Lucian Stone University of North Dakota
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ACTION NOTE PALESTINE , A T RAGICOMEDY ? Lucian Stone University of North Dakota Everybody knows that the dice are loaded . Everybody knows that the fight was fixed . The poor stay poor, the rich get rich . That’s how it goes Everybody knows —Leonard Cohen RELIEF On Sunday, May 30, 2010, our last night in East Jerusalem, a few of us from the faculty group I was traveling with walked from our hotel situated just outside the old city up the hill to the regal American Colony Hotel where there was rumored to be a reading by Suad Amiry from her latest book, Nothing To Lose But Your Life (2010). 1 After spending the previous nine days traveling throughout the occupied Palestinian territories, walking onto the grounds of the hotel felt familiar, like we were returning home. But “our home,” like so many homes the world over, was really a diversionary shelter—a false sense of relief—from the undeniable reality that our sense of security and comfort is too often built upon the suffering and affliction of others. Like many things in the West Bank, such as running water and electricity, the book reading was unpredictable. Amiry resides in Ramallah, which means she is unable to travel freely to East Jerusalem—although technically it, too, is part of the Palestinian territories. Nevertheless, the crowd gathered and waited, hoping that she would arrive. The start time changed several times, but eventually the author arrived, and we all convened in an ornately decorated meeting hall on the second floor of the hotel. It was standing room only. Editor's Note: The author, Lucian Stone, received permission to use Saud Amiry's name and identifying information in this article. Stone feels, and we agree, that in cases like this the use of real names is critical for the type of social action Amiry is engaged in. As a vocal critic and activist, Amiry's writing documents the persistent obstacles faced by Palestinians and how they, Palestinians, are forced into anonymity. One of the key goals of Palestinian intellectuals, Stone explains, is to find ways to become more visible. Thus, while as social scientists we are trained to "protect" our participants’ anonymity, any attempt to "protect" Amiry with a pseudonym in this case, would undermine Amiry’s own autonomy as an author and activist. HUMANITY & S OCIETY , 2011, VOL . 35 (August: 310-326) LUCIAN STONE 311 Amiry’s energy immediately brought everyone to attention, and she began, as so many authors do at these types of events, by offering us an ice-breaker; hers was about what she had to do in order to get there that evening. She held up a paper ID card that was the size of a passport. For everyone but the audience members in the first row, it was impossible to make out any of the details except that there was a picture in the upper left-hand corner of the document. She explained that the document was her dog’s official identification card—all Palestinians, even pets apparently, must have government-approved documentation. She had, Amiry continued to tell us, pasted her picture onto her dog’s ID card because her dog could legally travel from Ramallah to East Jerusalem, whereas she and her compatriots living in Ramallah and other parts of the West Bank and Gaza could not . As it turns out, her ploy worked, and our storyteller and the crowd—a cosmopolitan blend of East Jerusalemites, foreign dignitaries, Americans, other Palestinians who managed to cross the “border,” students, nongovernmental organization (NGO) workers and volunteers, and random travelers—burst into collective laughter. Like a beautiful song about ugly realities, the melody of that chorus of laughter has haunted me ever since. How could we laugh at this situation—a human being “disguising” herself as a dog in order to be treated with more dignity and to have more freedom? What was funny about this? Why did we give our tacit consent to the prevailing logic that made this act supposedly funny? Oppression and outright dehumanization is nothing to laugh at, is it? PARC Our group consisted of 10 American professors affiliated with ten different universities or colleges, representing diverse fields of study including history, media studies, sociology, women’s studies, philosophy and religion, English language and literature, social psychology, and Arabic language. We were convened by the Palestinian American Research Center (PARC), 2 which advertised a competitive grant to participate in its first U.S. Faculty Development Seminar, a program funded by the Educational and Cultural Affairs Bureau of the U.S. State Department. The program sought “U.S. faculty members with a demonstrated interest in, but little travel experience to, Palestine,” who, if selected, would “participate in Jerusalem-based activities [such as] lectures, workshops and visits to local universities and other related institutions in the West Bank” (PARC). The primary objective for the PARC fellows was to “learn about the region, deepen [our] knowledge of [our] particular fields of interest as they relate to Palestine, and build relationships with Palestinian academic colleagues” (PARC). 312 HUMANITY & SOCIETY As a result, each of us had different expectations for the program. Some wanted simply to learn more about Palestine and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and to do so by experiencing the living conditions on the ground firsthand. Others came with expectations to conduct research on Palestine, or to garner information to incorporate into the classroom and their home university’s curriculum. A few participants came prepared with detailed research agendas or creative projects and with the intentions of finding collaborative research partners in Palestine, while others remained open to the unexpected opportunities that might present themselves. The program brought us to a total of six different Palestinian cities: Jerusalem, Ramallah, Bethlehem, Hebron, Nablus, and Jenin. During free time, some group members traveled to additional cities such as Jericho. In each city, the group visited universities where we met with administrators and faculty members to learn about the curriculum, facilities, and challenges they face in trying to offer a high-quality education to their students while under occupation. When possible, we also met with colleagues in our own disciplines in hopes of conceiving joint research projects. Additionally, PARC arranged for us to visit Palestinian NGOs, historical and cultural sites, artists, and educators, all of whom provided us with more information about the past, present, and future of Palestine and the Palestinian people. BUILDING TENSION Walls. Our hotel was situated just outside the fortified walls of the old city of Jerusalem near the Damascus Gate. The old city is small, entombed in a thick wall built by the Ottoman Sultan Suleyman the Magnificent in 1538, making its confines feel even smaller and upon which tourists giddily traipse taking photographs. The old city is divided into four quarters: the Muslim Quarter, the Jewish Quarter, the Christian Quarter, and the Armenian Quarter. So as not to be accused, it seems, of departing from the “aesthetic,” these quarters are further delineated with walls or checkpoints manned by the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF). One could not help but wonder how much square footage the walls and checkpoints themselves take up. As a consequence, every inch matters. Each small piece of land holds significant value, not only for practical reasons but also due to the added weight of religious and historic symbolism. The combined effect is a strangling sense of claustrophobia: not only is the city physically suffocating from enclosures, it is also historically and politically—and therefore intellectually—asphyxiating. Like it or not, the hands of history’s ghosts, global politics, religious LUCIAN STONE 313 factionalism, economics, ideology, and simple-minded public opinion carve up the Palestinians’ homeland and their daily lives. Being a resident of the old city is no easy task; many of the families are crowded into small one-room dwellings with shared toilets and unreliable running water and electricity. Our guide through the old city, Mahmoud, grew up in one of these single-room flats, where he lived with eight family members; it is not uncommon for there to be upward of a dozen people crammed into these homes, and the Palestinian families are not able to expand their living space without permission from the Israeli government (which is rarely, if ever, granted). Many Palestinian homes, in fact, are slated for demolition by the Israeli government, often because of “illegal” expansion of the living quarters without the required permits. As our group caravanned through the tight corridors of the Muslim Quarter, one could not help but be struck by the poor living conditions. It was hot that day, which only made the experience more distressing. The walls, like the streets, are a dusty brown—except for the occasional burst of color generously gifted by a graffiti artist. So when we came upon a home tucked away in a corner of a tight alleyway that bore signs of a lush green garden behind the gate, it caught our attention. Mahmoud spotted one of the homeowners in the garden, and, before we could politely move on, they had invited us all in to see their garden and home, which they were visibly proud of and had put a great deal of work into maintaining. The vines overhead provided comforting shade over a narrow pathway leading to the home itself. The small, rectangular three-room concrete structure was home, we were told, to more than a dozen people. Hearing us, the matriarch of the house came outside and insisted on serving us freshly squeezed fruit juice. During our discussion over these refreshing drinks, we noticed that the family had started to build an extension onto their home.