From The Morgue

Up here. [EDIT: DEAD LINK – REPRODUCED BELOW]

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PREVIOUSLY: PALESTINE TRIP 3

Sunday, April 11, 2004

EASTER SUNDAY, BEIT SAHOUR
We were in Palestine as part of an organised tour, and this day was scheduled as our own to do with as we pleased. Given it was Easter Sunday, we started off going to church. We were made very welcome – the priest came over and shook our hands at the start – and it was easy to feel at home, as
the atmosphere and congregation were just like those I grew up with. They were dressed the same, had the same friendly warmth, the service was the same, even some of the hymns were familiar. All of it in Arabic, of course, but I knew exactly what was going on the whole time. After the service we
crossed the garden to the church hall where painted eggs were thrust into our hands by insistent smiling teenagers, many people shook our hands and asked us where we were from, and we drank sweet tea. It was great. At the end of the day I still had paint on my hands from the egg. We also found a tree that was either New Zealand’s native Christmas tree, the pohutukawa, or something that gave a very good impression of it. I reckon it was a pohutukawa – I remember from a documentary some years ago
that the trees were growing in odd places here and there throughout Europe.

Easter Sunday in Beit Sahour, and the surprising presence of a New Zealand native tree in Palestine.

SLOUCHING AROUND BETHLEHEM
Cal and I then wandered up to Bethlehem and checked out the Church of the Nativity in daylight, then set off to wander some more, chatting to a few policemen on the way. We ran into Jean-Guy and Sabine, and joined them and Olive Co-op’s Jo and the newly-arrived Mark for a great lunch in Nativity Square. We wandered further, led – somewhat haphazardly – by Jo. It was a great walk, actually, up and down the sloping built-up roads and occasionally breaking out into an open space with another panoramic view of
the surrounding hills. We passed the hotel where stand-up comedian Jeremy Hardy and the ISM stayed in April ’02, as chronicled in the documentary ‘Jeremy Hardy vs. the Israeli Army’. It was good to be able to connect those images of tanks on streets to this place, since it was at a screening of that film that Cal and I first began to think about coming here.

Bethlehem, and the tiny entrance to the Church of the Nativity.

SHEPHERD’S FIELD
We finished up the day with a trip down the hill to Shepherd’s Field, where the angel of the lord came near and gave the shepherds a heads-up about what was going on up in Bethlehem. There was a lovely garden, a nice church, and a fascinating archaeological dig revealing the monasteries that had been
built here over the centuries.

Naturally, we couldn’t get far away from the political angle of our trip, even on Easter Sunday. The sad tales of the taxi drivers, bereft of tourist trade even at Easter, were one thing; seeing the newly expanding settlement and bypass road a few hundred metres from Shepherd’s Field was another. The garden and chapel had been designed to create a sanctuary for pilgrims, but there was nowhere to hide from the ongoing incursion.

That night we all talked for some hours, going over everything that we were seeing and hearing. The truth about the situation in Palestine is that it is overwhelming. It is too much to see at once.

Mark’s blog is at http://www.rafahkid.net/blog.html 

Shepherd’s Field, where the Shepherds were told by an angel of Jesus’ birth. There is a growing settlement a short distance away, I think it is part of Har Homa.

NEXT: PALESTINE TRIP 5

Up here. [EDIT: DEAD LINK – REPRODUCED BELOW] There’s photos and all.

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PREVIOUSLY: PALESTINE TRIP 2

Saturday April 10

CHECKPOINTS

Checkpoints. In the morning we go through one on foot, the main Bethlehem checkpoint. Sarah points at some women as we approach – they are about to cut off the road and go overland to the far side of the checkpoint, bypassing it so they can get to work at Jerusalem. Sometimes they will meet a patrol on this bypass. Sometimes the patrol will just turn them back. Other times it is worse.

We walk around a building that’s essentially a concrete bunker, along a narrow route. Soldiers just waved us through, we all have white skin I guess. Half way around we pause and look back over the rooftops and see something happening on the balcony of a building. It looks like a gang of young Palestinian men beating a Palestinian woman with sticks, but it’s too far away to tell for sure. We eventually turn our backs and press on.

We are picked up in West Jerusalem and driven to the Container checkpoint. It has an ominous reputation. We’re meeting Anjela from Machsom Watch (http://www.machsomwatch.org/), an organisation of Israeli women who monitor the checkpoints and try to make sure Palestinians are treated fairly by those on duty. The stories she tells make it sound like this is a mammoth task. We stay at the Container while she makes sure a Doctor is allowed across to an ambulance waiting on the far side. We are told that ambulances aren’t allowed across checkpoints; patients have to be lifted across. If there is a delay in securing an ambulance to meet the patient, delays can be serious. The sick and injured die at checkpoints because of this, or because they are simply turned back.

But to me, the worst part of the checkpoints is the psychology. Every day, Palestinian men and women are subjected to the whims of teenagers schooled in a paranoid mythology and given absolute power over their ability to move freely.

Hell, you take the best teenagers you can find in New Zealand high schools and make them prefects, and like as not it all goes wrong. Its no leap to see how staffing the occupation with teenagers is breeding indignity.

DIVISIONS

Anjela is also part of the Israeli Committee Against House Demolition (http://www.icahd.org/eng/). She has a very good broad sense of what is going on and going wrong in Israel/Palestine, and she leads us on an improvised tour of the area.

We go through Abu Dis which is being sliced up by the enormous, unforgiving wall. It’s an Arab community and Anjela draws attention to the poverty – the roads are poor, the homes are cramped and small, there is nothing green anywhere. We keep driving, and two minutes later we are in the settlement
of Maale Adumim, on the next hill over. There are enormous, vibrant flowerbeds lining the wide, flat roads. Elegant stepped apartment blocks rise cleanly. There is, incredibly, a swimming pool.

A swimming pool, in the desert.

Anjela talks of the children in the Palestinian communities nearby, who have never seen flowers.

Maale Adumim is not peopled with messianic Greater Israel settlers, according to Anjela. The people there are economic migrants. Settlers get a lot of tax breaks, and very nice digs. (We later learn that one of the
drivers who lives in Beit Sahour keeps an apartment in Maale Adumim as well, so he doesn’t lose his Israel permissions.)

You hear a lot about contrasts. In this case, it is the proximity that is most disturbing. The luxury of the settlement is in sharp contrast to the privation of the established village. The settlement is, of course, built
on seized Palestinian land.

We see the wall-struck town of Abu Dis and its close neighbour, the lush settlement of Maale Adummim.

The landscape nearby Abu Dis and Maale Adumim

MAKING LIGHT

In Greek Orthodox tradition, on Holy Saturday, the patriarch goes into a sanctuary in the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem, and God sends him fire. This fire is then shared among the community.
(http://www.holyfire.org/eng/index.htm;
http://www.holylight.gr/agiofos/holyli.html)

I learned that While this is going on, everyone outside squishes up close and gets ready to start shouting and jumping.

We were crammed into an alley outside the church, with hundreds of other people, waiting for news. A great cry of cheers erupted from within, and then the crowd shifted, somehow making space as a series of men came charging out screaming with excitement waving around fire as they went. The crowd thrust candles into the passing flames as more and more people came out, there was shouting and praising God, and many elbows in ribs and shoves in backs and burnt nose hairs. People forced their way out of the church and into the already crowded alleyway and a fight almost broke out between Sarah and a guy who was using an empty pram as a prod to clear his path of little old ladies.

It was insane. It was another sign of how people do religion in Jerusalem.

THE WAILING WALL

We went to the Western Wall as well. The sun smashed down on the enormous wall, fifteen or more metres high and built of mighty sandstone blocks. A direct connection with God, in Judaism. It was impossible not to be moved by the deep respect shown towards this holy site. We couldn’t take photos –
it was the Sabbath, and an old Rabbi was trooping the crowd making sure no-one was breaking custom.
Jean-Guy, being a Jew, invited me down to see things up close, and so off I went. I put on a cardboard kippa and went down. Jean Guy led me into the tunnel at the side of the wall, which was thick with Orthodox Jews in their big hats, praying alone or in groups, reading the Torah, and in one memorable case jumping up and down shaking his hand at the wall. Again, as so many other times, I thought I was in another world. We came out into the sun and Jean-Guy smiled at me and said “What did you think? For me, it was very strange.”

We rejoined the others at the vantage point on the far side. We could see the top of the Dome of the Rock peeking over the Western Wall – the holiest place in one traditions and the second holiest in another, a literal stone-throw apart.

NEXT: PALESTINE TRIP 4

Up here. [EDIT: LINK DEAD-REPRODUCED BELOW]
On a lighter note, some more testimony as to the Godlike power of Leon has been added to the Making Leon a God website.
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PREVIOUSLY: PALESTINE TRIP 1

Friday April 9, 2004

The call to prayer sounds like a cross between an air raid siren and a Leonard Cohen song, and it sounds at the first touch of dawn, which is way to early for us. We sleep uneasily after that, not quite believing where we were.

Breakfast with Sabine and Jean-Guy – pita bread and houmous and cheese and meat. Nothing gets you in a local mood like diving into the local breakfast. Then ATG people Samer and Sarah appeared and we were out.

BEIT SAHOUR

Samer drove us around Beit Sahour, and we started to see the things we’d only read about before – the settlements, the bypass roads. The closeness of them is shocking. From the street outside our hotel you can see a huge settlement, Gilo I think, which is still being worked on. It’s literally just across the valley. It is built inside the ‘green line’, on Palestinian land, and it is staring the population of Beit Sahour in the face every single day.

Bypass roads, as well, are a revelation. They carve through the west bank sheathed in barbed wire and electric fences, and as they go they chop up communities, cut off farmland and orchards, and necessitate the demolition of Palestinian homes. We see a group of five homes that are hemmed in by bypass roads; all will be demolished eventually. The families just have to move. Nearby, a bypass road loops around an olive orchard, cutting it off completely from the locals.

I have been reading about bypass roads and settlements for years, but until I saw them I didn’t really understand what they were and what they meant. I didn’t understand how powerful they were – the power of, as the saying goes, ‘facts on the ground’.

AIDA CAMP

We visited a refugee camp in Bethlehem, Aida camp. It has evolved from a hilltop covered with tents in ’48 into an alley-network of cramped tenements. Kids called out greetings, ran down for photos. Everyone
greeted us warmly: “you are welcome.”

There were signs of conflict. Bullet holes in the wall of a school. Ruined walls and buildings. A factory’s blue corrugated wall ripped open by a missile, the interior now dormant.

Alongside Aida is a field. Across the field is Gilo settlement. The separation wall enters the field from two directions. Soon, new construction will join the wall together, and cut off this view.

We walked up to the end of the wall nearest Aida and some Israeli troops appeared from the other side. We walked away and they paced after us. Being followed by a force of uniformed men and women carrying weapons is not a nice feeling. They came up to the fringe of Aida proper and then watched
us for a while before going back. “They are not allowed here but they come and go as they please. They do whatever they want.”

It is hard to keep hope alive here. The Al Rowwad centre (http://alrowwad.virtualactivism.net/) keeps children busy with theatre and art projects. They have toured theatre pieces through Europe. The director
of Al Rowwad, AbdelFattah Abu-Srour, earned a PhD in France but turned down the right to stay there: “If I had it, the temptation to leave here when it got difficult would have been too great.”

JERUSALEM
The Holy City on Good Friday. It was incredible. Jerusalem’s Old City is a network of narrow streets, some of them built over so completely that you’re effectively underground. It twists and turns and is full of colour and culture – ultraorthodox Jews in their enormous hats, orthodox Jews in their traditional garb, Arab women in hejab, Christian priests and nuns and monks in full dress, salesmen and touts of all stripes, tourists, pilgrims, soldiers, us. It was an incredible place, unlike any place I’ve been to or seen. Probably it’s unique.

We sat in on a talk given by Rabbi Arik Ascherman of Rabbis for Human Rights (http://www.rhr.israel.net/), which was centred on RHR’s work in solidarity with the Palestinians.

Then we just explored. We ended up walking the Via Dolorosa, the path Jesus took with the cross to Calvary (as defined, of course, in the middle ages) to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, which was a confusing dark cave housing a mad melange of different Christian traditions, each pitting prayers and
incense against the others in trying to carve out a space for their individual flavour of the divine. Down below the Church was a deep chamber, the tomb of Jesus in Catholic tradition. (In Protestant tradition, it’s a few hilltops over.)

Its easy to forget that in amongst this best-guess mythplanting, there is truth – Jesus did preach here in Jerusalem, he did die here. The Temple did stand here – one wall, the Western Wall, remains.

Okay, it’s a bit harder to prove that Mohammed and his horse rode up to heaven from the Rock on Temple Mount. But I’m happy to give them the benefit of the doubt.

That evening we went to the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem. On Good Friday, passing from Jerusalem to Bethlehem, the spot where Jesus was crucified and rose again to the spot where he was born. Quite an Easter – and not a chocolate egg between us.

NEXT: PALESTINE TRIP 3

My first account is up here [LINK DEAD – REPRODUCED BELOW].
If you want to subscribe to the morgueatlarge email list, just send a blank message to: morgueatlarge-subscribe@topica.com
More to follow. Photos uploaded; links will be available soon.

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[ORIGINAL EMAIL TEXT]

Thursday April 8

So we’re zooming down the highway to Jerusalem on Holy Thursday. The speedo hovers around 120k, and the sun is coming down, and Cal and I are in the Middle East.

We’ve come with an outfit called Olive Tours, who work with the Alternative Tourism Group. A week-long tour in Israel and Palestine, meeting peace groups, meeting locals, seeing what its like on the ground. It all came together fast, and it nearly didn’t happen, but we’re here. Only a few people know. We don’t want our mothers to worry.

Getting here was a story in itself. In Zurich, after talking my way around the fact that my passport was expiring in 5 months 3 weeks instead of 6 months, we got the full interrogation by a mild-mannered El Al Air clerk. Where were we from? Where did we live? Why were we going to Israel? Had anyone given us a bomb? Any weapons? What about small weapons, just for personal use? We stuck to our story of going for Easter, good Christian pilgrims. Lying makes me uncomfortable and I didn’t enjoy it. Heart was
bumping good. We went into a side room with him and our bags were swabbed by bomb-detecting gear; then we were ushered out while they went through the contents in detail. We were glad we’d ditched the Private Eye we’d been reading on the way over, the one with an article ripping shreds out of Sharon.

But we made it through, and suddenly we were at Tel Aviv airport waiting for a driver to meet us. And now we were on the road.

Joseph, the Arab driver, slowed down, and we saw lights and concrete blocks in the road up ahead. ‘Is this a checkpoint?’ Cal asked. ‘Yes,’ Joseph said. ‘Say you are going to church.’

And suddenly there were soldiers around us. Fatigues and automatic weapons. We were both still running adrenaline-hot, ready for more questions, wondering what would happen if we were turned back. A soldier came up to Joseph’s window and we squeezed hands in the back seat.

Joseph and the soldier talked in Hebrew briefly, then, incredibly, shook hands warmly and waved goodbye. “My friend!” Joseph said as we drove off. “He is Russian! And a Christian!”

Our first checkpoint experience, the lesson being that the unexpected would always be just around the corner. There were many more checkpoints to come in the week ahead, though, and that was the only one that gave anyone cause to smile.

Now we were in the West Bank, in Bethlehem. The Occupied Territories, seized by Israel in 1967 and still held now. Its a hilly town, and I was suddenly reminded of home – I hadn’t seen a landscape so like Wellington’s hills since I left New Zealand. Joseph was, Cal thought, somewhat amused by our gushing comments, “It’s just like home!” We weren’t blind to the irony ourselves.

We arrived at the Three Kings hotel in Beit Sahour, just outside of Bethlehem, and were set up in a room and given a great, filling meal. Along the way we met Samer, the Palestinian ATG guy who was our organiser, and the other half of the tour group, Jean Guy and Sabine from Paris. After dinner,
we joined the Parisians and wandered down to the local Catholic church to see the tail end of the service. As we went we saw Beit Sahour at night. Shops were open late, and teenagers wandered the streets chatting and texting and flirting. Men sitting on their porches greeted us: “Where are you from?” “You are welcome.”

“You are welcome” was a phrase we heard every day, everywhere we went in Palestine. And it was sincere, and we did feel it, we did feel welcome. A feeling precisely opposed to the way we’d felt at Zurich.

“What is your intention? What are you going to do? Why do you want to go to Israel?”

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morgue

Cal on the plane

NEXT: PALESTINE TRIP 2