fear builds walls

so, this weekend i went to jerusalem/palestine/israel/the west bank/whichever name you happen to feel is politically correct. this post will cover said political correctness/borders/walls/etc. type of issues, the next post will be on jerusalem itself. not that the two can really be separated, but in the interest of manageable blog posts i'm doing it anyways.
palestine/israel is a topic that i generally avoid discussing, partly because many people have strong views on it and i'm not one to invite a fight, partly because i don't have the academic background in studying the issue to feel comfortable in a serious debate about it, and partly because there is so much irrationality about the situation (and many people's views on it) that it just makes me so incredibly frustrated. no matter what your view is on the issue overall, the human rights violations that have occurred as a result of this conflict are a crime against all affected, and the responsibility lies not only with the perpetrators but with the UN and the world as a whole for failing to take action to remedy the situation- the aspect of all this that truly makes me sick to my stomach is the world's preoccupation with the politics of it rather than the human aspect.
i don't claim to be unbiased in my views; i don't think it's possible to hold an objective opinion- an opinion by definition is influenced by personal beliefs, background, and experience, so whether we're conscious of it or not all of our opinions stem from something- a bias does not necessarily imply something negative. mine in this case comes from a belief that human rights are of paramount importance, and that everyone no matter what faith, what ethnicity, what anything has an equal demand on these rights. i have always had generally the same opinion about the palestine/israel conflict that i have now, although this past semester has definitely caused me to contemplate it more fully and deepen my understanding.
i believe that neither side has an exclusive religious or moral claim on the land- over the course of history it was controlled and inhabited by both jews and arabs, and both judaism, islam, and also christianity have many of their holiest sites in the same territory, and even on the same exact spots. thus, it is no one group's land to exclusively claim. the argument used by some israel supporters that the concentrated jewish immigration to palestine and the 1948 war were just jewish reclamation of the land the arabs had previously conquered from them irks me to no end- if we were still in the 6th century B.C. (when arabs reconquered palestine) then invasion and conquering of foreign lands would be a perfectly acceptable and normal thing to do, but the 20th century context does not sanction such action. i believe jews and anyone else have every right to immigrate to and live in a land they consider holy, but i do not believe they have the right to establish an exclusive jewish national state on land that history has made belong to more than one group of people. britain should not have supported the zionist immigration push, the world should not have allowed it to occur, and there should never have been talk of a "two-state solution" or a "partition". with the dissolution of the ottoman empire after WWI, colonial control should not have been imposed on palestine but rather governing power should have been placed in the hands of a local coalition. jews that wanted to come to live in their holy land should have been welcomed to do so, but out of personal desire and at a natural pace rather than an influx at the urging of an extremist movement with political motives.
but, what happened happened, and we must now deal with present realities. i do not believe that any jewish inhabitants of israel should now be forced out, as this is just a re-perpetration of the crime committed against so many palestinians. revenge is not justice, and despite the moral wrong that was committed by israel as a collective, that does not mean it would be just to now force individuals and families to leave what may have been their home for 60 years. however, i do not recognize the right of israel to exist on solely its own terms- compromise must occur. palestinians must absolutely have the right of return in some form. by this i do not mean the right to evict jewish families from homes, but i do mean the right to build a new home next door to them and live together. although the two-state solution seems to be the world-favored option (maybe because it has become the most feasible in practical terms), i think in an ideal everyone-cooperate-and-live-in-peace world one multicultural state ("palesrael", as one graffiti i saw this weekend put it) would be best. but since this would require a cooperative government between two groups that currently refuse to even sit down at the same table together, i'm not holding my breath. but a two-state solution has its own practical problems, because no matter where you draw the borders someone's not going to be able to go home again, and each side will continue resenting the other for the land on the other side of the wall.
however, either two-state or one-state would be better than the current injustice. israel has no right to the current control it exercises over the palestinian territories (nor in my opinion does it have the right to fully control what are now considered as "israeli" lands, since those were taken by force and at the expense of countless palestinian people). the entire area should be under UN mandate until the two sides can come together to reach an agreement, because if palestine does not have the right to declare itself an independent state than neither does israel. with respect to israeli control of fully palestinian land, there is such a glaring conflict of interest in allowing those people and that land to be administered by israel that i cannot believe it has been allowed to continue. similarly israel absolutely does not have the right to build the "security wall" (=israeli euphemism, oft known in palestine as the "apartheid wall") dividing current israeli land from the west bank, and it shocks me that the world continues to sit by and allow this to happen even despite UN and international court of justice rulings that the wall is illegal. (side note- the us's blind support of israel is something that i cannot morally understand, although politically the reasons are easy enough to follow, but i hate to think that politics has obscured morality in our country). and even without the political violation the wall embodies (especially where it deviates from true population situations and encroaches on palestinian territory), it is a gross human rights violation in that it cuts off many palestinian people and towns from access to farmland, roads, economic infrastructure/markets, healthcare, and water. the water issue in palestine/israel is a whole other issue that could fill a whole blog post of its own, just google per capita water supply in palestinian territories vs. in israel and you will find an aspect of this whole situation that is even by itself a terrible human rights violation.
what motivated this whole post was my experience crossing the israeli borders this weekend. entering "israel" (really the west bank) from jordan, i was questioned to a degree not even close to what i've experienced at other borders. sure, as an american i had to wait at the syrian border for four hours to get my visa approved, but the syrians did not ask me my father's name, my grandfather's name, proof of my hotel reservation, when you plan to leave and proof of return ticket, where you're going in israel, whether you're going to the west bank, why are you going to bethlehem, do you know anyone in jerusalem, do you know anyone in the west bank, you're not going anywhere else in the west bank, etc. etc. all this made me so frustrated and i wanted to shout at the border guards what right to you have to try and keep me out of the west bank- it's not yours to control! then when i set off the next day from jerusalem to bethlehem (which is in the west bank), i came face to face with the 8-meter high "security wall" and the reality for the palestinians living on the other side of it. the israeli side of the wall is just big, serious, concrete, but the palestinian side is an explosion of color and emotion in the form of graffiti art on every available square. calls to peace, calls for intifada, calls for humanity- calls for everything but the presence of that wall were shouted all over the cement slabs, and i walked along it as far as i could to take it all in.
if this post makes it seem like i side with the palestinians more than the israelis, that is because right now it is the palestinians whose basic rights as human beings are suffering under israeli occupation. palestinians and israelis have equal rights to the land, but the current situation does not reflect this truth. i am on the side of equality of rights for both groups.

wadi hassa

oops, forgot to write this post til now :/
last saturday a group of ciee kids went on a "water hike" in wadi hassa (literally means valley Hassa). "water hike" is a term that should not be taken lightly: we were at least ankle-deep in stream water for 85% of the hike, and a good portion of the hike was in fact swimming rather than hiking. wadi hassa is one of jordan's random and hidden treasures- in the middle of the desert hills it is an oasis of pink-flowering bushes growing along the rushing stream that is the center of the valley. on the course of our five-ish hour hike downstream, we got to jump off cliffs into deep pools, slide down natural waterslides, and float along as the current carried us. we ended our hike at one of the valley's natural hot springs. the day was definitely one of my favorite adventures in jordan, but unfortunately no pictures exist because any camera brought along on the hike would've been fully submerged/soaked in water so photos were not an option.

wadi rum

this past weekend was ciee's trip to wadi rum, yet another of jordan's geographical treasures. wadi rum (which just translates to rum valley- and is actually pronounced room not rum haha) is an area of the southern desert famous for it's unique and majestic rock formations.


unfortunately, what with our group of 85 ciee kids it was not exactly a weekend of authentic local experiences but rather a trip of the overly touristic variety, but such is ciee. nonetheless i enjoyed the trip for what it was, and the scenery of wadi rum is amazing no matter how many people you travel with.
friday afternoon was spent careening through the wadi in open-backed pickup trucks, stopping to clamber up and down rocks and sand dunes along the way.






the unfortunate casualty of this adventure was my camera, which was of course in my pocket during a run-turned-tumble down a sand dune, and is consequently now refusing to function due to the sand KATIR that is stuck in all its crevices :( laaaaame, but i'm thinking that one of these days mumkin it is just going to decide to wake up insha'allah haha. but my broken camera provided lots of entertainment for several of our bedouin truck drivers, who used everything from tire air pumps to wires to try and fix it for me. the individual below successfully used his teeth to get the lens far enough out in order to take a picture of himself, but unfortunately that success did not last and i had to forbid the infliction of any further bite marks on my lens.


after watching the sunset we stayed the night in the tourist version of a bedouin camp, but with its campfire, tea, and desert stars i was a happy camper :)


the next morning a few friends and i got up at 5:30 to see the sunrise, which was a beautiful array of pinks-oranges-yellows as the light rose over the hills.



we then set off on a three-hour camel ride through the desert, which was extremely exciting as i had never ridden a camel before. camel riding is quite the challenge in terms of staying on the camel, especially when it chooses to run and when it is time to dismount as both of these involve a sort of jolting teeter-totter motion that is not for the faint of heart. we had lots of laughs during our camel caravan, however, camels/camel saddles are NOT comfortable, and after three hours i was more than ready to bid my four-legged friend goodbye.

smurfs

today i learned a wonderful cultural quirk: jordanian university students commonly refer to freshman as smurfs (sanaafer in arabic). love it.

noor

yesterday noor, my host family's filipino maid, asked me if the reason american people had blue and green eyes was because of the weather? and she was perfectly, innocently serious.
noor is 19 years old, and is the 7th of 10 children in a family from a rural province of the philippines. she came to jordan with one of her sisters, but that sister works in a city a couple hours away so she rarely sees her. noor came to jordan to work as a live-in maid on a two-year (now extended to three-year) contract to earn money to put one of her older sisters through college at home. in jordan today there is an increasingly common practice, supported by the embassies of the respective countries, of bringing domestic workers from the philippines and sri lanka to work as household maids for middle class and wealthy families here. although their wages are determined by legal minimums, the quality of life for these immigrant workers varies greatly from family to family and often does not meet standards that i would consider conducive to basic human dignity. living with a very wealthy family that has a maid is a challenge for me emotionally and morally, and unfortunately my only option is to accept the situation as is without comment or action. noor is hard at work every day cleaning, cooking, doing any/all household chores. she rarely gets to leave the house, and when she does it is mostly to accompany my host mom on errands. her room is a small one just off the kitchen that also serves as a partial laundry and storage room. her bed is a mattress on the floor. she speaks pretty good english, which she learned in school, and over the two years she's been here has learned all arabic necessary for her daily life (at home in the philippines she speaks tagalog). when she has free time noor likes to listen to the radio, read magazines from the house, and talk to her sister on the phone. noor is luckier than the other situations i've seen here in that her relationship with my host family is a positive one (or as positive as possible, considering). what i mean by this is that i can see that after two years they, especially my host mom, really love her and consider her as much a part of the family as their social divide permits them to. however, this does not stop any member of the family from telling her what to do. the thing i find really unbearable is when my (somewhat spoiled) host siblings will sit in the living room watching tv and instead of walking into the kitchen to get it themselves, will yell for noor at the top of their voice and instruct her to bring them a glass of water.
noor amazes me because despite the hardships and monotony of the life she is leading, she is one of the most truly sweet and kind-hearted people i have ever met. she has informed my parents via skype that i am her new sister, and no matter how much work she has done she is always smiling and offering to make me food. her name means 'light', and the radiance of her heart really does embody her name.

la bandera

i keep forgetting what the different parts of jordan's flag represent, so i've decided to write it down.
red triangle: hashemite dynasty
white seven-pointed star: the first seven hadiths (sayings/actions of the prophet muhammad that are an important part of islamic scripture)
black stripe: abbasid caliphate
white stripe: fatimid caliphate
green stripe: ummayad caliphate

dana

i spent this past weekend with my friends mikki and matt hiking in dana nature reserve, a national ecological/biosphere reserve in the south of jordan.



dana was beautiful, a green oasis in an arid desert climate, with wildflowers of beautiful colors everywhere.



there were also an uncommonly large number of thorny/spiky plants, and i have numerous scratches to show for it.


dana village is a tiny collection of simple buildings overlooking the valley.



one of the most beautiful moments was hearing the sunset call to prayer echo off the valley walls with a background choir of birds chirping.


the other sound that made full use of dana's echoing space were the donkeys braying. now every american child knows that donkeys make the "hee-haw" sound, but have you ever actually heard a donkey bray? you would remember if you had; they are flippin LOUD. and it's funny because they're these cute and meek looking friendly creatures that generally just stand around contentedly, but when the emotion hits to make them bray they really let loose- even without the help of an echo their screeching/barking/uncomparable sound can be heard a long ways away, but it was almost comical to hear the peace of dana intermittently broken by some perturbed donkey.
the other interesting moment of this weekend was our hike to the spring. nabil, the owner of our hotel, had suggested we take the short twenty minute walk to a nearby spring, so we followed his advice. as we walked the surroundings got greener and greener so we knew we were heading the right way, and we passed irrigation channels with running water so we knew we were close. after a little while when we still hadn't found the spring, we backtracked, thinking we had missed a turn, and when we ran into a jordanian family picnicking, we asked if they knew where the spring was? "right there!" they replied, pointing to a small pool of inch-deep water that channeled a small stream of water from the mountainside into the irrigation channels.



we had been picturing a river, and mikki and i had even contemplated bringing our bathing suits, and what we found was just a small waterflow, but we realized that in a country where water is not easy to find, even a spring like this would be considered a big deal. definitely an amusing cultural moment though :)