27 November, 2000. Where shall I begin? As I write this I listen to a friend and colleague from Beit Jala who tells about the shelling and shooting there yesterday evening. She was marking papers for her English class but could not concentrate when the shelling started. I understand her inability to concentrate. My friend could even smell the burning after the rocket reached its target. I myself shall never forget another night. It was 15 November, the date of the declaration of the Palestinian state, at least on paper. The Israeli army was busy shelling Beit Jala. The shelling was “in response to the shooting by Palestinians” during previous days. A brutal response against civilians. I watched the shelling. When it stopped (or so it seemed), I asked a friend who was with me: ‘Has it stopped now’ and he said, ‘no, they are just taking a cigarette break.’ The sounds and sights draw me, captivate me…I don’t know why. To watch a bombing is unlike any other experience. 

CNN has a little clip called ‘sights and sounds of…’ There are some sights and sounds of Bethlehem and its environs they should consider. My friend now shows me a collection made by a twelve-year old student. No, not a collection of stamps or Pokemon stickers (if only!), but bullets, sixteen in all, and two remainders of gas bombs, I think. I can’t tell for sure although I should be able to judge by now. The students promised my friend that they would bring more bullets the next day. ‘Perhaps’, my friend jokes, ’they think I will give them good marks!’

In my English class the kids are used to share their stories by pretending they are on CNN and BBC interviewing the residents. Normally, each student has a special personal experience to share. They have so much to say that sometimes I wonder if we’ll get any textbook English done. I ask my classes how they feel about the Israelis now. Do they make a distinction between civilians and soldiers? Some of the older ones formulate their answers carefully, others don’t. The younger ones voice a strong dislike of their neighbors, to put it mildly. These are kids who have, unlike their parents, little previous experience with political violence. They are too young.

Now a new generation or more will directly face the failure of the so-called Peace Process. This has implications, thoughts of which make me uneasy.   

Gulliver in Lilliput?

These days (it is early December) there seems to be less outright bombing and shelling of nearby towns. But you wonder how long the quiet will last. Is it the quiet before the storm? It’s in fact a funny sort of quiet. You almost wait during the evenings to hear if ‘anything is happening’. While waiting you hope that perhaps the bombing is finally over. Yet it starts again and then you feel a release of built-up tension. It feels like normal when the shelling or shooting begins. 

I am here in Bethlehem now for over three months and barely remember a time of calm. I am Kenyan (of Indian origin). When I was eighteen I left Kenya for Britain to follow a dual honor’s degree course in International Politics and Marketing. I wanted to study German at first but was so bad at that that my professor politely discouraged me to take the course. I’m glad I didn’t. After graduation I returned home for about six months and worked with a humanitarian organization. I was sent to Somalia as a human rights researcher. Somehow, I ended up in the Netherlands six months later. And there, after living in a houseboat for two weeks in Amsterdam - an experience I shall never repeat - I began working with the Inter-Church Peace Council (a Dutch peace movement) on the Euro-Arab Dialogue (EAd) project. Among other issues, EAd works on youth here in Palestine through local partners. After visiting Palestine in May 2000 for a short period, I decided to stay longer when I returned in August (I think I fell in love with it!). Even then, the frustration of the Palestinians was clear. I remember one interview in August in Ramallah, A Palestinian working for an organization concerned with Peace and Democracy predicted the Intifada because of all the people’s grievances, which he listed. I admit that at the time the thought scared me.  

I stayed on in August after we conducted two youth workshops in Bethlehem and Jerusalem on the theme of socio-political participation of Palestinian youth.  I began to represent EAd through the Arab Educational Institute, its partner in Bethlehem. I also started teaching English at the Freres School in Bethlehem. I can barely remember the times when there were concerts outside the Nativity Church, even playing house music! When you ask people how they feel these days, they answer, “well, ‘ya’ani’  - under the circumstances I am still breathing!’ 

For a long time to come I will not listen to the siren of an ambulance in the same way as before. Normally a siren means that someone is unwell and is rushed to hospital - end of story. Now the ambulance siren signals demonstrations, youth throwing stones, and shelling. In the beginning I used to go to demonstrations - to get a taste of those famous Intifada scenes. They were shocking to an inexperienced eye. 

My Arabic skills are getting better. I can now make a little conversation. I noticed the other day how rich my vocabulary is: I can say words like bomb, shooting, rocket, helicopter, soldier, military headquarters, tank… I have studied Spanish for many years yet in that language such words I have not yet come across. So much for the need to learn a language in the native country. 

There is much I fail to understand. I read a lot and ask many questions to try to get a grip on what is happening, to try to make some sense of it all. What strikes me right now is a few lines from The Yellow Wind by David Grossman, a kind of examination of Israel’s occupation, published in 1988: ‘The heart cringes at the thought that we are doomed to endure another round of blood, worse than its predecessor.’ In this he seems to have been proved quite right. ‘The history of the world proves that the situation we preserve here cannot last for long. And if it lasts, it will exact a deadly price’. 

I just received an email from some Dutch ex-volunteers at the Freres who left Bethlehem a little while ago. They say ‘keep faith’ – perhaps that’s the most we can do.

25 January, 2001: Beginning of Something Else? The scars remain unhealed; the wounds rankle but the negotiations (for all they are worth) continue. Recently I had the opportunity to visit and talk with interesting personalities (both Palestinian and Israeli) close to the ‘conflict’. It’s hard to stay away from political speculation. 

Many West Bankers feel stifled inside their ghettos or enclaves, burdened by economic pressures and arrests of Palestinian youth in refugee camps. In Gaza, men are moved to tears while they describe the effect of the situation upon their children. Others speculate that still worse times are to come. It’s a whole different world out there. Others fantasize of the day when they somehow will succeed in removing Israel and its people – at least from the settlements. They are prepared to pay any price. The word ‘strategy’ seems foreign. Palestinian Arabs in Israel face their own (forgotten?) dilemmas. And somehow a segment of decision-making, affluent Israeli personalities seem almost infuriatingly unaware, or choose to be so. Even the principle of the ‘inalienable, indivisible, universal’ right to return is up for bargaining. 

I hear the struggle will always continue. As someone once said: “Father, I know very well that even by fighting we cannot recover Palestine. We must fight to tell the world that we exist. We must fight to tell the world that there is a Palestinian people. We must fight in order to stir the conscience of the people of the world. If we fail to persuade the people of the world that our cause is just we shall be lost, finished.”  (Alan Hart, “Arafat: A Political Biography”).

That someone was Arafat in the 1980s talking to Father Iyad in a convent in Beirut. Little has changed since those words were uttered, despite all what has happened. Perhaps we are on the verge of an historical turning point: ‘the end of Oslo is surely the beginning of something else (Edward Said, The End of the Peace Process: Oslo and After). I’ll stay a while.