Monday, May 27, 2013

The Fine Line Isn't Always Straight


In my last post I discussed how my interest in trying to understand all sides of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict had left me feeling like a right-wing conservative.  In trying to approach the issues as comprehensively as I knew how, I found myself bringing up (pro-Zionist) arguments that I didn’t necessarily agree with, simply because nobody else was. I arrived to the Arava thinking myself left wing; to suddenly feel myself categorized as right wing was at once frustrating and distressing.  

Shortly after my last post a friend from Duke came to visit Israel. She was traveling with about ten other Duke students on a school trip for a class on Israeli Environmental Technology. I spent a few days traveling with the group visiting wastewater treatment facilities and restaurants, touring the markets in Tel Aviv and the desalination plant in Hadera, discussing environmental technologies and, of course, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

On a car ride to lunch I was discussing the different experiences of visiting and living in Israel with an aspiring journalist who would be going on his second Israeli anti-defamation trip at the end of the semester. An inquiry on whether I would ever make aliyah launched us into a discussion on the sense and reality of security for a Jewish state, which then quickly devolved into a debate on the feasibility and desirability of a two state solution.

At some point I began talking about the politics of the occupation: settlements as detrimental to the peace process; the current paradox of maintaining Israel as both a Jewish and fully democratic state; the desire for an independent Palestine and the differences between being pro-Palestine and anti-Israel. I felt like I kept coming up against a wall, so I kept on with the “pro-Palestinian” argument.

Since then I have noticed how I approach these kinds of conversations. When I talk with someone who is (fervently) one sided on a particular issue, I frequently find myself offering the counterpoint, “Here’s how someone else—the ‘other side,’ if you will—might see this issue.”

To me, the peace process necessitates that individuals not only recognize that there are other legitimate perspectives, but that they understand the content of those perspectives. Only then can you begin to conceptualize a feasible solution that will be agreeable to all parties and all perspectives.

It’s taken me most of the semester to find my voice in the conflict, and I think I’ve finally found it: balance, but not centralism. It’s not a singular opinion that is acceptable by both sides; it’s a zigzag between every discussion: it’s voicing a Palestinian narrative to a Zionist and voicing a Jewish Israeli narrative to an anti-Israel activist.

I’d like to think that I tread the fine line of being both pro-Palestine and pro-Israel. And like any fine line, walking it requires balance. 

Monday, March 11, 2013

A Night on Occupation


My real AIES experience started about a week and a half ago. In the first two weeks our group had managed to talk about almost every single topic imaginable – music, movies, sports, the environment, sex, drugs, religion, philosophy – except the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. However, two and a half weeks in Muhaned, a Palestinian, decided to start the conversation by hosting a screening of the documentary Occupation 101 in the student lounge. At the end of an hour and a half film that was targeted to affect your conscience by portraying the moral and humanitarian issues of the living conditions resulting from occupation in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, everyone was in a period of in a momentary reflection. What a heavy tone to set for the semester. What have we gotten ourselves into? Was this what the rest of the semester was going to be like? Never has the group been so quiet.

We slowly regrouped, and after a few laughs, we drifted into several different groups and began discussing and debating the film, its perspective, and the issues discussed in the film. Over the next two hours we moved from deconstructing the film’s bias and debating the implications of this bias to whether a two-state solution would be feasible, or even desirable.

At one point we were discussing the implications of the ways in which the film portrayed the West Bank. Raphe, an American, brought up a very good point: he felt that the film portrayed the Palestinians as defenseless people, as victims incapable of self-determination. “If you portray them like victims, people will treat them like victims. If you want to convince the world that they deserve to be an independent state, you need to show that they are a proud and cultured people capable of controlling their political decisions.”

For me, this was an especially poignant point because earlier that day I had read a Chronicle article on the return of Israeli Apartheid Week to Duke University (The Chronicle is Duke’s student newspaper). Last spring, Duke Students for Justice in Palestine (DSJP) brought Israeli Apartheid Week, a national campaign, to Duke’s campus with the intention of creating productive dialogue on campus on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the occupation. Unfortunately, most of the resulting dialogue focused on debating whether the term “Apartheid” was appropriate.

There are several problems that I have with the way DSJP functions (including a dislike for their use of the term “apartheid” to describe the Israeli-Palestinian situation), but there was one I wasn’t able to pinpoint until Raphe spoke about victimization. DSJP – and much of the left-wing literature I have been exposed to – focuses on this perception of victimization with the intent of making the outsider feel sympathetic and, to an extent, guilty. It evokes the questions, “it’s it terrible that there are people living like this?” and “isn’t it terrible that these conditions are being inflicted on a people under occupation?” and “can you really support a government (i.e. the Israeli government) that does this?”

I firmly agree that these questions need to be raised and that these issues need to be addressed, but I have begun to question the way this issue has been presented by the left wing. I have only seen this sympathy-inducing tactic. It is an effective approach, but it’s far from holistic. There is never a discussion of politics, of practicality, of terrorism; just how bad civilian life is on the Palestinian side.

To that end, the Arava Institute is definitely left wing. Our Peace-Building course, and our out-of-class conversations, have focused on personal narratives—have focused on the personal experiences of those individuals living on all sides of the occupation—and on reacting to those narratives. I don’t meant to discount personal narratives; on the contrary, I think understanding personal narratives is a necessary step in the peace-building process. However, this focus on personal narrative means that the focus of discussion is on the experiences of civilians and, based on my experiences at the Arava Institute so far, mostly of Palestinians.

But what about the Israeli experience? Since arriving here, nobody has talked about losing someone in a terrorist attack; nobody has talked about growing up with a fear that if you get on a bus, you might be blown up; nobody has talked about the right of Israeli citizens to a right of physical security; nobody has talked about the actions of Hamas and Fatah, either in regard to their terrorist activities or in regard to their responsiveness (or lack their of) to their populaces. I feel like the closest we’ve come to discussing these issues has been when I rant about the fact that no one talks about these issues.

Recognizing the (Jewish) Israeli experience does not delegitimize the Palestinian reality. Conversely, recognizing the Palestinian reality does not delegitimize the Israeli experience, or for that matter, the validity of Israel’s existence. On that note, it is possible to be both pro-Palestinian and pro-Israeli. I’m going to say that again: it is possible to be both pro-Palestinian and pro-Israeli. However, in practice it sometimes seems that it is very easy to cross what seems like a fine line between being pro-Palestinian and, in fact, being anti-Israeli.

Since our ‘night on occupation’ started discussion on the conflict, our AIES Facebook page has become a forum for sharing video clips and news articles. Videos and articles have been appearing in the group over the past few days with the apparent aim of raising awareness of institutionalized anti-Palestinian sentiment: Israeli police clash with Palestinians at worship at Al-Aqsa Mosque; an Israeli solider hit a Palestinian woman; Israeli army dogs are being trained to attack any Arab who says “Allah Akbar” (“God is great”).

One student commented on the one-sided nature of this discourse: “Why is this Facebook group dominated by pro Palestinian and anti Israeli clips???” The response? “This is the AIES way. Just shut up and hate Israel already.” This was, of course, meant – and understood – as a joke. (In its philosophy, AIES is fairly neutral and, I would argue, manages to walk the fine line of being both pro-Palestinian and pro-Israeli.) However, this back-and-forth highlights just how fine the line between pro-Palestinian and anti-Israel sentiment is and how easy it is to cross – or to be perceived as crossing – that line.  

I hope that our debate continues at this level of passion and engagement, but that all sides are given the same weight and respect as I have seen thus far for the Palestinian cause. Without question, the Palestinian narrative needs to, and must, be both heard and understood, but it is still only one side of the story. 

Monday, March 4, 2013

A Weekend of Mud and Music

Thursday afternoon Abra, a Program Associate, asked us if we wanted to join her at a Bedouin village near Be’er Sheva for a weekend of Mud and Music. With a title like that how could we not go?!

After a night out in the desert hanging around a campfire and going stargazing up on the mountains, we headed to Be’er Sheva on a 10AM Egged bus (Egged is the main intercity bus company in Israel). We booked tickets the night before so we managed to have seats (I think that was the second time in my travels that I’ve had a seat on an Egged bus). First thing we did was head to the shuk (open market) for some deliciously fresh fruits and veggies (and olive oil and pita and some other delicious bread and hummus).

Buying some veggies at the shuk in Be'er Sheva
Filtration pits in their early stages
After we filled our bellies, we headed down to the Bedouin village, Qasr al-Sir, where we spent the afternoon helping out in the garden/future orchard. Some of us helped build stone walls around garden terraces, some helped collect stones and move dirt, and some helped to dig out the filtration pit (also called a recharge pit). Filtration pits are a simple technology used to replenish the groundwater supply. They are essentially small-scale dams designed to catch runoff. In the Negev, the rain comes only in the winter and because the land is so dry, most of the rain causes flash floods and runs down the side of the hills rather than filtering into the soil. The filtration pits catch the flood waters and holds it in reservoirs, which allows the water to sink slowly into the earth and recharge the groundwater, or, in the case of Qasr al-Sir, goes to supplying water for the fruit and olive orchard that they’re developing.
Hard at work building a terrace and a terrace wall
Sunset – and the subsequent quick onset of a chilly evening – ended our workday. We spent the next two hours in our tent, huddled around the campfire telling ghost stories, singing songs and eagerly awaiting what promised (and what was) a delicious meal. As the night got darker and the air became cooler, campfire socializing eventually evolved into a massage train and cuddle puddle (or ‘sifaking’ [pronounced ‘sha-fah-king] – a PWILD term for sitting in a manner that resembles the way sifaka lemurs sit. It is by far the most comfortable way to sit around a campfire when only one person has a camping chair. It’s also a great way to stay warm). When the fire was in its dying stages, we all hunkered down in our sleeping bags for what one of the colder evenings I have spent outside.
Our lodgings
At 8:30 the following morning we were woken up to a breakfast of fruit salad and rice porridge (a sweet rice dish that has a consistency between sticky rice and rice pudding). We then broke up into teams – some went to tree planting, others back to trench digging and wall building. I, on the other hand, was very happy to join the mud building team (after all, it was a ‘Mud and Music’ weekend, and we hadn’t seen much mud yet). We started by cutting straw down to 2-3” pieces and sifting the rocks out of the clay and sand. Then came the fun part: mixing the clay-sand-water mixture into mud. The convention seemed to be to work the components together using shovels, but, really, why use shovels when you have feet? I spent the next hour mucking around in a tub of mud in an effort to get a uniform mud mixture that could be used to patch up some of the holes in the building where they cooked our meals.
Hard at work moving stones and dirt

The Arava apricot tree!
! (meesh-mish) משמש

Mixing mud the right way


It's even better when it's a party

What all our mud-related fun (I mean...work) was for:
patching up the volunteer house
After a delicious lunch, I joined Abra to visit on the Bedouin families. The girl we were visiting apologized profusely that she could not offer me any tea because they were out of gas with which to heat the kettle. She insisted that Abra bring me back so that she could be a proper host and serve me tea.

Some Bedouin goats
On this note, I feel I should take a minute to explain why the tea could not be heated. Qasr al-Sir is a recently recognized Bedouin village, which means that the Israeli government has only recently granted this settlement legal status. The Bedouin are historically nomadic tribes known for herding animals. However, in the past few decades they have begun to settle in communities. The issue of Bedouin settlements has been complicated, to say the least. Many problems arise from disagreements of claims to land ownership. For the most part, the Israeli government does not recognize the large ranges of tribal lands as belonging to specific Bedouin tribes, whereas the Bedouins still see the land as theirs: “Although the State’s position is that lands in the Negev belong to the State and, as such, it is public land, some Bedouin maintain that the land belongs to them. Accordingly, the refuse to move elsewhere and they prevent others…from settling on the land they claim as their own.”[1]


Birdseye view of Qasr al-Sir
This problem is compacted by issues of illegal settlement. To a Bedouin who claims ownership of a plot of land, there are many benefits of settling outside “an established town” – free land, no constraints on construction, no governmental property taxes, to name a few – but it becomes “almost impossible to provide these [governmental and municipal] services to each Bedouin family that settles down illegally.” Unrecognized (‘illegal’) villages do not receive any municipal services from the government – no paved roads, no electricity, and no sewage treatment.[2] Because Qasr al-Sir has been recently recognized, it has received a paved road and its schools have been connected to the grid. With the exception of the volunteer house (which is furnished with solar panels), the rest of the quasi-shanty town village is still without electricity. (This was a very brief introduction to Bedouin issues in Israel. I hope to have a friend guest write a more detailed piece on Bedouin issues.)


The only proper way to travel on an Egged bus:
 on the floor and in the stairwell 
Around 3:30PM, the remaining Machon-ers packed up our belongings, said goodbye to our hosts, and walked to the bus stop. It should be noted that buses do not run on Shabbat in Israel, so our choices were to walk the 4 kilometers or to hitchhike. We decided to get a more authentic Israeli experience and hitched a ride to Dimona from a nice man in a large Jeep. (A few of the Machon-ers who left about an hour before us and decided to walk ended up a little too close to some train tracks and got caught by the police. They all had to present their passports. Apparently the policeman had a very difficult time believing that Americans, Israelis, Palestinians and Jordanians were in fact traveling together.) After a relatively quick bus ride back to the kibbutz (not surprisingly, I didn’t have a seat, so spend the two hours laying on the floor between our backpacks and sleeping bags. It was actually one of the comfiest bus rides I’ve been on). We arrived just in time to be welcomed back to the meager meals of the Ketura cafeteria and to get started on the homework that we rightfully neglected.



[1] Yahel, Havatzelet. “Land Disputes between the Negev Bedouin and Israel.” Israel Studies 11.2 (2006): 1-22.
[2] Athamny, Amny. “How physical conditions in Israel’s unrecognized villages affect children’s health.” NISPED-AJEEC. Accessed 3 March, 2013 from: http://vps.earlychildhoodmagazine.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/ECM118_3_How-physical-conditions-in-Israel-unrecognised-villages_Amny-Athamny.pdf