no easy solutions and no easy conclusions
Time for my bi-annual blog posting! How times have changed - I used to have seemingly endless opportunity to transcribe my thoughts and blast them into the blogosphere, but my one and two-year olds definitely keep me busy.
Still, occasionally events take place in my life that compel me to write and such an event took place last week; the after-effects of which are still playing out in my conscious thoughts and even in my dreams.
So, before I get into that story, I need to back up a little and update you on where I'm at these days.
Firstly, I've now completed my Lamaze Certified Childbirth Educators Program (yeah!) I've finished my course, handed in my major assisgnment (designing and writing my own 15 hour teaching course), completed my student teaching and observed four babies being born at Sha'are Tzedek hospital in Jerusalem (that was a truly amazing experience and totally deserves another blog all of its own). All that's left to do now is take the international exam at the end of October - pass it (!!!) - and then I will be a fully qualified Lamaze Childbirth Educator.
I'm in the process of building my own website and promoting myself and hopefully I will be able to start teaching expectant women and their partners in the very near future.
So, the second major life change is that I also have a new job. I deliberately avoided applying for anything that a) didn't really seem like a great job and b) positions that I felt wouldn't give me flexibility as a working mother with two very young children.
This position was a maternity leave cover, full time for three months, but with a very strong chance of continued full time employment (hence why I went for it). The job is a very creative marketing position with a not-for profit organisation that produces award-winning documentaries about the international threat of radical Islam. I'll say right upfront that it is absolutely NOT an anti-Muslim organisation. Their films highlight the very real and ever-present threat of extremist religious fundamentalist muslims - the Al Qaedas, the Jihadis - people for whom their one goal in life is to wipe out democracy, freedom of religion, freedom of speech, rights for women, gays and lesbians - you name it (remember there ARE no homosexuals in Iran).
So, apart from being very interesting work that intersects so many of my interests and passions, they also happen to be the most parent-friendly organisation I have ever come across. I can leave work at 3pm every day so I can go and pick up the kids from their daycare in Modi'in.
We really looked hard to find a great daycare that we knew the kids would be loved and cared for by really professional staff. We also wanted them to be together, because they are close and I knew it would be an easier adjustment for them both if they were together. So far, so good (more or less!) Our daughter has adjusted effortlessly. She hasn't cried once! Our son is having a harder time adjusting, but we fully expected this, especially as he's two and has been at home with me almost continously since he was born. He cries a bit in the morning when I leave him, but the ganenet (kindergarten teacher) has told me that he stops crying almost immediately and doesn't cry at all during the day. (I hope she isn't saying that to make me feel better!). She also said he plays really well with the other kids, and eats and naps well too (ha! better than I could manage!) Certainly when I have come each day to pick them up, they are both very happy and playing with the other kids and seem to be very relaxed and at home there.
On their first day last week, their ganenet sent me some photos of them which I thought was a really lovely thing to do to ease a worrying mother's anxiety!
Amalia playing with her new friend
Liev playing in the garden
Still, occasionally events take place in my life that compel me to write and such an event took place last week; the after-effects of which are still playing out in my conscious thoughts and even in my dreams.
So, before I get into that story, I need to back up a little and update you on where I'm at these days.
Firstly, I've now completed my Lamaze Certified Childbirth Educators Program (yeah!) I've finished my course, handed in my major assisgnment (designing and writing my own 15 hour teaching course), completed my student teaching and observed four babies being born at Sha'are Tzedek hospital in Jerusalem (that was a truly amazing experience and totally deserves another blog all of its own). All that's left to do now is take the international exam at the end of October - pass it (!!!) - and then I will be a fully qualified Lamaze Childbirth Educator.
I'm in the process of building my own website and promoting myself and hopefully I will be able to start teaching expectant women and their partners in the very near future.
So, the second major life change is that I also have a new job. I deliberately avoided applying for anything that a) didn't really seem like a great job and b) positions that I felt wouldn't give me flexibility as a working mother with two very young children.
This position was a maternity leave cover, full time for three months, but with a very strong chance of continued full time employment (hence why I went for it). The job is a very creative marketing position with a not-for profit organisation that produces award-winning documentaries about the international threat of radical Islam. I'll say right upfront that it is absolutely NOT an anti-Muslim organisation. Their films highlight the very real and ever-present threat of extremist religious fundamentalist muslims - the Al Qaedas, the Jihadis - people for whom their one goal in life is to wipe out democracy, freedom of religion, freedom of speech, rights for women, gays and lesbians - you name it (remember there ARE no homosexuals in Iran).
So, apart from being very interesting work that intersects so many of my interests and passions, they also happen to be the most parent-friendly organisation I have ever come across. I can leave work at 3pm every day so I can go and pick up the kids from their daycare in Modi'in.
We really looked hard to find a great daycare that we knew the kids would be loved and cared for by really professional staff. We also wanted them to be together, because they are close and I knew it would be an easier adjustment for them both if they were together. So far, so good (more or less!) Our daughter has adjusted effortlessly. She hasn't cried once! Our son is having a harder time adjusting, but we fully expected this, especially as he's two and has been at home with me almost continously since he was born. He cries a bit in the morning when I leave him, but the ganenet (kindergarten teacher) has told me that he stops crying almost immediately and doesn't cry at all during the day. (I hope she isn't saying that to make me feel better!). She also said he plays really well with the other kids, and eats and naps well too (ha! better than I could manage!) Certainly when I have come each day to pick them up, they are both very happy and playing with the other kids and seem to be very relaxed and at home there.
On their first day last week, their ganenet sent me some photos of them which I thought was a really lovely thing to do to ease a worrying mother's anxiety!
Amalia playing with her new friend
Liev playing in the gardenI've rather skimmed over this major transition - but I can't express how unbelievably stressful the whole thing was for us. I basically had a week to find quality daycare for the kids (in summer this is no mean feat given most gans close for at least a week in August), work out how to get to and from work (in Jerusalem - in the Old City no less!) and be able to drop the kids off in the morning and pick them up in the afternoon (their gan is on the total opposite side of Modi'in) and in the end there was no other way to do it other than to get a car.
We're renting one at the moment, because we want to see how things go over the next few months, and at this stage a long-term position is not a definite. It's so weird to be driving every day, especially after having had a license for about 10 years and never having driven! Still, having a car is such a liberating experience! I don't think I will ever be able to go back to being a public transportation girl!!
So, back to the story I started to mention at the beginning of this blog.
So my first day at work. As you would expect I was a little stressed, a little nervous. I had a new job, I was driving in rush hour traffic for the first time, dropping Amalia off at her new day care - oh, and I forgot to mention that the night before my first day at work my son woke up in the midde of the night with a raging fever and so my husband had to stay home with him (like that's ALL we needed) and then at 3pm when I left to go home and pick up my daughter, I was stressing that I wouldn't get there in time and so I thought (stupidly I might add at this point) I would try a slightly different route home in order to bypass the worst of the inner-city Jerusalem traffic.
Big mistake. BIG BIG MISTAKE.
Somehow I got myself heinously lost. Totally and utterly disoriented. My GPS was not helping me one little bit because where I was driving was too close to East Jerusalem (i.e the Arab part of the city) and the GPS is not programmed to pick up signals from there. Who knew my GPS had a political standpoint?
Given the traffic was so heavy (and let's not forget what maniacs Israeli drivers are) I had no choice but to continue with the flow of the traffic. There was no opportunity to turn off the highway, no u-turns and no familiar signs. Before I knew it, I couldn't even READ the signs as they were all in Arabic. I realised that I was very much inside East Jerusalem now. All the while, I was looking for a way to turn around, but the chaotic traffic that surrounded me would have put me at huge risk for a massive accident and so I just continued in the only direction I could - straight ahead.
Another few minutes and I am still driving through Arab neighborhoods and more and more people are looking at me as I drove by. I'll admit I was really beginning to feel nervous. As I tried hard to maintain my focus and calm, I vaguely caught sight of a sign on the side of the road that said something about "Area A" and "Palestinian ID card holders only". What that actually means for those of you outside of Israel is that the Palestinian Authority (PA) have designated control over both security-related and civilian issues in Palestinian urban areas. It is also illegal for Israeli (Jewish) citizens to enter such areas without a permit.
Somehow I had managed to drive straight into the West Bank.
Ok, so I think it is fair to say now that I was somewhat peeing my pants by this point. The roads were now pot-holed and unsealed. Drivers were chaotic and unpredictable and I was even more nervous at this point to draw yet more attention to myself. I was hoping against hope that if I just continued straight I would finally get back on to a main road or find a checkpoint where I could ask for help.
I finally did spot a checkpoint, and in the distance I saw the Israeli flag flying. I breathed a massive sigh of relief and tried to calm myself until I got there. What was confusing my though was the fact that the cars ahead of me were moving swiftly through the checkpoint, which didn't make any sense to me. It is well known that the Israeli army search cars coming from the PA and going into Israel extremely thoroughly and there are chronic delays. I soon realised why I was moving through so quickly. I was not driving OUT of the PA, I was driving further INTO the PA! The Israeli side was on the other side and from where I was, there was no way whatsoever to get across, other than continuing straight and then attempting to find somewhere to turn around and get in the line to go out again.
Checkpoints are crazy places. Chaos rules and being a sweltering hot July day did not make things easier. Thankfully I sat in air conditioned comfort, but even with the cold air blasting me to the maximum, I was still sweating from fear. The bumper to bumber traffic snaked around a traffic circle and at this point my instinct just told me to get the hell off the road and somehow try to find my way back. At this rate, I was only a couple of kilometres from Ramallah.
I pulled the car off to the side of the road where two young men were selling fruit from a stand. I did my best impersonation of a lost tourist and asked them for help (in English naturally!) They spoke just a handful of words in English, but I think they more or less understood that I needed to get back to the other side of the checkpoint. Now, I know this sounds crazy, but again, at this point I did not have a whole lot of options, my adrenaline levels were at an all time high and all I had to go on was my basic instinct. Did I think the kid selling fruit was really a terrorist in disguise? No. Was part of me worried that he might do me harm? Yes.
Still, as I said, I was desperate and so when the young man offered to show me the way back by hopping into my car, I agreed. I should also point out that I was at most 400 metres from the checkpoint, but I was desperate not to make any more errors and so that's why I agreed to let him in my car.
He was a nice young guy and he genuinely wanted to help me. Sure, he also wanted to sell me his fake designer perfume and aftershave, but didn't hassle me when I said no. He got out, I thanked him profusely and slowly nudged my way into the now very SLOW queue of cars waiting at the checkpoint for the Israeli side.
Just when I thought I was home free, a young boy, no more than 10 or 11 years old, walked by my car and tried to sell me a bottle of soft drink. I waved at him to indicate, no thank you and looked straight ahead. Obviously, this was not the answer he was looking for and he started to pound my driver's side window with his fists. I continued to stare ahead hoping he would just go away.
He didn't and instead, he just got angrier. Before I knew what was happening, he tried to open my door and I realised that I hadn't locked my doors. I grabbed the handle and just slammed it shut and managed to locate the central locking on my car (remember, this is a new car! I didn't know where anything was!) Once the kid realised I had locked the doors, he got angrier still and continued to pound away with his fists and yelled obscenities at me in Arabic (I got the basic gist).
Suddenly, the car ahead of me rolled forward and I was able to shift up that tiny bit closer to the checkpoint and the Israeli soldiers I could now see ahead of me. The kid ran away, knowing he'd get in trouble if he got caught and I just held myself together long enough until I could roll down my window safely and yell for a solider's attention.
A young man came up to my car and immediately realised that I was not, shall we say, a local. By now, my accumulated stress boiled to the surface and released itself in an outpouring of tears. Somehow I managed to say that I had got horribly lost, that I didn't know where I was, that I was trying to get home and please could someone help me.
The soldier smiled at me, told me to take a deep breath and relax. I was okay, everything was fine and I was now back in Israel. He gave me instructions on how to get back to the main highway (In real terms I was only off course a couple of kilometres - but I might as well have been on a different planet!) Once I was waved through, I just hit the gas and got home as quickly as I could.
This little "experience" added two hours to my journey home and of course there was no way I could pick my daughter up. I was constantly on the phone with Doron and as he was home with Liev, he was able to drive and pick her up thankfully. I tried to explain to Doron what was happening to me, but it wasn't until I finally got home that I was able to explain the full extent of my experience to him and he truly understood what an emotionally fraught experience I had just endured.
To be painfully honest, I actually had a full blown panic attack when I got home. I cried uncontrollably and I could still feel the stress hormones surging through my veins.
It wasn't until the next day that I was able to relax and calm down properly and start to evaluate my experience more objectively.
The more I thought about things, the more complex it became. The more questions I had in my head and the more troublesome it became for me on so many levels.
Yes, I had a traumatic experience. Getting lost and being in a known hostile environment where my safety was genuinely at risk was a legitimate fear. Many people over the years - not just soldiers; civilians too - have been kidnapped and murdered by terrorists in the West Bank.
Was I over-reacting though? Was I allowing myself to feed off the media frenzy, both what I absorb locally, and what I read internationally? Surely not ALL those people want to kill me? Surely it is only a tiny percentage? And it's not the kid selling watermelon by the side of the road, or even the angry little kid who hated me because I wouldn't buy soda pop from him and because I was white, affluent and (probably) Jewish.
Despite the very real fear I was experiencing at the time, I couldn't help but look at my surroundings. Literally just a couple of kilometres on the other side of the Green Line and I was on a whole other planet. The roads in the PA are horrific, the conditions appalling. The poverty and degradation was palpable. Just a 20 minute drive away is the city I live in, Modi'in - the picture of modernity and middle-class comfort. You could not draw a greater contrast if you tried such is the aching gap between the way I live and the way the Palestinians live.
As thin and tenuous a line as I know it is, I am not going to get into the political mire of blame here. This is not a blog about my personal political standpoint or beliefs. It IS however, a blog about my deepest personal feelings, even the ones that make me feel very uncomfortable to verbalise.
The thing I found the most surprising about my whole experience was that after I had relaxed about it, the one person I really wanted to speak to and "debrief" as it were, was my friend Shaden who I studied with during my Lamaze course. Shaden is a great friend, a woman I have a lot in common with (our birthdays are only a day apart too!) and I respect her enormously. She is also my only Palestinian friend.
What I wanted to say to her I wasn't sure. Would I offend her? Would she think I was crazy? The best thing about our course was that politics and religion had no place in our classes. We were seven women all learning to become childbirth educators, learning how to empower women - all women - to give birth with confidence and to help improve maternity care for women everywhere.
I normally find that at the end of a blog I am able to draw some nice neat conclusions, but here I draw a blank. I don't have the answers (yet) and I am unable to say "this is right" and "this is wrong". People simply have to understand that life here in Israel is, and never will be, simple.
Whether you associate yourself with the'right' or the 'left' or somewhere in between - as far as I am concerned, no one has come up with a workable solution. The crisis that exists here is so multi-layered, so complicated, so deeply emotional that it just cannot be "fixed" - with a signed agreement brokered by whatever U.S. President happens to be in office, a security fence, a checkpoint, or even a so-called "two-state solution". To assume such tactics can solve these problems is beyond naive.
And so this is where I will leave this blog. I am sorry I can't end it more decisively, but I hope that baring my emotions has given you all some food for thought about this land that I - and many others - call home.
We're renting one at the moment, because we want to see how things go over the next few months, and at this stage a long-term position is not a definite. It's so weird to be driving every day, especially after having had a license for about 10 years and never having driven! Still, having a car is such a liberating experience! I don't think I will ever be able to go back to being a public transportation girl!!
So, back to the story I started to mention at the beginning of this blog.
So my first day at work. As you would expect I was a little stressed, a little nervous. I had a new job, I was driving in rush hour traffic for the first time, dropping Amalia off at her new day care - oh, and I forgot to mention that the night before my first day at work my son woke up in the midde of the night with a raging fever and so my husband had to stay home with him (like that's ALL we needed) and then at 3pm when I left to go home and pick up my daughter, I was stressing that I wouldn't get there in time and so I thought (stupidly I might add at this point) I would try a slightly different route home in order to bypass the worst of the inner-city Jerusalem traffic.
Big mistake. BIG BIG MISTAKE.
Somehow I got myself heinously lost. Totally and utterly disoriented. My GPS was not helping me one little bit because where I was driving was too close to East Jerusalem (i.e the Arab part of the city) and the GPS is not programmed to pick up signals from there. Who knew my GPS had a political standpoint?
Given the traffic was so heavy (and let's not forget what maniacs Israeli drivers are) I had no choice but to continue with the flow of the traffic. There was no opportunity to turn off the highway, no u-turns and no familiar signs. Before I knew it, I couldn't even READ the signs as they were all in Arabic. I realised that I was very much inside East Jerusalem now. All the while, I was looking for a way to turn around, but the chaotic traffic that surrounded me would have put me at huge risk for a massive accident and so I just continued in the only direction I could - straight ahead.
Another few minutes and I am still driving through Arab neighborhoods and more and more people are looking at me as I drove by. I'll admit I was really beginning to feel nervous. As I tried hard to maintain my focus and calm, I vaguely caught sight of a sign on the side of the road that said something about "Area A" and "Palestinian ID card holders only". What that actually means for those of you outside of Israel is that the Palestinian Authority (PA) have designated control over both security-related and civilian issues in Palestinian urban areas. It is also illegal for Israeli (Jewish) citizens to enter such areas without a permit.
Somehow I had managed to drive straight into the West Bank.
Ok, so I think it is fair to say now that I was somewhat peeing my pants by this point. The roads were now pot-holed and unsealed. Drivers were chaotic and unpredictable and I was even more nervous at this point to draw yet more attention to myself. I was hoping against hope that if I just continued straight I would finally get back on to a main road or find a checkpoint where I could ask for help.
I finally did spot a checkpoint, and in the distance I saw the Israeli flag flying. I breathed a massive sigh of relief and tried to calm myself until I got there. What was confusing my though was the fact that the cars ahead of me were moving swiftly through the checkpoint, which didn't make any sense to me. It is well known that the Israeli army search cars coming from the PA and going into Israel extremely thoroughly and there are chronic delays. I soon realised why I was moving through so quickly. I was not driving OUT of the PA, I was driving further INTO the PA! The Israeli side was on the other side and from where I was, there was no way whatsoever to get across, other than continuing straight and then attempting to find somewhere to turn around and get in the line to go out again.
Checkpoints are crazy places. Chaos rules and being a sweltering hot July day did not make things easier. Thankfully I sat in air conditioned comfort, but even with the cold air blasting me to the maximum, I was still sweating from fear. The bumper to bumber traffic snaked around a traffic circle and at this point my instinct just told me to get the hell off the road and somehow try to find my way back. At this rate, I was only a couple of kilometres from Ramallah.
I pulled the car off to the side of the road where two young men were selling fruit from a stand. I did my best impersonation of a lost tourist and asked them for help (in English naturally!) They spoke just a handful of words in English, but I think they more or less understood that I needed to get back to the other side of the checkpoint. Now, I know this sounds crazy, but again, at this point I did not have a whole lot of options, my adrenaline levels were at an all time high and all I had to go on was my basic instinct. Did I think the kid selling fruit was really a terrorist in disguise? No. Was part of me worried that he might do me harm? Yes.
Still, as I said, I was desperate and so when the young man offered to show me the way back by hopping into my car, I agreed. I should also point out that I was at most 400 metres from the checkpoint, but I was desperate not to make any more errors and so that's why I agreed to let him in my car.
He was a nice young guy and he genuinely wanted to help me. Sure, he also wanted to sell me his fake designer perfume and aftershave, but didn't hassle me when I said no. He got out, I thanked him profusely and slowly nudged my way into the now very SLOW queue of cars waiting at the checkpoint for the Israeli side.
Just when I thought I was home free, a young boy, no more than 10 or 11 years old, walked by my car and tried to sell me a bottle of soft drink. I waved at him to indicate, no thank you and looked straight ahead. Obviously, this was not the answer he was looking for and he started to pound my driver's side window with his fists. I continued to stare ahead hoping he would just go away.
He didn't and instead, he just got angrier. Before I knew what was happening, he tried to open my door and I realised that I hadn't locked my doors. I grabbed the handle and just slammed it shut and managed to locate the central locking on my car (remember, this is a new car! I didn't know where anything was!) Once the kid realised I had locked the doors, he got angrier still and continued to pound away with his fists and yelled obscenities at me in Arabic (I got the basic gist).
Suddenly, the car ahead of me rolled forward and I was able to shift up that tiny bit closer to the checkpoint and the Israeli soldiers I could now see ahead of me. The kid ran away, knowing he'd get in trouble if he got caught and I just held myself together long enough until I could roll down my window safely and yell for a solider's attention.
A young man came up to my car and immediately realised that I was not, shall we say, a local. By now, my accumulated stress boiled to the surface and released itself in an outpouring of tears. Somehow I managed to say that I had got horribly lost, that I didn't know where I was, that I was trying to get home and please could someone help me.
The soldier smiled at me, told me to take a deep breath and relax. I was okay, everything was fine and I was now back in Israel. He gave me instructions on how to get back to the main highway (In real terms I was only off course a couple of kilometres - but I might as well have been on a different planet!) Once I was waved through, I just hit the gas and got home as quickly as I could.
This little "experience" added two hours to my journey home and of course there was no way I could pick my daughter up. I was constantly on the phone with Doron and as he was home with Liev, he was able to drive and pick her up thankfully. I tried to explain to Doron what was happening to me, but it wasn't until I finally got home that I was able to explain the full extent of my experience to him and he truly understood what an emotionally fraught experience I had just endured.
To be painfully honest, I actually had a full blown panic attack when I got home. I cried uncontrollably and I could still feel the stress hormones surging through my veins.
It wasn't until the next day that I was able to relax and calm down properly and start to evaluate my experience more objectively.
The more I thought about things, the more complex it became. The more questions I had in my head and the more troublesome it became for me on so many levels.
Yes, I had a traumatic experience. Getting lost and being in a known hostile environment where my safety was genuinely at risk was a legitimate fear. Many people over the years - not just soldiers; civilians too - have been kidnapped and murdered by terrorists in the West Bank.
Was I over-reacting though? Was I allowing myself to feed off the media frenzy, both what I absorb locally, and what I read internationally? Surely not ALL those people want to kill me? Surely it is only a tiny percentage? And it's not the kid selling watermelon by the side of the road, or even the angry little kid who hated me because I wouldn't buy soda pop from him and because I was white, affluent and (probably) Jewish.
Despite the very real fear I was experiencing at the time, I couldn't help but look at my surroundings. Literally just a couple of kilometres on the other side of the Green Line and I was on a whole other planet. The roads in the PA are horrific, the conditions appalling. The poverty and degradation was palpable. Just a 20 minute drive away is the city I live in, Modi'in - the picture of modernity and middle-class comfort. You could not draw a greater contrast if you tried such is the aching gap between the way I live and the way the Palestinians live.
As thin and tenuous a line as I know it is, I am not going to get into the political mire of blame here. This is not a blog about my personal political standpoint or beliefs. It IS however, a blog about my deepest personal feelings, even the ones that make me feel very uncomfortable to verbalise.
The thing I found the most surprising about my whole experience was that after I had relaxed about it, the one person I really wanted to speak to and "debrief" as it were, was my friend Shaden who I studied with during my Lamaze course. Shaden is a great friend, a woman I have a lot in common with (our birthdays are only a day apart too!) and I respect her enormously. She is also my only Palestinian friend.
What I wanted to say to her I wasn't sure. Would I offend her? Would she think I was crazy? The best thing about our course was that politics and religion had no place in our classes. We were seven women all learning to become childbirth educators, learning how to empower women - all women - to give birth with confidence and to help improve maternity care for women everywhere.
I normally find that at the end of a blog I am able to draw some nice neat conclusions, but here I draw a blank. I don't have the answers (yet) and I am unable to say "this is right" and "this is wrong". People simply have to understand that life here in Israel is, and never will be, simple.
Whether you associate yourself with the'right' or the 'left' or somewhere in between - as far as I am concerned, no one has come up with a workable solution. The crisis that exists here is so multi-layered, so complicated, so deeply emotional that it just cannot be "fixed" - with a signed agreement brokered by whatever U.S. President happens to be in office, a security fence, a checkpoint, or even a so-called "two-state solution". To assume such tactics can solve these problems is beyond naive.
And so this is where I will leave this blog. I am sorry I can't end it more decisively, but I hope that baring my emotions has given you all some food for thought about this land that I - and many others - call home.
3:10 pm
Enjoyed reading that.
Thanks for sharing! top
6:52 pm
Been there, done that, also peed myself :) I, however, sucked it up til I could ask the soldier how to go - I would NEVER have had the guts to let the kid in my car if I was alone. And that's pretty much any young man, regardless if he was Arab or Israeli.
This is not intended to be a political response, and I hope no one takes it that way - I'm talking about perceptions. The thing we have to be careful of, when we start comparing PA territories to Israeli territories (especially Modi'in), is that we are not responsible for the PA territories. The PA is. The PA that is looking to achieve statehood in September. You also have to consider where you are. If you could have stayed in the PA territories and driven closer to Modi'in, you would have gone through a couple of very nice middle-class villages with brand-new roads (I watched one being paved just a few weeks ago across a valley). When was the last time you drove through Ramla? An Israeli city with seriously lousy roads.
We also need to be careful about lumping "all Palestinians" together. Driving through one neighbourhood is not representative of all Palestinians. So seeing poverty there does not mean all Palestinians live like that. Back to my Ramla example - if someone only ever drove through Ramla, should they believe the whole country of Israel is like Ramla? Or conversely, Modi'in? The entire country - as you know - does not live in beautiful, brand-new apartments in a quiet, green, middle-class community.
Concern and compassion is warranted, and is certainly admirable, I just think we need to be careful about why we feel that concern and compassion, and ensure it is properly directed.
That said, I'm really curious where you wound up! Based on your description, I think you wound up on Route 60, past Pisgat Ze'ev? Then you would have driven through Dahiat al'Barid and the al-Ram Refugee Camp, and wound up at the Ramallah Checkpoint. That would have scared the bejeesus out of me if I didn't know where I was! I've driven through a number of the "refugee camps" (oops, that *was* political!) that are actually quite nice cities (there's a great story about a Palestinian writer for the Jerusalem Post who was asked to take a visitor to a refugee camp. He went to one outside Ramallah, which is a normal city. The visitor demanded to be taken to a "real" refugee camp. Y'know, one with tents. No such thing here.). I do hope you blog about your conversation with Shaden, if it's appropriate. I think we all should be able to have more (any) Palestinian friends and vice versa. top
6:53 pm
Also, sorry for writing a blog post instead of just a comment :) top
1:05 am
Always so great to see you're blogging again. Can't wait for more. I can understand some of your feelings having lived on both sides when I was little, and from being Aussie. Beautiful photos, congratulations on your course. top
1:24 am
Might we hear from you again, soon? Hoping all is well. Thinking of you and your sweet little family. Love from your fans in Oz. top