Alexandra Hartmann is a participant in an Interfaith Peace-Builders delegation to Israel and Palestine that is being co-led by Anna Baltzer and Adam Horowitz.
As we drove into Bethlehem from the West Bank, the Israeli separation wall did not loom over our tour bus as much as it sat squat and unchanging in front of us; not so much a shouting declaration of its presence as a constant reminder. As I stood at the base of the wall, I was not moved; I was not in awe. I have been in this country for five days and the occupation already feels like an unflinching reality. What did put a flicker of feeling in my heart was the art, writing, and graffiti painted on the wall by the Palestinians—the words and colors layers deep and overlapping up to varying heights along the six-meter tall cement slab of canvas.
It’s not how I expected to feel about the wall and not how I expected to feel in the occupied regions of Palestine. I didn’t feel defiant or resistant. I didn’t feel a want to beat the wall or tear it down with my bare hands. I felt the need to examine it and look at it and read it and listen to it. The wall itself has a complicated story with many hands and actors, which is separate from and bigger than my story about the wall. Now that I have seen it—touched it—now that members of our delegation have written on it in bright pink paint, we are part of its story. But still, what I’ve contributed is a tiny moment in the wall’s unfurling story and seems minuscule compared to the role it plays in my story of my time within the West Bank.
Similarly to how our drive within the gates of the Israeli settlement of Ma’ale Adumim felt different from our time in East Jerusalem, being within the wall and then, further, within the Dheisheh refugee camp felt truly different than sitting in classrooms or coffee shops, talking about the conflict and the plight of the people. Whereas the settlement felt cushioned from the conflict, the camp felt seeped and heavy with it in a way that is hard to describe. Walls are meant to separate, just the same as iron gates, just the same as elective fences. And not only did it seem like our friends in Dheisheh were far separated from the heady academic talks of border agreements and mass amounts of paper-pushing happening in offices in Jerusalem, but they seemed very much trapped within a cage made for them by the wall. One young man told us how he and his friends would drive around the perimeter of the town for entertainment, which takes a mere ten minutes.
Still the people in Dheisheh are warm and resilient. We stayed at the Phoenix Center, an organization started to address growing needs of the camp through service, cultural, and educational programs and so named because of its on-going reconstruction due to multiple demolition orders issued by the Israeli government. The center receives many international volunteers and so as we toured the winding, graffiti-covered streets of the camp, children approached us happily. often offering us greetings in English and colloquial Arabic. Our guide, Aysar, led us through the neighborhood, stopping to tell us about the artwork on the walls and to explain how the Israeli army would do nightly raids in the neighborhood, just to train their troops. He talked of many hardships, but he had such a natural ease about him as he paused his talks to light a cigarette then continued, sauntering through the streets, greeting friends along the way. In fact, as we walked through the camp, I was put quite at ease. In appearance, it was not unlike areas in Morocco, Malawi, or Guatemala where I have traveled before and the projects of the Phoenix Center reminded me of NGO work around the globe. Some people insist that the Palestinian conflict is not unique. In many ways they are right; history repeats itself. But the fact that finding a bittersweet familiarity in poverty and struggle makes one more comfortable amongst their manifestations—as I felt walking through the camp—is a sick phenomenon that needs addressing.
I felt these waves of familiarity throughout the day as Naji, the director of the Phoenix Center, and his wife shared their stories. I felt them still as Aysar and his friend Ahmad smoked with us on the roof of the center after dinner and then led us through the now-unlit streets to another cultural center in the camp to smoke hookah. As we sat around a small table in a dining area on the top floor, passing the hookah pipe and listening to Ahmad play al-‘ud, I felt that I could be anywhere in the world at that moment and that I was truly among friends. I let the sweet smoke and warm summer breeze brush my face and felt an intense calm.
Then the song changed. “We often traveled and played concerts with another friend. One day we were crossing through the checkpoint back into the West Bank and he was shot and killed. We wrote this song for him.”
Ahmad plucked the strings of his instrument with purpose, his back curved so that his cheek could rest wearily on the smooth curve of its body. A cigarette dangled from his lips and his friends gently took it from him when the ash accumulated, replacing it after taking a drag from it themselves. I stared out the window as one of the two large, bright nearby rooftop lights meant to illuminate the pathways of the camp flickered and waned against the dark of the night.
Palestine is like no other place on earth; the Palestinians like no other people.
