CHALLENGING THE WALL: TOWARD

A PEDAGOGY OF HOPE

Toine van Teeffelen (ed.)

Culture and Palestine Series, Bethlehem

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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 bemailed 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

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Dick de Groot

Ubuntu - I am because we are

Pat Gafney

Women-peacemakers - Crack in the Wall

Nikki Thanos and Leo B. Gorman

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

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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

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

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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 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

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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

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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.

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.

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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

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of whose photos are incorporated in this book, shows how

digital media, 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

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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

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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 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

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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

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

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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 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

1 See our website: www.wellsforindia.org.

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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.

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Space between people

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

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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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?

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 rainingstars ...

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.

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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

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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 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

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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

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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 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

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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

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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 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

32

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

33

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 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

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

34

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

35

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

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

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 andToine 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.

36

novel, The Pessoptimist1. 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 Palestinians2. 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 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

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

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

37

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

38

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.

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

39

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

40

‘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 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

41

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

42

jeopardizes the fabric of daily life. The movement also put

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 prosthesisis 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, insteadtheir 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.

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

43

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 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,

44

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

45

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 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

46

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

47

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

of a people that has been continuously dehumanized, here and

internationally. Sumud is a choice for renewal of life.

48

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

49

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 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

50

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

51

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, 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

52

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

53

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 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

54

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 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.

55

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

56

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

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

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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 our

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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.

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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

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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 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

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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

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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 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

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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

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not know much of the history or the present-day situation of

the Palestinians.

‘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

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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.

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

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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

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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 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

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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

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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.

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

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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 awareness of shared beliefs also exists

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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

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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.

73

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

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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 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

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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

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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.

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

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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 situation of social disintegration, it becomes

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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

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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.

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

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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

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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.

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

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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

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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.

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

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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.

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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

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

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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

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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 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

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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

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and roles, skills, and 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

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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

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

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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.

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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 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

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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

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the experiences that encouraged the women to engage in some

theological reflection on their role and their presence.

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

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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 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,

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“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)

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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?

 

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

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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

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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 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

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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 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

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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

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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 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

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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

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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

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

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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.

- 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’.

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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

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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–

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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, 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

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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,

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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 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,

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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

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who find the care and attention that encourage them to stay

in school and avoid becoming street children or child

workers.

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,

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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 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

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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.

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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.

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

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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.

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?

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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

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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.

“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

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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

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daily life (including that of 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

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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

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.

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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

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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

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

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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

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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 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.

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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

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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, 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

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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:

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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 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

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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

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).

138

combination with symbolic violence, as a form of ethnocide

(the deliberate eradication of the culture of a specific

group).1

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

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 1 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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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,

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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 common understanding and belief

that those threats jeopardize life in society.3 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 territory4 and between

identity and otherness.5

1 Brigitte Piquard, “The Politics of the West Bank Wall.”

2 Pierre Bourdieu, Le sens pratique. Paris: Minuit, 1980, p. 219.3 Brigitte Piquard, “The Politics of the West Bank Wall.”4 ‘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.5 See Marc Augé, Le sens des autres: actualité de l’anthropologie. Paris: Fayard, 1994.

141

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

One of the particularities of the paintings on the West Bank

Wall is the fact that quite a few have been made by

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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

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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

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

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_wa

ll/html/1.stm (accessed September 7, 2006).

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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,

1BBC, “Picturing Israel’s Wall,” online.

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barbed wire, and observation towers that is central to

Israeli architecture,1 a “hasty translation of a political

agenda into the act of construction.”2 The Wall and the

checkpoints have proved to be a form of spectacular

violence, a violence that must be seen, in opposition to

more frequent forms of suspended (latent, insinuated)

violence.3 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

1 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.

2 Rotbard, “Wall and Tower,” p. 46.

3 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.

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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,1 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 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

1 http://www.btselem.org/English/Separation_Barrier/.2 http://www.btselem.org/English/Separation_Barrier/.

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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 (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

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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.

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.

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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.1

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 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.

1 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

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

1 Helmi Kittani, interview, February 29, 2004. See http://www.justvision.org/.

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wall does not mean that you go about building it in the territory of the other

party.”1

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 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.”2

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

1 Gila Svirsky, interview, April 28, 2004. See http://www.justvision.org/.2 Walid Salem, interview: date and year not indicated. See http://www.justvision.org/.

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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.1

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.2

(….) 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, Turks, British, Palestinians, Israelis, and

more.3 (…) 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

1 http://www.btselem.org/english/Separation_Barrier/Statistics.asp.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. “Sorry, wrong continent,” December 23, 2006.

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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.1”

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.”2

“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

1 Uri Avnery. “War is a State of Mind.” Lecture in Berlin, Gush Shalom, October 20, 2005. Conference on “Raising Children without Violence.”2 Uri Avnery. “Living in a Bubble,” May, 1, 2004.

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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 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

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/.

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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.”1

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!”2

1 Truth against Truth. Gush Shalom, 2004, point 29.2 Sami Adwan, interview, January 14, 2005. See http://www.justvision.org/.

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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.”1

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.”2

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.”3 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 Truth against Truth. Gush Shalom, 2004, point 3.2 Dan Bar-On, interview, December 20, 2004. See http://www.justvision.org/.3 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

1 Truth against Truth. Gush Shalom, 2004, points 20–21.

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won’t automatically push aside the narrative of the other but be genuinely

willing to seriously listen to it.”1

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.”2

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 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’.”3

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 but1 Dan Bar-On, interview, December 20, 2004. See http://www.justvision.org/.2 Sami Adwan, interview, January 14, 2005. See http://www.justvision.org/.3 Dan Bar-On, interview, December 20, 2004. See http://www.justvision.org/.

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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.

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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

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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 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

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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

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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 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

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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

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expensive image campaign. The difference is obvious if one

compares the usual black-and-white pictures of protesting

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.

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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 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

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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

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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 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

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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

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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 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

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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 survive and give my children a

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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

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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 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.

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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

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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.

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

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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.

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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. 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,

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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.

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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 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

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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

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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

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.

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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,

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to refuse to be dehumanized, to 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

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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 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

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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

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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.

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

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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

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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 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

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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

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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 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

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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, they say, “Ah, but you said that you were a

democratic teacher!” Education is the most important means

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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

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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 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

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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

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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 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

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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.

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People ask themselves: “Who is enjoying more freedom than

the other?” People start looking at each other, categorizing

each other: “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

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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 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

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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

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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?

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

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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

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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 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

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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

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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. 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

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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

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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.

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

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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

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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 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

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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.

Over time, many Christians left. The Germans were imprisoned

and taken to Australia. A lot of Greeks returned to Greece

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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,

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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.

221

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

222

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.

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

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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

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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 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.

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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

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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 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.

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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 means knowing

that my daughter will one day be able to fulfill her wish to

see the sea by herself.

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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

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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 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

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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

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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 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.

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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

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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 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

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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

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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.

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

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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 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.

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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 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

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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.

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Claire Anastas is a Palestinian civilian who lives opposite Rachel’s Tomb in

Bethlehem.

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 ofmeat 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 inthe 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 inthe 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

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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 causeand 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 $).

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 costsare not included in the prices.

Arab Educational Institute

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P.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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