I'm still alive!

The past week as been crazy! And I'm sure many of you are wondering what the hell happened to me. It should come as a surprise that I have not been killed yet. No, no, not because of anything about Syria and the Golan Heights that you have heard about on Fox & CNN. There is a much bigger threat to my life here in Palestine- Palestinians are INSANE drivers. Literally insane. I am surprised that I have only seen one minor accident since I have been here.

I have to go ship some of my "questionable" things home- aka journals and arabic book and all PSE handouts- so I do not have a lot of time to be on the computer. Don't worry- when I get home I will be sure to put up posts about my last week in Palestine I just don't have time while I am here.

Wish me luck getting through security on Wednesday morning!!!!

View from the "other" side of the wall

As I mentioned earlier, Thursday we went to a settlement (town, neighborhood, whatever you like to call it) ad heard from a settler, Ardi, about his experience. Ardi grew up in as a secular Jew in Chicago. Ever since exploring his Jewish heritage and faith, Ardi has been very religious and classifies himself as a Modern Orthodox Jew. His explanation of what it means to be Modern Orthodox: adhering to Jewish law and living in the modern world with modern problems. We started our tour of Efrat in the Synagogue, which was a great place to learn a little more about the Jewish faith and ease the tension a little bit. Ardi is known to be confrontational and knowing this going in we were all a little on edge and uptight about hearing such a radically different opinion from a strong headed person. After sitting in the "un-air-conditioned-but-not-at-all-hot" Synagogue for 20 mins we relocated to Ardi's backyard Which had a GORGEOUS view of the mountain side- not obstructed by roads, buildings, or homes like the view of the Settlement from my house in Bethlehem.

SO here we were sitting in his backyard asking him questions about life in Efrat, his views on Palestinians, the wall, etc. And the way he took on some of our questions was very... abrasive.  It wasn't like having a dialouge or intelligent conversation- he took almost every question we asked and turned it around in a way so that he could give the answer (or non-answer) that he wanted. It was deffinitely an experience that I appreciate. Admitedly the only opinions I have heard about the conflict are more pro-Palestinian or rather, pro-peace, so it was deffinitely enlihgtening to hear the logic of someone who was willing to accept an "extreme evil [the Wall and Israeli policies against Palestinians] for an extremly necessary cause [protecting the Israeli population from Palestinian terrorists.]" There are lots of ways I could depact the various claims made in that statement but I don't want to waste time doing that on this post. (I am also running out of time to be on the computer... motif of my time in Bethlehem!)

Check this out!

Sami Awad is the Executive Director of Holy Land Trust, the non-profit that organizes the PSE program (along with many other programs) on the ground here in Bethlehem. The title of this article is "WWJD? A Non-Violent Conflict Resolution for Palestine." If that isn't descriptive enough the article goes into the details of the beginings of Holy Land Trust and Sami Awad's perpective as a Palestinian Christian.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/sami-awad/love-your-enemy-really_b_868194.html?ref=fb&src=sp#sb=1735470,b=facebook

Non-violence and Palestine

Yesterday we were given part 1of non-violence training. (Part 2 is next week). Our discussion focused on the definition of conflict and the different ways of dealing with conflicts, which are Force, Collaboration, Compromise, Accommodation and Avoidance. Each way has different implications for your personal goals or interest in the conflict and the relationship between the conflicting parties.
Force- you ruin the relationship but achieve your goals.
Collaboration- you achieve your goals and have a healthy relationship
Compromise- you half way achieve your goals and keep an OK relationship
Accommodation- you don't achieve your goals but you have a healthy relationship
Avoidance- you don't achieve your goals and don't have a relationship
Obviously there is a range of outcomes between these five main methods but these are the most clear and concise. The second have of the training dealt with the definition of violence and what it means to be violent. This was the difficult part of the training. Everyone in the PSE program comes from extremely diverse backgrounds- not necessary (or, rather, at all racially) but culturally and educationally. So as a group it was hard to agree on certain things or understand why someone was explaining something in a certain way- which was admittedly frustrating and time consuming when it didn't necessarily have to be. Overall though the activities and conversations that we had really made us struggle with violence and what is considered under the category of violence.

In the next session in your non-violence training we will be focused more specifically on non-violent action. It is really interesting to see the implementation of nonviolence in Palestine. As a method of protest nonviolence has been used in Palestine by Palestinians since the 1880's when the Ottoman Empire was tempted to give Palestine to the Zionists. Because of Palestinian nonviolent protests, this did not happen (it was at this point that the Zionists started to work on the British and they the Balfour Declaration came so on and so forth). So the roots of nonviolence go very deep in Palestinian society. There are protests every Friday here in Bethlehem and even though I have not been to one, I have heard that they are a real collaboration of Israelis, Palestinians and Internationals that say what they have to say but never use violence. There are of course other examples of nonviolence- boycotts of Israeli goods, some would say that the Palestinian community is an example in itself of nonviolent resistance.

(I'm running out of time with my hour at the internet cafe but I will try to write another post on Friday).

Ya Salaam