It is only five here and it is already fridgid in the tent that I have subconciously begun to call home over the past week here in Jerusalem. Though it was my first inclination to violate my 15 day ban from the territories, it was brought to my attention that once again, my fate is all tangled up with some relative stranger. A very nice guy from one of the Israeli human rights groups had come to the police station last sunday to help out the french girls and had agreed to sign bail for me, in doing this he agreed that if I am found back in the territories before my fifteen days are up he will be arrested and owe something upwards of 5000 shekels. As much as I want to return, it meant a lot that this guy trusted me and I would hate to ruin that. Which means, until monday, I am still out of the territories. I have tossed around a lot of ideas of places within Israel I want to visit, but with no real travel companion I have little motivation to go to, say, the dead sea to float around alone. Here in Jerusalem I can make myself more useful, if in a somewhat passive way.
For the week I have been sleeping at a house in the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood that I was at a month ago before I left for training. I get fed well and get to meet the many different people that roll through to see what is going on here, most important of that is the community group that meets here to discuss their plans for defending their homes. The group is almost completely dominated by women, which is so awesome, and those which speak english have been great to talk with. Also, about every other day a different set of activists comes to join me so I have been able to get more first hand accounts from the regions I haven't been able to go to yet. Though my stay here is also normally a time when I become incredibly frustrated, the settler family living in half of the home is American, a fact which makes it much harder to restrain from asking the woman and man, why on earth they would raise their four small children in a place where they are stealing someone elses home, why they would want this for their family. The restrain is necessary because confronting the settlers is not my place, I am here in solidarity with the Palestinian family in case the authorities come to evict them for not paying rent to the zionist millionaire who has stolen their home and given half of it away, not to pick fights with the family that, the way I see it, is being used as a tool in a much larger scheme. Also I have to remember, here and everywhere else I go that this is in no way my struggle, I am not a Palestinian, my home was not taken from me, my life is not a constant struggle and I do not live in an occupied police state.
When I am not here trying to actually accomplish some things while really lounging and trying to stay warm I have been visiting this nineteen year old Gazan fisherman in a Jerusalem hospital. About three weeks ago while fishing on his parents boat he was shot at by Israeli forces with a 15 mm bullet. The bullet completely entered and exited his shin, breaking both bones and taking with it most of the back of is calf. It was soon apparent that if he stayed in Rafah for treatment, he would have his leg amputated. The medical situation in Gaza is beyond bad, with supplies and equipment, along with doctors and technology being shut out by the siege Gazans have to seek serious medical attention elsewhere, which in many cases can be even more difficult. Since Hamas took over in 07 the Israeli government has decreased their number of medical permit allowances by 20%, 69% of people, many of them desperately ill will recieve a permit to leave the country. The permit itself can sometimes mean little, with lengthy checks at the border which many times include the Isralei government asking the Palestinians to trade information for their exit. But back to the story at hand, Mohammed, the boy I have been visiting, had to wait two weeks for a medical permit for him and his mom even though wether or not he kept his left leg depended on it. Finally, with some pressure from ISMers in Gaza and other human rights workers he was finally given a permit...for one day. Now that he is in the care of the doctors the time limit can be changed but still smacks of twisted israeli policy. Though my arabic is still very much in the beginner stages and Mohammed and his mother speak a few words of english combined I have really enjoyed my vists and according to our friends in Gaza they have said that knowing that myself, and those who come with me, care has meant a lot. I am always fed multiple cookies and atleast two cups of some fruit drink before I am allowed to leave the hospital room, seeing as Mohammed's mother has promised that she will make sure I want to come to Gaza on the next boat, most likely because she is planning me and Mohammed's pending nuptuals. Though many, if not all of the Israeli government's policies in Palestine are cruel and unusual, nothing really compares in my mind to the sick and twisted reality of limited health care, that while starving cities in the West Bank and Gaza of any means of medical advancement the authorities sit and watch Palestinians scramble, jumping through hoops when time is most definitely of the essence just to have a fair chance at survival sometimes.
On Sunday I was able to attend I demo at the Erez crossing about the medical situation in Gaza led by a large group of international physicians who were just denied visas to enter for the Gazan Mental Health conference. A handful of Israeli sources attempted to claim that the group was sponsored and funded by Hamas, an idea, even if it were true, should not have stopped people from being able to exercise academic freedom. The demo was in many ways a huge photo op and led mainly by the older American academics set to present at the conference but gained a lot of attention, I'm glad I went if only to see Erez, I huge compound of a crossing that really brings the phrase "open air prison" new meaning, because that is surely what it looks like.
Tonight will probably be my last night here at the house, I plan on going somewhere, probably haifa, until sunday when I will go back to tel aviv for this demo to support a conciencious objecter of the military and then on Monday its back to the territories. I will most likely be going to Hebron where the situation will be much different from what I saw in Nablus. The illegal Kiryat Arba settlement is basically on top of the old city and has terrorized citizens for years. Aside from settler violence the people both in Hebron and its surrounding villages are subjected to constant military raids and sieges which have effectively trapped Palestinians, sometimes for years at a time, forcing them to live off of the Red Crescent while watching their friends and family massacred and arrested. It is obvious that what has happened to Hebron is the Israeli plan for most West Bank cities, to starve them of any sort of livlihood and create an apartheid state in which Palestinian roads are even caged from above. There is currently an attempt at rehabilitation in many parts of the city and we are trying to re establish our international presence in the community and surrounding areas.
Tonight I will attempt to put a fitting ending to the relationship I have fostered with the neighborhood cats who have also taken up residence in the tent, though I admit that it is rather sad that I call what I have with them a relationship, I'm just being honest here. thanks for reading, until next time
ma'asalama

Exiled

On Sunday around 1030 I was detained by Israeli authorities for five hours at the police station at the illegal Qedumim settlement in town of Kufr Kudum north of Nablus on charges of being in a closed military zone and interfering with police work. If you would have asked me at the time where I would be right now there is a definite possibility that I would have told you waiting for my deportation to be processed, though instead I am sitting on a corner in the immigrant neighborhood of Tel Aviv trying to steal someone's internet on the computer of one of my fellow arrestees.
These past few days have been some of my more confusing and unexpected, though I will try and sort them out in the name of the travel blog gods.
At around ten o'clock Sunday morning I was beginning to settle into another day of olive picking in Kufr Kudum, thankfully drinking a morning cup of tea while assessing the work load when in a strange combination of Hebrew Arabic and broken English I was informed that there were troubles with the army in an olive grove just above where I was picking. Accompanied by some fellow internationals and a few Israeli activists I, if somewhat hesitantly at first, grabbed my video camera and headed up the steep incline. There we were met by more than a handful of soldiers accompanied by, of course not in defense against, a group of male settlers. The situation escalated in a manner as fast as the circumstances would demand them to and soon there was a pushing war going on between the Palestinians joined by us and the army joined by the settlers that found two petrified donkeys trapped in the middle. I can safely say that I have never in my existence been in a situation fueled by so much rage, the justified rage of the two old Palestinian men who were, for the second time in two days being forced off their own land, just as they have been for years, and also the rage of the settlers, which I can only explain as true hatred, hatred which I can also safely say I have never in my life witnessed in such an intensity. The words of the younger settlers, though wrong and hurtful were nothing in comparison to this one older settler, who stared at the Palestinians and us with such a hateful intensity that it is the only time during my filming that I lost control of my shaky hands, it was another one of those moments when my paradigm was suddenly refocused, everything made real.

The army and settlers managed to push the family and us internationals down below where the trees were, though not without pushing the two old men and their sons and us the whole way down. As soon as I stopped recording my shaking promptly returned, if only fueling off of the anger of the family.

We all stood waiting at the bottom of the groves as the settlers yelled at us and inspected what they referred to as "their land", for the District coordinator office officials to arrive and show us the actual warrant for a closed military zone. The DCO, is a system that basically runs a permit system for Palestinians to go to their own land, even though under international law, as an occupying force they MUST provide protection. As we waited I showed the video I was able to get to the family and tried to get some details written down for a press release later. Suddenly it was not the DCO that showed up but instead the Israeli police. An older activist approached the cop and tried to reason with him, explaining that the family we were with was promised to be able to go to the land and that if they waited any longer there would simply be no harvest left. The cop took no interest in anything we had to say and instead told us that we had two minutes to vacate or he would arrest everyone. Myself and a few other backed off seeing as we were filming, but a young french activist decided that she was not going to leave quietly. She asked that the officer stop speaking in such a violent tone and took some time to walk down the slope we were on, though apparently her retreat came to late because the officer grabbed her by the hair and threw her on the ground. The next five minutes were a confusing mixture of screams and pleas, the Palestinians were backed off by soldiers as the two french girls were thrown to the ground repeatedly. Before I knew what I was doing I had thrown myself on top of one of the French activist who was crying on the ground in an attempt to de arrest her or simply stop the soldier from hurting her. I felt that I was not going to be the target for the arrest and simply could not stand and watch the french girls get carried away. Though the police commander was quickly fed up with my efforts and before I knew it he had grabbed my bag to drag me by my neck back towards the settlement. After some fight and the loss of my shoe I was being carried towards the settlement where two cop cars were waiting, they had clearly come looking for arrests and we had conveniently provided them. Hearing my screams the incredibly brave Israeli woman activist had come running back to the scene that she had been walking away from and basically got arrested in order to sit in solidarity with me, an act that, as it will come to light, I will forever be grateful for.
Once in the police station I was searched, screamed at and identified, and though it would have been wise for me to then be scared I was for some reason feeling as confident as ever, with my video tape stuffed in my underwear and our lawyer on the phone I felt strangely calm. What followed was four hours of a confusing interrogation/intimidation. I was offered within an hour an agreement in which I would sign agreeing to leave the country within five days, terms I was absolutely positive I would not sign, an act that quickly showed the police officers that my story of being a tourist may not have overwhelming validity, seeing as the alternative was going to jail until wednesday and waiting for a deportation trial. The french girls were not quite so ready to deny the terms, near the end of their stay and from a very different organization they were in no way ready to go to jail, and the police used this against me. two hours into my stay I was told that whatever I did, in terms of signing, the french girls would also have to do, that I was effectively deciding all of our fates. That calmness quickly faded at this point, I may have been ready to play hard ball in terms of my own future but not with two virtual strangers'. Luckily the Israeli activist was able to play the role of the UN and translated everything between the three camps involved and assured me that the choice was still my own and that if I felt I simply could not sign an agreement that I in no way had to and, much more importantly, that she would do the same, promising that we could go to jail together. After a few more hours of saying no, filled with persuassion from all parties with the exception of Yfat, my Israeli friend, I was able, by the skin of my teeth convince the officers that there was no way I was going to sign, and it was at that point that the officer, who had refused to speak english finally offered to me, in english, an agreement where I would stay out of the territories for fifteen days, broken down, and admittedly a little scared, I finally agreed. when me and Yfat were brought in to sign our agreements the officer, finally in a display of humanism complemented her on her unwavering support of me and she simply responded that as women, its our natural inclination to stand together.
I have now been in Tel Aviv staying with Yfat for four nights, resting and coming to terms with being on the other side of the green line. On Tuesday I went to an anrachists against the wall fundraiser with a group of ISMers who came out from the West Bank and was able to meet a lot of Israeli activists, a group that I have overwhelming respect for, both because of my experience and because of the realization that in their choice to not deny what their government is doing, they have virtually committed their lives to the struggle. As internationals we can only stay for short periods but for an Israeli activist they never leave, their life, their existance, is constantly in this strange rejection limbo. Yfat has explained to me how easy it is to live in Tel Aviv or anywhere else in Israel and remain completely oblivious to the human rights violations occuring only kilometers to the east, a fact that we both agreed is not an excuse, but still a reality, people are still trying to live with a semblance of a normal life, as warped as that may seem to an activist such as myself. As much as I have accepted these realities, I still am not happy to be here, mainly because it was not my choice, though also because randomly I will walk past a store selling kuffiyas next to IDF sweatshirts and feel an overwhelming urge to hurl on the street. I have gone to the beach, enjoyed a western style coffee shop experience, which I admittedly deeply needed, and read a good amount of my book, but definitely feel that I will be leaving here soon. There are plenty of things I can do from this side for ISM, or so I am told, particularly in Jerusalem.
When I think about what happened sunday I definitely feel that it was all for nothing at some points, though many have assured me that my refusal was an important act in terms of international activists, that by not signing I showed as many ISMers have done before, that we will not just leave the country at the first sign we may go to jail, though in terms of the struggle, as in most actions, there is always a question as to whether my actions made any difference, which they most likely did not. The farmers in Kufr Kudum were not allowed to harvest the next day due to the violence on the other side of the hill and the police intervention on our side, but most likely that would have been the case anyway. I really think the lesson I am most grateful to take away is that of real solidarity, the way in which Yfat stood up for me based solely on the fact that I stood by her and the Palestinians when the army forced them off the land was an act that reflected the epitome of solidarity and I am more prepared now to do the same for any Palestinian or international I meet who is here to reject this illegal occupation.

Today is officially the one week anniversary of my coming to live in Nablus, a city in the north of the West Bank, though it feels like an eternity. Everyday the seven of us living in our apartment wake up at around 530, travel in all directions of the city and set off to spend the day becoming experts on the many methods of picking and collecting olives, and in many ways these days have been some of the best in my recent memory, and yet some of the most sobering. The purpose of the accompaniment program is to help to deter the possibility of settler violence, military violence and in general exercise solidarity in one of the most essential parts of a Palestinian's life in this region, or really in them all, in the land. Once we arrive in a village there is normally a period in which we have to wait for the magistrate representative to show up, or as we often suspect, wake up. We are then assigned to the family picking in the most dangerous area that day, normally nearest to the settlement which inevitably, for most villages, is never too far away, normally placed above on some hilltop ruining the horizon. Most days go on with no problem and aside for the mini war which those of the Islamic fate have across the board been waging for my half arab soul, or far more commonly the war Palestinian women wage for our hands in marriage for their available young sons, they are normally wonderful days, we drink a lot of tea, eat a lot of hummus, have the excuse to climb some of the most amazing trees and laugh more than anyone doing physical labor should. Many times the conversations are rather stunted seeing as most of us internationals are working on very low levels of arabic and a lot of the palestinians know very little english but somehow the most intricate messages can be conveyed, namely those of political and historical value. My british friend cannot escape a day without Balfour being brought up and I certainly will never escape one without mention of the israeli lobby in America, though the conversation definitely takes an interesting turn whenever it is discovered that I am Libyan, one based on the pretense that I am most certainly lying when I say that the green book is not hidden somewhere in my sidebag. On a side note I have recently discovered that one of my international friends has had dinner with good old Momar and somehow accidentally had the green book in her bag last time she came through Israeli security, but still got in.
In general our presence is graciously recieved and most people believe that our presence does deter settler violence, seeing as settlers have had to come to terms that they are fighting the PR war, that their cruel and violent attacks, mainly with no retributions, are starting to be noticed especially when internationals with cameras are present, but that doesn't mean that our job cannot seem frustratingly futile a lot of times. The Israeli Occupation Forces (otherwise known as the IDF) have come up with a plethora of warrants and decrees that stop us from entering the fields and effectively seem to make our presence more of a nuisance than anything else. Also with low numbers of internationals right now it is impossible for us to be everywhere that violence is likely to occur and many times organization is not always key to the Palestinians who understandably sometimes wish to not have to discuss with three different people their plans to go and harvest their own land. But in many ways that is the point, the army has made it so that even the land that the settlers have not already stolen is impossible to access outside of a few times during the year, farmers arrive to find trees that have been in their family for hundreds of years are burned to the ground, cut down, ruined by chemical and sewage waste from the illegal settlements or simply barren from forced neglect. Though not all of the farmers depend solely on the harvest for their economic stability, many of them do, and just as with all occupations, a strong sense of capitalism has been forced on what was once a different kind of society and a bad harvest can mean something far worse than it ever did before.
Its this dicotomous manner of living that has been so hard for me to wrap my head around, that a people with so much hope, even more pride and overwhelming kindness can live in such a harsh reality. I know it is nonsensical of me to expect that people do not go on living, but the palestinian people do it in a way that simply cannot go unmentioned.
In the past three days there have been a rising number of settler attacks in our area, all of which we were always just a little too far away from to respond any differently than a journalist could, and so there is a definite level of frustration in the air, both with one another and with the various other groups that we work with, but we continue to remind ourselves that we are doing our best and that the thing about detering violence by being a witness is that you do not witness, we never know when there was a real victory because a victory is a quiet day. What has added to the frustration though is the fact that in the Ramallah area three boys have been shot in the past three days by the IOF and every night this week someone has been beaten up at the Hawarra checkpoint nearest to our house, and every single death is used against the Palestinians in the news, every paper claiming that there is a renewed intifada, making their deaths sound necessary instead of the violent acts of military terrorism taht they most likely were.
We do all seem to find solace in one another in the apartment though, despite our overwhelming differences. My roomates are; a"professional" witch(actually, listed that way in the phonebook) from Iceland who has children older than me and is the epitome of delightful, especially when she recounts her sex life, a lone traveller of the middle east from Austria, an antifa lifer who describes himself as "the only nerd of the radical left in my country" from Finland, a lawyer/exdrug cartel/friend of the wu-tang clan from the UK, a very nice long termer from Australia and a maid from Quebec. Nightly discussions are not exactly what my expectations would have depicted them as but certainly always entertaining.
Beofre I came to Nablus I was staged for my entrance into the ISM world with a training in Ramallah, and though it definitely was straight forward on a lot of the facts, like, what ways are best to deal with industrial strength tear gas, how to effectively "de-arrest" someone, how to escape being detained and what actions will surely get you deported, there was also a lot of really great discussion of what ISM stands for that I think made everyone in the room feel that much more confident in why we had come here, that is with the exception of the psuedo ex hippie from veterans for peace who was the sole believer that throwing stones was a "violent act", insisted on patronizing me in every political discussion and knew so little about middle eastern culture that most of us tried to not listen to him out of embarassment.
On a final note, I was on Al Jazeera on Tuesday night, like arabic language Al Jazeera with a live interview, and am now recognized by taxi drivers and shop keepers alike, which is really fun and really annoying all at the same time. Alright so I am going to end this monstrous post and go try and cook some dinner for the people who had to pick all day seeing as through scheduling error I kind of had the day off.

Long Monday

It is now 4:05 am and it it the first time since my arrival that the has been a period of longer than five minutes that I have heard no car horns, instead just the call to prayer and silence.  I am on my night shift at the house that I am camping outside of to currently help safeguard, and aside from the patrol of an Israeli officer a few times an hour it is rather peaceful.  A little background on the house, in 2001 a three person Palestinian family live here in East Jerusalem, the mother and father in one half of the apartment, their son in the other.  It was that year that the father had a serious heart attack and was hospitalized, naturally the mother and son were with him at that time.  When it came time to return to their home they were shocked to find a settler family living in half of their apartment.  It seems that an organization had given the family the rights to the home.  Since then the Israeli government has offered the Palestinian family up to 11 million sheckels to leave the house, but the family resovled that under any circumstance, or for any amount, they would never leave the house.  The house has therefore become sort of a symbol then, of solidarity, a place that holds community meetings to garner support and has so far been successful in a loyal battle against the much wealthier and influential settler's group.  Hung around on the walls of the patio that we sleep on and the husband and wife often spend their days recieving people on plastic chairs with endless amounts of coffee and cigarettes, are posters and paintings announcing to all that come here that "we will never leave".  In their lawsuit the family has tried to assure that the current settler isn't jailed because as I was explained today the settler families kind of become pawns in the game in this situation, being rotated out every other year or so anyway.  The current eviction of the settler family is on the ninth of november, though there is a large chance that another family will simply move right into the house and begin the process again.  

Overall the situation seems to be, like so many other situations here, an eternal struggle, though it has been successful in bringing together a community that cannot watch East Jerusalem get taken from the arabs who live here. I was able to watch one of their meeting tonight and even through the language barrior it was a powerful thing to watch.  

Tomorrow night it is back to the hostel so that I can wake up early on Wednesday to be taken to Ramallah for training.  Hopefully it proves to be as interesting as last night, which was an evening spent discussing the cyclic and rather fickel political state of German fascist and anti-fascist movements with a group of German anti-fascists from a commune style city center in Germany(the eldest of whom was the spitting image of Karl Marx), among other things.  The conversation naturally shifted to the conflict, as I am sure most conversations held late night at the faisal hostel do.  

Well, that is all for now

The Beginning

At a little before four am this morning I safely arrived at Tel Aviv airport. With shaking hands and sweaty palms I fully suspected a long and tedious few hours ahead of me. Fortunately or possibly unfortunately I was dead wrong. I was asked two simple questions at passport control and issued a stamp outside of my passport, a stamp which was taken from me only moments later and ripped up. It was at this point that I have now been made aware that I should have found the authorities who would issue me a more perminent form of my visa. Though instead I collected my bag and, like a fish in a stream left the airport with no issue. What followed was a taxi ride that, if it weren't already abundantly clear, made me aware of the fact that I indeed was in a very foreign place. After an hour and a half of close calls with death by car crash and much closer calls with extreme invasions of personal space with my nine fellow passengers I was dropped off a few blocks from Demascus gate, a point from which I was marginally successful in finding my hostel and much more successful in sleeping for a good portion of the day. I was able to get a hold of the people in my organization and they assured me that my visa dilemna was a common problem that would only mean a little bit longer at check points. I have since spent some time coming to these small random revelations while socializing with my fellow backpackers. I will be having a perfectly normal conversation, talking politics or travel logistics and be struck with awe of the people i am with or where I am. I certainly am in fast pursuit of beginning to fulfill that pocket of wonderlust that has occupied my brain for far too long. Tomorrow I leave to sleep the remaining two nights before my training in a house somewhere further into Old Jerusalem with fellow internationals, hopefully more later.