British socialist current affairs mag the New Statesman has a beautiful, vivid description of how the normalcy of daily life in Ramallah defies the struggles, poverty, conflict and occupation that surround the city in the West Bank. It’s one of those things I see from time to time and think, “man, I wish I wrote that!”
(I have an issue with the headline though — Ramallah is no “secret” oasis, it’s well known to be an international destination full of life, culture and social opportunities).
Palestine’s secret oasis
Zoe Flood
Published 04 December 2008
Surrounded by conflict, the West Bank city of Ramallah is undergoing a quiet renaissance
As the sun rises between the hills and disperses low-hanging mist, Ramallah wakes up to a normal, urban life. Vegetable shops roll out their shining, fleshy wares. The exhausts of the city’s orange taxis shake off the chill of night. And although, unlike most other cities, Ramallah has been many decades under occupation, this, for its inhabitants, is just another day.
Despite its violent and difficult past and its uncertain present, Ramallah has an air of normality that is striking. So, too, does the stark, arid land that falls away from its hilltop perch, rising again to where its urban twin, al-Bireh, meets the university town of Birzeit. It is hard to imagine Israeli tanks growling along these vibrant streets, as they did during Operation Defensive Shield in 2002. Or pitched battles being fought near the lush municipal park, complete with faded playground equipment.
The comparative calm of recent years has allowed this city of some 30,000 people, at the heart of a much larger governorate of 280,000, to experience something of a quiet renaissance. While the World Bank this year put unemployment across the West Bank at 19 per cent, Ramallah, as the seat of the Palestinian Authority (PA), has become a centre of relative affluence.
“You can’t feel the conflict here so much,” said a friend who works for a local Palestinian NGO. “In Bethlehem, the wall cuts right through the town. In Hebron, there are the settlers [many with a reputation for attacking both the Israeli security forces and Palestinian civilians]. In Nablus, the tension is palpable.”
(more…)
