Shades of Hebron

“How is it that they show up whenever you’re here?” I asked Nadav in considerable irritation.

I had opened the front door to find that a blue metal barrier and two occupation soldiers had sprung up like mushrooms overnight. (Sadly not the edible kind.) They were blocking the mouth of our street. The wall surrounds us and the only way to get into Bethlehem lay past them. And I was going to have to walk past them with an illegal Israeli, which is not the ideal accessory to have about your person when confronted with an unexpected military roadblock.

For the honour of the nation: silencing victims of domestic violence

Impelled by the murders of women in their hometown of Lyd, the Palestinian hip-hop group DAM has got together with Amal Murkus and Jackie Salloum to release a rap against honour killings. Sung in Arabic, as with most of DAM’s music, it has generated a critique by two academics living in the USA, written in a particularly obscure kind of academickese (the better to give the impression that they’re making a sophisticated point when really they’re not). Stripped of its frills, the main complaint of Lila Abu Lughod and Maya Mikdashi is this: DAM rapped about the murders of Palestinian women by Palestinian men without also mentioning Israel’s military occupation and systematic discrimination against Palestinians as a whole. And this makes Palestinians look bad.

Wedding bells

My sister’s wedding is approaching. When I told the neighbours about it, the congratulations were accompanied by fits of giggling that mystified me until my friend Farah tracked me down, took me by the elbow, and hissed, “Vicky, when you talk about weddings, I want you to say urus, OK? Not urs.”

“What’s wrong with urs?”

“It’s the way you say it. You are telling everyone that you are looking forward to your sister’s bastard.”

Art and apartheid: worlds apart

Dear Sir or Madam,

I am an MA student in Jewish Studies. A few weeks ago students taking Hebrew were encouraged to book tickets for Habima Theatre’s Hebrew-language performance of The Merchant of Venice as part of the ‘Globe to Globe’ Shakespeare festival.

During my undergraduate years (as a student of English literature) I practically lived at the Globe, developing incredible calf muscles as I stood through half of Shakespeare’s repertoire. The opportunity to see one of Shakespeare’s most controversial plays presented in Hebrew by a theatre company intimately acquainted with Jewish history and heritage could have been a strong incentive to make a return trip (and maybe even invest in a seat this time).

The least of these: a reflection on a bad choice

It was only half-eight in the morning, but it was already too warm for comfort. I could feel the acrid salty heat rising from the tarmac as I headed up the hill. The chapel was going to feel like an oven. Once again I caught myself fantasising about air conditioning, which not many people have in Palestine. Just imagine walking into a building and being met by a beautiful blast of cold air, and getting some iced grapefruit juice, and…

“Stop!”

The order was issued in an American accent and preceded by an earsplitting whistle. I didn’t stop for the whistle. I never do. If people want to talk to me, they can start by addressing me as though I’m a person too and not an errant sheepdog who needs to be brought to heel. At “Stop!” I reluctantly obeyed. I hadn’t eaten any breakfast yet, and you don’t pick fights with M16-wielding men without at least having had a cup of tea beforehand.

The entrance to Bethlehem, viewed from inside the checkpoint complex.

He was not a soldier, but a civilian employee from the company that has been contracted to manage this particular checkpoint. (Military occupation is big business.) The sun glinted on his dark glasses and the barrel of his rifle. Behind him was a female guard who was gazing up at him adoringly from beneath her baseball cap. I know that look, and it’s never pretty. The way some guys start parading around the checkpoint like peacocks in flak jackets if there happens to be a female colleague anywhere in the vicinity is like something out of a David Attenborough zoological documentary on mating rituals. And what better way to demonstrate power, manliness, and general desirability than by harassing the odd passer-by? Frankly I don’t know how the female soldiers and guards manage to keep their legs together.

“I don’t want to go through the machsom,” I called out wearily, resigning myself to the game. I tried to step forward so that I could talk to him in my normal voice, but he gave another shrill blast of the whistle (ow) and held up the palm of his hand.

“Where are you going?”

“To church.” I pointed at the road that sloped off to my right, skirting the separation wall. The guard turned away and said something to his colleague. I took this as permission to move. I was wrong. The resulting whistle was loud enough to make my heart jump skittishly. “Wait!”

‘Resistance: which way the future?’

The main entrance to the arts centre was bedecked with bands of white plastic tape, with ‘Peace Week’ printed on each strip in blue letters. It reminded me immediately of the tape used to cordon off crime scenes while police gather forensic evidence. The organisers of the week were playing on that image deliberately: Peace Week was established in response to violent street crime in inner city Manchester. Now it is in its tenth year.

The arts centre was hosting a film installation by Liz Crow, Resistance: Which Way the Future?. I don’t know if the centre deliberately arranged to feature this artwork during Peace Week. It may just have been a coincidence – but coincidental or not, the installation has something tough and dark and powerful to say about non-violence.

Entering the room, you sit down before the first of three screens. The film coughs into life with the sound of an engine. The first image: an exhaust trailing smoke, the underbelly of the bus. You watch for a long time. At first you are expectant. Then the wait starts to grate on you. What’s happening? What are you waiting for? With a sudden roar, the bus drives off, revealing a young nurse with a clipboard standing outside a creeper-covered country house. She makes a decisive mark on her clipboard, then walks briskly into the house.

The writing on the wall

If you are a tourist or pilgrim who arrives in Bethlehem via Checkpoint 300, the first thing you will see as you turn into the street is the concrete barrier that slices it in half, severing the neighbourhood from Rachel’s Tomb and the military base that lies adjacent to the holy site. Get closer to the wall and you will find the women of the neighbourhood waiting to meet you.

One of the simplest but most important aspects of my organisation’s work is providing a space where people can tell their stories. One day Toine had an idea: why not turn the wall itself into that space? We could collect short vignettes from the women who use the centre and hang them on the concrete. The stories would be like windows: tourists on their way to see Nativity Church or eat dinner at the optimistically named Bahamas Fish Restaurant would be able to catch a glimpse of Palestinian life.

The checkpoint game

“Feee -ky!”

Reem came sweeping into the office with an agitated clatter of bracelets. She always moves like a whirlwind, but I can tell when something has happened to disturb her: ‘v’ becomes a ‘f’ and she stretches the first syllable of my name to breaking-point.

“Do you know what has happened to me in this sheckpoint today?” she demanded, jabbing her thumb at our rear wall. (‘Ch’ becomes ‘sh’ as well.) “I could not believe my eyes, my ears, my own ears I could not believe! Do you know what they are doing now?”

I glanced nervously at the brimming coffee cups on the desk. She was gesticulating with enthusiasm and I could see a third-degree burns incident occurring if we weren’t careful. I managed to shepherd her into her chair (an impassioned Reem is a bit safer when she’s sitting down) and discreetly transferred the cups to a side table. Then I settled down and prepared to hear yet another checkpoint story. Every Palestinian has their checkpoint stories. Listening to these weary catalogues of mundane humiliation and everyday hurt, I always wish I could change the endings, but I can’t. The only thing left for me to do is listen.

Love under apartheid: a colleague’s story

Love Under Apartheid is a collection of videos in which Palestinians talk about the effects that the occupation has on their ability to form romantic relationships and retain ties with their family and friends. Recently Israel’s Citizenship Law (which precludes Israelis from obtaining citizenship for Palestinian spouses who come from the Occupied Territories or the Diaspora) has received quite a lot of attention, as it specifically seeks to prevent the spouses of Israelis from receiving citizenship on the basis of their ethnicity and cultural identity alone. But this law is nothing new. Occupation and dispossession have intruded on the private lives of Palestinians for over sixty years now, including their loves.

This video was made by my colleague Toine. He describes his marriage to Mary (a Palestinian woman from Bethlehem) and the birth of their children.

For over ten years he had to leave the country every three months to get his visa renewed; the Israeli authorities wouldn’t grant him residency rights. (He still doesn’t have the right to reside, although he at least gets longer than three months before each renewal now.) When he flies out of the country, he has to ring the airport to let them know that he is coming. As a man married to a Palestinian, he is a security risk. As a man married to a Palestinian, he is not allowed to be unsupervised in the airport. An armed guard meets him at the entrance and escorts him to his flight. He once told me jokingly, “It’s quite nice. At least I don’t have to queue!”

I laughed. Perhaps there is a bright side to everything. Even love under apartheid. His family still can’t quite appreciate its advantages, though.

Through a child’s eyes

Some graffiti by Banksy in Bethlehem: A Palestinian girl frisks a soldier.

One evening late last summer, as I walked home from a day spent in Dheisheh refugee camp, I was stopped at a flying checkpoint. (These are blockades that pop up unexpectedly for a few days, or even a few hours, as opposed to the permanent checkpoints.) I took off my jacket so that they could search the pockets and waited patiently. This wasn’t anything out of the ordinary. What was unusual was the age and appearance of the ‘soldiers’. The eldest of them was nine. She is a little girl who lives just round the corner.

“Shoes!” she said imperiously, in a magnificent imitation of our local IDF, and I removed my shoes. She had a long wooden stick slung across her body in the manner of a gun. She made the motions of scanning my shoes, and then demanded, “ID!” To my horror, I didn’t have my ID on me. I stood and waited while they discussed what to do with me – would they just refuse to let me pass, or would I have to be interrogated first? Should I be arrested? In the end, needing the toilet rather badly, I bribed the occupation army by proffering a squashed packet of Oreos that I may or may not have sat on at some point. They accepted cheerfully. After I had dashed in to the bathroom, I came back out to them, and we spent a happy evening playing tag and hide-and-seek.