In Bethlehem

 In all the focus on Gaza we did not want to bother telling readers what is going on in West Bank nor at our museum of natural history. To rectify this, below are some thoughts from me, some photos of our vigil in front of the Church of Nativity and then reflections from Johnnie, one of our museum/garden volunteers which give you a good overview of what is happening here. 

Israel was given US greenlight to not only to assault and massacre Gaza's 2.3 million civilian population but also imprison and torture nearly 3 million Palestinians in some 10 concentration camps in the West Bank (where I am in Bethlehem is one of them). Here is just two examples: https://twitter.com/Issaamro/status/1719332892608753828 

https://forward.com/opinion/567856/bilal-muhammad-saleh-palestinian-farmer-murder-israeli-settler-donkey/

Israeli incursions into Bethlehem, the birthplace of Jesus are happening daily. Bethlehem concentration camp/ghetto, like other ghettos in the West Bank was sealed so we cannot travel freely. When we are out we meet marauding armed Jewish settlers who are trigger happy. Many of our university students can't get to the University so classes are held online (at least we still have electricity and internet). One of our staff members took the week off to help his family pick olives in a nearby village. Settlers and soldiers harass farmers. Israel had rounded up thousand of Gaza workers which they dumped in the West Bank for a while and then kept them in horrific conditions for three weeks, torturing them, trying to make them informers, stripping them of their phones, stealing their money. Israeli occupation forces then dumped them at Keren Salem crossing in Gaza and they had to walk 5 km to Rafah. All of them are from North Gaza which is now blocked and so they cannot get to their homes (which are being bombed anyway). One worker died from his beatings. 

We had a vigil on Thursday 2 November about Gaza in front of the Church of Nativity. Somber and sad people who like 7 billion other people on this planet wonder why humanity is silent or content with such small shows of concern! When I was asked I said if each person merely writes a few letters every day. Our message was simple, stop the genocide, ceasefire now, peace to all people in this troubled Holy Land. It is a poignant message from the city of the birthplace of the Prince of Peace.

Jesus was born here. What would he do?

A multireligious gatherig

Me with sign never again to anyone

Little Media coverage

From the journal of our volunteer Johnnie

There’s a saying in French : “Qui n’a pas une bonne tete a besoin de bonnes jambes”, meaning “If you haven’t got a good head, you need good legs”. I’m reminded of it every day here in Bethlehem.  How could I forget how hilly this city is!  It is, after all, located in the Judean Mountains. The Palestine Museum of Natural History (PMNH), three stories above and a basement, and the volunteer accommodation is on the top floor. The gardens are built on a series of terraces, overlooking what’s left of the Judean Desert.  Stairs and steps everywhere.  Steps of all kinds:  some concrete, some stone, some brick, and even one, rather too steep for me, made of old tyres, filled with concrete. And every time my no-good head forgets to bring something down to where I’m working, I am thankful for my still reasonably good legs. Several flights of steps and stairs every day should be doing wonders for my fitness levels and balance!

An abundance of fresh fruit, grown in the gardens here, contribute to a healthy diet.  Figs to pick from the trees at will, sweet little green oranges, pomegranates, pecans, and the other day, I tasted a cactus fruit, also very sweet, for the first time ever.  One local volunteer brought carob pods from his own garden and showed us how to soak and press them to extract the juice, for a delicious drink.

The PMNH brochures describe it as “an oasis of peace and tranquility”. Not an idle boast. When I first visited this time last year, just for a day, on a break between two of Martin Linton’s excellent Travel2Palestine political tours, it provided exactly that. A much-needed tonic after the trauma of seeing what’s happened in the West Bank in just three years since my previous visit. I noted then the concrete jungle that Palestine was becoming.

Now, on an extended personal trip for the first time, I have direct experience of the impact of building works. We’re surrounded by them.  Everywhere you look, new blocks of flats are being thrown up, smothering the Hills. Even here, in a supposedly Palestinian neighbourhood, Israel multiplies the settlements to accommodate the numbers of immigrants it encourages. Meanwhile, Palestinians are very restricted as to where they can build so, to accommodate their population needs, the houses seem to be all on top of each other. The noise of bulldozers, excavators and other heavy machinery is all around, not to mention the shouted conversations of construction workers which, from my first night at PMNH, woke me at 07.00. The PMNH building is on an East-West axis. Dominating the Eastern skyline, the pristine settlement of Abu Ghniem, identifiable as Israeli by the absence of the black water tanks on its roofs which generally identify Palestinian dwellings. The settlement has no need of them. Their water flows as required through their taps, direct from the Israeli Water Company, Mekorot.  Palestinians on the other hand, have to buy back the water which flows under their land, at an inflated price, from Mekorot, through the Palestinian Authority, and their supply is not constant.  Mekorot cuts it off frequently and fairly arbitrarily, hence the need to store water for such periods.

During the day, the street cries of rag and bone men, scrap merchants and other hawkers calling their wares are mingled with the four notes of the school bell, reminiscent of the prelude to a British train station announcement.

A dog barks. All the dogs in the neighbourhood take up his bark and they can howl for what seems like hours; sometimes during the day, often at night. I worry that they may belong to one of the camps and may be reacting to yet another Israeli incursion. Cockerels crow seemingly randomly, at all hours of day and night. Only the small geckos make no noise as they roam the building.

Other creatures keep me awake at night:  a fearsome breed of ‘Mosquito palaestina’, tiny, but with a more vicious and lasting bite than any I’ve experienced at home. The small tube of antihistamine cream I brought with me is almost finished but far more effective is Germoline, whose anaesthetic properties give some respite.

The Muezzin, who enraged me at first by waking me at 5 o’clock in the morning, apparently to tell me that I’d be much better off praying than sleeping, no longer disturbs me.  It’s cool enough now at night to close the windows and block him out, though the days are still hot and sunny - sorry for those of you who are suffering the effects of Babet and other storms! The other evening, a cool, refreshing wind was blowing and I actually put on a long-sleeved shirt for the first time in a month.

At first, there was little air traffic. In the last ten days or so, it’s been almost constant. It’s highly unlikely that commercial flights are operating over Palestinian airspace now and anyway, the menacing hum indicates heavier craft. Since Palestine has no Air Force, I guess it’s the Israeli Air Force flying out to bomb Gaza to dust or flying troops in for their ground invasion.  This morning, I was woken again at 3 a.m. by military aircraft flying over. How much more destruction and carnage can these wicked cowards wreak on their neighbours? How many more Palestinians need to die in defense of Israel? How can any thinking person reckon slaughter on this scale “defensive”? 

One day, I saw the Iron Dome in operation.  A siren sounded an alarm, for the settlement. Then, a deafening explosion, seemingly just overhead. Looking up, I saw two little white puffs of cloud or smoke. I was told that these were the remains of Hamas rockets, fired towards Jerusalem to send a message to Netanyahu, who was due to speak in the Knesset. The Iron Dome senses the rockets, and drones home in to destroy them. The whole incident lasted a matter of minutes.  No damage to any Israeli but, ironically, some debris fell on Aida Refugee Camp, injuring a young child.

It is now exactly four weeks since I arrived at PMNH, and almost the mid-point of my visit.  Things couldn’t have gone more differently than planned! I never expected to find myself in the middle of a hot war.  Violent occupation, I already knew about and expected. And of course, constant Israeli provocation and unremitting humiliation, the “kettling” of Palestinians, was bound, at some point, to produce this result. But no one could predict when the kettle would boil over.  Even after it did, I expected life to get back to ‘normal’ fairly quickly. Could any normal person have predicted the brutal savagery of the Israeli Government and its occupying forces (who like to be known as IDF – Israeli Defence Force - but are now more appropriately called IOF here); or the sycophancy and horrific complicity of Western Governments which condone and abet the slaughter?

This has made it much more difficult to write up this second installment of my journal. Optimism replaced by despondency, disbelief, despair. No, not quite despair. The resilience of the Palestinian people, their fortitude in the face of unremitting hostility, the resigned humour, the kindness and generosity, not to mention the ingenuity and inventiveness which allows them to get round the hurdles Israel puts in their way, to make the very best of what they’re left with, forbid despair.  Israel will not defeat them with its terror against Gaza, it is merely training a new generation of activists.

Recently, I heard a senior Israeli politician calling Hamas “Nazi”.  The French Resistance in the face of German Occupation in WW2 was never called that, nor, I think, the Irish resistance mentioned previously.  I have no time for religious zealots of any hue, be they Muslim, Jewish or, for that matter, Christian, Hindi or whatever else.  But if Hamas can be described as “Nazi”, what of the Zionists, whose creed allows them, in the name of religion, to exterminate the native inhabitants of the country they have decided belongs to them?  Of course, Israel has prepared the ground expertly.  Naftali Bennett has no fear of the epithet being applied to his ‘side’, for that would be deemed antisemitic and no one wants to be antisemitic.  But Zionists should beware of overplaying that card. In current circumstances, it could just finally backfire.

When I came here a month ago, although I know the Region has been unstable since Britain and the League of Nations decided to allow the creation of the State of Israel and deny a state to the indigenous people of Palestine, and although I know that the Occupation has been a constant war of attrition, the last thing I expected was open war.

I don’t sing anymore. I haven’t the heart. I am saddened by the wanton destruction in the Gaza Strip. I grieve for the more than 8,000 Palestinians (and counting) who have been killed in the last two weeks, the hundreds more buried under the rubble of their homes and hospitals, the thousands made homeless; for the 1,400 Israeli dead; for the 220 or so Palestinians already killed in the West Bank by the IOF, or by settlers intent on displacing them, from the beginning of 2023 up to 7th October.  I fear, not just for the hostages held by Hamas, but for the thousands of Palestinian hostages, held for years without charge or trial in Israeli prisons, in “administrative detention”. I am sorry for our newly-wed gardener, separated from his wife who went to visit her parents in Hebron and can’t return because Israel has sealed the area off. I am saddened by the good people at home who really think they’re doing the right thing by burying themselves in talk of “balance” but who, in effect, are just as complicit, by turning a blind eye to genocide happening in front of them, as those who shoot and bomb. I grieve for the State of Israel, conceived in blood and likely to continue so because its people continue to elect governments which want land, not peace. “Maximum geography, minimum demography”, they say.

I was talking to an old man a few days ago who told me that, when Muslims were the dominant population, people of all religions lived together, as neighbours. A census undertaken by the previous Ottoman rulers in the latter part of the 19th Century puts the Jewish population in the area at around 3%, with Christians at about 9% and Muslims an overwhelming 85%. As Jewish settlers, notably Zionists, began to arrive, tensions arose between them and the majority population. In the year I was born, 1946, according to a survey by the British Mandatory Power, Muslims still outnumbered people of any other faith by about two to one.  In the first half of the 20th Century, immigration of Zionists was causing increasing problems, and the British limited it. Then, in 1948, they abandoned Palestine to its fate and the Zionists overwhelmed the country.  So now, with the Zionists hotly pursuing their objective of making Palestine theirs, from the River to the Sea, we have mayhem.

Now, we have lots of “strike” days, mandated by the Palestinian Authority, when everything is closed, so workers can go to demonstrations called in protest against the death and destruction. The first of these, initiating three days of national mourning, was called after the dastardly attack on the Baptist Hospital. The Israeli Government, true to form, and despite having announced its intention to carry it out, tried to shift the blame for its crime onto the victims. Unlikely! What Palestinian has the power of such a devastating explosion?

The original purpose of this journal was to let friends and family at home know what I was doing, to tell them about the work of PMNH, and about the life of ordinary people going about their ordinary jobs in the extraordinary context of artificial shortages produced by occupation. During my visit, I had hoped to visit people in the Aida Camp, where I stayed last year. Now, I’m told that would be dangerous. Not because of the same people who still live there but because of frequent Israeli incursions. I had hoped to visit Jerusalem, Ramallah, Hebron…; now, that will be difficult, if not impossible. Previously, I’ve come to Palestine as a bystander. Now, I wanted to see a little more from the inside. I wanted to talk about the far-seeing project of a Palestine Institute for Biodiversity and Sustainability, set up in an area struggling for day-to-day survival, to document and conserve the disappearing fauna and flora of Palestine and save it from the depredations of overdevelopment, about the research projects into plant and animal taxonomy and the education outreach. Instead, I talk about war. Details of the Museum and Institute will have to wait, perhaps for a further episode.

Just a few words about the Olive Harvest:  knowing that I would be here at Olive Harvest time, and knowing little of olive picking, I had expected a fair proportion of my time to be spent on that. In the event, it was a bit of a let-down. I’d somehow expected the camaraderie of grape-picking or of an archaeological dig. But this was a very male affair, all done in the space of four days. The Museum has some 90 olive trees; two or three members of staff, assisted by two professionals, did most of the picking.  Speed seemed to be the main principle and branches full of olives were stripped from the trees. A handful of local volunteers, mainly women and children, were relegated to the repetitive task of picking over the pile of branches, twigs and leaves to retrieve the olives, while the pickers continually threw down more, on top of branches already “cleaned”.

As soon as the olives had been bagged up in old sacks, we took them to the Community Cooperative Press: chaotic, noisy and impressive, full of machinery and people.  As a curious visitor, probably the only westerner in the place, I was allowed to wander freely among the machines to observe the process. A kindly participant, seeing my interest and wanting to make sure I understood, beckoned me over to where he was watching his olives being processed and, without English, took me from machine to machine to show each stage. Of course, everyone is harvesting now and everyone wants to get their oil as quickly as possible.  Sacks of olives are off-loaded from an impatient stream of cars, weighed and marked for each proprietor, then stacked up in whatever free space said proprietor can find, before taking their turn to be pressed. It’s a wonder how anyone keeps track but they must, for this is said to be the best press in town.  It works well into the night. One member of PMNH staff stayed to collect our pressed oil. He was there till 2 o’clock in the morning.

Spare a thought for those who won’t be picking their olives this year. A fellow-customer in a grocery store told me that Israeli blockades, erected to contain the West Bank because of “the situation”, make it even more difficult than usual to circulate between towns and villages here in the West Bank. Jerusalem has been cut off from Bethlehem for the past three weeks – you can come to Bethlehem from Jerusalem but you can’t go back – and, since this man’s olive grove is on the wrong side, he won’t be able to go to it.  He told me, with a resigned smile, that his olives would undoubtedly be stolen.

In the absence of any sign of sanity, any sense of responsibility, from our supposed leaders, I am grateful for the thousands of people around the World who are joining protests against the obscene policies of their governments. May their numbers grow.  It must be time for an alternative to these failed parliamentary so-called democracies.

To end on a lighter note:  the brightest spot on my present horizon is provided by the antics of our endearing Hyena cubs.  They keep me sane.  The only fighting they know is play-fighting. Initially, they were provided with a bowl for water, and a large bucket from which it could be topped up.  A few days ago, they decided the drinking bowl was a toy.  They emptied it, taking turns to pull it around their enclosure.  Patiently, I retrieved it, put a large stone in it to prevent it being moved again and topped it up with water.  The next day, it had disappeared.  After some searching, I found the cubs had taken it inside the shelter placed within their enclosure, to protect them from the elements as winter approaches.  I respected their arrangement for a few days, then, worried that they might have difficulty getting enough water from the tall bucket, I decided to make another attempt to restore the bowl to its original purpose.  The cubs watched with interest as I again filled it with water and put another anchoring stone in it.  No more than an hour later, the bowl was back in its rightful place, upside down inside the shelter. The cubs have obviously decided they need furniture.  Who am I to contradict them? Live and let live!