To explain how I got into such a state of affairs, I need to go back to the beginning – of my interest in Jewish-Palestinian relations, that is. Four years ago, on my first trip to Israel, the group I was with participated in a seminar on the situation of Palestinians in Israel at the Givat Haviva Peace Center in Northern Israel. After speaking to a local resident about his experiences, we got in a bus for a mini-tour of the area. I was dumbfounded when I got off the bus onto a cracked sidewalk beneath an imposing mosque in the small, non-touristy Palestinian town of Barta’a (suffice it to say that until then my experience with Palestinians and their towns and their mosques was so limited that the combination of all three left me momentarily bewildered). I did not realize it at the time, but watching the interactions between the towns’ residents and our Jewish educator affected me so much that I spent much of the next year working to start a teen Jewish-Palestinian dialogue group in San Francisco. Thus began my foray into an arena that gives my life lots more meaning and my sanity lots more trouble.
It is fitting that Barta’a, rather than another town, provided my introduction into the world of interethnic relations. The physical and political layout is almost Dickensian, as the story of the town could easily be called, “A Tale of Two Mosques.” From a hill above Barta’a, the viewer can see a mosque with a dark green dome – the one that greeted me when I got off the bus – and another with a bright yellow dome. The former is in pre-1967 Israel, while the latter is in the West Bank. That is, the “Green Line” separating the widely recognized borders of Israel from the West Bank cuts between the two houses of worship, so that Bartans on the green mosque side are citizens of Israel, while those near the yellow mosque are citizens of nowhere. The barrier the Israeli government is building sweeps into the West Bank near Barta’a in order to enclose some Jewish settlements on the “Israeli” side, and in so doing it cuts behind Barta'a. As a result, the residents of Yellow Barta'a are pretty much literally stuck between a rock and a hard place – getting to the rest of the West Bank is obviously difficult because of the barrier right behind them; but it is technically illegal for them to cross the Green Line into pre-1967 Israel. Many do, and can feel reasonable safe while still in Barta’a, but if caught outside, they can be arrested. And oh yeah – almost all the residents are part of the same family.
(From the viewpoint above Barta’a one can also see the precarious circumstances that help to intensify Israeli Jews’ sense of existential threat. Just below the viewpoint is the invisible Green Line, and yet still within sight is the Mediterranean Sea – a testament to just how skinny Israel is at this point.)
And so there I was, back in Barta’a four years later, tagging along with a group of Israeli Jews of Russian and Ethiopian descent traveling Israel with a group of African-American high schoolers from Baltimore, as they learnt about the life of another minority, the Palestinians of Israel. One of the teachers at Givat Haviva told me he was concerned that attempting to deal with the diverse problems all these groups faced at the same time might be too much. The group seemed to be getting along fine, though I did notice one possible source of tension: the Americans spotted a KFC off the highway, and suddenly decided they had had more than enough falafel, thank you very much (ah, I love my country).
Come to think of it, Barta'a provides a good illustration of an important point made by a professor in Haifa who helped me out with my research. Remember our key word from last time ("$$$")? This prof distinguished between two ways in which money influences political behavior in Israel. Within the Jewish community in Israel, corruption works the way it's "supposed to." People get things they shouldn't by supporting the right people at the right times with the right promises. But with the Palestinian minority - like many minorities across the world - some voters cast ballots for Zionist parties in order to get what they should have gotten anyway, things like roads and electricity in their towns. And if a town populated by the minority doesn't vote for the right party from the ethnic majority, according to the academic, they don't get nuthin'. Maybe that explains the cracked sidewalk in Barta'a my tentative feet stepped on four years ago.
This insight helps explain the surprisingly large number of Palestinian votes for the Jewish national religious party called the "National Religious Party" (subtle name, I know) - a party whose hawkish views make even many (hopefully most) nationalist Jews uncomfortable. The NRP has often controlled the Interior Ministry - i.e. the ministry that controls budget allocations for building things like roads and electrical infrastructure.
One other interesting feature of interethnic relations in politics here is that not only do Jewish parties not invite Palestinian parties into coalitions (unlike the Macedonians with the Albanians), but many supporters and members of Palestinian parties I've talked to say they wouldn't want their party to be the coalitions, even if it was invited to join! The general consensus seems to be that of the major Palestinian parties, the one most likely to "sell out" and join a coalition with Zionist parties is the Islamic movement. "For religiosity you need money," said a professor in Jerusalem, his tone covering any cynicism like the yarmulke ironically covering his head.
So, a right-wing nationalist religious Jewish settler and a fundamentalist Islamic nationalist Palestinian walk into a government coalition - I know you haven't heard this one before...
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Pictures: One of the crazy things about a place with this much history is that just about anyone can be an archaeologist. In fact, it's hard to build anywhere because in many places, digging the foundations for a building will instead uncover an old cemetery or ancient house. At one kibbutz I stayed at, someone found a bunch of ancient mosaics that apparently no one knows what to do with yet:
The famous green mosque of Barta'a:
View from top of above-mentioned carpet shop, looking into West Bank (Yellow) Barta'a:
As I told you last time, Jerusalem drives me nuts. I thus find it more appropriate than annoying that I have a steady serenade of jackhammers outside the room where I'm staying. Instead of the usual pics, here's a nice Russian Orthodox church I don't remember noticing before:
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