CHALLENGING THE WALL: TOWARD

A PEDAGOGY OF HOPE

Toine van Teeffelen (ed.)

Culture and Palestine Series, Bethlehem

ARAB EDUCATIONAL INSTITUTE

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Copyright 2007 by AEI-Open WindowsAll rights reserved.No part of this book may be reproduced without written permission from the publisher.

Requests for permission to reproduce selections from this book should be mailed to: AEI-Open Windows, aei@p-ol.com

Published in Bethlehem, Palestine, by the Arab Educational Institute (AEI-Open Windows) as part of the Culture and Palestine series.

ISBN data:

Challenging the Wall: Toward a Pedagogy of HopeEdited by Toine van TeeffelenIllustrations by James Prineas, Leo Gorman and Alrowwad Cultural and Theatre Training CenterIncludes biographical references.

The “Culture and Palestine” series explores expressions of Palestinian culture, including popular customs, arts, and traditional stories, as well as writings and reflections upon Palestinian daily life.

www.aeicenter.org

Printed in Bethlehem, Palestine

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

Acknowledgement

Introduction

PART 1: REFLECTIONS

Mary Grey

Deep breath - Taking a deep breath: spiritual resources for a pedagogy of hope

Mitri Raheb

Culture - Culture as the art of breathing

Toine van Teeffelen and Fuad Giacaman

Sumud - Resistance in daily life

Jacobus (Coos) Schoneveld

Sacrifice - “Do not lay your hand on the boy or do anything to him”

Henri Veldhuis

Solidarity - How ethnic tendencies of a protestant Israel theology undermine solidarity

Dick de Groot

Ubuntu - I am because we are

Pat Gafney

Women-peacemakers - Crack in the Wall

Nikki Thanos and Leo B. Gorman

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Pop-Ed - From ‘cha-ching’ to ‘ahhh-oh’ in popular education: 

Beyond the banking model

Abdelfattah Abusrour

Nonviolence - A story of beautiful resistance

Susan Atallah

Voices - The power to have an impact

Gied ten Berge

Imagination - Mene Tekels on the Wall

Brigitte Piquard

Space/symbolic violence - Paintings, murals, and graffiti on the West Bank Wall:

Coping mechanisms and acts of resilience

Ido Abram

Identity - Communicating identity across walls

James Prineas

Photography and Internet - Virtual means to defeating the Wall

PART 2: INTERVIEWS

Terry Boullata Bit by bit, the Wall became more tangible

Maha Abu Dayyeh As long as there is a society that resists,

there is hope

Jizelle Salman Life in Palestine: The magnet that draws me home

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Hania Bitar I have to divide hope into stages to make it more realistic

Alexander Qamar Jerusalem was once a cosmopolitan city

Abdalla Abu Rahme We lock ourselves up in barrels, boxes, jails, cylinders, and cages

Claire Anastas We are imprisoned, buried alive in a tomb

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ACKNOWLEDGMENT

The contribution of Mitri Raheb previously appeared under the title, “Culture as the Art

to Breathe” in This Week in Palestine (TWIP), September 2006. We thank TWIP for

permission to republish the article in this book. Four of the seven interviews – those with

Maha Abu Dayyeh, Hania Bitar, Jizelle Salman, and Terry Boullata – were originally

conducted for the Dutch peace organization United Civilians for Peace. We are also

thankful to them for their permission to reproduce the interviews. All interviews have

previously appeared on various websites, including www. ElectronicIntifada .net . Gied ten

Berge’s contribution was originally written as a speech that was delivered beside the

Separation Wall during two ‘solidarity pilgrimages’ undertaken by Pax Christi

Netherlands during the Christmas holidays in 2004 and 2006. Coos Schoneveld’s

contribution was originally written for a seminar about international story exchanges. The

seminar was organized by AEI-Open Windows and IKV (Interchurch Peace Council) of

the Netherlands, and took place in Beit Sahour on May 14, 2004. Finally, we are very

grateful to James Prineas, Leo Gorman, and Alrowwad Center for allowing us to reprint

their photos in this book.

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INTRODUCTION

This book grew out of despair. During the years 2004–2006, several members of the Arab

Educational Institute (AEI-Open Windows) were directly faced with the horrifying

consequences of the building of the Separation Wall in the Bethlehem district of

Palestine. The situation of Claire Anastas – a member of AEI’s women’s group – and her

family, was especially dreadful. Her house was destined to be surrounded by the Wall on

three sides. Like the Israeli settlements, the building of the Wall seemed to be – and, for

Israel, is intended to be – an irreversible, unstoppable process. We remember well that

our women’s group staged a sit-in in front of Claire’s house to protest the Wall, but we

also knew that there was little else that anyone could do about it. People felt that the

Rachel’s Tomb area was a lost cause. Neighbors came to give their moral support but had

already prepared themselves for the inevitable.

Then the Wall was built. Two years ago. Like a hammer blow. The area, previously one

of the liveliest in Bethlehem, became desolate. Whenever possible, people, shops, and

businesses, left the area. There was no way to work or bring up children in the shadow of

the Wall.

There was, however, one remarkable development. Some journalists, including

international TV reporters, came to visit the area to show its degradation to the world. At

Christmastime, they included Rachel’s Tomb in portraits that presented the plight of

Bethlehem and the Palestinians. The Anastas house was visited by journalists, groups,

and delegations. Nothing changed – at least not visibly. However, international visitors

and members of pilgrimage groups showed an interest in adopting a presence there as a

sign of solidarity. Visiting groups started to put graffiti and drawings on the Wall.

We were suddenly faced with the question: How to create hope in a desperate situation?

It was decided to establish a peace house to help revitalize the area and to conduct

advocacy on the issue of the illegality of the Wall.

Building a peace house in a dead zone requires sources of inspiration. The present book

was set up to provide such inspiration (as a complement to the inspiration that springs

from the activities that are currently being undertaken at the house). A range of scholars

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and activists were asked to contribute their reflections. The common denominator of all

contributions is reflected in the title of this book: Challenging the Wall: Toward a

Pedagogy of Hope. On the one hand, we were looking for inspirational ways to challenge

the Wall, and on the other hand, we were trying to see how such ways could serve a

pedagogy of hope. In the end we received a rich yield of approaches, conceptualizations,

case studies, comparisons, and stories. The contributions are illustrated by a recent series

of interviews, conducted by the editor, with Palestinians who live close to the Wall –

interviews about their suffering but also about their sources of hope and energy. We

summarize both sections of the book.

Reflections

“Taking a Deep Breath,” by British theologian Mary Grey, introduces a concept that

stands in opposition to the suffocation that many Palestinians feel as a result of the

restrictions on freedom of movement. Her plea for the “breath of life,” for a renewed

spiritual and cultural energy precisely under the most desperate circumstances is

complemented by the contribution of Mitri Raheb, pastor at the Lutheran Church in

Bethlehem. He calls for “the art of sustaining one’s breath,” with special emphasis on the

nourishing role of culture so as not to lose “hope and heart.” The same long-term focus is

characteristic of the Palestinian concept of sumud or steadfastness, combining the

characteristics of rootedness and perseverance. Toine van Teeffelen and Fuad Giacaman

of the Arab Educational Institute elaborate why this concept was chosen to be included in

the name of the peace house at Rachel’s Tomb. They point to the danger that a symbol

such as sumud may become rigid and absolute. Whereas symbols and general calls for

sacrifice and solidarity may be beacons of hope, a precautionary warning is in order.

Coos (Jacobus) Schoneveld, a theologian of the Netherlands, warns that even though

sacrifices in the form of giving one’s life to a cause may be required at certain moments

and in ultimate situations, it should be made clear that it is not God who asks for the

sacrifice of people. Henri Veldhuis, also theologian, critiques the Dutch Protestant

Churches’ choice to stay in “unrelinquishable solidarity” with Israel, and warns that

solidarity should be ‘solid’ and built upon honest involvement as well as inner freedom.

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Realizing values in desperate circumstances cannot be without community building.

Throughout the book, this element is highlighted over and over again. Dick de Groot, an

educationalist, explains the African community concept of ubuntu. He casts his net wide:

Ubuntu is needed not just in situations where the community is threatened because of

such artificial obstacles like the Wall, but also as a correction to the pervasive and

extreme individualism that coincides with globalization. Pat Gafney, of Pax Christi UK,

writes that community building implies the peacemaking role of women as connectors

who are strong as rocks and able to “make cracks in the wall.” American popular

educators Nikki Thanos and Leo Gorman tell about their experiences with grassroots

community-building in the Americas – a concept that counters a ‘banking’ model of

learning and living.

Both Abdelfattah Abusrour (from the cultural center Alrowwad in Aida Camp, on the

western side of Rachel’s Tomb) and Susan Atallah (from the Terra Sancta School for

Girls/St. Joseph in Bethlehem), point to the need for a community context when initiating

communicative projects in the spheres of the media, drama, and diary writing. They show

how communicative work among young people serves not only to release tensions but

also to give them a voice that is aimed towards the outside world. In the process, they

help to break stereotypes of Palestinians. The communicative aspect of hope-inspiring

actions is further worked out in relation to the Wall by two contributions that specifically

deal with writing and drawing on the Wall as a technique of creative nonviolent

resistance. Gied ten Berge of the Dutch peace movement recalls his memories of creative

graffiti on the Berlin Wall and explains its relevance in challenging the present ‘Sharon

Wall’; while Brigitte Piquard, a lecturer at universities in the UK and France, studies the

popular expressions on the Wall that assert identity and reclaim space.

There are two more contributions that focus on the way in which audiences can be

reached through communicative projects. Dutch educator Ido Abram discusses the

possibility of empowering forms of communication and narrative between Palestinians

and Israelis across walls (understood both as a reality and a metaphor). Australian James

Prineas, several of whose photos are incorporated in this book, shows how digital media,

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including the website www.palestine-family.net, can make a crucial difference in

communicating a human Palestinian message to western audiences.

Interviews

The second part of the book consists of interviews with Palestinians who live (or who are

being threatened with the possibility of living) close to the Wall. The interviews raise

three questions: How is your daily life influenced by the Wall and the checkpoints? What

does freedom mean to you? What are your sources of energy?

The persons who were interviewed show how the presence of the Wall creates an

enormous burden on daily life and traveling, and has a pervasive negative influence on

family life, face-to-face contacts, and mentality. The sources of hope differ from person

to person but are never absent, whether it is (the laugh of) one’s children; the presence of

family and friends; the feeling of homecoming despite checkpoints; the persistent anger

about injustice, which serves to keep hope alive; the simple, good deeds that are offered

to others; the memories of cosmopolitanism in the Holy Land; or the search for an

interested audience. In fact, the interviews show how each Palestinian – sometimes

desperately – is searching for sources of life and hope against all odds.

The editor

October 2007

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PART 1 REFLECTIONS

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Deep breath

TAKING A DEEP BREATH:SPIRITUAL RESOURCES FOR A PEDAGOGY OF HOPE

Mary Grey

It is impossible to describe the shock and disturbed emotions on first seeing the Israeli

‘security’ Wall snaking its inexorable way around villages and towns and turning the land

effectively into a vast fortress. It is equally hard to grasp the full implications for the lives

of Palestinians. For a traveler with the option of going home to a country without war, it

is one thing; for the people of the land who are trying to carve out a life of dignity and

hope for the future – especially for their children and young people – the Wall presents an

almost insurmountable challenge to resist. And more than to resist, the imperative for

Palestinians and those in solidarity with them is to discover a way to live so as to ground

hope in a changed future. It is often said that in order to be happy, human beings need

community (a network of meaningful social relations), a relationship with nature (or the

land), and faith. In this context I want to explore the spirituality of ‘taking a deep breath’

as part of a pedagogy of hope.

The Spirit as breath of life

Spirituality in its simplest meaning is the life of the Spirit, embracing the human spirit,

the human dynamism for life, the human zeitgeist (spirit of the times), the energy-

grounding hope, itself linking with the Divine, the Universal Spirit of life that is shared

by people of all faiths and people of no official faith. But the meaning of spirit that unites

us in the most literal way of all is the Spirit as breath of life that grounds hope. Taking a

deep breath in this Dark Night of the Palestinian people, means connecting with this

Spirit, calling on resources for the long haul, and refusing to give way to the suffocating

effects of daily violence and humiliation. Not an easy option. Yet the most ancient

meaning of ‘taking a deep breath’ is drawing deep on the Spirit, the breath of life, the

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breath that keeps hope alive and energizes the hope of new life, as the Divine Spirit has

been actively doing since the dawn of time.

Taking a deep breath brings the gift of living peacefully when there is no peace: this

means calling on a type of imagination that is prophetic in remembering and seeing

differently – an imagination that summons us to live from a new reality that does not yet

exist but that can be embodied in every act of nonviolent resistance, of giving thanks, of

praising God – in acts of simple kindness, moments of joy, beauty, singing, and dancing.

In so doing we draw strength from ancient traditions that form Palestinian identity, such

as hospitality, love of the beauty of the land – the olive trees, the fruit trees in blossom –

the myths and poems that celebrate this, the stories that we want our children to

remember. It is more important than ever, during times of persecution, tensions, and daily

harassment, to draw strength from cherished traditions. The seasoned Mennonite peace

campaigner, Jean-Paul Lederach, tells in his recent book of making peace in Tajikistan

through the initiative of a professor who climbed a mountain to challenge an obstinate

Mullah, a warlord who was blocking the peace talks. However, their conversation did not

focus on obstacles to peace but on their shared love of Sufi poetry and mysticism. After

several months of journeying up and down the mountain, the Mullah consented to

descend and face the warlords. This was a peace that was made through friendship,

through shared love of beauty, not by forced agreement1 and not through bloodshed.

Flourishing

Taking a deep breath also means turning round the notion of future salvation to mean

flourishing – a concept that refers to more than the attainment of human rights – a state of

peace where a new, nonviolent symbolic order is enabled and embodied here and now,

not in the future. Hope is grounded here in history, not endlessly deferred to some

utopian future state of events. Not for nothing does Bethlehem mean ‘house of bread’.

Taking a deep breath means to believe that the Spirit is working to make new realities –

this House of Peace, this House of Bread, this new peace group and movement for

justice. The Spirit gives energy to sustain the daily rhythms of life – of feeding people

1 Jean Paul Lederach, The Moral Imagination: the Art and Soul of Building Peace, New York: OUP, 2005.

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and sharing meals, watering trees, caring for animals, enabling laughter, telling stories,

and keeping festival. Planting trees, sowing seeds, and baking bread are all activities that

literally embody our hope.

I see all this happening in the remote rural villages of northwest India, in the desert state

of Rajasthan, where I have been involved for twenty years with a small NGO, Wells for

India, which I helped to found. Wells for India seeks to ensure water security and dignity

for vulnerable rural communities.1 During the drought years (latterly drought and flood

have become interchangeable), it was haunting to see groups of women and young girls,

water jars on their heads, walking ever longer distances in search of water. How did they

find the energy to work sixteen-hour days, not only searching for water and wood for fuel

and fodder but also tending cattle and goats, caring for small children, cooking, and

toiling in the fields? Often their menfolk became very frustrated with the failure of

agriculture and would take to drink and to drugs – Rajasthan is on the opium route from

Afghanistan – and sink into deep depression. On a fundamental level, it seemed that the

women’s energy was spiritual; that sustaining the rhythm of life for their families brought

strength and meaning to their own lives and even gave them the capacity to celebrate the

many religious festivals and to be faithful to their tradition of hospitality. Love of the

land, the desert trees, and their ancestral villages (if they hadn’t been forced to migrate

because of drought) all contributed to grounding hope in the present.

In taking a deep breath, we share God’s hesed – steadfastness and faithfulness – and

God’s vulnerability to our suffering. We keep God’s presence dynamic in our lives when

(it appears that) God does not seem to be able to do much to help us: except to be

Emmanuel, God with us in our struggles. But somehow, through sharing this

steadfastness, a wider vision is kept alive, a hope that there will be a common future, that

as human beings we belong together – Palestinians and Israelis, Muslim, Jew, and

Christian – and that at some point in history reconciliation will be enabled, even if at this

given moment, it appears that a common, shared, peaceful future lies beyond the horizon

of possibilities.

Space between people

1 See our website: www.wellsforindia.org.

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Taking a deep breath is trusting that the Divine Spirit moves between opposing peoples

as ‘The Go-Between God’.1 If hope is to be kept alive, it is vital to keep space open,

space to breathe, making room between opposing violent factions. The Spirit keeps open

possibilities of connection and relating – as recounted in the above-mentioned story of

the Mullah who loved Sufi mysticism. This idea of the space between people, being

either the ‘I-Thou’ of deep connection, or the ‘I-it’ of objectivity (and therefore

separation, then objectification, even demonization), derives from the Jewish philosopher

Martin Buber who, at the creation of the state of Israel, argued strongly against the two-

state division and solution to the tensions between Israelis and Palestinians.2 Keeping

open the space of interconnectedness is another way of embodying hope. Refusal to block

memories of solidarity, friendship, and neighborliness is part of this. In other contexts we

have learned that forcing people to violence is partly caused by blocking these memories

of neighborliness. Before the war in the Balkans, Serbs and Croats, Muslims and

Christians lived in harmony. Before partition in India, many Hindus and Muslims also

lived in harmony. Today we can see that harmony still existing in the project areas of

Wells for India, even if in other places it has erupted into violence. Hope allows wider

horizons to blossom.

This leads to my final point. Movements of hope extend beyond faith communities: hope

that the killing systems can be transformed is what connects all people of good will. The

deeper the breath, the deeper the possibilities of connection – the connection that brings

possibilities of justice. The great spiritual leader Mahatma Gandhi believed in the

intrinsic goodness of human nature. His message, his pedagogy of hope, was to educate

people in alternatives to violence, to offer them real possibilities for transformation. He

hoped that they would respond positively. Life in his ashrams sustained the daily rhythms

of spinning, sowing seeds, sharing simple food, and creating a life of dignity for the

poorest people. He was killed embodying this hope, but his vision lives on. Is this

mindless optimism? Or deeply rooted hope in life itself – that fundamental love that

moves the earth, the heavens, and the stars?

1 The phrase is the late John Taylor’s, The Go-Between God, London: Collins, 1972. 2 Martin Buber, I and Thou, Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1935.

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This great affirmation of hope comes from Chile, but its message celebrates resistance to

the Wall and the belief that dreams of freedom will prevail:

I believe that beyond the mist the sun waits. I believe that beyond the dark night it is raining stars ...

I believe that this lost ship will reach port. They will not rob me of hope, it shall not be broken,

it shall not be broken.My voice is filled to overflowing

With the desire to sing.

I believe in reason not in the force of arms; I believe that peace can be sown throughout the earth. I believe in our nobility, created in the image of God, And with free will reaching for the skies.

They will not rob me of hope; it shall not be broken,it shall not be broken.1

1 “Confessing our Faith around the World,” South America, WCC 1985, in Janet Morley ed., Bread of Tomorrow, Maryknoll: Orbis, 1992, p.113.

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Culture

CULTURE AS THE ART OF BREATHING

Mitri Raheb

There was a time when people thought that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict was like a 100-

meter run. Participants behaved accordingly; they made a concentrated, short-term effort

to muster all the strength they could. When they reached the goal, they were out of

breath, but they could afford it for this brief race. However, people are increasingly

realizing that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, one of the longest ongoing conflicts in

modern history, is more like a 36-kilometer marathon. If participants were to behave as

though they were taking part in a 100-meter run, they would perish. They would resign

quickly, lose hope and heart, and emigrate either physically or psychologically. During a

marathon, people need to breathe differently, to prepare in another way, and to run at a

well-trained yet more relaxed pace. The key is to sustain one’s breath.

For Palestinians who live in this ongoing and seemingly unending conflict, culture is the

art of sustaining one’s breath. I often meet people and donors who think that culture in

this context is a luxury that we Palestinians cannot and should not afford. For these

donors, relief is what the Palestinians need under occupation. They need bread to eat – to

fill their stomach – so that they can think. This is usually the logic used. Our tragedy as

Palestinians, since the Balfour Declaration, has been that our struggle has often been

portrayed as a humanitarian crisis rather than one that has to do with identity and self-

determination. But people “shall not live by bread alone.” Culture is one of the most

important elements for people’s survival. Under immense constraints and in the most

immoral situations, culture is the art of learning how to breathe normally. In contexts of

conflict, people concentrate mainly on those who “kill the body” but often forget about

those who “kill the soul,” i.e., the dignity, creativity, and vision of a people. Without a

vision, nations “cast off restraint.” Culture is the art that enables the soul not only to

survive but to thrive. Culture is the art that enables one to refuse being solely on the

receiving end, to resist being perceived only as a mere victim. Culture is the art of

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becoming an actor rather than a spectator. It is the art of celebrating life in a context that

is still dominated by forces of death and domination – the art of resisting creatively and

nonviolently.

Sacred place

However, culture is a necessity not only at times of conflict. Culture is crucial not mainly

in resisting occupation but as an essential, positive way of expressing oneself the way one

is and communicating one’s story the way one wants. Culture has thus to do with self-

determination. Culture is the arena where we determine who we are – according to our

own definition and not that of others. Culture is the medium through which we

communicate what we really want in a language that is different than that of political

semantics and religious formulas. Within the Palestinian context, people have reached a

stage where they feel that political rhetoric no longer represents what they think and

desire. Also, people often feel suffocated by certain forms of religious expressions that

have too much religion and too little spirituality. Culture is a sacred space where people

can learn how to breathe freely in a context where the fresh air seems to get thinner by

the minute.

Culture is one of the most important pillars of a future Palestinian state. The role that is

played by culture in our future state will determine whether Palestinians consider

Palestine to be their homeland only by birth or by choice as well. What happens in the

cultural zone will indicate the direction in which Palestine is heading: toward a

democratic state where there is not only freedom from occupation but also a state-

guaranteed freedom of expression and allocation of resources to ensure that the cradle of

the three monotheistic religions becomes a major cultural hub for humanity.

Last but not least, culture is an important bridge between Palestine and the rest of the

world. Although culture has to do with expressing oneself as one is, this is always done in

relation to others. Encountering the other is always important in understanding oneself. It

is in the light of meeting a different context that one realizes one’s own unique context.

Culture thus becomes the space where people can meet others and themselves, where

they can discover a language that is local yet universal, and where they realize that in

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order to breathe, one has to keep the windows wide open to new winds and fresh air that

blow in from across the seas and oceans. Simultaneously, what Palestine needs are

ambassadors of its culture who can express the unique spirit of the land and its people.

Culture is the means that empowers us to give a face to our people, to write melodies to

our narrative, and to develop an identity that, like an olive tree, is deeply rooted in the

Palestinian soil yet whose branches reach out into the open skies.

For these reasons, our team at the International Center of Bethlehem decided in 1997 to

focus and invest most of our resources on culture. In 1999 we opened “the Cave” Arts

and Crafts Center, which houses workshops, a gallery, and a gift shop; and in 2003 we

dedicated Addar Cultural and Conference Center that includes a state-of-the-art

multipurpose auditorium. Out of this same conviction, we are planning to open the Dar

al-Kalima College in September, as the first college of its kind to offer vital, accredited,

and comprehensive higher education in arts, multimedia, and communication. This is our

contribution to the efforts to strengthen civil society, cultivate talent, and communicate

hope so that a fresh spirit will continue to blow within, throughout, and across Palestine

to enable us to breathe deeply and to “have life and have it abundantly.”

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Sumud

RESISTANCE IN DAILY LIFE

Toine van Teeffelen and Fuad Giacaman

Hope can find powerful expression in symbols. Gaining a central place in Palestinian

political discourse during the 1970s, the symbol of sumud (steadfastness, persistence,

endurance) points to two characteristics that can be ubiquitously found among

Palestinians in Palestine and elsewhere: On the one hand, preserving deep roots in the

homeland; on the other, stubbornly going on with life and keeping hope for the future

despite all the adversities that are faced, including occupation, discrimination, expulsion,

and international negligence. At its core, sumud refers to the refusal to give up on

Palestinian rights and dignity. Despite sumud’s focus on the here and now, it bespeaks the

vision of a human and just solution to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.

A typical artistic expression of sumud, found in a great many Palestinian paintings and

logos, is the image of the olive tree with its roots deep in the land and a life span

stretching over hundreds of years. The Palestinian mother is also a characteristic symbol

of sumud: she is said to protect the home and cultural identity while at the same time

transmitting to new generations the quiet power of people’s persistence. Sumud has deep

spiritual and social sources of inspiration that include the history and memory of the

Palestinian national struggle but also other cultural and social sources. Think about the

influence of religion, which gives to many Palestinian Muslims and Christians a deep

motive to continue to live and to struggle. Religion sustains essential values of care,

connectedness, and solidarity without which sumud cannot exist. The Palestinian family

and community are probably the most important sources of steadfastness because of the

supportive social environment they provide. Challenging the isolation in which many

Palestinians find themselves, the ongoing expressions of international solidarity provide

another essential source of inspiration and support. Despite the severe internal difficulties

Palestinians presently face, the joint influence of memories of the Palestinian struggle,

spiritual sources, the family, the community, and international solidarity nourishes the

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inner strength and the inner peace that are so necessary for people to go on with their

outer struggle and daily commitments.

Historical background

Initially the symbolic use of sumud was rather top-down, official. In 1978, the term was

given to a fund in Jordan that collected contributions from Arab and other countries to

support the economic conditions of Palestinians in the occupied territories. As a motto in

speeches and political texts, sumud served to bring out the defiant spirit of Palestinians

living in Palestine. With its ‘inside’ perspective and focus on staying on the land, it was

felt to complement and enable the struggle of Palestinians from the ‘outside’ to return.

One reason for its appeal was the fact that the Zionist movement, from its beginnings on,

has marginalized or negated the presence of Palestinian civilians on Palestinian land. The

practice and communication of sumud have enabled Palestinians to oppose this aim or

tendency.

In addition to being a symbol or motto, the notion of sumud has been employed for more

analytic purposes as well: to refer to a stage of grassroots institution-building in the

occupied territories at the end of the 1970s and the first half of the 1980s. This stage was

said to be primarily aimed at keeping people and communities on the land in defiance of

the wave of new settlement building in the occupied territories and Jerusalem that was

conducted at the time by the new Israeli Likud government. The somewhat defensive

sumud stage was distinguished from, and seen as a preparation for, the more challenging

stage of nonviolent struggle against the occupation that started with the first Intifada in

1987. In looking back to the recent history of the Palestinian movement – in Palestine,

but also in Palestinian communities in Israel and in exile (to which we cannot pay

attention here due to lack of space) – the symbol of sumud expresses the value of staying

put while confronting an overwhelmingly stronger military and political force.

As any national symbol, expressions of sumud face the risk of becoming ‘frozen’ and

rhetorical. But it is our contention that it remains a very relevant concept for a hope-based

nonviolent strategy, certainly so at a time when Palestinians are pushed once again, even

literally, to stand with their backs against the ‘wall’. The main reason for the usefulness

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of the sumud concept is that it puts common citizens center-stage. Nobody is excluded by

the concept of sumud, which is a characterization of, and an appeal to all Palestinians. It

is the Ramallah-based lawyer Raja Shehadeh who brought the concept from a rhetorical

level down to the realities of civilian life under occupation. In his 1981 diary, The Third

Way1, he situated the meaning of sumud in opposition to two extremes. On the one hand,

the samid (the steadfast person) refuses to accept or become subjugated by the

occupation, whereas on the other hand, he or she refuses to become dominated by

feelings of revenge and hate against the enemy. In fact, Shehadeh seemed to present

sumud as an example of life against two kinds of death – a death from inside and a death

from outside. In his writings, sumud expressed citizen agency; the will to carve out an

existence and a home – not necessarily through heroic actions but in a spirit of human

dignity.

A democratic concept

The form that Raja Shehadeh gave to his understanding of sumud is significant: a diary.

A diary is not the vehicle of speeches or rhetorical symbolism but rather conveys the

rhythm of ordinary life. Within the diary genre it is possible to recognize the various

voices and stories that show how Palestinian citizens persist. Although there are certain

prototypical stories of Palestinian sumud – for example, the man or woman who stands in

front of the bulldozer and refuses to go away, or the family who rebuilds its ‘illegal’

home for the fourth time – the most salient feature of the concept is simply that it can be

realized in innumerable different ways. With all its difficult demands, sumud is a

democratic concept that allows for participation in diversified meaning-making.

The concept can be employed to point to typical Palestinian realities that every person

will experience in a slightly different manner. Think about the very common feeling

among Palestinians of being continuously tested; the ongoing guardedness against

misfortune despite fatigue; the bittersweet happiness after having tricked a soldier at a

checkpoint; the abovementioned connectedness to community and family life as ultimate

sources of rest and nourishment in the eye of the storm. The stories of such experiences

1 See: Raja Shehadeh, The Third Way: A Journal of Life in the West Bank. Quartet, London, 1982

22

have a typically Palestinian feel. Many diaries that depict life against the odds – such as

the various published diaries from the time of the prolonged curfews in the West Bank,

2002–20031 – at times convey not only an understandable rage but also a tragic-comic,

even absurdist mood. The diaries picture realities in which everything that is normal

becomes abnormal, and vice versa. Going to school, finding work, traveling outside town

– all tend to become personal or family ‘projects’ that require flexible planning,

uncommon imagination, and enormous endurance.

Given the absurd reality, the diaries sometimes bring to mind a broader literary genre that

centers on the naive anti-hero who manages, often in seemingly funny ways, to preserve

humanity while living the ‘normal abnormal’ daily life of conflict, war, and occupation.

Examples are the Czech ‘good’ soldier Schweyk of Jaroslav Hasek, or, in the Palestinian

context, the Saeed character in Emile Habibi’s novel, The Pessoptimist2. It is no

coincidence that dry humor is an essential part of this genre. Despite the dire situation,

the steadfast, too, feel the need to laugh. Humor creates lightness in an unbearable

situation. It may even be part of a kind of silent communicative code among those who

share similar experiences. Edward Said once wrote in a travel reflection that Palestinians

employ a code that is only known among Palestinians3. If such a hidden code exists, it

will surely express those various shades of life, barely perceptible to the outsider but

typical for the sumud stories.

The most fundamental value of a diary is honesty. It is, of course, a most difficult value

to realize. In fact, in later diaries Shehadeh showed himself to be slightly skeptical about

the concept of sumud precisely because he felt that it can become a rather meaningless

symbol that is distant from the all-too-human realities on the ground. Truth, being open to

reality, is essential to keep focus and clarity. A diary can show ambiguities and doubts 1 See: Suad Amiry, Sharon and My Mother-in-Law, Ramallah Diaries, Granta, London, 2005; Mitri Raheb, Bethlehem Besieged: Stories of Hope in Times of Trouble. Fortress Press, Minneapolis, 2004; Raja Shehadeh, When the Bulbul Stopped Singing: A Diary of Ramallah under Siege. Profile Books, London, 2003; Toine van Teeffelen, Bethlehem Diary: Living Under Curfew and Occupation 2000-2002. Culture and Palestine series, Bethlehem, 2002. See also the diaries developed as a result of some Bethlehem based projects: Susan Atallah and Toine van Teeffelen (eds) The Wall Cannot Stop Our Stories: A Palestinian Diary Project. Terra Sancta/St Joseph School for Girls, Bethlehem, 2004. Toine van Teeffelen and Susan Atallah, When Abnormal Becomes Normal, When Might Becomes Right: Scenes from Palestinian Life During the Al-Aqsa Intifada. Culture and Palestine series, Arab Educational Institute, Bethlehem, 2001.

2 Emile Habibi, The Secret Life of Saeed: the Pessoptimist. Translated by Salma Khadra Jayyusi. Interlink World Fiction Series, Northampton, MA, 2001

3 Edward Said, photographs by Jean Mohr, After the Last Sky: Palestinian Lives. Columbia University Press, New York, 1998.

23

but, if true to its form, remains focused on a reality not blurred by excessive fears,

uncontrollable anger, or wishful thinking. Any hope to bring to life a new reality should

go through the detailed observation and understanding of the existing reality. That, too, is

part of the groundedness of sumud.

Social functions

In its communicative expressions, such as in diaries, sumud can fulfill different social

functions. The stories of sumud provide a learning moment for anybody who wants to

read about, listen to, or view the Palestinian experience of daily life. The stories may

elicit a liberating laugh for the reason mentioned above – such as Suad Amiry’s diary

Sharon and My Mother-in-Law. They can inspire people. Communicating daily life

experiences can be consoling, as morning coffee meetings among Palestinian staff who

have been traumatized by the experience of being closed up, or the stories told in the

teachers’ room of Palestinian schools or in the evening among the family. They can

enrage when they describe routine humiliation and oppression. But whatever their

impact, the stories are typically dialogical in the sense of being oriented towards sharing

experiences and informal learning.

If we use sumud as an umbrella term for the stories of daily life under occupation,

oppression and dispersion, we should also not forget that these stories – together with

letters, interviews, and whatever comes to us on the Internet – are significant sources for

future historical documentation. They show the small stories and memories woven on the

threads of the national Palestinian story. The sumud stories are excellent materials for

learning about Palestinian identity and the reality beyond the very general lines of

history. Oral history projects that bring out the details of daily life in the past and allow

for surprising cross-connections with the present are an example. Collecting and

understanding sumud stories are active ways to engage the learning process, in and

through the community, and can thus contribute to new ways of education. They show

the diversity of the Palestinian experience within an overall connectedness and national

unity.

24

Sumud invites Palestinians to learn about the identity of the land through the little stories

of the land and its beauty, such as the memories and stories of people and communities

living on it; the popular practices on/in the land including agricultural work, religious

worship, and traveling; and the meaning-making associated with those practices. Hearing

about, discovering, and also reconstructing the detailed stories of the land are types of

learning about Palestinian identity and roots that are not usually provided in formal

education.

Sumud as resistance

But there is a question posed by many. If sumud is a positive expression of the continuity

of the many different threads of Palestinian society, history, and relation to the land, how

then do we look at the discussions among Palestinians that have frequently flared up in

the past and have cast doubt on sumud as an expression of national resistance? Is keeping

on with daily life not different from actively and nonviolently challenging the

occupation? Does sumud not come close to the ‘survival mode’ – just preserving life

without nourishing the desire to change the oppressive reality? Is there no need to add an

adjective to sumud so as to give the concept a more challenging and dynamic quality, as

provided for instance by the expressions ‘resistance sumud’ or ‘active sumud’?

Sumud is a struggle to preserve one’s home and daily life. For Palestinians, home is

usually an extremely precarious reality, often put in question or brought under legal or

military pressure. A not uncommon Palestinian experience is to literally become an exile

in one’s own homeland. The very effort of preserving one’s home and going on with

ordinary life can be viewed in the Palestinian context as a refusal to give up on one’s

home and a willingness to make sacrifices. In brief: to exist, to go on with daily life, is to

struggle.

But, again, is sumud in its meaning of living such a struggle similar to sumud as

‘resistance’? The notion of ‘resistance’ implies the development of a broader view that

goes beyond preserving daily life and keeping one’s head high. In fact, viewed in a more

critical light, the sumud struggle can seem to point to a rather inflexible defensive and

protective posture, reminiscent of the hardiness, the ‘steeling’ property of a peasant

25

culture with its somewhat inward orientation towards ‘staying where you are’ and ‘never

giving up’. Sumud points to a stubbornness born out of a history in which, each time

anew, conquerors and occupiers took control over Palestine and in which common people

had to find ways to protect themselves against the dominating powers. Without many

other options than staying on the land, the sumud of peasants can be extremely hard to

break but may also have been tactically, inspirationally immobile.

We think that this criticism holds true, by and large, especially at a time when means of

communication and mobility are radically different from the past. Staying sumud in the

Palestinian land should not necessarily mean staying wherever you are. In fact, doing so

can sometimes be a maladaptive response (called ‘perseveration’ in psychology). This is

especially so when there are no conditions that allow one to stay put in a meaningful way,

or when there is a better way to contribute to the community’s overall persistence by

taking on another role or position. Examples are not difficult to find. A study or work

experience abroad may do wonders for Palestinian youth who want to make a creative

contribution to the national cause (even though the experience of not being able to find

appropriate work or study in one’s homeland is deeply disturbing in itself).

It should thus be possible to define the qualities of sumud in different ways, less purely

affirmative and defensive, and more flexible and dynamic (and containing even ‘light’

and ‘humorous’ ingredients). Such qualities are perhaps more suggested by another word

also used to characterize the Palestinian mentality: ‘resilience’ – the veering back from

adverse experiences. From the perspective of protecting the community and maintaining

a presence on the land, sumud can be viewed in the context of a resilient, pro-active

advocacy that uses the powers of modern means of communication.

As a form of resistance, sumud can, for instance, be shown to take on a more energizing,

challenging, and imaginative view of the concept of home, or of the practice of making a

home, or of giving new meaning to home while protecting it. A home or the daily-life

environment that characterizes or surrounds the home can be recreated for tactical

purposes in a struggle against expropriation of land and the building of the Wall. For

instance, the nonviolent movement in the village of Bil’in to the west of Ramallah used to

place playground tools in front of the bulldozers and the soldiers in order to show how

the building of the Wall there jeopardizes the fabric of daily life. The movement also put

26

caravans on land that was threatened to be disowned or excluded. House and home can be

moved to the ‘frontline’ as part of a challenge. Less courageous but also extremely

valuable is the documentation and publishing of home and daily life under threat of

disappearance, such as in the form of family stories and family trees available on the

Internet.

Other inspiring and imaginative examples of a more ‘mobile’ expression of the spirit of

sumud can be taken from the artistic sphere. Take the following description of the

painting The New Walk of Samira Badran:

In her piece almost five meters long, The New Walk, meandering images of artificial limbs reflect on the universal conditions of oppression in face of the onslaught of man-made tools and barricades, which result in all forms of incarceration. In this work the prosthesis is a metaphor for the indomitable spirit of the Palestinians who seem always to find alternate routes to crossing barriers. The congested artificial limbs – some broken, others bandaged – do not beg for sympathy, instead their seemingly frenzied march portrays boundless determination and resilience, a tribute to the Palestinians’ steadfastness in the face of military and political domination, and that despite all constraints, they continue to cross artificial boundaries and barricades1.

Here the essence of steadfastness is seen as the ability to keep the spirit moving on,

crossing boundaries along alternate routes, despite pain and sacrifices.

Another point is in place here. Much of the value of the spirit of sumud is related to its

communicative power. Communicating Palestine by showing practices of sumud helps to

provide a human image of Palestinian reality that breaks through the familiar media

stereotypes of passive or angry victimization and terrorism. Showing and communicating

sumud thus contributes to the important task of creating an international image of

Palestine that is beyond rhetoric and seen from an internal Palestinian and human

perspective rather than interpreted and distorted by others.

Comprehensive contrast

An active understanding and communication of sumud apply to the so-called sumud

peace house, which AEI-Open Windows has opened opposite the northern watchtower at

1 This Week in Palestine, ed. 114, October 2007.

27

Rachel’s Tomb in Bethlehem. The Wall there snakes through the area of northern

Bethlehem in such a way that the neighborhood has lost its vigor and life. Families move

away whenever possible. How can local people resist a Wall? At first sight there is no

way. A wall is not an adversary; it is a block of concrete. As it once was said, the only

thing you seem to be able to do after the Wall is erected and you live inside, is to walk

around in circles like mice. In fact, one reason that the Wall has been built may well have

to do with the reduction of human contact points between Israelis and Palestinians (from

the West Bank), because such contact points are essential for any active and challenging

forms of nonviolent resistance, individually or collectively.

Active resistance while in confinement may thus sound like a contradiction. However,

through the peace house and similar initiatives near the Wall another ‘contact point’ is

created – one between humans/humanity and the Wall. Sumud can be communicated

directly in front of or even on the Wall through any media genre or practice that one can

think of: diaries, video, film, visual memories, drama and plays, (inter-)religious rituals,

traditional customs and festivals, even dinners. By communicating daily life and the ‘art’

of life lived against the odds, normal life is put in opposition to the oppression of the

Wall. By showing, even celebrating, life and by creating and reclaiming spaces of life

next and in opposition to the Wall, the relation between human life in Palestine and the

Wall is defined as one of comprehensive contrast. Think about a piano concert under the

military watchtower with children around, or a Rap concert next to the Wall, or artistic,

festival-like life that is created near a house surrounded by the Wall on three sides (as is

the case with the house of the Anastas family opposite Rachel’s Tomb). Performance

artists often make use of contrasts to create surprising effects. Here Sumud will

communicate to a worldwide audience contrasts between beauty and ugliness; fragility

and massiveness; dignity and disdain; thanksgiving and military arrogance; voices and

suffocation; life and death. Essential to this resistance is communicating a reversal of the

Israeli image of the Wall as a protection of Israeli daily life against Palestinian violence.

Instead, the Wall is shown for what it is – the killer, expropriator, and divider of

Palestinian life, land, and community. The involvement of media, including the use of

media by the civil community itself, will be extremely important. Publicity about sumud

practices is needed to shame the adversary as long as he persists in disregarding the

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humanity of the other. Of course, the final goal of the nonviolent struggle cannot be other

than the removal of the Wall itself, making possible the concrete vision of a new reality.

Mezzaterra

There is also another, final side to sumud. Even with the Israeli adversary it is desirable to

have human relations, if only to challenge him or her to help end the occupation; to

jointly see the possibility of a different reality – a transformation of the status quo on the

way to equality and justice -; and to allow for honest (self-) criticism. For Palestinians,

the Wall kills communities by separation. Refusing that separation, an initiative such as

the sumud peace house is designed to be an open house, a place of conviviality and

sharing food, and thus a sign towards peace – in line with the slogan: “Not walls, but

bridges.” The house will point to liberating, border-crossing experiences to some extent

characteristic for that neighborhood in the past, when many Israelis used to come over to

shop or visit a restaurant (even though Israeli-Palestinian interaction under occupation

has inevitably been tainted or corrupted by power inequality). The concept of sumud will

be applied in an open-minded, flexible, imaginative way. The house’s activities,

including in the field of inter-religious encounters and prayers between Muslims,

Christians, and Jews, will aim to create a mezzaterra, an inter-zone, in which surprising

connections will help to create a different order and community life, and defy Israel’s

obsession with separation.

We started with the statement that symbols can contribute to or express hope. But as we

tried to make clear, the attractiveness of the concept of sumud is located in the fact that it

not only touches a basic Palestinian ‘snare’ but also that it is potentially much more than

‘just’ a symbol, left to be admired but out of touch with lived realities. In our opinion, it

can best be realized by living and communicating people’s experiences in daily life in

both its embodied and spiritual-imaginative dimensions. The practice of sumud helps to

communicate people’s and citizens’ voices, open up the diverse memories of the land and

its people, and make the nonviolent struggle to preserve home and community against

occupation more deep and encompassing. Last but not least, it shows the human dignity

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of a people that has been continuously dehumanized, here and internationally. Sumud is a

choice for renewal of life.

30

Sacrifice

“DO NOT LAY YOUR HAND ON THE BOY OR DO ANYTHING TO HIM”

Jacobus (Coos) Schoneveld

Sacrifice is a term often used in the context of the present conflict and war between Arabs

and Jews, or Israelis and Palestinians. On both sides we hear leaders call on their

followers to make sacrifices for the sake of the cause for which they are fighting. And

when people, whether military or civilian, are killed during this war, they are – in the

eulogies given at their funerals – called sacrifices, victims who have lost their lives in this

terrible struggle. In accordance with their national, political and, often, also religious

views, both sides give entirely different interpretations of the significance of the present

confrontation and war between both peoples. On each side, the mourners will stress the

ideals and aspirations for which their loved ones sacrificed their lives.

Sacrifice is a religious concept. It is a word borrowed from the language of religion. In

the present war, people who belong to one of three religions – Judaism, Christianity, and

Islam – are taking part. Many of them are inspired by ancient and deep-rooted beliefs that

form the very essence of each of these religions and have shaped their respective societies

and identities. They are deeply influenced by their respective Sacred Scriptures – in

Judaism: the Tanach or the Hebrew Scriptures; in Christianity, the Old Testament (which

is the Christian name of the Tanach) and the New Testament; in Islam, the Qur’an.

In these short reflections, I will concentrate on one sacrifice story that takes a prominent

place in all three religions: the story of Abraham’s readiness to sacrifice his son. In the

Jewish Tanach – the Christian Old Testament – it is found in Genesis, chapter 22. In the

Qur’an of Islam, it is mentioned in Sura 37 (Al-Saffat), verses 99–113. It is a story that

was apparently already familiar to the first hearers of the Qur’an and is therefore shorter

than the Genesis story. The story is that God gives Abraham the horrific command to take

his son and sacrifice him as a burnt offering on a mountain. Abraham sets out to fulfill

God’s command, but as he is about to kill his son, an angel of God calls to him from

heaven and says: “Do not lay your hand on the boy or do anything to him; for now I

31

know that you fear God, since you have not withheld your son, your only son, from me”;

and then a ram is provided to serve as the sacrificial animal to redeem the son.

In the Qur’an, the name of Abraham’s son is not mentioned in relation to this story. (The

Qur’an does not say whether it was Ishmael or Isaac; the opinions of Islamic exegetes

differ as to which was the intended victim; the majority opinion at present is that it was

Ishmael.) Abraham says:

O my son. I see in a vision that I will sacrifice you. So look, what is your view?

The son said: O my father! Do as you are commanded. If God wills, you will find

me patient and enduring. So when they had both submitted, He lay him unto his

forehead. And we [God] called out to him, “O Abraham you have already fulfilled

the vision.” Thus do we reward those who do right. For this was a clear trial. We

redeemed him with a magnificent sacrifice. And we left for him [this blessing]

among others: “Peace upon Abraham” (Sura 37, Al-Saffat, verses 102–109).

Not a will-less victim

The story plays an important role in the Jewish, Christian, and Muslim traditions. An

important feature in later Jewish tradition and in Muslim tradition is that the son whom

Abraham was about to kill was not a will-less victim but one who offered himself

voluntarily to be sacrificed.

In Jewish post-biblical tradition – already as early as the second century before the

Christian era – Isaac is portrayed as a young adult who was told by his father of God’s

order and then gladly consented and ran joyfully to the altar and stretched out his neck

towards the knife in his father’s hand. There is even a Jewish tradition that holds that

Isaac was actually sacrificed and was subsequently resurrected. The story was also

associated with the Jewish feast of Passover. According to a Jewish midrash (exegetical

commentary: Exodus Rabbah 44:5), Isaac’s willingness to be sacrificed was transformed

into a redeeming act of permanent validity for all his children until the arrival of the

Messiah, as is said in a prayer: “If the Jews are guilty and are on the point of being slain,

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remember then Isaac their father who stretched out his neck on the altar for your name’s

sake. May his immolation take the place of the immolation of his children.”

In Christianity, the story serves as one of the prototypes or ‘prophesies’ of the crucifixion

of Jesus Christ, in which Isaac serves as the prefiguration of Jesus. Also the ram offered

in Isaac’s place is a prefiguration of Jesus. When John the Baptist, at the beginning of

the Gospel of John, pronounced about Jesus: “Here is the Lamb of God who takes away

the sin of the world” (John 2:29), everybody who knew the Holy Scriptures was

reminded of the story of Genesis 22. And when in the Gospels, a voice from heaven says

about Jesus: “This is my son, the Beloved, with whom I am well pleased” (Matthew 3:17;

17:5), everyone well-versed in the Holy Scriptures associated these words with the

beginning of the story in Genesis, when God said to Abraham: “Take your son, your only

son, whom you love, Isaac” (Genesis 22:2). The voice from heaven that said to Abraham,

“you have not withheld your son, your only son from me” (Genesis 22:12) is echoed in

the New Testament in Paul’s saying that God “did not withhold his own son, but gave

him up for all of us” (Romans 8:32). Thus Abraham was seen by Christians as a

prefiguration of God the Father. And drawing on contemporaneous Jewish interpretations

of this story, Paul saw the freely accepted death of Jesus on the cross as the perfect

fulfillment of the self-sacrifice of Isaac.

Shift in religious consciousness

Thus in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, this story is of major significance and is the

subject of many various interpretations. In this short paper I only want to draw the

reader’s attention to the remarkable contradiction between the two times God speaks to

Abraham in this story. First, God commands Abraham to sacrifice his firstborn son, and

then he prohibits it: “Do not lay your hand on the boy or do anything to him.” Many

interpreters see in God’s change of mind the indication of an important shift in religious

consciousness and in the understanding of who God is and what He wills.

In ancient times, both in Israelite religion and in religions of surrounding nations,

offering one’s children to God or to gods was an acceptable and even praiseworthy deed.

It expressed the awareness that there are values in life that have absolute priority over

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anything else, even over one’s own flesh and blood and that true dedication to these

values may require readiness to give up everything else for their sake. It was seen as the

very essence of religion. It comes to expression in a passage in the Book of Micah (6:6–

7), where a religious person asks:

With what shall I come before the Lord and bow myself before God on high?

Shall I come before him with burnt offerings, with calves a year old?

Will the Lord be pleased with thousands of rams, with ten thousand rivers of oil?

Shall I give my firstborn for my transgression, the fruit of my body for the sin of

my soul?”

Abraham is on the verge of doing what many religious people before him have done and

is giving up his son whom he loves and who embodies the splendid future promised to

him. And so have many individuals and peoples sacrificed their loved ones in wars for

the sake of many lofty and not-so-lofty ideals: for the sake of their people and homeland,

for the values of religion, nationalism, socialism, liberation, democracy, independence,

etc. In our memorial ceremonies, we praise them for the ultimate sacrifice that they made.

They are glorified as heroes and saints, often even more than mourned as tragic victims

of violence who were driven as sheep to their slaughterers.

Test

In this story God prevents Abraham from carrying out the awful deed he was about to

perform in the name of religion. In later Muslim versions of the story, Abraham hears a

voice from heaven that says: “O Friend of God, how can you not be compassionate to this

small child?” When Abraham nevertheless continues with his deed and raises up the

knife to bring it down to his son’s throat, God’s angel turns the blade over to the dull side

and protects his throat with a sheet of copper and says the words that occur in the above-

mentioned Sura of the Qur’an: “O Abraham! You have already fulfilled the vision”

(namely the vision seen by Abraham in which he was to sacrifice his son), because it was

34

only a test to know whether Abraham would perform that extreme act in obedience to

God’s command.

Thus the Bible and the Qur’an are telling us that this extreme act is, in fact, against God’s

will, even if the command to carry out this awful deed comes from God himself. It is

based on a false understanding of who God is and what He wills.

In the Qur’an, God praises Abraham after this terrible trial: “We redeemed him with a

magnificent sacrifice and we left for him this blessing among others, ‘peace upon

Abraham’. Thus do we reward those who do right.”

In the Bible, God praises Abraham with the words: “You have not withheld your son,

your only son,” and God renews His promise that Abraham’s offspring will become

numerous and that through his offspring all nations of the earth will gain blessing for

themselves, “because you have obeyed my voice.” Which voice? The voice that called

from heaven: “Do not lay your hand on the boy or do anything to him.” It was the voice

that prevented Abraham from the terrible deed that he was going to carry out in the name

of religion.

“Shall I give my firstborn for my transgression, the fruit of my body for the sin of my

soul?” was the question of the religious person quoted by the Prophet Micah. Micah

answered:

He has told you, O mortal, what is good; and what does the Lord require of you

but to do justice, and to love mercy, and to be humble in walking with your God?

(Micah 6:8)

Not withholding oneself or one’s child from God – i.e., loyalty to God and walking in His

ways – does not mean death, but life, not sacrifice of oneself to God or to any high ideals

and values. What God requires is service of God in the pursuit of God’s purpose for the

world. That means doing justice, loving mercy, and being humble in walking with God.

Sacrifice and self-sacrifice

35

Nowadays the question becomes more and more pressing: Should we condone, admire, or

encourage the self-sacrifice that young people on Israeli and Palestinian sides are ready to

make for the sake of causes that are noble and good? These forms of sacrifice and self-

sacrifice – terrible as they always are –may at times be necessary and unavoidable but,

according to the prophet Micah, they are not what God requires. God does not require the

death of young people but their life in service to God. The story ends with the promise of

a life of abundance for the children of Abraham and, through them, of blessing for all

nations of the world. It is the reward that Abraham receives for dedicating not his son’s

death to God, but his son’s life.

It is a message that speaks against destruction and self-destruction at a time in which such

sacrifices seem to be the only option. The words of the angel: “Do not lay your hand on

the boy or do anything to him” and the subsequent promise of a great future are an

affirmation of life rather than resignation to tragedy and death. What this affirmation of

life means is said in the three words that Micah uses to describe what kind of life is good

and worth striving for: justice, mercy, and humility.

These words also form the basis of the House of Peace that will be opened in Bethlehem.

In the face of the Wall of Separation that has been erected between Palestinians and

Israelis, the House of Peace will challenge the Wall’s message of death, which sharply

contradicts Micah’s message of life.

May young and old in Palestine and Israel dedicate their lives to establishing justice in

the relations between the two peoples and, if necessary, make sacrifices that promote life

and open a new future for both sides. May they further become aware that this can only

be achieved in a spirit of mercy, endurance, reconciliation, and forgiveness. And may

they do this in humility in walking with their God.

It is remarkable that Micah says: “Be humble in walking with your God.” Why doesn’t

Micah say “walking with God”? I would like to interpret this in terms of our present

religious situation.

As Jews, Christians, and Muslims, we each have a long tradition behind us. On the basis

of our Sacred Scriptures, our religious communities have developed their own

understanding of God and God’s will, and therefore we each walk – so to speak – with

our own God in our various communities, with the God whom we have encountered in

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our tradition and whom we worship. In the present conflict, many people walk and

behave according to their own deepest religious convictions and beliefs. What is required

is that this be done humbly, out of the awareness that God, the Eternal One, may have

opened ways for others to walk with ‘their God’ – the One whom they have encountered

in their tradition and whom they worship – in a different manner. Humility in walking

with our God, then, means that we respect the honest beliefs and practices of the others,

even of our enemies, and do not impose our own understanding of God on others but try

to find common understandings of what God requires of us in the present circumstances.

May the House of Peace develop as a place of justice, mercy, and humility, and may no

sacrifices be mourned here or anywhere in Palestine and Israel.

37

Solidarity

HOW ETHNIC TENDENCIES OF A PROTESTANT ISRAEL THEOLOGY

UNDERMINE SOLIDARITY

Henri Veldhuis

Writing a contribution about ‘solidarity’ is not without risk, especially within the context

of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. The word ‘solidarity’ quickly arouses the suspicion of

one-sided involvement with one of the parties without taking into account the interests of

the other group ‘behind the wall’.

But especially when an important word has become suspicious, it makes sense to search

for its genuine meaning. A word’s meaning is not only related to its use but also to the

historical trace it has already drawn. It can therefore make sense to rediscover its

etymological origin. ‘Solidarity’ is derived from the Latin words ‘solidus’ and ‘solidum’.

The term ‘solidum’ means ‘the total sum’ of everything that is joined or added together.

‘Solidus’ means ‘solid’ or ‘reliable’. During the late-Roman Empire, it was also the name

of a coin – a name intended to suggest solidity of value. The meaning of ‘reliability’ and

‘solidity’ resonates in words like ‘soldier’ and ‘solder’. Against this etymological

background, two aspects of meaning can be discovered in the word ‘solidarity’. Together

they evoke a meaningful polar tension. On the one hand there is the meaning of a close

connectedness of parts which together form an unbreakable unity. The parts or members

of the whole cannot be disconnected and are indivisibly tied to each other. On the other

hand, ‘solidarity’ refers to the reliability and stability of the value of an independent unit,

such as the coin or the soldier. The reliability of the individual member forms the basis

for the reliability of the group.

It is exactly this dialectic of unit and whole, and the reliability of both, which can upgrade

the concept of ‘solidarity’ in political and theological language use. Both aspects of the

meaning of ‘solidarity’ assume a moral-political involvement with others, which can be

very strong but which is not at the expense of individual independence and freedom.

Solidarity is about a strong connectedness with others that does not suppress but rather

38

assumes individual inner freedom. Understood in this way, ‘solidarity’ is a helpful mirror

in which we can see how we as western outsiders deal with the Palestinian-Israeli

conflict, which so intensely polarizes the worlds of politics and religion. Especially in

this conflict, the combining of honest involvement and inner freedom seems to be an

impossible task.

Solidarity of a bad conscience

I wish to focus this test of western solidarity on the policy of my own church, the

Protestant Church in the Netherlands (PCN), a 2004 merger of the Dutch Reformed

Church, the Reformed Churches in the Netherlands, and the Evangelical Lutheran Church

in the Kingdom of the Netherlands. For decades these churches have been engaged in

discussions about how solidarity with Israel should be expressed. Two concepts

equivalent to ‘solidarity’ – ‘connectedness’ (verbondenheid) and ‘loyalty’ (loyaliteit) –

play a central role here. The essence of the Dutch discussion touches theological

questions that are regarded everywhere in the world church as fundamental in relation to

the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Since 1948 the aforementioned Protestant churches in the Netherlands have been closely

allied with the state of Israel. This of course has everything to do with the centuries-old

Christian anti-Semitism – the persecution of Jews that resulted in the Holocaust and the

shame felt about it. But it also has to do with the happy surprise about the return of so

many Jews to ‘the promised land’ and the establishment of a new Jewish state. That this

‘miracle’ was at the expense of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians who lost all

possessions, however, received almost no attention.

Motivated by guilt feelings and religiously-inspired admiration, a large part of the

Netherlands – first of all the churches – were straightforward in their support of the new

state of Israel. Most outspoken in its pro-Israeli stand was the synod of the Dutch

Reformed Church. In 1970 this church published “Israel, people, land and state,

assistance to a theological reflection,” in which the church not only declared its faith in

the lasting loyalty of God to the Jewish people but also provided a theological

justification of the new state of Israel. According to the memorandum, the Jewish people

39

have a right to their own state in the land given by God by virtue of the Biblical promise.

Some theologians reacted critically toward this far-reaching stand, and other churches

were more cautious in their positions. However, the vision of the Reformed Church

expressed a feeling that was experienced broadly in Protestant circles. Although the

discussion flared up each time anew, the Protestant churches did not come to a more

nuanced vision of the state of Israel that would also do justice to the situation of the

Palestinians. Viewed in the mirror of the concept of ‘solidarity’, it has to be said that, on

the one hand, the churches excelled in their solidarity with the new state of Israel but, on

the other hand, they were unable to find the spiritual freedom to understand the dramatic

consequences that the new state would have on the native inhabitants of the Holy Land. It

was a form of philo-Semitic solidarity that, in fact, caused the Dutch churches to remain

prisoners of their bad conscience.

Double loyalty

In two smaller church circles a more critical attitude existed: the diaconal department (the

World diaconate) of the Reformed Churches and the Dutch Council of Churches.

Because of the many international contacts, including the Christian churches in the

Middle East, they were much more open to the situation of the Palestinians. They also

saw how the current Israel theology worked as an ideological veil that blinded the church

members to the real situation of the Palestinians.

World diaconate therefore looked for another policy, which found expression in the new

term ‘double loyalty’ – a loyalty directed toward both Jews and Palestinians. In other

words, a choice was made for a two-sided form of solidarity. This solidarity was not

based on an apolitical form of charity, but on a universal search for law and justice.

Personal diaconal contacts enabled the growth of an inner freedom that allowed them to

also face the ‘enemy of the other’ openly and critically. Unfortunately, this new approach

of ‘double loyalty’ – one can also say: real solidarity – did not receive much hearing

among the church leadership. As a result the average church member still does not know

much of the history or the present-day situation of the Palestinians.

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‘Unrelinquishable’ solidarity

In the Protestant churches, the word ‘connectedness’ (verbondenheid) came into currency

to denote church solidarity with Israel. In fact, the expression ‘unrelinquishable solidarity

with the Jewish people’ became the unassailable motto of Protestant Israel theology. In

this motto, the state of Israel is not explicitly mentioned. However, church policy papers

include the additional opinion that the present state of Israel is essential for contemporary

Jewish self-consciousness, a fact that should be fully respected by the churches. This

again comes down to a theological justification of the state and policies of Israel.

Moreover, a later discussion memorandum (2003: “The Israeli-Palestinian-Arab conflict:

Contribution to opinion-making in the ‘Samen op Weg’ [together on the road] churches”)

explicitly discards the expression ‘double loyalty’. Instead, it is once again stated that the

Church only keeps an ‘unrelinquishable solidarity’ with the people of Israel, while it

holds a ‘diaconal relationship’ with the Palestinians. The memorandum does not discuss

what kind of relation the churches hold with Palestinian Christians – a significant lapse.

This theological and diaconal policy was confirmed in 2004 in the new church order of

the Protestant Church in the Netherlands. So PCN still adheres to the same line it had in

1970, and its Israel theology still works as an ideological veil. This makes an open

meeting with Palestinians and Palestinian Christians very difficult.

Tree and branch

There are always two important factors that determine whether authentic solidarity can

grow in situations of conflict and struggle. Of primary importance is the personal meeting

in situ with different parties involved. Only those who allow themselves to be genuinely

touched have the right to speak. But that is not sufficient. A fundamental reconsideration

of the individual ideology or theology is often equally important. Despite many contacts

and information, PCN has stayed ideologically entangled in both its guilty past and a new

philo-Semitic theology. I want to discuss here briefly some fundamental elements of this

theology and formulate in part an alternative.

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After the Second World War, two important insights evolved in the Dutch churches

which, for me too, cannot be conceded in the coming future. The first insight is that it

should be realized much more than before that – to use an image of the Apostle Paul –

the Christian church is grafted on God’s covenant with the Jewish people and on the

Jewish Bible (the ‘Old’ Testament) realized in the context of that covenant. Because of

this Jewish origin, the Church has always to make itself accountable in theology and

preaching. Without these Jewish roots, the Church will always misinterpret the Gospels

and itself.

Secondly, most Dutch churches have now principally distanced themselves from

‘substitution theology’, which assumes that the Church took Israel’s place. The churches

now fully accept that the Eternal One has gone His own way with the Jewish people.

Ethnicity and covenant

What do these two starting points mean for the attitude of the Church in relation to

present-day Jewry? PCN believes that God’s loyalty to the Jewish people implies that

Christians should never concede their loyalty to all Jews in the world, whether these are

believers or not. In other words, it chooses a faith-based solidarity with one specific

ethnic group. In my opinion, this is a serious theological error with significant ethical

consequences.

First of all, it is rather pretentious to promise, after centuries of anti-Semitism and

persecution of Jews, an ‘unrelinquishable solidarity’ with the Jewish people. Moreover,

such a pretentious promise seems nothing but a new, and now, philo-Semitic annexation

of Jewry by Christians.

An even more basic point is the nature of this solidarity with a whole ethnic group,

including believers and nonbelievers. Time and again Moses and the prophets made it

clear that Israel as a people of God is only safe in the context of the covenant established

by God Himself with his people. Israel has privileges on the basis of salvation history

only within the framework of that covenant. The Eternal One has started a special history

with this people, in which He, from the very beginning, kept His eye on the world as a

whole. He is eternally loyal to this Jewish people, who can repeatedly make an appeal to

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His covenant if they are willing to believe and live within that framework. This

hermeneutic primacy of Israel on the ground of salvation history has to be fully respected

by the Church, especially when it explains the Bible as a Jewish book.

This however does not imply an unrelinquishable solidarity of the Church with the

Jewish people outside the framework of the covenant and the Bible. Such a special

solidarity is a religious solidarity based on the Bible; it exists between Christians and

Jews only insofar as both can be addressed in reference to their faith in the Biblical

writings (or the Old Testament, the Tanach, which is part of them). An unrelinquishable

solidarity only exists through the Scriptures – a solidarity that goes beyond the significant

differences in interpretations of those Scriptures.

Nonreligious Jews can rediscover their religious identity and return to the covenant and

the Scriptures, which the Eternal One first gave them. But insofar as secular Jews do not

wish to be addressed with reference to a faith in the Biblical texts, it is not possible for

Christians to claim a special solidarity with secular Jews based on faith.

According to the laws of the present state of Israel, a secular Jew from Alaska has more

right to live in many parts of the Holy Land than a Christian Palestinian whose ancestors

have lived there for centuries. According to the present theology of PCN, Christians have

a deeper faith-based solidarity with the secular Jew in Alaska than with a Christian

Palestinian.

The conclusion is that the Israel theology of PCN in fact has an ethnic base and

contradicts the message of Moses and the prophets. The recent history of the Balkans or

the Middle East shows how dangerous exactly that confusion of ethnicity and religion is.

Christian freedom and solidarity

That PCN is hijacked by its own Israel theology is painfully revealed by the fact that it

never declared to be also in unrelinquishable solidarity with Palestinian Christians. In

this way, fellow Christians in the Middle East have been referred to a second place in

favor of believing and also nonbelieving Jews. This in fact means that the central

meaning of Christ, in whom we are unrelinquishably connected together with all

Christians throughout the world, is eroded.

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But it is precisely Christ who can liberate us from any ethnic favoritism and open our

eyes and minds to every person as our equal in a common humanity. Christ has been

given to us on Israel’s road; that hermeneutical primacy based on salvation history should

not be negated. However, the Apostle Paul understood the meaning of this Son of Israel

in its deepest sense when he liberated the Gospels from Jewish-ethnic boundaries without

negating the Jewish base of the Gospels. The message of the Church has grown on Jewish

soil and can only be understood in this way. But it is on this Jewish soil that the Gospels

have reached a universal scope, with promises and prohibitions that are equally valid for

all people.

Touched by the resurrected Lord, Paul reached the conviction that the Gospels should not

be uprooted from their Jewish soil, but that they should be freed from Jewish-ethnic

frames of understanding and have a universal meaning to be translated into the languages

and traditions of all peoples. From a hermeneutic viewpoint that is based on salvation

history, the privileged position of the Jewish people remains untouched. However, on the

level of values, when we talk about love, justice, and righteousness, there is no primacy

at all, whatever persons or people are involved.

In Christ’s light we are able to discover every human being and every people – regardless

of ethnic background – as members of a common humanity. In Christ each and every

human being, believing or not, is our ‘neighbor’ in the Biblical sense of the word.

Christ’s community knows an unrelinquishable solidarity of faith between Jew, Greek,

Samaritan, and Palestinian. Only out of our closeness with Christ do we find a solidarity

that frees us from ethnic and emotional preferences and gives us the power to be in far-

reaching solidarity with this Jew or that Palestinian on the way to justice and

righteousness.

This universal perspective inevitably leads us to question whether the concept of

‘unrelinquishable solidarity’ based on faith is useful in the first place. It may suggest that

in matters of love and justice a hierarchy exists. This conclusion should not be drawn, in

my opinion. Solidarity on the basis of faith can mean only that co-religionists can expect

much from each other, and can challenge each other on their special responsibility, on the

basis of shared beliefs, shared holy texts, and shared traditions. To the extent that an

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awareness of shared beliefs also exists between Christians and Muslims, such faith-based

solidarity will also exist between them.

Solid solidarity

What are the consequences of this viewpoint for the attitude of the churches with regard

to the Jewish people and the state of Israel? First of all, there can only be a special faith-

based solidarity insofar as both of us can be addressed in reference to the Scriptures.

Outside that framework of faith-based solidarity, God gives us every human being, Jew

and non-Jew, as a sharer in our common humanity to whom we are fully obliged to give

love and justice.

The state of Israel is a secular state, in its own understanding, and it should be seen as

such by the churches; that is, it should be viewed within the framework of international

law and international solidarity. There cannot be a preferential treatment on special

grounds of faith. The churches will otherwise inevitably come under the spell of

dangerous ethnic sentiments.

From an historical viewpoint it is understandable that modern Israel wants to preserve the

Jewish character of its own state as much as possible. But on the basis of its own

conviction, the Church should ask whether this Jewish-ethnic foundation of the Israeli

state can be democratically expressed in a way that brings about an end to the apartheid

policy that is imposed on Palestinian citizens, both in Israel and in the occupied

territories.

Finally, it is perhaps the most important test for the Israel theology of each Christian

church to show how the special position of the Jewish people based on salvation history

goes hand in hand with a solid solidarity towards the Palestinian brothers and sisters in

Christ. Meanwhile, we can expect that Palestinian Christians will always draw our

attention to all the members of their people, the majority of whom are Muslim. After all,

real solidarity knows neither borders nor walls.

45

Ubuntu

I AM BECAUSE WE ARE

Dick de Groot

Throughout my career in education I have kept in contact with people in other countries

who work in the field of education. In the mid-seventies, I worked in Zambia at a

secondary school in the bush. We discussed educational reform based on Cuban and

Chinese models. During the following years, I visited schools in England and Scotland

which were at the time a lot more advanced in everything concerning ICT than many

Dutch schools today. In Portugal I went to schools that had achieved a great deal in

teaching arts or in integrating special and regular education. In 1996 I was involved in

restarting schools in Rwanda after their closure for two years because of the genocide.

We saw schools that had been completely robbed of everything they possessed; where at

least half of the pupils were orphaned. In the following years, from 2000 until 2005, I

was project manager for school development and educational innovation in three South-

African regions. In 2003 and 2006 I was invited to contribute to a reorientation of

Palestinian schools on the subject of ‘new learning’. In the meantime I reflected on my

work in Dutch schools through the prism of these experiences. Such a career is a journey

along paradigms. Because of the African experiences I am now ready for a new paradigm

that I have called ‘communal constructivism’.

The ubuntu principle

Initially I tracked it down in KwaZulu-Natal. At first in the manner of greeting. If you

meet someone, you say: ‘Sawu bona’, which means: ‘I see you’. You return this greeting

with: ‘Sikhona’ or ‘Here I am’. This shows the ‘ubuntu’ culture, which is found

throughout southern Africa. Ubuntu is derived from a Zulu proverb: ‘Umuntu ngumuntu

ngabantu’ or: ‘A human being only becomes a human being through other human

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beings’. We are who we are because we are seen, because those around us respect and

acknowledge us as persons.

The phrase, “I think, therefore I am,” of Descartes has been translated in Africa to: ‘I am

because we are’. Viewed from a developmental perspective: ‘I become because we are’.

This sounds like ‘knowing and being known’, but the African way of looking at people is

essentially different from the Western way. A South African schoolbook says it as

follows: “In fact it is impossible to translate the word Ubuntu. There are direct

equivalents of this word in all African languages. The word means love, benevolence,

altruism, mercy, benignity, respect, preserving one’s dignity – just to mention a few

possible meanings. Only in ubuntu a human being can demonstrate to be ‘umuntu’, a

person in the holistic sense of the word. The ultimate meaning of ubuntu lies in the ability

to love the unlovable: the enemy who is shown good-heartedness, love, and respect,

although he or she does not deserve it.”

Community development is a process of rediscovering essential moral values. When a

community gives fundamental attention to a set of moral values as a guiding principle for

its actions, its learning orientation will change. Education will become learning as

community. In actual practice I ran across this way of learning when on my way to

Nongoma, some 60 kilometers north of the kingstown Ulundi. There always used to be

people along the road waiting for a lift. One of my hitchhikers was a young teacher who

was on her way from her parental hut to school. She started telling me about her daily

work. One of the problems she faced was that schools hardly had any teaching materials

and books. So she went into the nearby villages with her pupils to look for people from

whom they could learn. And they never stopped learning. There was so much to tell, to

do, to investigate that they always ran out of time.

The week before, she had walked with her class to a neighboring village to see, hear, and

try out a piano. And with the requirements of the ‘matric exam’ in the back of her mind,

this teacher and her colleagues imperceptibly adjusted the process of teaching according

to every day’s progress. In turn the village people learned from the children. It was the

best example of a learning community I have ever come across. And everyone regarded

this practice as normal.

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Communal constructivism

Also in South Africa it is thought that pupils are able to construct their own reality on the

basis of their learning questions. The educational environment plays a determining role.

The richer the environment, the more stimuli you find to become curious, to discover new

areas, to ask questions that you initially would not think of. But also: the more options

there are to choose from. The better a teacher manages to improve the learning

environment, the more inquisitive the pupils will become.

In many countries the provision of facilities that promote learning at school is not a

simple matter. In South Africa most schoolbooks were abolished in 1994 after the end of

Apartheid. In Palestine books had to be ‘borrowed’ from Jordan and Egypt, and the

struggle to publish Palestinian schoolbooks for all grades took a lot of effort. When there

are no schoolbooks, pupils have to rely even more on their teachers. However, many

teachers in a country like South Africa belong to the first generation of literates. They

have a limited frame of reference and limited access to sources of knowledge. There are

few or no reference books or magazines. Most pupils have no schoolbooks.

Is it still possible to preserve a school, or more precisely the learning process, under these

difficult circumstances? It certainly is, if you are convinced that you can learn from

anyone. The extent to which teachers are able to organize knowledge and expertise for

their pupils determines the quality of learning. Is not the boundary of what a person can

learn always determined by what can be learned from and with others? Teachers who are

able to look beyond their own boundaries open up new worlds for their pupils. The one

who teaches you is the one who widens or limits your learning.

On the basis of which values do pupils give meaning to the knowledge they acquire?

From a social-constructivist point of view, learning is a process in which the student

builds up an internal representation of knowledge, based on personal experience. All

human beings construct knowledge in their own way. In doing so, they are strongly

influenced by the reactions and views of the social environment. The weaker the social

environment, the more difficult it is to give meaning to knowledge – even more so when

individuals become marginalized under circumstances of oppression or poverty. In a

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situation of social disintegration, it becomes relevant to ask the question: from which

perspective are personal experiences viewed?

In Western society the perspective seems to be: everyone for oneself and no one for us

all. If the goal of education is to humanize young people and to prepare them for a

constructive role in the community in the broadest sense, then this goal should determine

the perspective through which we work in education. If we can manage to see education

as the founding process of our community, we will offer counterweight to the extreme

individualism characterized by phenomena such as disorientation, isolation, loneliness,

inability to enter into relationships, and even suicide. We should become aware of the

danger to contribute to this increasing individualism in our schools. According to the

Ubuntu principle, it is the community that should determine the perspective, not the

individual.

Communal constructivism asks for an active connection between members of a

community in order to improve everyone’s circumstances, not only the circumstances of

those who can be regarded as belonging to one’s own community. It urgently calls for a

deep sense of mutual dependency in the rediscovery of the significance of the

community. In this way ‘I am because we are’ does not only apply to the relation

between the individual and the community, but inevitably also to the relation between

different communities.

Community and individuality

In Palestine ‘sumud’ represents a strong image of resilience, of steadfastness. It is said to

refer to the image of the olive tree which lives hundreds of years and is deeply rooted in

the land. Or it is likened to the image of the cactus that even with little water and

nutrients is able to survive under severe conditions. ‘Sumud’ clearly means that there is a

strong belief in the future, that there is hope, even in desperate times. I would add to the

metaphor that even when the olive tree grows, it needs other trees to survive. It needs

other trees to develop into a community. Only a community gives meaning to individual

existence. In this way a clear connection between ‘ubuntu’ and ‘sumud’ can be drawn.

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What is ‘community’? If the idea of community is considered in the wrong way,

communalism and tribalism will become synonyms: group interest will become an

absolute goal. This can even lead beyond the point of recognizing other human beings as

equals by denying them the characteristics we count as ours. The word ‘minority’ loses

its quantitative meaning and will be used in the qualitative sense of degrading others as

‘minors’, as inferior people. Not only Palestine experiences this shameful reality. In

many parts of the world this phenomenon threatens many human beings.

As a result of a process of constant acculturation caused by large-scale media exposure

and the migration of many to all parts of the world, people get confused about their

communal belonging. Very often we do not know any longer what our community is,

because we belong to many communities. At the same time there is a growing awareness

that we all belong to the global community. The interdependence of humankind in

relation to the limited means of subsistence and the confined living space must be

considered in a worldwide perspective. If not, then even more parts of the world’s

population will lose their chance for survival.

Emphasizing community does not imply that the value of the individual does not matter.

A community is composed of individual members who all have a potential to develop

themselves. The question is whether the community is beneficial to all the conceivable

potentials of its members. If the individual human being determines his own values and

tries to develop all his own potentials, who decides what is destructive or beneficial for

the community? The future of our global community stands at risk when left to

individuals or individualized communities. If human potential is developed in the interest

of the community, a new perspective opens up – a direction of development that is open

for achieving what is good for us all, of what is morally right but closed to all threats to

the community.

There are nowadays many (potential) communities that require attention or loyalty, or

that can be constructed. Not all of them are diverse in what they offer or inspired by

positive values. When strong positive communities disintegrate, new communities

emerge that may be negative or even genocidal. Communities can also restrict people’s

learning potentials, for instance, by fostering conformism and stifling initiative – one of

the drawbacks in much education.

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Every community forms part of the global community. Leadership reaches beyond one’s

own community, and there is a deep awareness in communities of the multiple

dependencies in relation to other communities. The community should not have an

exclusive relation with a territory. Land ownership is a recent feature in human history

and a major source of conflicts and wars. The community has no time limitations. It is a

living organism that grows for the benefit of all members in an inevitably close

cooperation or interaction with other communities. The community splits when it

becomes too large and anonymity leads to disinterest and disintegration. It relates to other

communities in ever-growing interdependence.

Ubuntu as a movement

The principles upon which ubuntu is based are universal. However, the extent to which

we have lost our communal embedding differs. The loss of communal embedding is a

great risk for education in Palestine, as educators there know. Precisely because the

Segregation Wall in Palestine fragments Palestinian communities (as well as Palestinians

and Israelis), it may be one of the challenges for educators working there not to resign to

the loss of community but to put all their talents and skills in finding or re-creating

communities across borders.

From the work of reformers Maria Montessori and Helen Parkhurst, we know that

education has a role to play in community development: coaching children so that they

will become who they are; guiding and developing the whole human being in head, heart,

and hand; giving education an emancipatory function in the development of communities.

If a community has lost its cohesion, the only thing that ultimately remains is the hand

that wields the machete or a firearm that kills fellow villagers or people who are not

regarded as members of the community, whether in Rwanda, South Africa, or Palestine.

Education should always be in touch with the community, because nothing of what one

learns has value unless the community values it. Everyone’s learning contributes to the

existence and progressive well-being of the community.

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This also implies a reversal of our perspective on differences, with which we struggle so

much in the field of education. In our individualizing approach, we have trouble attaching

value to both principles: ‘equal opportunities’ and ‘appreciating differences’. This refers

to the discussion whether to organize learning heterogeneously (accepting and utilizing

differences between people) or to teach homogeneously (offering one program,

regardless of differences between people). It is about the struggle with differentiation and

selection, with esteem and status. In the meantime we tend to solve our educational and

pedagogical questions by giving organizational answers. In this way, structure is

embraced and content denied.

Viewed from the perspective of ubuntu, differences between people are enrichment. We

learn because we are different, and it is a great shortcoming if we fail to learn from and

with others. Although acquiring knowledge and skills individually is of fundamental

importance for enabling development, what really matters is inspiration, stimulating

imagination, challenging abilities, encouraging self-confidence, offering responsibility,

and enabling choice. And those values can only be realized in the context of a

community.

From the ubuntu point of view, what matters is keeping in touch with and strengthening

the community to improve the well-being of all. Learning in and as communities will

prove to be the most valuable addition to this process, because it adds the moral

dimension. Communal constructivism means helping to calibrate our individual concepts

of norms and values in relation to those of the community, and vice versa. Since we are

members of many communities, this calibration is an ongoing process of mutual transfer

of culture, of acculturation.

Five principles of ubuntu

Ubuntu in education can be translated into five aspects of communal learning. These five

principles are:

1. Learning is a communal process. Learning in schools is not confined to students

only.

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2. The community is characterized by diversity, not by divergence: we learn because

we are different.

3. The community determines the direction of the communal learning process,

because learning time is too valuable to develop all individual potentials in an

undirected manner.

4. The members of the community are responsible for its organization. In schools

students should be involved at all levels of organization in accordance with their

abilities. The school is a model community.

5. The members of the community utilize knowledge and skills of other

communities and offer their own skills and knowledge to others in the awareness

of ultimate global interdependency.

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Women-peacemakers

CRACK IN THE WALL

Pat Gafney

with ideas from conversations with Virginia Moffat, Barbara Kentish, Joan Sharples, Ann

Hemsley, and Rosemary Read

.

“Women hold up half the sky.” “You have struck a rock, you have struck a woman.”

These are two phrases that were frequently used to describe the experience and role of

women in the global south in the 1980s. They captured the spirit of the moment – the

start of the UN Decade for Women and Development and, in particular, the struggle of

women in Apartheid South Africa and war-torn Central America. These phrases reflect

images of strength, determination, and persistence in the face of a myriad of adversities.

Twenty years on, how might we describe the place and role of women as peacemakers in

our new world order? Do women have a distinctive contribution to make? Does being a

woman/mother/sister/daughter/wife offer insights into the task of peacemaking? Do

women across the globe share common experiences in peacemaking? I shared these

questions with a number of women friends and co-workers for peace to help me glean

some insights, and these are reflected in this contribution.

First an ambiguity. Women are peacemakers, as are many men; but women can also be

part of the problem of violence in our world as can men. This may be when we foster and

deepen divisions within the community under the guise of family or cultural honor or

religion and so fan the dangerous flames of vengeance and retribution. Such postures

remind us all that an important starting place for the task of peacemaking is with

ourselves: self-awareness of our own prejudices, of our ability to manipulate and be

manipulated by others towards choices and actions that perpetuate a cycle of violence.

No boundaries

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As peacemakers, then, we need to understand the dynamic of violence in order to be

better placed to transform it. At the time of writing, I hear that knife and gun crime in the

United Kingdom is now four times as frequent as it was a year ago. Almost every week

we hear of a young boy (and it is boys) being murdered by other boys for no apparent

reason other than that they were not part of the ‘gang’ or just happened to be in the wrong

place at the wrong time. The mothers of those killed and those doing the killing are both

victims of the same violence and will carry fear in their hearts for other children. Similar

experiences will be shared by the mother in Israel or Palestine who is afraid that a child

will be convinced that violence and counter-violence are the only ways to bring justice to

a broken society; or the mother in Africa, afraid that her son may be taken as a child

soldier or that her daughter will be kidnapped to ‘service’ the soldiers; or the mother in

Sri Lanka or Iraq, afraid that her children, on their way to school, may be caught in the

cross-fire of weapons that have been traded in far away places. Such realities tell us that

violence knows no boundaries. It happens within the family and at local, national, and

international levels. Violence is personal and political, private and structural, physical

and psychological. These experiences tell us that being an ‘outsider’, for whatever

reason, can leave one vulnerable to the family, the clan, the community of the other. They

tell us that those with interests in power and wealth have no scruples when it comes to

holding on to their positions and power.

So where are we women in all this – as mothers, sisters, daughters, wives, and friends?

Some of my women friends tell me that becoming a mother has heightened their

awareness of their role as peacemakers – giving birth to new life crystallizes the

wickedness of violence and warfare and deepens empathy with other women for whom

the very fact of their being a woman, a mother, makes them particularly vulnerable.

Think, for example, of those who are victims of rape in times of war, those who cannot

give birth in safety because of conflict and human-made controls and barriers. How can a

woman be so tortured at the moment of creating and bringing life into the world? A

negative, although real, response to this might be, “Well, women have always had to pick

up the pieces left by war and violence.” Like Rachel in the scriptures, women will always

cry because their, and other, children are no more. But another, more proactive cry will

say, “Enough!” We do not accept that violence and war are inevitable. We are not passive

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bystanders or victims. If we live in a culture that breeds and encourages violence, if we

live in a culture that uses fear or violence to control relationships, we have to change the

culture, whether it is in the family, the school, the community, the nation, or the religious

tradition to which we belong.

Creating a culture of peace and nonviolence

Some women believe that they should – but often fail to – play a role in helping their

menfolk break through their gender expectations, the ‘tough guys taking on the tough

guise’. Others allude to something similar when they talk of women not being so infected

by the macho-ness of society. This might mean having an ability to know that we do not

have all the answers and that we are not afraid of losing face. It might include being able

to see the bigger picture, holding on to what may be important for a longer-lasting deep

peace, and letting go of things that allow wounds to fester, fail to restore relationships,

and cause bitterness or revenge. These approaches support an understanding of

peacemaking that requires people to take personal responsibility for words and actions as

well as responsibility for the ‘other’. So across the globe, we see women actively

challenging the myth that violence works as a means to bring justice and security; women

who challenge the role that military or paramilitary violence has played in the lives of

their communities – working to prevent military recruitment, working to challenge the

often inflated and glamorous language and images of war and war games; women

working to challenge the myth of redemptive violence so that when sons, husbands, or

brothers are killed, the women mourn the human tragedy rather than celebrate some act

of glory, honor, or sacrifice on behalf of a group or state.

The role that education can play here is crucial. Women should ask for, and create,

opportunities for schools, institutions, and religious networks to teach the discernment

and analysis that is needed to understand the dynamics and consequences of conflict and

violence. They should demand that resources be invested in developing the tools and

skills of peacemaking and nonviolence – conflict resolution, dialogue, mediation,

negotiation, and nonviolent problem solving. They should create non-hierarchical models

of working at all levels so that each person is truly valued and roles, skills, and

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experiences are shared. In these ways each person begins not only to see the distinctive

role that she or he can play in naming and speaking out against injustice and violence but

also to feel empowered to act with others to create new opportunities for change and

transformation.

From the personal to the structural

Experiences of injustice and violence – firsthand or as shared through the lives of others

– can lead us into action, and throughout history we have wonderful stories and models

for this. In the play Lysistrata (She Who Disbands Armies), the non-cooperating women

of Greece had had enough of their menfolk going off to war. The midwives in Egypt did

not want be part of a system of repression and death. In both cases, the women organized

around the power they had at the time. Withdrawing sexual favors to their husbands and

refusing to have their skills used in a destructive way were models of active nonviolence.

Such ‘acting up’ continues today. Think of the Mothers of the Soldiers in Russia who,

sick of their boys being used as cattle fodder in endless wars, took on the military laws of

their war-mongering state; the Mothers of the Disappeared in Argentina who brought

their pain and anger into the public forum by walking weekly through their city centers

carrying images of the lost ones and refusing to allow the perpetrators of violence to

forget their acts; the women working in Sudan and Kenya, who traveled from refugee

camp to village with their simple message, “Get the guns out of our schools, our

churches, our marketplaces”; The Women of the Black Sash in South Africa and the

Women in Black all around the world, who act in solidarity with one another and with

those trapped in conflict and violence, faithfully taking their silent witness into the

streets, opposing militarism, mourning violent deaths, saying “Enough!” in a challenging

but non-threatening way. All these models show women who work against the stream

within their own communities, vulnerable – as many experience abuse and ridicule – yet

speaking truth to power and allowing their personal insights and wisdom, their solidarity

with one another, and their common project to give them strength.

Solidarity without boundaries – ways to connect

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In 1996 I was invited to East Timor to visit the church and other groups that work in an

occupied country. I met with women whose husbands had been imprisoned for years –

women who had been tortured and raped by their occupiers; women who were working to

weave their own cultural and traditional approaches to reconciliation and peacemaking

with their Christian faith in preparation for the time when East Timor would be liberated.

This happened to be at a time when four women in England were in prison facing trial for

an act of nonviolent disarmament. They had entered an airbase to try to disable a jet

aircraft, which was partially built in the United Kingdom and which they knew would be

used by the Indonesian military to attack villages in East Timor. This act of nonviolent

intervention, to prevent a greater crime from taking place, was undertaken after great

preparation, at personal risk to the women themselves, and with complete willingness to

accept the consequences of their actions. In the aircraft cockpit they left images of

children from East Timor and letters about the motivation for their action and prayers. I

took their story with me, together with photographs and press cuttings, but was surprised

to discover that the news of this action had already filtered through to East Timor. Some

were amazed at such actions of solidarity and others challenged me as to why more

people were not protesting the UK’s military support of Indonesia. A good question for

us all. When we know of acts of injustice or violence and realize how we are implicated,

yet do nothing, does our indifference and silence become another form of violence?

I recall a similar experience to that of East Timor when, in 2004, I took part in a Pax

Christi peace visit to Palestine. We went with our Palestinian partners to the almost fully

constructed wall near Rachel’s Tomb. We were from Ireland, the Netherlands, Germany,

France, and the United Kingdom. Part of our time together was to tell stories of other

walls in other times and places. Using poetry, images, and prayers we spoke of the

Romans building a wall to protect the border between England and Scotland; the Berlin

Wall, such a graphic feature of the Cold War; the so-called peace line that divides

Catholic and Protestant communities in Belfast; and the Separation Wall in Palestine. The

first three failed to bring true security and peace to the communities in which they were

constructed. Over time, through the actions of ordinary people seeking security and peace

through encounter, dialogue, and cooperation on projects that build justice and care for

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the earth, the walls had come down – first and foremost in hearts and minds. We hoped

that this sharing would provide a source of encouragement and solidarity for our

Palestinian friends – and be a spur to us all to act and lobby for peace and justice in our

home countries for the peoples of Israel and Palestine.

In these and many other cases across thousands of miles, connections have been made

between people, some of whom will never meet. Connections have been made between

the political, economic, and military visions and actions of people and communities in

one country and the suffering and repression in another. Whether in East Timor, Chile,

Argentina, Palestine, or Zimbabwe, women are making connections and are taking part in

acts of public witness, advocacy programs, vigils, educational initiatives, and

interventions that show solidarity and enable us to see the humanity of the other in order

to help us all become more human.

The power of symbol and faith

As Christian women, our spiritual and liturgical life and our symbols and feasts can also

contribute to our ability to bring hope to our peace work and not be downtrodden and

disempowered by violence and injustice. In the early 1980s Pax Christi women in the

United Kingdom, working at that time to challenge the placement of US nuclear missiles

in the United Kingdom, would regularly gather at a US airbase for times of prayer and

action. They developed a process that brought together women’s experiences with the

scriptures and applied these to the place where they prayed. Themes included watching

and waiting – at the Cross with the others who followed Christ to his death and outside

the gates of the air base, trying to prevent weapons of death from taking to the roads;

exclusion – the disciples rejecting women around Jesus, failing to listen to the women

who were messengers for Jesus and women being marginalized and vilified for their

presence at the base; empowering others – the Magnificat, turning power systems

upside-down, the nonviolent power of the cross and the rejection of hierarchy among the

women working at the base. These were just some of the experiences that encouraged the

women to engage in some theological reflection on their role and their presence.

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Similar actions continue today in resistance to the ongoing militarism and culture of

violence in our world. Using traditional liturgical days – such as Ash Wednesday and a

theme of repentance and change or the feast of Holy Innocents and a theme of the

destruction of innocent lives – and celebrating them at places of violence or conflict can

communicate a powerful message about the Christian option for peace and nonviolence.

Symbolic acts such as planting, watering, and nurturing the seeds of new life in places

where violence or war are planned can help to reclaim such places and return them to the

community. Liturgies that call on and honor the names of those killed in violent ways or

that recall the names of the saints and martyrs of peace and nonviolence who have gone

before us can give us great strength and remind us as a community of our desire to say a

clear ‘no’ to death and hatred and ‘yes’ to life and hope for the future.

A crack in the wall

One traditional way in which the world recognizes peace work is the Nobel Peace Prize.

Since it was established in 1901, only 12 women have been recipients of the award. Ask

most people to name a recipient and they would probably come up with Mandela and

Tutu of South Africa, Arafat and Rabin of Palestine and Israel, Trimble and Hume of

Northern Ireland, or Henry Kissinger of the United States. If you are lucky, they may also

recall Mairead Corrigan of Northern Ireland, Aung San Suu Kyi of Burma, and Wangari

Maathai of Kenya – three of the twelve. Such awards, for the most part, still operate from

a power base that has a limited understanding of peacemaking and is often out of kilter

with what happens on the ground. Indeed, one might even question the worthiness of

some of the recipients. In 2005 an attempt was made to change this when a project

entitled 1000 Women for Peace was introduced – a project that called on women around

the world to nominate ordinary women going about the work of peace. One purpose of

the project was to emphasize that peace does not come about through the efforts of one or

two people alone. It is a cooperative and highly participative process. Another was to

encourage women to continue in their work for peace and to use the opportunity to

educate others as to the breadth and depth of peace work. Unfortunately, the Nobel

Committee could not work with such a framework and remained limited to an approach

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of recognizing one, or at most two, people in their work for peace. They really missed the

point!

Writing in 2005 of these peacemaking actions of women, the South Asian economist and

sociologist, Kamla Bhasin, said, “I am not a wall that divides … I am a crack in that

wall.” Not very poetic but nevertheless descriptive. A crack creates space and lets light

through to illuminate things that are unclear. A crack offers an opening for something

different to be heard, seen, experienced, shared, and responded to. So perhaps this is the

phrase we might add to the others, “Women hold up half the sky,” and “You have struck

a rock, you have struck a woman.” When placed together they create a powerful recipe

for peacemaking and nonviolence. To strength and persistence we can add wisdom and

patience, an ability to connect and be in solidarity with the ‘other’, a readiness to ‘keep

on keeping on’, and a desire to resist violence and hatred with love and nonviolence. I am

not a wall that divides … I am a crack in that wall.

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Pop-Ed

FROM ‘CHA-CHING’ TO ‘AHHH-OH’ IN POPULAR EDUCATION: 

BEYOND THE BANKING MODEL

Nikki Thanos and Leo B. Gorman

 

Can you think of a moment as a teacher when you did not go home feeling that you had

learned something – something intimate and revealing about your life and work – from

your students? And as a student receiving instruction, was there ever a period when you

did not feel that you also contributed a teaching? The true, fluid nature of what is

normally conceptualized as a teacher-student dichotomy is foundational to the pedagogy

of Popular Education. We are all both teachers and students, all the time, from the most

visionary leader to the greenest novice. Many Latin American social movements have

embraced a Popular-Education-inspired, liberation approach to their education and

organizing work. But what is the contemporary relevancy of the Popular Education

pedagogies that have been popularized by Brazilian Paulo Freire’s 1971 book, Pedagogy

of the Oppressed? Why is it crucial to privilege a model that favors slow, systemic

transformations to the strategies that grab headlines, lure funders, and make us feel as

though “we really did something today”? Lastly, what lessons of Popular Education

(Pop-Ed) are applicable to Palestinian movements that are committed to nonviolent

struggle?

After participating in a ‘Nonviolent Barometer’ activity that we facilitated in 2003, one

woman shared that although she had “focused on nonviolent theory in graduate school

(…) for the first time, [she] really felt like [she] had to take a stand on the issues [she’d]

been studying.” As we fed scenarios to the group, folks positioned themselves on a

violent-to-not-violent spectrum that spanned the length of a room. Fighting back in self-

defense when attacked? A lack of health care for your children? Eating meat? Shopping

at WalMart, the US-based ‘superstore’? Throwing a rock at a tank? As discussion

erupted, one participant inevitably pleaded, “Can I change my position?” We

smiled. Indeed, isn’t that the whole point?

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Transformative action

Freire argued that we must strive to unify theory and practice, laying out a praxis for

transformative action that begins with an experience, deepens through a process of

critical reflection, and eventually produces a transformation (first personal, later

societal). In this article we will try to honor his unified praxis, using personal stories to

highlight the theoretical beams that have framed and supported our work as Popular

Educators in the Americas.

‘Cha-ching’ (the sound of coins being dropped in a metal bank box). As though she were

entering a bank, a student steps into the classroom, opens her hand, and futilely catches

several droppings of knowledge from her teacher. She closes her hand and her mind,

losing even more content, and is rewarded for spitting back the same information her

teacher just imparted. She is an empty bank account, and her teacher must fill her with

‘deposits’. Cha-ching. She exits ‘the bank’ – our schools and churches – where learning

is as dry and as inapplicably transactional as a bank deposit. She has been dehumanized

and undervalued. She has not received instruction that relates to her life or experiences,

but she has learned the most important lessons of her life. She has learned subservience,

acquiescence, and servility to the pathetic wisdom of a status-quo ‘expert’. She has

learned to be content with her oppression.

How many of us were taught in this way? How do we, as social-justice educators,

transcend what Freire coined the ‘banking model’ of education, particularly when we

ourselves are in the process of becoming ‘recovered receptors of deposited

knowledge’? We grow up, learn, and get busy – oftentimes ‘too busy’ to critically think

through our approach to our work. The stack of papers grows like kudzu (a fast-growing

vine), the e-mails keep accumulating, and the last thing it seems we have time for is a

three-hour session to think through our curriculum. We already know the material,

right? Haven’t we done this a thousand times before? Sure, our students/audience would

probably be more interested if we brought in some visuals or made the session

interactive, but it is so easy to stand in front of the group and lecture. After all, isn’t that

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what they are expecting?

People’s history – Rosa Parks

And yet instinctually we know that our pedagogies must reflect our own circumstances

and histories. We have to relearn our ‘people’s history’ to unearth the rich legacy of

Popular Education in our social movements. From the histories of our families, villages,

and nations come the stories, voices, and strategies that compose a deep fabric of wisdom

for social change. They inspire us to investigate and tell the ‘histories from the bottom’ –

the hidden or lost voices of immigrants, refugees, women, youth, and other historically

sidelined stakeholders. Moreover, Pop-Ed seeks to deconstruct the limitations of how

histories are created and told while opening spaces for community engagement with the

past.    

Cha-ching. Another bank deposit. In the United States, every student can regurgitate the

momentary history of Rosa Parks, the ‘mother of the Civil Rights Movement’, whose

nonviolent refusal to move to the back of a segregated bus in Montgomery, Alabama,

ignited the bus boycott that evolved into a nationwide movement. But Mrs. Parks wasn’t

just a seamstress who one day randomly decided, as we were taught, that she “was tired

and had had enough.” Parks was the secretary of the local National Association for the

Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and had trained with the Highlander Folk

School in August 1955, four months prior to boarding the bus. The Highlander Center, a

Popular-Education adult training school in rural Tennessee, has quietly churned out

thousands of committed social-justice leaders since opening its doors in 1932. Their

graduates include Septima Clark, Martin Luther King, Esau Jenkins, Bernice Robinson

and, more important, hundreds of other ordinary people who, in the words of the

Center, “worked with others to do extraordinary things.”

The Citizenship Schools started by Highlander in 1954 trained a base of literate black

leaders who backboned the Civil Rights Movement. Parks fondly recalled her first

workshop at Highlander to be the first time she’d ever lived in “an atmosphere of equality

with members of the other race.” How would the US Civil Rights Movement have been

different without the critical, yet often behind-the-scenes support of Highlander? Do we

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fully understand how crucial story-based, multiracial, participatory gathering/training

centers are to our social movements?

The lesson that the Highlander Center provides for effective social movement building is

clear: yes, it is Popular Education based. Yes, it is rooted in an anti-oppression

framework. But most important, the model trusts that the people most affected by

injustice will, provided with the right space, come up with the best proposals to move

toward true liberation. “The answers to the problems facing society lie in the experiences

of ordinary people,” reflects Highlander. “Those experiences, so often belittled and

denigrated in our society, are the keys to grassroots power.” 

That’s where traditional aid organizations err in their ‘empowerment models’ – the

methodology almost never mirrors the values to be cultivated. Whereas the ‘banking’

climate seems friendlier – after all, aren’t all nonprofits designed to be helpful? – the

casualties are the same as those in the school systems. Cha-ching. Even the do-gooders

continue to perpetuate a cycle of structural oppression.

 

Critical community forums

Contrast that to the work of organizations such as the Chiapas, Mexico-based CIEPAC

(The Center for Economic and Political Research for Community Action). CIEPAC has

opened critical community forums to dissect the dangers of the new militarism, which has

accompanied free-trade policies such as the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA)

and the Plan Puebla Panama. In a region where autonomous indigenous movements have

pulsed a colorful vibrancy back into organizing work, we don’t often pause to reflect on

the base-level trainings that produced a critical citizenry in the first place. It takes more

than just a meeting. Or ten. Or fifty.

Too often we focus on getting people out to meetings/events without putting a

corresponding level of attention on the pedagogies employed in shared spaces. If we are

to truly cultivate what Freire called a ‘critical consciousness’, we must make long-term

commitments to accompany people/communities in building skills as well as

analysis. Highlander has continued this work with its US ‘descendents’, including the

Center for Participatory Change in North Carolina, The Jefferson Center for Research

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and Education in the Pacific Northwest, the National Immigrant and Refugee Rights

Coalition, and the Texas-based Colectivo Flatlander.

There are riveting examples of how to apply the model to cross-border work as well. For

several years we both worked with Witness for Peace (WFP), a member-based movement

of people working to change US military and economic policy abroad. Through Popular-

Education-based, experiential delegations that were created to examine the human face of

US policy, WFP has politicized more than 10,000 people – the majority of whom are US

citizens – who return to their homes equipped to effect change. Contemporary

Venezuelan organizers are calling this a form of ‘lateral solidarity’ – the idea that

effective cross-border organizing does not pedestal the rich in parasitical ‘learning’ on

glorified poverty tours, but rather starts from a place where all parties are recognized as

teachers and students. A Guatemalan feminist, smirking during an interview in 2000, put

it this way: “Developed countries do not always produce developed people (…) they

[citizens of developed countries] too have a lot to learn.” 

In that spirit, we openly confess that we have a lot to learn about Palestine. The

blossoming Palestinian leadership, who is practiced in the teachings of nonviolence,

is considerably better positioned to weigh in on discussions about Palestinian movement-

strategy and direction. The construction and continued extension of the Israeli-built

Apartheid Wall and military checkpoints, which physically divide Israel from the West

Bank, offer unique opportunities to build a Popular Education-influenced pedagogy of

sumud (steadfastness). Because the Wall impacts a variety of Palestinian communities in

terms of religion, class, and life experience, a Palestinian-developed Pop-Ed could

effectively bring together and create consensus among affected stakeholders. Unlike

academic theorists, we try to avoid the temptation toward formulaic advice-giving; by

nature, Pop-Ed requires a localized expertise to apply and adapt the model. We are able

to contextualize our experiences in innovative ways through the simple act of telling old

stories and listening to new ones. A good story is often an appropriate, and arguably

crucial, place to begin rethinking a social movement.

 

Colombia-Palestine

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Take, for example, the product of a 2003 workshop with nonviolent faith activists in

Colombia. Participants first shared the realities of the war in their communities. As in

Palestine, limited communication between regions creates a dreadful sense of isolation

inside Colombia, particularly in rural communities. After the session, one farmer

commented, “I no longer felt alone once I told my story (…), and then I heard my

testimony repeated over and over again [in other participants’ stories]. Everyone here is

like me, facing the same (…) horrors.” In classic Pop-Ed fashion, facilitators then began

to bridge the power of each individual story into a more structured diagnostic.

The analysis that was generated during that meeting revealed striking parallels to

Palestine. The Colombians identified a series of commonly held community

values/beliefs as obstacles to effective organizing – obstacles that are often on par with

tangible manifestations of war, including fumigations, para-militarism, and territory

battles between armed groups. The following concepts were included among these

challenges: 

- Power comes from charismatic strongmen, not collective community power: the ‘we-

need-a-new-leader’ syndrome.

- It is not a priority to do work with long-term paybacks in the face of urgent, short-

term needs: stuck-in-emergency mode.

- Our participation in meetings that challenge militarism brings too much risk to our

families: scared into impotency.

- Nonviolence isn’t an option in a high-conflict zone: there is too much violence to be

nonviolent.

- There’s a reason people stick to their own races/faiths; we are too different to get

along: faith/race as insurmountable divider.

- We have been at war forever and have tried everything, but nothing ever changes: the

normalization of war.

- The gringos are here to help; they bring us aid, or money, or

accompaniment: foreigners in perpetual ‘helper mode’ – limited potential for lateral

solidarity.

- I don’t have anything valuable to contribute; I’m not a leader; I’m just a simple [fill in

the blank – farmer, teacher …]: dehumanized self-perception.

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- Social-justice organizers can’t be trusted – they’re out to get something just like

everyone else: social-justice organizers care more about their personal agendas than

‘the cause’.

We hope that you found yourself thinking, as did we, how incredible a dialogue would be

between these Colombians and a group of Palestinians. Excitingly, some of those

conversations have already happened. More are in the works. But that’s only part of the

point. Even more exhilarating is the recognition that a Popular Education model is one of

the only ways to move through such an abundance of knowledge and shared experience

into a stage of widespread, informed, community-wide critical consciousness. Palestine is

ripe for a model that has branded itself as an education that ‘favors the poor and

oppressed’. 

Cha-ching. But before we can get out of ‘the bank’, those of us already ‘critically

conscientized’ must deepen our commitment to cultivating (in ourselves and others) a

highly evolved class of facilitators. How do we perpetuate a colonizer-colonized or

teacher-student dichotomy in our work? So let’s introspect – long and hard – and as we

do, the ‘coins’ of the banking model will continue to get passed across borders and

generations. No worries. We all recognize that it is time to move beyond cha-ching to

what we like to think of as ‘ahhh-oh’ –  an affirmative, almost silent ‘ahhh’ – because we

know that solid organizing begins with a wildly inclusive passion for listening. And ‘oh’

because we don’t have to do the hardest work. We don’t have to have all the

answers. The path is already laid, and the answers already there, dormant in the wisdom

of our communities. Ahhh-oh, yes indeed. Now then, isn’t that a better sound?

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Nonviolence

A STORY OF BEAUTIFUL RESISTANCE

Abdelfattah Abusrour

The peoples of every nation in this world look forward to living in freedom and safety

and sharing the beauty of their cultures, traditions, and civilizations. This is what allows

peoples to be appreciated and respected by other nations. In the Middle East, and more

specifically in Palestine, the incessant propaganda that is diffused by the international

media portrays the Palestinian people as the aggressors, the criminals, the barbarians, and

the terrorists, even though they have been oppressed and uprooted from their lands that

are still under occupation, and even though they have suffered from the moment that

Zionist forces occupied Palestine in 1948.

Mahatma Gandhi said: “If we are to teach real peace in this world, and if we are to carry

on a real war against war, we shall have to begin with the children.”  

That was my starting point when I began to volunteer in various refugee camps, including

Aida Camp where I was born. Aida Camp is home to approximately 5,000 people who

came from 40 different villages that were destroyed by Zionist forces in 1948. During the

Nakba (the catastrophe of 1947–48) and the Naksa (the occupation of 1967), more than

500 Palestinian villages were destroyed by the Zionist and Israeli occupying forces.

Entire village populations were uprooted and evacuated from their lands. Presently, about

66 percent of the Aida Camp population is under 18 years old.

Aida Refugee Camp is located to the north of Bethlehem and is surrounded by Israeli

military posts and colonies/settlements. It is exposed to frequent military incursions and

curfews. At the same time, the camp does not have green spaces or playgrounds for

children. Since 2005, it has been shut off by the nine-meter-high illegal Separation Wall

along its northern side. In 2006, the eastern side of the camp was also caged in by the

Separation Wall. This Wall has created a huge environmental and health crisis for the

people in the camp, especially the children. The area next to the Wall on our side became

a garbage area. People, even from outside the camp, throw all their garbage there,

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including the leftover building materials from repair work that was done on some of the

homes that were damaged due to the previous shootings and incursions into the camp.

With the frequent military incursions, the children are in almost daily confrontation with

Israeli soldiers. We value our children, and we want them to be safe and live long lives.

We do not want our children to be killed by Israeli bullets and be numbered on lists of

martyrs, or handicapped for the rest of their lives, or perish in prison. Nor do we want to

continue to reproduce the same stereotypical images that are diffused in the media and

that represent Palestinians as only capable of throwing stones or responding only by

violence to all the violence imposed on them.

Safe space

My idea was to provide a “safe space” within which our children could learn to break

stereotypes by being allowed to defend and illustrate their beauty and humanity through

creative artistic activities as a way to resist the ugliness of the violence forced upon them.

I wanted to allow them to express themselves in a positive and constructive way via

theatre, arts, education, and sports, and to find peace within themselves in order to make

peace with the world.

With a group of friends, I founded Alrowwad Cultural and Theatre Training Center in

1998, and initiated the idea of the arts and culture as a form of “Beautiful Nonviolent

Resistance.” The arts, in general, and theatre, in particular, are very powerful means of

expression and effective methods of change at the level of the individual and the

community. The children are the actors and artists. And since we are still under

occupation, the arts are also a nonviolent way to resist the ugliness of the violence of this

occupation. Though I am actually working in Aida Camp, where I was born, I have also

worked in other camps, and theatre and arts programs are now multiplying. The idea of

beautiful, nonviolent resistance is actually on its way to different countries.

The theatre and dance performances of Alrowwad in Europe, the United States, Egypt,

and Palestine have made a great impact. On one hand, the audiences saw another image

of Palestinian humanity, beauty, and culture. Many said: “When we watch the news now,

we will watch it with different ears and eyes.” On the other hand, these tours have

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allowed our children to see other people and other countries and to experience how it is to

live in a free country without checkpoints, teargas, or occupation soldiers – and without a

Separation Wall. These tours created a possibility for them to meet with others and to

break the stereotypes of the others, whatever their origins or religions are. We are all

human beings and equal partners in building a better future for ourselves and the

generations to come. We all work so that the future will be more beautiful than the

present that envelops our lives.

These international tours have gained Alrowwad an international reputation and support.

Increasing numbers of international volunteers are interested in helping Alrowwad in its

projects and activities or in organizing international theatre tours. Some have volunteered

to animate workshops on playwriting for women and children, puppetry for children, or

photo and video training and film production for children and women. Alrowwad was the

first center to initiate the concept of “beautiful nonviolent resistance,” and the first to

create a sports fitness program in a refugee camp in Palestine. Alrowwad was also the

first center to create a two-year professional video and photo training program in a

refugee camp in Palestine, and probably also outside Palestine. Alrowwad was the first

center in a refugee camp to start the enhancement educational program for children with

learning difficulties. The program, which was begun in 2001 on a voluntary basis, offers

courses in Arabic, English, mathematics, and computer skills, and it provides a traditional

library and a games library. The approach that is used focuses on teaching basic skills for

reading, understanding, analyzing, and developing the imagination through play, the arts,

and role-play. This program is essential because of the social and psychological impact

that the frequent Israeli incursions into the camp are having on the children: the learning

difficulties, the psychological problems (aggression, bedwetting, fear, stress, and

anxiety), as well as the heavy economic burden due to unemployment – in addition to the

international boycott of the Palestinian Authority after the election of Hamas in 2006. All

these factors have created an environment that puts pressure on the children and forces us

to move forward and respond. This program provides hope for children who find the care

and attention that encourage them to stay in school and avoid becoming street children or

child workers.

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During incursions and curfews, Alrowwad Center is immediately transformed into an

emergency medical clinic, since there is no clinic in the camp. It also becomes a media

center to diffuse news worldwide. During such difficult times, Alrowwad was open 24

hours a day, seven days a week. During the invasion of 2002 (from March 30th to May

12th ), Alrowwad was full of life and volunteers, working like bees in a nest – foreign

volunteers from eight countries together with numerous local volunteers.

Pioneers for life

As “pioneers for life,” the people at Alrowwad work in a spirit of social entrepreneurship.

Whether funding is available or not, we continue to do the work and try to respond to the

needs of the community as best we can. When we received donations to help us buy

equipment that the Israeli soldiers destroyed when they vandalized the center in May

2002, we chose to allocate two-thirds of this donation to scholarships for high-achieving

students. We recognize how important it is to encourage young people to study at

university. During the summer of 2007, we conducted a theatre, dance, and clown-show

tour in Palestinian cities, villages, and refugee camps in the West Bank, without any

funding from local or international organizations. Our earlier focus was to build bridges

on the international level. We are now focusing more on collaborative work on the

national level as well.

In August 2007, Alrowwad presented a festival of silent movies, which were projected on

the Wall around the camp. This was the first street-cinema in Palestine. Our future

project, “Moving movies,” will present movies in various villages and refugee camps

throughout the West Bank.

We consider that children are not only the future, but also the “change makers” of the

present. We work with them and for them. It is clear that we need a circle of support to

continue. We cannot work with children without involving parents, especially the

mothers, and the schools. That is why we have created strong links with families and

schools. Alrowwad focuses a lot on empowering parents and involving mothers in

various workshops, especially in computer training, English learning, and psychological

follow-up and guidance. The parents’ committee of the enhancement educational

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program is composed mainly of mothers. Alrowwad’s board has three female board

members out of seven. It is evident that when the mother (who is more involved in

helping her children than the father in our community) is not empowered enough to help

her children with their homework, the cycle will remain incomplete, and our work with

children will continue to suffer.

“With or without money, we will do it”

Alrowwad’s work philosophy is that “with or without money, we will do it.” Of course, it

is evident that with money we can do much more. We depend largely on volunteers,

whether local or international. With all due respect to humanitarian aid, we do not

consider ourselves a humanitarian case. We refuse to be reduced to recipients of charity

and to be humiliated. We ask for donations to be an act of solidarity to help us to

continue doing what we do through our beautiful and nonviolent resistance, resisting the

policies of transfer and ethnic cleansing, and continuing to have the dignity and humanity

to defend by all means the beauty and humanity within us.

At the same time, it is clear that there is a need to build the capacities of Alrowwad in

terms of staff and full-time employees so as to reach larger groups. We are actually in

this phase now, responding to the increasing needs of Alrowwad as an institution and of

the local community, as well as to the demand for more services. We want to be able to

intervene at earlier stages of childhood and prepare infrastructures and capacities to

facilitate work with younger children from nursery to high school.

Alrowwad has created many theatre shows that focus on identity, culture and heritage,

folktales, human and children’s rights, women’s rights, and environmental and health

awareness. Puppet shows have also included some of the above-mentioned themes as

well as other important elements of education. Alrowwad has produced many children’s

photo and painting exhibitions that have toured internationally in USA, Japan and

Europe. It has produced two fictional videos and a video clip. By the end of the year, our

media project Images for Life will include more productions that have been created by

trainees.

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Together, the concepts of beautiful nonviolent resistance, community involvement, and

social entrepreneurship inspire our work, which is now on its way to becoming adopted

in other refugee camps as well as in other countries.

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Voices

THE POWER TO HAVE AN IMPACT

Susan Atallah

October 2000. The beginning of the second Intifada. It was a disastrous time with much

violence, shelling, and danger in Bethlehem. Students at St. Joseph School/Terra Sancta

came to school, studied, ate their snacks, and did their homework. We, teachers,

discovered that those students changed; they became absent-minded, they even cried

during classes, and they felt physically sick. The teachers’ roles and attitudes towards the

teaching process changed. Due to the circumstances, they had to sway from the

‘traditional’ way of facilitating their students’ educational development to include their

emotional development as well. Teaching is a tough job under normal circumstances, but

it is more difficult to deal with a traumatized child, let alone a whole classroom of

traumatized children. What was amazing is that students changed the ways they dealt

with school life, either by delaying lunch until after they had finished their homework

and before it became dark and the shooting started, or by freezing their activities and not

working at all. Each individual student came up with a different strategy to deal with the

current situation.

At the time, the students came to school and excitedly shared the events of the night

before with their friends and classmates. Some were able, after the fact, to laugh about

what they did during the shooting and bombing (how they crawled on all fours and hid),

and some cried. What I noticed among my students in the 11th grade was that they had

become more united and more empathic with each other. They asked us teachers whether

or not we were as afraid and worried as they were. It was very crucial to them, I noticed,

to know whether grownups felt the same as they themselves did. They wanted to feel

closer to their teachers, to show that their fears and insecurities were shared.

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In view of the need to give an opportunity to students to express their opinions and voice

their concerns for their future after being exposed to the traumatizing experiences of

bombing and shelling, it was essential to direct their focus towards positive channels. On

an educational level, a healthy learning process in any subject is based on providing an

environment where the students feel that they are active contributors to the structure of

their society. They have to feel that they have the power to have an impact, no matter

what their ages are. So what to do?

Oral history

Preserving Palestinian oral history was an initiative of my school to enhance the students’

sense of belonging and connection to their Palestinian heritage, customs, and traditions.

Concerned about losing the personal experiences of the grandparents and knowing that

those experiences would not be found in history books, we designed an assignment in the

English language curriculum in which the 11th-grade students (16 and 17 years old) were

required to interview their parents and grandparents.

Of course, neither the grandparents/parents nor the students could claim to be accurate

historians. One of the objectives was to document real-life experiences and personal

stories from the various periods during which Palestine was occupied and compare that

life with the present situation. Our main aim was to preserve our history. At first, the

students found it difficult to approach their grandparents/parents, since it is not customary

for teenagers to be interested in such topics. Some grandparents voiced their pride in their

granddaughters’ interest in listening to their stories and were so overjoyed that they

wanted to go on and on with their stories; other students felt that they had become closer

to their grandparents/parents and appreciated and respected them for enduring such

hardships during their lives. What was touching was that two of the grandparents passed

away after the interviews were conducted, and that the students felt glad that they had

been able to spend quality time with their grandfathers and had gotten to know them

better before their deaths. Only very few students felt apprehensive about this whole

project at the beginning and complained. The majority enjoyed being part of their

grandparents’ past.

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“What kind of future can we expect since our grandparents, our parents, and we ourselves

have only grown up under occupation, violence, restrictions, and above all, lack of

freedom?”

This was a question posed by my students after talking to their grandparents and parents

about the events that had taken place since 1936. Their conclusions were striking; the

information they received brought them more frustration, depression, fear, and insecurity,

since they concluded that this country has been under different occupations and that each

one was worse than the other. Their conversations with their grandparents brought them

closer together, and they learned to appreciate the difficult lives that their grandparents

had lived. They wanted to learn more about the history of Palestine and kept asking for

books. So I went ahead and bought them a few good books to read in their free time.

Another thing was evident in their conclusions: their refusal of occupation and their

worry about their own future and the future of their own children. This taught them to be

more adamant and more determined to continue the fight, in their own ways, against all

that is unjust. Some said that by being more educated they could fight the Israeli

occupation, whereas others thought that the second Uprising (Intifada) could and would

bring them the freedom they sought. A few students refrained from answering because

they were confused about this violence that had changed their lives in every possible

way, and they were all worried about their safety and security, even in their own homes.

Diary writing

Another pilot project, “A Palestinian Diary-Writing Project,” was initiated in November

2000 and has continued during subsequent years as a means to adapt our curriculum to

the psychological and social needs of the students. We chose this approach because it

helps to provide a learning environment in which students register what happens around

them, cope with negative and traumatic feelings and experiences, and reflect upon their

identity in a world of conflicting cultural demands. The project was part of the English

language curriculum for students between the ages of 14 and 17, since they have the

ability to express themselves well in English. The diaries served to provide information to

those in the outside world who are not familiar with daily life (including that of

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Christians) in Palestine. The AFSC (American Friends Service Committee – a Quaker

organization) sponsored the project and encouraged us to make contact with various

social and learning environments, including boys and girls in Arroub Camp to the north

of Hebron, also in the West Bank.

The diaries covered the day-to-day events in the students’ environment, living their

‘abnormal normal’ life, as one of the students remarked. Many accounts related to daily

life under a 24-hour curfew and how school and study life were affected by that. Other

diaries showed emotional reflections by the students about their individual and social

worlds and sometimes included critiques of what they felt were the shortcomings of the

society. Still other diaries revealed dreams about the future or addressed subjects that deal

directly with the conflict and the Israeli ‘other’. Many diaries at the time dealt with a

great tragedy that befell the school in March 2003: the death of a ten-year-old girl,

Christine Sa’adeh, after Israeli soldiers in the center of Bethlehem mistook her family’s

car for that of a militant. Christine’s death was a shock for the school as well as for the

Bethlehem community as a whole.

The students’ diaries were published in several books: “When Abnormal Becomes

Normal, When Might Becomes Right” (published by AEI-Open Windows, Culture and

Palestine Series, Bethlehem 2000), and especially “The Wall Cannot Stop Our Stories: A

Palestinian Diary-Writing Project, 2000–2004” (St. Joseph School for Girls/Terra Sancta,

Bethlehem, 2004, second edition 2006). The diary-writing project continues to be

implemented by our school.

Moreover, based on the diaries of the first class that participated in the project, a drama

play was developed. The play focused on ten different young girls who live in the

Bethlehem region. It reflected their dreams, fears, joys, expectations, visions, and hopes

for the future, as they live under occupation. The play was in English and was performed

at the largest theatre festival in the world, the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. It was also

nominated for Amnesty International’s award for best play for the year 2005.

Now the Saint Joseph students are working on launching a one-hour radio program on

Radio Mawwal in Bethlehem that tackles social issues related to teenagers by teenagers.

There are three groups of four students who will address the following issues: cheating in

schools, migration of minds from Palestine, and the relationship between teenagers and

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their parents. Each topic will be addressed during two sessions to be aired once a week

and will include time for listeners’ feedback via e-mail. The aim of this radio program is

threefold: to help students voice their opinions on significant issues, to offer relevant tips

and solutions to their peers, and to help students become more responsible.

A land of testing

A personal reflection to conclude. Every time I think about my country, Palestine, a few

things pop out in my mind that explain why it is very difficult to live here, especially in

Bethlehem.

The Holy Land is a land of testing. It is a land where your faith is tested, your patience is

tested, your courage is tested, and your hope is tested. When friends come for a visit from

abroad, they often ask us how we can actually live in this country where everything that

we deal with is so difficult. You have to be a fighter to be able to get what you want or be

who you want to be, especially if you’re a woman. This is one of the reasons that I instill

courage and confidence in my teenage students and encourage them to have a goal and to

go for it. They have to have high self-esteem and stand up for their opinions without

insulting anybody. They are learning to adapt themselves to the current situation, but not

get used to it because it is not normal; people don’t live like us and our lives and

circumstances are not normal, but we have to cope with them in the best way that we can.

We can feel depressed and frustrated, but we can’t give in to those feelings for a long

time. It’s normal to feel afraid and it’s normal to feel angry, but those feelings have to be

channeled towards a positive direction.

As an illustration of these principles, I would like to quote from an essay that was written

by four of my students: Jennifer Juha, Jumana Denho, Rasha Hazineh, and Nisreen

Ballout.

There was a little boy who was holding his toy. It was a pigeon that symbolizes peace.

While he was playing one afternoon, he had a dream. He dreamed about another world

where he could talk about his toys and his hobbies, his interests and his dreams,

instead of talking about guns, blood, and killing – a world where he could run and play

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with his friends. He dreamed about people who loved each other and smiled to each

other, happy and secure. Happiness was in everybody’s heart. There was no war, no

tanks, no rockets, and no shelling or bombing. There weren’t sounds of crying.

Christians, Moslems, and Jews were living together in peace, fighting together against

the evil of the world, and talking about justice. He dreamed about a better world. A

world full of peace. A bullet, an evil bullet came like a thief and entered his heart. It

took his soul and his dream away. His pigeon was beside him, right there next to his

motionless body. But the pigeon remembered the boy’s dream and came to life and

flew away. The pigeon decided to tell the boy’s dream to the world; AND it decided to

make this world that he dreamed about come true.

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Imagination

MENE TEKELS ON THE WALL

Gied ten Berge

A thesis was recently published in the Netherlands by Beatrice de Graaf, titled “Beyond

the Wall, the German Democratic Republic, the Dutch Churches and the Peace

Movement.” The 1970s and 1980s were the heydays of the Dutch peace movement led by

Christian peace movements such as the Interchurch Peace Council (IKV) and Pax Christi.

Hundreds of thousands of people participated in large peace demonstrations. IKV and

Pax Christi inspired the activities of hundreds of local peace groups working within the

churches. In cooperation with East German dissidents and independent peace activists,

IKV and Pax Christi tried to set up a transnational movement for peace and human rights

that would reach beyond the iron frontiers of NATO and Warsaw Pact countries. At the

time, our partners in the GDR lived more or less in a state of illegality. However, under

the roofs of their churches they found a free place in what used to be a totalitarian state.

During these difficult times, the churches made it possible for our partners to keep alive

their dreams of a better future. They prayed in the churches; they had discussions and

developed actions for an undivided peace. The book shows that all this was not without

consequence. The East-German Secret Police (Stasi) were exerting much pressure on the

church leaders to isolate the dissidents. The Wall was an effective instrument to sabotage

the contacts between our peace friends and us. I speak about ‘contacts’ in general, but

you may also interpret ‘contacts’ at the time as a manifestation of the art of making a

‘solidarity pilgrimage’. It concerned a pilgrimage towards all our fellow Christians who

were living in a communist country in the dangerous context of a nuclear weapons race. I

have many memories dating from that time and also from previous periods.

As a 19-year-old student in 1967, I participated for the first time in a Berlin trip

organized by the Dutch Catholic Student Federation for Political Sciences. I remember a

city where you could still observe ruins from the Second World War. For the first time, I

saw the Berlin Wall, erected some years before out of rough blocks of concrete and

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surrounded by a lot of barbed wire. My visit to the grey world of East Berlin was very

impressive. The last day was especially memorable. I still remember well the walk I took,

alone, along the 17th of June Road in the direction of the Brandenburger Tor. I heard

shooting. American armed cars immediately raced to the Wall. In my mind’s eye, I still

see the fugitive bleeding dead and hear the shouting of people who wanted revenge.

Mythos Berlin

Many years later I participated as a coordinator of IKV’s peace activities in a movement

of independent peace groups that represented parishes from all over the GDR. It

happened that my name was put on the black list, so I was unable to pass the frontier until

the Berlin Wall fell in 1989. Two years before, in 1987, a public meeting of Evangelical

churches took place in East Berlin. We knew that some independent peace activists from

the East would make a public appearance. I tried again to cross, but in vain. The ‘paradise

of workers and peasants’ seemed to be closed forever.

So I decided to take a long walk along the western side of the Wall. German friends told

me to have a look at the interesting graffiti. I wrote an impressionistic article that began

with a reference to the cross of that unknown fugitive, erected 20 years ago. But it was

not the only memory of that day. The change in atmosphere surprised me. Looking at the

Wall, I realized that feelings of helplessness and anger no longer prevailed, but rather the

feeling of watching a ridiculous, surrealistic work of art that caught me. The feeling grew

stronger that day when I visited the exposition “Mythos Berlin.” There I saw – two years

before the Wall fell! – fabulous and brilliant exhibits of international artists who

participated in a contest for the development of ideas about the future of the Wall. They

did so under the slogan: “Zur behutsamen Verstädterung der Berliner Mauer” [“For a

careful urbanization of the Berlin Wall”]. I saw brilliant photomontages of the Wall

situated in play lakes. I saw the Wall built within a green dike that could be climbed so

that one could look down on the Wall. I saw models of sections of the Berlin Wall

situated in parks, with benches on both sides. People had the opportunity not only to look

‘beyond’ the Wall but also to look at themselves. It was all very creative and elicited

feelings of cheerful alienation. I spoke about it at the time as indicating “a new,

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comfortable feeling of reality.”

Most remarkable at the time was the near absence of the militant, aggressive texts that I

had observed in 1967. Most graffiti was now loaded with humor and reflection. “Juchei!

Unnsinn gegen Wahsinn” [“Yippee! Nonsense against madness!”]; “Wings will bring

you peace!”; “Freedom, also for you, Erich” (the first name of Party leader Erich

Honnecker). There was a cartoon of Ronald Reagan flying on a rocket through space and

shouting: “I am the Wall in space!” I used a beautiful French poetic text as the title of my

article: “Le mur c’est bien, l’amour c’est mieux” [“The wall is OK, but love is better”].

Some texts were very reflective indeed, such as “Das Geheimniss der Zukunft der

Menschlichkeit is das schlechtste zu besiegen” [“The mystery of the future of humanity is

the most difficult thing to besiege”]. And that is very true, because walls can never break

our deep human curiosity for each other, our longing for love and understanding between

human beings.

It is this text from the Berlin Wall, which has already vanished, this text with its hint of

curiosity and longing that I wish to bring to the Wall in Bethlehem and Palestine today.

Full of creativity

The Wall, which nowadays divides Palestine and divides Palestine and Israel from each

other, is rather new. The anger and bitterness are very fresh, and this Wall has its own

unique context. However, this Wall too is a manifestation of all the physical and

psychological walls built by mankind. From its very beginning we have to unmask this

silly monument as a sign of fear and distrust, injury and impotence – as the ultimate act

of those who are once again confusing peace and security on the one hand, and repression

and injustice on the other.

One way to answer them is by writing Mene Tekels on the Wall. The Wall will become

full of creativity – full of drawings and messages with a hopeful impact. It is good advice

as well as a lesson in the recent history of Berlin: reserve the graffiti on this new Wall not

only for messages of anger and outcry, which are well known, but also for messages that

express intelligence, humor, and reflection. This Wall does not need only to express

people’s despair but can also whisper their beliefs, hope, and love. This Wall must not

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just be a ‘carrier’ of cynicism and hate. Rather, it must be a place where people

encourage one other, where they make fun of ridiculous politics, and where they make

each other laugh. A Wall full of interesting, critical texts can feed people with reflection,

cheerfulness, hope, and desire. Sharon’s Wall will sooner give way under the pressure of

these creative weapons of non-violence than under a battering ram.

Of course the Berlin Wall and Sharon’s Wall are not the same; they belong to different

contexts, and I do not want to compare different countries, peoples, situations, or political

systems. But one thing is sure: building such walls will always bring results that are

different than the original intentions of the builders. Perhaps we may compare them with

barrages of a water reservoir in which the desires of new generations for lasting peace

and justice are collected. Those desires will always find a way out; if not ... the barrage

will break! We learned from the Berlin Wall that, even after its collapse, the Wall can

still have a second life in peoples’ minds. But now it is enough to encourage one another

by learning about historical experience. Political and military walls always represent the

end point of a process, when politicians reach a dead end. However, this ‘farthest point’

also forms, paradoxically enough and sooner or later, the beginning of unforeseen

changes. The fall of the Berlin Wall taught everybody that, after its fall, nothing will ever

be the same again.

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Space/symbolic violence

PAINTINGS, MURALS, AND GRAFFITI ON THE WEST BANK WALL:

COPING MECHANISMS AND ACTS OF RESILIENCE

Brigitte Piquard

Space and time are two basic notions on which identity, feelings of belonging, and social

order are defined and organized. The Wall and the numerous checkpoints have drastically

modified the notions of space and time for Palestinians who are dispossessed of their

lands and their lives. They experience this as a deep loss of social meaning and an

ultimate form of harassment.

The Wall impacts Palestinian life through the destruction of the social and spatial

environment. The confiscation of land, the destruction of visual perspective, the closure

of enclaves, the denial of privacy, the destruction of landscape, and the systematic control

of Palestinian places of memories and social meanings can be described as acts of

‘spaciocide’ and ‘urbicide’ (massive destruction and disorganization of space and cities)1

and even, in combination with symbolic violence, as a form of ethnocide (the deliberate

eradication of the culture of a specific group).2

Various forms of reactions and coping mechanisms can be found in relation to the Wall.

Since its creation, the Wall displays graffiti, political slogans, and paintings of all kinds

produced by artists or activists. Visual art can be one of the most symbolic and powerful

expressions of resilience.

Those products can first be analyzed according to their content, as images that represent

aspects of political discourse concerning the Wall or the general situation in the West

Bank. The intended meanings of the drawings may vary according to the author. Their

symbolic interpretation can be polysemic and vary according to the audience that is

1 For further explanation, see Marshall Berman, “Among the Ruins,” The New Internationalist, issue 178, December 1987. Available

online: http://www.newint.org/issue178/among.htm (accessed on October 30, 2006), and Stephen Graham, “Clear Territory: Urbicide

in the West Bank.” Available online: http://www.opendemocracy.net/conflict-politicsverticality/article_241.jsp#3 (accessed on

October 30, 2006).

2 Brigitte Piquard, “The Politics of the West Bank Wall,” in Swenarton, M., Troiani, I., Webster, H., The Politics of Making. London,

New York: Routledge, 2007.

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targeted. The paintings have their own lives. They can be reproduced in photos or

postcards and put on the web without losing their symbolic power.

Secondly, the paintings or graffiti may carry a meaning in relation to their specific

locations on the Wall. The paintings and their environment together make up a complete

object. The paintings may lose their impact if transposed to another location. They lose

their significance if taken out of their physical, social, or political environment. But

through their contextual link they can become the emblem of a specific place, part of the

landscape, and even part of the collective memory.

Finally, the representations on the Wall can be considered as products of a process, a

flow. The act of painting and the process of creation are by themselves significant,

whatever the content or location. The emphasis is on the active dimension of this

expression of resilience, which is viewed as an ongoing process. The Wall is painted and

painted over – again and again. Some drawings will last a few days; others will stay and

become part of the collective memory.

This article will try to tackle the various aspects of the paintings and graffiti on the West

Bank Wall in order to analyze their qualities as expressions of resilience and as

mechanisms to cope with symbolic violence and a culture of war.

Culture of war and symbolic violence

The concept of a ‘culture of war’ emphasizes all dimensions of the cultural construction

of conflict and occupation. In a war context, a whole range of creative and innovative

initiatives can be observed, which lead to new kinds of social behavior, relations, values,

and beliefs. Living close to the Separation Wall, some Palestinians have created their own

mental walls, imposing a curfew on themselves, restricting their own mobility, walling in

their hopes and aspirations.1 This can be understood as a result of the symbolic violence2

that is experienced by a certain group when it perceives a situation as unbearable because

values, power relations, or a world vision are felt to be under threat and when there is a

1 Brigitte Piquard, “The Politics of the West Bank Wall.”

2 Pierre Bourdieu, Le sens pratique. Paris: Minuit, 1980, p. 219.

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common understanding and belief that those threats jeopardize life in society.1 In most

conflicts, these feelings of threat are reciprocal. The Wall is the architectonic emblem of

feelings of mutual threat, victimization, and mental borders.

Cultures of war and forms of symbolic violence, as well as their impact, are not only

created during conflict or occupation. They can also be transmitted through media, art, or

formal and non-formal education. Representations on the Wall are expressions of current

feelings that underlie a specific understanding of the situation and a response to it. Those

perceptions are organized in two main dichotomies: the relations between space and

territory2 and between identity and otherness.3

As for the relations between space and territory, the central notion in connection to the

West Bank Wall is the idea of closure. The experience of total closure is often expressed

by metaphors of prison, ghetto, or camp. There is a clear sense that territories are sealed

and, within the territories, specific symbolic locations are sealed as well, such as Rachel’s

Tomb in Bethlehem. The West Bank has become a place from which one neither leaves

nor migrates but escapes. The sense of total closure is even more strongly felt when there

is a need or willingness to cross, to travel, to move in and out.

The notions of closure and mental wall have, for many, become part of the collective

identity. This awareness may lead to the redefinition of the notion of identity and

otherness. A process of identity formation is a reciprocal phenomenon. There is a need to

be recognized by others in one’s own identity and to recognize others in their own

identities. In Palestine, the relation is broken by the lack of potential contact with

‘otherness’. Due to the Wall, Palestinians consider ‘others’ to be those living behind the

Wall. They can neither be reached nor, in many cases, seen. The reciprocity in

identification is therefore in crisis.

The symbolic content of drawings

1 Brigitte Piquard, “The Politics of the West Bank Wall.”

2 ‘Space’ should be taken in its purely geographical or physical dimension. ‘Territory’ refers to a socialized, inhabited space.

Collective memories and identities transform space into territory. The denial of this transformation (by the nonrecognition of places of

memory, the denial of access, the denial of meaning-making in relation to specific spaces) may have a dreadful impact on a

collectivity and on its sources of identification.

3 See Marc Augé, Le sens des autres: actualité de l’anthropologie. Paris: Fayard, 1994.

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One of the particularities of the paintings on the West Bank Wall is the fact that quite a

few have been made by international activists who are not themselves part of the

Palestinian struggle but are concerned global citizens. As a consequence, the contents of

the paintings may indicate a broad range of registers such as the peace register

(references to Gandhi, peace symbols, and slogans, etc.) or the register of the anti-

globalization movement, linking and mixing anti-Israeli feelings with anti-American and

anti-capitalist symbolism.

However, most of the paintings use symbols of the Palestinian resistance such as the

Palestinian flag or the Palestinian keffiyeh. Slogans such as “To exist is to resist” defy the

annihilation of Palestinian existence. Putting such symbols and slogans on the Wall can

be a way to reclaim, to reappropriate symbolically, or even to regain the

occupied/confiscated space. The symbolism is directly connected to the identity quest.

Israeli policies will be portrayed as evil and are often compared to the creation of ghettos

during the Second World War or to apartheid in South Africa.

Although Palestinians tend to emphasize the dichotomy identity/otherness, the

international activists emphasize the tension between space and territory. Closure is a

main theme that is expressed through symbols of openness: windows, holes in the Wall,

ladders along the Wall, etc. In some places, as in Bethlehem, “symbolic doors have been

painted by Italian artists on the Wall to highlight the denial of freedom of movement.”1

Drawing clearly becomes a political practice for all.

Symbolic drawings may lead an ephemeral life on the Wall but can survive through

reproduction. They can become emblems of Palestinian resilience and used for

international demonstrations, exhibits, or propaganda. They become ideological and

symbolic markers that sometimes escape the very meaning given to them by the author.

Drawings as objects

There are also paintings or slogans on the West Bank Wall that do not have a central

political meaning. They can be sceneries, representations of stylistic flowers, or

1 These paintings and interviews have been published in a series of articles on the BBC News under the name, “In pictures: Picturing

Israel’s Wall,” Available online: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/shared/spl/hi/picture_gallery/05/middle_east_picturing_israel0s_wall/html/

1.stm (accessed September 7, 2006).

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imitations of fabrics. But in a specific location they have a completely different impact.

They may become territorial indicators. They may aim to reassure/challenge/threaten and

may target one’s own population, the adverse party in the conflict, or the international

community. The main contribution of Israeli artists aims to make the Wall look familiar;

that is, as ‘ordinary’ as possible. Six paintings of the Israeli artist Arnold Goldberg,

which represent stylistic flowers or farmland scenery, have been sponsored by the

Ministry of Defense and the Israeli Government. They are situated behind the Mount of

Olives, a place of importance for tourists and pilgrims. The aims of these paintings are

not only to mask or hide the Wall but also to make it become commonplace. There is here

a dichotomy between, on the one hand, the inclination to humanize the Wall – to beautify

it, to make it more acceptable – and on the other hand, the inclination to dehumanize the

Palestinians – to conceal their existence. Goldberg stressed in interviews that his

“paintings were not political but rather a personal expression of concepts like peace,

prosperity, hope, and even brotherhood.”1 The embankment along motorways and the

sign, “Peace Be with You” (sponsored this time by the Ministry of Tourism), at the

Bethlehem main checkpoint terminal have a similar purpose. Another section of the Wall

in East Jerusalem, in Arab communities divided by the Wall, displays an experiment by

Israeli installation artists. Stones and bricks have been sliced and cemented on the Wall in

an attempt to change its structure and appearance.

The Wall as a vector of rhetoric and ideology evokes a series of mental images. The

Israeli understanding of the Wall has to be read through the lenses of the politico-

architectural concept of ‘Homa Umigdal’ (Wall and Tower), which refers to a settlement

system surrounded by walls, barbed wire, and observation towers that is central to Israeli

architecture,2 a “hasty translation of a political agenda into the act of construction.”3 The

Wall and the checkpoints have proved to be a form of spectacular violence, a violence

1BBC, “Picturing Israel’s Wall,” online.

2 Sharon Rotbard, “Wall and Tower (Homa Umigdal), the Mold of Israeli Architecture,” in Rafi Segal and Eyal Weizman, eds., A

Civilian Occupation: the Politics of Israeli Architecture. Tel Aviv: Babel; London and New York: Verso, 2003, pp. 39–56. According

to Rotbard, the Homa Umigdal project was initiated in 1936 by the members of Kibbutz Tel Amal. The objective was “to seize control

of land officially purchased by the Israel Land Administration but which could not be settled mostly for security reasons.” Rotbard,

“Wall and Tower,” p.42.

3 Rotbard, “Wall and Tower,” p. 46.

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that must be seen, in opposition to more frequent forms of suspended (latent, insinuated)

violence.1 This notion of spectacular violence is central to the site-specific drawings

mentioned above. Indeed, the making of non-political drawings and the attempts to

trivialize the Wall, observable in specific meaningful places, suggest arrogance and are,

in fact, obscene. They reinforce the tendency to deny the very existence of Palestinians.

The process of drawing

Paintings on the Wall can represent a means of nonviolent resistance. They create coping

mechanisms and reduce the effectiveness of the symbolic violence of the Wall and the

psychological feelings of imprisonment. Many children, in particular, suffer from stress

as a result of those forms of violence and feelings. Peace activists or educators take

children to the Wall and encourage them to represent it in their drawings or to paint on it.

The purpose of these activities is to ensure that the children keep the abnormality of the

situation in mind without fearing it. The presence of the international community may

guarantee the security of the Palestinians, and peace activities are often initiated by local

and international NGOs together.

As mentioned, a main characteristic of painting and writing graffiti is its dynamic nature.

The notion of flow is clearly relevant here. Paintings can be created, destroyed, or re- or

over-painted. The notion of flow explains why emblematic murals may sometimes be

covered by graffiti.

Future

Paintings on other separation walls, such as in Berlin or Northern Ireland,2 have played

different roles or taken on different meanings over time. Could those changes in role and

meaning be imaginable in the West Bank?

1 Ophir Azoulay, “The Monster’s Tail,” in Michael Sorkin, ed., Against the Wall: Israel’s Barrier to Peace. New York: The New

Press, 2005, p. 2.

2 Neil Jarman, Painting Landscapes: The Place of Murals in the Symbolic Construction of Urban Space. CAIN, University of Ulster.

Available online: http://cain.ulst.ac.uk/bibdbs/murals/jarman.htm (accessed on July 25, 2007).

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The Northern Ireland case shows that, with time and with the prospect of a sustainable

peace process, the main murals and paintings can become part of tourist itineraries. The

murals and paintings so clearly show the resistance to the conflict and the cultural

production during the war that most of the local tour organizers, such as (London)Derry,

would include the main murals in their tours. We can imagine alternative tourist routes in

Palestine that include some of the painting sites in order to raise awareness about the

situation created by the Wall as well as to introduce nonviolent expressions of resilience

aimed at breaking the culture of violence in the Middle East.

Could we imagine that some of the drawings on the Wall would become so emblematic

that with time they become local memorials, and that rallies or demonstrations would

take place in front of those emblematic murals rather than just at any arbitrary place in

front of the Wall?

Is drawing on the Wall already an endogenous, even a national activity? It seems that the

process is led primarily by international activists and members of the Palestinian civil

society. How can this process be reappropriated by other layers of the society, including

the grassroots, in order to become a source of pride and of collective identity? Drawing

on the Wall has not yet shown all its facets and potentials.

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Identity

COMMUNICATING IDENTITY ACROSS WALLS

Ido Abram

“In June 2002, the government of Israel decided to erect a physical barrier to separate

Israel and the West Bank in order to prevent the uncontrolled entry of Palestinians into

Israel. In most areas, the barrier is comprised of an electronic fence with dirt paths,

barbed-wire fences, and trenches on both sides, at an average width of 60 meters. In some

areas, a wall six to eight meters high has been erected in place of the barrier system.”1

This description of the Israeli human rights organization, B’Tselem, ends with the words:

“Israel has the right and duty to protect its citizens from attacks. (…) Even if we accept

Israel’s claim that the only way to prevent attacks is to erect a barrier, it must be built

along the Green Line or on Israeli territory.”2

The title of this book is: Challenging the Wall: Toward a Pedagogy of Hope. ‘The Wall’

refers to the aforementioned ‘Separation Barrier’. The title of our contribution is

“Communicating Identity across Walls.” The word ‘Walls’ is plural because it relates to

both the above-mentioned concrete Wall as well as the mental walls between people that

make communication difficult or even impossible.

First, we will introduce a general model for learning and communication: the Arena

Model. After that, we will use this approach to consider the way in which Israeli and

Palestinian peace activists communicate identities in conflict situations.

Arena model

The four core concepts of the Arena Model are: Arena (A); Both identity and imago (B);

Conflict (C); and Dialogue (D). Arena can signify ‘battleground’, ‘scene of conflict’,

‘sphere of action’, or ‘stage’. It is the context in which learning takes place. Images

1 http://www.btselem.org/English/Separation_Barrier/.2 http://www.btselem.org/English/Separation_Barrier/.

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(plural) refer to identity as well as imago. Identity or self-image indicates how one sees

oneself and one’s environment, how one experiences it, and how one evaluates and

communicates that evaluation. Imago is its counterpart, the counter-image. It refers to the

image that others have of a person and his or her life/world as well as the expressions of

that image. Identity is self-definition, imago is the identity imposed by others. Imago is

biography, identity is autobiography. The discrepancy between identity and imago leads

to tension and conflict but can also lead to the inception of a dialogue. Dialogue is

directed toward exchange, openness, and mutual interest. Constructively used dialogue

can be critical.

Intercultural learning takes place in arenas in which there is room for images from or

about somebody or something, in which dialogue is ultimately more rewarding than

conflict, and in which conflicts are recognized and transformed in the direction of

dialogue, taking into account the fact that not all conflicts are solvable.

A safe and warm stage fosters dialogue and intercultural learning. An adversative and

cold battleground, however, obstructs both and stirs up the conflict.

Schema: Arena model for intercultural learning

A = Arena (battleground, stage)

B = Both identity and imago

C = Conflict (confrontation)

D = Dialogue (encounter)

The triangles in this schema overlap. This serves to express the fact that image, conflict,

and dialogue are influencing each other and are mutually related. The Arena can be

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reached through B, C, and D. Whichever entrance is chosen, all meanings represented by

the three letters play a role.

The Arena Model can also be understood as a general model for learning and

communication. If we suppose that each person is a separate world, it is possible to say

that, in fact, all successful forms of learning and communicating are intercultural by

definition: you learn about yourself through others and about others through yourself.

“To know another is to know oneself. To know oneself is to know the world.”1

In exceptional cases, imposed identity (imago) and self-definition (identity) nearly

coincide. The general point is this: identity and imago overlap but never coincide

entirely. But we should not go to the opposite extreme either. It is equally exceptional

when identity and imago do not have anything in common. They certainly influence each

other mutually, at least if there exists some form of mutual communication, however

small. In identity there is always a resonance of imago – and vice versa. There is no

intellectual or logical argument that would give more value to one or the other image.

The two images, ‘identity’ and ‘imago’, should therefore be granted the same opportunity

to prove their merits.

On the basis of the aforementioned, some thirty projects were carried out in the

Netherlands on a variety of themes. Usually the participants were asked in advance to

bring an object that tells something about themselves and about the theme. This

connection was verbally explained during the initial acquaintance. There were projects

for youth and older persons, men and women, persons with diverse cultural and national

backgrounds, and a mixture of all of the above. The youngest participant was 10 years

old and the oldest was 93. Each project ultimately revolved around issues that were

important for the participants, such as family (the living and the dead), work, friendship,

religion, home, feasts, respect, health, hobbies, money, traveling, and so on – all typical

characteristics of identity and imago.2

Now we will make a mental leap from the Netherlands to the Middle East. As the object

of our project, we will choose the Wall or Separation Barrier. “Communicating Identity

across Walls” is also the theme of the project described below. That project – a

1 Janis Rainis (1865–1929), Latvia’s most famous poet. Rainis was an ardent Latvian patriot and at the same time he repudiated

nationalistic narrow-mindedness and provincialism. 2 Seven projects are described in Abram, I. & Wesly, J. Knowing me, Knowing you. Identity and intercultural dialoque. Ger Guijs/Forum – Institute for Multicultural Development, Rotterdam/Utrecht, 2006.

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symposium – never took place. However, the persons who are introduced really exist, but

they never took part in the symposium. The reason is simple: it is impossible to

participate in a non-existing project. However, the quotes are not imagined and are

rightly ascribed to the persons mentioned.

Symposium

Our Arena is an imaginary symposium of some twenty Israeli and Palestinian civilians

crossing the Green Line to work for peace. The participants have been asked to each

bring a photo that says something about themselves as well as about the Wall. We are in

the year 2005.

At the start of the meeting, participants introduce themselves to each other and explain

why they chose the particular photos that they brought to share. We first focus our

attention upon three of them.

Helmi Kittani: “Look, the conflict impacts my personal life in a harsh manner. I’m in

Baka el-Gharbiye and it is located on the seam line, just on the Green Line. My mother is

from a village that is across the Green Line. So my family is located on the other side of

the wall, and it is difficult for me to keep up natural and normal contact with them. Even

if a relative dies, I cannot always participate in the mourning rituals – if they take place

on the other side of the Green Line. And likewise, it is hard for my relatives – my cousins

– to come and participate in my happy events, or mourning, God forbid.”1

Gila Svirsky: “I understand that Israel has to defend itself. I know that Israel has

enemies. I would understand if Israel built a wall to protect itself even though I don’t

agree that it’s the best way to go about protecting itself. But the need for a wall does not

mean that you go about building it in the territory of the other party.”2

Walid Salem: “[W]e have two options. One is to continue the violence from both sides,

which will result in the building of walls: the physical wall that Sharon is building and

1 Helmi Kittani, interview, February 29, 2004. See http://www.justvision.org/.2 Gila Svirsky, interview, April 28, 2004. See http://www.justvision.org/.

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the more important walls that are the mental walls. (…) The other way is to build peace

from the bottom up in order to transform the conflict in a way that will lead to future

cooperation.”1

It is clear that the quotes and photos refer to much more than the Wall alone. They refer

to personal life: my mother, my village, my family, my family gatherings for happy and

sad occasions, my enemies, self-defense, territory, violence, physical and mental walls,

future cooperation, ghetto, peace, tourism. It is for this reason that, during the course of

time, the Wall has been called so many different names and why so many slogans have

been written on it: separation barrier; fence; security fence; segregation wall; security

barrier; annexation wall; illegal wall; apartheid wall; “The Wall: Prison for Palestinians,

Ghetto for Israelis”; “First of All: the Wall Must Fall”; “To Exist is to Resist.” In length

the Wall cannot be compared to China’s Great Wall (6,700 kilometers long) or to the

Berlin Wall (only 155 kilometers long). These two walls have now become tourist

attractions. Hopefully this will also happen to the physical barrier here. It is now more

than 400 kilometers long and will be close to 700 kilometers when completed.2

Now we give the floor to three other participants in our fictional symposium: Sami

Adwan, Uri Avnery, and Dan Bar-On. They have extensive experience in communicating

identities, especially across mental walls as a result of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. All

three share their vision on the role of education in the context of a ‘pedagogy of hope’.

Uri Avnery: “We, Israelis and Palestinians, are living in a permanent war. Each of the

two peoples has created a narrative of its own. Between the two narratives – the Israeli

and the Palestinian – there is not the slightest resemblance. What an Israeli child and a

Palestinian child learn about the conflict from their earliest years – at home, in

kindergarten, in school, from the media – is totally different.3 (….) For almost 2,000

years, the annals of the country disappear from the school (...) including all its periods

and peoples: Canaanites, Israelites, Hellenists, Romans, Arabs, Crusaders, Mamelukes,

1 Walid Salem, interview: date and year not indicated. See http://www.justvision.org/.

2 http://www.btselem.org/english/Separation_Barrier/Statistics.asp.3 Uri Avnery. “War is a State of Mind.” Lecture in Berlin, Gush Shalom, October 20, 2005. Conference on “Raising Children without Violence.”

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Turks, British, Palestinians, Israelis, and more.1 (…) War is a state of mind, and so is

peace. The main task of peace-making is mental: to get the two peoples, and each

individual, to see their own narratives in a new light and – even more important – to

understand the narrative of the other side. To internalize the fact that the two narratives

are two sides of the same coin. (…) This is mainly an educational undertaking. As such, it

is incredibly difficult, because it first has to be absorbed by the teachers, who themselves

are imbued with one or the other of these world views.2”

Avnery is too pessimistic when he says that there is “between the Israeli and the

Palestinian narratives not the slightest resemblance.” After all, he is the co-author of the

booklet “Truth against Truth,” in which he himself says: “In it we [the Israeli peace

movement Gush Shalom] have tried to outline a common narrative of the conflict, taking

into account the viewpoints of both sides.”3

“Truth against Truth” is a brochure – not a school textbook. But this has been in the

works for a long time. Sami Adwan and Dan Bar-On, for example, are developing a new

school textbook with a group of Palestinian and Israeli teachers and two historians.

Sami Adwan: “Through our analysis of Palestinian and Israeli curricula, we have found

that both sides tell one-sided stories. What is very apparent is a complete denial and

disregard for the other’s story. (…) The aim of our project was not to craft a shared

history. Rather, what we simply tried to do was explore the possibility of writing a

Palestinian narrative and an Israeli narrative and presenting them side-by-side as

equals. (…) A Palestinian or Israeli who reads the story of the other is not the same

person he or she was before doing so; facing the other’s story increases one’s

understanding of one’s own story and own reality, regardless of whether this

understanding is positive or negative. At the same time, one comes to appreciate the

multiple dimensions of the other’s story. (…) Eventually, it might be possible to develop a

joint narrative or a bridging narrative that can begin to mend that gap between the two

1 Uri Avnery. “Sorry, wrong continent,” December 23, 2006.2 Uri Avnery. “War is a State of Mind.” Lecture in Berlin, Gush Shalom, October 20, 2005. Conference on “Raising Children without Violence.”3 Uri Avnery. “Living in a Bubble,” May, 1, 2004.

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narratives. Yet this is not possible at this stage ... in the absence of a political solution

that would end the conflict in all its aspects, or at least a vision for such a solution.”1

Dan Bar-On: “We chose consciously to take the more-or-less consensus narrative of the

Israeli-Jewish side, and the more-or-less consensus narrative of the Palestinian side.

Clearly, there are more narratives on each side but they come from smaller groups. It

was also not our idea that we should create a bridging narrative. We do not think that

true peace requires somehow bridging the historical narratives. We think that true peace

means that you recognize how the other is different from you, not how the other is the

same as you. To create a bridging narrative means to create a same-ness. We don’t want

to create an illusion of same-ness; we don’t think that will happen – not in the near

future, at least. So first of all you have to recognize that the other thinks differently from

yourself. That’s exactly the purpose of this.”2

Avnery’s approach differs from that of Adwan and Bar-On. Avnery construes a

‘common’ narrative, the two others not. As long as there is “at least” no “vision for a

political solution (…) that would end the conflict,” Adwan and Bar-On consider the time

not ripe. For the time being, they work on two parallel narratives “side-by-side as

equals.” The possibility to arrive at a ‘joint’ or ‘bridging’ narrative is not rejected by

Adwan and Bar-On on principled grounds, but they transfer this possibility to the future.

Both approaches struggle with the tension indicated in the Arena Model between identity

and imago. At stake are not only the selected words and images, but even more, their

interpretations.

Avnery: “The contrast between the two national versions reached a peak in the war of

1948, which was called ‘the War of Independence’ or even ‘the War of Liberation’ by the

Jews, and ‘Al Naqba’, the catastrophe, by the Arabs.”3

1 Sami Adwan, interview, January 14, 2005. See http://www.justvision.org/.2 Dan Bar-On, interview, December 20, 2004. See http://www.justvision.org/.3 Truth against Truth. Gush Shalom, 2004, point 29.

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Adwan: “Another issue is one of the key expressions used in the Israeli curriculum to this

day: the term ‘Eretz Israel’. Palestinians call this land ‘Palestine’. A question thus

arises: what is the definition of ‘Eretz Israel’? Does it stretch from the Nile to the

Euphrates or from the [Mediterranean] sea to the [Jordan] river? If this term continues

to be used, it signifies a complete denial of the existence of Palestine. On the other hand,

if the term Palestine, as it has been used historically, remains identified as the land from

the sea to the river, then it also signifies denial of the existence of Israel. (…) Likewise

the Israelis’ description of the first immigrants as ‘pioneers’ disturbs the Palestinians.

For Palestinians, those were the people who caused their destruction. For Israelis, on the

other hand, they are regarded as the people who built the country!”1

Given our situation of conflict – the Israeli-Palestinian conflict that has already lasted 125

years – the discrepancy between identity and imago is large.

Avnery: “In the course of this long conflict, as in any war, an enormous mass of myths,

historical falsifications, propaganda slogans, and prejudices has accumulated on both

sides.”2

Bar-On: “What you find in Israeli and Palestinian textbooks, in general, is typical to

conflict situations where the goal of the textbooks is to support and legitimize your side of

the conflict, and to de-legitimize the other side.”3

Regarding issues about fundamental problems that seem insusceptible to consensus, the

British mathematician, Ramsey, proposed that “in such cases it is a heuristic maxim that

the truth lies not in one of the two disputed views, but in some third possibility which has

not yet been thought of, which we can only discover by rejecting something assumed as

obvious by both disputants.”4 As the Arena Model assumes the principled equivalence of

identity and imago, the discrepancy between both should lead to some thoughtful and

careful reflection on claiming one’s own right.1 Sami Adwan, interview, January 14, 2005. See http://www.justvision.org/.2 Truth against Truth. Gush Shalom, 2004, point 3.3 Dan Bar-On, interview, December 20, 2004. See http://www.justvision.org/.4 F. R. Ramsey. The Foundations of Mathematics. Routledge and Keagan Paul, London, 1931, pp. 115–16.

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The differences that exist between the approach of Avnery (common narrative) and

Adwan and Bar-On (two parallel narratives) can be bridged. Also in Avnery’s case we

find two narrative lines.

Avnery: “The struggle between the two nations in the country appeared in the emotional

sphere as the ‘war of the traumas’. The Israeli-Hebrew nation carried with it the old

trauma of the persecution of the Jews in Europe. (…) The clash with the Arab-Palestinian

nation appeared to them to be just a continuation of anti-Semitic persecution. The Arab-

Palestinian nation carried with it the memories of the long-lasting colonial oppression.

(…) [T]he Naqba (catastrophe) of 1948 appeared to them to be the continuation of the

oppression and humiliation by Western colonialists.”1

Adwan and Bar-On, too, create conditions to join the two narratives. When the Israeli

teachers are neither willing nor able to listen to the Palestinian narrative and vice versa,

the separation into two ways – two stories – does not make any sense. After all, at stake is

breaking through divisions to make possible communicating across Walls.

Bar-On: “(…) listening to the other narrative, asking questions about it, telling the other

side what terminology is insulting for them, and seeing how the narratives will have to fit

together is necessary so that each teacher will feel comfortable teaching in his or her

own classroom – so that pupils who read both narratives won’t automatically push aside

the narrative of the other but be genuinely willing to seriously listen to it.”2

Adwan: “In the introduction [of the textbook], we stated clearly that our aim is to listen

to the story of the other, not to change it. Our second rule was that if either side wanted

to change a term, it was free to do so.”3

Bar-On: “It needs certain conditions: they mustn’t use hostile, de-legitimizing

expressions. There were discussions about it. For example, regarding the term ‘Zionist

1 Truth against Truth. Gush Shalom, 2004, points 20–21.2 Dan Bar-On, interview, December 20, 2004. See http://www.justvision.org/.3 Sami Adwan, interview, January 14, 2005. See http://www.justvision.org/.

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gangs’, which the Palestinians use, the Israeli teachers said, ‘If you use this term, our

students will shut down right away. Can you use another term?’ Or on the Israeli side,

‘terrorist’ vs. ‘freedom fighter’. They didn’t find solutions to everything. Sometimes the

solution was to use a ‘slash’: ‘freedom fighter/terrorist’.”1

So far the imagined symposium, with its imagined persons, was closely related to peace

education. The context (Arena) of this imaginary project was a symposium about the

Wall and the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict. Therefore, entry C of the Arena Model was

chosen: conflict and confrontation. We saw how this conflict enlarges the gap between

identity and imago (B) and how the participants in the symposium did not avoid

confrontation but tried to search for, and found, the dialogue (D). The fact that the

participants are not imaginary shows that a pedagogy of hope is not a fantasy but a

reality. It is also important to note that, for this particular conflict – when all is said and

done – dialogue is more rewarding than conflict.

1 Dan Bar-On, interview, December 20, 2004. See http://www.justvision.org/.

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Photography and Internet

VIRTUAL MEANS TO DEFEATING THE WALL

James Prineas

Heritage. Strength. Beauty. Education. Hospitality. Spectacular landscapes. Children.

Vitality. These are words that spring to my mind when I think of Palestine. I’m sure more

people would think of Palestine that way if they had seen what I have seen. Of course I

also associate other, less inspiring words with Palestine, but they are almost all a result of

injustices inflicted on the Palestinians, and I like to think that one day, with those

injustices at least partly redressed, Palestine will be regarded by all as a welcoming

country of impressive beauty and fascinating history. As it is to me. As it should be to all.

Education is not just about learning. It is about the flow of information. Connecting those

who possess knowledge with those who want to learn is one of the most effective uses of

publishing and of the Internet. And the learners often notice that they have something to

‘teach’ as well. Creating a platform for interactive education interests me a great deal.

The Palestine-Family.net website, which I developed together with half a dozen partners

inside and outside Palestine, allows the viewer to also be the author. Directly. Easily. So

the information seeker can easily become the information provider. The student – the

teacher. The listener – a story-teller.

Providing a platform that reaches a wider world can help those who have something to

say. When they see an old picture they can say: “My family was here – we belong here.”

A recipe: “We are part of a region, but we have our own distinctive cuisine.” A family

tree: “My roots reach back endlessly – seek your relationship to me.” Each entry on the

site – at the moment there are approximately 3,400 – sends out a message to the world

and at the same time helps preserve a piece of the past.

A great many intelligent people are making a sincere effort to create a viable Palestine

free of occupation. That is happening at the political, cultural, and social levels.

Encouraging ‘sumud’ amongst the Palestinians themselves is equally important, as is

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giving them access to the tools they need to spite the considerable forces working against

them. Every smiling Palestinian face seen in the ‘outside world’ contradicts the general

perception and challenges it. It is also a reminder to those who would banish them that

their spirit is not broken. Each visible family tree holds the (virtual) earth beneath a

Palestinian foot and makes it less stable under that of a settler. Every picture of the Wall

that is seen and understood by an outsider diminishes the moral stature of its builders.

www.palestine-family.net

Just as the printing press allows a single person’s voice to reach innumerable ears, the

Internet is an equally efficient means to make accessible the opinions and information

that might not make the news ticker. But the distinction between making something

accessible and making it visible is great. There are billions of pages of information on the

Internet. Forty-five million of them refer to Palestine. Getting ‘eyeballs’ to your page or

site is a question of science, art, money, and luck.

The strategy behind Palestine-Family.net combines all four.

1. Science: Programming a site to make it fast and adorning it with useful features

2. Art: Designing a user-friendly interface to make it not only easy but a pleasure to

use

3. Money: Encouraging site exposure through online and offline advertising and PR

in order to offset the costs of design, construction, and hosting

4. Luck: Hoping that the numerous factors involved in creating a successful site will

combine in such a way as to attract and keep a wide audience of viewers

By creating a community website on which all those interested can publish their private

collections of heritage material, we bundle the potential of visibility. Instead of 200

individuals each creating personal mini-websites – usually poorly designed and

constructed – their materials are instead published together on a professionally designed

and programmed website that is much more likely to climb the inscrutable Google

ranking list and become visible to a wider audience. This ‘strength-in-numbers’ strategy

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draws people who are looking for personal or family material into the wider community.

The Wall

Even for those who are informed about the Wall, seeing it for the first time is still a

shock. I lived for two years in Berlin while the Wall was still up; and compared to the

Wall in Palestine, the Berlin Wall was a picket fence. I’ve seen others who have also

reacted to the Apartheid Wall as I first did: “I didn’t realize it was THIS bad.” My goal is

now to make people who haven’t or can’t visit Palestine realize just how terrible the Wall

and the situation in general is.

One of the best known strategies for learning and remembering is to be exposed to the

same information in different forms: hearing, seeing, speaking, etc. I try to use the same

method to inform as many people as possible about the Wall and its consequences:

through photographs, the Internet, texts ... I also create a mix to give a more realistic

view. My current exhibition, which can be seen at www.sumud.net, is a mixture that can

be divided up into three main categories: Landscapes, People, The Wall. The Western

world usually connects the word ‘Palestine’ with ‘conflict’, ‘Israel’, ‘terrorism’, and

‘refugees’. Its inhumane treatment at the hands of so many is barely or incompletely

known. By presenting them with a new image of Palestine – ‘grand landscapes’,

‘beautiful people’, ‘joy of life’, ‘disgraceful Wall’ – accompanied by texts that explain

the injustice and situation in listed form, I hope to open eyes to the plight of the

Palestinians and give the outsider a factual basis from which they can interpret news from

the region.

Creating a book of the exhibition pictures is our attempt to hurdle the geographical

limitations of a physical exhibition, yet still give a more haptic experience to the viewer

than an Internet site. The World Wide Web, though perhaps second-nature to those who

have grown up with it, often seems ‘only’ virtual, electronic, and transient to pre-Internet

generations. To the latter, a book in the lap can add a reassuring dimension while

interacting with the material at hand. A beautiful book also gives its contents a standing

that would otherwise only be achievable with an expensive image campaign. The

difference is obvious if one compares the usual black-and-white pictures of protesting

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Palestinians found in newspapers to those of a high-quality color reproduction of a more

picturesque scene.

Strategically we are applying a PR/media solution to a political problem. Our task is to

‘correct’ the outside world’s notion of Palestine, using the Internet, exhibitions, and

books. The latter two have to appeal to a wider audience than the usual pro-Palestinian

public – who are already aware of the injustices – if new ground is to be broken.

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PART 2 INTERVIEWS

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BIT BY BIT, THE WALL BECAME MORE TANGIBLE

Terry Boullata

I am 38 years old, and I am from Jerusalem. I was born and have lived all my life here;

and I am proud of that. I married a man from Abu Dis 14 years ago. He carries a West

Bank ID card. I myself have a Jerusalem ID. I studied at Jerusalem schools and then went

to Birzeit University. During the first Intifada, I was arrested four times; the last time was

while I was working as a fieldworker for a human rights organization. I was released after

the intervention of former American president Jimmy Carter and Mme. Mitterrand. Later

on I opened my own private school in Abu Dis, thinking that I should contribute to the

development of the community that I’m living in. I started the school in 1999 with loans

from agencies and banks, and it is still in operation. The school has 225 children from

kindergarten to the fifth grade. But this year I lost approximately 77 children due to the

building of Wall, which is less than half a kilometer from the school. Due to the loss of

income, I am now also working as an advocacy worker for the Palestinian Campaign for

Freedom and Peace, which was initiated during the visit this year of Dr. Arun Gandhi, the

grandson of Mahatma Gandhi.

Abu Dis, Azzariyyeh, and Sawahreh [villages to the east of Jerusalem] are totally isolated

from the Palestinian areas. Together they form a canton, a ghetto. On the eastern side of

the Wall, there are now 70,000 people who have no access to proper health services in

Jerusalem or in areas within the Palestinian Authority. If you cannot go to Jerusalem, the

nearest hospital is in Jericho, a half-hour drive away. And the Jericho checkpoint is

closed after eight in the evening.

My house is historically part of Abu Dis. But in 1967 the Israelis annexed my area to

Jerusalem, and it became part of Jerusalem, according to Israeli law. International law,

however, indicates that it is part of the occupied territories. When we married, it didn’t

really matter since the area was still open to the West Bank. The border was on the map

but not on the ground. But in August 2002, we suddenly woke up to see that the army had

shifted the Jerusalem checkpoint towards the entrance to Abu Dis. And they brought

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cement blocks one meter high to place along the border. So we started to have quarrels

with the soldiers because they sometimes denied us access to Jerusalem and sometimes to

the West Bank. Bit by bit, the Wall became more tangible. Every day they brought more

trucks with cement blocks that were laid in accordance with the Israeli map of Jerusalem.

Bit by bit, our neighborhood became more and more isolated from the center of Abu Dis,

from my husband’s family, and from my own school. Until January 2004 we were still

able to jump over the one-meter-high wall that was there at the time. As my house is on a

hill, I could more easily jump over the one-meter barricade from the highest part of

ground near the wall. But during that period I was pregnant twice and I had two

miscarriages because of the jumping. But that was almost the only way to reach my

school.

My neighborhood was turned overnight from a residential area into a military zone. The

lifestyle in the neighborhood changed totally. Men, women, children – everybody was

jumping over the Wall at the low point near our house. During the early morning hours,

the children on both sides of the Wall would try to reach their schools on the other side,

including the children from the west side who were going to my own school on the east

side. You could always find children jumping amidst teargas and sound bombs. On a

daily basis. The early morning and afternoon were also exactly the times when the army

would come to harass the passersby. The border police had settled in to a military camp

that was built in front of my house. They came to know us better; in our neighborhood

there are only 13 families, and we live at the highest part so that the army or border

police always used to come and sit around our house. But they still kept harassing me and

asking for my identity card. I told them: “You know me, and you know that I’m going to

my school, and you still want to check my identity card?” My family was renovating the

nearby Cliff Hotel, which was later confiscated. The soldiers teased us: “Why are you

renovating the hotel, we’re going to take it anyway. We’ll even give you rent money; it is

much better for you.” I wouldn’t even allow my children to play in the streets of the

neighborhood because the army jeeps, with their teargas, were there all the time.

The construction of the Wall, from one-meter to nine-meters high, and only six meters

away from our house, took place in January 2004. The jumping from our house became

impossible of course, and we had to look for other ways to sneak into the village of Abu

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Dis. My husband is a West Banker, he cannot be in Jerusalem. As a Jerusalemite,

however, I was able to go around the Wall along an Israeli bypass road so as to enter Abu

Dis from the other side. It became a half-hour drive to my school instead of the normal

one-minute drive. At least I could still drive, but my husband had to look for the lowest

parts of the Wall that were still under construction and not yet the full nine meters, and

jump over it or go through small openings.

However, when sooner or later the Wall is completely finished he will not be able to

come back to the house by jumping. Very recently my husband – he is a merchant who

sells stone – was able to get a permit that allowed him to be in Jerusalem from five in the

morning until seven in the evening. That means that after seven, he is living and sleeping

illegally with us. That’s one of the things we joke about. My husband is afraid that he can

be kicked out of the house at any moment, or that if he jumps over the wall to Abu Dis

one day, he won’t be able to return. Other cousins in the neighborhood, who own

property here but carry West Bank ID cards, are living illegally on their own property. If

they don’t get Jerusalem ID cards or permits to live there, they can be kicked out and

their properties can be turned into absentee properties [to be confiscated by the Israeli

state]. Khaled, our cousin, was arrested three times, literally upon entering his own hotel,

the Cliff Hotel. And the scary part is that in May 2004, the Israelis established a

settlement just behind our house. It is called Kidmat Zion and has 250 housing units,

which means nothing less than the arrival of 15,000 Israeli settlers. The famous

Moskovics [American Jewish philanthropist who sponsors settlement building in East

Jerusalem] is of course the one who started this settlement, and of course with subsidies

and Israeli government approval. This settlement is growing on our account and will

squeeze our neighborhood.

For me, freedom means being with my husband Salah and children, having a family life,

and moving around easily – for instance, being able to spend time together on weekends.

I can’t easily go with Salah to the West Bank. Jericho is a well-known winter resort. But I

can’t go to Jericho as a Jerusalemite. I need a permit. It’s easier for him as a West Banker

to enter Jericho. On the other hand, Salah can’t come with me to Jerusalem. Even when

he has a permit, he is often denied access; for instance, when the Israelis announce a

general closure. The Wall is depressing us all. No family members can visit us, so we try

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to visit them. Instead of us and the other members of the family going on a picnic, we just

visit them at home. It’s boring for the children. Also, my husband has lost income.

Nobody is building houses, and so he doesn’t sell much stone. You run, run, run from

checkpoints to destinations, and at the end of the day, you just have enough to pay all the

bills. In Jerusalem there are a lot of taxes to pay.

Nowadays Salah sometimes says: “Let’s move to the West Bank.” He and his own family

have a house there that will lessen the expenditures of paying the rent and the taxes and

the bills. But I cannot do that because the moment I live in the West Bank, I will lose my

residency in Jerusalem. I will not get any other residency because the Palestinian

Authority does not give ID cards to Jerusalemites who lose their IDs. They claim that

they do not want to encourage Jerusalemites to leave Jerusalem. Moving to Abu Dis

would make my life even more brutal. I would have no exit at all and would just have to

stay in Abu Dis.

The only time that I can breathe is when I leave for a conference abroad. Although there

is harassment at the border, at least I get to go out and see the world. That’s part of your

personal freedom – to go abroad – a freedom that my husband is denied. He cannot

travel; the Jordanians do not allow him to travel through Jordan. We want to be free as a

family, to live wherever we want, and that’s not easy. I say to him: “I don’t want to live

in a smaller ghetto. Yes, East Jerusalem is a ghetto, but it is a somewhat bigger ghetto

than the Abu Dis ghetto. I want to have more opportunities for my daughters. On the

Jerusalem side they can have music or ballet classes. I am a middle-class woman; I would

like to have some of those opportunities available for my daughter. He says that when

they kick him out he wants to stay in the West Bank; he doesn’t want the harassment

anymore. That would mean that he would have to take the girls a few days with him, and

the girls would have to come back and live a few days with me. So the whole family

would be affected when the Israelis really impose the expulsion of Salah from the area.

So we have to choose between my own family and my husband’s family, and even

between living together as a family or being separated.

At the end of the day, I am a mother. As I always say and brag: we created life. So we

have to create hope. Your only option is to survive for the sake of your children. I need to

have a special level of hope and creativity and ease of life and even fun in order to

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survive and give my children a better life. Many Palestinians share the belief that our

only hope is for our children. It’s not an easy thing.

Now I work in Ramallah. It is very frustrating to stand in line at the Kalandia checkpoint

every day for an hour and a half or even two hours, if not more. It used to be a half-hour

drive, but now it takes an hour. When I return home, I am totally exhausted. I have no

time or energy to spoil my daughters. I have to hurry to cook, clean, help the girls with

their homework, and put them to sleep. It’s becoming more and more frustrating and

tiring. But at the end of the day, you still have to go beyond that frustration. Daydreams?

No, my only daydream, in fact my nightmare, is when I come back home and Salah is not

able to come back. For instance, when I am stuck at Kalandia and Salah cannot come

home because he is stuck at the other side of the Wall and the children are left home

alone. You never know. Or when something happens during the day, and I am stuck on

one side and my daughter on the other.

I am an activist now. What gives me hope sometimes is that I speak more with the press

and with Israeli groups. I am receiving lots of Israeli delegations who come to see the

Wall. Sometimes I am happier to receive Israelis than to receive foreigners. If the Israeli

point of view changes, it can make our life easier because they can have influence from

within their own society. I believe that in terms of lobbying or campaigning, I should

work more and more within the Israeli society. We as Palestinians still have a long way

to go to address our issues more effectively, but it gives me hope when I see Israelis

discussing and listening, especially when they see that the Wall provides no real sense of

security for them – it only separates Palestinians from each other. Making us suffer more

and more and pushing us farther into the corner is also bad for them. We talk with Israeli

intellectuals and the young generation. The young give us some hope. Sometimes a few

Knesset members or Israeli media people visit and write about us. You see the fear that

the Wall provokes in them, not just in us. When we work together with these Israelis,

many of them may cross the line. They have become more active against the occupation

and the icon of the occupation, which is the Wall.

Very recently, we established Artists without Walls. I am not an artist, but because of the

area, Palestinian and Israeli artists approached me to ask how they could help. So in April

2004, Palestinian and Israeli artists came together to make the Wall “transparent” by

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setting up screens, projectors, and lights, as in a video conference. The people from both

sides were able to see and speak with each other. This gives hope not only to the people

who are living in the ghetto but also to those who were listening to and watching us.

These are windows of hope that I can see from time to time. We as victims need to work

hard to make the perpetrators aware of what they are doing to us on the human level. On

our side not everybody is convinced. Many people are steeped in their own anger and

frustration, and I can understand that. I don’t identify with it, especially when it comes to

suicide bombings, but I can understand what is happening to those people. And this is

what we have to say to the Israelis: “Put yourselves in our shoes. Would you expect

yourselves to accept the daily humiliation at the checkpoints and the Wall, while it serves

no security purpose at all?”

Interview: December 8, 2004, Jerusalem.

Terry Boullata adds (on October 5, 2007):

As for recent developments with regard to the area and my family situation:

1. The neighborhood remains under constant army surveillance. The soldiers are still in

control of the Cliff Hotel area to secure the new settlers who moved in on the hill behind

our neighborhood in May 2004. The West Bank residents of the neighborhood, who are

also homeowners, are under strict movement restrictions as they have to receive

permission – through their lawyer Usama Halabi – to gain access to the other side of Abu

Dis, behind the Wall. They do so by passing through the opening in the Wall nearby that

is observed by the army. However, such permission is not granted to neighborhood

residents who are Jerusalem ID holders. (The West Bank and Jerusalem residents are

from the same Ayyad family). The Jerusalem Ayyad family members are ordered to take

the long bypass road through Ma’aleh Adumim in order to go to work or to visit their

family members in Abu Dis behind the Wall. The West Bank residents are not allowed

even to move a few meters away from their houses and, if found in Jerusalem, they would

be arrested.

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2. On the personal and family level: Following the divorce between me and my

husband, I moved out of the neighborhood in March 2006 and have lived since then in

Beit Hanina. My daughters’ time is split between me and their father: three days in Abu

Dis with their West Bank father and four days with me in Beit Hanina, including the

school days. They study at the Rosary Sisters’ school in Beit Hanina, which means that

they have to go through the terminal/checkpoint every day that they stay with their father.

We are afraid of future developments that might ban Jerusalem Palestinians from

accessing West Bank areas behind the Wall. This would deprive my daughter, who is

now 15 years old and who will get her Jerusalem ID in a few months, from seeing her

father who, of course, cannot come to Jerusalem to see her.

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AS LONG AS THERE IS A SOCIETY THAT RESISTS,

THERE IS HOPE

Maha Abu Dayyeh

My office is close to my house – I just walk across the street. Now the Wall ends just

before the intersection where I cross. When its construction is completed, I will have to

drive all the way through the Kalandia checkpoint, turn right around, and cross the

checkpoint again and go to Dahiet Al-Barid, before I can get to my office! I live on the

left-hand side of the street that goes from Jerusalem to Ramallah, which is the Jerusalem

side. However, all the services for my daily existence will be on the side that will be

blocked off. Think about getting vegetables or food, or getting maintenance and

household support. Half of all Jerusalemite Palestinians are going to suffer from this

because electricians or maintenance people all live in areas that are blocked off. Because

they will be harder to get, they will be more expensive. Life is going to become much

more expensive, and not only monetarily. We will also pay a heavy social and emotional

price. We will become disconnected – literally and figuratively – from family and

friends. Going to Ramallah or Beit Jala, places actually not very far from here, will be

very difficult.

Practically speaking, the Wall is imprisoning us even though the prison gates are not in

the house itself but beyond the house. To go in and out you will need to have a special

permit, and you will need to pay for it. On top of that, there is destruction to the

environment in areas close to the Wall because of the digging in the streets, the dust, the

fuel, and the fumes. Dust and fumes are always in the house; you can’t ever get it totally

clean. Going in and out of the house means jumping over rubble and concrete, over all

kinds of building refuse. You destroy your clothes, your shoes. You have to have an extra

budget for all those expenses. And the Wall blocks the view. You can see only a few

meters in front of you. You wake up in the morning and face the massive, ugly, grey

cement blocks. We are living in chaos.

One has to realize how the Wall, specifically, and the living conditions, as a whole, block

us psychologically. When you are psychologically blocked, your thinking is also blocked.

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Your ability to be creative is blocked. Your ability to feel is blocked because you have to

protect yourself all the time from feeling frustrated. These are what destroy the person.

It’s a sort of psychological torture. You always have to be on the alert. You can’t relax.

You always think about how you are going to deal with the next obstacle. You can’t ever

plan and fully expect to complete one plan. You always have to have plan A, plan B, and

plan C. It often happens that you can’t achieve the goals that you worked so hard for.

You always have to face disappointments.

An outsider to this situation has to go through this to understand what it really means.

The Wall is one of the most violent forms of psychological and physical aggression that

is directed against the Palestinian collective and against the Palestinian individual. This is

especially true for those whose daily existence requires them to cross the Wall or go

around it. Maybe there are a few people in the center of Palestinian towns who can

manage and who do not have to move, but these are very few. The majority of the people

have to cross the Wall all the time. You cannot cross without a permit issued by the

Israeli government, so the Israelis control our movements. They decide who is able to

move or not. In so doing, they control the lives of the Palestinians. They decide who is

important or not; what is valuable or not; who can go to work or not. On a day-to-day

basis, these decisions are up to soldiers who guard the gates. These soldiers on the ground

make a lot of their own, independent decisions. They can sexually harass the women if

they want to. They can choose to be easy, hostile, or violent. And when they have

violated the rights and dignity of Palestinian people, they can always find an excuse, and

the government will cover up the violations. We live our daily lives within this violent

situation.

Because of the current situation, the number of women who are able to reach our office is

declining. We are not able to help as much as we could. It forces us to open more centers

throughout the region, which is more expensive – unnecessarily expensive. It is a terrible

waste of resources. We end up using our money on administration, rents, and other

overhead expenses, including transporting staff, rather than on doing program work.

There is nothing like one’s own real experience. I internalized the violence of the Wall

after I heard that it was built around Qalqilia. But hearing about it and internalizing it in

an intellectual way are incomparable to the actual experience of having to go around or

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walk or drive by it. You drive next to the Wall, but there are also buildings bordering the

other side of the road. They built the Wall in the middle of the street and you’re stuck

between it and the buildings in a narrow channel, like cattle. You know what happens

with cattle: The cattle are lined up, and the machine takes them one by one while they

can’t move, as though they were in a cage. The same happens to us. You cannot run

away. You cannot backtrack. You cannot go left or right. You are stuck between the Wall

and the other buildings. You’re in a line and whatever happens, you cannot act on your

own or control your own destiny. This happens all the time. You get the feeling that,

inevitably, you are going to be destroyed, killed, stampeded, caught in the middle of a

shooting, as if you are living your life in one giant, ubiquitous crossfire. You are

constantly on the alert and feel very vulnerable. To say this is a disempowering

experience is an understatement. In fact, you are being choked unmercifully, cold-

bloodedly.

All our lives we have to deal with crises. You become weaker as a person. Your capacity

to tolerate difficulties becomes much smaller. You are emotionally charged most of the

time. Personally I am deeply affected when I observe the children. The kids are nervous

all the time, agitated, so much of their energy and effervescence is restrained. They are

afraid, especially of soldiers. When they see a patrol, they all run away and start crying. If

they start crying, I start to cry. And that shows that I too have been, and continue to be,

traumatized. It is a new thing for me. I am affected by the whole situation. It is a horrible

way for children to grow up.

Freedom, for me, is the ability to walk endlessly without being stopped. To be able to

keep moving forward. For me this ability is physical and also mental. To think without

being restricted. I find that my ability as a thinking and moving human being is

handicapped because my physical movements are continually hindered and restricted.

Freedom also is being able to do what I want to do; to see my friends when I want to see

them. Freedom is not being restricted irrationally and arbitrarily, that is, when I don’t

understand why I am restricted. As a child, I could never accept a “no” without an

explanation. I wanted to see friends, to be with people, to have activities, and to be able

to participate with my friends in joint activities. And to be able to think freely and to

express my thoughts freely without being shut up or being told that I am stupid or

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unrealistic or otherwise blocked in my ability to think. As an adult living under Israeli

occupation, I see the same patterns. The restrictions and hindrance are more

sophisticated, but the same principles are still there. There is an English expression, “the

sky is the limit.” That means that one’s imagination and ability to be an actor in the world

should be far-reaching, limitless, unrestricted. But in the Palestinian context, the Wall is

the limit.

As an individual, I cannot complain. Indeed, if I compare myself to many other people, I

am a lucky person. I am able to travel abroad and meet very interesting and creative

people. They help me overcome my own thinking blockages. I think with them, learn

from them. When I return home, I am better able to overcome my own limitations in

thinking freely. Traveling and seeing other realities enable me to regain my sense of

balance. When you travel you see that the situation here is abnormal and that the normal

should be what people out there experience. When you stay here you get used to the

situation and come to believe that there is no other way of life.

So my level of anger is elevated when I come back and see the situation again. My anger

means that I am alive. My anger makes me act more, be more constructive with my

colleagues, with my kids. I try to help them cope with the situation that they are in. Being

able to use my anger to help others is important to me because it gives me energy. If I can

maintain my anger at a steady level, I am energized. Anger means that I am trying to act

on what happens. I think people need to be angry all the time about the situation. People

have the right to be angry and express their anger. It’s a sign of living – a refusal to die.

Through anger, you say no to a brutal situation. We should not walk quietly in the face of

brutality. One should resist, for instance, by showing anger to the soldier and by breaking

the rules. Refusing to respond to instructions given in the Hebrew language is a form of

resistance. Everybody has a chance to resist by any small way or means. It builds one’s

strength. Resistance is not the same as survival. Survival is barely making it, just going

on with your dealings. Resistance is acting consciously, purposefully on your situation.

Some people just choose to survive because they are tired of resisting and fighting; I

can’t blame them. I consistently hope that not all people in our society fall into that mode.

So far, it looks as though they are resisting and fighting. My organization supports coping

strategies but also the fight to maintain humanity, to refuse to be dehumanized, to

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maintain hope. When we implement our educational programs in the community, we just

remind people of the issues of justice and the rule of law. You can always find hope for

building a better life.

I personally refuse to be killed emotionally or psychologically. I will not give up. I am a

resister. As long as there is a society that resists, there is hope. I see people’s resistance as

a profound, courageous expression of choosing life. I see it all around me. It may not be

tangible in the immediate, but when people choose life, there is hope. I also see happy

children all around me. As long as there are kids laughing, there is hope.

Interview: December 20, 2004, Jerusalem.

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LIFE IN PALESTINE: THE MAGNET THAT DRAWS ME HOME

Jizelle Salman

I need to take a detour to get to my house. I used to take a road that has now become an

Israeli checkpoint and military camp. We heard last year that the land on the hill above

my house, which we have cultivated for many years, will be expropriated in order to

build the Wall and, next to it, a military road. This was of course most difficult news for

us. The Wall will be at a distance of only 6–12 meters from our house. We will be

imprisoned by a Wall above our house, where there is the Har Gilo settlement, as well as

a Wall below our house. Above our own property, the Greek Orthodox Convent has

lands, and beneath our home, the Salesian Convent has lands. Both convents started court

cases against the Israeli army. Because these are church institutions that the Israelis

respect to some extent, we may perhaps be supported. The Israelis have announced that

they will change the route of the Wall, but up until now we haven’t been informed.

Because of the checkpoints my dad lost his factory – a stone factory for building houses.

He got the raw material – the rocks – from Hebron, but the rocks could not pass the

checkpoints. So he lost his job and left to look for work in the United States together with

my sister who now studies and works there. I hope that my father will come back. My

mom stayed here. She is a very strong woman; she didn’t want to go to the States. As

long as there was still an open road that led to downtown Beit Jala and Bethlehem, she

was content to stay. They could not close the road because there is a hospital nearby. So

we were lucky. The fact that we have a house here protects our land from being

expropriated. If we were not here, there would be nothing to prevent them from taking

the land so as to enlarge the Har Gilo settlement.

Palestine is divided into three areas. Sometimes you lose count [laughs]. Area A is

supposed to be 100-percent Palestinian controlled; Area B, Palestinian-civilian

controlled, but with ‘security’ in the hands of the Israelis; and Area C is under complete

Israeli control, with the exception of specific services such as telephone and electricity. I

live in Area C, so the army is always around. It is very difficult to have the soldiers

coming and going so close to our house. Sometimes they close the road when they

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suspect that there are ‘wanted people’ who have been injured and are being taken to the

hospital. Then the Israeli army comes and searches the area for these ‘wanted’ people.

I had planned to study for my master’s degree at Birzeit University, normally two hours

away. However, the checkpoints and the difficult roads made it impossible. It’s not safe.

Sometimes you are stopped and prevented from reaching your destination, and sometimes

it also happens that the road back home is blocked. Then you’re stuck in the middle and

have to endure the rain and cold or the heat of the sun.

My uncles live in the Ramallah area; I haven’t visited them for the last two years. You

can’t easily go to hospitals, to holy places. I haven’t been to Jerusalem in four or five

years. It’s very difficult to even get a permit to go there. So you can’t really live your life.

At night when you want to go out to meet with friends or do something, you need to be

careful not to get too close to the checkpoints so as not to encounter Israeli soldiers. It’s

especially frightening for young women. Sometimes when the soldiers are looking for

someone, they impose a closure on the area where you are, and the drama starts. Frankly,

you can’t understand what I’m talking about unless you live it.

I really hate checkpoints around the house. I used to go out and walk through the hills.

We live near the top of a very high hill; it has nice views. The air is fresh, not like in

downtown Bethlehem. But as soon as you want to go for a walk on a beautiful summer

night, for instance, you sense that danger is lurking. The soldiers may think you’re a

‘suspicious person’ and take you away for investigation or something even worse. So

you’re just imprisoned in the Bethlehem area – or more specifically, a part of the

Bethlehem area. You’re stuck in a very small space. You can be stopped and checked

every few meters. You can suddenly find a so-called emergency checkpoint in front of

you and, just like that, you’re taken away for interrogation. This happens especially in

our neighborhood, because I live in an area where they look for ‘wanted’ men.

Each summer I travel abroad to study or visit my friends. When I need to travel in June, I

start planning in March. And even with the best of plans, I am never sure whether I will

be allowed to leave the country or not. Palestinians are forbidden from using the nearby

airport (Tel Aviv). So I have to ask for a permit to go through Jordan. And even if I get

the permit, I’m not sure if I will be allowed to pass through the checkpoints on the day of

my departure. It often depends on the mood of the soldiers who man the checkpoint.

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After a while, you lose hope and want to say: “It’s enough, I don’t want to travel.”

Imagine having to suffer three months every year just thinking about how to leave the

country. It becomes really tiring.

Then finally, if you are able to leave, you discover another world – freedom: freedom of

movement, freedom of expression, respect for you as a human being, respect for you as a

female. I remember the days when I went to Europe. In Holland I traveled by train. You

can go from one city to another without a passport and, after some hours, I discovered

that I was in Belgium. Wow! Nobody asked for my passport. I was free! The journey

back home was my biggest problem. When you return, you find the opposite. You find

checkpoints, you find yourself stuck in cultural issues, you can’t move, you can’t do

anything. I was really frustrated and depressed during the first weeks after I returned. It

was almost as if I had never lived here before. I asked myself: “Did I really used to live in

this situation?” All I wanted was to leave again.

But then, all of a sudden, after I had been home for three weeks and had filled my days

with the dozens of things that one has to do after traveling, I actually felt attracted to

being here – as though there were a magnet that was pulling me to stay or reminding me

of my attachment to this land. I don’t know exactly what it is. After all, you can only

scratch the surface of your life. You don’t know what lies beneath the surface. But

sometimes, for a brief moment, there is a feeling that captures you. If you were to ask me

the reason, I wouldn’t be able to tell you. At first you think that there’s nothing to do

here, and you can’t bear your life any longer. There are dozens of problems that fill your

head, and then, all of a sudden, something comes like this [snaps her finger]; maybe it is

the smile of a friend, or a word from an old woman, or a cup of coffee with your

relatives, or your relatives coming to help you. Maybe it is our family life, maybe it’s our

friends. I can’t describe precisely why I want to stay here. It’s just an irresistible desire.

It’s strange, but that’s the reality.

After this trip, I was completely at rest with my family again, with my friends and family.

I was back into our normal prison life [laughs]. And I thought: So why did I want to

leave? It doesn’t make sense. I don’t have many choices here, but at least I have better

choices than other people. I have a job; I study at a university; I have friends; I have a

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social life. What do we need from life, in general? We need respect, we need to be able to

afford a household, we need friends. It’s not very complicated.

I once had a problem with my car, a small accident. I phoned and suddenly three cars

arrived, full of guys – my brothers and friends – who asked: “What do you want? Is

everything OK?” The guy who caused the accident was afraid because he thought that I

had brought all those people to make problems for him. Wow, whenever you need them,

friends and family are there for you.

Maybe family life is better outside, I’ve never tried it; but I sometimes hear from my

father that he hasn’t seen my sister for two days, although they live together. She works

different hours; she studies at night, gets up early. Money-wise, they say it’s better there.

But if you work a lot without having the time to enjoy your life, what will happen to you

after a certain number of years? It’s not easy when you are under stress. Sometimes I just

want to sit with a big family around and drink a cup of tea. When they ask me: “What do

you consider a day off, a holiday?” After having visited six countries this summer, I say:

“I am completely free when I am away from the world and when I am in my pajamas

drinking coffee with my mom, with nothing to do. It’s very therapeutic.

After going to Lebanon for a workshop, I was able to say, without hesitation, “I am so

lucky to be in Palestine and Bethlehem.” I went to the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps.

There I met a lady – she was in her late sixties maybe – and we were carrying flowers to

take to the collective graveyard that commemorates the massacre. She asked: “Where are

you from?” “I come from Bethlehem, Palestine,” I replied; and she hugged me and kissed

me. She even wanted to kiss my hand. She started to cry. She didn’t want to leave me,

and she said, “Please take me with you.” There were about sixty of us there at the time.

We had all come to visit, and we represented six Arab countries. And all of us were

crying at that moment. Refugees have a strong desire to see their land. When I asked

them: “Where are you from?” They replied, “from Safed,” or “from Acca,” and they even

mentioned the names of Palestinian villages that I had never heard of. When I came home

and saw my family around me, I knew that I would remain here, despite the fact that life

is very difficult and really a struggle. In fact, the struggle makes me stronger. I have been

through a lot. If you have everything, a tiny problem becomes a big problem and you

become frustrated by it. But if you face a lot, if you face a really tough experience, it

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makes you stronger, it gives you a challenge. So I said to myself, it’s either me or life;

life is not going to get the best of me. So now I can say that I am here because I have

certain choices – better choices than many other people – and I must stay here in order to

save my home, to save my life, and to encourage others.

As a teacher of children, I hope that the children will be able to bring about change:

respect the differences of the other; respect somebody for what she or he is. For me, the

concept of freedom means respect for a human being. I am not sure whether we will ever

reach that stage, but I believe that we need to try – through education for both

Palestinians and Israelis. We shouldn’t feel superior or inferior towards other people.

Feelings of inferiority lead to hatred of the other; and a sense of superiority prevents

respect of the other. Of course, this is my long-term goal.

And that’s what keeps me going – hope. I hope that I can be a catalyst for change. When

you’re young, you can do a lot to bring about change. Many foreigners stay here to live in

solidarity with us; they give. So what about us Palestinians? Why don’t we give? In fact,

I believe that we give a lot. But we still have the energy to give more, to stay in our

country and raise our children. We love our country and its people. We love our home.

Despite all the terrible things that happen to us Palestinians, we have achieved something.

We are now able to get Palestinian passports and IDs that reflect our nationality. I

became aware of this achievement during a recent visit to Canada. I was there for a few

weeks because I had received a scholarship. The aboriginal people – native Canadians,

don’t have Indian passports and have just melted into part of colonial history. I realized

that I had forgotten that we, as Palestinians, are becoming strong and that we have our

own nationality, our own presence, our own country. We are facing very strong

international powers – the strongest powers in the world. But we have asserted our

cultural and national identity.

There are also rewarding moments with my children, that is, my students. Whenever I go

to class, I know that they’ll be waiting there for me, outside the English class. Last year I

told one class that I wouldn’t be teaching them next year. They went to the principal to

ask if Miss Jizelle could continue to teach them. They appreciate the fact that I teach

them how to be self-confident, how to act democratically. I don’t impose things on them;

I give their opinions weight. Sometimes, when I am tired and nervous and start to yell,

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they say, “Ah, but you said that you were a democratic teacher!” Education is the most

important means for bringing about change. You see the sparkle in the children’s eyes

when they hear the word ‘democracy’ or ‘participation’. These eyes reflect hope,

innocence, and love for their teacher. That’s very rewarding for me.

Living in Palestine is something special. I was lucky enough not to have to leave the

country, not to become a refugee or an emigrant. I could have gone to the US to get a

green card or a passport, but I didn’t do so. If ever I have to choose again, I would still

choose to live in Beit Jala – on the top of that mountain that is so very calm and clean and

surrounded by strong family and social bonds. Bethlehem and Beit Jala touch your heart.

Interview: 7 December, 2004, Beit Jala.

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I HAVE TO DIVIDE HOPE INTO STAGES TO MAKE IT MORE REALISTIC

Hania Bitar

When the whole story of the Wall started, I was somehow dealing with it in disbelief. It

was something that was about to happen, but at the time I was pushing it away, or I dealt

with it from a journalistic or political point of view. It was being built in this area or that

area, but still it was far away. It was not part of my life. But when they started

constructing the Wall in the Ar-Ram area where I cross, where I work and live, suddenly

this thing forced itself upon my existence, my daily life, my day and night. Every time I

looked out the window I saw the Wall. It was really shocking. Suddenly this Wall of solid

concrete became very scary. I usually try to be and present myself as a courageous

woman, but to tell you the truth, sometimes when I am driving and it is evening, this Wall

really frightens me. It looks cold, long, and winding – like a snake. When I am driving

alongside it, it is an endless road. Although I am not claustrophobic, that Wall makes me

feel as though I am in a bottle. I want to shatter it into pieces. Then I feel as if I can’t wait

until I reach the end of this road. Whenever I drive, the Wall is either on my left-hand

side or on my right-hand side. It really gives me a feeling of suffocation. I just want

somebody to sit beside me in the car, to make jokes about the Wall, to laugh, to sing

aloud. We try to avoid looking at it directly. We try to continue with our lives, but it is

always there.

The Wall and checkpoints isolate me from many things in my life. My social life is

composed of many elements, it is not Hania alone. I have my parents, my sisters, my

brother, my work, my colleagues, and the members of Pyalara [Palestinian Youth

Association of Leadership and Rights Association]. Step by step, the separation started

with the checkpoints and then it was combined with the Wall. Being cut off from one

another has taken a big toll on our lives, our connections, our relationships, and how we

view ourselves.

I remember when I was living with my family in Jerusalem proper, in Wadi Joz. We lived

in a rented house, and then the landlord wanted our house. My parents always dreamed of

owning their own house. For financial reasons we were never able to buy a real nice

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house, but we worked hard to buy an apartment. After working hard, we were able to buy

it five years ago in the Kufr ‘Aqoub area, which is part of Jerusalem. My new house was

just a five-minute drive from my work. It was so convenient, in-between Jerusalem and

Ramallah. We were very happy with it. A few months afterwards, the Kalandia

checkpoint was constructed. Then the new apartment became a nightmare. Suddenly all

our dreams were shattered; everyone in my family blamed themselves for making the

most stupid decision of their lives. All the savings were put into this house, and as we are

not a rich family, we could not buy or rent another house in Jerusalem.

We are Jerusalemites, but we live on the other side of the checkpoints and within the

Walls. As Jerusalemites we are entitled to health coverage inside Israel. But how to get

there? So many things separate us from what is really ours. I remember that a few years

ago my father was sick and we often had to go to the hospital in Jerusalem, to Hadassah.

It was winter, and we always went in my car. When we would reach a checkpoint, we

didn’t know whether they would let us pass. The checkpoint closed at nine in the

evening. A number of times, when we needed to reach the hospital very quickly, we were

stopped because they had to do all their searches, all the checks, all the stupid questions –

and all this even though we are Jerusalemites. When my father died, he was in an

ambulance, stuck at the checkpoint.

My mom is generally fine but she has some health problems. She cannot walk easily

because of back trouble. She now feels paralyzed because she cannot walk the three

hundred meters needed to cross the checkpoint to go wherever she wants. If I don’t take

her, she cannot move. We cannot enjoy going anywhere because we get stuck at the

checkpoint for at least one or two hours. Any event we want to go to is already destroyed

by this feeling that we need to cross a checkpoint. It’s as if we are going to another

country – and even worse since we have to endure humiliations and problems. If

something happens to my mom and it’s urgent that she get to hospital, I now have not

only to cross the checkpoint but also to face the problem of the Wall. We are now

completely separated from wherever we want or need to go. Even our social life has

become disastrous. I remember my birthday; it was just a while ago. None of my sisters,

nephews, or nieces to whom I am very close could make it. We turned from a very busy

family where all came to see each other very often – having all those big lunches and

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dinners and so on – into a family where the phone replaces the face-to-face encounter and

the social events. Having good social connections characterizes us as Arabs or

Palestinians. But now we have to be realistic; we cannot waste all our time in waiting to

go through the checkpoints.

The Wall has a big impact upon a youth organization like Pyalara. I remember when we

started this organization back in 1999. It was a melting pot of sorts. Whenever we had a

training session or workshop, kids came from various areas: Hebron, Jerusalem,

Bethlehem, and Ramallah. All would come and meet at our office. As an organization we

brought these kids closer together. Now this can no longer happen. If, for example, we

want to plan an activity for youth from Nablus, we have to go to Nablus. We now have

no connections with Hebron even though this was one of the first places that we started to

work in. I have a press card, so I can travel to Gaza. A few days ago I came back from

Gaza and literally cried. Oussama, the guy who runs our office in Gaza, is always on the

phone with his colleagues in Ramallah. He thinks that I have the key to bring him to

Ramallah. Each time, he says: “Please try, please try. Maybe they’ll allow me to go this

time. I just want to spend one day with my colleagues in Ramallah.” I feel that the

separation is hardest on the people of Gaza.

As members of an organization, we always want to challenge tough challenges, to be

even stronger than the Wall or the barriers. We really try to overcome whatever measures

the Israelis take. We try to facilitate connections between people despite the fact that they

are disconnected. Our kids in Nablus sometimes leave at four in the morning and stand in

long queues in order to make it here on time. Sometimes they get stuck here because

there’s a closure on Nablus or another area, and then they have to sleep here. It’s a

financial burden as well. But the young people are ready to cross the barriers just to be

together. Sometimes it is not feasible. We have many youngsters who are below eighteen,

and for them it is risky because somebody has to bear the responsibility for their

traveling. If we go there we can see them; otherwise we have to work through the Internet

and the phone.

The Wall has had a negative impact upon how people view each other, even on how we

relate to each other as Palestinians. People ask themselves: “Who is enjoying more

freedom than the other?” People start looking at each other, categorizing each other:

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“Who is the least to suffer, who more?” Thank God, the younger generation is a little

more vibrant. They are still hopeful, they want to challenge the world; they want to

escape, to run away, to have a fresh start. The older generation seems like zombies

sometimes, without spirits. This is really scary. We are thankful that we work with the

young generation, but we are always afraid of what might happen to them in the future if

the situation continues the way it is today.

What I feel is also important is the psychological impact of the Wall upon the Palestinian

nation vis-à-vis the Israeli nation. Already we have been disconnected for so many years

from the Israeli side. It seems that the Israeli side has really bought the stories or the

myths about the Wall and the “protection” that it provides. They believe that it protects

them as a nation from the invasions or suicide bombings of the Palestinians. They didn’t

really calculate the long-term effects of the Wall. Maybe it can save some lives in the

short term, but in the long run I don’t know what the effect of the Wall will be. I don’t

know what happens when people feel so isolated from each other. As Palestinians we

assume that anybody living outside the Wall just doesn’t care; we feel that they don’t

want to see what is going on inside the Wall. If we as two nations are destined to share

one land, and if we care about the future generations, I don’t know how this Wall will

help in actually realizing a better future.

The whole issue of the Wall reminds me of an article that I read and responded to almost

ten years ago. It was written by Susan Hattis Rolef in the Jerusalem Post. She advised the

Israeli government to imprison “the terrorists” inside nets – just like what you do with

mosquitoes that bother you. You should keep them away by putting up a net. And this is,

in fact, what her government has done. For the Israeli government, the Palestinian people

are not real human beings with rights. If they could just imprison those troublemakers,

then their lives would continue peacefully. Israelis may gain some sort of tranquility in

the short run, but if no real settlement is found – a genuinely just solution – then those

mosquitoes will just tear a hole in the screen and come to bother them again. Whatever

barriers or walls are built, they will never preserve tranquility or peace in the future.

There is a big difference between how I used to view freedom and how I live or feel it

now. Years ago, freedom was a sense of calm, nature, no borders, traveling, green things,

sea – all those things represented freedom for me. So whenever I was traveling and high

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in the sky or when I was swimming in the sea, I felt like I owned the world. Freedom was

always connected with large landscapes, with vistas, a big view. Maybe it was because of

the fact that where we live we almost never enjoy a big view. Only a few have the luck to

live in a place that is high enough to have a view. Wherever we live or work, there are

many things that obstruct the view. It’s because houses are often jammed together here,

close to each other; and even more so now because of the Wall. So for me, freedom was

vision – literally.

But right now I see freedom differently. Freedom has become more an emotional state of

mind. In order to feel free I cannot make a connection with how I am living objectively,

with where I can go or cannot go. It’s more like what I can do vs. what I cannot do. Not

in terms of traveling but with regard to what sustains and fulfils me emotionally. In order

to reach a level of emotional satisfaction, I have to concentrate on small things that make

me happy and make me feel free: for example, when I am able to help someone. Last

night, for instance, I came home at nine. As I was driving along the Wall, a man was

walking along the road. I knew that at such a time he could not find a taxi. He was

walking along this endless road. I stopped and gave him a ride. The fact that I helped

someone gave me a sense of fulfillment and freedom. So I have to find my freedom in

very small things that maybe don’t count at the macro level. But for me as a person, I feel

that with each step I take, with each act I perform, I am liberating something inside me.

This gives me a sense of freedom that is lacking around me; and at the same time it gives

me a sense of resilience. In order to be able to continue, I have to realize myself. I realize

myself through helping others, through being needed, through giving hope to others. I

have to produce tangible results; if not, I don’t feel satisfied. For me hope is not just an

abstract term. Hope has to be linked to something concrete. I have to divide hope into

phases to make it realistic. When I complete a certain phase, I move to the next level, and

further up. This is how I relate to the people around me. Many young people are

frustrated because they want to achieve something much higher; they want freedom; they

want to get rid of occupation. They want to find excellent jobs, to attain a certain status in

society. We cannot fulfill all those goals right now. So we must divide them into smaller,

doable tasks. How can we find a role for young people that helps them to develop part of

who they are, to learn to help themselves and others in the society?

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It seems to me that a comparative approach is the most appropriate. When you compare

you can reach a level of satisfaction. Even when you are in a very bad situation you can

find people who are worse. And because you are doing better, you can help them. If you

bring those who are in a worse situation to your bad situation, it is a fulfillment of one

phase – and then you move to the next phase, which allows you to do something much

better.

As a Jerusalemite, as a representative of a youth organization, and as a journalist, I

usually have the opportunity to travel. And we do our best to provide travel opportunities

for our young people. But it’s funny: If I am in another country – for example, Holland,

Germany, or the United States – and I am enjoying whatever those countries give, believe

me, I don’t feel relieved or relaxed until I reach Kalandia checkpoint. Only then am I

back home [laughs]. It reminds me of Kundera’s book title, The Unbearable Lightness of

Being. I know what is awaiting me. Whenever I want, I can be somewhere else, and I

could do many other things in the world. The easiest thing is just to escape. But somehow

I want to face the challenge. Other nations can live disasters or epidemics. But in our case

we face not just a “regular disaster,” such as an economic burden or even a regular Wall,

but a convergence of factors that are all designed to continuously degrade the human

being, to deprive you of your dignity. We Palestinians are subjected to daily experiences

that drive us crazy, but still we manage to overcome whatever experiences we go through

and are somehow able to challenge the things that cannot be challenged. Getting rid of

the occupation has become a challenge. Of course we are entitled to resist the occupation

according to all the international laws. But we have to keep strong in order to maintain

our ability to challenge the occupation until we get our rights. Meanwhile, in order to

continue and be strong, our soul has to be fed, nourished.

I nourish myself through things that I manage to fulfill on the personal or on the

organizational level. I feel that we as Pyalara are making a significant impact upon young

people’s lives. Sometimes we are amazed at the comments we get. When we hear some

people talking about how we’ve influenced their lives, we react with: “Oh, my God!”

Sometimes we can’t believe how much something small can help, how it can rescue

people. We do something small – let’s say, giving youth an opportunity to speak on a

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youth TV program – and we ourselves don’t really appreciate its value. But it might come

at a certain point in their lives when self-esteem is so low that our support or our ability

to engage them in something rescues their lives. They get somehow find meaning in their

lives; they feel that they’re doing something valuable, that there is a reason that they

should continue to live and look toward the future. Sometimes I even feel that I myself

need someone to support me, someone to give me hope. I am a human being. I need to

believe in the things I am doing, and so I need someone to make me believe deeply in

hope. When I am feeling down and come to work, I get some of the feedback I need as

soon as I meet with the target groups whom we are working with. I see how much their

lives are touched. Then I really get energy.

When we were recently in Holland with a group of youth, I didn’t speak. The young

people themselves narrated their stories. When the Dutch young people were clapping

and embracing the Palestinians, I looked at those young people. They felt that they

liberated the world; that they had won a million dollars. I really felt that they had

accomplished their mission. They worked from their heart, and they delivered something.

Those young people felt they had played a significant role for their peers, for their

culture, for their cause. Those moments are like a treasure. You can always lean back on

those moments.

Interview: Al-Ram, December 9, 2004.

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JERUSALEM WAS ONCE A COSMOPOLITAN CITY

Alexander Qamar

Every two or three weeks the army comes knocking at the door. They have come four

times since they built the Wall. They ask us to leave the house and stand for two or three

hours on the street. You hear a voice outside shouting: “Open, open!” “Who is there?” I

ask. “Jaysh (army), jaysh, Israeli jaysh!” Then they search the house. This is not what life

is supposed to be. The last time was about three or four weeks ago. It happened that one

of soldiers spoke French; he was an officer. So I spoke French with him. “Where are you

from, Morocco?” I asked. “No, no, je suis Parisien!” Briefly, I got a feeling of

cosmopolitanism – but under what circumstances!

The street in front of our house leads to Rachel’s Tomb. It used to be the easiest way to

reach the center of Bethlehem or to go to Jerusalem. However, it was closed during the

last Intifada. When the boys from Aida Refugee Camp came out along that street and saw

the Israelis, they would start throwing stones. After the closure of the road, we couldn’t

easily move anymore. The refugee camp became a backwater. There used to be many

people living in this area, but now not a living soul remains. It’s empty. A year ago, the

Palestinian Authority opened another street behind Rachel’s Tomb to make it somewhat

easier for the people. But with the building of the Wall, access has again become more

difficult. In fact, the Wall was one of the reasons we had to close our factory.

In the past we used to get two- or three-week permits to go to Jerusalem. Then later,

when it became more difficult to get a permit, we sometimes took a roundabout way to

avoid the checkpoint, for instance, the path through Tantur (ecumenical center beside the

Jerusalem–Bethlehem checkpoint). That is now no longer possible. I am an old man now,

I am 81; and I cannot run as before to cross from here to there or even walk the required

distance. I have to go all the way to Kfar Etzion (Israeli civil administration branch of the

army) to ask for a permit. And I never know whether they’ll give me one or not.

I used to have customers in Mea Shearim, Bukharim, or Arab neighborhoods in

Jerusalem. There are still some merchants in Jerusalem who owe me money that I cannot

collect. Our textile products were brought to Jerusalem, Tel Aviv, Nablus, or Ramallah.

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Now we cannot enter, or easily enter, those places. Before the closure (in 1993) it used to

take me 15 minutes to get to Jerusalem. Now, if I have the chance, it would take at least

half a day. It is as if we are in a prison; not a prison cell, but a prison quarter.

We used to have an unobstructed view to Gilo from our house. Now we don’t see

anything in front of us except the Wall. To get any view at all, I have to go to the terrace

on the roof. The present situation makes me want to sell my house. But buyers don’t want

to pay as before. That means that I will lose. With the Wall nearby, nobody wants to buy.

If I were able, I would move somewhere else, maybe to Canada where my two brothers

live. Nobody lives in this quarter anymore. Many have left for Bethlehem or elsewhere.

The Wall has closed in on us.

All my life I have been a factory owner. The locations of our factory and home have

changed over time. In 1948, our home was in the Rehavia quarter in Jerusalem,

Arlosoroff Street, no. 15. We were at supper in the evening when we heard knocking at

the door: “Anton, Anton, come out; we want to speak with you!” (Anton was my father.)

He went outside and some four or five of the Haganah [the regular Zionist army at the

time] showed him their Israeli-made sten guns. They told him: “You are presently living

in a Jewish quarter. We have a Jewish fellow who is living in an Arab quarter, in Baka’.

You have to switch places with him – you go to live in his neighborhood and he will

come to live here.” What could we do? The Jewish man from Baka’ was an attorney

general in the Russian Compound in Jerusalem, Dr. Nacht. We even knew his aunt. We

had no choice but to do what the Haganah had asked.

At the time, our factory was located opposite Mea Shearim. It was in part a laundry and

in part a dye house for textiles. The factory was taken over by the Haganah. We had just

ordered new machinery from England that had to go all the way through Beirut,

Damascus, Amman, and Jericho before arriving in Jerusalem. Since we had to move, we

were forced to put the machines either in Ramallah or in Bethlehem. We decided to put

them in Bethlehem. We installed the machinery and started working in 1951. Our old

factory in Jerusalem was completely lost. The laundry equipment was taken over by an

orphanage in Jerusalem. We also lost our other properties. Inside Mea Shearim, our

family had twelve shops. We haven’t received any rent for fifty years. We had plots of

land – 200 dunams – near Beit Safafa. We lost it all.

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Until 1969 our factory was located at the junction of the Jerusalem–Hebron and

Bethlehem–Beit Jala roads, at what is now called Baab el-Zqaaq. One Sunday an Israeli

car with three officers and a driver got into an accident. A truck from Beit Jala hit them

and crushed their car in front of our factory. All four were killed. After that the Israeli

government announced that we had 48 hours to move our factory to a new location. The

factory was thought to be too close to the street. It made the street narrow – Zqaaq means

‘very narrow’ – and that was considered to be the cause of the accident. The Israelis

wanted to enlarge the street. After the intervention of a Jewish lawyer, I was given 40

days to move. They didn’t want to pay me any compensation money. They told us:

“Collect it from the mayor of Beit Jala.” Beit Jala is a small place, and the municipality

didn’t have any money. All we received was 1,500 Israeli lira – just enough to cover the

cost of moving to another place. In 40 days we built the building that presently houses the

factory.

Life was easy because we had workers; refugees from the camp here [Aida camp]; 40 of

them in total – women and men. We taught them how to work in the factory. Over time,

however, the textile market declined. Before the factory’s closure two years ago, we had

only 22 workers. We could no longer compete with the cheap labor in China.

Our life has changed a hundred percent; it has moved from freedom to imprisonment. In

Jerusalem we were free, we lived differently. Jerusalem was like Europe. Before 1948,

there was an open atmosphere. On Thursdays and Sundays the cinemas were especially

for the Christians. Saturday night after the Sabbath, the cinemas were for the Jews. At the

time, there was no TV. Cinema was our only entertainment. The Christians in Jerusalem

were larger in number than the Moslems and the Jews, especially in the neighborhoods of

Baka’, Katamon, the German Colony, and the Greek Colony. Many Germans and Greeks

came from Turkey to Jerusalem, as well as Armenians who fled from the massacre.

Christian Arabs had already had a long history of presence in Jerusalem.

We ourselves were Arabs from Jerusalem. My grandfather came from Lebanon, from Dar

el Amar (Shof mountains). He came after clashes between Christians and Druze, and

after the Crimean War (1850); Turkey was then obliged to open Jerusalem to all. My

family started to work in hotels and mix with the people. My grandfather became a

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blacksmith in a shop in the old city. He happened to have a neighbor from Malta who

worked with the Cook Travel Agency. My grandfather married the daughter of the agent.

With so many different nationalities, we felt free in Jerusalem. Nowadays Jerusalem is

divided between Jews and Moslems. But it used to be a cosmopolitan city. On Sundays

all the roads were full of Christians on their way to church. We spoke various languages:

Arabic, French, English. There was the Alliance Israelite, a Jewish institute that used to

teach the French language to children in elementary school. Their boys came to the

College des Frères or Terra Sancta to continue their studies. They came from Morocco,

Tunis, and Turkey; there were even Jews from Egypt. That was until 1942. At the time

many Christian schools continued to teach the Hebrew language. It was not obligatory

but was offered as an extracurricular activity. I sat with Jews on the same bench. I

remember someone named Moshe Shetrit and others. Every morning we went to church

while the Moslems and Jews remained in the courtyard. Then at eight, we all entered

class together. There were Jews with us in every class. Our class of 30 students included

seven or eight Jews and two Moslems. The rest were Christians. I remember a fellow

who sat with me on the same bench; he was called Louis. He didn’t stay in school but,

after seven or eight years, I met him on Jaffa Road. I looked at him – he had red hair –

and asked: “Aren’t you Louis Schnevelstein?” “From where do I know you?” he asked.

“Were you not at the College de Frères?” I continued. “Yes, I was,” he replied, “but now

I am no longer Louis.” “What do you mean?” I asked. “I am Levi now!” was his reply.

He had changed his name. He didn’t want to speak further with me. Imagine, we shared

the same bench!

At that time Jerusalem meant liberty. There were no patrols. Everyone used to go to the

same cafés, the same restaurants. On Saturdays we went to Café Europe. It was at the

corner of Jaffa Road and Ben Yehuda Street. The building belonged to a fellow from

Bethlehem: Sansur. One was free to enter that café, to dance, to do everything. It didn’t

matter whether one was Jew or Arab, there was no difference. That was so until the

publication of the White Paper in 1939. Before that, in 1936, there was an Arab strike

(for six months), but that took place only in the old city of Jerusalem. In 1939 the Jews –

the Haganah, and the Irgun (paramilitary Zionist band) – began to strike at the British.

Then the Jewish boys stopped coming to our school.

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Over time, many Christians left. The Germans were imprisoned and taken to Australia. A

lot of Greeks returned to Greece after the 1948 war. Many Armenians went to America.

Most of the Christians lost their houses outside the city walls. They fled to America,

Canada, or Australia. The Christians now make up less than 5 percent of the inhabitants

of Jerusalem. Christians are also leaving Bethlehem. People leave in order to look for

work. There are now 250,000 descendants of the inhabitants of Beit Jala, Bethlehem, and

Beit Sahour living in Chile or Mexico. Here in Beit Jala, there are only ten to fifteen

thousand left. Approximately 85 percent of the former population of Bethlehem, Beit

Jala, and Beit Sahour live abroad. Many people from Beit Jala settled in Chile; many

Bethlehemites went to Mexico. Nowadays they are moving to the United States and

Canada. Most people don’t find work here. And it is work that keeps people going on.

The Jerusalemites and Bethlehemites are a mixture of different peoples, and that is

something I value. St. Jerome (who translated the Bible into Latin and lived in Bethlehem

in the fourth century) came from present-day Romania. In the past, even a number of

Jews converted to Christianity and established themselves in Bethlehem. Most of the

intelligentsia of this country used to come from places such as Jerusalem and Bethlehem.

Life was full of change here. People were on the move; there was an atmosphere of

cosmopolitanism. That’s why all over the world you can find people from Bethlehem; in

Europe, America, South Africa, everywhere. But now the only thing you find in

Bethlehem is a prison. Travel is impossible; crossing borders is impossible.

Interview: 16 December 2004, Beit Jala.

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WE LOCK OURSELVES UP IN BARRELS, BOXES, JAILS, CYLINDERS, AND

CAGES

Abdalla Abu Rahme

Some 1,800 Muslims live in Bil’in. We have 4,000 dunams (1 dunam = 1 m2) of land in

the area. A large part is covered with 20,000 olive trees. There is also some open land for

animals and the cultivation of corn. Half of the villagers are dependent on agriculture and

another ten percent on keeping animals. Others are workers or employees. The Wall cuts

us off from more than half the land: 2,300 dunams, or 57 percent. We still have access to

our land on the other side of the Wall – that is, as long as the gate in the Wall is open.

The building of the Wall started on February 20, 2005. We organized a committee to set

up actions against it. At first we planned to conduct actions daily, but that was difficult to

implement, and so we settled on having two to three actions every week. We decided to

try out a new and creative method each time so as to make the actions attractive to the

media and to keep journalists interested in coming. We wanted weekly continuity in our

actions as had happened before in the villages of Budrus, Biddha, and Mesha, but we also

wanted the media to keep asking: “What is new in Bil’in?” After all, when the actions are

only about throwing stones, people would think that it is always the same. A friend and I

have been meeting every Wednesday night to brainstorm about that week’s next actions –

which had to be nonviolent. Other friends join in to give their comments, and then we

prepare for the weekly action. As for participants, we depend upon the villagers,

members of the International Solidarity Movement (ISM), international volunteers, and

the Israeli peace movement.

Our purpose is the removal of the Wall. We will continue our actions even if the Israelis

plan to finish building the Wall in the coming months. If they wish, they can put the Wall

on the Green Line (the pre-1967 border between Israel and the West Bank), but not here.

If the Wall prevents us from going to our land, we will have a third Nakba (disaster –

expulsion of Palestinians; the first Nakba was in 1948 at the time of the establishment of

Israel, the second during the June War in 1967). Our families would not have land on

which to build and would face a new transfer from their homes.

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Our actions aim to expose the injustice of the Wall and the treatment of Palestinians. Last

week we wore orange masks, the kinds worn by convicted persons before their execution.

It was to tell the world what is happening in Gaza. When you destroy power stations, you

are killing people. Last Friday we made a kind of soccer play with the adults holding a

big ball on their shoulders and wearing T-shirts and flags of the various countries

participating in the World Cup. On the other side of the field, some 20 children wore red-

painted T-shirts that symbolized the occupation. The message: While everybody is

watching football on TV, many Palestinian children are killed. Each time we bring a new

element into our actions. We lock ourselves up in barrels, boxes, jails, cylinders, and

cages. We put tape over our mouths, chain our hands, and even chain ourselves to the

Wall.

At the end of last year we heard about the arrival of so-called ‘illegal’ settlers on our land

on the other side of the Wall. Of course all settlers are illegal according to international

law, but these settlers were considered illegal even by Israel, as they have no building

permit. So we wanted to do something. We challenged the Israeli state on December 21,

by posting a caravan next to those illegal settlers’ houses, on our own land. We told the

soldiers, “If you want to implement your own law and remove our caravan, you have to

destroy those 700 apartments in Matityahu East [the settlement] as well.” Twenty persons

remained inside or close to the caravan for a period of 36 hours. Then a big tractor came.

Soldiers took us out as if we were savages or beasts. The caravan was destroyed and

some people were arrested. On December 25, at 15:00, we came back with another

caravan. It was rainy and cold, so we thought that maybe we would be successful. After

an hour, a commander came and asked us what we were doing. “You don’t have a

permit,” he said. So we asked, “What about those other houses – they don’t have a permit

either.” The commander: “Those are houses, they have windows and ceilings.” In

response we decided to build a house, of one room, some 150 meters behind the Wall.

We started immediately, at 21:00, on the evening of that same day. Friends helped us

quietly. It was raining so when we passed through the gate in the Wall, the soldiers were

not looking too closely. But then the car that transported the building materials got stuck

in the mud. We called for another car, stuffed it with materials, and told the soldier at the

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gate that we needed the new car in order to pull out the first car. All went well. We

started building at night, with building blocks and three to four sacks of concrete. All

together we were thirty people. To protect us from the cold and the rain, we made a big

fire in the middle of the building place. The difficult part was the ceiling. Throughout the

night we rotated so that at any one time seven persons kept their hands held high to

sustain the ceiling – four by four meters. Imagine how we looked standing there like

sculptures! At five in the morning, the room was dry. At seven o’clock, the commander

arrived, clearly nervous and angry at the soldiers who allowed this to happen. Photos

were made; we filled in a form to apply for a permit.

Now we have a center near the land that we cultivate. We call it the Center for Common

Struggle. After the action, our lawyer was able to get the ‘illegal’ building activities in

Matityahu East stopped, at least for the moment. Jewish families would constantly enter

the empty apartments during the night. Some 35 families in the ‘illegal’ settlement are

now not permitted to get electricity pending the court’s decision. At the moment, we

show the World Cup matches on a big-screen TV. There are usually between 20 and 50

visitors, keeping a presence around the clock. The army does not allow cars to enter the

gate, but visitors can walk through it.

What keeps me going and allows me to continue with these actions? In the first place, the

hope to remove the Wall. This is our right; we have a right to our land. We do not have a

choice. Without our land, we are in a terrible situation. Where can we build houses for

our children, brothers, neighbors? What also sustains us are the volunteers from many

countries who come especially to support us. We are not alone; we have friends against

the occupation. Members of the Israeli peace movement also come day and night. At the

beginning it was difficult to organize meetings in the village if Israelis were included. All

that has changed because now there are relations between these Israelis and the villagers.

Whenever we need them, they come immediately. We are not against the Jews, or the

Israelis, but against the occupation. I always stress this. I wouldn’t even mind going

personally to Olmert to tell him: “You are wrong!” In fact, we want to change Israeli

public opinion about the Wall. At first Israelis spoke about security as the reason for

building the Wall. But after learning about our case and others, many found out that the

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Wall is not about security but that it serves a policy of grabbing land and building

settlements.

If there were no occupation of our land, we would have good neighborly relations. Many

Israeli friends come to my home. We respect each other as human beings. They also

come to court in our defense. It affects me when I see banners such as “Free Abu Rahme”

in court. It makes me strong. I was arrested three times: on June 17, 2005, July 15, 2005,

and September 9, 2005. Two other times I escaped arrest. After the first arrest, I was kept

for five days and had to pay 3,000 shekels ($670); the second time, I was detained for

five days and had to pay 5,000 shekels ($1,100); and the third time, I was held for 21

days and had to pay 6,000 shekels ($1,330). I paid the first fine myself, but the second

and third were paid by the international volunteers. We have learned to help each other

by sharing what we have: the volunteers use my apartment in the village.

I was twice injured by rubber bullets; about ten times I was beaten up by soldiers, with

sticks. Because of a stick that hit my wrist, I can no longer carry heavy things.

When people call me ‘Palestinian Gandhi’, I feel flattered. Of course it’s great to have

such a nickname. But in the end, it’s not because I am reading Gandhi in the library that

we have come up with our actions. I was not planning to become a Gandhi. This is a

Palestinian struggle. We show that we can use nonviolence in Palestine. Louisa

Morgantini, the Italian Euro-parliamentarian, recently came to the Gaza Strip. She said

on Al-Jazeera TV that if the Palestinians would do what Bil’in is doing, Europeans would

support them. John Dugard, UN special rapporteur on human rights, came to Bil’in, and I

explained to him the situation here. He saw how soldiers were shooting teargas grenades

along a straight line, very dangerously, just over the roof of a car. Those grenades are

supposed to be shot in a curve. He saw how a 13-year-old boy wanted to plant a little tree

near the Wall, and how the kid was arrested and then barely escaped. With all the

publicity we receive, we are writing history with our own actions.

For me, freedom is independence – having one’s own country, being able to move

everywhere and travel to any country. Freedom means that others treat us like human

beings and that we have the financial means to live. Freedom is the early-morning

moment when my family and I sit under the olive tree and breathe the fresh air. Freedom

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means knowing that my daughter will one day be able to fulfill her wish to see the sea by

herself.

Interview: July 1-2, 2006, Ramallah.

Following popular non-violent resistance, an Israeli court decision was issued on

September 4, 2007 in favor of the petition of the village of Bil’in to change the planned

route of the Wall. Although this decision can be seen as a victory in the non-violent

struggle of the villagers against the Israeli occupation, the route of the Wall still deviates

from internationally recognized armistice lines and is therefore in violation of

international law.

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WE ARE IMPRISONED, BURIED ALIVE IN A TOMB

Claire Anastas

I am a mother of two children – two girls and two boys. We live in a building that is

surrounded on three sides by a nine-meter Wall, with fourteen persons, including nine

children and my mother-in-law who is sick and has rheumatism. Only one side is open,

with barely any sun coming through. While sitting in the kitchen, I see three walls. The

army is going to build a fourth one, in the middle of their camp next to us. As we live

near Rachel’s Tomb, our house is subject to severe military measures. Our two shops –

for home accessories and car mechanics – are located on the first floor of the building.

They are closed; there is no business. In front of our house used to be the main street to

downtown Bethlehem. It was the richest area of Bethlehem, but now it is a small, scary

place. We are without neighbors; we just live with two families on our own. We are

imprisoned; we are buried alive in a tomb.

Even during the years of the second Intifada, we experienced much pressure. In 2002,

there was a lot of shooting. We lived in a cross-fire. Soldiers occupied the high positions

around our house. People were shooting at the soldiers from different directions. My

children were paralyzed by fear and could not even use their hands. During some of the

shootings, the bullets entered our house. We did not know where to hide; we did not

know where to go. The situation lasted one year. Each night my children would wait for

the shooting to start. They shouted, “The shooting will start soon, we don’t want to sleep

in our beds.” We had to sleep on the floor, near the door. The six of us slept there, in

sleeping bags, next to each other. Our oldest girl slept on a chair.

We used to have money, but for the past two years we only have debts. We cannot pay

them back. We haven’t had work for five years. Our businesses have come to a standstill.

The last two years have been unbearable. Two years ago, the electricity was cut off for

four months because we could not pay the bill. We extended the wires from my brother-

in-law’s house so as to have electricity at least for the important things like the fridge and

other major house utilities. In 2002 my husband cut his hand. He was very anxious about

the situation. At that time our debts began. Instead of fixing the car, he cut his hand. His

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hand is now always painful; half of it is paralyzed. The churches gave a little help, and

our children’s schools reduced tuition fees for us.

Our13-year-old son suffered terribly from two infections in his legs when workers were

digging up sewage pipes while clearing the ground in order to build the Wall. His legs are

sensitive to dust and sand. I took him to five doctors. Initially they did not know what it

was. It looked like a new kind of infection. Despite taking antibiotics, he did not become

well during the one and a half months of digging. I asked a foreign visitor to bring water

from the Dead Sea. That helped; until now the infections have not come back. Now he

can wear his shoes normally.

It is unhealthy here. We have a playground nearby, but who wants to play when there is a

nine-meter-high Wall around it? Other parents could send their children on a bus trip

outside the Bethlehem area. But for us, to send seven or eight children is too expensive,

and I would not want to send only some of them and feel as though I’m playing favorites.

So I keep my children inside the Bethlehem district. That is terrible. They should enjoy

the summer, the holidays, as in any normal life; they should swim. Now they just go

around and visit our families.

We are waiting for our shops to open, but I now have no hope. Clients are afraid to visit

this military zone. Even our family is afraid to pay us a visit. My children are deprived of

having friends come home to play with them. So-called emergency checkpoints are

constantly being set up by the army. Four days ago, I was even prevented from entering

my own house. They closed the area for a Jewish feast; the religious Jews came to pray at

Rachel’s Tomb. In the evening, I went to pick up my husband while my children stayed

at home. No one told us that they would close the area. When I returned with my

husband, a large area around the house was closed. I went to the gate of the nearby

military headquarters. I spoke with the soldiers there but had to wait for two hours at

various military barriers. We were told to go away.

We thought about going to Nativity Square to ask if we could sleep in the church. After

all, by this time it was midnight, and everyone was asleep. Finally I called my brother,

who told me to come over to sleep at his house. When I called my children, my youngest

son asked to sleep in my bed, together with his oldest sister, so as to feel more secure. In

the morning, my brother-in-law asked the military leaders to let us return home. We were

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late for church, and I wanted to pray. There was still a closure. My brother-in-law asked

them for mercy. He asked that we be allowed to go in and out of the area. A relative had

died, and we needed to attend the burial. Finally we were allowed to enter our house.

The main problem is that my children have suffered a lot. They often cry. They don’t feel

that they have any future. The Wall was erected in just one day. In the morning,

everything was normal; in the evening, the Wall was there, blocking the view from our

windows. The children sat next to the window and started to cry when they saw the Wall.

How could this Wall appear so suddenly?

Over time they have become more anxious. They tell me that they feel as though they are

being physically suffocated. They feel pressure in their chests. They come to me to say

that they cannot bear it anymore. When they watch TV, they see children freely playing;

they see Walt Disney, they see that children are happy. They ask me to send them to

playgrounds in a nice park. I tell them that I can’t promise anything, but I’ll try. All my

children think that their lives will become worse in the future. They are aware, they are

smart. They used to get good grades at school, but after seeing the Wall, their grades

dropped, and I cannot do anything for them. They cannot concentrate on their studies

with this pressure inside them.

My 16-year-old daughter is always silent. She doesn’t want to look at the Wall. She

closes her eyes. She can’t comprehend it. Till now she has not said anything about it. The

other children just stare at it. The youngest one, our eight-year-old, said, “Wow, it is like

a tomb here!” I try to tell my children that I am going to support them by asking the help

of a great power, of leaders from abroad, who have the power to move the Wall. “Don’t

worry,” I tell them, “I am doing my best.” This is what gives them a bit of hope. I don’t

know what to do if no one asks about us.

The friends of my children say: Don’t think about the Wall; just try to adjust to it until

your family can do something about it. They invite them to their homes because they

cannot visit my children. My oldest daughter did not want to have a birthday party. She

thought that we might plan something that would cost more than we could afford.

“Why?” I asked. She said, “Because my father does not have work, and I don’t want to

burden him.” Her friends called me to say that they would organize everything for her

birthday – they would plan a surprise party for her and would visit her at home. They

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brought a cake and gifts. Afterwards my daughter said that it was the nicest birthday

she’s had in years. But then she started crying because she felt embarrassed at the same

time.

For me, freedom means living in a free country, not in a cage with a minimal amount of

space, without the requirements of living. I wish that I could go abroad with my children,

my husband, and my mother-in-law. My memories of freedom are buried in the past. God

keeps me going. We always pray to God that we will find people who can help us get rid

of this Wall. This is what gives me a bit of relief. I only want to live a normal life. When

we drive around Bethlehem, we see nice places; we try to go maybe once every three or

four months to one of them.

As a young child, before the first Intifada, I used to live a nice life. We used to go

everywhere by car, and almost every day we would go to Jerusalem, because we live very

close. There are a lot of parks there. We also went to the Mediterranean; we used to go

there in the evening to swim and come back at night. The Dead Sea is also close. When I

think about the past, I feel sorry for my children because I cannot offer beautiful things to

them. To do so I would have to leave my country, but it would be hard for me and my

family to become refugees.

Interview: December 16, 2005, Bethlehem.

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CONTRIBUTORS

PART 1 REFLECTIONS

Dr Ido Abram was born in the Netherlands Indies (now Indonesia) in 1940. He studied

philosophy, mathematics, and linguistics at the University of Amsterdam. He was the

endowed professor of ‘Education on and after the Shoah’ at this university from 1990

through 1997. Abram is now director of the Stichting Leren (Foundation Learning,

Amsterdam), which is dedicated to making human learning more humane and more

cultured. He has authored publications about Jewish identity, ‘education after

Auschwitz’, and intercultural learning. He lectures and designs educational programs.

Dr Abdelfattah Abusrour is director of Alrowwad Cultural and Theatre Training Center

in Aida Refugee Camp. He was elected the first Ashoka fellow in Palestine, in 2006,

because of his work as a social entrepreneur in creating “beautiful nonviolent

resistance.” Ashoka is a global organization that encourages social entrepreneurs or

individuals with personal, creative, and unique ideas that have a social impact on the

community and can be replicated elsewhere.

Susan Atallah is the English coordinator and high school ESL teacher at Terra Sancta

School/Sisters of St. Joseph in Bethlehem. She received her master’s degree in TESOL

from St. Michael’s College in Vermont, USA, after receiving a Fulbright Scholarship.

Drs Gied ten Berge studied sociology at the University of Leyden. After becoming

recognized as a conscientious objector (1973), he worked at a peace education project of

the University of Groningen. Between 1977 and 1994, ten Berge worked for the

Interchurch Peace Council (IKV) and was deeply involved in the campaigns against

nuclear weapons and for détente and democracy in Europe. Since 1994 he has been

working for Pax Christi Netherlands. (Since 2007 both movements have merged to

become IKV Pax Christi). For almost 40 years, ten Berge has been one of the organizers

of the Dutch Peace Week.

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Pat Gaffney has been General Secretary of Pax Christi, the International Catholic

Movement for Peace, since 1990. Prior to this, she was the Schools and Youth Education

Officer for CAFOD and before this, a teacher. Her work as General Secretary includes

lobbying and campaigning within the church and political networks on peace- and

security-related issues; support and facilitation for church-related groups on Christian

peacemaking as well as co-coordinating the day-to-day running of Pax Christi in Britain.

Fuad Giacaman is co-founder and general director of the Arab Educational Institute in

Bethlehem. After teaching various subjects at different schools in Bethlehem, he was

principal of the Bethlehem Freres School from 1992–2000. He is active in various

projects that promote the activation of youth and women.

Dr Mary Grey is Emeritus Professor of Theology at the University of Wales,

Lampeter, a fellow at Sarum College, Salisbury, and Professorial Research Fellow at St

Mary's University College, Twickenham. Her research has focused primarily on feminist

liberation theology and spiritualities, but has also encompassed ecofeminist theology,

ecological theology and spirituality, Indian liberation theology, Jewish-Christian

dialogue, systematic theology from a feminist perspective and the relationship between

social justice and theology.

Drs Dick de Groot is a senior educational consultant and a member of Board and

Management Consultants BMC, the Edukans Foundation, and the Edusupport RGLA

Foundation. He is one of the founders of the Africa Alliance, a consortium of

organizations of school managers in Africa (Helsinki, 1999). As a researcher he studied

the school management system in Scotland, the impact of ICT in England and Scotland,

and the implementation of basic education in Portugal.

Dr Brigitte Piquard is a senior lecturer at Oxford Brookes University, CENDEP, and

Maître de conférences associée at Paris XII Val de Marne, LARGOTEC. Her chapter is

based on initial exploratory field observations made around Bethlehem and Jerusalem in

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March and October 2006, including interviews and discussions with Palestinians, Israeli

peace activists, or citizens who are experiencing the Wall and its impacts, as well as

photography, art productions, children’s drawings, and cartoons.

James Prineas from Australia is the instigator of the cultural-archive website Palestine-

Family.net. Also a keen photographer, he has occasional exhibitions, the last being “The

Spirit of Sumud” (www.sumud.net). A book of photographs of the same name is currently

being designed with texts from anthropologist, Toine van Teeffelen. James lives in Berlin

with his wife and two sons and is employed in the communication industry.

Rev. Dr Mitri Raheb has been the pastor of the Evangelical Lutheran Christmas Church

in Bethlehem since 1988. An internationally acclaimed author and speaker, Rev. Dr.

Raheb is also the President of DIYAR, a consortium of three Lutheran institutions that he

himself founded between the years 1995 and 2006. These institutions serve the whole

Palestinian community through culture (The International Center of Bethlehem), health

(Dar al-Kalima Health & Wellness Center) and education (Dar al-Kalima College). 

Jacobus (Coos) Schoneveld is a Protestant theologian from the Netherlands. He lived

from 1967 to 1980 in Jerusalem as theological advisor to the Netherlands Reformed

Church; from 1980 to 1996 he lived in Heppenheim, Germany, in the Martin Buber

House, where he was general secretary of the International Council of Christians and

Jews. In 1997 he initiated the project ‘Living in the Holy Land – Respecting Differences’.

He served as academic consultant for the project, which is implemented on the

Palestinian side by the Arab Educational Institute (AEI-Open Windows) and on the

Israeli side by the Center for Educational Technology in Tel Aviv. For several years he

was scholar-in-residence at the Tantur Ecumenical Institute for Theological Studies in

Jerusalem.

Dr Toine van Teeffelen is a Dutch anthropologist who conducted studies in discourse

analysis. Living in Bethlehem with his Palestinian wife and children, he is development

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director of the Arab Educational Institute and the editor of its Culture and Palestine

series.

Nikki Thanos and Leo Gorman are popular educators and political activists from New

Orleans, Louisiana, USA. From 2002–2005, they worked in Mexico and Colombia as

Pop-Ed facilitators for Witness for Peace, a US-based Latin American solidarity

organization. In the spring of 2007, they collaborated with the Arab Educational Institute

to produce a seventeen-minute audio slideshow of photographs and recorded interviews

with Muslim and Christian Palestinians who live near the Wall in the Rachel’s Tomb

area of Bethlehem, West Bank.

Dr Henri Veldhuis is a minister at the Protestant Barbara Congregation in Culemborg

(Netherlands) and a member of the General Synod of the Protestant Church in the

Netherlands (PCN). After his studies in theology and philosophy, he wrote a dissertation

in the field of hermeneutics. He is chairman of the Research Group John Duns Scotus and

The 7th Heaven, a foundation for drama and dance in the context of religion and church.

During the 1980s he was involved in supporting the human rights movement in

Czechoslovakia. In recent years he has participated in initiatives to promote peace and

justice in Israel and the Palestinian Occupied Territories.

PART 2 INTERVIEWS

Maha Abu Dayyeh is director of the Women’s Center for Legal Aid and Counseling

(WCLAC) in Jerusalem.

Abdalla Abu Rahme is coordinator of the Popular Committee against the Wall in the

West Bank village of Bil’in. He teaches Arabic at the Latin Patriarchate School in the

village of Birzeit and is a part-time lecturer at Al-Quds (Jerusalem) Open University.

Claire Anastas is a Palestinian civilian who lives opposite Rachel’s Tomb in Bethlehem.

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Hania Bitar is secretary general of the Palestinian youth organization Pyalara

(Palestinian Youth Organization for Leadership and Rights Activation).

Terry Boullata is head of a private school in Abu Dis and an advocacy worker.

Alexander Qamar is a retired factory owner from Jerusalem who lives near Aida

Refugee Camp in Beit Jala, opposite the Wall.

Jizelle Salman, from Beit Jala, is an English-language teacher and youth coordinator at

the Arab Educational Institute in Bethlehem.

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PUBLICATIONSCULTURE AND PALESTINE SERIES

The “Culture and Palestine” series explores expressions of Palestinian culture, including popular customs, arts, and traditional stories, as well as writings and reflections upon Palestinian daily life.

Sahtain: Discover the Palestinian Culture by Eating. 110 pp. Published by the Freres School in Bethlehem, 1999. The book contains 60 recipes of meat and fish dishes, snacks, sweets and pies, and drinks. Apart from stories, there is background information about traditional and modern food habits in Palestine (20 IS or 5 $).

Bethlehem Community Book: Discover the Palestinian Religious Culture. 162 pp. Editions in English and Arabic. Published by the Arab Educational Institute, Bethlehem 1999. Chapters deal with the ancient history of Bethlehem; the 19th and 20th centuries; its religious life through peasant eyes; churches in the Bethlehem area; theologies of meditation, service and liberation; Moslem and Christian living together, and traditional handicrafts (30 IS or 7,5 $).

Moral Stories from Palestine: Discover Cultural Wisdom through Stories. 56 pp. Texts in English and Arabic. Published by the Arab Educational Institute, Bethlehem, 2000. Chapters deal with 22 brief, traditional as well as modern stories grouped around the following themes: generosity, justice, trust, humility, courage and forgiveness. In addition, a 35-page teacher manual (only available in Arabic) is available, and a card game using traditional Arabic and Palestinian proverbs for dealing with dilemmas of present-day Palestinian life (15 IS or 4 $).

Palestinian Education Across Religious Borders: An Inventory. 64 pp. In English. Published by the Freres School, Bethlehem, 2000. This is a report of a study initiated to develop Moslem-Christian education in Palestine, and based on interviews with members of school communities in the Bethlehem-Hebron area (15 IS or 4 $).

Discovering Palestine. 112 pp. In Arabic. Published by the Arab Educational Institute, Bethlehem, 2001. An overview of heritage sites in the Bethlehem-Jerusalem-Hebron areas especially explained for teachers (20 IS or 5$).

When Abnormal Becomes Normal, When Might Becomes Right: Scenes from Palestinian Life During the Al-Aqsa Intifada. 70 pp. In English. Published by the Arab Educational Institute, Bethlehem, 2001. Essays and diaries written by, mainly, Palestinians from various background and age (15 IS or 4 $). Out of print.

Your Stories Are My Stories: A Palestinian Oral History Project. 142 pp. In English. Published by St Joseph School for Girls, Bethlehem; Wi’am Conflict Resolution Center, and the Arab Educational Institute, Bethlehem, 2001. Oral histories collected and written by 16-17 year students at St Joseph School in Bethlehem (30 IS or 7,5 $).

Bethlehem Diary: Living Under Siege and Occupation 2000-2002. Toine van Teeffelen. 287 pp. In English. Published by the Arab Educational Institute, 2002, Bethlehem. Preface by Latin Patriarch and Pax Christi International President Michel Sabbah (25 IS or 5 $).

Ibrahim 'Ayyad. Ya'coub Al-Atrash. 342 pp. In Arabic. Published by the Arab Educational Institute, 2004, Bethlehem. A biography of a Bishop from Beit Jala who became associated with the Palestinian national cause and has been a major advocate of Moslem-Christian living together. The book describes the different phases in his life and the events he witnessed locally and in South America (30 IS or 5,5 $).

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Living Together in The Holy Land: Respecting Differences: Educational materials for understanding the three monotheistic religions. 70pp. In Arabic. Published by the Arab Educational Institute, Bethlehem, 2005 (5 IS or 1 $).

Winners All. 28 pp. In Arabic. Published by the Arab Educational Institute, Bethlehem, 2005. Cooperative peace education games for all ages. Translated from Pax Christi UK materials (5 NIS or 1 $).

Caged In: Life in Gaza During the Second Intifada. 59 pp. In English. Published by Arab Educational Institute. Based on observations and narratives from observers of Dutch peace organization United Civilians for Peace, this magazine gives an overview of the daily life hazards in Gaza during the period 2002-2004 (20 NIS or 5 $)

Another Way: Non-Violence as a Mentality and Strategy in Palestine: Materials for Education. 39 pp. In English. Published by the Arab Educational Institute, Bethlehem, 2005. A brochure written for Palestinian youth and educators as well as internationals interested in non-violence (15 IS or 4 $).

Contact the Arab Educational Institute for ordering books. Mailing costs are not included in the prices.

Arab Educational InstituteP.O.Box 681BethlehemPalestine via IsraelFax: 00-972-2-277.7554Tel: 00-972-2-274.4030Email: aei@p-ol.comwww.aeicenter.org

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