Black clouds loom in our skies these days, casting shadows on this troubled land, but also dousing it with raindrops of immeasurable value. The dwarfs and I have been rustling about the city in our raincoats. The atmosphere has changed since we arrived - with both Palestinians and Israelis living in fear of the next retribution attack as penance for the last. And in the background, the Israeli state has resumed its practise of demolition orders - notably on homes of Palestinians who committed terror attacks in Jerusalem in the past month. But it seems like these are a deliberate way of harming innocent people, since those responsible for the attacks have either been killed by Israeli police, or are already facing trial. And it adds fuel to the flames already licking around society's most irascible quarters.
Since as internationals we're able glide mercurially from one side to the other, I've been making the most of this and roping the dwarfs, unknowingly, into a friendliness offensive or love-off with people we would normally not get chatting to. Just because we can, and I always fear we could become embroiled in the fear and the hate if we don't make an effort to venture out and keep an open mind.
In a park on the West side last week, I spoke to a beautiful orthodox Jewish lady with creamy skin, wearing a tight grey leopard print top, brown wig and black headband, who was strolling with her 1 year old daughter, and pregnant with the second child. 'My husband's a student here [yeshiva - the Jewish study of religious texts] and we moved here from New York a few months ago just to try it out,' she explained in a thick New York accent. 'But we don't really like it. You have to be so hard headed to survive here, so we might not stay - even though we're allowed to if we like.' The Jewish diaspora are allowed to embark on Aliyah: literally the 'act of going up' (to Jerusalem) to take citizenship and buy land in Israel whenever they like.
Meanwhile, the dwarfs were not towing the line with the friendliness offensive, and were physically blocking her one year old from entering the model train in the playground, Rashimi shouting: 'She ith NOT a nithe girl. This is OUR train.'
Her husband came to join her, dressed in black with the white strings symbolising some of the laws he's presumably studying, day in, day out. 'Hey, your boys look like they're a whole load of fun and a whole load of trouble, all bound up in one boy bubble!' she laughed as they wandered off.
She didn't mention the recent tit-for-tat terror and I regretted that I didn't ask her what she made of this current situation. But then, there were no Palestinians to be seen in the park that afternoon, so perhaps it didn't cross her mind.
The following day, the dwarfs and I tried to fly a kite and catch leaves in a tiny gust of wind at Liberty Bell park, also on the West Side. As the boys scooted about a tarmac area I got chatting to a Palestinian family taking a Friday stroll. 'We like this park and there aren't parks on the East side - so we come here. Although we feel a bit afraid, we don't think it should stop us living our lives,' they told us.
We took the Lozenge to have his ears tested. The doctor was South African, now Israeli having done his Aliyah 30 years ago, with a yarmulka and a friendly disposition. 'Well young man, where do you come from with that beautiful accent. Is it UK by any chance?'
'No, I come from Jeruthalem,' replied the Lozenge.
The weekend arrived and J and I were wined, dined and breakfasted by various friends. A Palestinian couple took us out to breakfast in a lovely cafe which felt a bit like we were in France. Rashimi was with us as St Grace had nipped back to Jordan for a weekend, so while he tackled a plum tart sprinkled with icing sugar, we talked. She's a child psychologist, and he a lawyer - they work with Palestinians and Israelis in their team, and speak Arabic, Hebrew and English fluently. They are funny and modest and we laughed a lot over plates of patisserie. J and I mused on the way back to begin our respective days, that these kinds of people are the gold of this land, and its future also (if Palestinians are allowed to have one here).
After a five course dinner cooked for us on Friday evening by some equally wonderful Dutch friends, we set off on a family adventure to the Golan heights to meet an Israeli friend visiting from the UK and his family. We wiggled along the Jordan valley, the green undulating landscape dotted with palms and other tropical vegetation. The green is a welcome change from the dustier heights of Jerusalem. The autumn rains had caused a spring-like burst of green and chubby cows grazed happily beside the road. After nearly 3 hours in the car, we reached Rami, or 'Wami' as he's known by the dwarfs, who spent the day guiding us around his home. We started at a memorial for his father, who was killed fighting in Lebanon in 1984 when Rami was 10. What a view, down to lake Galilee. His father sounded like a wonderful man, full of integrity and well deserving of this landscape spread before his memorial site:
Rami himself is completely free of hate, even though he was only 10 years old when his father was killed by Hizbollah fighters. And he's a mine of information and personal experience, we discovered, as he gave us a whistle-stop tour of this extraordinary highland area where Lebanon, Israel and Syria meet - with many a feud to mark it. When you look at a map of the area it is littered with dotted lines: Ottoman Villayet boundary; 1920 Franco British agreement boundary; 1923 mandate boundary; 1949 armistice demilitarised zone; 1967 ceasefire lines; 1974 disengagement lines...
We meandered about between minefields, disused Syrians barracks and other administrative buildings, pock marked with bullet holes and now within the Israeli border, since after the six day war in 1967 since when the area has been under Israeli control.
The weather was as wild as the region itself. We stopped at a look out post in an old Israeli bunker to look at the Syrian border, where on a clear day you can see the black flags of Al Nusra, one of the Syrian opposition groups allied with Al Qaeda. The dwarfs are not used to wind and rain but enjoyed the climb up the rocky outpost, and fortunately it was cloudy. I wasn't sure I wanted to see those flags with my own eyes.
The area is also well known for its Druze villages of Majad al Shams, Buqata, Mas'ade and Ein Quiniyye. Druze is a branch of Shia Islam and they are independent communities here renowned for their hospitality and independent mindedness. While many Palestinians were driven out of their lands by Israelis since the 1940s, the Druze stayed put. Their villages have a completely different feel from everywhere we've experienced so far - coloured houses, extravagant architecture in some places, plenty of building work creating more mismatched structures, dotted with large numbers of tractors of varying vintage.
We all had a Druze labaneh and za'atar flat bread sandwich made by this lady.
We can't wait to go back. And as we meandered back to Jerusalem in the darkness, Rashimi announced: 'Mummy, we did have a weally good time in GoLand!'
Sunday we lounged about, and the Lozenge decorated most door handles and knobs with 'Chrithmath Mouthtaches' made from pipe cleaners, and made a few little 'Chrithmath mithe' from walnuts, who are sitting by the oven keeping watch.
Since as internationals we're able glide mercurially from one side to the other, I've been making the most of this and roping the dwarfs, unknowingly, into a friendliness offensive or love-off with people we would normally not get chatting to. Just because we can, and I always fear we could become embroiled in the fear and the hate if we don't make an effort to venture out and keep an open mind.
In a park on the West side last week, I spoke to a beautiful orthodox Jewish lady with creamy skin, wearing a tight grey leopard print top, brown wig and black headband, who was strolling with her 1 year old daughter, and pregnant with the second child. 'My husband's a student here [yeshiva - the Jewish study of religious texts] and we moved here from New York a few months ago just to try it out,' she explained in a thick New York accent. 'But we don't really like it. You have to be so hard headed to survive here, so we might not stay - even though we're allowed to if we like.' The Jewish diaspora are allowed to embark on Aliyah: literally the 'act of going up' (to Jerusalem) to take citizenship and buy land in Israel whenever they like.
Meanwhile, the dwarfs were not towing the line with the friendliness offensive, and were physically blocking her one year old from entering the model train in the playground, Rashimi shouting: 'She ith NOT a nithe girl. This is OUR train.'
Her husband came to join her, dressed in black with the white strings symbolising some of the laws he's presumably studying, day in, day out. 'Hey, your boys look like they're a whole load of fun and a whole load of trouble, all bound up in one boy bubble!' she laughed as they wandered off.
She didn't mention the recent tit-for-tat terror and I regretted that I didn't ask her what she made of this current situation. But then, there were no Palestinians to be seen in the park that afternoon, so perhaps it didn't cross her mind.
The following day, the dwarfs and I tried to fly a kite and catch leaves in a tiny gust of wind at Liberty Bell park, also on the West Side. As the boys scooted about a tarmac area I got chatting to a Palestinian family taking a Friday stroll. 'We like this park and there aren't parks on the East side - so we come here. Although we feel a bit afraid, we don't think it should stop us living our lives,' they told us.
We took the Lozenge to have his ears tested. The doctor was South African, now Israeli having done his Aliyah 30 years ago, with a yarmulka and a friendly disposition. 'Well young man, where do you come from with that beautiful accent. Is it UK by any chance?'
'No, I come from Jeruthalem,' replied the Lozenge.
The weekend arrived and J and I were wined, dined and breakfasted by various friends. A Palestinian couple took us out to breakfast in a lovely cafe which felt a bit like we were in France. Rashimi was with us as St Grace had nipped back to Jordan for a weekend, so while he tackled a plum tart sprinkled with icing sugar, we talked. She's a child psychologist, and he a lawyer - they work with Palestinians and Israelis in their team, and speak Arabic, Hebrew and English fluently. They are funny and modest and we laughed a lot over plates of patisserie. J and I mused on the way back to begin our respective days, that these kinds of people are the gold of this land, and its future also (if Palestinians are allowed to have one here).
After a five course dinner cooked for us on Friday evening by some equally wonderful Dutch friends, we set off on a family adventure to the Golan heights to meet an Israeli friend visiting from the UK and his family. We wiggled along the Jordan valley, the green undulating landscape dotted with palms and other tropical vegetation. The green is a welcome change from the dustier heights of Jerusalem. The autumn rains had caused a spring-like burst of green and chubby cows grazed happily beside the road. After nearly 3 hours in the car, we reached Rami, or 'Wami' as he's known by the dwarfs, who spent the day guiding us around his home. We started at a memorial for his father, who was killed fighting in Lebanon in 1984 when Rami was 10. What a view, down to lake Galilee. His father sounded like a wonderful man, full of integrity and well deserving of this landscape spread before his memorial site:
Rami himself is completely free of hate, even though he was only 10 years old when his father was killed by Hizbollah fighters. And he's a mine of information and personal experience, we discovered, as he gave us a whistle-stop tour of this extraordinary highland area where Lebanon, Israel and Syria meet - with many a feud to mark it. When you look at a map of the area it is littered with dotted lines: Ottoman Villayet boundary; 1920 Franco British agreement boundary; 1923 mandate boundary; 1949 armistice demilitarised zone; 1967 ceasefire lines; 1974 disengagement lines...
We meandered about between minefields, disused Syrians barracks and other administrative buildings, pock marked with bullet holes and now within the Israeli border, since after the six day war in 1967 since when the area has been under Israeli control.
The weather was as wild as the region itself. We stopped at a look out post in an old Israeli bunker to look at the Syrian border, where on a clear day you can see the black flags of Al Nusra, one of the Syrian opposition groups allied with Al Qaeda. The dwarfs are not used to wind and rain but enjoyed the climb up the rocky outpost, and fortunately it was cloudy. I wasn't sure I wanted to see those flags with my own eyes.
The area is also well known for its Druze villages of Majad al Shams, Buqata, Mas'ade and Ein Quiniyye. Druze is a branch of Shia Islam and they are independent communities here renowned for their hospitality and independent mindedness. While many Palestinians were driven out of their lands by Israelis since the 1940s, the Druze stayed put. Their villages have a completely different feel from everywhere we've experienced so far - coloured houses, extravagant architecture in some places, plenty of building work creating more mismatched structures, dotted with large numbers of tractors of varying vintage.
We all had a Druze labaneh and za'atar flat bread sandwich made by this lady.
We can't wait to go back. And as we meandered back to Jerusalem in the darkness, Rashimi announced: 'Mummy, we did have a weally good time in GoLand!'
Sunday we lounged about, and the Lozenge decorated most door handles and knobs with 'Chrithmath Mouthtaches' made from pipe cleaners, and made a few little 'Chrithmath mithe' from walnuts, who are sitting by the oven keeping watch.
Long before this current hostilities in Jerusalem and the "Al Aqsa Mosque" hysteria, it was a Jewish man who was stabbed by an Arab in Jerusalem's Liberty Bell Park (http://www.haaretz.com/news/national/.premium-1.537742).
ReplyDeleteThe young hostile Arab gangs from Silwan or Abu Tor harrassed Jewish mothers with their little kids, or Jewish girls who came to the park. As a result, this park which was built by Jews and is in a Jewish area and close to Jewish neighborhoods is not visited by many Jews who live 5-10 minutes walk from it because of these harrassments. I myself once visited the park alone and used the sport facilities there when a group of three Arab youth (guys) came and sat near me and sprawled all over the facilities and misused them in a way that vandalized them. I felt unsafe and left. I felt anger that these people can come with full confidence to my part of town, destroy facilities that the Jewish municipality put there for the use of everyone. Only a few years ago, before the Arabs "discovered" this park, I used to walk through it alone quite often, something that I don't do now because of the presence of Arab men there who sometimes harrass and even attacked Jews there. I'd say that usually the Arabs in Jerusalem can feel much safer than the Jews in this park or anywhere else in Jerusalem.