November 2006 Olive Harvest Delegation

Interfaith Peace-Builders & American Friends Service Committee

Report One: Waiting – and Concrete Realities

 November 5 & 6

“Initial Impressions in the Sand”

Walls, lines, fences, borders

All projects of separation,

Not communications, nor love,

nor reconciliations.

Lie, surrounding our vision

With distinction, deeply

Embedded by history.

Long held by fears, in trepidations.

Walls, lines, fences, borders.

What are these signs of hopeless frustration,

If not some fabrication of

Mankind’s hopeless recognition

Of promises kept and broken

Deeply rooted in pain, greed

and thoughtless action?

Like the olive tree which has

Seen years, decades, centuries of

Seasons broken and long, dry and fruitless.

The people of these demarcations

Have come to produce myths,

Stories and conversations that

continue to extend this

Feeling of separation, desperation

And frustrations.

Walls, lines, borders and fences.

When is the Promised Land of

Milk and honey within these

Feelings of separation,

Desperation and indignation?

Maybe the answer lies within

The delegation of friends who

Come to the lands to be present

With those who mourn?

Maybe it is possible that walls,

Doors, circles, specks, gates

Might crumble, melt, and

Disappear like other human

Fabrications?
Maybe?

--Bill Plitt

Airport unWelcome

I was excited and anxious about going back to the West Bank after an almost seven year absence. 

On Sunday, November 5, after a two day orientation in Washington, D.C., the delegation departed the U.S. for Palestine and Israel.  The travel itself, and the stopover in Zurich, were pretty exhausting and intense.  I could relate to the mixture of excitement and anxiety that others on the delegation were feeling – but for a different reason.

I have traveled through Ben Gurion Airport in Tel Aviv often.  My airport experience, like that of other Arab Americans, has always been a dragged out and tiring interrogation process – especially after a 12 hour flight.  Consistently, I never fail to be singled out for special interrogation by Israeli personnel.

Though I’m accustomed to going through a time-consuming process of interrogation, I’ve never accepted it.  No matter how often I am singled out for extra scrutiny, it is still not something I get used to.   

There was a chance that because I was part of a delegation, I could be spared the loss of several hours in waiting and being questioned.   But that was not to be.  So I waited.  And waited.  I told the Israeli security agents that I was not traveling alone but was a part of a delegation.  The entire delegation of almost a dozen people were already out and waiting for me in a bus and waiting for a long time.  

Waiting.  How many times have Palestinians expressed that this central feature of their daily life is intolerable and endlessly disruptive of their day-to-day lives?  The other central feature of their lives is uncertainty – both of which I only catch a glimpse of with my airport experience. 

That glimpse into a life of perpetual, no end in sight, waiting and uncertainty reminds me of why I’m here.  I am not a native-born Palestinian, so whatever inconveniences I suffer and whatever racism is directed towards me, I know it is not part of my daily experience.  I try to imagine life for the Palestinians, and ironically, at this moment of waiting, it’s hard to imagine how Palestinians survive it day after day, year after year.  Waiting at checkpoints, hundreds of them scattered throughout the West Bank.  Waiting for a gate to open, waiting to be let in or out of a gate in Israel’s wall located in Palestinian cities and towns, waiting for the international community to decide that they should be free.

The waiting and uncertainty, along with the security agents’ dismissiveness to my requests, exhaust me emotionally and physically.  I saw a film once about the centrality of waiting, the loss of hours at a time – often daily – for students, doctors, teachers, mothers, fathers.

This time, though waiting was dragged out and exhausting, my questioning during the interrogation lasted no more than twenty minutes.

There were many personal questions.  Demands for home and cell phone numbers.   When will I get out of here?  Need to get some sleep.  Waiting. 

--Miryam Rashid

First Impressions

After a brief stopover in Zurich, we arrived at Ben Gurion International Airport near Tel Aviv about 4:00 p.m. on Monday afternoon. We felt relief at the end of a very long day of travel and excitement about finally arriving in Israel. While standing in one of several busy lines at Passport Control, Orna of the Israeli travel agency “Smile” approached us with a sign and greeted us warmly. Said Rabieh, our guide and travel companion for the coming twelve days, was waiting in the baggage claim area to greet us also.

While the rest of us passed through Passport Control with little delay, the only Muslim and Arab American in our group was taken aside for some special attention. Miryam later described the experience as designed to exhaust the person, to make them feel anxious and insecure, and to set the tone for things to come while visiting. A person is left not knowing what is to come. The actual questioning ran for 15-20 minutes and the rest of the time was spent just waiting. Having Orna to check on Miryam’s progress was a definite advantage for the rest of us, and something that Said and the others of us could not do.

After gathering our bags and proceeding to the bus, we waited an hour and half outside at the bus for Miryam. Even though she should enjoy the same rights and protections of other U.S. citizens, Miryam was treated to a process that purposely wasted the group’s and her time, as well as being personally frustrating and demeaning. Obviously, a greater number of personnel would expedite this process and make it far less frustrating and time-consuming for everybody. Many asked the question, what indeed is the purpose of such a process? Miryam observed that the waiting and questioning seemed intended to imprint a sense of insecurity within her – something that would linger throughout her time in Israel and Palestine.

We traveled to Jerusalem through the dark. Despite the darkness we could see various Israeli and Palestinian towns and villages as we made our way to Jerusalem. Said pointed out the newly constructed “security wall” lining much of the road. We passed through a checkpoint as we entered Jerusalem and arrived at the St. George College guesthouse. A welcome and too brief break preceded a family style dinner at the St. George’s Pilgrim Guest House.  Said gave an overview of the region’s history as we examined maps of the land west of the Jordan River. Names and relationships of peoples and places were something of a blur as we headed off to bed to begin our firsthand exploration of Israel and Palestine.

This morning was our first in Jerusalem. I got up early and walked down to the Old City by myself. As I walked, I noticed that everyone I saw seemed to be serious, and almost in a hurry, going to work, or to school. They paid no attention to me, an obvious American. Most, if not all of them seemed like they were Palestinian. As I got close to the wall of the Old City, by Herod’s gate, I noticed some Israeli soldiers, heavily armed, talking to each other. I sensed almost immediately a change in the way things felt. There was a distinct, palpable underlying tension in the air. And these two soldiers were not stopping anyone, or overtly threatening anyone at all. But even I knew that they could, any time they wanted to, and it made me feel uncomfortable.

I thought that I had begun to have just a taste of what Palestinians live with all the time. I didn’t like it.

I also wonder what it might be like for those two young Israeli soldiers, who were way too young, in my eyes. What was it like to have such power? What was it like to be surrounded by people who are both afraid of you and angry with you? Is this something that they enjoy doing? Do they ever yearn for peace, real peace, so that they don’t have to do this anymore? I wonder what I would say if I could ask them.

--Scott Kennedy & Bill Mims

November 7

Squeezing East Jerusalem: Checkpoints and Walls

The Qalandiya Checkpoint which separates Jerusalem from the rest of the West Bank is a huge, brightly lit maze of concrete and steel that funnels people and vehicles. On a cold November evening our delegation did what thousands of Palestinians must do every day:  we waited in lines before turnstiles, waited until a light turned green so we could pass to the next line and wait some more.  We stepped through metal detectors, had our possessions x-rayed, and held our passports up to bulletproof glass windows where young, bored-looking Israeli soldiers decided who would pass and who would be turned back.  It took us about 45 minutes. 

The checkpoint illustrated the multiple inequities between Jewish Israelis and Palestinians that the delegation learned about and witnessed this day.  Besides the delay and indignity of the checkpoint, we learned from the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions about the inequitable tax burdens on Jerusalem’s Palestinian residents, the demolition of houses for multiple reasons, the encroachment of massive Jewish settlements on Palestinian land, and, most dramatic of all:  the Wall. 

Officially called the “separation barrier,” this massive concrete and barbed-wire structure cuts a wide and raw gash through the countryside around Jerusalem, bi- and even trisecting neighborhoods and villages.    Dahoud of the Palestinian environmental NGOs Network (PENGON) told the delegation that the Wall is planned to enclose Jewish settlements around Palestinian East Jerusalem, bringing the settlements into Jerusalem and eventually cutting off Jerusalem Palestinians from West Bank Palestinians.  Seeing the massive, gray, unsightly wall smack in the middle of Palestinian neighborhoods was shocking.  I have seen pictures of the wall, but I was not prepared for its physical presence.  It was absolutely shocking both in its physical imposition on the Palestinian landscape and in its location – separating Palestinian towns and homes from each other. 

From the ground, the Wall has an almost medieval look, with guard towers looming over its grey concrete expanse.  Even higher than the guard towers are the poles for cameras, keeping watch more efficiently than any ancient watchman could.   The Wall is adorned with graffiti and surrounded by rubble fields.  Sometimes it runs close to or even through houses.  At one point a house was incorporated into the Wall and used as a guard tower, Dahoud said.  As the delegation walked through the rubble to see the Wall closer, some children were playing nearby.  A little girl waved a pink balloon that was almost deflated.  A little boy playfully grabbed it from her and tossed it into the trench next to the wall.  That was the end of that toy.

Earlier, Jeff Halper of the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions explained that the Zionist ideal of Israel as a Jewish state, combined with its establishment and expansion of settlements into the Occupied Palestinian Territories, has led to an intractable situation.  Rather than a geographically contiguous Palestinian state, Israeli policies are leading to an apartheid situation with Palestinians imprisoned in several separate cantons or “Bantustans.”  Seeing the wall and the settlements in the West Bank today forced me to visualize that possibility in a most concrete way.

--Mary Ann Weston

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