EYEWITNESS  FROM  BETHLEHEM

ARTICLES & REFLECTIONS WRITTEN BY TOINE VAN TEEFFELEN

BETHLEHEM DIARY (25)

April 16-23, 2001

The first three evenings and nights of the week give us the worst moments of shelling up until now. Many districts of Bethlehem are targeted as well as Beit Sahour, Beit Jala and Al-Khader. Mary, Jara and I sleep at my mother in law’s house to comfort her and Mary’s sister Janet. Mary’s family lives near an area from where the Tanzim are shooting to Rachel’s Tomb. During one evening, an Israeli bullet once again enters the landlord’s living room on the second floor. Fortunately, he is still out of town.  Further above and behind the house, near an apartment of a colleague of Mary, a car is hit by several bullets. Mary’s mother’s apartment is fortunately just below the Israeli fire range. During two evenings of shelling we hide ourselves in the kitchen which is largely absorbed by the rocks of a hill on top of which Bethlehem University arises. I have Jara on my lap and sing as usual cheerful Dutch songs. Jara knows that shelling and shooting is something bad but she does not fully realize the tension. She climbs on me and plays as normal. She is still not really affected or at least so it seems. However, Mary’s mother and Janet are on the top of their nerves. Each time when a shell falls down, they say in shock “Ya’Adra” (Virgin Mary) or “Ya-Khader” (St George). When the guns fall silent for a while, we move to our bedrooms to sleep early. Almost instinctively Mary and I look at the location of the windows of the room in relation to the places where we sleep and where our heads will be. Jara must be out of any possible danger.

Most of the nights we sleep, although during one night Mary and her family stay intermittently asleep and awake until 3:00 hrs in the morning. As I hear from my Arabic teacher later on, other people stay awake the whole night and closely follow the subtitling on the local TV programs that relay the latest Intifadah news. According to the Washington Post, during the bombing nights several areas in Bethlehem were shelled from which no previous gunfire came, such as a stone cutting factory and a four star hotel near the Solomon Pools at the south of the town. It seems that the shelling was also aimed at hitting economic resources. Stonecutting and tourism are important economic sectors here.

Fuad and I talk about how to educate young students to deal with fear. “Fear education,” he calls it. Of course students are presently tensed and not very motivated and concentrated. Many of them carry their books and home work to different places. During evenings when bombings are predicted they sleep at a family member’s house. As a teacher dryly remarks, the emergency situation gives many students an excuse not to do their very best.

I tell Mary that I see and hear people less crying than at the beginning of the Intifadah. Maybe people reach a state that you become emotionally hardened or less sensitive. Or people simply have too much to worry about. Mary says that women bear most of the worries.

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At the Freres School we have a meeting with teachers for the organization of a fieldtrip. A fieldtrip? Some don’t believe it when I tell them. But yes, the weather is beautiful and until now there have been little shootings and shelling during the day. Foremost concern is that students need to release their tension and get out into nature. During the meeting we make an attempt to design itineraries for four consecutive fieldtrips in the region of Jerusalem. Access to Jerusalem is more difficult than ever but Fuad, who is at heart an optimist, declares that there is always a way to sneak through the closure. At least some of the trips can be in suburbs of Jerusalem and other trips can take place in “Greater Jerusalem” - if we adopt the Israeli definition of Jerusalem in which the urban ring around Jerusalem stretches to the south of Bethlehem.

The first trip will be in Artas on the south-eastern border of Bethlehem. The teachers discuss in detail which itineraries on which hours of the day are possible in exactly which areas. We talk primarily about safety issues. I realize that in the course of the uprising people’s safety standards sometimes erode due to people becoming accustomed to war-like circumstances. An acquaintance of mine living in Beit Jala tells that he and his wife nowadays take more risks when going to work or visiting friends. It is an unconscious process, he says. Of course, the last thing you can allow yourself as teachers is to become relaxed about the students’ safety. The participating teachers are well aware of that.

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The fieldtrip turns out to be a success. Ri’baal, the teacher from Artas, points out the new big holes in the four-star hotel near the Solomon Pools as a result of the previous days’ bombing. We move on to the monastery playground beautifully located under the shadow of rocks and trees. Loudspeakers are set up and a group of Moslem and Christian boys and girls from the Freres School and Al-Arroub camp give a fine performance with songs and drama sketches about the Intifadah, including a tape with the sound of shelling, and songs in which shared values between Islam and Christianity are expressed. We hear the sounds of the muezzin and church bells merging into each other. Teachers and students are busy taking pictures and videotaping the event as if we witness the latest fashion. The teachers are on the alert to keep the sound decibels at a moderate level. Ri’baal points out the hill one kilometer further to the west where an Israeli tank is positioned. They better should not hear us, nor should we alarm the nuns in the monastery.

After the performances, Karishma announces the wishmaking action in which some of the Belgian partner schools have participated. She reads a wish of a Belgian student. Students read other wishes. Fuad translates from the English. Afterwards Karishma distributes the wishes to the students who, with real interest I observe, study the reflections of their distant partners about the need to ban illnesses, bombs, wars and injustice from the world. The students’ English teachers help them translating. While observing the scene, I realize how it all looks like as if a bit of heaven is made visible on earth, indeed like a little Garden of Eden. Artas is a place where according to tradition Solomon, or in Arabic Suleiman, composed the Song of Songs, the mystical love song of the Old Testament transgressing human and natural borders. And borders are definitely crossed here. Picture the scene: Karishma, a Kenyan woman from Indian descent, reads wishes from Belgian students in front of Moslem and Christian Palestinian students at a garden designed by the Church of Montevideo, Uruguay, and now taken care of by an order of Italian sisters. The Palestinian students and teachers look like a real cross section of Palestinian society, with students from town, village and refugee camp. Their outlook and clothes differ greatly. Some of the Freres School boys emphatically wear a cross on their breast, while the girls wear clothes ranging from traditionally Palestinian embroidery dress, modern jeans, a head scarf (mandil), to the long robe common among more conservative Moslem circles. A celebration of diversity. Most of all, it is heartening to see the students laughing and playing without fear. Perhaps I feel the scene is so beautiful because beauty is now so exceptional. Beauty emerges when you know how precious it is.

Afterwards we climb down into the valley to the plot of land which we consider to rent for establishing a school garden. Some of the boys, walking in the high grass, tell that they fantasize themselves to be guerrillas in Vietnam. One of the Al-Arroub boys apparently makes a sexually charged joke about the Hebronites. A girl from Hebron teaches him a lesson. There is a bit of tension in the air. Karishma tells later on that the two became good friends in the bus and that the whole episode may be part of an elaborate ritual of courtship. Some teachers say that for future fieldtrips they prefer to have younger boys and girls, younger than fourteen. With the older ones, you have always problems, they say. When we reach our plot of land, a neighbor shows his dissatisfaction about boys and girls jointly passing by. “First boys and girls, afterwards foreigners, and finally you have the Israelis.” It ends up with a little toshe (quarrel) between some members of two Artas extended families (hamulas) who are traditionally not at peace with one other. Musa, the teacher and organizer with a vast knowledge of Artas, was supposed to give an explanation at the top of the hill of Etam but he moves away quickly after noticing the neighbour’s scorn. Fuad is relieved that the spark did not lit a broader flame and no real fighting took place. But we have to think over our intention to rent the land. Afterwards I show Musa a detailed old article about how the Song of Songs resembles traditional Arab and Palestinian folklore. We strike the bargain that he will receive the article if only I receive from him for photocopying those out-of-sale anthropological studies about Artas conducted by Hilma Granqvist, the Finnish anthropologist who did her fieldwork in Artas from the 1920s till the 1940s, studies of which Musa has rare copies. Afterwards I sit alone with Sana’a, the principal from neighbouring Battir village, and tell her that when on a visit I always see so many clean clothes drying in Artas. Is that in Battir, too? She asks a group of small boys and girls how often their parents do the washing. A boy says, “once a month.” Why? The boy says that it is for financial reasons. The family cannot pay more for soap and water.

Next day Jara and I visit the Peace Center at Manger Square which presently organizes all kinds of activities for youth. Suzy has accepted to be a storyteller and Jara joins the circle of completely absorbed children who listen to Suzy who, cross-legged sitting on the floor, tells out from her big storybook. A rare scene of real peace.

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At home, Mary and I visit a new house since our own house grows too small, especially for Jara. We check the usual things like room space, noise from the street, quality of building structure, garden and the rent which is in Bethlehem for newly rented houses almost never below 400 $. We wonder if the rents are not going down, these days. Mary inquires about the reason for a hole in a window. It turns out that, while the house itself is out of the Israeli fire range, once a bullet bounced from a wall of an adjacent house. In fact, there are nowadays few houses in Bethlehem that are completely out of danger. In the house we look for and find a safety room without windows.

Jara asks me to bow and whispers that she wants an ice cream. We go and take a big one. Just going out and looking for a new house gives a good feeling, as if a change in one’s general situation is in the air. In the evening we walk to our house in the dark. It turns out that many people don’t pay their electricity bills and to reduce the deficit the municipality has decided to put out the lights of many streets.

Jara gives names to three of her bears and animals – Marie, Toulouse and Doreen (names adopted from cartoons). Each of them receives a shekel for buying a drink and a bag for school. Which school? Marie goes to Terra Sancta, Toulouse to St Joseph and Doreen to the Amerrican school (in Jara’s pronunciation). And Jara goes to the Freres? No, she says, “I go to work and earn money.

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For information about the wishmaking campaign, exchanges with Palestinian schools, and any personal correspondence with the author: tvant@p-ol.com

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