Life in Palestine
July 3, 2003
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Jane related her experiences as an American Christian woman married to a Palestinian Christian man and their life in the Occupied Territories in Palestine.
Jane initially went to the Middle East as part of a Church of the Brethren outreach program to teach English to Palestinian women. While there, she met her husband, a Palestinian Christian who lived in Bethlehem. They married in 1990 and now have four children. Jane quickly discovered the scrutiny paid Palestinians by Israeli authorities and the distrust felt on both sides. Her students were often late to school due to searches of buses conducted by Israeli authorities. Jane noted that, after the first Intifada, the Israeli authorities closed all Palestinian schools for four years. During this time assembling to teach lessons in any environment, including private homes, was forbidden. Jane says there is a lost generation of Palestinians whose education stopped during the first Intifada.
Access to water in the Occupied Territories has "always been a problem." There is a very large subterranean aquifer beneath Bethlehem. However water is routed away from the areas inhabited by Palestinian people and sent primarily to areas of the West Bank and Gaza strip inhabited by Israelis. Jane explained that for seven months during the year water in Palestinian areas is strictly controlled by Israeli authorities. In those seven months the authorities allow water taps to flow two days then stop the flow for the next two weeks. During the two day access periods Palestinians fill every cup, bucket, tub or jug that they own with water. The collected water must last two weeks until the taps are turned on again. Jane noted there was never enough water to meet her family's needs for drinking, cooking, housekeeping and bathing. While water is strictly rationed for Palestinians, no such water rationing seems to be in place in Jewish settlement areas where individuals are able to water lawns, fill swimming pools and wash cars.
Travel and communication within Palestine are difficult and time consuming. Israeli authorities have closed many roads to travel by Palestinians. In addition checkpoints between Bethlehem and Jerusalem force Palestinians to take circuitous routes to travel what should be short distances between cities and villages. Curfews complicate travel. In occupied areas Palestinians must apply to Israeli authorities to own and use telephones. The general assumption is all telephones are tapped and some who receive approval to use telephones are Israeli snitches.
Jane explained that the Israeli government has strict guidelines regarding how close a Jewish settlement's borders can be to Palestinian property. If a settlement expands and spreads too close (there must be a prescribed security buffer) to a pre-existing Palestinian farm or village, the Israeli military is instructed to evict the Palestinians and raze the buildings if necessary. It does not matter how long the property has been owned by Palestinians, sometimes for many generations. Jane said Palestinians can appeal these judgments. But the appeals are heard in Israeli courts where decisions rarely go in favor of the Palestinian landowner.
Jane lived in the neighborhood where the Church of the Nativity is located. She related events that occurred during the siege of the church. She described military tanks going through her family's back yard and the terror she and her children felt during the siege. Tanks and Israeli soldiers are a common presence in Bethlehem. Even so Jane returned to the United States with her children because the situation had become too dangerous to risk staying there. Jane's daughter had begun to sleepwalk. The little girl wandered out of the house after dark (curfew) and could have been killed on sight by the Israeli military. All her children were beginning to manifest signs in their play that the civil discord was having a negative effect on them. Jane's husband, a Christian peace worker, is still in the region. Jane believes that her husband can leave if he wishes, but once outside Palestine, would never be allowed to return by the Israeli authorities. Palestine is his ancestral home.
Jane noted that the humilities imposed upon the Palestinians by Israeli authorities make Palestinians feel like cattle. Jane was dehumanized by the treatment she received and was powerless to stop it. The feelings associated with lack of civil rights were alien to her as an educated, white, middle class woman raised in the United States.
A chapter member asked Jane if the irony of segregating Palestinians and treating them the way Nazis treated European Jews was lost on Israeli citizens. Jane said "many of the older generation of Israelis are horrified by what is going on" because they remember the fear, loss, subjugation and brutality they and others suffered in Europe during the 1930's and 1940's. Unfortunately, Jane noted, many of these people are no longer active and are disappearing because they are quite old.
When asked if there is a solution to the conflict in Palestine, Jane emphatically said "yes". She suggested that a Palestinian state should be established whose borders are the pre-1967 borders. She also suggested that the Jewish settlements within Palestine's pre-1967 borders be given to Palestinian refugees currently in exile. The opportunity to return to Palestine is paramount to the exiles and will contribute to a long-lasting peace between Israel and Palestine.
Jane recommends that Greens read Toward a Jewish Liberation Theology by Marc H. Ellis and Israel/Palestine: How to end the war of 1948 by Tanya Reinhart.
Rebecca Torstrick, PhD, professor of anthropology at IUSB, attended Jane's talk to the Greens and confirmed the accuracy of Jane's account of life and events in Palestine. Torstrick does field research in Israel and Palestine periodically and has written a book about Palestine, The Limits of Coexistence: Identity Politics in Israel.
St. Joe Valley Greens, South Bend, IN