This one is about Dheisheh Refugee Camp...

With the help from our guide in Hebron, Abboud, we hopped a 9 shekel collective taxi ride (instead of a 40 shekel private ride) to Dheisheh Refugee Camp just outside of Bethlehem to stay with a family in their apartment’s AirBnb’d room. How’d we find this place, you may ask? A lil random. While planning the trip, I asked my sister if she had friends in/near Hebron or Bethlehem. She mentioned she had a friend in this specific camp and after a quick Google search, I found myself reading a blog about staying in Dheisheh in an AirBnb. Why the hell not? Fear? Irrational. Not today, Jewish Satan!

“Go to the Hyundai Company and I will meet you there,” instructed Ibrahim, our host family’s father. Cool. Our collaxi dropped us at the spot and at Ibrahim’s insistence that we’d get lost trying to find the house ourselves (he was certainly right), we sat on the curb and waited. We were confrised, half confused/half surprised. Our expectations shattered. When I used to think of refugee camps, I’d think of the NatGeo or BBC Instagram accounts showing tents and temporary structures. I’d like to call it naiveté but it was just ignorance. We were in the middle of a refugee camp that seemed to have the same infrastructure as Hebron and other cities I’d visited. Put plainly: Palestinians started to understand their reality and took steps to make life better for themselves. They built.

As we’d learn in our rooftop talks with Ibrahim, Dheisheh is as old as Israel (because … well…  of Israel…), 70 years old. The UN leased the land from Jordan just after Israel’s War of Indpendence and Palestine’s Nakba (roughly translated from Arabic as: The Catastrophe) for 99 years. Its 0.33 square mile area houses roughly 15,000 people. According to the UN’s website, the estimated population density is ~45,454 per square km. That’s a dense area. Part of the reason Ibrahim wanted us to wait for him was because the streets and houses remain unnamed and unnumbered due to the areas refugee status. There are just two schools, a boys’ school and a girls’ school. For a population of 15,000... just imagine class sizes. Each family was given a one story concrete hut, more or less, and after a while, decided it wasn’t enough. Ibrahim’s family “purchased” the plot of land on which he and his brothers (3 or 4 of them, not all 8 brothers… that’s right, 8 brothers… and 5 sisters in his family) built a 4-story apartment complex, each family with their own floor. I put purchased in quotes because the deed to the land moving forward isn’t necessarily a guarantee. Though even after 1967, when Israel pushed out Jordan and began its occupation of the West Bank, the UN still pays Jordan for the camp’s leased land. Yet no one knows what will happen in 29 years when the UN’s lease expires. Will it be renewed? Will the conflict be over and the refugees allowed to return to their homeland? Ibrahim wasn’t sure. But we do know, from Ibrahim, that buying the land from Jordan wasn’t cheap. We also know that there’s a history of discarding deeds legal in one society that don’t fit the asinine, often instantaneously decreed requirements imposed by another.* There was no certainty to be discussed.

*Side note: When we tried to get our yearlong student visas for the teaching program, we were randomly asked for a signed letter confirming we were Jewish from our rabbis back home. First of all, being Jewish can’t be a requirement for a student visa because there are plenty of exchange students enrolled in Ben Gurion University who are not. Secondly, the one woman on our trip who’d already received her visa through the same office had no such hoop through which to jump. And thirdly, after a phone call from our program administrator, the “requirement” was waived. Most of our bureaucratic interactions involved some sort of absurd tomfoolery and power play by the Israeli in charge. Most invoke a head-tilted, one eyebrow-raised look of incredulity, and most situations resolved without meeting the absurd condition. And that’s for American-born Jews. One can only imagine the absurdity faced by anyone who isn’t.

As we sat and waited for Ibrahim on the side of the road, we saw some… less than safe driving. It was the beginning of a rally. It started when someone did a donut in the middle of the street (a big street, the main road between Hebron and Jerusalem) right in front of us. Only part of me thought it was okay and it was the part that controls my motor functions. Only when the guy finished his sprinkled treat and sped off did I my cognitive center entertain the thought that maybe that could’ve gone … less than ideally and I should’ve moved.

Young adults and teenagers flew flags of Palestine and also militaristic flags, a yellow flag with a Palestinian flag in the middle and machine guns coming out of it, as they sped up and down the street, without regard for which side they drove on. These yellow flags (and the few thrown stones I saw in Hebron) were the only potentially aggressive and inflammatory things I saw on this trip of Palestinian origin. For me, including this little tidbit serves to question why these young adults feel a connection towards the symbol of machine guns. I’d see why throughout the rest of my 20-some hours in the camp. “A riot is the language of the unheard,” said the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Violence is disgusting and unnecessary, but when an entire people, stripped from every other tool they might be able to use to tell their story, need to express themselves, one can understand their perspective of not seeing another option. As reprehensible as it is, violence gets media attention and brings a sense of relevance to the transgressor. The shitty outcome is that violence against oppression fuels the group’s image of danger and threat in others’ eyes and paves the trail for the spread of hatred and anti-them propaganda. It’s incredibly heartbreaking. These are people who feel let down by their own government amidst this occupation and are tired of being occupied and displaced. Their parents and grandparents were forcibly removed from their homes in present-day Israel and they just want to go back. So while my upbringing in a Pro-Israeli home/society made me cringe slightly as Ibrahim pointed out the graffiti portraits of Palestinian martyrs, it is so painfully obvious why that word “martyr” carries so much pride in their society.

**Another side note: I only read the abridged version without it back in middle school but apparently Victor Hugo’s full-length Les Miserables includes chapters of commentary on the time’s political situation. What I’m trying to say is… deal with it? kthanksloveyoubyebutactuallyIhopereadingmythoughtsondifferentsituationsis somehowrelevanttoyoualsoI’mnotactuallycomparingmyselftooneoftheworld’s greatestwriterslolz

Oy, this happened last post, too, right? As I told some of my readers in person, this train-of-thought writing style can scatter a bit. I’ve had to pee for like 20 minutes. BRB… … … Okay, I’m back. Back to the plot:

Winding through narrow streets, passing by graffiti celebrating the dead, the jailed, and the dream of return, we walked with Ibrahim up to his apartment on the third floor. On the walk, Ibrahim made sure to point out this piece of art (look for the red letters):

I don’t think many Palestinians would argue in the Oslo Accord’s favor.

His young boys and wife, Aya, greeted us as we entered, though the most adorable 5-month-old baby girl Alma and her big and beautiful brown eyes stole my attention immediately. She’s so cute. We exchanged pleasantries, dropped our bags in the room, and headed out to the balcony. What a view:

Sitting there, gazing out onto what felt like such a peaceful landscape, Ibrahim told us the story of the camp, from which of the 45 former villages represented in the camp his family originated, about the living conditions during both intifadas, and how life operates around the camp. He’s a nurse who works in Jerusalem on a special permit allowing him entrance to the Israel. Aya has a degree in accounting. Ibrahim’s permit allows him to travel freely and unimpeded anywhere in Israel, but in his immediate family, only he has the permit. No one can come with him to Jerusalem.

It was so quiet, so calm out on the balcony. Part of that was because the apartment was located away from the camp’s center and the other because it was Friday, but it was quiet. I remember feeling uncomfortable with the serenity.

After asking what felt like a million questions, only to receive answers evoking a million more, Ibrahim informed us of the night’s plan. We were to attend the wedding of a family friend! Well alrighty then.

Though first, around 6:30pm, we followed Ibrahim on a walk around the camp to the Ibdaa Community Center. It serves as a center of life and strength for the camp’s youth, with dance classes, sports teams, study groups, and other opportunities for expression. Trophies commemorating their basketball prowess against other Palestinian communities in the West Bank lined the walls of the first room; there were so many of them, like Globetrotters versus Washington Generals status. The center also served as a constant reminder of the community’s history, with pictures from Dheisheh’s past and gruesome photos of the occupation. I certainly felt the pride walking through the center, pride in the community’s perseverance.

Then we went to the wedding!!! Not what I expected it at all. Also, don’t forget: religious Muslim community = no booze at parties, not that I was expecting it, I know that law, but it’s just been a long time since I went to a party where the coveted drink of choice was Coke. Everyone from Al Jura (sp?) neighborhood came, a couple hundred people. Separated by gender, we sat and talked (well, my friend and I talked while everyone else around us talked to each other), shook lots of men’s hands, and waited for the wedding to begin. What at least I didn’t know at the time, it’d be learned later, was that today was day 2 of the wedding ceremony (which turned out to be a 5+ hour affair itself), so the wedding had already started. After a while drinking the tiniest cups of coffee I e’er did see and cola, we walked back down the street to the beating of drums, singing, and dancing. The groom, hoisted up on the shoulders of his friends/family, smiled ear to ear as he danced along to the music while being sprayed with what looked like silly string by the crowd. There was so much positive energy and lots of happiness. Friends and family carried the groom up the hill (not a small feat) to meet his bride waiting in a car adorned with ribbon and flowers. The couple entered the hall alone, did whatever newlywed couples in Palestinian societies do (to be honest, I didn’t ask), and after, the groom came out and greeted every single man in attendance. The greeting went as such: handshake, kiss on the left cheek, kiss on the right cheek (sometimes twice for the important peoples), ending with a hug. My friend and I’d had plenty of time to study how to it was done but were still a little gleefully nervous as our time in the spotlight (literally because of the giant camera with the bright-ass light that followed the groom’s every step) came. You could see our presence shocked the groom a bit but he didn’t miss a beat. He embraced us one at a time as if we’d belonged there all along. I shyly voiced the word I’d asked Ibrahim to teach me: ma-bruk, meaning congratulations. It was really cool, an incredibly warm encounter.

After the wedding, our night wasn’t over. A little after 10:00pm (over 14 hours since we’d started our trip), Ibrahim brought us to a brother’s home where we would help carry the food prepared for the wedding family to their house. First though, we met the extended family. We sat in a room full of women, including two very cool German graduate students researching entrepreneurship in refugee camps, and a few men. Pretty much everyone at least attempted to engage with us in English but surely everyone greeted us. The best part of this picture I didn’t take was of these women, all joyfully chatting with one another, sitting under a font size 7,000 “Love” painted word on the wall. I remember turning to my friend and saying: “This is supposed to be the enemy. These are the people we are told to fear.” It’s a simple fallacy. Just as my Republican friends don’t like to be roped in with the Alt-Right movement, and just as there are some wackos on the left with whom I disagree and with whom I don’t want to be associated, every group has bad apples. And unfortunately, bad apples tend to define groups to those who don’t know better. Frankly, we, most Reform Jews in the West, don’t know better, weren’t taught better. These are not the faces of people who want to harm others. These are not the faces of those who hate Jews. These are not the faces of an enemy. But we lump them in.

To the beating of drums, clapping, and singing, we ascended to the wedding family’s home with the groom’s party that hadn’t missed a beat. Seemed like they’d just been walking around the whole camp, announcing the celebration to everyone. The men of Ibrahim’s family carried a giant platter of lamb (3 or 4 people carrying it), rice, and vat of soup. We carried up the cans of soda… BUT we were still included and we still helped! They said we’d done them a great honor, which was a wonderful sentiment, though I regard the other food carriers as higher on the honor chain.

Outside the wedding family’s gorgeous house, we ate a little dessert, had a little more coffee, and were pretty sure it was bedtime. LOLOLOLOLZZZZ NOPE! It was apparently time to return to Ibrahim’s brother’s house for MORE FOOD (I neglected to mention we’d already eaten dinner with our host family). A table (yes, I said table because the tray was ~2 feet in diameter) of chicken laid on a bed of garlic rice with bowls of yogurts lay in front of us. Armed with spoons, we went in. I ate too much as it was very good but because every time any whitey put down his/her spoon, our hosts jovially hounded us to continue eating, insisting we’d not had enough. Finally after this 4^th meal (though please don’t read that as an endorsement for Taco Bell, I maintain the opinion that it’s a gross establishment because I decided that when I was 7-9 and I’m stubborn), we went home and passed out.

On our walk to Bethlehem the next morning, we passed the fenced-in, memorialized turnstile used as the camp’s only entrance/exit during the first intifada, pretty much restricting almost all movement. Over 10,000 people lived with a curfew for over 3 months, unable to leave their homes. They’ve since fenced in the turnstile, as it’s no longer in use, yet it serves as a constant reminder of the occupation.

My favorite word on this trip was “juxtaposition;” my friend grew a little tired of hearing it. Here’s one for you: I worry about where I’ll move to when I return to the States; they’ve worried about if they can move past their front door. Another: Western perceptions vs. Reality. Ibrahim listed his room on AirBnB in March of 2017 has since had over 112 different guests. In response to a question about his neighbors’/friends’/family’s response to his attempt to bring tourism to Dheisheh, he said simply: they love it because it gives people a chance to see our lives. Every guest of his has left this Palestinian refugee camp without incident, besides being included in a wedding… ooooofah.

Go see for yourself. Go talk to “the other.” For reasons we can only assume, it’s what the occupying leaders don’t want. Go see why.

Here’s the link to Ibrahim and Aya’s place; they’re wonderful people:

https://www.airbnb.com/rooms/17350628?location=dheisheh