Palestinian reaction to events in Iran

I was recently approached by Foreign Policy magazine and asked to write an article about the reaction on the Palestinian street to the turmoil in Iran. While I initially expected to find some people who saw a link between the Iranian’s calls for freedom and the Palestinian fight for independence, the reality of this perspective was much less than one would think. I talked to many people from a broad slice of society and found some indifference, much support for Iran and Ahmadinejad because of the support of the Palestinian cause, and some intellectual analysis among the general population.

Ignoring the Green Revolution by Lubna Takruri

Ignoring the Green Revolution
With so much at stake, why don’t Palestinians care about Iran?

BY LUBNA TAKRURI | JUNE 29, 2009

Foreign Policy Magazine

Last Friday in the West Bank city of Ramallah, where old men sat at sidewalk coffee shops with cards and hookahs, and the city’s upper crust sipped cappuccinos to trance music in upscale eateries, Palestinians spoke of the dollar’s fluctuations, Israel’s latest military activities, and even Michael Jackson’s passing. They touched on nearly everything – with one notable exception: the volcanic protests in Iran. Whereas the drama on the streets of Tehran has captivated the world, here, the news was hardly noticed. “We have bigger problems of our own,” was the collective reply from one cafe.

Palestinians are accustomed to their double curses of occupation and corruption, and they’re used to watching an unending routine of election protests elsewhere in the Middle East. This time, however, their indifference is harder to explain. Although Israelis see Iran as their greatest threat, Palestinians tend to view it as their best international protector. Power shifts in Tehran, whether through war or internal unrest, could have reverberations in Palestine. A weakened Iran, for example, might offer less support for Hamas in Gaza and the West Bank, thereby tipping the balance of power in favor of its Western-backed rival faction, Fatah.

Photos of life in Ramallah lately

Sheep graze outside my bedroom window in the middle of Ramallah

The late afternoon view from my house in Ramallah

The wood-burning oven at Angelo's in Ramallah, which opened in 1988 and has the best lasagna and pizza in town

My new little family of desert plants for my home, which I and my aunt and uncle made from cuttings of their plants

The sunset over the West Bank hills from my grandparents' house in Ramallah

A lemon tree hangs over the stone wall inside the Old City of Jerusalem

A Westward Gaze Toward Gaza

On these clear winter days, I can look West out the window of the shared van ride through the West Bank hills from my home in Ramallah to work at Birzeit University and see a distant city on the horizon. Only a 45 minute drive from Ramallah, those barely discernible little buildings might be Ashdod; or it might be Tel Aviv itself. And just beyond… blue. Somewhere in the blue expanse at the horizon, an invisible line divides the sky from the Mediterranean Sea. Sometimes there in the openings between two hills, if I try really hard, I can see it: the former Palestinian coast, now part of the state of Israel.

Westward from the Ramallah hills

With no Blackberry or Washington Post to bury my head in anymore, my travels to work are a calm, contemplative break in the day. Each day my gaze is drawn in the same direction: over the hills with white specks of Palestinian villages, over the boundary between the Palestinian West Bank and the State of Israel where a monstrous wall keeps us trapped on our “side,” over fertile farmlands, to these modern new Israeli cities which I, like many West Bank Palestinians, cannot access without permission documents from Israel. My relaxed mind often allows thoughts to wander to the imaginary lives of the people in these cities. There, they have skyscrapers, neat streets, warm beaches. Now, they might be grabbing a latte on their own commute to work, and over the weekend, the children will go to playgrounds and swimming pools. There, they have power and freedom. On clear nights, too, I can see the sparkling urban lights from my doorstep in Ramallah and then, too, I paint a quick image of their nice restaurants, nightclubs, neat modern homes, before I walk down the street to my very different life on what feels like a whole separate planet. It’s often strange to me that I can see right over to their world from my doorstep, and not just on TV.

Anytime I hear the often repeated Israeli complaint of how Israelis live in fear of violent Palestinian backlash against the military occupation oppressing them, these images stand out: they are afraid to go to their malls and swimming pools on the chance a Palestinian rocket will land there.

Maybe they don’t in fact know that most Palestinians don’t have malls, Palestinian children don’t have nice playgrounds and swimming pools. That here in the walled-in West Bank, not to mention the encircled prison of the Gaza Strip, there is not just fear but daily, constant reality of violence and oppression by military occupiers.

But for the past three weeks, I look toward those lights in the west with not just curiosity about the cities and nostalgia to see the coast. For also there, a little further south, is a 5 mile wide strip of land in which 1.5 million people are trapped in poverty and despair. Somewhere there in the distance I imagine I can see Gaza, less than 2 hours away by car yet inaccessible even to those standing at the border, with F-16 fighter jets and Apache helicopters overhead, with the rubble of former cities and refugee camps burying hundreds of bodies beneath it, with thousands of military soldiers encircling the strip from land and sea, not letting anyone in or out either to flee or to see the carnage they are inflicting.

I pause even more these days to look west, to focus even harder on the shapes and colors beyond. I want so badly to go to Gaza, to help or to report, but there’s absolutely nothing I could do that would get me there. So instead, I imagine I can see Gaza from my doorstep so I can feel closer, so I can feel that I can absorb a tiny slice of their suffering and experience, so I can feel that by standing there and exposing my eyes and my being to the west, to the same sky and wind over Gaza, I am a part of them too.

-Lubna Takruri

West Bank Palestinians Feel Gaza Almost Another Country

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/sns-ap-ml-palestinians-west-bank-view,0,2973804.story

West Bank Palestinians feel as if warring Gaza has become another country

By BEN HUBBARD
Associated Press Writer
January 8, 2009

RAMALLAH, West Bank (AP) — While one part of the Palestinian territories faces the fiercest Israeli onslaught in years, there is little to remind people in the other part of the war except for news reports, requests for blood donations and flags flying at half-staff.

Even pro-Gaza demonstrations have been suppressed by Palestinian police in the West Bank, sometimes violently.

Just 25 miles of Israeli territory separates the West Bank and Gaza, and Palestinians consider themselves one people and share the desire for a state. But decades of geographic separation and a political schism between the Islamic militant Hamas rulers of Gaza and the moderate Fatah faction that runs the West Bank are driving them toward different fates and leaving them increasingly isolated from each other.

“It’s as if Gaza has become another country,” said university student Mohammed Akram, 19, slightly embarrassed. Next to a sign bearing pictures of injured Gazans, he was listening to a pop song on his cell phone.

Around him, other students shuffled to class, toting books and sending text messages.

“Some people go out and protest, but most of us go to the university and live our normal lives,” said 19-year-old Aria Darwish, sitting under an olive tree and tapping on her laptop. “We don’t really feel it.”

Nearby, a flag flew at half-staff and a sign asked students to donate blood.

Israel launched airstrikes across Gaza on Dec. 27 and a ground invasion on Jan. 3, with a stated goal of undermining the ability of Hamas militants — who control Gaza but not the West Bank — to fire rockets at Israel.

Since then, more than 670 Palestinians have been killed, about half of them civilians, according to United Nations and Palestinian figures. In the same period, 10 Israelis have died, three of them civilians.

The fates of the two territories are largely tied to their respective rulers. Hamas seized control of Gaza in 2007 from forces loyal to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas of rival Fatah. Israel quickly imposed a blockade on the territory.

Britain’s New Statesman Mag on the good life in Ramallah

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.”

Biggest Muslim holiday, Eid al Adha, comes to Ramallah

For a look at Eid in Ramallah in photos and video, see my Flickr feed here.

With as much or more fanfare as Christmas in the US, Eid al Adha has been in the air in Ramallah for the past week. Islam’s biggest holiday, Eid al Adha, or feast of the sacrifice, commemorates the Biblical and Quranic story of Abraham taking his son to the mountain to sacrifice him as a test from God, before God replaces his son with a sheep at the last moment.

The week before the Eid is the time Muslim pilgrims make the Hajj to Mecca in Saudi Arabia as the Prophet Mohammad did at the dawn of the religion — one of the five pillars of Islam. Today is Eid, marking the end of the Hajj pilgrimage and a holy day off for the whole Muslim world. The other Muslim holy day, (Eid al Fitr, or breaking fast) comes at the end of the month of Ramadan, during which Muslims fast from sunrise to sunset.

It’s a festive time of wonderful traditions. All week, Ramallah has been bustling, packed with shoppers from the surrounding villages. The streets around the Manara circle (the town square, basically) have been blocked off to cars and instead filled with street vendors peddling everything from fruit to socks to incense (and lots and lots of colorful helium balloons for the kiddies) and families toting bags from the hundreds of boutiques that make up the West Bank’s commercial center.

At times like these, there is no doubt that Ramallah is indeed the financial and cultural capital of Palestine. It also presents a beautiful image of Palestinians, who are too often maligned in photos and videos only depicting them as masked gunmen or Muslim extremists. Here, in Ramallah on Eid, is a far truer picture of Palestinians: a spirited, social and hospitable nation who cherish the threads of shared traditions and cultures of their land.

Muslim, Christian, Palestinian or visitor — everyone feels and shares in the traditions of Eid here to some extent. Keep reading for a description of Eid day.

Turkish Bath in Ramallah/Al-Bireh

Attention weary tourists, travelers and Palestinian workers alike; those in need of pampering, take note: there’s an inexpensive two-hour experience to be had in Ramallah that includes a massage, a full-body traditional loofah scrub, steam room, pool and hot stone relaxing at the Turkish Bath in the twin city of Al-Bireh.

The bath offers exclusively single-sex schedules and is priced by services: entrance includes using the steam room, hot stone room, pool and traditional turkish bath for 50NIS (about $12); add a and soap massage scrub to that and it’s 70NIS, and with a back massage it’s 80NIS (about $20) — the full package, including all of the above and a full body massage is 110NIS (about $35). The full package can be done in an hour and a half, but to really relax and enjoy the full spa experience, give yourself two hours onward.

The bath asks that you make reservations before you arrive, but two of us were graciously accommodated when (not knowing this), we showed up without.

Click below for the Turkish Bath’s schedule and more about the experience.

Glimpse of Ramallah: Cafe nightlife

Ramallahites enjoy a warm night on sidewalk tables at Pronto Cafe in Ramallah, Palestine

Obama’s Day in Palestine

Palestinians in the West Bank woke up Wednesday morning to a glorious sunny 75 degree day and the news of a new American leadership — as President Elect Barack Obama put it, a new dawn — not just for the US but for the world. THe earliest news reports and my own conversations with people in Ramallah indicate an obvious satisfaction at the very least with America’s choice for preseident, if not the same celebratory and hopeful mood we saw on TV in Washington, New York, Kenya and around the world.

Digging deeper, there exists for the Arab world reasons to be skeptical toward the idea of radical change in the Middle East. But optimism is the prevailing sentiment with the election of America’s first African-American president. During my day in Petra, Jordan last Sunday, I spoke with the young men who sell colorful Petra sand designs in bottles to tourists from all over the world. Cultured and knowledgeable, they had much to say about the US elections and it echoed messages from other non-Western countries.

The Road to Ramallah and a Long-Lost Cousin

After six hours, three cars, two buses, two border crossings, and the discovery of a long-lost cousin, I’m in Ramallah at my grandparents’ house overlooking a stunning view of the road that travels through the gentle hills from Ramallah to the university town of Birzeit.

My trip was long (it used to take 2 hours to drive from Amman to Ramallah before the borders were created by Western powers in 1948), but smooth in that I encountered no problems with my documents. It was the first in my lifetime’s worth of Israeli border crossings that I wasn’t asked a single question. Not why I am here, what I am doing, who I plan to see. No opening of suitcases or requests to have a seat and then three hours later receive some unpleasant news about my “status” in the occupied territories. Just a long, multi-step journey from one part to another of what was formerly one undivided land.

The day started at 10am when my aunt and uncle drove me to the bus station in Amman and I boarded a shared “service” taxi for the 30 minute ride to the western Jordanian border.

The Tabarbour bus and taxi station in Amman