Report Two: Yesterday we danced*

*Since first arriving on March 7, the delegation has seen the Wall in Jerusalem; toured refugee camps near Bethlehem and spoken with Holy Land Trust. The delegates have; met with Women in Black and Machsom Watch in Jerusalem; and traveled to Ramallah and Birzeit. 

Unfortunately, due to computer problems, several reports from their first week of travel could not be sent back the U.S.

The delegates checked  back in on Monday, March 14.

March 14, 2005

We drove north along the Mediterranean, past Tel Aviv, Netanya, and Haifa, to the ancient city of Acre (Acco in Hebrew, Akka in Arabic), on north Haifa bay.  There, in an old stone building that may have been part of crusader ruin, Khalid Abu Ali led us in theater games. For some of us this was a new experience, but we were willing to play along, hoping to release and process some of what we were feeling after a week of learning about this complicated place called Israel and Palestine. 

To the beat of Khalid’s darbookah, we cried, screamed and laughed. But mostly we danced.

We danced for the young Palestinian man at Dheisha refugee camp outside of Bethlehem, who kicked at a muddy puddle he called their “swimming pool.”  We danced for Rami, whose grief over his 14-year old daughter, killed in a bombing on Ben Yehuda Street, drove him to join the Bereaved Parents Circle – a group of Palestinians and Israelis who have lost family members to the violence.  This is the only club in the world that hopes – and works –never to have any new members.

We danced for the once-exiled Palestinian politician Abdel Jawad Saleh, who read us his poem about his dead son.  We danced for the Palestinian women who hiked up their skirts and were helped over an old iron gate to get to their village of Abu Dis – a village almost completely blocked by a 20 foot concrete wall, a section of the Wall Israel is building on Palestinian land inside the West Bank.  We danced for Leah, the Israeli woman living in the settlement of Ma’ale Adunim, who works at creating a delicate balance in her life by helping her Palestinian neighbors pick olives under the threatening presence of more militant settlers.

We danced for Mohammed Abu El-Haija, who earlier that day had welcomed us into his home in ‘new’ Ein Hod, a small Palestinian village in the hills east of Haifa.

Two Ein Hods – one Israeli; one Palestinian

To get to his home, we’d started our day as many tourists do, with a visit to the Israeli village of ‘old’ Ein Hod. We wandered its manicured and processed streets, looking for signs of life, encountering only large sculptures and glimpses of gardens.  We admired the well-tended stone walls and houses.  New windows had been fitted into the odd openings of the houses.  New doors, with new locks.  On one of these ancient walls, a Magen David, a star of David, had been sculpted into a jagged transom. It was early in the day, and not a weekend, so we had the place to ourselves.  Most of the galleries in this Israeli artists’ colony were closed, but one was open and we wandered in.

Rabbi Lynn greeted the proprietors, two sisters in their seventies, who, noticing her kaffiyeh scarf, immediately launched into an explanation of how they came to be in this village.  Their father was settled here by the government in 1951, they said.  He was a painter and other artists soon followed.  Lynn asked about the Palestinians who had originally lived in this village, and who now live half a mile away in the village of ‘new’ Ein Hod.

  “Oh, they are not from here.  They came here afterwards, from the West Bank,“ one sister said.

We leave this colony, this Israeli artists’ colony, and travel a paved road past a large Kibbutz, with hundreds of cows standing under a metal shelter, with plenty of room, water and even fans to cool them down. 

Our bus now begins the climb to the other Ein Hod, and after we pass the Kibbutz the road quality immediately deteriorates.  It is narrow, unpaved, twisting its way past rocks sprouting wildflowers.  Tree branches brush the windows. But Hadder, our driver, is a master driver and we are not really worried.  At the top of the hill, we get off the bus and are ushered quickly into a small parlor/office.

Mohammed Abu El-Haija greets us wearily, and almost immediately starts a video.  It is called “Not on Any Map,” and he hopes, it seems, to avoid having to tell his story once again, to yet another delegation.

The film tells the history of these two Ein Hods – the old and new.  ‘New’ Ein Hod, the Palestinian village where we now are, once was no more than space in the hilltops where, until 1948, the shepherds of Ein Hod would bring their goats and sheep to graze.  Before 1948, ‘old’ Ein Hod – now the Israeli artists’ colony – was a Palestinian village.  When the war broke out, the Palestinian villagers fled to these hills, expecting to return to their stone homes and terraced gardens in a few days or weeks when things calmed down.

They have never been able to return.  Although their present village is less than a mile from their original houses, Israeli law declared them “present absentees,”  a status which gave them Israeli citizenship, but stripped them of land ownership rights, even if they had left their homes and villages for just a few days.

So Mohammed’s family and their neighbors – all citizens of Israel – made a new life in the hills.  Here they built houses, tended their animals, grew vegetables. Yet, to Israel, they did not exist.  No services were provided. No electricity.  No water, although the nearby Kibbutz did share its water with the new village. Ein Hod received no phone or mail service. No schools.  The villagers’ names were not on any election roster. Though larger than the Israeli artists’ colony of Ein Hod below, their village was not on any map.  It still isn’t. Unrecognized in any official way, the Israeli authorities still kept close tabs on the village.  They weren’t allowed to build a school, so they ran a kindergarten indoors, and didn’t let the children out to play.

In 1978, Mohammed’s village began asking for services from the government.  But for one reason, and then another, their requests were denied. 

Mohammed was born in the new Ein Hod.  He went to university, and there he learned that Palestinian citizens of Israel are equal citizens.   But back home at the village, nothing changed.

“Slowly, we began to understand it’s not so easy, and I am not so equal. But I didn’t want to believe it.  It took a long time to convince me that I was not equal,” Mohammed tells us after the video ends.

In the 1980s, an Israeli report identified thousands of Palestinian homes that had been built without permits, and thus were illegal.  To get building permits, a village needed to have a “master plan.” So Ein Hod drew up such a plan, but it was not accepted because the village is not recognized.  And so it went.

After 26 years of lobbying, a master plan was finally drawn up for Ein Hod by the Israeli government in 2004.  Because the villagers felt they had to start somewhere, they accepted the plan, Mohammed says, even though it it was the worst plan you could imagine.  There were less than ten acres designated for housing, an area that is less than that which the village houses currently cover. Another five acres is designated a military zone, and the final five acres for roads.   More than fifty years after relocating to this site, they finally have water and trash collection.  But still no electricity. 

“I came from the moon?” he says.

He pauses.

“Never mind,” he says. “I don’t know where the Israelis come from.”

He pauses.  We listen, not breathing, not scribbling our notes.

“They are living in our houses.  We don’t want the  houses back.  They stole it.  They should just shut up. I can’t imagine how she can look in my eyes and say that.”

 Mohammed tells us that his Kurdish ancestors came with Salhadin 900 years ago to fight the crusaders.  Ein Hod was one of five Kurdish villages in Palestine.

When he finishes speaking, we go upstairs where we are fed a fabulous meal. Above us, on the wall, is a photo of Mohammed’s grandfather.  We board the bus, drive down the windy road again, and head north to Acre, to dance.

-- Lynn Pollack, for the Delegation

©2004 Fellowship of Reconciliation