EYEWITNESS  FROM  BETHLEHEM

ARTICLES & REFLECTIONS WRITTEN BY TOINE VAN TEEFFELEN

BETHLEHEM DIARY (34)

July 9 - July 16, 2001

This weekend we moved to our new house opposite ‘Azza camp in Bethlehem. Some friends we met on the street told us: “But that is even closer to the shooting.” That may be the case but it is also conveniently close to Mary’s mother and sister and not far from her work at the university. We also live more spaciously, and Jara has her own room now. The removal itself is comfortably completed with the help of some hired hands and Mary’s cousin who is a carpenter. “Look here, how do I look with this Kathusya [rocket]?” asks the helper from ‘Azza camp carrying a rolled tapestry on his shoulder. Unlike the custom here, Mary wanted the rooms to be painted in bright colors. Jara insists her room to be pink. In the drive is a statue of the Virgin Mary as you see them in Belgium or France or Mediterranean countries. The pleasure place is a balcony directed to the east where we already spent most of the leisure hours. We eat fresh fruit from Jibrin’s, a vegetable market owned by people from ‘Azza camp who managed to develop a thriving business.

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‘Azza camp stretches from our street towards Paradise hotel. Some 2,000 refugees, or descendents from refugees, live there in cramped conditions in multi-story gray-dark houses built of poor material. Last week I had a chance to visit the camp’s youth club with the help of a member of the institute’s youth group, Mohammed, who invited me in his characteristically light-hearted and somewhat ironical way: “So you are going to live next to the camp. Maybe you have never been there. I’ll do you a favor and introduce you to your neighbors.” While walking through the camp I’ll see only very few women who wear the mandil (veil). The Palestinian camps tend to be politically secular though more radical than the towns and villages. Along the walls are posters of martyrs. One poster shows a collaborator in the camp who a few weeks ago, possibly under pressure by the Palestinian intelligence, shot and killed his Israeli liaison. When Israel returned the body after several days, the family of the man and a doctor held a press conference in which they showed pictures of the severely mutilated corpse.

Together with Shireen I attend a dabkeh (folklore dance) performance of some of the camp youth, a project made possible by the Japanese peace movement. My experience with youth from the camps and the villages is that if they get a chance to join in an activity, they do it with almost total dedication and discipline. Here, too. Some of the girls can’t keep the seriousness on their faces and break into a smile while dancing. The dance and song themes are derived from the refugee experience and deal with suffering, liberation and return. While watching I am suddenly aware that what I observe the Israelis would call “incitement.” In a neighboring club building youth are making a wall drawing that represents the nuclear attack on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Why Hiroshima and Nagasaki, I ask myself – as if the refugees need to be reminded that things can always be worse? The project leader explains that the Japanese peace movement annually commemorates their day of nuclear destruction in different places in the world. During this year’s remembrance day the dabkah troupe will give a performance in the Peace Center of Bethlehem. Later on in summer, they will show their skills in Morocco and Paris – if they can leave, of course. There is a computer lab in the youth club, too. The Japanese effort clearly makes a difference, the youth are encouraged to be active and to do new things. On the bare walls hang a few posters of refugees that were especially designed for the occasion of the Pope’s visit last year.

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While watching the posters, I remember the countless images and photos of Palestinian refugees, their stilled faces betraying weariness, renunciation and bitterness. Years ago, when I made a study of the portrayal of Palestinians in popular fiction, I found out that many thriller writers were fond of giving desperate Palestinian refugees the role of fanatic terrorists. To them was attributed an “explosive” mixture of traumatic experience, anger and despair. In many of the narratives, the fact of their homelessness made them easy prey for political manipulation by evil conspirators. Rather than having their own story, they were thought to only be able to obstruct somebody else’s story. Many novels depicted the refugees’ facial features, especially their “hard” eyes, but did not give them a real voice and humanity. The refugees were described as both unsettled and unsettling.

This image of the embittered Palestinian refugee is present everywhere, both in literature and science. The famous American educationalist Jerome Bruner, whose work I otherwise admire, once wrote that second or third generation Palestinian refugees experience such a breakdown in culture and such an impoverishment of narrative resources that the stories they tell presumably have little variation. Apparently, according to him they can do little else than thinking about their uprooting and return. The underlying message is: You know in advance what they are saying, so there is no need to listen to them. No doubt, this is a distorted construction of reality. An anthropologist like Rosemary Sayigh who stayed and lived for many years with Palestinian refugees in Lebanon has shown through her interviews with women how rich and subtle the narrative resources of people in the camps are. This is also my feeling. While walking though ‘Azza camp on a summer evening, you see people sitting outside in front of the doors and the shops talking, narrating, gesturing. That does not mean that the collective feeling of injustice is not there. The youth leader I meet tells that the club’s name is mandaleh (bitterness). Rather than referring to a generalized emotion, the name is that of a story-teller: Nadji al’Ali’s popular cartoon figure, a little child who observes and comments upon distressful situations prevalent in the Arab and Palestinian world such as political repression, corruption and neglect. As if to emphasize the embarrassment and bitterness caused by what he sees, he is always depicted with his back towards the viewer. The facial features should be imagined but not seen.

The youth leader says that the refugees of ‘Azza feel somehow different from the other Palestinians in Bethlehem. There is not a great deal of contact with the native population, although, unlike other camps, ‘Azza is completely surrounded by a town. But the very fact of being adjacent to Bethlehem town only serves to underline the contrast. The refugees are not at home.

Last year, some of the refugees from the camp joint a journey towards the village from where many of them come, Beit Jibrin, near Beit Shemesh in Israel. The Israeli authorities did not allow them to come close. In fact, many Israelis are haunted by the image of refugees wanting to return. I recently read in Haaretz that perhaps the major reason why the Israeli public, including a large part of the peace camp, recently made a nationalistic turn in their political thinking was the return of the Palestinian demand of the right of return. The refugees’ dream is the Israelis’ nightmare.

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Silently above the camp hangs a kite, a mini airplane with two Palestinian flags at the rear. A symbol of national pride or of the suspended possibility of flying away? With the youth leader I discuss an old project proposal of our institute which aims, if nothing else, at least at people’s minds flying away. Beit Jibrin, as said the place where many of the ‘Azza refugees come from, is located on the historical road between Hebron and Beersheba, or, seen from a regional perspective, between Jerusalem and Cairo. Once we thought about the possibility of reconstructing the route Jerusalem-Cairo as an educational project. Children would learn about what happened on that route over time, what the monks, traders, military and of course refugees brought to move from place to place. Students would see pictures of the route, make exchanges with schools along the route and, if possible, visit places. Beit Jibrin (in Hebrew Beit Guvrin) is centrally located on that route. It used to be a strategically located Roman town, with lands stretching from Ein Gedi along the Dead Sea to Ashkelon along the Mediterranean. Later on it became an important Arab village. Presently it is a kibbutz. The school where many of the parents grandparents of our new neighbors used to study is now the kibbutz’ administrative building. The value of the project we think of would be that students would mentally rise above their present-day fragmented condition to gain a broader view of history and geography. Right now Palestinians from the West Bank can neither visit Israel nor the Gaza Strip. The project would rest upon the assumption that one’s life may be imprisoned but one’s spirit is always challenged to fly away.

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Other new neighbors are Suha’s parents. Last year Suha joint our exchange program during which she met a Palestinian in Holland whom she married in Amman this week.  A few weeks ago she wrote the Institute a letter. During the time of the exchange she stayed in Holland with a “lovely family,” she writes, whose daughter as well as niece live in a kibbutz in Israel. Suha invited them to come over from Israel to her place but the shootings prevented that. “Israel did not know that I was having visitors.” Now she leaves for Holland, and writes that she will “never know if I will be able to see my home again. Maybe a rocket will hit it in its way.” We don’t hope so, neither for her nor for us.

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Upon hearing about another suicide attack in Israel, Mary’s cousin who came over from Dubai for a few weeks’, advances her departure to be able to cross the bridge before it would be possibly closed in reprisal. When she tells Jara about her leaving, Jara answers: “Kamaan?” (you too) as if she is surprised to hear about all the people who are leaving one after the other. Her favorite song is Majd al-Roumi’s Tiri, tiri, ya asfoureh, ana bint zghire hilwe amoura (Fly, fly, bird, I am a sweet cute little girl). I join her dance and tell an evening story about a flying tiger who is admired by the rest of the animals.

Israel retaliates to the suicide attack with quick bombings. Jenin is bombed, says Mary, the bomber came from that place. “Yes, that sounds very logical,” I answer. Also Tulkarem is bombed, she says. “That is also logical, that town is not very far from Jenin,” I tell her. Mary resigns. All we need is a bit more logic.

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While I am writing this, the news comes in that four Bethlehem people have been killed by an Israeli rocket intentionally directed at the house where they were staying. They were waiting upon the release of a family member who was five years in an Israeli prison. Two of the killed were Hamas leaders, apparently. The staff at the Institute are shocked when they hear the names of the killed. Ala’a, a new worker at the Institute, mourns especially the loss of one of the four who was a history teacher at Terra Sancta School in Bethlehem where Ala’a studied. Three of the four belong to the Sa’ade family who have several shops down on the Bethlehem-Jerusalem road near our former house. Tomorrow will be a day of mourning in the town.

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