Something to smile about

 

A Palestinian grocery store in a village of the Central West Bank

Blogger’s note: Please check my Flickr page for a slideshow of the West Bank.

Peace is not absence of conflict; it is the ability to handle conflict by peaceful means – Ronald Reagan

Not all things are what they seem.

I’d like you to meet Muhammad. He is an 18-year-old Palestinian born and raised in Hebron with a Bedoin background. However, he lives in three percent of the city where Jews are allowed in. The rest of Hebron belongs to the Palestinian Authority.

Before going any further, I need to explain the situation a little bit.

Any Jewish person attempting to enter the 97 percent of Hebron that is under Palestinian jurisdiction is breaking Palestinian law and can be thrown in jail or killed on the spot. Meanwhile, Palestinians are free to go roam almost the entire Jewish section of Hebron. This scenario sets up a Call of Dutyish kind of atmosphere with soldiers on rooftops and on the street walking all over the place.

Back to my story. Muhammad would like to be an engineer someday, although his father prefers that he go to med school and become a doctor. He’s got time to decide that.

He speaks fluent Hebrew, which he learned partially from his father, but mostly by conversing with the Israeli soldiers, who are stationed in front of his father’s store since it is one of the major intersections in Hebron.

Aside from opening and closing roads during certain times of the day, the soldiers stand in front of Muhammad’s father’s store during prayer to make sure that they can pray without disruption.

Speaking in his articulate Hebrew with a big smile across his face (as my friend Adrienne is translating) Muhammad explains his feelings on growing up in the Jewish part of Hebron by saying that he truly doesn’t care who his neighbors are as long as they are nice and can live in peace.

Muhammad is mature well beyond his years. Adrienne, her friend Shayna, and I entered the store and received a warm greeting and before the teenager asked us if we’d like to sit down with him and his dad for tea. As we sit down, he pours each of us a big glass of tea and tells us to help ourselves to some sugar and sweeten the taste.

After finishing our glass, he insisted on refilling them, but we told him that we have to catch the bus back to Jerusalem and pointed us in the right direction. During the bus ride, we caught an Israeli soldier playing with some Palestinian boys in their neighborhood and looked like he was having fun doing it.

As we were walking around, I wondered aloud if the soldiers ever get bored on days like today when it was quiet. My friends responded that it was better than the alternative. The more we walked around, the more I realized that most of the soldiers like to entertain themselves by talking to Palestinians and Israelis alike.

We had a pleasant surprise of our own. We asked a soldier about getting to the Chabad cemetery and Sarah’s Cave (someone important to Chabad history), which made them insist on having an armed soldier act as a body guard part way until we were in the eyesight of another group of soldiers.

We were confused on what the problem was with walking to a Jewish site in the Jewish part of Hebron and he said that it is still a Palestinian neighborhood and we risked being stoned or shot without protection. The soldier then walked us down the block and showed us some Palestinian houses where Jews have been shot in the past.

Yikes.

There were definitely a few cold looks on the way up, but we made it without a problem. When we came down, some little kid who couldn’t have been older than eight years old started waving at us, said hi, and then shouted something in Arabic.

All of a sudden, more little kids out of nowhere ran out into the street and started waving and giggling. We waved back, which caused them to wave at us again.

Sure enough, the minute we started walking away, the kids followed us part-way beaming deliriously as if they were on some serious happy pills before they went back to their yard to play.

If this is what the future looks like; Palestinians and Israelis smiling, talking to each other, and getting to know one another instead of throwing Molotov cocktails and stones, we may be a lot closer to peace than anyone ever realized.

I realize that what I saw was more anomaly than the rule. I would have had a different picture coming out if I happened to cross into the Palestinian side of Hebron and things are not even close to perfect.

But this just does more to reinforce a point I made in my column for the Daily Collegian, which is that the only thing that violence and dismissing the other side actually accomplishes is a lose-lose scenario.

It’s frustrating when you see that the Israeli Defense Forces have to restrict some roads as Palestinian or Israeli only for the sake of security. We can do better. In fact, I have seen better.

This is where my tour guide from Friday, Jamilla, comes in. Jamilla is an Israeli-Arab from Syria with three children all grown up. Her story only shows a fraction of the inner strength she possesses. 

She lived in Syria where she felt what it really meant to be a second class citizen. She decided about 20 years ago to make Alliyah after constant discrimination. However, moving out would not be so easy.

She told the government that she was going on vacation to Greece and signed a paper saying that Syria held the right to all of her property and assets until she returns. If she said she wanted to move out of Syria permanently, she would’ve been blocked from leaving the country.

She came to Greece with nothing more than $150. As soon as she got there, she found the Israeli Embassy and filed paper work to immigrate to Israel. 

Now, she is as proud to be Israeli as any other Jew. Her oldest kid is an ultra orthodox rabbi and studies at a Yeshiva while living in a settlement in the West Bank. 

She also embraces her Arab culture as well by doing volunteer work with an NGO to help Palestinians get food, medicine, and other necessities that otherwise wouldn’t be available.

Jamilla took Adrienne and me to the Central West Bank on a private tour. We assumed that since we’re being taken past the green line, we would have a very leftist agenda and have to deal with five hours of anti-Israel rhetoric.

That couldn’t be further from the truth. In fact, she is pro-Israel and supports settlements in the West Bank. Her point had less to do with who was right and who was wrong and more about the need for Palestinians and Israelis to rely on one another.

Her proof required no effort at all. In fact, it was something that I could see with my very own eyes. Whether it was a Palestinian grocery store or restaurant, we saw Israelis conversing in Hebrew.

It was a site you wouldn’t believe unless you saw it yourself. Jamilla groups the Palestinians into two categories: kosher and non-kosher.

The kosher Palestinians have permits for their houses, jobs in Israel, and their family has a perfect record in dealing with Israel. The non-kosher Palestinians, well, you can figure it out.

The first group of Palestinians plays a critical role in Israel’s economy. Most Israelis refuse to do blue-collar work such as construction.

Palestinians on the other hand are willing to take the lower-income jobs that otherwise would make it nearly impossible for infrastructure to be built in Israel. In addition, Palestinian farmers generally work the land on property that is less valuable because it’s in the West Bank than land is in Israel.

Between that and Palestinians willing to price their crops at a value that is just high enough to make a living, but not completely maximize profits, the resale value in the grocery stores and restaurants continue to be low.

When you’re an Israeli suffering from the recession, you’re generally willing to do whatever it takes to make sure you can put food on the table. Israelis buying from Palestinians is an example of cooperation on both sides and is certainly a win-win situation.

The low price of Palestinian food makes it easier for Israelis to feed their families while Palestinians benefit with increased demand from the Israeli customers.

The terrain of the Central West Bank makes it much easier to grow things in general. Jamilla took us to an almond plant where we took a bunch of the tree and ate them in the car.

The weather was perfect. It wasn’t dry like most of Israel is, but there was still a lot of sun. Everywhere we looked, we saw green or flowers. It made me miss Grandpa a little bit since I know that if he had the opportunity, Ariel and the surrounding Palestinian villages would be one of his favorite places in Israel.

It reminded me a lot of when Grandpa used to take me to the Botanic Gardens when I was little because of how nice everything looked.

If there’s any message that I took away from here, it’s that Israelis and Palestinians are stronger when they work together instead of pushing each other away. And the victories are that much sweeter when they don’t come at the other’s expense.

If there’s anything that I’ve learned this weekend, it’s that when you look for it, the dream of two people living peacefully as neighbors is available when we’re ready to put aside our differences.

Nothing exemplified this better than when I went to the Huwara checkpoint, which patrols Palestinians going in and out of Nablus, one of the most intense Palestinian cities in the West Bank.

In order to make the checkpoint go quicker, it is now computerized, which makes the soldiers job a lot easier and the waiting time that much faster. The soldiers at these checkpoints also speak Arabic and learn about how to deal with Palestinians in a way that isn’t offensive to the family.

In-between getting Palestinians back into Area C of the West Bank the soldier made time to talk to us and he seemed pretty friendly. But the moment that truly revealed his character was when a Palestinian family went through the checkpoint, he said something to the family’s little boy in Arabic.

The boy looked back and laughed at whatever it was the soldier said.

These are moments you never hear about. The media likes to portray the soldiers at these checkpoints as cruel and inhumane, but in the 10 minutes I observed and talked to these soldiers, not once did I think of them ever being anything besides kind.

I know this because I asked directly how they view the Palestinians. One soldier said that he thinks their culture is fascinating and they are usually very easy to deal with. There are only a few occasions where he actually has problems.

President Reagan’s quote at the top works applies perfectly to the issue at hand. The conflict between Israelis and Palestinians isn’t going to be solved over night, but working towards peace is one thing that doesn’t have to wait for government intervention.

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