muslim), individual identities and lived experiences are subsumed into these "ethno-confessional divisions"--divisions that can be simply circumscribed and described in diagrams and neat paragraphs by historians, sociologists, etc.

Tamari complicates this through the writings of a Jerusalem musician from the early 20th century, and shows that the socio-cultural map of Jerusalem was far more complex, fluid, and hybrid than allowed for in conventional narratives. Identity itself is (and was) a fungible thing, and in Wasif Jawhariyyeh's narrative, individuals and groups with multiple identities shared the same spaces, creating not only a complex map of overlapping group identities, but a creolized culture that bridged differences.

Interestingly, in his brief biography of Jawhariyyeh, Tamari illustrates many of the problems of conventional narratives: Jawhariyyeh's life story was complex and irreducible to a single sentence--even the parts before his music career. If one individual's life is so deep and rich, imagine the injustice done when entire communities are so treated, reduced to a single sentence in a footnote of a 400-page history book.

But then, one of Tamari's points is that the division of the city into four "confessional" quarters was a retroactive reduction by the British during the Mandate, and this fits well with how we see imperial/colonial re-writings of history and geography. There is a deep need to simplify and create realities that correspond to (and support) colonial mappings of conquered/administered territory--and colonial imaginations of the homeland and the roles of its people. In other words, the British simplified the geography and history of Jerusalem in order to administer it, to "create" a new past that fit the present (at the time) geography and history, and to reify their roles as administrators of the Mandate.

I could say a lot more about chapter 5, but rather than spend too much time on this one chapter, I'll skip ahead to chapter 6, "Lepers, Lunatics and Saints." In this chapter, Tamari discusses the (interwar) ethnographic writings of Tawfiq Canaan, a Jerusalem physician.

One of the most brilliant points Tamari makes is how "the process of ethnic exclusion and demonization had sunk" to the point that Arab and Jewish lepers were segregated after the war of 1948--even members of a group typically shunned by society were subject to, and objects of, the divisions caused by the territorial dispute-cum-war. Leprosy's provenance is given little thought anymore, despite the religious connotations of the disease and thus its role in the religious histories of the region--because Canaan was so very successful at helping eradicate the disease from the region.

But the contribution that Tamari makes with this chapter that I think is most important to our perceptions and study of disputed Jerusalem is his discussion of nativism and how Canaan and his contemporaries in the Journal of the Palestine Oriental Society anticipated and to some degree presaged Said's notion of Orientalism and the reductions and violences Orientalism entails. Tamari seems to indicate that Canaan and his circle valorized the peasantry to no small degree, but despite this problematic elevation of the peasant as the repository of culture and history, Tamari sees Canaan's work as ethnography unsullied by later folklore revivalism--a revivalism that was both insincere and inaccurate in its representation of Palestinian life.

Tamari points out that revivalism--and, by extension, the Orientalist-tainted histories and geographies of the region--was a reaction to Zionist history, and thus surrendered authenticity and representation to Zionist claims. Thus, Tamari sees Canaan's writings as being descriptive of quotidian Palestinian life, rather than a reactive movement that simply argued with counter-histories about "who was here first," or "whose culture is most authentic to the region."

To wrap up (prematurely) what has turned into a very labyrinthine meta-discussion of the readings within the readings, I'll just touch on the ethnographic details of Tamari--details left out of histories like Armstrong's. For example, despite Armstrong's love for digging into the details of religious belief and practice, revelations like Canaan's detailing of the relationship between madness and demonic possession, the attachment of religious meaning to the darwish and the practices of djinn--these are little tidbits, samples of life during the interwar period that Armstrong skips over. And for good reason: Armstrong isn't interested in the peculiarities of religious belief among Palestinian peasants in the interwar period. By this time, Armstrong doesn't feel that the reader needs more details about Baal or local demons, etc., Armstrong has decided that the political climate of the interwar period is more important to relate than the substance and details of the lives of people.

And thus it is all too easy to lose sight of the fact that people were living, and continue to live, in this region, and their daily lives are subject to--but oddly, not relevant to--the political tides of the day.

Questions for Salim Tamari

2011-05-01T09:05:00.000-04:00

Before I get into my response to the excellent chapters from Salim Tamari's book, I'll pose here the questions I have for him. For those of you who aren't part of the Living Jerusalem Project and/or are unfamiliar with Tamari, his book Mountain against the sea is full of material and ideas that are highly relevant to my research. Tamari uses ethnography to complicate and problematize the geopolitics of Israel/Palestine--he doesn't realize it, but Tamari is engaging with the project of critical geopolitics, by challenging the assumptions bound up in traditional top-down approaches to examining the Israel/Palestine dispute, as well as methodologically challenging classical geopolitics, by locating the practice and object of geopolitical practice at the scale of the community and even the individual, rather than purely in the aeries of state power.

So, based on my reading, here are the questions I have:

One theme that resonates throughout chapters 5, 6, and 9 is that of the complexity and fungibility of identity in Ottoman/Mandate Palestine. If, as you argue, there weren't discrete, ossified, coterminous identities among the residents of the region (prior to 1948), does that imply, then, that a one-state solution was possible and even preferable back then? And, at the same time, does the movement away from the complex identities and communitarian notions of these "confessional communities" therefore imply a concomitant move away from a one-state solution and necessitate talk of a two-state solution?
There is a great deal of literature in social psychology and political psychology that parallels Edward Said's Orientalism, particularly in the construct of the Other--particularly to the end of constructing an idea of the self. Do you see that this notion of the Other feeds nationalism and separateness in Israel/Palestine, or do you think that the reverse is true--that the nationalist drive of the Israeli proto-state fosters a notion of Other-ness. In other words, which comes first--the chicken (nationalism) or the egg (Other-ness) in your reading of Israel/Palestine?
Ethnography is a research method applicable to many questions, but geopolitics has largely shied away from ethnography, often because of the difference in scales between research subjects and where power is assumed to reside (individuals vs. states). Your writings have explicit geopolitical connections drawn between ethnography and state power: do you feel that this is a "natural" way of analyzing geopolitics? In other terms, you are critical of revisionist renderings of quotidian life in Israel/Palestine by the powers that created the contemporary dispute--is a return to the story of the individual (i.e., hearing the subaltern speak) a solution to this inscribing of history by the powerful?
(bonus question) What work is done by historians like Armstrong, who tend to write the narratives against which your ethnographic studies argue? That is, Armstrong portrays religion in Israel/Palestine as contested and contesting, whereas you paint a picture of syncretic and communitarian practice (if not belief). Is there a place for Armstrong's reading, or is this type of history just a starting point, so that we can begin to uncover the complexities that are left out of traditional narratives?

If I was in charge...

2011-04-26T22:14:00.003-04:00

Peace is a fleeting dream; negotiations broke down and fell apart years ago. There is no dialogue between Israel and the Palestinian Authority anymore--unless you count the PA complaining about Israeli settlement expansion, and Israel trading shots with Hamas as "dialogue." The peace process is not processing.

How can we ever achieve peace and justice if there aren't negotiations? The Israelis could annex the West Bank; the Palestinians could "unilaterally" declare statehood (this is splendidly ironic... as if declarations of statehood or independence are ever "multilateral"). Neither scenario would be a solution, but neither requires one side to talk to the other, so these outcomes are more likely right now than any outcome predicated on resuming negotiations between the two sides.

But if I'm so smart, what would I do or suggest to get the ball rolling again, in a direction that not only would lead somewhere, but would be productive for both sides, and self-sustaining (that is, the negotiations wouldn't fall apart without pressure/support from other countries or IGOs)?

I'm glad you asked, because I have a plan.

Step One
Settlement expansion has to stop, period. There is no Israeli argument for continuing settlement expansion that holds water. If there is a burning need to construct new housing for Israelis, there is plenty of room outside the West Bank. I know this for a fact, because I drove through a whole lot of nothing between Be'er Sheva and Ashkelon. Or, if agricultural land is too precious to build settlements on, south of Be'er Sheva there's even less than nothing. Build there. But the bottom line is that building and/or expanding settlements in the West Bank has no legitimate purpose--other than attempting to create more "facts on the ground" that will result in more territory for Israel and less for the Palestinians.

There are two types of residents who move to these new/expanding settlements: economic settlers, and religious settlers. Economic settlers move into these settlements because the Israeli government subsidizes rents, making the settlements cheaper than other housing options. Religious settlers move into these settlements because they want to prevent the land from leaving Israeli control. The first group won't stand in the way of a settlement freeze, because their subsidized housing can be built on Israeli soil, for all they care. The second group is against negotiating with the Palestinians regardless, so a settlement freeze won't affect their view of negotiations, either. In either case, a freeze won't change the political will of the Israeli public to resolve the conflict--or at least make progress in that direction.

Step Two
Past negotiations have broken down because neither side has faith in the political leadership of the other side (and, especially on the Palestinian side, for good reason). Mahmoud Abbas is a caretaker with very little public support, and the Israelis know how little power he actually wields; the Netanyahu government is seen as the worst thing to happen to Palestinians since Ariel Sharon was Prime Minister--and Sharon was the worst thing to happen to Palestinians since 1967.

Because neither side has faith in the other's leadership, negotiations need to take place outside the leadership circles. Negotiators outside the loop of politics-as-usual need to be appointed. This has been done before: Israeli and Palestinian negotiators outside the circles of power have met over the years, and had very fruitful discussions. However, these discussions have amounted to nothing, because the negotiators were... well, outside the circles of power. The negotiations were words on paper, and nothing more. I suggest that negotiators be given the power--by their respective governments and constituencies--to implement the results of their negotiations. Obviously, there are a lot of political hurdles to clear with this idea, and it would be all-but impossible to implement this for "big" issues like the final status of Jerusalem, the right of return, borders, etc. So that brings us to...

Step Three
"Confidence building" was a process in the early 1990s whereby each side negotiated on little things, to show the other side that they were negotiating in good faith and could actually carry out the agreed-upon results. AS things started to fall apart in the mid- to late-1990s, "confidence building" went out the window, because those "big" issues needed to be resolved, and each side wanted to make a "big strike" to show their own people that they were making real progress, rather than simply building confidence with the other side.

However, in the 21st century neither side has confidence in the other. At all. So we need to return to confidence building. But at the same time, big issues need to be resolved, because things have deteriorated so badly that change needs to happen now. So let's tackle a big issue, but one that's been off the table from the beginning, because it seemed to be trivial compared to the rest of the big issues: water.

Most of the water used in Israel/Palestine comes from an aquifer that lies almost entirely under the West Bank. Israelis use, on average more than four times the amount of water that Palestinians do--and this doesn't count water used in agriculture and industry. Long story short: the water resources are predominantly under Palestinian land, and Israel consumes this water at a pace far greater than the Palestinians. This is unsustainable--not only for the aquifer, but also for the Palestinians. West Bank wells are increasing running dry, or being infiltrated by salt water due to fresh water being pulled out by the Israelis.

So this is a very important issue, but one that is not in the forefront of political leaders'--or the public's--minds. In other words, no one is fighting-mad about water. But it's probably a more important issue than the right of return, or other intractable issues. Thus, it's the perfect issue to start with--solving a big problem through confidence-building measures.

And it's a problem that the US can help solve. Israel has desalinization plants; these plants are very expensive, and they use a great deal of energy. Israel has ample renewable resources, however--coastal wind and plenty of solar capacity. The US could easily provide a grant to Israel for the purchase of solar panels and construction of offshore wind farms, using parts and technology purchased from US firms. This is a two-birds-with-one-stone idea--give the US renewable energy industry a lift, while solving a couple problems for Israel.

Providing a viable alternative source of water for Israel would allow room for compromise--dare I say, even justice--with the Palestinians. Once the two sides saw that there could be a solution to an issue that wasn't zero-sum--that is, one side wins and the other side loses--they could think creatively about other areas of dispute.

Step Four
In South Africa after the Apartheid regime was dismantled, there was still a great deal of anger--and rightly so. But rather than pursue long, potentially fruitless criminal trials to bring to justice the worst offenders from the Apartheid era, South Africa tried something else. The Truth and Reconciliation Committee was a way for the stories of abuse and injustice to come into the open; victims had a forum to air their grievances and tell their stories, and the abusers could admit their roles without fear of prosecution or retribution. It wasn't a perfect idea, nor was it perfect in its implementation. But the TRC allowed South Africans to acknowledge the injustice of the past, to air those grievances, and to accept responsibility... in an open forum, and--perhaps most importantly--rather quickly. Criminal trials take a long time, and if the prosecution isn't successful, there is no sense of closure for the victims. The TRC, because it wasn't prosecuting anyone, moved quickly enough to keep the country's wounds from festering--and there was no "failure" to convict criminals, because no one was being tried.

Something similar should be put on the table in Israel/Palestine. First, an open, televised forum needs to be implemented, so that individual Palestinians and Israelis can share their stories. There's too much they-ing, as in "They took my land," or "They're violent," etc. Individual Israelis and Palestinians are not tiny subdivisions of government policy and position; each has a unique story, family history, and encounter with the past. The Israeli public certainly needs to be exposed to the histories of dispossession Palestinians carry with them; Palestinians could benefit from hearing the histories of persecution that drove Israelis to the region. In other words, the monolithic identities of "Israeli" and "Palestinian" need to be deconstructed, so that each side can see the other as individuals and human beings, rather than as cogs in the faceless oppositional nationality.

Step Five
Tear down the wall. Israelis feel more secure because of it, while Palestinians feel caged in. Yes, taking it down would run the risk that radicals would start bombing buses again. But negotiations are a risk in and of themselves, and, at some point, the wall is going to have to come down anyway--and even then, there will likely be radicals willing to kill to make their point. Taking down the wall is a good-faith gesture that is sorely needed, particularly when Palestinians see the wall as yet another appropriation of their land.

Step Six
Israel needs to talk to Hamas. Hamas was legitimately elected in free & fair elections. Yes, Hamas' charter still calls for the destruction of Israel. And yes, Israeli governments have made a big deal about "not negotiating with terrorists." But Israel negotiated with enemy states before (Egypt, anyone?), and so dealing with a group that is hostile to the Israeli state is nothing new. And Israel has, does, and will again "negotiate with terrorists." In fact, in the 1980s, even as Israel was branding Yasir Arafat as a radical terrorist, they were actually protecting him from harm.

The Israeli government needs to learn that they're playing chicken with Hamas, and by refusing to deal with them, giving Hamas more incentive not to blink.

No progress toward peace can happen in the West Bank without concomitant progress in Gaza; shutting Gaza out to punish Hamas will just prevent anything from getting done in the West Bank.

Now, I realize that most of these steps are moves/compromises the Israeli government must make, so that might seem like less of a "negotiation" and more "a set of demands." But the bottom line is that since the peace process derailed in 1995-96, Israel has moved farther and farther from the negotiating table, through words (e.g., "East Jerusalem is not a settlement!") and deeds (e.g., the wall, the blockade of Gaza, settlement expansion). Israel has the power, and thus it is Israel's obligation to take the first steps toward compromise and peace.

Reading Response: April 25

2011-04-24T20:04:00.003-04:00

I said this in my last post about Armstrong: Jerusalem (the book) is a maelstrom of historical detail, to the end of illustrating how these details matter to those who contend with each other over the fate, over the meaning of Jerusalem (the city). Yes, those details are important in and of themselves (not to quote Santayana's "those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it," but yeah, that might apply, too), but my one of my main points of contention with Armstrong is that she seems to miss that these details are precisely the weapons each side uses against the other.

That said (again), let me hit some highlights of chapters 14-18, and the whole book overall.

First, I think Armstrong has really hit on something when she identifies building as a political act. She didn't bring this up until, oh, maybe the Roman period or thereabouts, but the last 1000 years' worth of history have really hammered this point home. As an aside, it's rare that you can say about a city "well, for most of its history this didn't matter, but over the past 1000 years or so, this new thing was important."

Anyway, destruction is obviously a political act. As Norman Schwarzkopf pointed out in 1991, armies are made to "kill people and break things." And in the course of killing people, the things that are often broken are the buildings and urban spaces where the people live. On this topic, Stephen Graham's Cities, War, and Terrorism is a brilliant book. In his Introduction and chapter "Cities as Strategic Sites: Place Annihilation and Urban Geopolitics," Graham points out how for most of history, cities and civilians were not spared from the ravages of war, and instead were the targets of warfare. Only for a brief period of "civilized" warfare did armies try to minimize damage to civilians and cities. For more on the topic, and specific to Israel/Palestine, his chapter in the same book titled "Constructing Urbicide by Bulldozer in the Occupied Territories," is very compelling.

So anyway, armies conquer and break things, particularly the cities that are the targets/objects of conquests. Many times when this happens, buildings are--necessarily--destroyed. When a conquering army destroys the holy places, government offices, and/or walls of a city, it's obviously a political act--the erasure from history (and the city) of any notion of resistance to the conqueror. We can have no idea how many civilizations once existed, because many conquerors obliterated any record of their conquered foes. Similarly, as in Egypt, often the successes and achievements of past regimes are erased from history (in ancient Egypt, pharaohs would sometimes chisel from monuments the cartouches of predecessors, and put their own names instead).

But the notion that construction, rather than destruction, is a political act--well, not that that's novel among social scientists, but it's worth pointing out in a history, and it's of paramount importance in Israel/Palestine, and especially in Jerusalem. Constructing something is not only an establishment of a group's presence in the city, but it's also a claiming of space. And particularly where space is at a premium--within a walled city, proximate to holy sites--claiming space is not just a political act, it is an aggressively political act.

I wish that Armstrong would've taken a few pages out of each chapter to apply some social theory. She applies (or tries to apply) psychological concepts, and uses a lot of religious/theological theory, but some social theory would've been helpful. Most particularly, especially in the right historical frame (say, the last 300 years), she could've taken some time to examine Western notions of property ownership, and/or Eurocentric ideas of territory and territoriality. Because a lot of what she's talking about is ground that has been trod by social scientists (particularly, geographers) for a long time now: the notion that property must be improved to be rightfully owned. This is prominent in Locke, but it traces back to Grotius (late 16th - early 17th century philosopher). In short, if you don't make land more productive, you essentially lose your right to it. This isn't just a quaint historical notion: it survives in present-day American residential zoning (e.g., if you put a fence up on the wrong side of your property line, on your neighbor's property, and your neighbor doesn't contest this, after a set amount of time--usually something like seven or eight years--you can legally claim that property is yours).

This idea is how colonial powers justified their appropriations of land and the incorporation of territory into their empires. As Rashid Khalidi has pointed out, the Zionist settlers imagined Ottoman Palestine as "a land with no people for a people with no land." How did this come to be? Well, yes, as Armstrong has pointed out, the decline of the Ottoman empire ran concomitant with a decline in the economy and population of Jerusalem. But more importantly, the indigenous people in Ottoman Palestine were largely pastoralists, moving their livestock over large areas. What sedentary agriculture there was, was largely olive tree groves--which didn't require active maintenance or irrigation. So, when Zionist settlers arrived, they saw a land that was "sparsely populated" and not being utilized to its capacity. They formed their kibbutzim, and "made the desert bloom." By investing time and capital in the land, through irrigation systems and sedentarized agriculture (complete with permanent housing and infrastructure), the immigrants were thus improving the land, giving them claim to it that superseded any Arab claims. After all, the reasoning went, if the Arabs really owned and valued the land, they would have improved it long ago. They're just squatters, scraping a living off of land they don't own (and therefore don't have the right to improve, either).

This is an important bit of history and theory that certainly applies. And I think it makes a lot clearer the politicization of construction in the region. Building a new structure--be it a religious site or a marketplace or an apartment complex--is not just political because it establishes "facts on the ground," but because it establishes (and/or reinforces) a claim to that land that abrogates previous claims.

Next point about Armstrong, particularly in 14-18. She really pins the blame on the Crusaders. She even goes so far--in the Israel chapter, I think, or maybe Zion?--to say that the Crusades "broke" relations between the three great monotheisms. I don't dispute that the Crusades did a lot of long-term damage; a lot of very deep wounds were cut during this period. But during the Ottoman period--particularly during Suleiman's rule--relations were pretty good. Yes, there were undercurrents of hostility, and lingering grudges, but if things had kept up the way they were going during Suleiman's reign, perhaps those hostilities and grudges would've smoothed themselves out and healed over time.

And honestly, the British really bolluxed things up during the Mandate. Particularly in the wake of WWII, they were unwilling to say 'no' to the Israeli proto-state. And the bombing of the King David Hotel seemed to just give the British another reason to wash their hands of the Mandate, instead of doing something to solve the growing dispute. And then, particularly after 1967, the US took Britain's place as the power that contributed to the problem, rather than to the solution (for example, compare the US response to the Suez Crisis with the US response to the Six Days War, or the Yom Kippur War).

So yeah, the Crusades were a brutal period and established some dysfunctional relations between the three faiths. But to lay everything at the feet of the Crusades is not only too simple, but it absolves modern powers from their roles in creating and exacerbating the dispute.

This post is turning into a book, so I'll be brief with my two remaining points.

Third, the little people get left out of Armstrong's history. This is pretty much a necessity in any broad history of ancient times and even antiquity--accounts of quotidian life by the commoners are unlikely to survive hundreds or thousands of years. Instead, we get lists of rulers, conquerors, and priests. I understand this. But records from the Crusade on are pretty good--especially so from the Arab Islamic Empire, and the literally dozens of famous social scientists and travelers who chronicled the world (e.g., Ibn Battuta, Ibn Khaldun, etc.). This is one thing the Living Jerusalem project "gets" that Armstrong (as well as historians like Bernard Lewis) misses: people live in these histories. Armstrong goes to great lengths telling us about how Jews, Christians, and Muslims contended over sites like the Holy Sepulcher or the "Upper Room," but she simplifies the opinions of all these groups into a monolithic stance. Surely the common folk who lived in the city didn't all think the same way and hold the same opinions about these disputes--disputes that often involved mainly the wealthy & powerful.

Not only are the opinions of these unheard lives important, but their lives themselves are important. The intro video for the Living Jerusalem project tells more about the history and impact of the Israel/Palestine dispute in the story of the two bakers, than Armstrong does in Chapters 17 & 18.

Which brings me to my fourth (and final, for this post) point: Armstrong seems to have run out of gas by Chapter 16. The 20th century has seen more "history," more bloodshed and conflict, more danger and potential ruin, than previous centuries. The complexities of politics and dispute in the 20th century are deeper and more tightly imbricated than those of previous periods, because they carry the baggage of these periods, as well as contemporary issues. Armstrong does a lot of short-handing and eliding of very important events. For example, the 1973 Yom Kippur/Ramadan War gets a couple sentences, despite it provoking the OPEC boycott--which itself broke the world economy and prompted a restructuring that we're still feeling today--and damn near causing World War III. And let's not forget that the 1973 war pushed Israel to the brink of destruction, and there was the real threat that the IDF would nuke Cairo and/or Amman as a desperation measure. All that absolutely is germane to discussions of Jerusalem today--if only because military solutions are off the table, simply because of the threat Israel's military (and nuclear weapons) pose to Arab countries.

I also think Armstrong missed out on discussing more implications and fallout of the Camp David Accords, and though she was writing too early to really see the ramp-up of settlement activity in the West Bank during the Oslo period, she did touch on settlements, and this again would've been a great opportunity for her to employ some social theory and discuss the potential problems on the wind.

Like Armstrong, I started this post strong and verbose, and then ran out of gas and short-handed my last few points. I guess it's a hazard of writing about Jerusalem, eh?

Reading Response: April 20

2011-04-19T22:40:00.000-04:00

We've been slogging through Armstrong for a while now--and I say slogging not because it's not a well-written, enjoyable book, but because there is a lot of detail and Armstrong is prone to excursion--and I've come to a couple conclusions about Jerusalem.

First, Armstrong is trying to illustrate the history of Jerusalem by giving us a history of the three religions that consider it the Holy City. This point bears emphasis. Armstong is trying to illustrate the history of Jerusalem by giving us a complete history of the three religions--from their origins to the present--of the three religions that consider it the Holy City. This explains most of her excursions, wherein we learn details that hardly seem relevant to the politics of contested modern-day Jerusalem.

So what does it mean that Armstrong thinks that a history of Jerusalem is lacking without a full history of the three great monotheisms? Several things, really: first, that arguments about modern Jerusalem are rooted in the history of religion; second, religion and religious history is used in arguments about modern Jerusalem, and so it behooves everyone to know the history involved; third, details matter. This last point is most problematic. Because yes, I think it's important that we get a full idea of the history and the development of the three religions, so we know Jerusalem's place in all this history. But if the details really matter, then we're surrendering ground to those who use those details as wedges, as points of contention. And worse, Armstrong, while very thorough and drawing on a gamut of sources, leans very heavily on scripture for history--and as problematic as historical texts are for accuracy and reliability, scripture even moreso, if only because scripture is meant to enlighten believers about the nature of the religion, not to provide an accurate historical record of events.

So when I read today's chapters about early Christianity and the beginnings of Islam, and the Crusades, I'm troubled that an account like this does work against its primary objective. People can easily seize on factoids in the book, or entire chapters or even themes, and use those to bolster their exclusionary claims. Not only do we open the door to the inevitable "who got there first?" questions/arguments, but we also open the door to "who was treated the worst, and by whom?" claims--wherein whichever group suffered the most has the most puissant claim to the city now, and whichever group was the greatest victimizer has the weakest claim.

On these grounds, then, the Jews have the greatest claim to Jerusalem: they were present in the city and the region so far back in antiquity that it is difficult (if not impossible) to separate their presence from that of the progenitors of the Palestinians, and they suffered repeatedly at the hand of conquerors and rulers from afar--to an extent never known before (Armstrong repeatedly notes that the Jews were the first people to be persecuted for their religious beliefs and practices).

Again, this is a very problematic direction, because it closes down the possibility for dialogue. Israelis use this history as justification for their claims, while Palestinians point to evidence that their progenitors were in the region at the same time as the progenitors of modern Jewry, and that the Palestinians or the Muslims were not the great persecutors in Jewish history, and therefore they (Palestinians and/or Muslims) shouldn't suffer penalties today. These are the terms by which the argument is framed so often, without deep histories of religion. So giving us the deep histories doesn't serve to defuse or to deconstruct those terms.

The second conclusion I've reached is not so deep (or long-winded), and one I've stated in class as well as above. Armstrong relies too heavily on scriptural sources to flesh out her "history." At one point--I think in describing the Bar Kokhba Revolt, but I'm a bit foggy on where exactly--Armstong cites... maybe Josephus, saying that the Legions swept through and killed something like 585,000 people in the scouring of Judea. That number is preposterous--there's no way a half a million people were living in the region, let alone that many being killed in the sub-province (and leaving any survivors behind to populate it, even sparsely). I've read a few critiques of Josephus, who, as a "historian" is problematic and not very reliable. So if Josephus isn't entirely reliable, and (at the very least) exaggerates numbers, what about scriptural writers? Armstrong is right to point out the very anti-Jewish themes in the gospels of Matthew and John, but despite acknowledging this bias, she never questions the historical veracity of their writings. This is beating up chapters that we read prior, but the point is still valid, because establishing scripture as a reliable history undermines the (more recent) history of Muslim presence in the region--a history that has greater support and more sources.

So coming to the expansion of the Arab Islamic Empire, and the clash with European Crusaders, the Jewish presence is not entirely written out of Jerusalem, but then Armstrong replicates some of the violence down to conquered peoples--but focusing on the contests between the powerful, between the armies and rulers of the two newer religions. Even more than in the bloody history of Babylonian, Assyrian, Persian, Macedonian, and Roman conquests, the Crusades stand out for the cruelty and violence--not because the Crusaders were necessarily more villianous than previous conquerors, but because we have more detailed records of the cruelty that survive to the present--often because the Crusaders themselves bragged of their (mis)deeds as if they were virtues.

And I'm not sure that Armstrong acknowledges that problem.

I was going to write something else about Armstrong, but not only have I forgotten my point--I've written a bunch already, and don't want to write a book here. Oh, and did anyone else despair at finding the Ellwood chapter? I couldn't find a link or anywhere to download it.

April 18 Reading Response, Part II

2011-04-18T00:14:00.000-04:00

To clarify and reiterate: I don't think that the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra or any similar cultural exchange programs are bad ideas, or wasteful, or that the money & efforts would be better spent elsewhere. I simply think that we should be cautious with our expectations, and we should be cognizant of the political implications (or lack thereof) of such programs.

Because (and here I tie this to the rest of the readings) images of Other-ness are powerful and entrenched so deeply in the collective (and individual) psyche that it takes a huge amount of counter-programming to overcome those ingrained images and perceptions.

Stereotypes rule how we think and how we react, even when we deny it (see Fiske, et al 2002. "A Model of (Often Mixed) Stereotype Content: Competence and Warmth Respectively Follow From Perceived Status and Competition." Journal of Personality and Social Psychology and Morton, et al. 2006. "We Value What Values Us: The Appeal of Identity-Affirming Science." Political Psychology). Our ingrained preconceptions are powerful, and often determine how we'll react and perceive others. So we're pre-conditioned by all of our experiences and knowledge to act sympathetically (or not) to people outside our own (perceived) group. Certainly for the participants in cultural dialogue programs (including the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra), the exchange deconstructs some of their ingrained stereotypes. But how much do programs like these affect people outside the program?

And, to complicate things a bit further, there's evidence to suggest that what is happening to participants in programs such as these isn't necessarily a dismantling of stereotypes of Others, but in fact a rearrangement of perceptions of who is part of the in-group, and who is part of the out-group (see Dovidio & Gaertner 2008. "Commonality and the Complexity of 'We'" Social attitudes and Social Change." Personality and Social Psychology Review and Fischer & Roseman 2007. "Beat Them or Ban Them: The Characteristics and Social Functions of Anger and Contempt." Journal of Personality and Social Psychology). In other words, quite often when we're talking about "breaking down barriers" between groups, it's not about actually deconstructing stereotypes, it's about taking some people of a perceptual out-group and turning them into members of the in-group. We see this in the Parallels and Paradox extracts, where Israeli and Arab musicians are portrayed as excluding each other from their group, or their conversations. After some time and interaction, the Israelis and Arabs include each other--but this isn't necessarily any tremendous breakthrough, any re-organization or destruction of stereotypes. What is more likely is that the musicians re-organized how they perceived the "Us vs. Them" grouping. For the Lebanese musicians who excluded the Israeli from their Arab jam sessions, they didn't see the humanity common to all people, Lebanese or Israeli: they saw the Israeli as part of the Orchestra, a musician like them. If the Israeli musician had a friend who wanted to sit in on the jam session, it's not very likely that the Lebanese musicians would feel very welcoming. The out-group/in-group dynamic had changed from "Lebanese vs. Israeli" to "Orchestra musician vs. other."

I don't mean to trample all over the successes and meaning of the Orchestra, but to instead frame the mission of the Orchestra against harsh reality. I'm reminded of what Stalin said when warned that he might run afoul of the Vatican. Stalin said, "How many tank divisions does the Pope have?" So, despite the powerful influence of the Catholic church, the realipolitik boils down to who has the most guns.

To bring this bad to Said, geographers trade quite heavily one two (related) concepts from Said's works. They're deceptively simple when you look at them, but they're very deep, and the influence of these on our thinking is even deeper. First, is the notion of the Other. The idea that we group people into "Us" and "Them" is pretty facile. Sociology and psychology affirms this grouping: to shorthand it, we tend to sort people into groups in order to save brain processing power, to simplify the world and our reactions to others. We have positive feelings towards our in-group, and negative towards the Others. Edward Said articulated all of this in his seminal work Orientalism, but he applied it specifically to the knowledges ingrained in Western history and cultural studies, and delved deeply into the implications of this Other-ing process.

To put it in a nutshell, Said argued that we define ourselves in and by the very act of defining Others. That is, we don't form a concept of ourselves and our in-group in a vacuum, and then perceive Other-ness. Instead, through our encounters and interactions with others, we discover and define difference, and create a Self from this difference perceived among the Other. Then, we ascribe all sorts of positive traits to "Us," while ascribing their opposites, their negatives, to Others. The Other, for Said's work, was the Eastern world--the Middle East in particular. This Other-ing allows for and justifies all sorts of violences against the Other: not just physical violence, but the cultural violence of "writing out" of history subject peoples.

The second idea of Said's that geographers use is the notion of "imaginative geographies." This is plainly put: imaginative geographies are the mental, imaginary terrains we populate with people--people whose traits and characteristics are determined by what we have learned via acculturation from our schooling, our peers, and our culture. Thus, the average American populates her/his imagination of the "Middle East" with turban-wearing zealots. These imaginative geographies color our actual geographies: Derek Gregory has written at length (see his The Colonial Present for a brilliant example) about how imaginative geographies are transformed into geographies of violence.

Finally, the last bit I have time for is a commentary on Noura's thesis. I know that time & space constraints limited the breadth of her argument, but I can't help but think that yes, it's possible to construct the notion of "homeland" without exclusion, without creating in-groups and out-groups that vie for territory in a zero-sum game. But is it likely? Especially when the exclusionary narratives established by each side are rooted in and justified by the violent conquest of the land?

David Newman is a giant in my field, and he has published a lot about these notions of territory and attachment, of nationalism and its expression on the land. Ghazi Falah (who was the chair of the session I presented in at my conference last week; I chaired a session he presented in at our national conference in 2007) is very forthright in his application of these notions in the Israel/Palestine dispute--Falah reads the landscape as an exercise in Israeli nationality and Palestinian dispossession. Derek Gregory knits together Newman's base, Falah's reading, and Said's fundamental notions of Other-ness (particularly in his 1995 Progress in Human Geography piece, "Imaginative Geographies," which was an intimate portrait of Edward Said and his dislocation from his homeland), and the result is a damning indictment of Orientalism and its direct descendant, imperialism.

To boil it down, geographers sometimes joke about "the geography of hope," but the joke conceals something geographers feel very acutely: the geopolitical realities we analyze and critique are very powerful, entrenched, and continue to do their violence upon the world (especially the disadvantaged). We can rail and research and posit alternatives, but in the end, we're whistling past the graveyard, aren't we? The alternities that we posit are fractional and subject to the inertia of the world, and the prejudices of power. So yeah, we can posit possibilities and we can light those candles instead of cursing the dark, but I would be happier if we could make those possibilities happen.

Reading Response: April 18

2011-04-17T11:32:00.000-04:00

First, questions for Miriam Said:

1) Since the peace process stalled and began deteriorating in the mid-1990s, attitudes among politicians and segments of the public on both sides of the Israel/Palestinian divide have hardened. As time goes on and the distance from/to a peaceful settlement grows, has the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra had difficulty with the logistics of practice and performance? That is, I am wondering if the performers are able to get together and practice outside of the yearly meetings in Spain. As a addendum, I'd also be curious to find out what Israeli/Palestinian government or public attitudes toward the project are. It seems ironic that the Orchestra meets and performs so facilely outside the region, but performances in Israel/Palestine are so rare.

2) Related to the mission of the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra, and drawing on the influential work of Edward Said: Particularly among the politically powerful on both sides of the Israel/Palestine dispute, images of the Other have increasingly become ossified over time. While the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra is a compelling project in and of itself, what (if anything) might result politically? That is to say, it is a noble and worthwhile effort to break down the walls between individuals--particularly young people--but the walls exist and continue to grow because of the actions of the powerful. And the politically powerful rely on tropes regarding the Other, tropes that generate support for their political agenda domestically. For example, Netanyahu cannot (publicly) characterize Palestinians as anything other than intransigent intruders, lest he lose support from the Israeli right; Abbas cannot talk productively about Israel without losing support to Hamas. So as a political engagement, I don't know if the project will bear fruit.

My overall impressions of the cultural exchange and dialogue among Israeli and Palestinian youth are unguardedly enthusiastic. I am firmly of the school that it is "better to light a candle than curse the darkness," and the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra project is the exact sort of the interpersonal exchange--among young people--that I think that the Israel/Palestine dispute needs. But my enthusiasm wanes quickly when I recall the reality of the geographic and political divide between the two sides. I despair that a cultural exchange will ever have a significant impact on the entrenched positions of the (politically) powerful, and I wonder about class issues, as well.

To elaborate on this last point, though I have seen news items on individuals, groups, and NGOs that donate monies and instruments to youth in Palestine, by and large, developing the skills needed to play symphony instruments is largely a luxury. Not only are instruments expensive, but playing & practicing demand time and space that most Palestinian youth simply don't have. So the pool from which the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra draws from on the Palestinian side is probably not representative of Palestinians on the whole--I would guess that the Palestinians involved largely come from more affluent (and culturally more Westernized) backgrounds.

Similarly, on the Israeli side, though the higher standard of living and a tradition of musical aptitude (with Western symphony instruments) would lead me to believe that there would be a more representative sample of Israeli youth, I don't see many hard-right families allowing their children to perform in the Orchestra. I can imagine secular and/or leftist families being much more enthusiastic, and therefore I wonder if the political orientations of the participating performers are predisposed to dialogue with Palestinians.

So ultimately, I wonder if the project has that great of an impact. The critical side of me wonders if the youth involved are changing their own outlooks and perceptions (of Other-ness) that much--if they aren't already predisposed towards dialogic exchange, especially as far as music is concerned. And then, once established, I wonder how much the dialogue accomplishes on the wider scale. In other words, does it make a difference beyond the lives of the performers?

Again, I think it is noble and completely worthwhile. But I also am a realist, a pragmatist, and I don't think that the Orchestra is going to change any of the political realities. Actually, if anything, I think that the project makes for good propaganda by extremists on either side, sort of a "Well, of course we don't hate them--look, we let our kids play in an orchestra with them!" thing.

Reading Response: April 11

2011-04-11T00:34:00.000-04:00

In "Exile and Return," Armstrong deals with two topics that for me--despite what I think to be a pretty good grasp of history and theology, particularly of the ancient world--were somewhat glossed over and unexamined. First, the Exile itself. In what I've read (and taught) previously, the Babylonian Exile was notable primarily for two things: 1) It was the first iteration of destruction and displacement, echoed and magnified 600 years later; 2) It was during the Exile that the first record was made of Judaic scripture--or at least, the first written record that survives into modern times.

In other words, Exile wasn't so much a period in time but more of a stopping point: things didn't happen during Exile; Exile was a lacuna in history between the First Temple and the Second. Armstrong fills in the gaps and turns Exile into a living, breathing time when Judaism grew, changed, developed.

These changes and developments touch on the second point that Armstrong communicates--she argues that it was during the Babylonian Exile that Judaism actually became unequivocally monotheistic. Prior to the Exile (and during it), Armstrong asserts, Yahweh was one god among many--supreme, and requiring worship exclusive from other gods. Then, during Exile, Yahweh is pronounced to be singular and sole deity.

To me, this is an interesting revelation. In the past, I had always thought of the core concepts of Judaism as being ossified by the time of Exile--I mean, the religion was already established & practiced for quite some time, with the Temple in Jerusalem at its center. Instead, it is a dynamic thing that was still adapting to the rest of the world.

And when I apply this thinking to Jerusalem itself, I see why I fell into the mindset of the religion being established and unchanging for thousands of years--because that's how we default when we think of the Israel/Palestinian dispute, or Jerusalem itself. We tend to think that the ideas, concepts, conflicts, and contestations are eternal and unchanging--that the rock-throwing & tear gas is just a modern manifestation of conflict that reaches back through time.

There's no avoiding it

2011-04-07T13:03:00.004-04:00

While preparing my presentation for AAG next week, I ran across a photo I took in 2009 inside the Qalandia checkpoint. I didn't have time to do a great job composing the shot--I don't know how much the IDF allows inside the checkpoints, and the time prior to this, the IDF had given me a really rough time getting through. So I snapped a few quick shots, just so I could share what it's like trying to get from Palestinian areas into Israel proper.

The Qalandia checkpoint is the main transit point between Ram'allah and Jerusalem.

There it is again...

2011-04-06T09:07:00.004-04:00

The ad for the "International Fellowship of Christians and Jews" is showing up on my blog pages again, and this time I decided to pick a fraction of a penny from their pocket, and I clicked on the ad. The page that loaded has a banner picture--featuring the map I posted about earlier, as well as a photo that looks like it was taken during the Egyptian January revolution (with a rock-thrower holding an improvised shield prominently displayed). The text of the page reveals an interesting way of thinking about the wave of protests and anti-authoritarian regime changes that have been sweeping across the Middle East this year:

"Violent street protests are spreading across the Middle East, from Yemen to Bahrain and even into Iran. This upheaval could have disastrous consequences for Israel, threatening the stability of the entire region."

A little deconstruction first. The protests that have swept across Tunisia, Egypt, Yemen, Jordan, Syria, and Bahrain have been almost entirely nonviolent. Yes, the responses by the regimes in power have often been violent, but the protests (and protesters) themselves have been peaceful. The most "violent" of the protests has been in Libya, where the protesters did not resort to violence until after the regime opened fire on protesters and bystanders. Next... Iran??? Ummm, the regime in Iran has not allowed any protests--let alone violent ones.

So this bit of propaganda is rooted in fantasy, in anti-Arab and anti-Muslim paranoia that equates any act or event with a threat to Israel.

And interestingly, the chain of cause and effect is portrayed as "upheaval" --> disaster for Israel --> instability in the region. In the worldview of the IFCJ, Israel is not only maintaining stability in the Middle East, but is the linchpin keeping the Middle East from destroying itself.

"Now more than ever Israel needs committed friends to stand by her. One way you can help Israel during this time of violence and volatility is to show your solidarity with the Jewish state by wearing this free U.S.-Israel flag pin, The Fellowship's gift to you for helping spread the crucial message of support for Israel."

Never mind millions of Arabs peacefully demonstrating in hopes of overthrowing autocratic regimes; never mind the peoples and nations hungering for freedom and democracy; never mind the thousands who have died in efforts to affect change: Israel needs our support and solidarity.

And, to top it off, I'll point out the sop to Israel as a "Jewish state," which excludes the Palestinian Christian and Muslim citizens of Israel, and points out what a farce it is for this organization to call themselves the "International Fellowship of Christians and Jews."

Reading Response: April 6

2011-04-05T23:28:00.002-04:00

Reading the introduction and first four chapters of Armstrong's Jerusalem, three themes stand out for me. But before I get to these themes, I have to do a bit of excavation and explanation, introducing another historical work I think is very germane to our discussions of ancient history in the holy land.

David Rohl's Pharaohs and Kings is a compelling challenge to orthodox Egyptology & archaeology in the holy land. Rohl's central argument is that overlapping (and competing) pharaonic reigns in the Third Intermediate Period (TIP) have traditionally been seen as sequential, resulting in a timeline of Egyptian history that is artificially extended. Revising down the elongation of the TIP results in a different sequence of historical linkages between Egypt and Israel--in short, Ramses II ("Ramses the Great") is not the Pharaoh of the Exodus, and thus historians and archaeologists have been looking for biblical Israel during the wrong time period. Rohl argues that his revised dynastic timeline coincides with other historical accounts, and concludes that Solomon's rule didn't take place in the early Iron Age (ca 1000-900 BCE)--a period of impoverishment and decline--but up to 200 years earlier, during the late Bronze Age--a period of wealth and prosperity.

Rohl builds a very convincing case (though my understanding is that mainstream Egyptologists and archaeologists remain very skeptical of his radical adjustment to the pharaonic timeline), and with his new chronology, suddenly a great deal of biblical narrative finds congruence with other historical sources. The Amarna period of Egypt dovetails nicely with the unification of Israel by David.

I bring up Rohl's work--and the orthodox resistance to his conclusions--to illustrate how ingrained knowledges become, and how staunchly these knowledges are defended. The resistance to Rohl's revisionist chronology was staggering--I watched a Discovery channel series based on his research, and there were scenes of academics (their CVs with publication lists as long as my arm) dismissing Rohl's ideas out of hand, simply because he dared depart from "what everyone knew."

I'm not completely sold on Rohl, because he is one of a number of historians and archaeologists who seek to find "proof" of the Bible in archeological digs; I think he's too quick to accept elisions and logical leaps that support his theories, despite criticizing the orthodoxy for these same sorts of elisions and leaps.

But he makes a powerful argument--if only because through his revised chronology, there is a wealth of evidence that connects not only ancient Egypt, but biblical accounts with places that we can visit and apprehend with our own senses.

In Armstrong's terminology, Rohl gives us a connection to "sacred geography" that we are otherwise separated from by thousands of years. Rather than searching blind and relegating biblical stories to myth and symbolism (and not as Armstrong uses these terms, but more in the rougher vernacular), we suddenly have access to tangible proof of these stories. Rohl's work creates a powerful connection not only with the past, but with the biblical narrative that describes this past and gives it meaning.

So that's the first thing and the second thing all rolled together. First, that knowledge and power are (as Foucault argued) one in the same, and one cannot talk about one without the other. Thus, even Armstrong's very careful dissection of historical and biblical evidence about who lived where and who did what to whom (and why, and when, and where) is imbricated with power--her account can be used as justification for modern Israeli claims to territory (or as a refutation of those claims, depending on what passages one chooses to cite). There is no getting away from it--any exploration of the history of Israel/Palestine is fraught with the politics of contesting claims to modern Israel/Palestine.

The second thing is that even putting aside politics, when examining the history of the holy land and Jerusalem, we run into the concept of the sacred... and are confronted with the presence of the sacred. For believers, this can be a psychologically powerful experience. A devout Christian who visits the Church of the Holy Sepulcher is confronted with the very place s/he believes Jesus lay and was resurrected. Armstrong points out that this connection to deity results in a transcendent experience, and an attachment of meaning to place--in geographic terms, this is the fundamental notion of territory: land that has some (intrinsic or extrinsic) value, and can be contested. Thus, what is sacred is socially constructed through human experience; Jerusalem is valued, contested, and sacred because events transpired there that resonate with believers, creating a space where deity and humanity are closer to one another.

The third thing that occurred to me as I read the opening salvo of Jerusalem is the conditionality by which Armstrong writes, and the importance thus assigned to her account. That is, it borders on tautology to use biblical accounts as evidence for biblical history; ultimately, if one argues that the Bible--written centuries after many of the events described within--is not a historical account and at best is a collection of myths and allegories, then the historical account Armstrong is building is undermined significantly.

The ambiguity captured in Armstrong's opening chapters--who were the hapiru really? Who were the progeny of the Hurrians? Of the Jebusites?--is what I feel is the basis for why Jerusalem Project members believe Jerusalem is a balanced account. It's easy to identify "bias" when a writer makes definitive statements one way or another, when an author declares something (especially history) to be true beyond the shadow of doubt. But Armstrong is less challenging such declarations so much as declaring history to be muddy and murky.

Don't get me wrong--I think she's done a brilliant job synthesizing a lot of material thus far, and her repeated calls to social theory are very good at framing her historical narrative. But even with the level of detail (really, do we need all the monologues by Baal?) Armstrong provides, I think this history misses one of the most important points (if not the most important point) that get in the way of peaceful, productive dialogue about Jerusalem: histories are partial and contested, and everyone can roll out their experts who will provide definitive proof that their ancestors "were here first." No history, no matter how meticulous (and "balanced") can overcome willful ignorance of evidence that contradicts one's worldview. In other words, Armstong's doing a great job, but the only people who will appreciate all the peeling-back of history are those who haven't formed indelible opinions already.

Reading Response: April 4

2011-04-04T00:59:00.000-04:00

As noted by many, in conversations about the Israel-Palestine dispute (in general, and Jerusalem specifically), the dialogue often devolves into a "who was here first?" argument.

The readings for Monday's class certainly tread upon this territory. Like many supportive of the Israeli side, Reba Rubin (in Jerusalem: The Holy City Through the Ages) draws upon biblical and historical support for ancient Jewish claims to Jerusalem. For Rubin, the Bible is proof of Jewish presence and thus historical claim to territory. Archaeological evidence fits neatly into this narrative--not necessarily 'archaeological fact,' because especially in the context of Israel/Palestine, political (and religious) agendas exert a great deal of influence on archaeological evidence ex post facto. In other words, evidence is tailored to suit explicit political/religious motives.

Counter to Rubin and other Zionist accounts, Khalidi (in The History of Jerusalem: An Arab Perspective) deconstructs the notion of objectivist history, and argues against many of the traditional pillars of Zionist argument for historical claims justifying contemporary Israeli control of Jerusalem. Interestingly, Khalidi leans on Enlightenment (particularly from Grotius) notions of property claiming and ownership--in that to truly retain a right to ownership of land, one must improve it and make it more productive--to create a context justifying Arab/Palestinian claims upon Jerusalem. As an example, Khalidi discusses Muslim architecture and monumental structures in Jerusalem, as evidence that not only was there a persistent and continuous Palestinian/Muslim presence in Jerusalem from antiquity, but that these ancestors of today's Palestinians weren't just itinerant and negligent squatters. They inhabited, ruled, and improved the land. This is in line with Khalidi's other writings on the subject, wherein he takes an aggressive anti-colonial/anti-imperialist stance, vilifying the notion that Palestine was ever "a land with no people for a people with no land."

The most "objective" piece of the readings for today, by Jeremy Pressman (A Brief History of the Arab-Israeli Conflict) strikes me as less objective than a neophyte might think. I won't go into a laundry list of the elisions that Pressman makes that gloss over some of Israel's bad behavior, but I will sum things up by saying: any historical narrative that puts on objectivist clothing is inherently dangerous. Though Bernard Lewis is a very knowledgeable historian, Edward Said argued very vehemently (and to me, convincingly) that the knowledge that Lewis shares as "objective" history is all couched in language and ideas that are themselves biased and partial.

Like a black fly in your chardonnay

2011-03-30T08:51:00.004-04:00

It's ironic that when I checked this morning, one of the ads running on my blog was this:

I won't go into detail deconstructing this image, but this is a great example of a lot of geographic concepts (banal nationalism, Gottmann's iconography, the use of maps as propaganda, the signals and affective response of color in cartography, etc.). Note that Israel is "surrounded by enemies," despite the fact that the two non-Israel nation-states indicated on the map both have formal peace agreements with Israel. Gaza is reduced to being "Hamas" while the West Bank is given some status as a quasi-nation-state--interestingly, the Security Barrier's route through the western edge of the West Bank seems to be demarcated as a different class of territory, as well. Finally, the whole bit is summed up by equivocating "peace" with "support for Israel," which naturally is the ideal of Christians and Jews--never mind those Christian Palestinians, and let's not even get into those warmongering Muslims.

I enabled ads on this blog as an experiment to see what would come up, and to try to raise the profile of this blog so that I could connect to other people and organizations with interests in the region. I'm sickened by this ad, though, and am contemplating disabling ads. The only "plus" I see where this ad is concerned is that it gives me an opportunity to attack some of the persistent propaganda perpetrated by the virulent pro-Israel (and anti-Palestinian) crowd... and the ad costs them money.

So maybe I'll click on it myself, just so I can take a few tenths of a cent out of their coffers.

Living Jerusalem: initial readings

2011-03-29T17:27:00.000-04:00

My first reflections upon reading about the Jerusalem Project and the 1993 Folk Festival were that my impressions of Jerusalem and its contested nature were pretty much spot-on. I don't mean to pat myself on the back, because to me, the complexities of representation and perception regarding Jerusalem are palpable, omnipresent, and abrasive.

In other words, you can't spend 10 minutes in Jerusalem--especially in the Old City--without tripping over the tangled mess of how different people perceive Jerusalem, and how everyone's subjective position determines what they perceive as 'objectively' Jerusalem. My first day in Jerusalem, I saw a Palestinian shopkeeper being accosted by Israeli Police because he didn't have his trash can in the right place. Perhaps to the shopkeeper, Jerusalem is his livelihood. Perhaps to the police, Jerusalem is a dangerous place--a powderkeg of contrary political and economic realities. To the tourists giving a wide berth to the argument, Jerusalem is a holy city with a conflict that would just go away if everyone would just find Christ (italics indicate my sarcasm here). To me, the geographer looking for moments of contention between groups, Jerusalem is a battleground of quotidian conflicts.

So we each bring our respective baggage to Jerusalem, and see the city through tinted lenses--and many assume that everyone sees (or should see) the city the same way. This subjectivity isn't restricted to how we perceive the city and its denizens (and its visitors), but extends to the history and the folkways of the city, as well as how the city is represented thousands of miles away, in and around the halls of power in Washington, DC.

Enough of my musing; I should respond specifically to the readings for this week.

The Hasan-Rokem paper hit squarely on the target painted by Homi Bhabha's Location of Culture. As in my musings above, Hasan-Rokem spends a great deal of thought on representation and the performative aspects of culture. Israel (and especially Jerusalem) is a terrain populated by history and revanchist cultural practices--practices that, to one degree or another, seek to connect to and perpetuate history. Sukkot, Purim, and other holidays are important to Jewish culture and religious practice, but also gain importance through their commemoration on Israeli soil. I feel that Hasan-Rokem has captured quite a bit of the ambiguity and difficulty of representing Jerusalem and its polyglot culture, but I can't help but wonder if he simplified things a bit--because Jerusalem isn't just a contest between Israeli and Palestinian, Jew and Muslim: Jerusalem is also a product of Armenians and Orthodox, of wealthy tourists and dispossessed families, of first-world technology and economics clashing with Iron Age archaeology and 19th-century infrastructure.

The Representing Jerusalem piece from Middle East Report is remarkable to me most because the text shows its age. 1993 was a moment of hope and possibility, and there was a palpable feeling that things would only get better--and they did, to a degree, for a while. Thus, the "most difficult problem" of the project is contextualization, in order to keep the threads untangled and prevent the Jerusalem Project from becoming "a caricature of itself." Never mind the grinding reality of ongoing conflict in and around the city, especially in the 21st century: in 1993 we just had to figure out how to be equanimous, how to be "fair and balanced" without going overboard.

Which is why Researching East Jerusalem feels more in-tune with (my) reality: Amiry talks about peasant women, teenagers, drugs, and crime. Sometimes we focus so much on the elephant in the room, we forget that Jerusalem is a city with problems like other cities. And that context is important to keep and remember, as well.

Finally, one bit of Living Jerusalem: Cultures and Communities in Contention really stood out for me: defining and delimiting the research process, particularly in terms geographical boundaries (hey, I am a geographer) and what is "contemporary." Jerusalem is a place where "contemporary" is particularly problematic--not just because of the age of the city, but because (as I mentioned above) how groups and individuals bring historical practices (and myth) to the present in efforts to reinforce their claims on space in the present.

Overall, I find two themes tie together the readings for me. First, as I've blathered on quite a bit already, Jerusalem is a quagmire of meaning and contested context. Second, 18 years ago, we could spend time and energy worrying about the politics of representation in an academic setting; nowadays, the politics of representation is geopolitics. When Bibi pronounces that "East Jerusalem is not a settlement," it's clear that what is at stake is a lot more than getting an ethnographic project done right.

Everyone loves the Old City at night

2011-03-29T13:17:00.004-04:00

I'm just warming up and trying to get back in the blogging mindset. I noticed on the Livin g Jerusalem 2011 blog there was a header photo of the Old City at night, taken from the Mount of Olives.

It just so happens that I took a nearly-identical shot back in 2009. It was an interesting evening, as while I was setting up my tripod and composing the shot, a local kid was trying to beg money from me. Either my Arabic was off (which is entirely possible, as at the time my colloquial was virtually nonexistent), or the kid wasn't Palestinian (also possible, given that there was a nearby apartment building that looked to be all Jewish settlers), but we were having communication difficulties. Eventually the kid got through to me that he was willing to stick olives up his nose for money. I politely declined, but he stuck the olives up his nose anyway. And then, of course, he wanted money for the show.

I should've taken a picture of him and given him a NIS or two, just for fun.

In any case, in the spirit of friendly competition with the Living Jerusalem blog, here's another look at one of the images from that night. It's a HDR composite of several exposures, with some
additional tweaking in Photoshop:

Looking at the image I've produced, the colors are a bit unrealistic (though that's one of the styles you can achieve with HDR photography). In the end, though, I think that it's a fitting metaphor for Jerusalem. No one can be objective when it comes to Jerusalem (being something of a post-structuralist, I'd argue against the notion of 'objectivity' in regards to anything, but that's another story), and so our personal histories, biases, and preconceptions color how we look at Jerusalem, and many people end up idealizing it.

I am not immune to this tendency--I just spent a good long while compositing the HDR image, and then playing around with it in Photoshop, all to produce a 'perfect' snapshot of the Temple Mount. A snapshot that doesn't reflect the reality one would see when standing on the Mount of Olives and looking at this very same scene with her/his eyes.

It lives!

2011-03-28T10:53:00.002-04:00

This blog has been silent for the past year and a half, since my return from Israel/Palestine.

But I am now resuscitating the blog for use in a class at OSU. The class is called "Living Jerusalem," and one of the central elements of the class is how Israelis, Palestinians, and others live in and perceive Jerusalem, as mediated by blogging.

So, kind of right up this blog's alley.

More to come later.

Checkpoint? Checkmate.

2009-09-18T15:58:00.009-04:00

This trip is winding down, and as Friday starts the weekend--and I leave on Sunday--there's pretty much no research I can get done from this point on. So my plan was to go to Jerusalem one last time and do some leftover tourist stuff, maybe buy a souvenir or two, and make arrangements for my departure Sunday (long story short, because cabs from this side of the border aren't allowed over the border, I have to get an Israeli-tagged cab to pick me up and take me to Jerusalem on Sunday).

As I walked to the center of Ram'allah this morning, I noticed that the butcher was very busy--this is the last Friday of Ramadan, and Sunday marks the end of Ramadan. People will celebrate Eid with a feast.

When I got to the bus depot, I noted that there were none of the bigger buses that normally run all over the West Bank--just the little yellow minivans ("service taxis," or sherut) that aren't allowed across the border. After some asking around, I found out the Qalandia checkpoint was closed. The Israelis weren't allowing any vehicles through, and only had one gate open. Typically on Fridays the Qalandia checkpoint is mobbed--even moreso during Ramadan--as Palestinians go to the Haram ash-Sharif to pray on the Muslim sabbath. But today, apparently because it's the last Friday of Ramadan, the Israelis felt like being more difficult than usual.

I knew the checkpoint would be busy--that was part of the point for me going today: I was going to take pictures of the checkpoint and all the human cattle being funneled through the ritual humiliation. But I didn't see any point in going to the checkpoint and not being able to cross into Jerusalem and do all the things that I wanted/needed to do.

I'm going to have to re-think my plans for Sunday, as I was originally thinking of starting the journey to the airport at about 5 pm, an hour and a half before sundown and the end of Ramadan (and the beginning of Eid). It might be a long trip.

But fear not, I have pictures!

Last weekend four of us from the guest house took a road-trip through Israel, going to the Dead Sea, the Negev Desert, and then ending up in Tel Aviv. We put about 800 (~500 miles) kilometers on the rental car over three days, and had we gone for a fourth day, we would've gone up to the Galilee and ended up covering about 90% of Israel. It's not a big country.

We started out at Masada, climbing up the "snake path" up the eastern side of the hill before dawn. It's a pretty brutal climb: ~400 meters up, and quite steep. It was rough, too, because for a number of reasons I won't go into here, I only got about 2 hours of sleep the night before, in the driver's seat of our car. So I didn't take a lot of pictures during the climb, and the ones I took didn't turn out all that great. But to be honest, the whole "watch the sunrise over the Dead Sea from the top of Masada" is overrated.

So instead, feast your eyes on this gorgeous Ram'allah sunset, as seen from the top of the guest house:

Like the Herodion, Masada was built by Herod the Great. Also like the Herodion, I was underwhelmed by Masada, and I didn't take a whole lot of pictures. Here's a local bird. Interesting, in that it's been banded (twice)--look at its feet.

Here's another bird at Masada, right after sunrise.

EXTREME CLOSE-UP!!!

After hiking up Masada, we needed to cool off a bit. The Dead Sea region sits below sea level, and that makes it a lot hotter than Ram'allah, and it's more humid, too. North of Masada, there's a nature reserve centered on some springs, called Ein Gedi. Ein Gedi has waterfalls and swimming pools, and sounded like just the place to relax and recuperate from a rough night and tough pre-dawn hike/climb. We got there pretty early, and shortly after entering the park, saw some ibex on a cliff.
There were also a bunch of these rodents hanging out all over the place--mainly in the cool shadows and near where some of the irrigation hoses were leaking water onto the ground. They're about 2-3 times the size of a guinea pig, and were rather unafraid of us--as long as we didn't get too close.

We got to a waterfall-fed pool, and for some reason I didn't get a good picture of the pool. It was gorgeous, though. Cool & refreshing, and for a good hour or so, we had it all to ourselves. Well, us and the dragonflies (who, I'm guessing, were responsible for the complete lack of mosquitoes around the water).

Sadly, we had to leave Ein Gedi earlier than I would've liked, because several buses pulled up and vomited out a couple hundred tourists; our idyllic little oasis became mobbed, and the rest of the park turned into a massive human traffic-jam--and the jam included several Israelis who were carrying rifles. Not in uniform or anything, and not military-issue weapons (they were bolt-action carbines).

So we went south, into the Negev, and ended up at Makhtesh Ramon--the huge crater from a meteorite impact tens of millions of years ago. Again, this was relatively underwhelming, as it's billed as a cross between the moon and the Grand Canyon. Wadi Rum is less than a hundred miles east of here, and it's a much more spectacular site. We stayed the night in a Bedouin camp in the crater, and that was nice enough--especially with all the stars that were visible. I took this shot the next morning, from the eastern rim of the crater.

Two of us went on to Tel Aviv/Jaffa from here, and I took some photos of Jaffa and the Mediterranean, but I haven't had time to Photoshop them, yet. Rather than Jaffa pictures, then, I'll close this post with a shot from Ram'allah the other day. You can make your own joke.

The Judean Desert

2009-09-16T04:49:00.013-04:00

I went to Bethlehem on a day trip, and have yet to post some of the pictures I took. To put these in context, after passing through the checkpoint, it's about 2-3 miles to Manger Square. I skipped past Manger Square and went for a hike southeast, into the Judean Desert, headed for the Herodion--an ancient hilltop fortress built by Herod the Great about 2000 years ago. The Herodion is about 8 miles outside of Bethlehem, and as it was a nice morning (and I needed the exercise), I decided the hike would be fun... as well as saving me 200 shekels for a taxi to take me there & back.

I'll narrate the trip a little more through photos, but for some reason I decided to post them a bit out of sequence--like I said, I went to Manger Square after the Herodion, but the Church of the Nativity pictures are first up:

This is a 3-shot HDR composite of the inside of the Church of the Nativity. It was very busy, very crowded with tourists. Lots of Italians. On the wall in the upper left, and under the trapdoors in the floor on the lower left, are original mosaics dating back to Byzantine times, when the church was first built.

It wasn't just Italians. Poles & Germans, too. We're lucky World War I didn't break out. Anyway, this is the grotto under the nave--the place where Jesus was born. The tourists were crowding the grotto, touching the stone, taking lots of pictures, and then this old Orthodox priest (you can see the black knit cap on his head just next to the blue banner) came down and started berating people for pushing and shoving and hogging the grotto.

Hiking to the Herodion means going through Bethlehem's eastern "suburb," Beit Sahour--where I got a big bottle of lemonade that was quite refreshing. Beit Sahour isn't very big, and you leave it with the Shepherd's Field to your left (and Har Homa looming over the Shepherd's Field), and pretty quickly, you're in the desert. The light was lousy, and, hey, it's a desert--so I didn't take any pictures for a couple miles, until I got to the highway. A little ways down the highway was this secondary road, leading to a Palestinian town. The sign indicates that this is part of the area where the Palestinian National Authority has sole authority and jurisdiction, and it's illegal for Israelis to enter. Illegal under Israeli law, that is--which is ironic, because traditional notions of sovereignty hinge on the territorial extent of a state's law. In other words, this is recognized as Palestinian territory (even by Israel), and yet Israel law is still active in this territory. Yet another example of political geography. Does that make your head hurt? So I followed this road, instead of the highway, to the Herodion.

Here's a panoramic view of the area (three photos stitched together). The greenhouses had a sign--a business for growing/selling flowers. Moments after I took this panorama, a car pulled up and the driver offered me a ride. He only spoke colloquial Arabic, so our conversation was stilted, and I've forgotten what he said the name of this village was. He took me about 4 miles, the rest of the way to the Herodion, and didn't expect anything in return. His name was Ibrahim.

Oops, I cheated a little. Ibrahim dropped me off at the Herodion, so this shot is actually one I took on the walk back. That big mound is the Herodion. I was hiking back along the main highway; the road I was walking on (and which Ibrahim drove me on) went up the lower hill, through the trees you can see on the right side.

Climbing up the Herodion, what did I see... but an Israeli military installation. Not very big, but with a tank and three APCs (armored personnel carriers), a couple watch towers, and lots of concertina wire, this little outpost looks down on the Palestinian valley directly east of Bethlehem. You can see Bethlehem in this picture, in the distance right above the tank's turret and gun. Nice of the Israelis to keep watch over Bethlehem like that, isn't it?

I climbed to the top of the mound. The Herodion is actually an Israeli National Park--all the more interesting, because it's not in Israel! 27 NIS (~$7.50) admission, not a penny of which goes back to the Palestinian communities that surround the place. I spun in a circle and took a bunch of photos, and here is a panoramic composite of three shots. There's a glitch in one stitch, and if you look closely at the roads, you'll see it. Anyway, this vista looks north from the Herodion. The curving road at the bottom of the shot is the one Ibrahim drove me on; the straight road about halfway up is the highway I hiked back on. The Dead Sea is off about 90 degrees to the right: you can't see the Sea from here, but you can see the haziness from the heat & humidity around it.

The top of the Herodion is actually quite boring--and that's saying something, coming from a guy who loves ancient history. The Herodion is very much like Masada in form and history--it was a hill-top fort, and it was held by the Maccabeans during the revolt against the Romans. The Romans eventually won, of course, and destroyed the fort. So there are ruins up there, but not a whole lot to look at. There are cisterns under the surface, though, and during the revolt, the Jews enlarged the cisterns and carved new tunnels and exits, in order to harass the besieging Romans. I went down there--lots of steep steps and low ceilings, but nice & cool--and took some pictures.

Here is an "emergency exit," but in ancient times, this was a secret hillside entrance used by the Jews to launch surprise attacks on the Romans. This is another three-exposure HDR composite.

The tunnels/cisterns were closed off just past this point, so I started hiking back to Bethlehem. I took the main road, with the intent of stopping a taxi or sherut (a minivan shared taxi) and riding back to town--it was just after noon, I was tired, and I felt like hiking 10 miles across the desert was good enough.

Not a single one stopped. And along the way, I stepped on a crumbling rock and took a spill, cutting my left hand and bruising up my left knee. The rest of the hike was uneventful--though I stopped and had a tasty lunch in Beit Sahour. The nice thing about the Bethlehem area is that Christian restaurants serve lunch during Ramadan. And I needed a good lunch after hiking 18 miles through the desert.

Behind the counter of the bar in this restaurant was a framed photo of Rachel Corrie, an American peace activist who was run over by an Israeli bulldozer that was demolishing Palestinian homes in Gaza in 2003. Two important bits to take away from this observation: first, the occupation of Palestine and Palestinian anger/resistance to the occupation isn't a simply a Jew vs. Muslim thing; there are a lot of Christian Palestinians who suffer the same indignities that Muslims do. Second, Israel evacuated all the Jewish settlers from Gaza in August of 2005, 2 1/2 years after Rachel Corrie was killed. The IDF bulldozed all the Israeli settlements, rather than let Palestinians move into the homes.

Stranglehold

2009-09-15T10:38:00.003-04:00

No, this isn't about the Ted Nugent song. This is a bit of a political rant--a long-simmering one. I'll try not to be too incoherent in my anger, though.

If you don't know about the wall around Palestine, the map to the right can give you a glimpse of the problem. This is actually an interesting problematic from a cartographic and geographic standpoint, because as you can see in the map's title, this one is four and a half years old. There are very few decent maps being made (that doesn't mean there aren't many maps, it just means that there are very few decent maps out there. I've seen some horrid examples of cartography relating to the West Bank, but that's a story for another post), but you can see on this map some of the results of fencing off a population of 2.5 million people. In urban areas, the wall is 8-meter high slabs of concrete, with pillboxes every couple hundred meters, and often festooned with concertina wire, like garland on a Christmas tree--but not nearly so festive.

Aside from the problematic route, the visual affront that is the wall, and the specially-built roads that Israelis get to use to bypass the wall, the wall is where the Israeli border becomes more than a location: it is a social institution, and crossing the border is a ritualistic humiliation, a negotiation involving bored Israeli teenagers armed with automatic weapons and complete authority over anyone who wishes to pass.

OK, enough preaching against the "Security Barrier" in general, and time for some talk about specifics.

Among other places in the West Bank, Bethlehem is being slowly strangled by the wall. I posted pictures of Har Homa, the (illegal)* settlement built on a hilltop opposite Bethlehem, one of the several settlements where "natural expansion" is non-negotiable--the Israeli government insists that settlements like Har Homa should be allowed to expand further into Palestinian land.

I haven't been brash enough (yet) to take pictures at the checkpoints, and the wall itself is so visually disgusting that I can't bring myself to photograph it, either. But my experiences at the checkpoints have been so infuriating that I've been tempted--and I'll be taking a short trip to Jerusalem before I leave, so I'll probably see about taking pictures then.

If it weren't for a sizable Christian minority in Bethlehem, and all the Christian significance of the city, Bethlehem would likely be dead, choked by the wall and Israeli settlements. If you're up for a hike across a hill or two, you can walk from the Old City of Jerusalem to the Old City of Bethlehem (including Manger Square) in an afternoon. Previously, I've posted a picture of the (modern) wall around Bethlehem, as seen from the (ancient) wall around the Old City of Jerusalem. Go look at it. But if it weren't for hordes and hordes of tourists visiting the city, there'd be no life there. Encircled by the wall and ever-expanding settlements, the place would die off.

But there is a booming tourist trade (and from what I've learned, about 99.7% of Italian citizens are right at this moment visiting various religious sites around Jerusalem and Bethlehem. The 0.3% who are left are working in Italy's tourism industry, probably), and so Bethlehem survives. Other places in the West Bank aren't so lucky. I'll be visiting a couple of these places over the next few days.

Now, I've posted before about Ram'allah's economy and the construction boom. Don't be fooled into thinking that all is well, and that the wall is simply an ugly scar on the land. Ram'allah is the center of Palestinian politics, the headquarters for most international aid organizations, and since the 2000 Al Aqsa Intifadeh, the center of the Palestinian economy (the northern city of Nablus had been the economic center, but in 2003 the city's economy was effectively strangled to death). There's no shortage of stuff to buy in Ram'allah--that's the real trick to the border/wall: you can get in, but you can't get out.

Outside of the economic effects, the stranglehold takes on a personal significance each and every time one tries to cross into Israel--and sadly, trying to go from one part of the West Bank (e.g., Ram'allah) to another part (e.g., Bethlehem) often means going through a border checkpoint, transiting Jerusalem. Here's how traveling from Ram'allah to Jerusalem works:

I hop on bus #18 and pay 6.5 NIS (~$1.75) for the trip. The bus drives about 6 miles to get to the Qalandia checkpoint. At the checkpoint, all passengers have to get off, and the bus driver takes the empty bus through security. The passengers have to walk across the road, through a parking lot, and into what resembles a cross between an amusement park line-maze and a cattle chute--galvanized steel tubing encases us in a long tunnel until we reach a turnstile. Once through the turnstile, there are eight different "gates" to choose from. There is no indication of which gates are staffed, or who can go through where--there are some gates where they don't have the x-ray machine running, so anyone passing through that gate cannot have any bags, luggage, or packages. So the human cattle queue up, and wait for the green light above another galvanized-steel turnstile, so they can push through, put their possessions on the x-ray belt, walk through a metal detector, and then be berated by the IDF soldier behind a 1.5" thick plexiglas window.

Palestinians need to have identity cards indicating they're Israeli residents, or permission slips allowing them to temporarily visit the other side of the border. Foreign nationals need their passports, showing their current Israeli visas.

And this is a problem. Israeli stamps in a passport make a traveler persona non grata in Iran, Yemen, Syria, and Lebanon--these countries won't admit any traveler who has visited Israel (or the Palestinian Territories). Most European/North American passengers who arrive at Ben Gurion airport can opt to not have their passport stamped--the immigration officers simply stamp a piece of paper (that you keep with your passport) so you don't suffer the stigma of the stamp. This has become such a common request that the immigration agents default to stamping the piece of paper. When I arrived at Ben Gurion--and this experience is a common one, I'm told--after I was processed through immigration and went to pick up my baggage, another immigration agent took the slip of paper from me and ripped it up.

So, according to my passport, I have never been to Israel. According to my passport, this research trip does not exist at all. For anyone who knows me, and knows how much I want to achieve my goal of filling up my passport with visas & stamps, you know that I would probably trade being blacklisted from Syria for the next five years (until I get a new passport) for another page of my passport filled. But no, I've got nothing in my passport to show for this trip. Of course, I'm in all the Israeli computers as having entered.

That doesn't do a lot of good, though. The IDF soldiers who work in the bullet- and bomb-proof bubbles at the checkpoint are all young--about the age of most of my students. If you didn't know, Israel has mandatory conscription--very few Israeli citizens are exempt from active service in the IDF, and even upon discharge from active duty, Israeli citizens have mandatory reserve service that lasts decades. So the young soldiers--most of whom I'm sure would rather be somewhere else, doing anything other than sitting in a glass-and-steel cage for hours at a time--hold complete control over (and responsibility for) the transit of thousands of people a day over a border that doesn't really even exist. I've experienced border guards who were obviously bored, but mostly they're sullen and hostile. I've been shouted at in Hebrew by a woman who looked like the daughter of an East German shot-putter, queried like I was a simpleton by a woman who looked like she was lounging on the beach as recently as that morning, and studiously ignored by a pudgy guy who was more intent on humiliating the Palestinian who was in line in front of me.

The common thread to all my troubles, of course, is the lack of any documentation in my passport that I'd ever entered Israel. "Feesa?" they keep asking me. I tell them, "No, I'm an American. I don't need a visa to enter Israel." "Stamp?" they reply. I tell them, "At Ben Gurion, they stamp a piece of paper." "Feesa?" is the moronic reply, "Where is paper?" I sigh, put on my best aww, shucks, I'm just a stupid American smile, and explain how they tear up the papers rather than give them to people. The East German shot-putter yelled at me in response. The beach bimbo chattered to her co-worker for a couple minutes--not about me, though, because she was sharing a text message on her cell phone.

The first time I negotiated the checkpoint, they called in to some immigration hotline and read off my passport number to verify that I hadn't snuck into the Territories for the nefarious purpose of sneaking into Israel. The beach bimbo took my passport and quizzed me on its contents: "What is your name?" Oh, please. Can't you see that the picture is me? And I have my Ohio State business card in the passport, too, so they can see I'm just a harmless academic. Where are you coming from? Where am I coming from? Ram'allah (I point behind me). No, where are you coming from? Where are you from? Originally? Oh, well, Ohio is where I started. She looked at me dubiously, then eventually decided her cell phone was more interesting. I looked at my passport as I left, and realized that she was looking at the place where it was issued--Illinois.

Once approved, I go through yet another turnstile, then out another cattle chute, to a parking lot on the other side of the checkpoint, where I can re-board the bus (or board another one, if it took too long to get through the checkpoint), and ride the remaining 8-10 miles to the Palestinian bus depot on the north side of the Old City, in East Jerusalem. It's a humiliating, frustrating, frightening experience... for a foreign national whose government hands over multiple billions of dollars of no-strings-attached aid a year to their staunchest ally outside of the tea-swillers in Ye Olde Englande. Now imagine what it's like to not have that carte blanche, to be restricted in your movements--to be subjected to a much more degrading process whenever you want to go pray at the holy site just a few miles from where you live, whenever you want to visit family or friends who live in East Jerusalem, whenever you need to purchase a good or service that isn't readily available in your hometown, etc.

The trucks rumble through the border unmolested, carrying Israeli goods for sale in the West Bank. Not too many Palestinian goods travel the other direction, because everything gets minutely inspected. There might be a bomb in that truckload of tomatoes. Those handicrafts might be concealing weapons. That van might be smuggling someone into Israel.

I'm getting negative and cynical, and this post has taken on a life of its own, well beyond the things I wanted to talk about. But you can't get away from that wall. You can't not notice it, be aware of it, be fearful and anxious about trying to get through it. And why is it there? To screen off Palestinians from land that was once theirs, from the settlements that are growing and metastasizing like melanomas on the face of the West Bank.

An ironic addition: this past weekend, I went on a road trip that included visits to Masada, the Dead Sea, the Negev Desert, and the Mediterranean. When we rented the car in Jerusalem, I wanted to double-check, as I was aware that most agencies prohibited renters from taking cars into the Territories. When I asked about this, I was answered with a confused look from the rental agent. The Territories didn't exist in her "geographic imagination." Of course you can't cross the border checkpoints with the car, but as long as you stay on Israeli roads, you never cross a border; there are bypass roads threading all through the West Bank, that are off-limits to Palestinians. So as long as we stuck the bypass highways, we could drive through the West Bank and down to the Dead Sea.

We went around, on principle.

I was going to post pictures from Bethlehem, but I'll have to do a separate picture-post for that. This one's already too long. And then photos from Masada, etc.

Oh, and a link to a blog post by a British doctor who visited Nablus a couple years back and had to deal with the ritualized humiliation of the border.

Bits and Pieces

2009-09-06T10:41:00.002-04:00

A week ago I went to Bethlehem for the day, and I still have to post more about that trip, but I keep picking up little things here and there that I need to share. Random, unconnected stuff. So here some of it is, in no particular order:

The billboard near me--the one with the USAID feel-good advertisements on each side--has changed. Both sides are advertisements for a furniture store. I won't post (or take) a picture of the new signs, but it's interesting that the USAID signs are gone.
On a related note, I went to Birzeit University the other day, and on the drive (it's a good five miles one-way from the center of town) there and back, noticed that the European Union has a bunch of billboards advertising its humanitarian aid projects. They might need to take a lesson from the Americans, though: one EU sign shows a blond kid drinking from a water fountain, the other shows a guy with a big straw hat hoeing a field; both signs have--in English--short slogans about humanitarian aid. Earth to EU: who are you marketing your programs to?
The other day when I was walking through the center of Ram'allah, I heard a very loud conversation being pumped out of speakers somewhere. Though it was in Arabic and they were talking very fast, it was some sort of radio show (like whatever "morning zoo" type radio programs you hear on American radio), and the host was talking to several different people. It got louder as I made my way around the al-Manara circle that marks the center of Ram'allah, and then suddenly I was in the middle of a crowd, and right next to me is a guy with a microphone, talking to a young woman--and her voice was the one I was hearing on the speakers. It's weird to be walking through the center of a town in a foreign country, and stumble into a remote broadcast for a radio station.
The New York Times posted some photos taken near here on Friday. Go here and look at pictures #7 and #8. #7 is a brilliant photo, one that I wish I had taken; #8 isn't bad, but the caption is a bit wrong. Qalandia is nowhere near the Old City; yes, those are people waiting to get through the checkpoint to get to the Old City (and the Haram ash-Sharif), but it's a 10-15 minute bus ride from the checkpoint to the Old City.
On another audio/visual note, I can take video with my Canon DSLR, but even after converting & shrinking the files, for some reason I'm unable to get the video to upload to YouTube. Solution: I e-mailed the file to Mary and let her post it. So if you want to see/hear video of the evening call to prayer in Ram'allah, click here (it's a ~4 MB file, so if you're on dial-up, be patient while it downloads). The coolest thing about posting the video to YouTube is that there are a whole bunch of other videos of Ram'allah, shot by other people, that are all linked to mine--so you can see a lot of Ram'allah with just a few clicks.
Yesterday was another Strange Saturday at the guest house. I heard some loud music out in the hall, and I took a look to see who was playing their stereo/TV so loud. I saw 20+ Palestinian kids (mostly 10-14 years old, I'd guess--some of the girls were wearing headscarves, too) in the hallway, with violins, violas, cellos, etc., and a couple adults--one conducting, another playing an oud, doing some sort of concert or orchestra practice. There were a bunch of parents proudly looking on, applauding when the songs were over. It was good music, and interesting, but the crowd was blocking access to the kitchen, and I was hungry (it was also before sunset, and I didn't feel like walking all the way to one of the Christian restaurants), so I went to the Subermarket and got some stuff to snack on. When I left the building, I noticed all the cars parked in front of the guest house--many were very nice, and several had Israeli license plates. Pretty interesting that on a Saturday evening, Muslim and Christian kids from both sides of the Palestine/Israel border would converge upon a hallway at the Evangelical Technical and Vocational Training Center to play orchestra music.
I mentioned Christian restaurants. You can't tell just by looking at them--I guess I could ask around. Though honestly, even many Muslim owned/operated restaurants wouldn't have any problems if an obvious foreigner/non-Muslim wanted to eat before sunset--but the one I've been to actually makes a decent pizza.
My difficulties finding people/places continues: I went to Birzeit to talk to the former director of their Center for Development Studies, and it was a pretty frustrating experience. He told me his office was Room 110. Nope. Eventually, after not finding him anywhere on the first floor, or anywhere near the office of the department he teaches in (Economics), a woman--I think she was a maintenance-type person--helped me look. She asked me where I was from, and told me she had lived in Kansas City for a year and a half. We eventually found the right office: Room 208.

That's all for now. I had more little sniglets to post, but the rest are escaping my memory now. Tonight I'm going to walk to a hill south of the downtown area, where I've seen a lit-up ferris wheel at night. If I find it, I'm going to take some pictures.

Al Amari

2009-09-01T07:04:00.011-04:00

I've fallen a bit behind on keeping this blog up-to-date. I wish I could say that's because I've been so swamped with interviews and observations, but the reality is that I've been hitting a lot of brick walls, research-wise. I've uncovered a lot of very interesting, compelling, and relevant stuff, but I'm finding it very hard to find anyone who will actually follow-through and talk to me. Americans and Palestinians alike, all seem to be avoiding me. Later, I'll post some ruminations on this aspect of my field work, but for now I think I'll just share this:

On Saturday, several of us from the guest house (there are a bunch of Birzeit University students living here, including some Americans, Europeans, and an Aussie who are studying Arabic) went to the center of town to meet up with the director of an NGO (non-governmental organization) that teaches English to Palestinian kids in the Al-Amari refugee camp. The Birzeit students are here for three months or more, and so wanted to volunteer. I was tagging along to volunteer and/or observe and/or make another contact in the NGO community; schooling in the camps is by and large left to the United Nations.

So we got to the designated meeting place, and after 15 minutes or so of waiting, we called to find out why the director hadn't met us. Well, it was Ramadan, and because this woman hadn't heard back from Birzeit that anyone would be volunteering, she had canceled everything. The Birzeit students are going to wait until after Ramadan and try again—during Ramadan, they do the English lessons in the morning, and that's when Birzeit has its classes.

But some of us (well, me and anyone who felt like following) weren't deterred. I had never been to an honest-to-goodness refugee camp, and so I decided to walk down to the camp to take a look around. To give you a very, very brief background, these are "camps" in only a very loose sense. Most of the refugee camps in Palestine go back to the 1948 War of Independence (called an nakba, "The Catastrophe," by Palestinians), when Palestinians fled the fighting in the North and West and took refuge in safer areas. The camps around Ram'allah are populated by Palestinians who lived in/near Jerusalem or Tel Aviv. The camps aren't collections of tents; for 60 years now, Palestinians have been building houses out of whatever materials they can get, and there is some very basic infrastructure (electricity, running water) that has developed over the years. Ultimately, the camps have the look of run-down, low-income areas. Some (rabid pro-Israelis) have a problem calling the residents of these areas "refugees," as the United Nations has an entire arm of the organization dedicated to providing services to the refugees (the United Nations Relief Works Agency, or UNRWA), and there is some semblance of infrastructure present. But the bottom line is that these camps aren’t recognized as legal residences, and the homes and shops are built on land that someone else owns.

I could write a lot more about the camps, but this was supposed to be a brief narrative. So I’ll get back to that.

Having walked around most of Ram’allah, relying on my geographer’s acute recall of the map back in my room, and periodically consulting my trusty keychain compass, I was able to navigate the 1.5 kilometers or so from the city center to the Al Amari camp. And, as promised, it was distinguished by two things: the generally run-down and low-income look of the area, and the UNRWA buildings. We—an American undergrad, a British Cambridge grad, two Germans, and me—walked through the camp, which was pretty quiet. The locals we passed treated us pretty much like all the other Palestinians we’ve met—a nod and a smile, a quick greeting, sometimes a curious stare—until we hit the “main street” cutting east/west through the camp. An older gentleman—probably in his 70s, wearing a kuffiyeh—greeted us, and started up a conversation with the American undergrad and the Briton. This Palestinian asked where they were from. Upon hearing “America,” the gentleman didn’t have any problem; but when the British woman told him where she was from, he got a little animated.

“This… Palestine is my land. Jews came and took from me! Britain… Balfour let them!”

He was referring to the Balfour Declaration of 1917, wherein the British “government view[ed] with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people.” The British were in charge of the Mandate of Palestine, and so this was widely seen as the opening of the gates for European Jewish immigration to the region, the fulfillment of the Zionist dream. Of course, most everyone forgets the rest of the Declaration: “it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine.”

It was rather ironic to me, though; the guy gave a pass to America, despite widespread Arab/Muslim resentment of unflinching U.S. support for Israel (not to mention well over a hundred billion dollars in U.S. aid), but he blamed the British for starting the whole chain of events that led to him living in a refugee camp for the past 61 years. Of course, he wasn’t blaming a 22 year-old British woman for a government policy enacted 82 years ago, and he certainly wasn’t hostile. But it just goes to show that there are deep histories and long memories in the Israel/Palestine dispute, and no simple answers.

Enough narrative! Time for pictures:

Shortly after sunset the first weekend of Ramadan, looking west-southwest from the roof of the guest house. You can just make out the Israeli city of Rehovot as a line of lights on the horizon below the center of the frame. Less than 10 miles beyond Rehovot is the Mediterranean.

Hey, remember this billboard from Ram'allah? They've got 'em in Bethlehem, too. This one is on top of an apartment building, just north of the old city.

Another one of the USAID billboards, attached to a building housing, among other things, a bank. About ~500 meters beyond this building is the old city of Bethlehem and Manger Square.

A bit further on, looking back northeast. This billboard is attached to a building that has an honest-to-goodness parking garage (first one I've seen in Palestine).

After leaving Bethlehem to the southeast, looking back towards the old city & Manger Square. This trio of billboards not only trumpets USAID success in training health care workers, but also advertises a radio station(?) and ice cream. I'm guessing on the center billboard, because it says something like "we had for two years the wide 5:00 capacity with...[something I can't figure out]." So it seems to be advertising a TV/radio station having the biggest evening audience for two years. Michael, help?

Leaving Bethlehem behind, going southwest along a highway, I hiked through the Judean Desert (more in a subsequent post). I turned off the highway to follow this road, which had this very fascinating marker denoting an area of Palestinian sovereignty. I find it fascinating that it's against Israeli law for Israelis to go somewhere that (by definition) isn't in Israel. If you ever wonder what political geography is, it's stuff like this...

...And it's also stuff like this. This is the Har Homa settlement, which houses 15-17,000 Israelis on land seized from Palestinians during the 1967 Six-Day War. I have more photos that show more detail that I'll post later, but in the far right side of the frame you can see the construction cranes that are adding onto the settlement. This is part of the "natural growth" of settlements (despite them being illegally-located on Palestinian land in the first place) that the Israeli government refuses to stop. Har Homa, and settlements like it, are the big reason for the Security Barrier, and these settlements are choking off Palestinian communities like Bethlehem. Oh, I should probably mention this photo was taken from the east end of Bethlehem, and the low ground in the frame is the famed "Shepherd's Valley," where according to the Bible, the angels proclaimed the birth of Jesus to shepherds tending their flocks. The settlement, with its multiple schools, shopping centers, and medical clinics, is considered by Israel to be part of Jerusalem.
And that refusal to stop settlement expansion in order to accommodate "natural growth" of the community? Yeah, that concept gets really sticky when you note how nationalist/religious Israelis want to out-breed Palestinians:

Leila

2009-08-24T05:03:00.003-04:00

Leila is Arabic for night. Particularly during Ramadan--the lunar month of fasting from sunrise to sunset--at night the Palestinian landscape undergoes a transformation of sorts.

To clear a common misconception: this is not the desert. There are deserts to the south (the Judean Desert, the Negev, the Sinai); there are deserts to the east (the Jordan Desert and the Southern Desert); but technically, most of Israel/Palestine--particularly the coastal and highland areas--is a "Mediterranean" climate. This means hot, dry summers and cool winters, with most of the precipitation coming during the winter months. Los Angeles has a Mediterranean climate.

There's plenty of greenery mixed in with the reddish-brown dirt on the hillsides--olive trees and other herbaceous shrubs that are used to long, dry summers. The days can get hot; if you've been looking at the weather applet off to the right, you'll note that the daily high temperature is in the high-80s to mid-90s--but as "they" say, it's a dry heat: the humidity is typically low in the daytime. Ram'allah is in the hill country, about 2900 ft above sea level, less than 40 miles east of the coast. The proximity to a large body of water moderates the regional climate--that is, it stays cooler in the day (and summer) and warmer at night (and winter) around here than it would if the sea weren't so close. Also, every 1000 feet of elevation corresponds to a 2 degree (Farenheit) temperature decrease--so it's cooler up on the hilltop than down in the valley.

So that gives you a sense of the physical geography of the area. What does this mean--and what does it have to do with the night? Most of the nights I've been here, a couple hours after sunset as the temperatures drop and prevailing winds off the Mediterranean push moist air inland, a thick blanket of fog rolls east. As the moist air is forced upward by the hills, it cools and the fog thickens. The hills and valleys are breezy most days and nights, and so standing on the roof of the guest house, several nights now I've watched the fog roll in and over Ram'allah... only to push further east, towards Jericho (of course, Jericho is in the lowlands around the Dead Sea, so it's warmer there, and it's likely the fog dissipates in the warmer air on the other side of the hills). Some thin tendrils of fog linger in the valleys, though, shadowy and cool until the morning sun climbs high enough to burn the shreds away.

If you time it right, then, you can witness this cool, damp blanket being dragged eastward, and watch the lights of Ram'allah change from pinpricks of brightness to fuzzy technicolor orbs.

And last night after the fog rolled through, the crescent moon fell slowly into the sea; from the apartment building just across the street, some Ramadan revelers played Louis Armstrong's What a Wonderful World several times, loud enough for the entire neighborhood to hear and enjoy.

Looking northwest from the roof of the guest house, towards the "suburb" of At-Tireh, with the old Byzantine church, At-Tira mosque and the UNRWA (United Nations Relief Works Agency) compound making the fog glow.

Saba'h, Shabbat, Sabbath

2009-08-23T09:57:00.007-04:00

The three monotheisms might converge on belief in the same God, but they don't agree on which day to set aside for worship. The seventh day of the Islamic week is Friday; most businesses are closed for the day--certainly after noon--although some will open in the evening to entice weekend shoppers. The Jewish sabbath starts at sundown on Friday and runs until sunset Saturday--trying to get anywhere on a Friday night in Jerusalem is tricky, because the Israeli buses don't run again until Saturday evening, and so your best bet is to find a Palestinian taxi driver who won't gouge you too much. In Christian areas, Sunday is the day of worship. While this doesn't effect too many shops, and travel not at all, it does produce some headaches.

As a result, it's hard to get anything done in Palestine from Friday to Sunday. The NGOs (non-governmental organizations) and municipal offices I'm trying to work with basically all have 4-day work weeks. Throw Ramadan into this tangled mess of religious observance, and it gets harder to get any work done--Muslims get up before dawn to have breakfast, and then often go back to bed to sleep part of the day away, and things s l o w d o w n q u i t e a b i t . . .

So while I'm waiting for my contacts to get back to me, I've been walking around town, taking pictures of stuff. There are lots of buildings and projects with signs on them, attributing the construction, addition, or renovation to some international donor. It is in this context that USAID is marketing its projects quite heavily--as you can see below.

First off, a "typical" street view just east of the center of Ram'allah. This is looking west along An-Nahda Street. The radio station you see advertised on the billboard runs programming partially funded by USAID.

This is facing the other direction from the previous shot--looking east. In the distance, you can see another billboard advertising a USAID program.

A bit closer, you can see it's the same program from the billboard I photographed earlier, over to the northeast near where I'm living--it's advertising USAID-funded programs to train health care workers.

A bit further east, towards the wealthier part of town, this billboard advertises another program. The caption reads:
Step by step
We rebuild and develop
Empowering more than 2000 youth leaders
From the American people (United States Agency for International Development)

There are two interesting things about this particular advertisement. First, the word for "empowering" (or "empowerment") is tamkeen--which is also the name of a specific aid project that aims to inculcate Arabs to Western norms of secular, civil society--through programs like coloring books for children, radio and television programs with strong women characters, education, etc. Second, this billboard seems to indicate that "empowering young leaders" has something to do with the media. In case you were wondering, the Tamkeen project is one of the "fall-back" programs in my research (meaning, it's big and widespread and ongoing, and is a bit too big for me to take on at the moment--but if I can't get any traction on my main project, this is what I'll dig into).

Ramadan is here

2009-08-22T02:55:00.002-04:00

Ramadan started today. A few people in the guest house had thought it started Friday, and for much of the morning/afternoon on Friday, it felt like Ramadan--certainly, the volume and length of the broadcasts from the local mosques seemed to indicate that it was, in fact, Ramadan. Instead of the one- or two-minute call to prayer, a couple mosques put their entire Friday noon services on the loudspeaker.

I stayed around the guest house most of the day, checking e-mail and constantly looking at my cell phone, as one of my research contacts had said she'd get in touch with me yesterday. In the late afternoon, a couple of the Bir Zeit students wanted to go into town, and in particular wanted to go to the store where I got my fan on Thursday. This same store was doing a brisk pre-Ramadan business, selling multicolored strings of lights, extension cords, etc.--pretty much anything you'd need to create a festive Ramadan light display. The Bir Zeit students wanted to make their own Ramadan display up on the roof of the guest house.

So I walked with them to the center of town and took them to the store--which, by the way, was closed because it was Friday afternoon. Main Street was very quiet, and most of the stores and restaurants were closed. This was surprising--only because I was expecting all the stores and restaurants to be closed: after all, I had been told that Ramadan had started. So as we were walking along past open restaurants, I was speculating to myself about the religion of the owner, the secular-ness of Ram'allahn society, etc. It was only when we got to the closed electric appliance store that we found out that no, Ramadan hadn't started yet.

So the Lonely Planet (it's so lonely) guide book was right, and the internet was wrong (one web site said that Ramadan starts on the 22nd for North America, but a day earlier in Asia due to different moonrise times). It wasn't so surprising that there were some restaurants and shops open yesterday afternoon--it was just a Friday afternoon. Sure enough, as afternoon faded into evening, more shops and restaurants opened, and the downtown area came to life.

As we were walking back, the street filled with police cars--no sirens, but flashing blue lights. A dozen or so Palestinian police were cordoning off the street from traffic, and some very-professional looking individuals in midnight blue uniforms got out of a black SUV and started scanning the street. We ducked into a bookstore for a minute, and when we came out, three of the guys in dark blue were escorting down the street a middle-aged man with glasses and a tailored suit. He passed a few feet away from me and I got a good luck at him, but his face didn't ring a bell. There was a merchant sitting outside his shop, watching the whole display of police and political power.

I nodded my head in the direction of the VIP, and asked ma' huwa? (Who is he?)

The shopkeeper shrugged and said ma'b 'araf... rajul kabeer? (I don't know... an important man?)

rajul kabeer indeed

Zombie attack imminent!

2009-08-19T02:38:00.002-04:00

So I get up, am eating breakfast and drinking my morning tea while watching BBC Middle East, and there's a scroll across the bottom of the screen about how if zombies existed, scientists say they'd destroy civilization unless there was a rapid and aggressive response. I figure that it's a joke, or someone accidentally cut & pasted something, but so I could cover my bases when blogging about it, I go to the BBC online to double-check... and yep, there it is.

I'm doing my research on the wrong subject, apparently.

Ironically, modeling the spread of infectious diseases is a sub-field of geography called (appropriately enough) medical geography. It's an important area of study, very generously-funded (in other words, geographers can make a lot of money doing work in this field), and now I'm questioning my own research goals.

I could be researching zombies.

OK, to apply all this to Ram'allah, near the construction zone on Main St., there are several little kids who sell passersby packs of gum--think the smallest packs of Wrigley's Spearmint, but the trademark-violating Palestinian equivalent--for 2 shekels. Well, my second day in Ram'allah, I met two of these kids, and one of them is named Yusuf--which is the Arabic equivalent of my name (and, if you don't know the story behind the URL for this blog, iss-mee is Arabic "my name is"). Yusuf and his buddy gave me the hard-sell, but I didn't buy. I put them off with a strategic use of bukra--saying I'd buy a pack tomorrow.

Well, the next day I walked through the same area and Yusuf and his buddies found me again, and when I initially refused to buy, Yusuf protested that I had promised yesterday that I'd buy today.

So what does any of this have to do with zombies or medical geography? Well, Yusuf's friend Mu'awi asked where I was from, and when I said America, he asked me if I had...something. I didn't recognize the word, so I asked him to repeat it a couple times: it sounded like infalu'enseh. I still didn't get it until he put his hands over his face and pretended to cough. Influenza. Yeah, the H1N1 panic is worldwide, and associated with the U.S. Interesting, because in America we tend to think of pandemic disease as originating from elsewhere and intruding on our borders.

That's all I have for now. I hit a dead-end with the one NGO I was counting on for access to some project sites, and my options are narrowing--I'm waiting for replies to some e-mails I've sent, and depending on those results, I have to do some cold-calling of contacts people gave me.

I can't imagine what all this would be like without the internet and cell phones. Maybe it would be a lot more like what I'd prefer: I could just go somewhere and talk to people there, rather than having to go through multiple levels of bureaucratic barriers and electronic communication.

Useful phrases

2009-08-18T12:43:00.005-04:00

'induka khareeTeh ram'allah? Do you have a map of Ram'allah?

sishtarayu mobile phone; wayn dukan mobile? I will be buying a mobile phone--where is the mobile store?

la, uhibb batla ma'ee kabeer. No, I would like the big bottle of water.

mahaaratuka al-lughat ul-inklizieh akbar min mahaaratee al-lughat ul-arabieh. Your English is better than my Arabic.

I remembered that I'm a geographer, and we use maps--so I found a bookstore and bought a map of Ram'allah. Unfortunately, the road I'm looking for isn't on the map.

I broke down and bought a cell phone for use over here. It was more than I wanted (my grant) to spend, but I have to face reality that phone calls get more responses than e-mails.

After not being able to find the NGO office I'm looking for, I stopped at maTa'm meester beetsa (Mr. Pizza's Restaurant) for... well, even though the pizza looked good, it was way too much food for me to eat in one sitting, and I didn't want to carry a pizza box 2 miles back to the guest house, so I got a hamburger instead. It wasn't all that bad, and the guy working the counter came out and started talking with me in English--turns out he lived in Florida and Chicago. As he was talking to me, a friend of his walked up, his hands filthy with dirt and grease, and he started complaining (in English) about having a flat tire. Not only did I get lunch, but the (restaurant) guy gave me his business card and offered to help me with my work.

Some photos of Ram'allah:

This is a ~120-degree panorama from the roof of the guesthouse, looking west-southwest right after sunset. I stitched four photos together to get the panorama, and messed up one of the joins (laptop monitor is too small to see one issue until it was too late). The center of Ram'allah is off to the east-southeast, so almost directly left from this view.

This billboard is about 100 yards from the guest house. This side says:
Step by step
We rebuild and we develop
Training 12,000 health service providers
From the American people (United States Agency for International Development)

This side says:
Step by step
We rebuild and we develop
Build and repair more than 6100 classrooms
From the American people (United States Agency for International Development)

There's another one of these billboards over on the other side of town, over by a school with USAID logos all over it--the school has an astroturf soccer field, too.

Ram'allah: under construction

2009-08-17T14:23:00.000-04:00

Walking around Ram'allah has been interesting from a number of perspectives. First, to give you a brief narrative snapshot of Ram'allah, it's a city of about 60,000 people roughly 20 kilometers north of Jerusalem, and is the de facto center of Palestinian politics and international aid efforts. The Palestinian National Authority is headquartered here, and Yassir Arafat lived here when he was President of the PA. All that said, it's still a pretty small town, and in many ways is a bit of an idiosyncratic provincial backwater--30% of the population is Christian, although the city has a long history, that history is basically based on Ram'allah being a stop on the way from Jerusalem to other places (Nablus, Jenin, Damascus, etc.) that are bigger and/or more famous.

All that said, it's an interesting place. It's very hilly, and so walking just about any distance means going up/downhill as much as 150 meters. The hills that aren't full of big, expensive houses or spiffy apartment buildings are terraced olive-tree groves, and in the morning a chilly fog rolls up out of the valleys and is burned off by 8am or so. All in all, it's a pretty peaceful place.

Except that everyone is busy, and one word exemplifies the place: construction. I got a little lost my first day walking around, because the street that I should've been walking on was so torn up (they're re-trenching sewer lines) I thought it wasn't even a street. There are high-rise office & apartment buildings being built, and though there is plenty of the type of trash you expect to see accumulating around a developing-world countryside, there is a lot of construction rubble, too (i.e., cinder blocks, chunks of re-bar, tile, etc.). Right now I hear a little yap-dog down the street barking its little yap-dog head off (this is a Christian area), and then in the distance I hear bulldozers, dump trucks, and jackhammers. Last night, after sunset, I heard someone using a masonry saw down the street.

The people of Ram'allah strike a stark contrast to those people in other places I've been to; here, everyone is either shopping (in the center of town), making something, or going somewhere. In Damascus, there were lots of people just hanging out--as if they were waiting for something to do. In Jerusalem, it was similar, except the waiting was "waiting for tourists." In Istanbul, people were scheming and scamming and going places--but everything had already been built. Amman was full of people who seemed to have nothing to do, too. I could go on, but instead of belaboring the point, I'll just sum up by saying: Ram'allah is moving, and its people are industrious.

A couple other observations about the place: one, you can't go very far without passing a Palestinian government office, a UN compound, or some international aid organization project--Ram'allah is certainly the nexus of Palestinian development. Two, security is pretty tight. At major intersections, and every couple hundred yards near the center of town, is a soldier in camouflage and beret, holding an AK-47 at the ready. The soldiers are friendly, though. When I was out this morning, a few struck up a conversation with me, and seemed most impressed that the population of Chicago was about the size of the population of all of the West Bank.

More later, but for now I'll share a few leftover pictures from the other side of the wall:

P.S. my internet connection here at the guest house is woefully slow, so I'm using a different format for the pictures that results in a smaller file--at the cost of lower image quality. If you like any of the pictures and want better reproductions, let me know and when I get back I can get you full-resolution copies.

One last photo of the Dome of the Rock, at night.

Early morning in the Garden of Gethsemane. This is one of the 2000+ year-old olive trees.

Lots of flowers & flowering vines in the Garden. Took a quick shot of these viney flowers, and spiffed up the shot using the Viveza plug-in for Photoshop.

16 NIS ($5) gets you a ticket to walk all around the Old City of Jerusalem on top of the city walls. This was the view on the South Ramparts walk near sunset; south of the Old City is the Franciscan Monastery, and at sunset it made a very pretty sight. This is a 3-photo HDR composite of the scene.

A little further along the South Ramparts, there's an unobstructed view of the terrain to the south. Bethlehem (Bayt Laham) is just a few miles south of Jerusalem--that's it on the hilltop in the background of this shot.

Here's a zoom/crop of that prior photo, focused tightly on the hilltop & Bethlehem. You can see the security barrier (aka "Apartheid Wall") snaking over the landscape. The Israelis built the wall in this area because of the continued building & expansion of Israeli settlements on Palestinian land in the West Bank.

The South Ramparts wall-walk ends right next to the Western Wall plaza, and so I cut through there on my way back to the Mount of Olives. As I've mentioned previously, when Israel captured the Old City in the Six Days' War in 1967, there were apartment buildings standing here. The Palestinian residents of those homes were evicted and the buildings bulldozed to make the plaza. On this evening, there was some sort of IDF induction ceremony being held, with a bunch of new recruits standing at attention.

The officer in charge--the woman near the center of the frame--was pacing back and forth, giving some sort of lecture in Hebrew. The guy to the left of center was translating into English for the non-Hebrew speakers in the crowd. It was some rambling speech about how much of an honor it was to hold the ceremony here, and how important this place was to Israelis. It made me wonder what Palestinian Muslims--whose homes had been bulldozed on this very spot, just 50 yards or so from the Haram ash-Sharif and one of the holiest places in Islam--might think about the military ceremony being held there.

If this is Saturday, this must be Ram'allah

2009-08-15T06:24:00.004-04:00

Made it. Taxi driver on the Ram'allah side of the checkpoint hadn't a clue of where to go, despite my map and having a phone number for this place (his phone couldn't make the connection).

So I once again experienced the hospitality element of Arab/Muslim culture. The taxi driver stopped a dozen times, asking random passersby for help/directions, and people went out of their way to help. Not just because ooh, look! an American! but because a person needed help--and even taxi drivers are considered people. At one point, the driver stops a guy walking along the street, and he can't help, but he knows of someone maybe who can, and this first guy didn't leave until the next person was able to help--until some stranger from another country got the right directions for where he wanted to go.

At one point, the driver asked a group of three guys if they knew the directions, and they conferred among themselves for a minute, and then replied along the lines of, "Sorry, we don't know this area very well, as we're from Lebanon. But if you go up the street to that grocery store, maybe they know."

Maybe I'm belaboring the point, but I just don't see this type of thing happening in the U.S.

By the way, the taxi driver turned out to be a money-grubbing jerk (note: if you ever ask a taxi driver how much the ride cost, and he simply says "you pay me what you think is fair," that's code for "I want to gouge you, but make you feel like you deserve it"), but the accomodations here at the guest house are very nice.

Enough of that; it's lunch time and I need felafel.

Hot Dog and a Pepsi

2009-08-14T12:06:00.001-04:00

So, I'm leaving Jerusalem and going to Ram'allah tomorrow, so I can stop playing tourist and start playing researcher. Ram'allah is about 12-15 miles north of Jerusalem, but the bigger issue is the Qalandia checkpoint: following the 2000 Al Aqsa intifadeh--a Palestinian protest/insurrection movement spurred by Ariel Sharon's assertion of Israeli rule over the Temple Mount--and subsequent suicide bombings in Israel, the Israeli government decided to seal off the Palestinian population in the West Bank by building a wall/fence around it. There's a lot more to it than that, but I'm going to leave it at that for the moment because my point is trying to get through this barrier--which, depending on where you are, is fence, 24-ft tall concrete wall, and/or border crossings with tighter security than you find at the airport--is a pain. Not so much for me, but for whomever is transporting me.

I've arranged for one cab to drop me off at the Qalandia checkpoint, then I walk across, and will pick up another cab (hopefully) to take me the rest of the way to Ram'allah--or, specifically, to the Episcopal Technological and Vocational Training Center guest house, where I'll be staying for the next five weeks.

How does this have anything to do with the title of this post? Well, after talking with Mary, I decided to go on a quick shopping trip in the "New City" area of Jerusalem--the part of town on the exact opposite side of the Old City from where the Mount of Olives (and my hotel) is located. And rather than tromp through the Old City crowds and congested, convoluted streets, I walked around the Old City, to an outdoor shopping mall I had seen a few days back. That trip was a total bust; the only places open on a Friday afternoon (post-noon is the Muslim sabbath, while sunset on Friday marks the beginning of the Jewish sabbath) were restaurants and one art gallery. So I turned around and headed back, only to find a hot dog stand. The guy running it had what I like to call a "desperation ponytail," so naturally I assumed he was an immigrant from America. He wasn't, and so he didn't understand (nor had the ingredients to make) a "Chicago style" hot dog. But that didn't matter much--it's not every day that you get to have a hot dog in Jerusalem on the sabbath, and so I very much enjoyed my hot dog & pepsi.

Today: hot dogs in Jerusalem. Tomorrow: felafel in Ram'allah.

Inshallah

The Muzzein Belched

2009-08-12T16:37:00.008-04:00

I think the muzzeins of different mosques sometimes try to out-muzzein each other. The other morning, one mosque belted out the pre-dawn call to prayer at 4am. Then every mosque in the area did the call for prayer at 4:30. Then, the first mosque--the one right outside my window, of course--did another call at 5am. I dunno--maybe no one came to the first two calls? I think there have been at least three different muzzeins doing the call to prayer at the mosque nearest me (the Mosque of the Ascension), and one of them definitely sounds like an older guy: his voice sometimes squeaks, and he sometimes clears his throat into the mike. But one of the younger-sounding ones was doing the afternoon call to prayer, and in the middle of it--between "God is Greatest" and "There is no god but God," he belched. Not very loudly, and not a long belch--but loud enough that everyone within earshot heard it.

Keeping on the religious topic, I visited places holy to the three great monotheistic religions. The Western Wall (aka the 'Wailing Wall') of the Second Temple, the holiest place for Jews--though technically, the Temple Mount itself is holier... but Jews are forbidden to go there. Or so I thought, as when I visited the Temple Mount, there were some IDF soldiers up there. The books I have read on the subject have misinformed me.

As I just noted, I went up to the Temple Mount--or, to Muslims, the Haram ash-Sharif (the 'Noble Sanctuary')--site of the Al Aqsa Mosque (mentioned in the Qur'an), and the Dome of the Rock. The Rock in the Dome is believed by Jews to be the stone upon which Abraham was prepared to sacrifice his son to prove his dedication to God. To Muslims, Abraham was in Arabia for this event, and the Rock in the Dome is instead the point from which Muhammad ascended to heaven. All in all, a pretty holy place--the site of the Second Temple of the Jews, and the third-holiest site in Islam.

But wait--there's more holiness! On the way to the Temple Mount and the Western Wall, I stopped at the Garden of Gethsemane, which according to Christian tradition, is where Jesus spent the last night before his crucifixion. There are olive trees in the Garden, several of which have been scientifically dated to be more than 2000 years old. I took pictures of them (and will post them later). Is that enough holiness for you? Because there's more!

I also went to the Church of the Holy Sepulcher--the church built (by the Emperor Constantine's mother) on Golgatha (where Christ was crucified), and containing the crypt where Jesus was interred.

I had some very tasty Armenian food for lunch, too.

I mentioned yesterday that I'd post more about politics, but I spent way too much time working on some of these photos for posting, and so you're just going to have to wait for more political ranting.

The pictures are in reverse-order of how I should've loaded them, and I'm not going to mess with moving stuff, as the last time I tried that, the blog crashed.

First up, the rotunda inside the Church of the Holy Sepulcher. This isn't a HDR composite--just a regular shot with very little post-processing. I love my IS lens: I hand-held a 1/5 second exposure and it's sharp as a tack.

Next, a hallway in the back of the church. This is a HDR composite of two images--the third was too long of an exposure for even the image stabilizer to keep steady (2.5 seconds). Honestly, I don't think it needs the third.

This is in the front-ish of the church, near the shrine to the left of the entrance. This frescoe is from the Byzantine era. In the right of the frame, you can see the people lining up to go into the shrine. I got berated by a priest for wearing a hat inside; I guess it's OK to wear a hat if you're standing in line for the shrine? This is another 2-shot HDR composite.

This is looking back towards the entrance. This is a 3-shot HDR composite, which results in "ghosting" of multiple images of the same person as they move through the three exposures.

This shot is in basically the same location, but rotated 180 degrees--so this is the view directly behind where I was standing in the last shot. It's a 3-exposure composite HDR image, but the light streaks were not added--it was pretty smoky inside, due to all the votives and tapers that were burning. This is one of my favorite images from the trip so far, if I do say so myself.

This is "extreme close-up" detail on the Dome of the Rock, so you can see all the calligraphy and tile work. The larger image is below.

The entire image of the Dome of the Rock. This is a single exposure--not HDR--but I did some considerable tweaking (correcting the perspective, saturating the blue sky) to make the image more vivid--the light was pretty harsh when I took the picture. If you look closely, you can see the moon right next to the dome (if the dome was a clock face, look at about 2:00).

Again, the order on these pictures is all messed up: this is some stained glass from inside the Church of the Holy Sepulcher.

I had forgotten to post this one earlier: this is a view of the Old City at night. You can see the Dome of the Rock on the right, and the Al-Aqsa Mosque just left-of-center. This is another HDR composite of three photos, shot on a tripod from the Mount of Olives, near where I was staying.

"the lost post"

2009-08-12T15:18:00.014-04:00

Well, isn't this odd? I found this post sitting in the "saved" area, where it must've went went Blogpost crashed. I'll post it, not because it's anything novel, but just so it looks like I'm posting more often. It's a little bit different than the other political rant I posted.

I've fallen a bit behind, partly due to having walked about 30 miles over the past two days, partly due to having shot almost 300 photos over the past two days, but mainly because my Firefox browser is acting up and wasn't letting me do much of anything online. So I've switched back to Evil Empire™ Internet Explorer, and I think that this will work until I figure out what Firefox was doing wrong and how to fix it.

It's too bad, really, because I was fired up to do a big political post based on some casual observations I made yesterday. Well, the rage has cooled, but I still want to relate the glimpses of Palestinian life under Israeli rule that I saw yesterday:

In the bustling David St. Market in the Old City, a Palestinian merchant was getting hassled by two IDF soldiers and an Israeli police officer; from what I gleaned from the conversation and the gesticulation, the merchant had left stuff (probably trash?) out in front of his shuttered store when he went to afternoon prayers. When he came back, the Israelis--armed with automatic weapons and dressed in body armor, by the way--made sure he knew the price for violating the law.

Later, in a nearby and similar market area, another trio of armed Israelis (two IDF, backing up a Israeli police commander) were hassling another Palestinian merchant because the scarves he had hanging out in front of his stall were dangling too low--a tall man would have to duck his head to avoid the scarves brushing against his hair.

Earlier in the day, I took a bus tour of greater Jerusalem. On the bus, you get a pair of headphones you can plug in to get a pre-recorded narration (in your choice of eight languages) of all the sights the bus passes on its route. Time and time again, the narrator mentioned where brave Israeli soldiers "took" locations in combat--never mentioning that they "took" these locations from the Palestinians who owned the land--or where ruthless Arabs (Jordanians, most typically) mercilessly slaughtered innocent Jews/Israelis. There's that saying about how history is written by conquerors; it's not just history--it's tour guide narration, too. Palestinians do not exist on that tour; they were the previous occupants, who somehow left no forwarding address. I was half-tempted to switch to the Arabic language version, in hopes that the Palestinians would exist there, but listening to the English narrative was like watching faceplant videos on Youtube: you're horrified by it, but you can't stop.

Later on, I was walking through another market area, and in a bigger stall that looked like some sort of tailored-goods store, an altercation had started up between several IDF soldiers and one of the merchants. Again, the IDF soldiers are armed, and an older guy--some sort of officer--had intervened and things weren't looking very promising for the merchant. I have no clue what was going on, or why, but for the third time in the day, I wondered what it would be like to scrape by as a lower-class merchant at the whim of guys with guns who can cause you all sorts of problems if they don't like the way you dispose of your trash, or how you display your merchandise, etc.

Finally, I was walking back to the hotel past the Damascus Gate--which is the entrance to the Old City that butts up against Arab East Jerusalem. There is a taxi stand there, and then a whole bunch of signs that I interpret as "no parking" or "no stopping" signs, and as I was walking past, a Palestinian teenager runs up and yells to another guy in front of me (all I caught was "yulla! yulla!" = "go! go!"). The guy runs to a cab--parked in what must be the no parking area--and fires up the engine to make a quick getaway... too late. A pickup truck with three Israeli police screeched to a stop, boxing in the cab. The Palestinian driver tried to sneak past the truck, whereupon one of the Israeli police jumped out and angrily started shouting and pointing at the Palestinian, one hand on his gun. The incident ended with the cops pulling the guy out of his cab and writing up some sort of documentation--a ticket, or a court summons, or something. Like the tailor incident, I surreptitiously took some pictures, but another touristy-looking guy wasn't so circumspect--he was blatantly photographing the whole incident. The cops didn't seem to care.

So there you have it; in a day when I wasn't looking for evidence of the grinding oppression that Palestinians experience on a day-to-day basis, I had it thrown in front of me, several times. The Israelis have the guns, and the power, and if they don't like something a Palestinian is doing, they intervene. And they don't care who sees it.

If you have any questions why I do what I do, hopefully this post will be something of an answer.
And so you have something to look at after reading all that politically-charged observation, here are some pretty (and a couple not-so-pretty) pictures:

(well, blogspot has a pretty awkward way of adding & moving around pictures in posts, and I just lost one of the ones I had posted. I'm not going to mess with trying to fix it now, so here's the rest)

I call this one "This is not your land"--this was the police intervention on the illegal parking

This is the Western Wall plaza. All the cleared ground in this area was, before the 1967 Six-Days War, a Palestinian neighborhood. That neighborhood was bulldozed to make the plaza. I'm sure the Palestinians got over it--hey, Israel even built a nice, wooden ramp so all the non-Muslims who want to visit the Temple Mount can do so!

The order of these pictures got messed up, as I wanted this picture to be before the previous one. Anyway, this is a HDR-composite photo of the Western Wall. The people look ghostly not because they're ghosts, but because I put three exposures together in order to get the dramatic sky and saturated color tones.

The entrance to the David St. Market, just east of the Jaffa Gate into the Old City.

Zion Gate, on the southeast side of the city. The only post-processing I did on this picture was to correct some perspective distortion--I did nothing to the woman sitting; she was stock-still long enough so that her image is razor-sharp, while the woman walking past is merely a blur. Pretty cool of her to model like that for me.

Monday (alternatively, "This Land is Not Your Land")

2009-08-12T05:37:00.000-04:00

OK, blogspot is a pain in the neck for posting pictures, and when I tried to publish my last post, it lost the whole thing--pictures, text, and all. This annoyed me greatly, because I had spent a good amount of time writing up that post.

So I'm going to compose stuff offline, and then try to upload it later. If it doesn't work, I'll just go back to the livejournal blog I used in Damascus three years ago.

Here's my attempt at the post that blogspot vaporized.

Time is flying by, and I'm not getting stuff posted as quickly as I'd like. Of course, having taken over 300 photos so far is slowing me down--spending a few minutes editing each picture takes some time. But in someways, this is a good thing. After walking around on Monday, I saw somethings that got me really riled up, and had I posted to this blog right away, it probably would've come across as an angry political rant.

Instead, I've had some time to cool down, and reflect. So this won't be as emotionally-charged as it could have been. But to the point--Monday I took a long tour around Jerusalem. I saw lots of ancient buildings, religious landmarks, and Palestinians being routinely abused in a casual, careless way by Israelis. A few 'narrative' snapshots, followed by some photographic ones:

In the morning, I took a bus tour around Jerusalem. You get on the bus for the two-hour loop around the city, and they give you a pair of headphones you can plug in, to listen to a pre-recorded narration of the various points of interest--in your choice of eight different languages. The thing that struck me most about the narration was the complete erasure of Palestinians from the landscape. The narration at various points discussed cooperation and peace between Christians, Jews, and Muslims, but never once did it mention Palestinians. Landmarks were noted as places captured by valiant IDF soldiers, or places where Arabs (or Jordanians) committed some murderous crime against peace-loving Jews/Israelis. A plot of land outside the Old City, purchased by a Jewish immigrant during the British Mandate period, was mentioned as the first site of Jewish residence outside of the Old City--but it was never mentioned that the Jew had purchased the land from its Palestinian owner. Over and over again, the presence of Palestinians was elided. The narrative established Jews/Israelis as heroic conquerors or liberators or entrepreneurs, and enemy Arab/Jordanian forces as the bad guys. But Palestinians? They didn't exist. I was tempted to switch to the Arabic version of the narration to hear how that represented things. The bus tour was very unfulfilling. There's that old saying about how history is written by the conquerors... I guess tour bus narration is the same way.

After the bus tour, I was walking through the David St. Market in the Old City, and I saw a Palestinian merchant being accosted by a trio of Israelis. Two of the Israelis were IDF soldiers, with automatic weapons and body armor; the third was an Israeli police commander--also with an automatic weapon and body armor. I wasn't entirely sure of what the dispute was, but it seemed that when the Palestinian had left for afternoon prayers, he had left something--trash, I'm guessing--outside his shuttered stall, and this apparently warranted the intervention by three heavily-armed Israelis to set this shopkeeper right.

Later, I saw this same trio outside another Palestinian merchant's stall--they were giving him a hard time because some of the scarves he had hanging up outside his store were low enough that a tall man might brush his head against the scarves as he walked past. Apparently, hanging your merchandise a few inches too low merits an angry berating from armed Israelis.

Then in a suq in another part of the Old City, I walked past an escalating argument between a Palestinian merchant (running some sort of clothing/tailor shop) and some IDF soldiers. Whatever the dispute was, an IDF officer had just gotten there as I was passing, and was intervening--on the soldiers' behalf, of course. I surreptitiously snapped a picture of the scene.

As my day was winding down and I was tiring out, I headed back to my hotel, going the long way around the city walls, through East Jerusalem. The Damascus Gate leads from the Old City to East Jerusalem (the Palestinian area of the metropolitan area), and outside the Gate is a taxi stand. As you progress east from the taxi stand, there are signs along the road that are either "no parking" or "no taxi idling" type of signs, and as I was walking along one of these areas, there were plenty of taxis pulled up alongside the roadside, looking for fares. Suddenly a teenager yells something in Arabic--all I caught was "yalla! yalla!" ("go! go!")--and a young Palestinian guy goes running past me and jumps into one of the parked cabs, quickly starting it up and trying to drive away. A white pickup truck with three Israeli police screeches up and boxes in the taxi. The driver tried to sneak the taxi past the truck, but an Israeli cop jumps out of the pickup and starts pointing and yelling at the driver, and then puts his hand on the pistol on his hip. The incident ended with the cops pulling the taxi driver out of the cab and taking him off to the side to write up some paperwork--a ticket, or a court summons. Again, I took some surreptitious pictures, but at the same time, there was an older tourist with a digital camera, brazenly taking pictures of the whole incident from just a few feet away. The Israeli cops didn't seem to care. They got their man: the parking ticket was issued and order was restored to East Jerusalem.

So I didn't go looking for it, but I got a very clear picture of what life can be like for Palestinians in Israel. The Israelis have the power and the guns, and I saw several exercises in authority that seemed quite arbitrary and petty. From the merchants whose zoning infractions were addressed by rifle-wielding soldiers, to the taxi driver who was nearly pulled from his cab at gunpoint for a parking ticket, to the erasure of Palestinian presence from narratives about Jerusalem's environs, it was pretty disturbing.

Sadly, the political realities stayed in my face the next day--which I'll post about tomorrow. Right now I've got to try to get this to work on blogspot. Pictures & captions below.

The Russian Orthodox church on the slopes of the Mount of Olives. This is a HDR (high dyanmic range) composite of three separate exposures.

From An American Geographer...

This is the inside of the Zion Gate on the south side of the Old City. The only post-production manipulation was my (partially successful) attempt to straighten out the perspective issues from shooting wide-angle--the woman in the foreground was sitting very still, so that the 1/15th-second exposure left her really sharp and distinct, while the woman walking through the arch was blurred. Kinda cool, eh?

From An American Geographer...

Looking east from the Jaffa Gate, into the David St. Market. No post-processing other than some minor contrast/brightness tweaks

From An American Geographer...

The Western Wall. Another HDR composite of three exposures, to bring out the details in the sky and the colors in the wall. The "ghosting" produced by compositing three images with moving people is intentional. Before Israel took this part of Jerusalem in the 1967 Six Days' War, this entire area was Palestinian apartment buildings. The Israelis bulldozed the apartments to make the plaza.

From An American Geographer...

Another view of the Western Wall and the plaza. The golden dome in the background is the top of the Dome of the Rock--the third holiest site in Islam--and the wooden walkway is the Bab al-Maghariba, the entrance for non-Muslims to access the Temple Mount / Haram ash-Sharif.

From An American Geographer...

"This is Not Your Land" (part one). The IDF soldiers were arguing with the Palestinian merchant, and more IDF were coming to back them up in the argument. I snapped this picture from the hip, not wanting to draw attention to myself and make anything worse.

From An American Geographer...

"This is Not Your Land" (part two). Another quick shot of Palestinians at the mercy of the Israelis with guns. I didn't need to be so circumspect--another guy was openly taking pictures and the Israeli police didn't seem to care at all.

From An American Geographer...

P.S. Let me know if the pictures don't come through. I did something weird, and am hoping it works.

More to come...

2009-08-11T15:53:00.001-04:00

I took a lot of pictures today, and will be uploading some of the interesting ones... but I'm going to have to re-install Firefox on my laptop, as there's something wrong with the installation I have now. Be patient.

I was going to post a picture to spice things up a bit, but for some reason (probably the aforementioned browser issues), I can't.

Weird

2009-08-10T15:33:00.002-04:00

So I'm not sure, when you go to my issmeeyusuf.blogspot.com page, it only shows you the first post I made. I'll work on fixing it when I have more time & energy & posts.

OK, maybe it was just my browser cache needing to be cleared. That's probably a sign I should get some sleep.

Day One

2009-08-10T15:08:00.000-04:00

I've arrived in Israel. I've been catching up on my sleep--I typically am not able to sleep much on flights--and haven't done anything exciting yet. I've noticed some interesting sights, but have yet to use my camera a lot:

Waiting for the bus from the airport to Jerusalem was a young Orthodox couple; the husband was dressed in dark khakis and a white button-down shirt, with his fringes hanging out and his kibbe on his head, he looked like a younger version of Joel Wainwright (well, the picture of Joel without the beard). The guy had some massive holes in the soles of his shoes, but his cell phone was quite spiffy.
On the road down the Mount of Olives this morning, I noted pilgrims from Italy, Portugal, Spain, Canada, Korea, and India. Mobs and mobs of tourists, stomping down the road, crowding into the religious sites, haggling with the local Palestinians for souvenirs. One group couldn't read the English (or Hebrew) sign on the arch to the Jewish cemetery, and stomped in there to take unobstructed pictures of the Temple Mount.
At nearly the top of the Mount of Olives, there is a block of apartments that looks relatively new. Certainly less than 30 years old. Before those apartment buildings was there, you could stand at the top of the Mount of Olives and look down on all of the Old City, including the Temple Mount. Now, if you stand at the top of the Mount of Olives, you get a marvelous view of these apartment buildings, one with a massive Israeli flag fluttering from the top of a 30-foot pole attached to the top of the building.

Many thanks to Michael Ewers, by the way, who just by hanging out with me in Damascus taught me some useful Arabic that I would've otherwise not picked up. I even avoided telling the desk clerk at the hotel that I had a "machine" instead of a "reservation."

I did take a couple photos today, and with one shot did some tricky photo manipulation. The picture below is a HDR composite of three separate exposures, tone-mapped and then manipulated in Photoshop to mimic the appearance of Fuji Velvia film. Turned out pretty good for a spontaneous shot that was fiddled around with in post-production. I need to figure out blogger a bit more so I can do fancier stuff with my photo-posting (right, Cheryl? I aspire to your level of blog-art).

Leaving on a jet plane... or not.

2009-08-07T15:52:00.000-04:00

Well, leave it to US Airways to throw a monkey wrench into my plans. My flight departing Columbus was delayed so much that I had no chance of getting any flight to Israel.

So, tomorrow is the new date of departure.