Final shaloms, debriefings and debates for the road

By Khaled Diab

After an all-night writing spree, in Jerusalem cafes and then in my hotel room, I woke up with a serious intellectual hangover on Sunday morning, so I decided to treat myself to a nice brunch. Before I left, I said goodbye to the incredibly earnest brother of the owner of the hotel, who turned out to be Palestinian.

I then caught one of the private minibuses to Tel Aviv. After engaging me in conversation in English, the guy sitting next to me switched to Arabic when he discovered that I was an Egyptian. It turned out that he was a Palestinian, but I'd kind of supsected that from how he was dressed.

Although nowhere near as overbearing, he came across vaguely as the Palestinian version of Ricky Gervais' character in The Office or one of the pretentious wannabes in the BBC's The Apprentice! He was an apprentice yuppie. Within about 10 minutes, he'd told me that he was a marble and granite subcontractor, how much he earned, and his future business aspirations. Thankfully, a long telephone call in Hebrew with a business contact kept him busy until he had to get off.

A taste of Jaffa

Having heard and read so much about Jaffa, I decided to stay there and checked into a small hotel which was housed inside a beautiful old Ottoman building. The establishment was the kind of Bohemian place where smeared and torn clothing is worn as a badge of pride and the women aren't too bothered if their moustaches are longer than the men's.

Despite the rather low ceilings, my room was cosy, with wooden floors, Bedouin embroideries and a divan. Lying on my bed, I could look out of the low-slung window at the antique market. With my intellectual hangover to nurse, I decided to take it easy for the rest of my penultimate day - except, that is, for my encounter with Uri Avnery in the early evening.

I explored Jaffa's markets and walked around the atmospheric streets of the Old Town and wandered a little in the newer parts, too. Large sections of the market looked like a typical souq or bazaar from anywhere in the Middle East, except for the kippas.

From the Jaffa clocktower and beach, you can see the encroaching Tel Aviv skyline advancing towards s this old Palestinian town and threatening to subsume it. I decided that I would take a leisurely stroll along the beachfront to the centre of town.

Although it did not take more than an hour and a half to reach, Tel Aviv is a world away from the solemn piety of Jerusalem and the heavy chains of history and conflicting ideologies it bears. With its carefree ways, one would almost be forgiven in thinking there was no conflict, except for the odd soldier walking around. Tel Aviv's liberal ways and beautiful people puts me in mind a lot of Beirut, which is only 220km or so further up the beach - an impossible distance in this troubled spot. Although it is not all gleaming, modern and liberal, and I witnessed quite a few cracks and run down areas on the bus in, particularly the Yemeni quarter.

After meeting Uri Avnery (an encounter which made Alex very jealous), I had some time on my hands before my evening appointment, so I sat at a streetside cafe with a too-large coffee, watching the city groove by.

Alex and Max had suggested we meet at a place called Fish and Chips. "Typical Londoners," I'd thought to myself, "arranging to meet at a chippy's!" I'd also suggested to a couple of American students of Arabic at Tel Aviv University who'd wanted to hook up that they meet us there. The road on which this 'chippy' was located reminded me a lot of Gamet el-Dewal el-Arabiya or Abbas el-Aqqad in Cairo, the busy roads where young people hang out and cruise.

Over completely un-English chips and beers, we chatted about Egypt, Arabic, building bridges, Middle Eastern politics, and more. Afterwards, Alex, Max, Hagay and I went to a Tel Aviv bar which was designed to look like someone's front room, where we were joined by another friend from Haaretz. There, we talked more politics, music, culture, and they wanted to know my impressions of Israel.

Familial debriefing

On the morning of my final day, Monday, I had breakfast in Jaffa and then decided to buy a gift for Katleen (well, the both of us, actually!). I bought a beautiful, cobalt-blue Bedouin embroidered hanging. The merchant was a little surprised by my haggling skills - he'd assumed I was just a naive tourist - and appeared somewhat peeved by the final price we reached after I refused to budge from my offer. It's not only Israelis who can be intransigent, you know!

I took the train to Pardes Hana but got off at one station and Tzachi was waiting for me at another! After much consulting of maps and colleagues, a taxi-driver found the address and took me there.

Anat and Tzachi were keen to hear about my journey and 'debrief' me, particularly my trip through the Palestinian territories. Zipora was in Tenerife and Amos had hoped I'd get there earlier so I could join him. He'd gone to see a Samaritan ceremony on the holy Mount Gerizim. As there are only 700 or so of them, and they claim to be the only true Jews, having lived uninterrupted and unconverted in Palestine since ancient times, I was disappointed to have missed the opportunity to see them in action and hear their liturgical Aramaic.

There was some excitement about a snake Tzachi's brother had seen and the family called in a local 'snake catcher' to find it, but to no avail. Anat told me that Dan, her son, had asked whether I would be returning, which really touched her, especially since he couldn't understand any of my 'gibberish' as he called it, until she discovered that he wanted more Belgian chocolate!

In the evening, we had one last political debate for the road. One of Tzachi's friends, an IT consultant and semi-professional computer game player, towed a pretty hardline and the discussion with him got pretty animated, particularly when it reverted to history. But I was pleased to see that my visit and the months of communicating beforehand had helped converge the views of Anat, Tzachi, Debby and myself. There are still a lot of differences in perception, but the gap is much narrower now.

Amos returned from the Samaritans all excited and full of stories to tell. Apparently, he'd grown bored of the ceremony but was fenced in by the railings on one side and the crowd on the other. So, being 80, he thought it would be clever to fake a heart attack or a fainting spell! However, he got more than he bargained for, as the person who came to attend to him shouted out that he couldn't find his pulse and began to push down on his chest to resuscitate him.

"He almost killed me!" the eccentric and fit old man complained.

Amos told me that I should weigh up carefully what I advocate. He warned me that promoting the idea of a binational state, instead of two states, could have dangerous consequences and may actually lead to more conflict. I wasn't entirely convinced by his line of argument - he sounded more like a man who had spent most of his long life committed to a Zionist vision and saw a federal state as a threat to the ideals he had grown up with. But times move on and identities evolve.

Besides, I do not advocate a federal state here and now. I believe that it will probably be a consequence of peace, as the two sides discover the impracticalities of trying to maintain two separate states on such a small plot of land, and the synergy closer ties would create. Alternatively, I fear that the hardliners who have built settlements left, right and centre and sabotage every attempt to reach a final settlement may have made a single state, without the interim two-state period I envision, all but inevitable, particularly if no courageous and visionary leadership emerges soon to reach peace.

With time, as this reality dawns on everyone, the Palestinian struggle may evolve away from demands for nationhoood and become a civil rights movement, demanding equal rights and opportunities and autonomy.

And the future, historic and contemporary discussions - 1967, 1948, etc; - continued on late into the night, until we realised the time and had to dash so that I could catch the last train to the airport. Debby gave me a lift and, at the station, I had to run and leap over a fence to get to the platform in time.

Next, 'Please open your political baggage'.

©Khaled Diab. Text and images.

Tea at the Resistance Cafe

By Khaled Diab

Hebron, or el-Khalil in Arabic, is one of the most beautiful towns in Palestine and its old city, with its lively kasbah, is first rate… until you get to its latter reaches! Hebron, which began life as a Canaanite royal city, is one of the oldest cities in the world.

Rabie and I hooked up with Al Haq’s man in el-Khalil, Zahi, and a group of NGO workers from the UK for the human rights equivalent of a guided tour of the old town.

After a delicious lunch of falafel, the famous local hummus, baba ghanoug, fuul (fava beans) and other assorted salads, Zahi led us through the teeming throngs in the historic heart of the city – towards the thorn in the side of the locals.

“Normally, settlers occupy the hilltops and, although they may be taking Palestinian land, they and the locals do not usually come into direct contact,” Zahi explained to me. “Here, in Hebron, it’s very different: the settlers live in the town centre, causing massive commercial and social disruption. They also go around provoking the locals.”

And it is all because of a cave where Abraham – who is believed to be the common patriarch of Jews, Christians and Muslims – and his family are supposedly buried. The hardcore, ideological, intolerant settlers who live in the old town are there to be close to the Cave of Patriarchs.

Also known as the Ibrahimi Sanctuary by Muslims, this is a crazed settler from the nearby Kiryat Araba settlement outside Hebron killed 29 Palestinians and wounded 150 who were praying in the Ibrahimi Mosque in 1994. Almost seven decades earlier, rioting Palestinians killed 67 Jews and wounded 60 in the 1929 Hebron massacre during the British mandate, as part of a general level of unrest across the country at the increasing Zionist presence and a dispute over access to the Western Wall in Jerusalem.

The first half or so of the souq was teeming, a hive of hustle and bustle similar to any old-fashioned Middle Eastern market. Gradually, the number of shoppers dwindles, the nearer you get to the settlements. The latter reaches of the kasbah are almost completely deserted and most of the shops have been shut. The ones with red paint on their shutters were locked by orders of the army because they are just under the settlements, which loom intimidatingly overhead.

Above our heads, is a metal grid to protect pedestrians against the projectiles sometimes dropped by the settlers. I saw bricks and rocks of various shapes and sizes, as well as water bottles and other debris lying up there. Zahi told me of one incident in which a settler had removed the insulating handle of a screwdriver so that it would fit through the grooves, and dropped it. It hit its target and instantly killed a passer-by, he said.

A handful of shops have remained defiantly open, expressing sumoud (‘fortitude’) against the settlers, even though the have little or no business. Some of these shop owners spoke to me. One said that, a few years ago, any of the leases on the shuttered shops was worth at least 200,000 dinars. Today, they would be like to fetch 1,500 dinars.

Another told us that the door to his upstairs storeroom had been welded shut five years ago by the IDF who have been occupying his rooftop as a watch post ever since. His father complained that just before we arrived a large rock landed just to the side of where they were sitting. When they looked up to complain to the soldier overhead, the soldiers had said it was the wind that blew it over the side. “Where’s the wind?” asked the old man in exacerbation. Indeed, it was a still day.

On a roll, he confided that the grossest thing was how some soldiers would urinate into bottles and pour it over the side or defecate into fast food boxes and chuck it on to the street. “It’s disgusting, but I have to clean it up – what else can I do?”

“No one cares about us here. The Israelis don’t care; the Arabs don’t care; the world doesn’t care,” his son chimed in. “You’re the first Egyptian journalist that has come down this way – and I’m here everyday. Where’s the Arab media; where are the journalists documenting our oppression?”

Stake out and refreshments
Just around the corner from these shops is the gate to the Bet Romano settlement. One lone shop facing the gateway was open for business. Its proprietor waved us over. “Come, come,” he called. “Come and have a drink at the Resistance Café.”

Hisham once worked as a TV news cameraman until he was shot in the leg, but he has not allowed this to get him down – and his big smile and positive attitude were infectious.

“I used to work for the media until a crazy Israeli shot me in my left leg,” he said with a big smile on his face, as if he were retelling a humorous incident involving a vicar and an actress. “We decided to reopen this family café seven months ago as a form of peaceful resistance against the settlers.”

“Others thought we were crazy,” he laughed. “But if all the shops reopen, we will defy the occupation. I don’t sell much, but that doesn’t matter.”

He recalled an incident in which an Israeli soldier, upon being informed about the purpose of the establishment, asked: “What kind of resistance is it opening a café?”

“Would you rather we shot at you guys?” was Hisham’s response to him.

The café’s impressive vantage point means that we spent a ‘lazy’ Saturday afternoon waiting for the camera-shy settlers to come out on their weekly Sabbath ‘tour’ of the old town accompanied by dozens of soldiers.

First came an armoured vehicle, then a small group of nervous-looking soldiers, then more soldiers, who kept going backwards and forwards – but still no settlers. “They don’t usually take this long,” Hisham informed us. “Perhaps all my guests are making them shy.”

Just before the settlers emerged, a nervous and shy young soldier who was probably 18 but looked about 14 came up to us. His baggy uniform and hairless face screamed ‘child soldier’ to me. “Would you mind not taking photos?” he asked apologetically, his voice quivering slightly, his green eyes unable to make eye contact with us.

“Why?” I asked. “And is that an order?”

“It’s just because the settlers don’t like to be photographed on Shabbat; it’s against their beliefs. And we don’t want trouble,” he said. “But it’s only a request.”

We all left our cameras rolling and pretended to be doing other things to show respect to the disrespectful.

If you’re ever down Hebron way, do drop by for a drink at the Resistance Café and show some solidarity with the locals.

©Khaled Diab. Text and photos.

The long road to Hebron

By Khaled Diab

The quickest way to get from Ramallah to el-Khalil (Hebron) is via Jerusalem – a journey that should take just over half an hour.

But the Israeli occupation in all its infinite wisdom provides Palestinians with the unavoidable opportunity to take the scenic route, along secondary roads, via Bethlehem – a journey which takes two hours, assuming you don’t have to stop long at the checkpoint and there is no heightened state of emergency.

While the rest of the world goes about its business at increasingly break-neck speeds – the Maglev train in Japan can go almost as fast as a plane and Paris is now only an hour away from Brussels via a high-speed rail link – the Israeli authorities have enabled the Palestinians to go about their lives at a more leisurely pace.

Who needs a high-octane-rapid-burnout career when they can, instead, simmer slowly in the bubbling frustration of unemployment and poverty? And if you have a job, why overwork yourself dashing from one appointment to the next, when you can stop and smell the flowers, or admire the midday sun as it hangs perpendicular over your sweating brow while you kick your heels at a checkpoint?

And don’t forget the flora and fauna. Look around you and marvel at the growing forest of settlements that have been planted on almost every hilltop and in many valleys, and why not follow the wild growth of the security wall as it cuts through people’s backyards and land?

All this, and much more, you can do, as a Palestinian, on the long roads between Palestinian towns.

The Israelis believe the checkpoints and road blocks are justified because they prevent would-be suicide bombers from crossing into Israel and murdering Israeli citizens - I had lunch at a roadside cafe near Haifa where a large attack had occurred and, while there, Tzachi admitted to me that he sometimes thought about the best place to seat his children so that they would be shielded from a possible attack.

The Palestinians see them as yet another form of collective punishment that may slow but not prevent a determined extremist from getting through, especially since the back ways are often left unguarded. In addition, they are bewildered why, if Israelis are so concerned about their well-being, do they build so many vulnerable settlements on Palestinian land and push more Palestinians to extremes? A couple of Palestinians I met went so far as to suggest that this was part of an elaborate policy to make daily life unbearable for Palestinians, to 'encourage' many of them to leave the land 'voluntarily'.

Splitting the Palestinian atom
For me, the journey was a chance to have a long chat with my companion from a Palestinian NGO. He spent the first part of the drive tracing the course of the settlements which have mushroomed up on much of the available land between the Palestinian towns, penning them in and inhibiting their future growth.

A practical illustration of the atomised nature of the West Bank – which is supposed to represent the heartland of a future Palestinian state – is that every few minutes, my companion would have to switch between his Palestinian and Israeli mobile phones when he needed to talk to his colleagues and the group of European NGO activists we were due to meet in Hebron.

My companion is the third generation of his family to live in the Kalandiya refugee camp, which is home to over 10,000 registered Palestinian refugees and was established in 1949, shortly after the armistice in the first Arab-Israeli war. Israel considers it to be part of ‘Greater Jerusalem’. “The camp still witness clashes with Israeli soldiers and frequent stone throwing incidents,” according to UNRWA.

My companion pointed out the densely populated and walled-off camp as we drove past it. “It’s often hard to sleep,” he confessed to me. “Israeli soldiers regularly patrol under my window late and I hear armoured cars passing all night.”

I realised just how fortunate I am: not only do I have a land (two, in fact); I am also free to travel the world and am more mobile in my Palestinian companion's land than he is.

The Hamas factor
The conversation drifted to Hamas and I asked him whether secular people and Christians were finding life harder in the wake of the gains made by the Islamist group.

“Hamas respects the plurality of Palestinian society. In fact, a lot of Christians voted for them,” was his response. He explained that, despite their Islamic platform, Hamas were less bigoted against Christians than most Fatah members and hangers-on, many of whom were little more than thugs.

The Palestinians, both Muslims and Christians, who voted for Hamas, he said, did so because they were sick and tired of Fatah’s corruption and the criminal gangs that lived off it.

He acknowledged that in Gaza, where Hamas rules the roost, things had become a lot more conservative and restrictive than in the West Bank, but this was also down to the religious and social dynamic that has been gaining ground there. And, I would imagine, the desperate economic situation and the fact that Gaza is the most densely populated place on Earth also play a role in making it so stifling.

I asked why then was the Christian population of Palestine dwindling. He said that life under occupation was miserable for all and that masses of Palestinians have fled and are trying to flee the country. He explained that Christian Palestinians, who are generally better-educated than their Muslim compatriots and have more connections with the outside world, find it easier to get out. I found this was a partly satisfactory explanation. But I imagined with the growing politicisation of Islam, it was also becoming more uncomfortable for Christians.

I asked him if he was not afraid of Hamas’ vision of, one day, creating an Islamic nation. “Not really,” he shrugged, expressing his belief that the party was committed to the democratic process and so whatever goals it achieves “will occur in the context of the democratic process”.

He contended that, much like the religious Jewish parties in Israel, Hamas may succeed in pushing through some Islamic elements but Palestinian society will remain secular because Palestinians prefer that system of government.

©Khaled Diab. Text and images.

The unseen undercurrents of the Arab-Israeli conflict

Khaled Diab
Land, history, ideology, religion - these are what most people associate with the Arab-Israeli conflict. But dive beneath the surface and a whole other barely mentioned conflict is keeping a settlement at bay.According to ancient Arab wisdom, wells are good keepers of secrets. And appropriately water is, and has been for decades, one of the hidden undercurrents driving the conflict between the Israelis and the Palestinians, as well as neighbouring Lebanon and Syria.
Why did talks with Syria break down: over the large inland lake known as the Sea of Galilee - you know, where Jesus reportedly fed the 5,000 and walked on water - into which the Jordan River flows. But no such miracles visited the ill-fated talks over the Golan Heights in 1999.
During the Oslo years, why was Israel so reluctant to cede any of its main settlement blocks in the West Bank? Partly because they sit on the Jordan River's main aquifiers.
Under the Oslo accords, four-fifths of the West Bank's water was allocated to Israel, though the aquifers that supply it are largely replenished by water falling onto Palestinian territory. Under the same deal, Palestinian were earmarked 57 cubic metres of water per person per year from all sources. Meanwhile, Israel had a fourfold allocation of 246 cubic metres per head per year. And in the four decades that Israel has controlled the West Bank, Palestinians have been largely forbidden from drilling new wells or rehabilitating old ones.
The politics of water
A study released this month found that the situation was far worse than even the lop-sided Oslo accords envisioned. Carried out by the Applied Research Institute-Jerusalem (ARIJ), it found that Israel consumes annually around 82% of the renewable water resources in the underground water aquifers of the West Bank.
"In the case of a water crisis in the Palestinian territories, the problem is not the quantity of the available water, but the priorities and policies of the state of Israel," the report claims.
The Jordan River basin - which is shared by Jordan, Israel, Palestine, Lebanon and Syria - provides 50% of the water needs of Israel and Jordan, but only 5% of Syria and Lebanon's, which is a cause of major political tension, according to ARIJ.

If the situation is not addressed honestly and equitably in the quest for peace, then it could be the cause of conflict in the decades to come, especially as climate change kicks in and makes the Middle East drier.

Ever since ancient times, tribes and nations in the region have gone to war over control of vital wells and waterways (and this is one of the causes of the current Darfur crisis). Oil may fuel conflict in the Middle East today, but 'water wars' could well be next if we are not careful.

First published on 11 April 2007

©Khaled Diab