Another incredible day. The furthest south we got was an overview over Northern Gaza. We were that close we could hear the Call to Prayer and see the surveillance hot air balloon. We could hear gunshots and then our guide reassured us that there was a shooting range in the vicinity (no danger to us).
We entered Beer Sheva on Route 60 through many Israeli settlements. It was at the checkpoint on the way out of the West Bank that our bus got stopped for the first time. We all had to show our passports and documents. Our driver, Mustafa, who is Aziz (our guide’s brother), had to get off the bus with his bag and take it to be x-rayed. He doesn’t have anything on his record. It was very uncomfortable for me and I think especially some of the other Jews on the bus. Some people wanted to find a reason to justify why they would do it. I think even if there is a security reason to justify it doesn’t change the humiliation experienced by Mustafa. And this wasn’t even really such a ‘big deal’. But he said he wouldn’t go through this checkpoint again. We also realised that this checkpoint was run by contractors, and not the army, and that may explain the added interferences compared to the many other checkpoints we have passed through so far on the trip.
We met Noam Tirosh at Ben Gurion University. He volunteers for an organisation called Negev Coexistence Forum www.dukium.org/ which advocates for citizens rights in the area especially the Bedouin of the Unrecognised Villages. These people, recognised by the UN as Indigenous people, and were moved by the government in to a specified area in the early 1950’s. They were either put in larger towns or stayed in the smaller village which remained unrecognised and this didn’t receive any services. The people still paid and pay taxes and receive health and social benefits but they don’t receive the usual municipal services of waste and water (other than drinking water). They’re not allowed to be involved in agriculture and build greenhouses. The lack was stark because we were in view of the Jewish community opposite which had developed agriculture and had greenhouses. Someone from our group asked if it was because the land they’re on is on top of minerals or oil. Our host responded that it was because both peoples care a lot about the land. We had lunch in the village. Our guides have made a conscious decision about spending our money in places where we can support the economy. Many Bedouin women are now attending university. Often the burka for them is a symbol of their freedom in the world because they use it to be able to fully partake in life outside of the community. With their growing integration in to society there has been a parallel move to more intensified Islamic practice. They consider themselves part of the state of Israel, and at the same time identify with the Palestinian struggle. But our host said, ‘I don’t want a state, I just want water’. They would be happy to have their villages recognised and receive the usual municipal services. Noam surmised that because of the conflict it is hard for Israeli Jews to fully acknowledge the plight of the Bedouin and be involved in social action to promote change.
We then visited Sapir College, in Sderot, a tertiary college where every room is now reinforced like a shelter to be protected from the katyusha rockets that were coming from Gaza. We met with Merav Moshe Grodonsky who is a peace activist and academic there. She is advocating for the difference that it makes for Israelis and Palestinians to meet each other. She described the experience of a Jewish woman who was forcibly relocated from a settlement in Gaza and currently living in a caravan near Sderot. She said that every day her daughter asks her when they are going to return home. She asked a Palestinian in the dialogue group how she should respond. He said, “You know, I really understand your daughter, she misses the smell of the sea, her feet in the sand, feeling of home”. It is the most powerful connection when we recognise the human sentiments of the other across borders and ideologies. Merav brings the Bereaved Families Forum- Parents Circle in to her classes. One Jewish woman from Hebron asked her why she was doing it. In the end this same woman wrote the final paper on human rights for settlers and Palestinians. Merav has also developed a Peace Dialogue Group for Jews with a wide spectrum of ideologies to meet and discuss their visions and hopes for the future. Sapir College, through Merav, is partners with the McGill Middle East Program in Civil Society and Peacebuilding. This exciting project involves the development of ten rights based, community based centres with the operating assumption that in order to create peace you need to reduce inequality in society. Communities are not usually able to access their rights. It is a very long process. People start off with a sense of disentitlement and then move to being able to use the political system to change laws. She described how the program was responsible for the establishment of public housing law in Israel. Residents learnt to demonstrate, speak to the media, invite the Minister to their homes, lobby in Knesset and eventually be part of the coalition that successfully passed a law in the Knesset (Israeli Parliament). There are no steps taken without the community being an integral part of the process. They are training people about the skills of citizenship in a more universal language than that of kinship. They are not going to be coordinating on a regional level to advocate for social and economic rights where there are overlaps and interconnections across the region. She described how she has been slowly and strategically introducing her peacebuilding agenda to the college and acknowledged the support of the College leadership.
Eric Yellin took us to the place where we could see Northern Gaza. He has lived in Sderot for about 8 years. He is involved in Other Voices www.othervoice.org/info/eng/about-us.htm, an amazing organisation that tries to create dialogue between Jews of Sderot and Palestinians of Gaza amid a crazy reality. They are building a human connection to the other side of the border. Eric said that the only way to bring change is to create human connection. They don’t trust leaders to do it. And leaders certainly can’t do it alone. He said that Gaza is like the symbol of hell and that Israelis and very fearful of Gazans but that as neighbours they need to find a way to live together. They communicate through phone and facebook and through Operation Cast Lead through SMS. He acknowledged the courage of the Palestinians involved in the dialogue who because of internal politics can’t really have contact with Israelis. Sometimes the Gazans say they need to take a break from contact when they feel they are under surveillance or suspicion. There is 80% unemployment in Gaza. They have run seminars where Gazans have come in to Israeli with permits. It is a sensitive issue for Palestinians for work with Israelis because they get accused of ‘normalisation’ which means that they are accused of somehow accepting the occupation and the current status quo. The Palestinians involved don’t see it that way. They see dialogue as one part of a strategy out of the current situation.
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