Shalom...Achshav? Matai? Peace...Now? When?

Again, I experienced a sad sense of distance reading today's news from the West Bank. Many people have asked me how my trip was, and all I can say is it was amazing...it was depressing...it was fascinating...and I'm so very glad I went. And to keep us all plugged in, here some interesting websites about what’s happening in Israel/Palestine.

One of the most memorable, and certainly one of the more distressing meetings we had was with Hanna Barak, one of the founders of Machsom Watch, an organization created by a group of Jewish Israeli women who observe the treatment of ordinary Palestinians by Israeli military at checkpoints throughout the West Bank. I was astonished to learn that there are 546 checkpoints scattered throughout this tiny piece of land. We watched a brief, heartbreaking film about the daily bureaucratic obstacles faced by Palestinians at these checkpoints. While it’s true that checkpoints have uncovered and foiled would-be terrorists, the bulk of the people trying to get through them are merely trying to receive much needed medical care, go to work, or simply pay a social visit to another village. Machsom Watch reports on their observations, and intervenes where it can to assist with emergency, or just quotidian problems. Here is brave, lovely Hanna.

We also met with Yossi Alpher, who is a former advisor to Ehud Barak, and is the Israeli co-author of the site Bitter Lemons which presents Palestinian and Israeli perspectives on the conflict. You can read an excellent, informative briefing he wrote on the Gaza crisis in the form of a Q&A here.

And here's mom and me after our last round of meetings in Tel Aviv. Still standing and still smiling.

The Return of the Native

I’m back in New York. Exhausted. It feels like I was gone for a month, not 6 days. It was a little bizarre this morning to read the New York Times about what’s happening in Gaza when I was sitting in a room at the Ambassador Hotel in East Jerusalem, not even a week ago, in meetings with a Fatah member and a pre-eminent Palestinian pollster hearing their thoughts about Gaza. Now I’m so very far away from the convoluted world into which I was submersed.

Waking up this morning with my husband, eating breakfast, getting on the subway and coming to work...my life is so radically normal. It’s easy to understand how Israelis feel when the world is focused on the plight of the Palestinians - as evidenced by the abundant, violent news headlines - when all they’re doing is eating breakfast and trying to go about their day with a sense of normalcy. But of course, their world is far from normal. Some Israelis choose to ignore the conflict that stares them in the face every day. Some embrace it, fight it, give their lives to find a path to peace.

"Normalcy" is something we in the States take for granted…after all, our wars are fought across oceans, not in our backyard.

Tell me Tel Aviv

I'm relaxing at my friend Anat's house in Tel Aviv right now. It's very refreshing to be here and not to be cramming my brain full of pessimistic political information. It's very hard to integrate everything I've heard and learned these last four days into a coherent narrative. Mom and I feel like our heads are spinning. So I'm taking a break today, but I will return to an update on some of the more fascinating experiences soon. Here's a cutie cute picture of Anat and Stephen, both of whom worked with me at the 92nd Street Y. This was actually taken in Jerusalem, where we dined in Stephen's Emek Refaim neighborhood.

We left Jerusalem early yesterday morning for Tel Aviv so we would not get caught in rush hour traffic, and so we would avoid the street blockages being created by the police in anticipation of the Jerusalem Gay Pride parade. As in years past, the Haredi (ultra-Orthodox) of Jerusalem have protested the parade and have tried to prevent it, by taking the municipality to court, from "desecrating" the Holy City. The parade was actually cancelled last year, after a Haredi man stabbed 3 participants in 2005. You can imagine how sorry I was to leave Jerusalem just as this fascinating showdown between such disparate elements of Israeli society was taking place. In the end, 2,000 people marched, and 2 dozen haredim were arrested, one for carrying a home-made bomb. Tel Aviv is a much more liberal, accepting environment where the Gay Pride parade was held last weekend. My timing is all off.

Tonight we're enjoying Shabbat dinner with Dan and Fran Zetland, and Jeremy Zetland and his fiancee Elisabeth. I am really looking forward to a lovely evening!

Salaam, Shalom, Hello

We had another jam packed day of activities and meetings yesterday. We began our day with a bus tour of some of the settlements outside of Jerusalem in the West Bank. We drove through Ma'ale Adumim, which is not what you might imagine when you hear the word settlement. It has well planned streets and cul-de-sacs with manicured lawns and a mall and banks and even a branch of the local coffee chain, Aroma. It is, in fact, a city. It really helps one understand the difficulty Israel faces in negotiating a permanent agreement with the Palestinians, in which the majority of settlements would have to be uprooted. 270,000 Jews now live in the West Bank, up from 100,000 just from the early 90's! The era following the signing of the Oslo Accords in 1993, the year I lived here, saw the most rapid growth in settlers. Very upsetting to realize.

We also visited a portion of the Separation Wall in East Jerusalem, where it literally divides one half of a Palestinian neighborhood from the other. It was deeply upsetting to see this manifestation of the conflict. I will post some photos of the graphitti that adorns the Israeli side of the Wall...but for now I will list some of what it said:

Seattle Supports Palestine
Make Love Not Walls
Sharon Bush Blair Terrorists
Scotland Supports Palestine
The Wall will Fall
Witness the Jewish Shame

The most fascinating meeting of the day was with MK Rabbi Michael Melchior who spoke to the need to confront religious differences as a track in the peace process. In other words, he feels it is not possible to make peace between governments with out peace between religions. A seemingly obvious observation, but one that tends to get lost in all the political, military and demographic arguments.

Everyone we've met with so far is in agreement that the US and Israel have little time to waste to make peace with the Palestinians, and that to isolate Gaza would be a political and humanitarian disaster. Everyone is also unanimous in their frustration with the Bush Administration for 6 years of non-involvement in this conflict, which has partly led to the breakdown in Palestinian society. It's very distressing.

Today we are going to East Jerusalem for meetings with several Palestinian leaders. It should be quite interesting to finally hear their perspective directly. Will report in!

Sterling Notes Says Shalom

After a gap of seven years, I have returned to Israel. I signed myself up as my mom's companion on a fact-finding mission with the board of Americans for Peace Now. The nice thing is this is our second such mission together - the first one was in 1992! I guess you could say that last one made quite an impact, since I subsequently spent the year in Israel, rabble-roused among Jews and Palestinian Americans in Berkeley and worked for New Israel Fund. Now that I've been working in the arts for a few years (going back to my other roots) and have been feeling out of touch with what's happening on this side of the world, it felt like a good time to come back. You know, what with civil war breaking out in Gaza.

And what a way to return. Whew. We have been in intense back to back meetings since the moment we arrived. As in 1992, I am definitely the youngest person on the tour by about 30 years...I would like to gently suggest to APN that they cultivate some younger leadership. Yesterday one of the tour members came over to ask me who I was; she said she had been wondering "who's that KID?" Kid! I guess I should be flattered.

I'll post more details about the following meetings we had yesterday:

Former MK Naomi Chazan
Minister of Housing Meir Sheetrit
Peace Now Settlement Watch Coordinator Dror Etkes
US Consul General Jacob Walles (at the US Consulate, housed in a centuries old former monastery and leper colony!)
Veteran reporter on Palestinian affairs Danny Rubinstein

On today's agenda is a tour of the settlements and outposts around Jerusalem, and then we head over to the Knesset for meetings with several MK's (members of Knesset).

Will report in!