Palestine Trip 7: Tough Situation

Up here.
Only one day still to come.

PREVIOUSLY: PALESTINE TRIP 6

Wednesday April 14 , 2004

Breakfast with Manar and Johnny and little Nicole

BEIT SAHOUR
It was just like driving around a town anywhere in New Zealand, except for the bullet marks, the burned out buildings, the missile holes, and the streets blocked off by rubble to control Palestinian movement.


I can’t emphasise it enough. Its easy to think of places where these sorts of things as happening as special environments, different, where the horrible things that happen are somehow context-appropriate. They aren’t. Imagine how it would feel if there was a wall built across a major street near your home. Imagine a bulldozer pushing rubble into the road outside your house so you need to go the long route to get where you’re going. Imagine the motel nearby all smashed up and burned out. It wouldn’t make sense. Neither does it make sense here.

There’s nothing special about Beit Sahour. There’s nothing special about Palestine. There’s nothing special about the Palestinians. They are just people and chaos is half in the door and its pushing hard.

After breakfast with Johnny and Mannar we meet back at ATG and Samer takes us for another drive. We see more of the signs of chaos. A bypass road being built, at massive expense, flanked by layers of security fences, dividing one village, more in its path. Facts on the ground.

HERODIUM
We drive out to Herodium. This is a hill, the highest for miles. It was made by human hands. Herod built it as a fortress and palace, and the ruins on the top and at its base remain, as do a network of tunnels through its interior. We head out to it, see sheep grazing in the excavated swimming pool at the foot of the hill. The road up goes right past an IDF military base. There are a couple of soldiers in the carpark at the top of the hill, but otherwise this major tourist destination is empty. The soldiers watch us indifferently.

Samer chats briefly to the man in the ticket booth and we go up to the top. Its an impressive ruin, a crater filled with old Roman construction. It is also hot, and we soon duck into the tunnels, out of the sun. We wander through, reading signs explaining the history of this place, particularly its key role in important rebellions in Jewish history.


As we leave, I refill my water bottle at a spout near the soldiers and one of them greets me. They are sitting on a bench with a set of high-powered binoculars mounted before them. “Do you want a look?” he says. I go over and peer through, see villages and settlements for miles in all their flattened detail. “We were in that village yesterday. They were throwing stones. We were shooting.” He says it without any particular emotion, as if it was just the weather. “Rough,” I say, listening with some surprise as the words come out of my mouth, “tough situation.”   He shrugs and doesn’t say more.

This view shows some Palestinian villages seen from the top of Herodion. At the centre of the top is a square of light – that’s a bridge. A bypass road will pass under the bridge – it has already been built up to the bridge. The photo shows the olive groves and village that are in the way of construction and will be annexed and demolished to make way for the road.

Cal stole this shot while a guard in a sniper tower (not visible – that’s a water tower in the photo) watched our van suspiciously. This is the road down from Herodion (the hill is out of shot on the left) and the sign says ‘Welcome to Herodion National Park’. The barricades, barbed wire and sniper tower are an odd accompaniment.

DHEISHEH REFUGEE CAMP
Dheisheh is a large refugee camp, also in Bethlehem, like Aida. We stop in for a look around at Jean-Guy and Sabine’s suggestion. Our host is a gregarious guy named Jihad (Samer: “You really should change your name.”) and we get the tour and history. We stop in at the camp nursery, full of swarming sugar-highed under-fives (it was someone’s birthday) and its impossible not to smile. When I lift one of them up to touch the ceiling he just about explodes with laughter. Cal ends up carrying three of them around at once. Its nice to stop in here.

The streets of Dheisheh are incredibly narrow, the memory of the enclosing wall still fresh. “There are no secrets here,” Jihad says. “Everyone hears everything. Every argument, every cry, every time you go to the toilet. Everything.”

Jihad tells us that Dheisheh was visited by the IDF the previous night. They blew up the sewage processing unit. No-one seems to know why.

Dheisheh refugee camp. Jihad, who told us the history of the place and showed us around, is in most of these photos.

Lunch. It was delicious.

NEXT: PALESTINE TRIP 8

That How Many Dudes Song

it is being piped into my head right now.
It echoes in there.
Cool.
—
I feel like I’ve just come up for air. The last couple months have been hard work. Good work, but hard, and I was starting to feel I was drowning not waving. But now I pop into the open and fill up on O2 and its true that I’m better for it, stronger and more complete. There’s no such thing as time wasted for a writer, just a few less pages produced in the final tally.
Apart from making contact with a few welcome visitors from far afield, Justin Raffan and Avril Barker among them, I’ve been finishing up some roleplaying game commitments and generally discharging old promises. The end of the road was Friday night, taking part in ‘The Vault, a tournament one-off run by Nancy. The nicest thing for me, apart from getting to game with some people I haven’t had the chance to before (e.g.), was seeing it resonate with the tournament one-off I ran nine or so months ago.
This was Amnesia, by the redoubtable Matt Cowens. Amnesia and The Vault begin in basically identical circumstances. They are entirely different things, of course, but it was nice for me to see the start and the end of an intense period of fantastic gaming should complement each other so nicely.
There are many and obvious reasons why tournament games start with “you wake up and you remember nothing”. I think there’s life in that old saw yet.
This particular scenario was of a more experimental bent than most tourny games I’ve seen. I didn’t find an absolute success – it was laden with too many red herrings and not enough solid hooks for either plot development or character interaction – but it deserves recognition for being a good, challenging idea executed well. Anyway, in play most of these things didn’t matter – Nancy as GM and her Deadly Viper Squad of elite roleplaying talent were able to paper over any gaps in the scenario and make the damn thing hum.
It were cool.
—
Three new people came along to ORC this Saturday. Blimey. I have long ago lost track of our total numbers ever taking part, but I’d guess it in the forties, even fifties. About half of those have stick around long term. Which is just great.
The whole damn thing has been quite the success. Two weeks we have our anniversary. Hmm. I guess that means I still haven’t done everything I need to do: one anniversary to plan. And still gotta write up two final Palestine-trip instalments.
But then, lord have mercy, I will start writing Ron the Body.
—
Also: the Fringe Fest booklet is out. There goes August.

My Neck Is Made Of Rubber

I remember when I was 17 attending a dance for 13-14 year-olds as a supervisor type. This involved some intense supervisory-type head-throwing-around. I can’t remember the song, but it was something appropriate for black jeans and signs of the devil. I remember the next day, my neck muscles had the strength and characteristics of a bundle of overcooked egg noodles, and I thought to myself: “I am getting too old for this.”
So, last night, at a club. Still too old for this, apparently.
The night out was with the wonderful crew for the Providence Summer game I’ve raved about occasionally, plus my Caroline of course. It was a nice evening of dinner and dancing and fine, fine drunken conversation.
Today, I am resting my neck and not moving around much. It is a treat to do nothing. The week has been mad. Got in the door from Switzy at 11pm on Tuesday, in bed at midnight, Weds out the door at 8am, back at home at 1am and straight to bed, Thurs out at 8am, back home at 9pm this time so had a few hours before sleep, then out the door at 8am on Fri and not home until 4am Sat morning, then up at 10.30 and out the door at 12, back home for a couple hours in the early eve then out again and not home finally until almost 3am. No wonder I’m not getting any bloody writing done.
Its a really beautiful day though.

Challenging Definitions

Over on Rafah Kid, Mark links to this article about the death of Rachel Corrie. In the comments, the usual debate is raging. (I say “debate” in the spirit of being extremely generous to some of the contributors.)
Reading it reminds me of one major problem in dealing with these issues. In this case, the spark is me noticing that some of the pro-occupation posters tend to make absolute statements about who the Palestinians are, namely that they are a people who overwhelmingly want to wipe out Israel and kill as many innocent Israelis as they need to in order to make that happen.
These people have defined the Palestinians as evil.
—
A few blog entries back I had a comment from someone called Hannah. She’s in high school in the States, and says, quoting my Palestine premises post:
[me] * Shared humanity tells us that the majority of people on both sides are
prepared to compromise for peace, and seek to minimise suffering for those on
the opposing side.
[Hannah] I’ve tried to say this before … but they just pull out the “60% support
terrorism and dont want peace” statistic … how should I defend myself in this
situation?
—
Again, the Palestinians are being defined as evil.
I replied to Hannah recently, but I don’t know how much sense I made and I didn’t keep a copy so I can’t check. Anyway, I thought it might be good to throw this one open to any and all who might be reading:
How can you talk about being pro-Palestinian when your opponents are defining the Palestinians as evil?
Or to flip it around,
How can those who define Palestinians as evil be made to question this definition?
Please respond. I’ll email Hannah to tell her we’re talking about this here.

Licensed To Peel

Back from Switzerland. Cover not blown. Dispatched with seventeen SMUSH operatives in their concealed missile silo beneath Lake Lucerne. Disarmed supermissile aimed at Antarctica set to kickstart global warming and raise oil prices. Watched as evil mastermind Jaromir Pyts eaten by his own pet eels. Ate chocolate. Yum.
—
Craig and Marcel’s wedding was delightful. In Switzerland, the wedding reception is like those I’m familiar with, but all the speeches are like the best man’s speech. Which is to say, those with the temerity to wed get ruthlessly, teasingly mocked for the entirety of the reception. Good fun. There were a bunch of photos of young Craig I’d never seen before.
It was pretty cool. I’ll throw up some photos soon.
—
An RPG system I’ve developed and made available on the web, dREAL, has been awarded a kudos thread on RPG.net. This makes me a very happy moose. Always nice to have things you work on get received well.
Of course, it just makes me want to do more work on it, which isn’t particularly useful right now. It is June. I still haven’t written any Ron the Body since last June (made notes but that don’t count). I’ve taken a year off my novel without even meaning to! Erk.
—
I am exhausted. But life is good. Now I’m gonna try and knock off a bunch of email. Sorry if yours isn’t one of those replied to.

Palestine Trip 6: Green Spaces

Up here. [EDIT: DEAD LINK, REPRODUCED BELOW]
I’m really not sure I did Qalqilya justice with that last email. Its hard to communicate how many-layered the problems are, how they all fold back on and compound each other. I could write and say much, much more.
I won’t. I will say, if you’re interested, there are plenty of resources a google away. The tunnel, in particular, is something to watch – when we visited Qalqilya, very few people knew of it. Word is spreading fast.

PREVIOUSLY: PALESTINE TRIP 5

Tuesday April 13, 2004

It’s Tuesday. We get out of the cage.

It takes about an hour to get from Qalqilya to the heart of Tel Aviv. We’re here to talk to Windows (http://www.win-peace.org/), an organisation that promotes understanding between Jews and Palestinians across the Green Line. It uses art and education, and a beautiful magazine that is
co-created by children on both sides of the border and produced with Arab and Hebrew text side by side.

We meet the young Windows person and head out to eat breakfast in a park with some of her friends. There are trees everywhere and happy children playing. It suddenly feels a bit like normal life again: sitting in a park talking politics with informed and passionate people. But that is an illusion. Tel Aviv isn’t distant from the politics – it is caught right up in it. The attacks happen here. Israeli society is full of worry. On the inflight magazine coming over, there were six or seven full page advertisements that referred to bombings of civilians. This is absolutely a part of their world.

I talk about New Zealand a lot. They are interested in the Maori situation, how New Zealand has managed and mismanaged its reparations, how politicians make hay out of resentment and fear. There is also respect for the New Zealand history curriculum, which had me at 15 studying Northern Ireland and Palestine side by side.

Back at the little downstairs office, we get the spiel about Windows and its mission. It is an incredibly valuable group doing important work. The hope is refreshing.

Our next stop is Ein Karem, a lush suburb in the hills near Jerusalem. There we meet Peretz Kidron, and talk about the refuseniks (http://www.yesh-gvul.org/, which seems to be down right now). These are
Israeli soldiers who have refused to follow orders. Peretz comes across as fiercely committed to his ideal of a conscious soldier who is informed and able to make moral decisions. This is the best place for human rights to be defended – history has shown that we can’t expect those in power to give account to human rights, so it falls to those who enact the orders to be the moral guardians as well. Its a compelling argument, and while I don’t agree with every aspect of what he says, it is all insightful and worthwhile. One interesting thing we talked through: he advocates a fair conscription into military (not civil) service, because a professional army will never question the orders received from their political masters. He’s an
interesting figure and we take up most of his afternoon.

In the hills near Jerusalem we talk with Peretz Kidron of Yesh Gvul, a refusenik organisation.

Then we head back to Beit Sahour. Samer and the ATG crew have organised for us to spend the night with a local family. Cal and I are staying with Johnny and Manar, a young couple, and their little daughter Nicole. They are good people, welcoming us in, plying us with food, chatting about all sorts of things. Johnny in particular is a born storyteller, full of tales. He’s pleased to see some more Kiwis, having worked with some New Zealanders some years back in a casino in Jericho. He regrets never getting a chance to play the promised rugby game with them. Eventually we sit watching television, Saudi and Lebanese stations by satellite. Johnny apologises that he can’t take us out anywhere – there isn’t anywhere to go.
No movies, no nightclubs. All of their stories end up talking about the situation. It underlies every aspect of their lives.

Their house is beautiful. They’re both lovely and smart, full of life. They are absolutely like any random family here in the UK, or in New Zealand, or, well, anywhere. They’re just good people.

Under their roof that night, we sleep well.

Before we leave Qalqilya, we give Mahmoud’s children the kiwi that’s travelled with me since I left New Zealand in 2002. I make sure they know what it is before we go.

NEXT: PALESTINE TRIP 7

Every 6 months

I cut my hair.
Yay. Number 2. I am smooooove.
—
My moose powerz continue to grow. MAD SKILLZ TO THE MOOSE. Ergo keyboard has arrived too, cool.
Just watched the third-to-last episode of Angel. Wow. Cool. Funnay. Cookie dough.
Now watching ‘Death in Gaza’. Err.

Palestine Trip 5: Pushes

Up here [ DEAD LINK – REPRODUCED BELOW ]. Mistakenly numbered it ‘4’. One of the problems with the email archive is that it doesn’t let me edit anything. Oh well.
Also I forgot to put in the email that new photos are up [DEAD LINK – INCLUDED BELOW], including my favourite from the trip.
Must get this account done before going to Switzerland on Saturday!

PREVIOUSLY: PALESTINE TRIP 4

Monday, April 12, 2004

There is a wall in Palestine. It is an absolute barrier, 8 metres high, solid and grey. It is dividing everything. It sets apart Israel and Palestine. More precisely, it divides Palestine from Palestine; Palestine land on the wrong side becomes part of Israel.

Qalqilya is in the northwest part of the West Bank, right at the westernmost limit of it. It is as close as the West Bank gets to the warm waters of the med. A large town, 40,000 people or so. In happier times its thriving markets served the whole region. Many of its residents are farmers, who leave their homes each morning to go to their plots and fields. Qalqilya is completely surrounded by the wall. There is one gate giving access. One gate only. It is a prison camp.

Except it isn’t quite that simple. There is another gate, a farmers gate, giving access to fields. The wall is only 8 metres high on the westernmost stretch – elsewhere it is razor wire and trenches. The one gate is
unguarded when Issa drives us in. The truth is harder to grasp than the simple image of giant walls on all sides. And yet, for all that the residents can see the horizon, it is still a prison.

Qalqilya, a Palestinian town of 40,000 people, surrounded on all sides by the wall. This is a view from the outside, showing the southwestern corner of the wall.

We are five – Mark of Olive Tours, Sabine and Jean-Guy, Cal and myself. Our contact is Mahmoud, a Reuters photographer and regular host to visitors such as us. He later shows us photos of New Zealand minister Phil Goff at the wallside. Mahmoud is large and taciturn, but his hospitality is unstinting. We drink sweet tea in his sitting room and look at old photos of his family members, some of them martyrs in old wars. Then we go down to the wall, the western section, eight metres tall.

There is a girl’s school on the way, and as we walk we pass schoolgirls clutching workbooks, whispering to each other as they see us. Some of them fiercely ignore us, while others smile shyly. The school is close to the wall – fifty metres? I forget the distance exactly. Close enough to have been tear gassed in the past. Close enough that the children will see the wall out their classroom windows every single day.

Approaching the wall. The girls’ school is on the left, with the vehicles parked outside. The wall looks very close – but that is because it is far, far larger than you expect. Mahmoud and Mark are in front, Jean-Guy and Sabine arm in arm, and Caroline just in front of me.


The wall itself is remarkable close up. It is taller than I expect it to be. Sniper towers sit at regular intervals. Cameras and motion detectors survey every inch of the wall.

The wall divides farmland. There are a few metres of gravel beside the wall, and then green crops. As we walk along the gravel, a jeep rushes up. A teenage girl with a gun argues with Mahmoud from her seat as her fellows appraise us. The jeep drives off; we walk a few feet further out from the wall, on the gutter between the gravel and the crops.

Alongside the wall, before the soldiers arrive.

On the far side of the wall, we remember, there is a highway. The Israelis driving on that highway don’t have to see Qalqilya. All they see is an 8 metre wall protecting them.

Imagine it as a kneeling giant reaching its arms out, one on each side of Qalqilya. Imagine the giant’s arms casting shadows. Where the shadow falls, that land is claimed. Where it plants its hands, a settlement is built.

At the farmer’s gate we watch the same soldiers from the jeep inspect men and children who are crossing to their fields. A Swiss guy we met on our walk takes photographs incessantly, and the blonde girl who had argued with Mahmoud scowls at him, tells him to stop. He shifts position and keeps going. “Don’t push me!” she yells at him. The gate is surrounded by barbed wire. It is only open for an hour at a time, three times a day.

At the farmer’s gate


From the gate we can see the town of Habla, Qualqilya’s close neighbour. They are separated by the giant’s shadow – the drive there, once ten minutes, now takes ninety. The state of Israel has taken it upon itself to build a tunnel that will connect Qalqilya and Habla. Work has begun; land was confiscated for the project, of course. The residents of Qalqilya found out what was going on through Israeli TV.

They’re building a tunnel to a town you can see from the gate, if you peer over the wire.

As the sun comes down we walk up the main street. It is busy, but not as busy as it once would have been. There isn’t much money left in Qalqilya. People call out to us as we walk: “where are you from?” “you are welcome!”

There’s also a surprising ‘hey dudes’ greeting, which belongs to a New Zealander, a journo named Hayden. He’s in town making a short documentary about the Qalqilya zoo – “cages within cages”, as he says. Cal and I seize on the familiar ground and we have juice together in an outside bar. Hayden
speaks quickly, smiling all the time, and replacing as many words as possible with sound effects. As always with Kiwis on the road, we establish people we know in common a few minutes into the conversation (in this case Cal’s infamous Blenheim Boys).

Then Mahmoud takes us to meet the head of the Palestine Authority in town. I take an instant dislike to him. Everything he says is equivocal, emotive – he is trying to sell us on his own political vision. I have to remind myself that his message is worth evaluating on its own merits. Behind his rhetoric there is a real story of appalling dissolution. Half of the wells into Qalqilya’s water are outside the line of the wall, and now belong to Israel. 6,000 people have left Qalqilya in the last few years.

“They are pushing us!” he says.

If things continue as they are going, this exodus will continue. Perhaps then the giant will finally bring his hands together.

Mahmoud’s lovely children

View from on top of a building in Qalqilya, showing the size of the place.

My favourite photo from the whole trip

NEXT: PALESTINE TRIP 6

Stressy Weeks

Cal and I are both feeling pretty stressed at the mo. Too much to do! It isn’t cool. We’re managing very well, I feel, and the stress isn’t turning into bitter angry HATE HATE BITE DESTROY anything, it’s just an ‘aaargh! too much to do!’ vibe.
We are looking after each other with cuddles and NZ chocolate and the occasional episode of Firefly or season one Dawson’s Creek (which I will defend to my dying day, HAH).
Little-known fact: for an entire year of my job at Massey University, my screen background was a Dawson’s Creek cast shot. I thought it helped me get ‘down with the kids’. Yeeeeah.
At work we have just had a total rebuild of all our PCs. Now we are not allowed any screen backgrounds other than the mandatory blue-with-PC-specifications-on. It isn’t gonna help morale much, but I’m cool with it.
If you’re at all interested in what’s going on in Gaza right now, check out Rafah Kid in my links list – he’s getting regular updates from the field. The comments are pretty interesting too. Some big debates that seem to be staying pretty rational all the time, which is good.
Last night I went to the Opal Lounge, which is big-trendy Edin bar, for my boss’s 29th birthday. It was pretty cool. I was underdressed (typical) but didn’t particularly care (also typical). There were many hen nights. One gaggle of young women from Milton Keynes filled up the area near us, sat around not talking much and sipping drinks, then got up and left twenty minutes later. Luckily the bouncers made them take off the bobble-headbands with spangly penises at the end of the springs. Hen nights are an Edinburgh menace, on account of our ridiculously late licensing laws. (Pubs in England shut at 11, remember.)
Anyway. I have managed to get some good writing done, including an entry for the BBC3 ‘Get Writing’ competition which involves finishing off a very short story by a Famous And Successful Author. I went for horror churn-out-er Shaun Hutson’s one, on account of not having to think so much. I don’t think I could ever be a horror genre author, I don’t have the commitment to grime and misery, but I can definitely do dark’n’scary. I’ll email it to anyone interested once I’ve keyed in all the amendments.
Right. I’ve got to get sorted to go into town and run some roleplaying games for enthusiastic people in this club I started. It is a beautiful day, and I might try and get us to play in the park. Ahhhhh. Park.
Peace to you all. I am reading your emails, and will respond as soon as I can!