I'm currently on my own adventure right now

but support my friend Emily in her quest to circumnavigate the world starting in December

Click on the link and see a video of her describing the trip and to donate $1 or many dollars. She has 24 days to make these pledges count.

long summer days go so quickly

Well, it's been a month since I last wrote and it may as well have been a day.

I've decided to start adventuring out of Nablus and out of the West Bank, to rattle my senses. I've spent the last 2 weekends at the beach, so there's not too much to report on, but I hope to spend a few summer weekends investigating and experiencing new things. I had never gone into Tel Aviv before and it was quite a culture shock coming from Nablus. It's a little bit more like Miami than anything I'd expect to see so close to here.

The first weekend, I went to Tel Aviv beach and this past weekend I went with some friends to Jaffa beach. Jaffa is part of the same municipality as Tel Aviv and they are rubbing shoulders, but they have entirely different histories. Jaffa is an ancient city with a rich history that has experienced many empires, occupations, and uprisings. Tel Aviv is a relatively new city that started during the Zionist movement of the early 1900s and was built up after the 1948 creation of the state of Israel. Jaffa's population was mostly Palestinian before 1948, but is becoming more and more gentrified, moving Jewish Israelis in and Palestinians out. It's obvious that Israel is trying to make Jaffa just a neighborhood of Tel Aviv and I'm afraid it's happening, but Jaffa has it's own unique charm that shouldn't be swallowed up into the sprawling city. Jaffa is meant for fishers, drinking tea, ancient stories and Tel Aviv is meant for expensive tourism and cheap modernity.

Jaffa is an ancient port city, hosting what is thought to be one of the oldest ports in the world. We got lost walking around the docks and fish warehouses and it was incredible. It reminded me of Nablus, but on the beach. I really couldn't ask for much more. The buildings are old and patient, unlike Tel Aviv's buildings which seem rushed and intrusive.

Here is a picture looking onto Tel Aviv from Jaffa.



Typical Jaffa buildings along the port


Fishers and vagabonds



My body's clock has fallen into a rhythm, like I've never experienced before. The call to prayer, the precise minute that I wake up every day, the way which various shop owners predictably greet me day in and day out, the carrot juice that I buy on my way to work, the way I watch the sunset every night, and the feeling that I've seen most of the faces on the street before are all part of the way the clock tics. I feel like everyone sees the same things that I do and if anything from my routine didn't happen, the world would stop rotating or my heart would stop beating. All these things make it so difficult to communicate what's going on here. It's a comforting place to me now and I feel like I might be too complacent.


Summer often brings wars here, but war currently seems like a distant reality to me. It's almost like I have blinders on.

squatters

Just a short drive through the West Bank, from Ramallah to Nablus, and you can see why all the "peace deals" in the world can't exactly get the Palestinians too excited. In addition to checkpoints, soldiers, military watchtowers, and military jeeps on patrol there are Israeli settlements and settler roads that continue to take more and more land in the West Bank.

The top 2, Ofra and Pesagot, are illegal Israeli settlements.

Here's a settlement. If you wonder why it looks like an American suburb, it's because it essentially is. Many of the settlers are American Jews who decide to come settle on Palestinians land just for the fun of it and because the Israeli government gives them the land and other subsidies


How it all starts. Some extremists come set up trailors wherever they want, have the Israeli military protect them, and wait around for Israel to build them houses where they've staked their claim.



Military watchtower on the road






The international community has recognized the West Bank and Gaza Strip as occupied by Israel since they were captured in 1967 from Jordan and Egypt.

Why these settlements are illegal:
Article 49, paragraph 6 of the Fourth Geneva Convention explicitly stipulates that “the occupying power shall not deport or transfer parts of its own civilian population into the territory it occupies”.

UN Security Council Resolution 465 (1980-unanimously adopted) made it clear that “Israel’s policy and practices of settling parts of its population and new immigrants” in the Occupied Territories constitutes “a serious obstruction to achieving a comprehensive, just and lasting peace in the Middle East”. The Security Council called upon Israel to “dismantle the existing settlements and in particular to cease, on an urgent ba-sis, the establishment, construction or planning of settlements in the Arab territories occupied since 1967, including Jerusalem”

fruits of my labor

I went over to a dear friend's house the other night and she said that the ascadania trees in her backyard were ready to be picked. My friends and I gladly offered to come pick them for her, because she's too old to do it herself these days, and we just happen to like eating them. (I have no idea if they're called ascadanias in English or if that's how you spell it, but maybe someone can inform me)
One of my favorite things about living here is all the fresh fruits and vegetables.

The next morning we got up 6:30 a.m. to go climb the trees and pick the fruit. It was a slow start.



our view of Nablus from up in the tree



a little bit of fruit for the basket



and a little bit of fruit for our mouths



an oasis above the city



my friends house/magical garden. visit palestine


This was another beautiful day where I like to go back 60+ years and imagine this city in more peaceful times.

holy land?

Pope Benedict XVI is currently here making his Holy Land pilgrimage and as I expected it seems much more political than it seems holy.
He really can't do or say anything right, because it's either going to be offensive to the Israelis or to the Palestinians. He has to prove to Jews that he is sorry about the Holocaust, he has to convince Muslims that he doesn't think Islam is evil, and he has to convince the Palestinian Christians that he hasn't forgotten about them. None of these things have to contradict each other, but when they're politicized, it's amazing how quickly you can turn them into opposing viewpoints.

A Palestinian Islamic cleric, Taysir Tamimi, gave an impromptu speech criticizing Israel's recent war in Gaza and its occupation of the West Bank at an interfaith gathering that the Pope was attending in Jerusalem. The Pope didn't react and then left. The Vatican later issued a condemnation, saying in a statement that "this intervention was a direct negation of what dialogue should be."

Don't get me wrong, I agree that an interfaith conference wasn't necessarily the place to start a political discussion, but I think Tamimi was taking an opportunity to do something that no Palestinian was offered to do on the Pope's trip here...to express the oppression that is imposed on the Palestinian people living here.

The Pope's trip in Israel/Palestine started in Tel Aviv (even though its on the opposite of the country from where he was coming from in Jordan), where there are no religious sites, but instead the Holocaust Memorial, Yad Vashem. Many Israelis were complaining that his language during his speech regarding the Holocaust was too vague.
Rabbi Israel Meir Lau, chairman of Yad Vashem and a former chief rabbi of Israel, stated in regards to the speech,
"There is a clear difference between 'killed' and 'murdered.' There is a difference between saying millions in the Holocaust and saying six million. The word six was not said."

Pope Benedict has his own reasons for having to mend ties with the Jewish community and to apologize for the Holocaust, such as his reputation of being a member of the Nazi Youth while he was growing up and his role in removing the excommunication of a bishop who is well known for denying the Holocaust. He should be clear about his condemnation of the Holocaust, but I can't imagine the Pope being expected to express the same kind of clarity regarding the crimes that Israel is currently committing against the Palestinians as he's expected to express regarding the Holocaust. It's not necessary to compare one to the other or to hold them both in opposition, just try to look at the facts here.

There was no talk coming from the Pope regarding the Palestinians murdered in Gaza just a few short months ago. While the Pope is making his rounds here, the Catholics in Gaza are locked in their open-air prison and apparently it was too political or too offensive to Israelis for the Pope to visit Gaza, even though he's probably one of the hand full of people that could actually get in there right now.

During his visit to the presidential residence in Jerusalem, the pope met the parents of Israeli soldier Gilad Schalit, who was captured by Hamas 3 years ago and is still being held in Gaza. This is a sound political move if you're trying to appeal to the average Israeli, but then you upset the families of the 11,000 Palestinians that are detained in Israeli prisons, many without charge or trial.

On Wednesday, Pope Benedict is scheduled to visit Bethlehem, the birthplace of Jesus and now a West Bank city under occupation and surrounded by a 25 foot wall that Israel has built. He will visit the Aida Refugee Camp, but Israel kindly refused to allow the platform that the Pope will speak from to be built near the separation wall, although it surrounds the refugee camp.

Much like he should have been more specific about the travesties committed against the Jews in the Holocaust, he should be more critical of the situation here in Palestine. I guess the Pope can't please everyone...or anyone on this trip.

the wind brought the desert to the hills

Yesterday we woke up to our house, everything in it, and everything outside of it covered in a fine red dust and the wind that brought it still howling. Apparently spring brings "khamseen" in this part of the world. Khamseen means "50" in Arabic and this particular khamseen is the 50 days that the desert sands are blown from the Sahara desert and/or Saudi Arabia right here to my living room.

I had to do some research on this phenomenon, because I had never heard of it.
I discovered that the winds come at a speed of up to 87 miles (140 kilometer) per hour and can raise the temperature as much as 68 °F (20°C) in 2 hours and that we're lucky enough to be the last stop before the storm hits the ocean.

Strangely, the fast winds seem to slow everything down. A blogger from Cairo describes it perfectly:

"...It comes on much more slowly; as Neil Gaiman would say, like a migraine. You wake up in the morning to catch the shuttle to campus, and the sky is bit hazier than it was yesterday. Crossing the 26th of July Bridge, you can't quite make out the high-rise hotels in the distance along the Nile. Have they always been that far away? Walking to class, you smell a faint whiff of burning, or of something dusty. Take a deep breath in; it's a little harder to breathe now. Later, as the storm progresses, the sky turns orange and the sun blots blue, and it looks like the apocalypse. Dust gets everywhere, even inside--especially inside, where it falls in almost invisible layers on your desk, laptop and food."

It made many people sick yesterday and everything needs to be cleaned, but I kind of enjoyed it.

From the poem, Mercy's Reward
by Sir Edwin Arnold:

"...High noon it was, and the hot Khamseen’s breath
Blew from the desert sands and parched the town.
The crows gasped, and the kine went up and down
With lolling tongues; the camels moaned; a crowd
Pressed with their pitchers, wrangling high and loud
About the tank; and one dog by a well,
Nigh dead with thirst, lay where he yelped and fell,
Glaring upon the water out of reach,
And praying succour in a silent speech,
So piteous were its eyes..."

silencing resistance

This week is a week of very little free time, but it's very important that I make a post about two villages, Bil'in and Ni'lin. Tonight there is a presentation at the Alternative Information Center (AIC) near Bethlehem about the situation in these villages, but I have to work, so I'm going to post this blog to shed a little light on Bil'in and Ni'lin. A dear friend, Bassem Abu Rahma, was killed on 17 April by the Israeli army while he was protesting the theft of his land in Bil'in, so it's an urgent issue for me.

Here is a picture of Bassem running along the security fence in Bil'in:


In addition to the murder of Bassem, 4 Palestinians have been killed during protests in Ni'lin since May 2008 and Tristan Anderson, a 38-year-old American was shot in the head with a high-velocity tear gas canister in March of this year.

These drastic measures are taken in order to silence the Palestinian, Israeli, and International activists who want to preserve these villages and the lives of the people living in them.

I have mixed feeling about protesting, especially here where it has been proved to be fatal, but I support the non-violent resistance of the Palestinians living in Bil'in and Ni'lin and other villages that are having their land taken away.

Nil'in is losing it's land to the separation wall being built between Israel and the West Bank. The current path of the Wall will annex 10,000 acres of Ni'lin land to Israel, leaving its residents with 30,000 acres; this is a fraction of the 228,000 acres that constituted the village in 1948. Ni'lin residents have lost more than 85 per cent of their land to confiscation and illegal settlement building.

60% of Bil'in's land is being annexed for Israel to build and expand illegal settlements and to further build the separation wall. "Israeli and international activists join Bil'in residents to peacefully demonstrate every Friday in front of the "work-site of shame". And every Friday the Israeli army responds with violence, both physically and psychologically. Bil'in residents have continued to withstand these injustices despite the frequent night raids of Israeli soldiers in the town followed by an increasing number of arrests of inhabitants and of activists. " -AIC

The annexation of this land within the West Bank is unacceptable and in addition, there is absolutely no reason that the Israeli army should shoot an unarmed protester in the head...ever.