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| A Bedouin prayer, answered |
Based around the true story of an order of Trappist monks living in Algeria, the film focuses on the monks' work in a local Arab community and their excruciating decision about whether to stay, or leave, as the inevitable threat from Islamist extremists looms closer.
They stay. And one night, they are taken from their remote monastery and murdered in the snow covered fields by the Islamists.
These events happened 20 years ago, and it's hard not to feel that since then the situation has got a whole lot worse.
One subtitle quotes a phrase from Blaise Pascal: “Men never commit evil so fully and joyfully as when they do it for religious convictions.”
Here in Jerusalem we are reminded of this daily, not only when we watch films such as these.
Israeli extremists set fire to a Greek Orthodox seminary in Jerusalem this week. A mosque near Bethlehem was torched by a similar group a few days earlier.
I was speaking to a live wire of a man from the UN Relief and Works Agency, which provides education, social services and healthcare to Palestinians living in the West Bank and Gaza. He said he's certain there will be another war in Gaza this summer.
Banksy's just been to Gaza. Have a look at some of his work there.
www.banksy.co.uk
I wonder what the Gazans make of it.
Netanyahu has finally made the famed, uninvited visit to Washington, angering Obama by going straight to Congress. He railed about the threat of Iran - just as everyone knew he would.
But what does this mean for your average Palestinian?
Not much, really. They're more concerned about Palestinian Authority workers not being paid due to Israel's withholding of tax revenues, meaning that workers in all public services are working for almost nothing or not working at all. Think hospitals, police...
The local security infrastructure is a much closer concern for your average Palestinian man or woman. Iran feels a long way away.
Against this backdrop, I was lucky enough to spend a day in the patch of land between Jerusalem and the Dead Sea with a Bedouin expert, interviewing some Bedouin families for a possible story.
It's a tough life for the Bedouin people in Palestine. All clans have suffered multiple displacements and for the most part, they exist in temporary constructions trying to rear sheep and goats, with the constant threat of demolition or eviction orders. One of the areas on particularly shaky ground is the one I visited yesterday. The Israeli ministry of housing is hungrily waiting for the opportunity to build more settlements on these lands, meaning the Bedouin would be forced into what have been described as 'urban sink holes' threatening their culture and way of life.
But, as for all subsistence communities, not only Gods, and Men, but the climactic conditions, play a large part in their state of mind - albeit as temporary and precarious as the rickety dwellings.
As Abu Ra'ed, Abu Mohammad and Abu Suleiman explained to me, this spring has been the best in years. The rain and snow have enabled the usually lunar landscape to transform itself into swathes of grass and wildflowers. The clans have saved so much money by not having to give expensive fodder to their animals, and both livestock and Bedouin are literally, rolling in clover.
They are living in the moment. Bedouin style.
The joy was infectious.
"The Israeli ministry of housing is hungrily waiting for the opportunity to build more settlements on these lands".
ReplyDeleteLOL. The number one land grabbers in Israel Are the Beduins but to a clueless hateful towards Israel person such as you this doesn't matter. The Beduins are taking control of huge areas they never lived in, but someome like you, who have no idea how these areas looked only a few years ago, it seems that since they are Arabs and SAY that they lived there for centuries then they must be right!
Anyone who lived in this land for more than ten years remembers clearly how the area between Jerusalem and the dead sea was almost empty beside the Israeli towns and villages in between - like Ma'ale Adumin etc.
The spread of Beduin settlements as well as the ugly high rise dense construction of the "Palestinians" on every hill top are NEW. Now you can say that I'm a liar (being an Israeli of course) but unfortunately for you these areas like the rest of Israel has been photographed from air over the years many times and that why people like you keep on whining and distorting the facts and then don't understand why Israel is "let off the hook" time and time again and no one in the international community do something when when it's obviously committing such terrible crimes!
By the way, the same thing with the Beduins is going on in the Negev. Anyone who drove for instance from Kiryat Gat to Beer Sheva up until 15 years maybe saw a relatively empty alnscape filled here and there with israeli villages, and very few Beduin tents could be seen from the road. Now you almost see only Beuduin tents. These people come with their stock and take control of vast territory and then claim that the land has been theirs for centuries (and no, I'm not talking about Jewish settlements).
In addition we're talking about a population with very little respect for the law and pretty wild. Israeli villager and their equipment in the south are robbed frequently by Beduins, the Beiduins make the roads in the south death traps with their wild driving, Jewish businesses owners in the south are harassed by Beduin outlaws who threaten them that if they don't pay them commission from their revenues they'll kill them - and many business owners get their shop totched or cars damages or are shot at if they resuse. The Israelis in the south complain that the Beduins have turned it into the wild west with their violence and barbarism and the police is helpless.
You can't leave your car anymore in an Israeli nature reserve in the south without it being stolen by a Beduin.
And with all that their life in Israel is great. Each one of them has several wives, dozens of kids, and they all live on the Israeli social security stipends!
the Israeli Jews work and develop and build industry and hightech and economy and send their children to defend the country while the Beduins who basically only take and not give to thios country get to enjoy the advanced Israeli hospitals, the Israeli tax payer and live off the hard work of the Israeli Zionists.
All in all I think the get a pretty good bargain out of this country and its people.