April 18 Reading Response, Part II

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

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

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

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...

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

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

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

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

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

I'm just warming up and trying to get back in the blogging mindset. I noticed on the Living 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!

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.

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

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

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

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

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: