No Borders, No Nations
At the end of a demonstration at the Rachel's Tomb Checkpoint, kids scrambled up on a pile of sand and rocks by the Separation Wall and began writing slogans in Arabic. Their leaders were calling, "Get down, get down! Yalla, yalla!" but the kids weren't in any hurry to leave, "Qalam, Qalam!" they called for more pens. Soldiers approached and told the kids to get down and some of the US Christians (who had been holding a sign that said, “American Christians for Palestinian Justice”) started asking the soldiers why they would want to hurt the children. As everybody herded the children back to the Bethlehem side of the Wall, one International, a middle-aged man with the remains of a Mohawk wearing a leather jacket over a tough-looking tee-shirt with German writing wrote the slogan that is the title of this e-mail. It went, "No Boarders/ No Nations/ F*** Occupations." Some cried "A poet!" while the same people who had been deriding the soldiers ejaculated, "No profanity!" As much as I saw the Christian ejaculators as up-tight, self-righteous, and silly, I had to agree with them on this point. The profanity just wasn't cool.
I felt ashamed that the only graffiti written in English on the Wall was a profane
poem. From the Arabic I can read, the Palestinian kids were writing slogans like, "The Wall must fall!" and "Palestine." As much as I agree with the anarchist statement of the first two lines, I don't like to use the F-word in political situations because profanity immediately discredits ideas.
The demonstration was supposedly a march in Jesus' footsteps. Palm Sunday marks Jesus' triumphal entrance into Jerusalem where the Jerusalemites welcomed Him with palm branches, the same Jerusalemites that would soon change their welcome for vigilantism and call for his crucifixion. It is a feast that celebrates Jesus’ triumphal entrance into Jerusalem but it is also a feast to remember fickleness of human nature.
Anyway, the march's purpose was to protest the Occupation but moreover the fact that Palestinian residents of the West Bank do not have access rights to Jerusalem; if they want to go to the holy city they have to get permission from the Israeli Army. This permission is often withheld and if it is granted it is only after a long and tedious process. The organizers planned that they would march from the Church of the Nativity to Jerusalem bearing palm branches and riding on donkeys.
I had done my weekly pilgrimage to Jerusalem that Sunday morning and attended the Palm Sunday service at St. George's Cathedral. That morning the checkpoint was so empty of Palestinians that I had to call a soldier over to see my passport. I could have just passed through but I didn't like the idea of the soldiers noticing that I had gone through without screening. It was a good thing too, because the soldier that came mistook me for a Palestinian. He began asking me questions in Arabic. I understood him but I refuse to speak Arabic with soldiers. He had to call another soldier over to talk to me because he didn't speak English. When soldiers are talkative the dialogue usually goes something like this.
The soldier takes the passport, looks at it, looks at my visa. "Where are you from?"
I have answered Bethlehem, California, and the United States so far.
The next question is, "Where are you going?"
"Jerusalem."
Then sometimes he or she asks, "What is your name?"
Then the soldier gives the passport another glance and hands it back to me. Once a girl soldier said, "Thank you," to me but the way she said it seemed much more like, "Go jump in a lake." Working at a checkpoint must be no fun. About half the time the soldiers aren't talkative and wave my blue passport away when I hold it out for them.
On the way back from Jerusalem there were many Palestinians coming out of the checkpoint on their way to Jerusalem. Most of them wore conspicuous cross necklaces. I had been told that for Holy Week (the week from Palm Sunday to Easter Sunday) the Army grants Palestinian Christians permits to go to Jerusalem without as much hassle as usual. About halfway between the checkpoint and the Separation Wall there was a clutch of photojournalists waiting under the shade. I approached a few and asked them if the demonstration had passed. "Are you a journalist?" one asked me. I was flattered.
The demonstration hadn't come by yet.
I put calories into myself (falafel) and then walked on to find the demonstration.
I didn't have to walk long; they rounded the corner just before I did. There was a man on a truck with a loudspeaker shouting slogans and about 150 people. As they rounded the corner, the man stopped the slogans and turned on music. The mood was happy, there were many signs, palm branches, olive branches, the "PACE" rainbow flag and many kuffiyyas (the traditional black and white or red and white Arab scarf that has become a Palestinian symbol). I pounced into action along with the rest of the photojournalists, or rather, I ran ahead of the parade and crouched. We passed through the Wall to the shouts of, "Down with the Wall!" however, when we reached the checkpoint the group stopped. There were a few soldiers and they were moving their hands back and forth like windshield wipers. “No, no.” One Palestinian and a soldier started talking but before three words passed between six cameras swooped down on them. There were at least twenty photojournalists and three groups with video cameras. There was a big cluster of demonstrators, soldiers, and photojournalists the leader of the group was talking to who I think was the commander; he was the most heavily armed man I have ever seen. I had seen him before at the checkpoint. When you bundle up a child to go outside in freezing temperatures she often is so well-insulated that she cannot walk properly anymore; this soldier was like that with weapons. When he walked you could tell that he put a lot of effort into making it look natural. At least ten photojournalists were around this interaction and I decided not to even try to penetrate it.
Instead, I took photographs of everybody around, of the soldiers, the demonstrators, the older women lecturing the soldiers, the girl soldier who was saying "No, I don't want to talk, I don't want to talk," I climbed up on blocks and tried to get the whole jumble of soldiers, Internationals, Palestinians, and photojournalists into one frame. Impossible.
Soon more soldiers arrived, parked their jeeps in front of the demonstration and along with the demonstrators, formed a phalanx of linked arms to block the road. I'm not sure whether the soldiers or the demonstrators formed the phalanx first. They both seemed to grow at the same time. The soldiers did not let any demonstrators cross their line but I was placed on the journalist side thanks to my SLR. I tried to fit the picture of photojournalist and not chant along with the demonstrators, however, sometimes, "Hurriya, Hurriya!" (Freedom! Freedom!) escaped my lips and I couldn't help myself from singing along with "We Shall Overcome." I tried to stop myself at first but then saw that the soldiers could care less about what I was singing.
After a while, a murmur began going around that the soldiers would use violence if we did not disperse in ten minutes. However, because of the heavy presence of journalists and the calmness of the Palestinian demonstrators I wasn't that afraid. Whenever there were even a few words between a Palestinian and a soldier at least three cameras came immediately. When the news of the soldiers' threat of violence got around, a decision was made to sit down and everybody sat down and the Internationals began singing "We Shall Overcome." After a while the Palestinians sang "Mountinee" which is a song about how beautiful one's homeland is. It is the unofficial Palestinian national anthem. A Palestinian read a statement in English to the soldiers about how they should look into their hearts and think about the policies they were enforcing, then they sat some more, and then dispersed.
Many of the soldiers couldn't keep a straight face while in the phalanx. When I participated in anti-war demonstrations two years ago the San Francisco police was the most stony human wall I have ever encountered. You could say anything to them and they wouldn't move. I had been at a demonstration where one girl made a game out of picking out a policeman or woman and taunting him or her until he or she made some sort of reaction. It was very hard to do. If she got any reaction at all it took at least ten minutes of non-stop personal sexual teasing. With these soldiers, they might even say something to you if you said something to them. A few looked like they were suppressing laughter. One had sunglasses on and was gazing over the crowd like a contented rooster. These young people hadn't been through the same training that the SFPD had.
There was one peace activist I overheard complaining about the fact that the demonstration had stopped at the checkpoint. She maintained that we could have gone to Jerusalem if we hadn't stopped. One German woman I know who is an Ecumenical Accompanier was disappointed that there weren't more people. Most of the Palestinians who wanted to go to Jerusalem for Palm Sunday had gone to the DCO and gotten permits.
Jerusalem is a big issue for Palestinians. When I was preparing the high school girls for the live video conference with Dutch teenagers almost all of the girls' dreams included being able to go to Jerusalem and pray at Al-Aqsa. Faiza, a woman from the Arab Educational Institute (AEI) asked me why birds weren't allowed to fly in their own land but foreign birds could and were welcomed into Jerusalem. It was a rhetorical question. In almost every Muslim shop or home there is a picture or replica of the Dome of the Rock.
Last night, my youngest host sister, Fairouz, asked me what I thought should be done with Jerusalem. "Say whatever you think, it's ok," she told me. I told her I thought it should be divided. (Seriously, I don't know what should be done with Jerusalem; I would like it to be an international city, the capital of one democratic state of Israel/Palestine or the capital of two states but I am for any solution whose goal is the security and dignity the people of this land.) Fairouz, my sister, disagreed with me. "It's just for the Arabs," she told me. "God wants us to have it."
On Sunday afternoon, after the demonstration, I took two American friends to my house and then we went to our old house which had been dynamited last November. My Palestinian uncle Aziz took a piece of bread and broke it into two pieces. "Before," he said, "we wanted all of Palestine. Now we have come to accept this. You take one part and we'll take the other."
Although I see this solution as a feasible one, I can't help but imagine along with John Lennon that there are no countries or at least no nations where race or nationality matter; yes, that is my dream, a world where your roots don't dictate how you will be treated.
Love,
Larisa
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