The other side of the wall: Alternative tourist tour 
 

Health Work Committees, the organization that's guiding us here in Palestine (a more detailed article about this organization will follow) supplies us with all kinds of useful addresses and telephone numbers amongst others, they gave us the number of Ajman. He runs an agency that focuses on alternative tourism here. Everything we do around here is called alternative, and so far our stay here has indeed been anything but ordinary. Our organization painstakingly wants to assure we get the closest possible look at the true state of affairs in the Palestinian territories.

It's noon and we've just returned from the Mehwar centre for abused women. Everything seems to be closed, a pause dictated by the sultry heat. As there is also a lull in our program for the first time since our arrival in Bethlehem, we decide to call Ajman.

He asks us which time would be suitable for us to have a tour and somewhat hesitantly we ask if it would be convenient for him to do it now.

Not more than three minutes later we're in a mini-bus driving through the Shepherds' Fields. The place that allegedly constituted the scene on which the angle came to announce the good news –the birth of Jesus- to the shepherds.

Ajman probes us to find out what we've seen so far. He'd like to guide us in French, but we opt for English, as Maryam isn't as proficient in French as she is in English. Every now and then a French expression does slip into his explanation. We will find out later why he's so fond of the tongue of Molliere, Rimbaud, Camus, Sartre and so many other literary giants.

We drive towards the Jewish settlements and pass from a Zone A to a Zone C. In the A zone the Palestinian authorities are in full control. A zone C means that the Palestinians own the land (for the time being we should add, unfortunately), but that administration and police our in the hands of the Israeli authority. In fact they are under military law.

Ajman, who, with his long curls, sunglasses, cigarettes and relaxed laissez faire, laissez passer behavior reminds one of a philosophically minded student striding the narrow streets of the Quartier Latin in Paris. Someone's who's ready any time of the day to leave his seat in a cozy, liberal bar to go out on the street and preach 'love, peace and empathy or slogans like: underneath the asphalt there's a beach' to anyone willing to listen.

We stop at Herod's mountain, where they have uncovered only recently the tomb of this almost legendary king. We also get to stare at his ancient pool, now more than 2,000 years old. It looks a bit dilapidated now of course, but one can still imagine the vast and regal man-made oasis it once must have been.

Ajman shows us some Jewish settlements and explains us how it's impossible for him to ever enter them. We ask if we, armed with European passports may enter. The answer is yes, but only from the other side.

We see how the Israelis are constructing an intricate two-way system, with roads exclusively for Israelis and roads exclusively reserved for Palestinian traffic. It's easy to notice that the Israeli roads are better and located higher than their Palestinian counter-parts. The latter need tunnels to get passed the former.

For the time being we can still drive on this Israeli road, conveniently marked with yellow lines, so Israelis can always know they're on a 'safe' road. Mighty watch-towers arise on the side of these roads, every 100 meters or so. We ask if they're always manned and in this part they are indeed.

Ajman drives us to a particularly interesting –read: depressing or enraging- spot. It's an olive grove closed in by barbed wire. On a hill-top we see a few houses next to a Jewish settlement. The handful of isolated houses belong to Palestinians. They are completely closed of, literally trapped in a sort of no man's land. But in fact, there are people still living there, surrounded by the callous contours of an alien wall.

Ajman tells us the people over there may leave there houses, but they're not allowed to have visitors. They don't have the Jerusalem passport and their status is acutely precarious. To go to school the children have to cross over to the nearest village, but to do that they have to pass a check-point. A daily process that involves a scrutinizing search of their schoolbags. 'What do they expect to find in children's bags?', we ask.

'Nothing, of course, they only want to make life hard on them, to make them leave.'

Ajman points to the olive trees. Do you know how old these are? Some are thousands of years old. The Israelis uprooted hundreds of them to build their wall. And you know what they did with them? They buried them to cover their crime.'

Ajman tells us the story we already saw unfolding on a large map the Health Work Committees presented us with. The Israelis are surrounding the whole area of Bethlehem with settlements, they appear on hilltops all around the area and little by little they are being connected, like an ever tightening noose. They want the Palestinians to feel imprisoned, they'd like to see them turn desperate.

The settlements start out from scratch, at first they are called outposts, but soon enough they look like the most modern kind of huge holiday resorts, completely sealed off to any unwanted company. It makes you feel that the Israelis are there, omnipresent and always on the look out to grab more land, but at the same it's almost as if they are not really there and only exist in fairy-tales.

But make no mistake about it, they are certainly there. And as Ajman tells us, every day something new appears in the landscape, they're constantly expanding and perfecting their trap.

Again we ask how he deals with all this.

'Ow Palestinians have lots of ways to ease their troubles.'

He points to his house. A majestic building, a real dream house, as if it were made by Mattel for Ken and Barbie to live in it, but constructed with more taste.

'That's how we fight them, by making our houses as pretty as can be. To say, hey, this is our land. You know, we live better than them.'

It's true, the houses we see here are often amazing, big, and beautifully designed.

Just before Ajman drops us off at a local, non-tourist restaurant, he gives us some more information that makes some of the most impressive and expensive looking houses a very fragile quality that makes you ache deep down in your heart.

All of the houses standing too close to the wall have received warrants stating that their owners have to break them down. If not the Israeli army will do it for them. All expenses paid by the owner.

We sit down for lunch in an enchanting open air restaurant overlooking these fertile hills and cannot help but wondering why one people can go to such strenuous length to drive off other human beings.

16-06-2009 om 14:39 geschreven door Tederdraads  

During our interview with the writer Nassar Ibrahim we find out that he's married to an Iranian woman. He describes her with a lot of affection in the same adjectives I have come to associate with Iranian women: fiery, energetic with an indomitable spirit. He tells us she is running the ONLY refugee centre for abused women in the entire middle east. Immediately we make an appointment to meet her in the Mehwar centre.

This unique centre was founded with the help of the Italian government. There used to be no such institution in the whole of Palestine. Abused women had to be contented with shelter in a clinic or even a prison.

Now all that has changed, these unfortunate women have a safe haven to turn to. And safe it is. During a short tour we get to see all the safety precautions that the staff takes to ensure the well-being of the women. Nobody gets in without a proper appointment or an official document stating that his presence there is allowed.

The Persian director is a bit reluctant to have her picture and her name accompanying our interview or any article resulting from our meeting. We'll call her Malika for practical purposes. She insists we drink coffee, as all people we meet here tend to do.

She explains us how her centre is not only unique in Palestine, but in the entire world. The centre is not only a shelter, it's much more than that. Everything is done for these women, everything from A to Z. In the morning cars come to take them to work or to school. They have gym classes twice a week and everyday they attend all kinds of sessions to help them find their place in society.

This is not an easy task and Malika carries a heavy burden. Only the worst cases come here. These women have been sexually abused since their early childhood. Their entire development has suffered in so many ways. The centre offers a wide spectrum of aid, both psychological and legal.

We get a tour by the fitness instructor, a very enthusiastic, bantam sized woman who seems to love all shades of pink. She leads us through the halls of the centre, the walls are adorned with pictures depicting violence against women. Atrocious images of Afghan women being stoned to death accompany pictures of an Italian woman who is clearly a victim of some brutal domestic violence.

An other wall boasts explanatory drawings in a vivid, almost comical style. 'Who made these?', we ask.

'Ow, I did', she smiles.

She even insisted on painted her gym all by herself.

In pink, almost as a rule.

We don't get to see any of the women, nobody is allowed to see them. The tour ends> She points to an outer wall and says: 'You know, we chose this kind of stone, because no bullet can get through it.'

We ask her if someone ever took a shot at it.

'O no, no, as soon as we see or hear anything suspect we call the bullies'

The what?

It turns out she means the police, but she keeps calling them the bullies, charmingly unaware of what the word bully means.

Our guide sighs happily. 'There is so much work to do around here. Sometimes me and my colleagues just stay here and our husbands come and visit us here, so we can continue our work.'

We are amazed to see so much good will. In the days to follow we will notice the same kind of warm, constructive attitude not just towards abused women, but also towards little children, the elderly and, most difficult of all, the mentally disabled, as we tour one social centre after the other.

16-06-2009 om 13:10 geschreven door Tederdraads  

Shaub means hot in Arabic and that describes the feeling you get when you walk a street around here. It's hot, burning hot. Already in the morning it's over 30 degrees around here. If you stay in it's cool. The houses are mainly built out of a sandy colored stone and inside it's never very warm. People try their best to keep the mosquitoes out, but that doesn't always work. So Maryam and I are more or less covered by mosquito bites.

Before we arrived in Palestine, we read a lot about the conditions here. Particularly striking was an account by a Belgian woman living in the Westbank with her Palestinian husband. Every day she had to pass checkpoints to get to her work in Israel. Each time she had to lift her blouse up to her neck, to prove she wasn't carrying any explosives. You can imagine some of the humiliation she must have felt. One time an Israeli soldier punished her because she showed her passport a little bit too close to his face. Apparently he thought the passport was going to explode in his face.

The soldier forced her to stand in the broiling sun for half an hour. When you read it, you think: hmm, that must be uncomfortable and boring as well. But over here, you only have to be exposed to this unforgiving heat for one minute to realize what kind of cruel torture this is. It's pure harassment of the vilest sort. After two minutes already every cell in your body is looking for shade, for a place to hide from these attacking rays of sun.

The woman said that after half an hour she was completely scourged. Walking these streets around noon and seeing how the shopkeepers close their shops between one and four, seeing people rush inside when the sun reaches its highest point is enough to convince me that she wasn't exaggerating.

So that's where these Israeli soldiers, nervously shouting kids in uniform in fact, look for allies. They force the sun to perpetrate their crimes for them. After only a couple days here I'm confronted with a lot more of the ingenuity of the Israeli people to bring their psychological genocide against the Palestinian people into effect.  

Luckily the Palestinians are equally ingenious at finding ways to cope with the oppressing and adamant behavior of their neighbors.

16-06-2009 om 12:28 geschreven door Tederdraads