Planting hope

Last week the Joint Advocacy Initiative (JAI), where I volunteer, arranged the Olive Planting Program together with the Alternative Tourism Group. Over forty people came from Europe and the USA to plant olive trees and learn more about the situation of the Palestinians. In total we planted 1600 olive trees, all sponsored by individuals and groups from all over the world. The trees were planted in areas that are threatened to be taken in order to build settlements. In this way JAI aims to "keep hope alive", which is the slogan of the campaign. On the photo below you can see one of the fields we planted, belonging to the village of Beit Eskaria. The buildings in the background are part of an outpost (a settlement not recognized by the Israeli government).


The man in the front is Osmund, who read about the Olive Planting Program in an article by me and the other GoCYs in the newspaper and decided to come!

One of the places where we planted olive trees was Oush Ghrab, lying just outside Beit Sahour. People in Beit Sahour fear that Oush Ghrab will be taken to build settlements. If this happens, Bethlehem will be surrounded on all sides by settlements, which among other things means that there is no way for Bethlehem to expand. Oush Ghrab was used as a military base both under the Jordanian and the first decades of the Israeli occupation. In 2006 the military left the area, and people in Beit Sahour decided to build a community center to make sure that this area would not be confiscated again. Among other things there's a football field and a hall for parties there now.


From the community center at Oush Ghrab. Note the star of David on the climbing wall.

The hall was built illegally, since Palestinians hardly ever are allowed to build in area C (which comprises most of the West Bank, and where Israel exerts full civil and military control). Two years later, in 2008, settlers started coming. This article from Times gives an impression of what was going on. Lately the settler activity has escalated. Settlers come to Oush Ghrab every week, sometimes bringing rabbis who preach there, other times spraying David stars and racist motives on the place. If you want to read more about Oush Ghrab and the settlers, see this article by Hagit Ofran, director of the Settlement Watch project of the Peace Now movement.



Two weeks ago, people in Beit Sahour formed a committee for the popular defense of Oush Ghrab. They decided to work non-violently, among other things by planting trees. And so it was decided to bring the people on the Olive Planting Program here to join the peaceful resistance.


Two girls from Rønningen folk high school in Norway planting trees in Oush Ghrab.


Fatima Jubran and her son, Ra'ed Jubran.

The trees were planted in the parts of Oush Ghrab that are still fields. While people planted, there were Israeli soldiers watching us. The owner of the land, Fatima Jubran and her son Ra'ed were there and expressed their gratitude for the support.
- We are afraid to come here alone, because of the Israelis. The people who come here to help give us courage to come and plant our land, Ra'ed said.
He told me that another piece of land close to the hill Abu Gneim had been taken from him and annexed to Jerusalem. Now it is on the other side of the wall. I asked Fatima and Ra'ed what thoughts they had about the future.
- We hope that peace will come to our land, but the Israelis and the settlements are preventing peace, Fatima answered. Ra'ed said:
- We need to feel that we are humans and have rights like everyone else in this world.
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Winter Wonderland

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Coming from a country where winter means death and spring resurrection, I am surprised to find that winter is the greenest time of year at the West Bank (although I must admit that I am yet to witness spring here). Ever since November, when the temperature dropped and rain came more often, it has become a little greener every day. Now the almond trees are blossoming, and there are flowers on the ground as well. It is so beautiful. As you look at the photos, please let your imagination add sunshine in your face, birds singing and the sweet smell of warm, moist soil.








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Arab + Jew = true

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Last weekend I was at a guided tour in Jerusalem in order to learn more about the Middle Eastern Jews in Israel, a group often called Mizrahi. Rotem Mor, the Israeli guy that was giving the tour, told us about the rich history of Jews in the Middle East. Throughout this history, there have been many cultural links between the Arab and the Jewish culture. For instance, in Andalucia in the Middle Ages, the Hebrew language was changed so that one could write poems in the Arabic style and structures. And the great Jewish Medieval philosopher, Rambam (in the West often called Maimonides), actually wrote in so called "Jewish Arabic", meaning Arabic with the Hebrew alphabet.

In general, life for Jews was easier in the Middle East than in Europe, Rotem told us. Although they were not equal with Muslims, in most cases they did not suffer persecutions. By the beginning of the twentieth century, there lived around one million Jews in the Middle East. They were not very much involved in Zionism, but the tensions that were growing in Palestine, were also felt by Jews living in the rest of the region. This, and the second world war, made the Mizrahi start to ask whether there was a place for them in the Arab countries anymore. Israel also actively tried to make Middle Eastern Jews immigrate through different policies.

In many ways, however, the Mizrahi ended up in an underprivileged position in the Israeli society, living near the borders, where it was more difficult to stay regarding both economy and security. Besides, the majority ended up doing physical work, while the European Jews (Ashkenazi) dominated the universities. A reaction to this was the movement The Israeli Black Panthers (inspired by the Black Panthers in the USA), who were active in the early 70s. Rotem told us the story of the Black Panthers while showing us a previously Mizrahi -now mixed- neighbourhood in Jerusalem. After the conquest in 1948 it had been named Morasha by Israeli authorities, but the Mizrahi preferred to use the Arabic name, Musrara, as most of them were more familiar with Arabic than with Hebrew.


From the Morasha/Musrara neighbourhood.

Because of a comment I had on one on my blog posts (one from December called "An image in captivity"), I was interested in knowing more about how and why the Mizrahi Jews left their countries in the late 40s and in the 50s. The writer of the comment made a connection between the Palestinian refugees and what he saw as Jewish refugees from the Arab countries: As Arab Jews had been received in Israel, Palestinians should be integrated in their "new homeland". So I asked Rotem: Were the Middle Eastern Jews expelled? Is it valid to think of the Mizrahi and the Palestinians as an exchange of refugees? An interesting conversation followed.

Rotem said that it was more correct to say that the Middle Eastern Jews were questioning their future in the Arab countries rather than that there was an expulsion. And he referred to the stand of The Democratic Mizrahi Rainbow, an umbrella group for Middle Eastern Jews, who do not accept the idea of a refugee exchange. The reason for this is that the two groups in question did not benefit from it. The property left by Mizrahi in Arab countries is not in the hands of Palestinian refugees, and the old Arab houses that the Palestinians left, now are the homes mostly of Ashkenazi families. And, (this is my own argument) this exchange was not chosen by the two groups.

If you want to read more about the Mizrahi, see the website of The Democratic Mizrahi Rainbow. They have several interesting articles, among others one about Iraqi-Israeli literature and one about the relationship between the Mizrahi issue and the Palestinian issue, written by professor Jehouda Shenhav, who is also a Mizrahi Jew.

One of the things that Mizrahi seem to have struggled with, was their Arab cultural background. For them, as Arab Jews, it was their own culture, but as Israelis, it was the culture of the enemy. I think this is very well captured in the this poem, "Baghdad, February 1991" by Ronny Someck:

Along these bombed-out streets I was pushed in a baby carriage.
Babylonian girls pinched my cheeks and waved palm fronds over my blond down...
What's left from then became very black like Baghdad and the baby carriage we removed from the shelter the days we waited for another war.
Oh Tigris, oh Euphrates, pet snakes in the first map of my life,
how you shed your skin and became vipers.
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