Palestine - Mya Guarnieri

The Long Road to Bethlehem Part Four

November 16, 2020April 9, 2025 by adminin Middle East, Palestine, Writing

+972, December 19, 2015

“I’m leaving.” I tell people in English, Hebrew, and Arabic. The words sound unexpected and foreign in every language, as though someone else is speaking them. While I’ve resigned from my post at the university and someone has already been hired to teach my fall classes, I haven’t given my landlady a firm answer as to whether or not I’m vacating the apartment, never mind a last-day-here-date. Nor have I begun to dismantle a houseful of stuff, the accumulations of a life.

My place looks like I’ll stay there forever. But tomorrow I’ll head to the US for a month; first to an artists’ residency in Vermont, then I’ll head to New York City, where Mohammad will join me. There, he’ll meet my family and we’ll attend my aunt’s wedding. After that, he’ll head to Florida to start his new life there. I’ll return to the West Bank as I’m scheduled to teach a two-week class at the end of the summer. We will spend July and August apart.

It’s our last afternoon together in Bethlehem. Our impulse is to pass the time in the garden, picking mish mish baladi (a local variety of apricot), sipping tea, and taking in the view. But we decide to pay a visit to the streets, alleys, and buildings that witnessed our courtship.

We head out, passing an old, large house like the one I live in. The limestone is the color of sand, the arched windows are framed by glistening white stone. We pass the French school—a stately building of rose-tinted stone surrounded by a blue gate—and we duck into an alley that cuts through the Christian quarter. It’s a residential area; there’s laundry hanging, the sounds of knives on cutting boards, the smell of food, voices, doors ajar reveal porches lined with potted plants.

On a white arch, red, spray-painted graffiti reminds the passerby: Palestine. I’m puzzled—everyone in this area is local and the word is written in Arabic. Why would someone in this neighborhood need to proclaim this Palestine to other Palestinians? Or was it something more personal, the artist’s way of asserting to himself or herself that Palestine persists?

We cross the plaza adjacent to the Church of Nativity and pass the tourist shops with their bright scarves flapping in the wind. As we climb the stairs next to the souq, we pass several gold stores. The moment we notice the jewelry, it’s obvious to both of us that my engagement ring should come from Bethlehem.

We go into one store and find a ring we like but decide to keep looking. In the second shop, we find an unusual ring—the edges are wavy rather than straight. We’ve never seen anything like it. I try the ring on my right hand—where I’ll wear it when we’re engaged as is the custom in Palestine. I move it to my left, as we will when we get married. It fits both hands perfectly. I head home alone while Mohammad haggles and pays.

When he joins me at the apartment, he’s holding a small plastic bag. I can see the outline of a box inside.

“I can’t give it to you today,” Mohammad says, adding that he wants to surprise me. But I know from previous conversations that he’s conflicted about getting engaged without his parents’ knowledge and blessing. This is especially true while we’re in the West Bank. I’m reminded, yet again, of how impossible a shared life would be here, that if we want to be together, we have no choice but to leave.

In the earliest hours of the morning, a driver from East Jerusalem arrives. “Omar,” as I’ll call him, already knows my ID situation and he knows how to avoid soldiers. He greets me on the street in Arabic; with the windows rolled down, we’re careful to stay in the language until we’re out of Area A. Once we’re on a settler road, we switch to Hebrew because it’s the easiest way for us to have a conversation. We chat all the way to Ben-Gurion Airport about everything—his family which includes a wife and four children, the situation in East Jerusalem, his thoughts about the Jews, the difficulties Mohammad and I have faced.

Omar is certain that if we really want to make it work, we can. He’s sure that, once we’re married, Mohammad’s parents will come around.

“If we get married,” I correct him.

***

Just a few days before Mohammad is supposed to leave for America, three Israeli teenagers—Eyal Yifrach, Naftali Fraenkel, and Gilad Shaar—disappear in the West Bank. The army focuses its efforts in Hebron and the surrounding villages; Hebroni men below the age of 50 are not allowed to exit the West Bank. Although he lives in Ramallah, Mohammad was born in one of those villages of Hebron; its name is written in Hebrew on his ID card. There’s no hiding where he comes from. Will he be able to cross Allenby Bridge into Jordan? Will he make it to my aunt’s wedding? Will he meet my parents? If he can’t get out of the West Bank, we wonder, how long will he be stuck there?

***

Two days before his flight, Mohammad decides to try his luck at the bridge. He gets through.

And then it’s the evening of his arrival; his plane will land in just a few hours. I don’t know what to do with myself in the meantime, so I dress up like I’m going to a party. I put on a one-shouldered black and white striped dress. I have a painful hairline fracture in my left foot and the top of my foot is swelling a bit but I wince and cram it into a black high heel. I slide into the other shoe, apply make-up, and pull my hair up. Some jewelry, perfume, a swipe of lipstick and I head to the subway.

As I ride the train to JFK airport, a couple of young black women board and sit across from me. One points at me and says to her friend, “Ooooo, look at princess, all dressed up. Don’t she look good?” They fall into each other, laughing. When they catch their breath, they continue to taunt me.

I grew up in the Deep South so this sort of thing isn’t new to me. And, as a public school kid, I saw enough white on white and white on black and black on black violence to know that the girls are looking for a reaction, that they’re trying to provoke me.

I avoid eye contact but settle into to my seat. I feign nonchalance—I lean back, cross my legs, and examine my nails. I play with the silver bangles on my right arm, counting them, rearranging them. When I realize my fidgeting makes me look nervous, I stop, pull a collection of Hebrew short stories out of my purse, and do my best to concentrate on the words on the page.

Still, the taunting gets to me, in part because I resent the assumptions behind it. But I can’t tell these girls that I grew up in a neighborhood that probably wasn’t so different from theirs; I can’t tell them about the free lunch days; I can’t tell them how we qualified for food stamps but my mom was too proud to take them; I can’t tell them that I was the only “white girl” on the bus to elementary school and that the black kids reminded me of that every day. “White girl, white girl,” they said when I boarded. I can’t tell them that those children never bothered to ask my name, nor did they ask themselves how it was that we lived on the same side of town and rode the same bus. Nor did they ask why when we all went through the lunch line together I—like them—didn’t have to pay.

I can’t tell these girls that I’m going to meet my partner at the airport because we aren’t afforded the right of living together in what’s supposed to be our land. I can’t tell them that we’re moving to America hoping to avoid exactly the kind of thing that’s happening on the train right now.

I’m angry and disappointed. Even though Mohammad hasn’t even arrived yet, I want to protect him from these type of encounters. I wonder if—with his rosy view of the U.S. in general and of New York City, in particular—he’ll be even more disappointed than I am when something like this happens again. And it’s inevitable that it will.

Still, I keep my mouth shut. I remind myself where these girls are coming from and how, despite the poverty I experienced as a child, my light skin has afforded me some privilege. I understand that they feel voiceless and that it’s easier to pick on a white girl alone on a train than it is to tackle the enormous and deep inequalities that are part of the fabric of American life. So I sit and take it until they leave.

***

I have Mohammad’s flight number memorized. When I get to JFK, I find it on the arrivals board—on time—and head to the customs gate. There’s a crowd milling about. I ask an Asian woman with glasses if she’s waiting on the flight coming from Heathrow, which is where Mohammad had his layover. She is.

“Have any passengers come out?”

“No, not yet.”

I find a place to stand. My left foot throbs. I clench my teeth against the pain. I make a fist and dig my nails into the palm of my hand. I will not take these shoes off. I will look perfect when he steps into the terminal. We will have our happy ending.

I edge closer to the frosted, sliding glass doors. I find myself in the middle of the aisle, step aside, only to realize I’m right in front of someone. I excuse myself, move closer to the doors. Put my purse down between my feet. Pick it up, put it back on my arm. Move again, repeat, like some bizarre sort of square dance sans partner.

The frosted doors slide open and, the passengers begin to trickle out. Their faces hopeful, they scan the waiting crowd. That flash of recognition, a smile, a wave. Their gait speeds up, they rush towards their loved ones.

The crowd thickens as the passengers meet their families and friends. It thins as they move on to collect their luggage. Soon, it’s just a handful of people left, waiting. The doors are shut again. Where’s Mohammad? I worry that maybe there was something wrong with his visa. Or maybe he’s being questioned. No, this isn’t Israel. But sometimes the U.S. doesn’t seem so different.

Or maybe I’m at the wrong gate.

I ask a black woman with short hair if this, indeed, is the flight from Heathrow. “I sure hope so,” she laughs.

A moment later, she’s waving at a man striding towards her. They hug and off they go, his carry-on rolling behind him.

There’s just a few of us left at the gate.

Maybe Mohammad fell asleep during his layover and missed the flight, I think.

The doors slide open and a man in a bright blue uniform comes out. Homeland Security. I brace myself, certain he’s going to come tell me that they’ve detained Mohammad. Instead, he turns and opens a door at the end of the hall. I see people inside. It looks like some sort of waiting room. Is Mohammad in there?

The glass doors part and another Homeland Security official emerges. He heads down the hall and into the same room. I try to get a peek but can’t.

And then the glass doors part again and it’s Mohammad. He dons a wool sports coat—I know without asking him that he wore it so he could save space in his luggage—a white linen button down shirt, jeans, and leather shoes. He’s got only one bag and a backpack with him. He puts them down and we hug.

“Hayati,” my life, he says as we hold each other.

***

It’s the morning after Israeli forces shot and killed a Palestinian in Ramallah, just meters from Mohammad’s old office. We’re headed to Coney Island for the day and, in a bid to keep our expenses down, are filling his backpack with snacks and bottles of tap water. I unzip a pocket only to find the ring from Bethlehem. Not wanting to blow the surprise, I don’t say anything about my discovery. I continue stocking the backpack.

When we get to Coney Island, we start at the aquarium. Inside, it’s cool, dark, and quiet—save for a school group that weaves through the place, puncturing the silence like a radio suddenly turned up to full volume. We linger at each tank, watching fish flit against endless turquoise waters, admiring electric-fluorescent skins and glimmering scales that seem to change colors as their wearer curves around rocks. I forget about Brooklyn, Israel, Palestine—the world—as I follow the fishes’ meanderings.

When we step outside, the day is hot, the sky cloudless and bright. The light is painful to our eyes, which have adjusted to the aquarium’s dim lighting. We squint.

Mohammad’s phone rings. It’s his brother calling from the West Bank—not the brother I’ll meet soon, in Florida, but one I’ve never met. When Mohammad answers, the phone disconnects. It rings again. And, again, Mohammad picks up only to hear nothing on the other end.

Mohammad tells me he’s worried something has happened—why else would his brother keep calling and calling like this? He sits on the nearest bench, clutching the phone in his hand, staring down at it. He tries to ring his brother but gets a busy signal.

This goes on for nearly half an hour until they finally manage to connect. Mohammad’s voice is full of relief when his brother answers. He smiles and laughs when he realizes everything is fine. He tells his family that New York is good and talks about his trip. But he’s careful to do so only in first person singular. “I.” There’s no “we” or “us.” There’s no Mya in any sentence. No mention of the fact that he’s met my aunt and her fiancé, my favorite cousin, my grandfather, that in a few days he’ll meet my parents.

If there’s a real emergency in Palestine at some point and Mohammad has to go home, I wonder, will he quietly omit me then, too? Will I stay alone in the States—maybe with children—so he can head back free of his unacceptable Jewish wife? And what if he has to stay in the West Bank for whatever reason? What will happen to me?

Intellectually, I understand his situation. Still, I can’t bear sitting there, listening to him talking about his solo trip to New York City. Listening to him talk to the family I’ve never met, who don’t know that he’s bought a ring and that we’ll soon be engaged.

I mime that I’m going to the bathroom. When I lock myself in a stall, I stand, focusing on my breathing. I try to stifle the voice in my head that’s telling me I’m a fool to have quit my job when I’m not even sure that he has, indeed, told his family about me at all. I try not to wonder why I’m following him to Florida, a place that holds few opportunities for me in a country I have no desire to live in.

Later that day, Mohammad proposes to me. We’re on the Ferris wheel, suspended in the sky, Coney Island tiny and insignificant below. My heart should be floating, too. But the unmovable earth awaits us.

***

The day Mohammad flies to Florida, the three Israeli teenagers who disappeared in June are laid to rest. Late that night, Jewish settlers kidnap Mohammed Abu Khdeir, a 16-year-old boy from East Jerusalem and drive him to the woods. They take him to the forest adjacent to Kiryat Yovel. There, between the trees where Mohammad and I took our first picture together, the Israeli men commit a murder beyond brutal. They force the boy to drink gasoline. They soak his thin body in the liquid and set him alight while he’s still alive. His last breaths were full of ash.

Now East Jerusalem is burning on the muted TVs at the gate at JFK, where I await my flight to Tel Aviv. Palestinians are clashing with Israeli forces. The scene flashing before me is unfolding on streets I’ve driven and walked, roads I’ll be on again in just a matter of hours as I take public transportation from Ben-Gurion Airport to Jerusalem and then to Bethlehem.

I realize Mohammad will not be coming to spend every weekend with me this summer. I’ll be alone, the West Bank simmering around me.

***

An American-Israeli friend stayed in my apartment and took care of my cat while I was in the States. He’d been contemplating a move to Bethlehem; my place was his trial run.

I arrive home to find that he’s already left.

He emails me, explaining that the situation has been very tense. Israeli forces have been raiding houses in Beit Sahour—which is just down the road from my apartment. And my friend almost got nabbed by soldiers when he took the bus in to Jerusalem recently.

He’s had enough and went back the previous day.

I’ve always felt safe in Bethlehem but, when I go to bed that night—with Israeli tanks and troops amassing on the Gaza border and Hamas firing rockets into the south—I think about something a Palestinian friend said to me in December, during the Christmas party Mohammad and I hosted. I’d had a little too much to drink and found myself, more than once in the evening, slipping into Hebrew. The friend, a close friend of Mohammad’s, realized I must have an Israeli ID and pulled me aside.

“I’m scared for you,” he said, in Arabic. He emphasized that he, personally, had no problem with me living in Bethlehem. He knows me, he knows my politics, he loves me and he loves me and Mohammad together.

“But there are people who don’t think like me,” he continued. “And if they find out that you’re here, alone—I’m scared for you.”

Six months later, as something stirs in the garden, I remember his words. I think of the family of settlers who were killed in Itamar in 2011. I recall the student who waited for me after class one day. “So, I heard you’re Jewish,” she began. “I really admire you for teaching here. You’re so brave. Anyone could bring a gun to campus and shoot you.”

I tell myself that there’s no one in the garden. It’s just the wind, I think, reminding myself that I’m not a settler. And I curse myself for thinking like a racist, paranoid Israeli, for being so self-centered and so self-important as to lie in bed thinking anyone would care that I—one person, a harmless woman who works at a Palestinian university and rents from a Palestinian landlady and is not occupying anyone’s home—am here and that they would be so bothered as to do something about it.

Outside leaves skitter across the garden’s stone path.

Or are those footsteps, someone walking through the leaves?

I try to think things through. The house is nestled into the side of a hill, on an old olive terrace. It’s at least a ten foot drop to the orchard below and then another huge leg-breaking-jump down to the road. So for someone to get into the garden, they’d have to scale not one but two stone walls. I’m completely safe.

The leaves rustle again. I think of the three settlers who disappeared (but you’re not a settler! I remind myself again) and I think of Abu Khdeir. Most Israelis wouldn’t kill a Palestinian. And most Palestinians wouldn’t kill me. But both sides have their extremists and these are tense times.

My mind fills then with angles—the various trajectories a bullet could take if it was fired into my bedroom from different positions.

I remind myself that my bedroom is on the other side of the enclosed porch that also has bars on the window. It would be quite a shot, aiming through the bars of one window towards another barred window.

Still, I can’t sleep.

I slide out of bed and, staying below the window, edge towards the armoire. I remove some blankets and I make a nest on the floor in the “blind spot” between the bed and the bureau, where no bullets could possibly reach.

The sun rouses me in the morning. As I wake and remember why I’m on the floor, I feel ashamed. I fold the blankets and put them back in the bureau. I make the bed and look at the room, which is full of light. It’s like last night never happened.

I make some Nescafe, grab an ice pack and a towel for my still-fractured foot, and take a seat in the garden. My cat joins me. It’s a beautiful summer day. I tell myself that everything is fine, that everything will be just fine.

Old problems in Jerusalem’s Old City

November 23, 2015April 9, 2025 by adminin Palestine, Writing

IRIN, November 23, 2015

Faten Ghosheh, a 33-year-old Palestinian mother of five, stands on the roof of her partially demolished home in Jerusalem’s Old City, the Al-Aqsa Mosque visible behind her.

She recalls the moment five years ago when Israeli forces arrived at 5am to tear down the two rooms and bathroom that her husband had built with their life savings of 700,000 shekels ($180,000).

To avoid the fine that the Jerusalem municipality would charge for the demolition, the Ghoshehs called on the men in their family to come and tear down the walls.

“The children were all crying,” she says. “The older children brought hammers and started demolishing with their father.”

Now the family of nine, which includes Ghosheh’s sister-in-law and mother-in-law, makes do with only one bedroom.

“In order to protect this, the mosque,” she explains, gesturing towards the glistening dome on the horizon, “we will continue to live here. We consider ourselves … defenders of Al-Aqsa.”

Her comment explains at least some of the sentiment behind the wave of violence in Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories that began last month and has claimed the lives of 16 Israelis, an American, an Eritrean and at least 90 Palestinians, including attackers.

For many Palestinians, Al-Aqsa, which stands on land Israel occupied in 1967, is as much of a political symbol as it is a religious one.

Alleged Israeli provocation at Al-Aqsa and the Temple Mount – holy to both Jews and Muslims – were a match to the powder keg of home demolitions, taxation without services, classroom shortages, and grinding poverty.

As much of the violence has shifted to the West Bank (although there was a stabbing Monday in West Jerusalem) East Jerusalem remains a focal point for protests, and the issues Palestinians face there are on full display inside the walls of the Old City, where the flare-up began.

Building permit woes

The Ghoshehs applied for but were denied a building permit for the rooms that were eventually torn down. Human rights organisations, including the Association for Civil Rights in Israel (ACRI), argue that it is nearly impossible for Palestinians to get permits.

Only 14 percent of Palestinian East Jerusalem is zoned for residential use; less than eight percent of Jerusalem’s total landmass for a third of its population.

In 2014, Israeli forces destroyed 98 Palestinian structures in East Jerusalem because they were built without permits. Two were in the Old City, displacing seven people, including five children.

The Jerusalem municipality insists Palestinian residents of East Jerusalem can obtain building permits. The city points to 2014’s numbers: 108 permits were requested for East Jerusalem; 85 were granted.

Asked if these permits were granted to Palestinian residents or the Jewish Israeli settlers who live in East Jerusalem, Ben Avrahami, a spokesman for the municipality, said he did not have that information on hand.

The reality is that many Palestinians feel ahead of time that they will not be granted permits. By ACRI’s count, an estimated 39 percent of the houses in East Jerusalem have been built without permission.

“It’s not because we want to make their lives more difficult,” Avrahimi told IRIN. “It’s a problem with tabo [land registration]. It’s very complicated to prove ownership.” To that end, he adds, the city has started a special committee to examine those who claim ownership but lack all of the documentation, though not in all of East Jerusalem.

Lack of services

After the demolition, with the roof of the top floor torn away and most of the walls gone, the Ghoshehs added tin in an attempt to keep out the wind and rain. But it isn’t enough. During heavy winter storms, water leaks into the home. The city has fined them for the erecting the tin.

The family also pays arnona, property tax, to the municipality. Paying it is crucial to East Jerusalemites as it helps them prove that the city remains at the center of their life – a condition they must meet to hold on to their residency and, thus, Israeli IDs. According to the UN emergency coordination body OCHA, more than 14,000 Palestinians have lost their Jerusalem residency since 1967.

When asked what services she receives in return for the tax, Ghosheh remarks: “What services?”

Jihad Yusef agrees. The 49-year-old has brought her six children up in the Old City, and was born and raised inside its walls.

She recalls her attempt to enroll her son Ibrahim in the government-run school near their home. There was no space, so she had to put him in a private school that cost her 3,000 shekels ($770) a year.

OCHA estimates the city needs to supply an additional 2,200 classrooms to meet the Palestinian community’s educational needs. The municipality argues it is tackling this issue, telling IRIN in an emailed statement: “We build 100 new classrooms in East Jerusalem every year, more than any other sector in Jerusalem.”

Other basic services are also lacking. Palestinians from East Jerusalem are entitled to Israel’s public healthcare system, but there is only one clinic that provides free prenatal, infant and pediatric services in the Old City, and it’s in the Jewish Quarter. Likewise, East Jerusalem has seven of these clinics and there are 26 in the city’s Jewish neighborhoods, three of which also serve Palestinian families.

The Arab areas – that is, the Muslim, Christian, and Armenian Quarters – have a higher population density and many of the buildings there are in poor condition. As of 2002, according to a UN report, a third of Palestinian houses in the Old City lacked running water and some 40 percent were not connected to the sewage system.

Hard times

Ghosheh’s building is just a short walk from Al Wad Street – the narrow, cobblestone thoroughfare that leads to Al-Aqsa, Islam’s third holiest site, as well as the Western Wall, which is sacred to Jews and where the first stabbing attack took place in October.

Nabil Abu Sneineh and his brother, Saadeh, own a bakery on this road. They estimate that sales have dropped 90 percent since the flare-up began.

Historically, the area has been a centre for Palestinian trade. But West Bank suppliers have trouble reaching their traditional markets and vendors, thanks to the difficulty in acquiring Israeli government-issued permission to enter and navigating checkpoints, especially since the construction of the separation barrier that divides Israel from the West Bank and cuts through part of East Jerusalem. Many of the buyers who used to come to the Old City to do their shopping are now absent.

ACRI estimates that since the separation barrier’s completion, the percentage of those who live in East Jerusalem neighborhoods outside the barrier and do their shopping in Jerusalem has dropped from 18 to four percent. “Businesses in the centre of East Jerusalem and in the Old City have been particularly hard hit, and layoffs have become more and more frequent,” the association says.

The unemployment rate for Palestinian men in East Jerusalem hovers around 40 percent. In the Old City, some estimates are as high as 50 percent.

“[Israeli forces] close the streets any time they wish,” Saadeh Abu Sneineh, 32, says. “They harass us as we’re walking into our shops. Many [Palestinian men] have been strip-searched as we’re walking into the Old City.”

With sales so sluggish now, the Abu Sneinehs are worried they won’t be able to pay the property taxes on the business, which could result, eventually, in losing the bakery.

Ziyad Hammouri, director and a founder of the Jerusalem Centre for Social and Economic Rights, which offers legal aid to East Jerusalem Palestinians, says the most common problems are home demolitions, inability to pay property tax, and revocation of residency. Three houses were demolished in the city the day before he spoke to IRIN.

The municipality has always sued Jerusalemites who fell behind on their tax payments, going as far as seizing cars, bank accounts, and wages. But this phenomenon hits Palestinian residents harder as they are, by and large, poorer than their Jewish counterparts and are more likely to fall behind on arnona in the first place.

Hammouri is particularly concerned by recent attempts by the city to seize and auction off Palestinian property to pay off arnona debt.

“[The Israelis] want a political result from this economic oppression,” said Hammouri. “The goal is to push the people outside the city [beyond the separation barrier]. But first outside the Old City.”

However, the family of nine Ghoshehs is going nowhere in a hurry. Faten says she remains determined to stay in the house her husband’s family has owned for decades, although she admits wearily: “Living in the Old City is like suffocating.”

Eat the breakfast of a king and the dinner of a pauper

November 16, 2015April 9, 2025 by adminin Palestine, Writing

Roads & Kingdoms, November 16, 2015

One can learn much about labneh—that is, the version of the breakfast food that appears in Palestinian homes—through the word itself.

Both the name and the substance labneh are derived from laben, yogurt. But it also shares a root with “block,” as in the substance used to build. And the thick, strained yogurt—sometimes dried and rolled into balls—is indeed a cornerstone of the Palestinian diet.

In Arabic, they say “Eat the breakfast of a king, the lunch of a prince, and the dinner of a pauper.” This doesn’t mean that labneh should be decked out. No, it’s humble; it dresses accordingly in a thin coat of olive oil and is eaten with pita.

My husband, who is from the West Bank, explains that labneh has already been perfected; there’s no need to improve on it. When we’re feeling festive, however, we sprinkle labneh balls with crushed garlic and dried chili. This isn’t uncommon in Palestinian homes. And whether one chooses the thick labneh spread or the condensed balls, which are preserved in oil, is as much of a matter of taste as whether one prefers labneh made from sheep, cow, or goat milk.

The spread is creamy, with a slightly tart finish. To make labneh balls, one dries yogurt out; the loss of liquid means a concentrated flavor. Although the balls are delicate, crumbling when pushed upon with pita, their flavor is strong, running the gamut from tangy to sour, depending on the milk from which it is made.

In recent years, it’s begun to pop up on menus in Tel Aviv’s trendiest restaurants, not as a simple breakfast food but, rather, as an ingredient that’s been interpreted, played with, and incorporated into larger dishes. At Mizlala, owned by celebrity chef and restauranteur Meir Adoni, labneh makes a cameo in the “Asian sashimi” as part of a glaze that also consists of soy and silan (date syrup). At Shaffa—a tapas bar located in Jaffa’s gentrified shuk hapishpishim (flea market)—labneh comes adorned with a glistening crown of crushed tomatoes.

But the labneh spreads I find in Tel Aviv and Jaffa’s restaurants don’t cut it. I’m used to the balls and I’m used to the ones that are made in the West Bank; these products are banned in Israel. With things as they are right now, however, I spend most of my time inside the Green Line, haunting the grocery stores, looking for the “right” labneh, dismayed to find only bland, mass-produced spreads that lack the punch of their Palestinian counterparts.

And then a stroke of luck: at shuk hacarmel (Carmel market) in central Tel Aviv one Friday, I spy the familiar balls, packed in oil. The vendor tells me they come from the Galilee, an Arab area of the country. I pay the steep 20 shekel ($5 USD); I pay the same price again when I find another jar of labneh balls in Jaffa at an Arab bakery. “These are from Nablus,” a city in the West Bank, the worker tells me, proudly. Maybe he doesn’t know about the ban.

I wrap my precious finds in plastic bag after plastic bag so when the oil leaks out—as it invariably does—it won’t soak my clothes. I pack them in my suitcase and bring them back to Florida so my husband and I can eat them at home, for breakfast, as we ought to.

This is What the Israelis Really Want

October 23, 2015April 9, 2025 by adminin Israel, Palestine, Politics, Writing

The World Post at The Huffington Post, October 23, 2015

It’s Wednesday night. I’ve just left the memorial for Habtom Zarhum, the Eritrean asylum seeker who was mistaken for a Palestinian during the attack on the Beersheba bus station. Zarhum was shot by a security guard and was then “lynched”by an Israeli mob. They cursed the asylum seeker, spat on him and kicked his head as he lay on the ground bleeding.

The gathering held in Zarhum’s memory took place in a south Tel Aviv park, near the Central Bus Station. I board a “sherut” — a minivan that serves as a shared taxi — to head home.

Two older women are seated inside. They’re Mizrachi, Jews from Arab lands. It’s easy to tell from their accents. As I make my way past them, I squeeze past a large suitcase, which is taking up much of the aisle.

“Is it yours?” one of the women asks.

I cluck my tongue — the standard Israeli response for no.

A young man gets on behind me.

“Is that your suitcase?” They ask him as he sits down. A foreigner, he offers them a vacant look. He wears a kippah and a smile.

“Ken,” he says, yes.

“Take it,” one of the women commands.

The man, whom the women have already dubbed “the Frenchman,” does nothing. I gather he doesn’t speak Hebrew.

“Nu, come on, take it already! I don’t want it exploding next to me,” she shouts.

The woman is saying what the others around us were surely thinking. Whose suitcase is this? What’s in it? It’s what we call a “hefetz hashud,” a suspicious object.

“Maybe we should check it,” her companion says as the sherut starts to move. “Is it his? The Frenchman’s?”

The women don’t speak English so they continue yelling at him in Hebrew, trying to ascertain that the suitcase is, indeed, his and trying to figure out what’s in it.

“Is this your suitcase?” I translate for the young man.

“Yeah, it’s mine,” he says. He’s got a heavy American accent.

“The women want you take it.”

He wheels it down the aisle. But this doesn’t calm the women down. A few blocks later as the driver slows to pick up a passenger, one of them shouts “Don’t let him on, he looks suspicious.”

The driver ignores her, stops, and the man boards.

It’s quiet as he walks down the aisle, the woman’s remark still in our ears. We size him up. He sits down. It’s silent as faces pivot towards him, eyes trying to read his clothes, his hair, his skin, his facial expression, his movements. Does he look nervous? Is he reaching for something in his pocket?

He takes the only open seat, in the back row, wedged between the American-“Frenchman” and an Ethiopian Jew who wears a kippah. I wonder if he wore it a week ago, before Zarhum was killed. Or is it something new, something so he won’t be mistaken for a non-Jew, a terrorist.

The sherut lurches forward and, after a few uneasy moments, the women — who mention that they’re visiting Tel Aviv from Ashkelon — start chatting with the driver, asking him if it’s safe here.

“Sure,” the driver says. “This is Tel Aviv. What do the terrorists want with us? We’re all left-wingers. Vegans, everyone!”

Tel Aviv is known to Israelis as habuah, the bubble, because it is supposedly very different from the rest of the country. Here, the thinking goes, we’re isolated from the conflict. Here, everyone is, supposedly, a liberal.

“The leftists loves human beings,” the driver adds.

The women grow defensive. “We’re right-wing,” one says. “And the rightists love human beings, too.”

“But are you vegan?” the driver asks.

“What are you crazy?” one answers.

The driver launches into a speech, one he has clearly given many times. Eventually their discussion, which turns into an argument, becomes about kashrut, keeping kosher. Then the women identify themselves as masorati, traditional — like many other Mizrahi Jews, they’re neither secular nor religious. This leads, inevitably, to the driver asking them about their family roots. The women’s parents come from Yemen and Morocco.

“So you’re Arabs,” the driver says, adding that his family are Yemeni Jews, too.

“Gross,” the women shout. “We’re not Arabs.”

“Listen to your own accent,” the driver insists. “You’re an Arab. It’s okay. We’re all Arabs here.”

The women make noisy protest, one of them saying that Arabs are murderers and terrorists and that she is a Jew. As though Jews don’t kill people, too. As though dozens of Palestinians haven’t been shot to death by Israeli forces in recent weeks.

I realize, too, that she’s dehumanized both the Palestinians and the Jews in one fell swoop. Palestinians are “monsters” who kill people; Jews are saints who join the“most moral army in the world.” As an American-Jewish-Israeli who is married to a Palestinian, I’m doubly offended.

I also want to tell them that one can be both an Arab and a Jew. The child I’m carrying in my belly — our first, a girl — is living proof.

But I keep my mouth shut because there’s two of them, one of me, and who knows what the other people on the sherut think, how they’ll react.

The second woman takes a different approach than her friend, explaining to the driver that we have to distinguish between language and culture versus ethnicity. She admits to having the accent and, maybe, even some of the culture. “Sure, I cook some of the food,” she says. But that’s where the similarities end, in her mind.

“I’m not an Arab,” she says. “I’m a Jew.”

The driver, whose eagerness to embrace his Arab roots is uncommon amongst Israeli Jews, gives up. He steers the topic back to safer territory.

“Do you eat eggs?” he asks the women.

They say that they do.

“How can you eat eggs? Have you seen the cages those poor chickens live in?”

If he can’t persuade the women to embrace their Arabness, at least he’s going to make good vegans out of them.

***

As I ran errands in Tel Aviv last weekend, I passed a kiosk. The mainstream Hebrew daily Ma’ariv grabbed my eye.

“66%: Separate from the Arab neighborhoods in East Jerusalem,” the headline read.

The picture below showed the cement blocks that were placed around Palestinian parts of the city last week.

I was intrigued. Giving up on half of Jerusalem — which Israel claims as its “eternal, undivided capital” — is usually associated with the “left” (I use the term loosely in regards to the Israeli left — many argue that there isn’t a left left here). But the past few elections have shown that the public has moved right.

As I studied the picture, I wondered if the uptick in violence has made Israelis realize that the occupation is unsustainable, if they finally see that attempting to control another people — by corralling them into ever shrinking spaces like the one shown in the picture, by restricting their freedom of movement — is not only impossible but inhumane.

I took the bait and bought the paper. After I picked up a few things from the market, which was a bit quieter than usual but still busy, I headed home and settled in to check out the article about the survey.

When I opened the paper, I was disappointed.

“The principle is to separate” the headline said.

The poll revealed that while, yes, Jewish Israelis say that the state should leave the Palestinian neighborhoods of East Jerusalem — which writer Ben Caspit admitted is “left wing” — 58 percent also support a “voluntary transfer” (whatever that means) of “West Bank Arabs” (read: Palestinians).

Where are they supposed to go? I wondered.

Caspit accurately pointed out that this is a “right wing” sentiment. “In reality, it’s the same result,” he continues. “We want to quit the Arabs. It’s not important how. That they’ll leave us, that we’ll leave them, the principle is to separate.”

But separation — which was formalized and deepened by the Oslo Accords — has only made things worse. It has wrought our current reality. It has brought us to the present day, to two peoples who think of the “other” as faceless enemies.

Then there’s the issue of collective punishment: 61 percent of Jewish Israelis who were surveyed “support an economic boycott of Arab Israelis following the ‘wave of terror.'” And 88 percent support “punitive measures towards the family members of terrorists.”

The latter translates to home demolitions — after a Palestinian kills a Jewish Israeli, the state destroys the family’s house, even if the suspect himself is dead or in jail. Violence begets violence begets violence.

Where will it end?

And that glimmer of hope that I’d had — that recent events had led Israelis to understand that they need to give up on the occupation, that they’d moved to the “left”? On the contrary. The survey showed that despite the “wave of terror,” 64 percent of Jewish Israelis have not changed their political affiliation. “Only three percent report that they’ve moved left,” the article says, while 30 percent have moved further to the right.

Hold that one-third in your mind as you consider this: 67 percent of Israelis aren’t satisfied with how Netanyahu is handling the “wave of terror.” The next government will likely be even more right-wing than this one.

***

While I don’t know a lot of rightists — politics are divisive here and people self-segregate into like-minded groups — their conversations are omnipresent. On the bus, in cafes, in restaurants. And what I hear leaves me even more disheartened than what I see in the newspapers.

Wednesday, on my way to Zarhum’s memorial, I sat and had lunch at a hole-in-the-wall Persian place. Three middle-aged men and a young soldier sat at the table next to me. One of the men remarked that the place, which is usually busy at lunch time, was empty.

“Where is everyone?” he asked. “It’s because of the matsav, the situation, I guess.”

“The situation” — that’s what Israelis call the conflict.

The men began to chat about recent events, one casually mentioning that not only should terrorists’ homes be destroyed, but their families should be deported.

This, another chimed in, is the solution to the conflict. “Deport all of them and put walls on every border.” He took a bite of his food, chewed. “What can we do? We already live in a ghetto.”

A brief argument about the West Bank follows. If we annex it, one says, “All the Arabs will come here.”

“But if we leave, it will turn into Gaza,” another declares. “There’s nothing to do.” Both separation and occupation must continue.

The soldier complained that his commander is some sort of leftist who “wants a peace agreement with the Palestinians.” He snorts. “If we had a peace agreement with them, they’d make a “balagan.” A mess.

***

I’m saddened by this conversation and the poll, too, but I’m not surprised. When the violence ticks up — when the Palestinians no longer take dispossession and occupation like docile lambs — Israelis don’t self-reflect. They don’t ask “why are these people angry?” “What might they be trying to say?” “Have we done something to provoke this?”

Instead, Israelis look for simple, external answers: They’re anti-Semites, they hate us, they want to kill us, they want to drive us into the sea.

While I don’t understand this utter inability to self-reflect, I have to admit, I understand where it comes from: fear. I feel it, too, as I move through Tel Aviv. I, too, eye the people I pass on the street, sizing them up. Forget about racial profiling — I’m scared of everyone I don’t know right now. I try not to stand too close to anyone, God forbid they pull a knife out of their bag or pocket. Soldiers and police seem to be targets of attacks, so I make sure not to get too close to them, either, as I don’t want to get caught in the crossfire.

An elderly man and his wife — tourists who speak heavily-accented Hebrew — try to stop me and ask for directions one afternoon and I shout the directions to them over my shoulder as I keep moving.

That, I figure, is the key. Just keep moving.

I realize my thoughts and behavior are absurd. Totally irrational.

But even my husband — who is one of those “West Bank Arabs” that most Jewish Israelis would like to see transferred “voluntarily” — says he is more worried about me now than he was during the war last summer. Because “anything can happen anytime anywhere.” It could be a Palestinian attacker, it could be an armed Jewish Israeli who freaks out. Who knows?

And as I talk to people, I find that I’m not alone.

“It doesn’t matter if you’re a blonde, even,” an acquaintance says, speaking of the hysteria and panic that seem to be spreading through Israeli society, “someone starts screaming that you’re a terrorist and you’re done.”

***

As good humanists, we say these things and we try to believe them. We try pretend that this could happen to anyone. But, Sunday night, we’re reminded that it’s the dark-skinned among us who are most likely to be falsely accused, as was the case with Zarhum. In a rare moment of clear-eyed reporting, the Israeli media calls it a “lynch.”

On Wednesday, after I left the restaurant, I headed to south Tel Aviv to conduct some interviews related to my book and to attend Zarhum’s memorial. As I passed the Central Bus Station, I noticed that there were even more guns here than a week ago. It wasn’t just the increased police and army presence. I also saw several civilians — all of them men — with handguns tucked into the waistbands of their pants or jeans.

The firepower didn’t make me feel safer. On the contrary. I crossed the street to try to get away from the police and soldiers — again, they’re targets — but there they were, on the other side of the road, too. Looking at all the uniforms made me feel like I have a reason to be worried, that there’s something to be anxious about and I began, again, to look intently at the people around me.

I passed a policeman. We made eye contact. I realized he’s sizing me up and I understood just how on edge he was — how on edge everyone is — when even a pregnant Jewish Israeli woman waddling down the street like myself can be considered a possible threat.

It struck me that this pervasive sense of fear and insecurity that has begun to permeate every aspect of life here — that sense that anything can happen anytime anywhere — is familiar. It reminds me of what I felt when I lived in the Occupied Palestinian Territories, of how I felt when I passed through a checkpoint, of how I felt when I heard that soldiers were raiding houses down the road from me.

No, Israelis are not under occupation. But now they’re getting a little taste of what those “West Bank Arabs” and East Jerusalemites feel on a daily basis. They’re getting a little taste of what comes from inequality, occupation and separation — things that Israelis view as necessary to their survival, things that won’t be going away anytime soon.

Welcome to Palestine.

This is What Palestinian Youth Really Want

October 19, 2015April 9, 2025 by adminin Israel, Middle East, Palestine, Writing

The World Post at The Huffington Post, October 19, 2015

It’s Friday morning and East Jerusalem is on lockdown, the city’s Palestinian neighborhoods cut off by new, hastily erected checkpoints — massive cement blocks manned by Israeli soldiers.

In Tel Aviv, however, it’s the beginning of the weekend, and it feels like it. The streets are full of life as Israelis sit in sidewalk cafes, lingering over breakfast, as they shuffle towards the beach, or head to the shuk, the open-air market. I’m going through the motions myself, running a couple of errands before the Sabbath begins.

But as I move freely through Tel Aviv, I can’t stop thinking about East Jerusalem. A majority of those who have attempted or have carried out recent attacks on Jewish Israelis have come from the Palestinian neighborhoods of East Jerusalem. Indeed, some journalists and commentators are pointing to the area as the epicenter of the current unrest, or intifada, call it what you will.

East Jerusalem is a place I know well. As a journalist, I wrote about the housing shortages and inequalities that plague the area due to Israeli policy. I also taught at a Palestinian university in Abu Dis, a Jerusalem neighborhood on the “other” side of the separation barrier that I lived in for some time, as well.

When I think about East Jerusalem now, however, I think less about my own experience and more about my former students, who came from there and the West Bank. They were 17, 18, 19-years-old. Freshmen in college. They were not unlike the university students I’d taught in the United States. Some were hardworking and devoted to their studies; others came to class unprepared and full of excuses. All worried about their grades.

In short, they were normal kids who wanted normal lives.

They wanted to come to college without having to pass through Israeli checkpoints. They wanted to return home and find all of their family members present, that none of their fathers or brothers had been taken to administrative detention (imprisonment without trial). They wanted to sleep through the night without the fear of soldiers raiding their house, turning it upside down, or stationing themselves on the roof — events a number of my students described in their essays.

They wanted their younger brothers and sisters to be able to go to school, something that isn’t always possible in East Jerusalem. The West Bankers among them wanted to be able to visit Jerusalem without a permit. Those who lived in East Jerusalemwanted neighborhoods where the garbage had been collected, places where the police helped keep law and order, where they could feel safe, where there was decent infrastructure, where they could get permits to build houses or add on to existing structures. Where their homes would not be demolished.

All of my students wanted to graduate and find decent jobs, something increasingly difficult to do in both East Jerusalem and the West Bank, where the economies have been de-developed by the Israeli occupation and where unemployment is rampant. They wanted to marry one day and start families of their own.

My students wanted what any human being wants, regardless of nationality.

Whether they hailed from the West Bank, where the Palestinian Authority has control over designated areas, or East Jerusalem, where there is no PA presence and where Israel shirks its responsibility towards Arab residents, my students had little faith in the Palestinian leadership to help them out.

During the 2012 Operation Pillar of Defense — which claimed six Israeli lives and saw more than 100 Palestinian casualties — my students convened a town hall meeting to discuss the events and strategies for protesting Israel’s bombardment of Gaza. They openly expressed their frustration with all Palestinian political parties, including Fatah, which leads the PA. They called not for the resurrection of the largely defunct parties like the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine but for something completely new, something from the ground up.

Fast forward to today’s protests and stabbings. The latter are cries of despair and hopelessness, tragic suicide missions that are unlikely to accomplish much of anything besides more needless bloodshed.

Foreign analysts have been quick to claim that recent events are about Al Aqsa, and they’ve been even quicker to argue about whether or not this is a third intifada. But both discussions miss the point.

Yes, Israeli provocations at Al Aqsa were a proverbial match. But the tinder is the occupation and the many forms of violence — literal and structural — that Palestinians experience at Israel’s hands every day. And because Al Aqsa is in Israeli-occupied territory, it can be understood as both a religious and political symbol.

Those who call this a religious war, and who point to Abbas’ words as incitement, have got it backwards. Abbas — whose term expired in 2009 and has little legitimacy on the Palestinian street — is trying to insert himself into recent events in a bid to regain popularity.

But the Palestinian youth who are protesting and carrying out attacks on Israelis care little what he or other politicians say. Indeed, their actions can also be understood as moves against the current state of politics, including the Palestinian Authority itself. The young people are calling for something new, for something more than endless negotiations that go nowhere or that buy Israel the time to build more settlements and deepen the occupation. After all, this is the generation that was born and raised after the Oslo Accords were signed in 1993 — their difficult lives are a testimony to what negotiations will get the Palestinian people. That is to say, little.

The youth are calling for their human and civil rights, for equality, for hope. Will Israel — and the world — listen?

How does Israel stop Palestinians from protesting?

October 19, 2015April 9, 2025 by adminin Israel, Palestine, Politics, Writing

Al Jazeera English, October 19, 2015

Israeli police came to activist Adan Tartour’s home in Jaffa at half past midnight on October 7, and pounded on the door. When the Tartours opened it, police said that they had an arrest warrant.

Adan Tartour, 18, a Palestinian citizen of Israel, was put under arrest for “suspicion of violence and terror” – only because she’d signed up to take a bus to a protest in Nazareth.

Tartour, and other activists, were detained on suspicion of planning “illegal” demonstrations.

“They had an arrest warrant for me and my father,” Tartour explains, adding that this was the case with other female detainees. “They were arrested with their fathers… It’s humiliating and chauvinistic,” she told Al Jazeera.

She and her father were taken to a local police station before being transferred to Nazareth, where they arrived at 4:30 in the morning. During the interrogation, which began at 5:30am, police repeatedly told Tartour that she “is a shame to her family” and that her actions are “not good for her family”.

She felt that this orientalist appeal to “family honour” was an attempt to dissuade her from protesting.

“But what they don’t understand is that our [Palestinian] families stand by their daughters,” she says.

Rights groups say that dozens of Palestinians are being detained in what they describe as a wave of “preventive arrests” that reflect Israel’s attempts to quell Palestinian resistance against its excessive use of force against protesters and the extrajudicial killings of Palestinians in occupied East Jerusalem and the West Bank.

According to Adalah, the Legal Centre for Arab Minority Rights in Israel, the detainees have been subject to preventive arrests before they attended demonstrations. Like Tartour, most of those detained have no criminal record.

As of today, between 160 to 200 Palestinian activists have been arrested either before or during protests, according to Adalah. Of those detained, 40 are still being held as Israeli authorities seek to lengthen their imprisonment.

Sawsan Zaher, a lawyer with Adalah, says that these arrests are illegal. “According to Israeli law, you cannot arrest a person based on the fear that in the future they might commit a crime,” she explains, adding that stopping people from protesting is a “violation of their right to freedom of expression”.

It’s not only demonstrators and their family members who are being locked up. Several bus drivers who attempted to transport protesters to Nazareth – but were turned back by police outside of the city – were later arrested.

“Police claimed that the drivers themselves had participated in an ‘illegal’ demonstration,” Zaher says, even though the protest “did not need authorisation in the first place” and despite the fact that the buses did not actually reach the protest sites.

The buses were also impounded. As of October 13, the vehicles were still in police custody.

Not only have the courts upheld requests to extend the activists’ detention, but they have also, at times, accepted highly questionable “evidence”.

“Judges referred to onions [found on demonstrators] as an indication that the protesters meant for a violent demonstration,” Zaher explains. “We have never seen onions being referred to as a legal defence.”

Onions are sometimes used as temporary treatment for exposure to tear gas, which Israeli military and police forces regularly use on peaceful Palestinian demonstrators.

Zaher adds that judges have also detained Palestinian citizens based on investigation material to which she and other defence attorneys do not have access.

In one case, a minor who doesn’t know Hebrew was being held on the basis of a “testimony that was written in Hebrew” and signed by the child.

Minors’ legal rights are being violated in other ways, as well.

According to Israeli law, minors’ parents should be informed and are allowed to be with their child during questioning. Children may also have a social worker present, and minors should not be interrogated after 10:00pm.

Lawyers have seen some or all of these rules ignored by Israeli authorities during this wave of arrests.

Farah Bayadsi, a lawyer representing a number of activists and minors who were detained, echoes similar views about police preventing detainees from getting the legal counsel they are entitled to according to Israeli law.

“A police officer intervened when I was giving a 14-year-old teenage [girl] legal consultation before her interrogation, as [provided for in] the law. The policeman kicked me out of the office and told me that my time was up,” Bayadsi says.

For some, the recent events are reminiscent of the Israeli military regime that ruled over Palestinian citizens of the state from 1948 until 1966.

Shira Robinson, an associate professor of history and international affairs at George Washington University and the author of Citizen Strangers: Palestinians and the birth of Israel’s liberal settler state, remarks, “There were tonnes of preventive detentions” of Palestinian citizens of Israel between 1948 and 1966. “It was the name of the game.”

She offers the example of Israeli authorities’ attempts to stop the commemoration of the Kafr Qasim massacre, which took place in October of 1956.

In the days and nights before the anniversary, “Israeli authorities would round up known activists ahead of time. That was standard fare”.

Zaher says that it’s unnecessary to look that far afield. She remarks that the manner in which Israeli police and courts have handled protesters points to a fundamental difference in the way the state treats and views its Palestinian citizens versus its Jewish ones.

Ultimately, she says, Israeli authorities handle Palestinian citizens similarly to Palestinians in the occupied territories: “It doesn’t matter where you are – if you’re Palestinian, you’re an enemy and you’re a threat.”

The Israeli legal system, Zaher continues, “is based on a perspective of a Palestinian … as an alien. When they are viewed as an enemy and this is anchored in the law, then you have the legitimisation to do anything”.

While Adan’s father was released early morning on October 8, her detention was upheld and extended by an Israeli court. After four days, she was let go with the caveat that she might be taken in for additional questioning, and under the condition that she stay away from Nazareth for two weeks.

She is also “forbidden from joining protests”.

And that’s the ultimate goal, according to Tartour and others: The Israelis want to frighten Palestinian citizens and thus stop them from demonstrating.

Reflecting on her experience, Tartour is troubled by a number of things, particularly the treatment of minors, the court’s role in upholding and extending detention, and the state’s attempts to depict Palestinian protests as illegal.

When Tartour appeared in court and her detention was extended, Tartour recalls: “The judge said because of what’s happening in the state … they couldn’t interfere with the police’s work. So what is the courts’ job?”

Read the longer version at +972 Magazine.

Which is the ‘right’ side of the Green Line these days?

October 12, 2015April 9, 2025 by adminin Israel, Palestine, Writing

+972 Magazine, October 12, 2015

Thursday morning: I wake up and check the news this morning to see what happened last night and then head to the doctor’s in north Tel Aviv. I’m 24 weeks pregnant — yes, with a Jewish-Palestinian baby. My physician in Florida, where we live now, has advised me to keep up with my medical care in Israel even though I’ll only be here for six weeks to freshen up my research for the book I’ve just sold.

I’m a few minutes late to my appointment . When the doctor’s door opens, the woman who is scheduled after me steps right on in. She shuts the door in my face. I check the list next to the door and announce the time of my appointment aloud.

“So, it’s your turn,” the other women who are waiting say. They urge me to knock and assert myself.

I knock and the patient who just entered opens the door. “I’m sorry,” I begin, “but I had the 8:40 appointment.”

She shrugs, smiles. “But you were late.” And the door slams shut in my face again.

“Israelim,” Israelis, one of the women smirks.

When the door opens again and the patient emerges, I’m quick to make my way into the doctor’s office. We talk for a few minutes about what tests I’ve already had in the States, their results, and how I’m feeling. At my American doctor’s insistence, I’ve brought my medical records with me. I offer them to the doctor. He says they’re not necessary and then he sends me on my way to get checked for gestational diabetes.

As I’m leaving, there’s a commotion in the lobby. A Filipino man has followed an elderly Israeli couple into the building.

“They hit my car!” he shouts in English.

No one responds.

“You hit my car!” he tries again to the couple.

The clerk — a Palestinian citizen of the state I spoke to on my way in — goes about his business. Another elderly couple puzzles over a piece of paper.

“You hit my car and you’re angry with me?” his voice indignant.

I step onto the sidewalk just as the Filipino man is heading towards parallel parking.

“Look,” he says, pointing. “I was there, they pulled in and hit me, and then they got out, didn’t apologize, and yelled at me.”

“Israelim,” I say.

“Look at how much room they took!” he continues, pointing to the couples’ vehicle, which was, indeed, taking up two spaces. “And they hit me!”

The worst part, he tells me again, is that when they got out of their car, they started shouting at and blaming him rather than apologizing.

I think of Israelis’ reactions to the events of this week — their inability to reflect on what has brought Palestinians to this point. I think of Israelis’ unwillingness to understand the stabbings as violent responses to the violent occupation that began in 1948 for some and 1967 for others, depending on who you ask.

I think of what’s happening, specifically, in East Jerusalem and the West Bank, where Israel has taken most of the land and resources and is constantly expropriating more. Where there isn’t enough land and houses for normal population growth, where Palestinians are forced to build “illegally” because the Israeli government refuses to grant them the necessary permits. Where one might have to then pay for the demolition of their own home.

Where the economy has been crushed by the occupation; where there is no freedom of movement; where the lack of freedom of movement further suffocates the economy, feeding only the sense of desperation.

Where there is no hope. No hope for anything — a decent job, a good income, a normal life. Where there is little trust in the PA or politicians or negotiations that wrought the current reality, Oslo, or the negotiations that are resurrected from time to time just maintain an unbearable status quo.

I think of the place my former students live, the place where they left home every morning for school, uncertain that they would make it through the checkpoints and arrive, let alone on time. The place where a student might find that a friend hasn’t made it — maybe his classmate has been taken to administrative detention. Or maybe he has been shot. Who knows? One’s fate is just as uncertain as the roads in the territories.

The stabbings are screams of frustration, rage, despair, hopelessness. They’re the screams of people who are lost, who have no leadership and see nothing on the horizon. I think of the Israelis’ inabilities to hear these screams; I think of how they hear no one’s voices but their own.

Next to me, the Filipino man is still going on about his car.

He’s looking for consolation, which he won’t get from the elderly couple. I simply repeat back to him what he’s already said to me. “Israelis don’t take responsibility for their actions,” I say. “Instead, they get angry and blame others.”

He shakes his head and cradles his face in his hands as he stands on the sidewalk, looking at the damage done to his vehicle.

Later that day, when I arrive back at the city center, I notice a pile of old hand-painted tiles on the sidewalk near my apartment. They’ve been placed there, neatly stacked one on top of the other, by the Palestinian workers doing the renovation in the building next to mine.

I pick a tile up, brush the dust off, and examine it. I contemplate taking it back to Florida to join the other pre-state tiles I collected in both Tel Aviv and Bethlehem — souvenirs from a time when things were different, from a time when the land wasn’t divided. Remnants from a time when there was still such a thing as Palestinian Jews.

One of the workers joins me on the sidewalk. “Something interesting to you here, miss?” he asks.

“These,” I say. “Are they garbage?”

“Yes, that’s why they’re here.”

As we’re talking, another stabbing is taking place. This time, it’s in Tel Aviv.

“It’s a pity,” I say, “to throw these things away.”

“Death,” he says. “That’s what’s really a pity.”

Read the full article at +972 Magazine.

The long road to Bethlehem: part three

July 27, 2015April 9, 2025 by adminin Israel, Palestine, Writing

+972 Magazine, July 27, 2015

The New Year comes and passes. It’s January 2014 and I’ve been living in the territories for almost a year. But rather than becoming more comfortable in my new surroundings and feeling like my usual curious and adventurous self—I am the woman, after all, who has traveled some 20 countries, mostly alone—I find myself turning inwards. I prefer to stay in Bethlehem, close to home.

This is not me.

The occupation and the checkpoints, particularly the flying checkpoints, have something to do with the change: on my way back to Bethlehem from Ramallah one afternoon, a flying checkpoint pops up near Jabaa’. As the soldiers take the IDs of everyone in the service taxi, I don’t know what to do—do I give them my American passport or my Israeli teudat zehut?

In theory, I could be headed from Qalandia—which is technically part of East Jerusalem—to Hizme, which is in Area B. I’m legal here, I tell myself. Or am I? I try to picture myself on the map that shows the zones: A, B, C.

Where is Jabaa’?

Where am I?

Who am I supposed to be right now?

It happens again as I’m driving back to Bethlehem from Jerusalem one afternoon. I’m on the little, rolling two-lane road that takes me to Beit Jala. Usually, I glide by the small army base on the edge of Beit Jala and from there, it’s a short drive to Bethlehem and I’m home. But today: when I bank the hill, I see soldiers standing in the middle of the road—a road I’ve never seen them on—checking IDs as Palestinians drive into Beit Jala. But why? If checkpoints are about security, then why would they be scrutinizing Palestinians headed into a Palestinian area? Are they looking for someone? Are they making sure that no Jewish Israelis are headed into Area A? Are they enforcing segregation?

Whatever the army’s doing there, I panic, slam on my brakes, and make a U-turn in the middle of the road, just meters from a soldier. As I speed away and he grows smaller in my rearview mirror, I realize the stupidity of what I’ve just done. I realize how suspicious it must have looked.

I also realize that I’m not sure how I’m going to get home. If there’s a flying checkpoint outside of Beit Jala, surely things will be tight at Checkpoint 300, too. There’s one more way in—a settler’s checkpoint that leads to a road that eventually splits and takes me to Beit Sahour, which neighbors Bethlehem.

But what if there are soldiers at that fork in the road, too?

I call Mohammad and ask him what I should do.

“Go back to Jerusalem, have a coffee, and try again.”

“What if the soldiers are still there?”

“They won’t be—they won’t stay forever. By the time you get back, they’ll be gone.”

Intellectually, I know that this is true. I’ve seen flying checkpoints many times before and I’ve seen them disappear as quickly as they appear. But something inside of me has changed and I find myself less able to use my head and reason through things. All I know is what I feel and I feel like the soldiers are everywhere.

Indeed, they showed up at a neighbor’s house recently—even though we live deep in Area A—asking about another neighbor’s rifle. Not only do they seem to be everywhere, they seem to know everything, even what people have in their private homes.

No, under occupation, even homes aren’t private.

I feel like the soldiers will never go away, they’ll stand there on the road between Jerusalem and Beit Jala forever and that’s the route I always take, that’s my “safe” road, and now they’re there and I’ll never get home.

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The long road to Bethlehem: part two

April 26, 2015April 9, 2025 by adminin Palestine, Writing

+972 Magazine, April 26, 2015

I was sold on the apartment. But my landlady wasn’t sold on me yet.

We went upstairs and sat in her salon. Once a porch, it had been closed in with glass windows and offered a view of the hills surrounding Bethlehem. It was one of the few vistas that wasn’t ruined by the occupation. There was no wall, no checkpoints, no military bases, no settlements.

As my landlady took her seat across from me, she handed me a small, wrapped hard candy. She apologized for not offering me coffee. I realized how much she needed to rent the first floor out.

“You aren’t the first to come see the place,” she began, adding that she’d turned the last applicant down because she suspected that he was a Jew. Under no circumstances would she rent to a Jew.

She looked at me, her gaze shifting from one of my eyes to the other, as though she was trying to read what was behind them. I understood that she was waiting for some sort of a reaction. I smiled.

“Happiness is more important than money,” she continued, explaining that it was important to her to find the right person for the apartment. The house was special to her—not only because she’d grown up in it but also because it had witnessed so much of Bethlehem’s history.

The cornerstone was laid in 1808 when someone built a tiny, stand-alone room next to the well. Several other one-room houses followed, making a half-moon around the well, creating an open-air courtyard. In the early 1900s, the cluster of rooms was turned into one large home. The courtyard was closed and the second story was built. New floors were laid with the hand-painted tiles common to the Levant—a reminder of the years when trains connected Beirut and Damascus to Jerusalem and Jaffa.

But those days didn’t last. The Middle East was carved up, including Palestine. During the Nakba, my landlady’s family left Jaffa empty-handed: her father lost his business; they lost their money, home, and belongings. Christians, they fled to Bethlehem where they had roots and family. A few years later, in the early 1950s, they moved into the first floor of this house, a once-wealthy family of seven crammed into two bedrooms.

But the place emptied as her brothers left to find work abroad—the West Bank’s economy wasn’t great and it only got worse under the occupation. Thanks in large part to the remittances her brothers sent back to Palestine, her family scraped together enough money to buy the whole house. Eventually, my landlady followed in the previous owners’ footsteps, moving upstairs and renting out the space beneath her. In the beginning, many of her tenants were students who came from other Palestinian cities and villages to attend Bethlehem University. But as the occupation deepened—a process that was facilitated by the Oslo Accords and the creation of the Palestinian Authority—the economy all but ground to a halt and Palestinian tenants were increasingly unreliable.

During the hard days of the Second Intifada, when Bethlehem was under siege, the first floor was full of stranded students who couldn’t pay rent. After that, my landlady decided only to rent to ajanib, foreigners. She began to rattle off the list of recent tenants, telling me their names, their jobs, where they’d come from, and why they’d left Palestine. Most of her renters had had cushy NGO gigs. I didn’t tell my landlady that I wasn’t collecting a foreigner’s income; that my wage was set by the PA’s scale and that I was making the same as a Palestinian professor would. Another reason to leave Jerusalem—I couldn’t afford it on a West Bank salary.

“I must ask you,” she said. “What is your religion?”

“I don’t see how that’s really relevant.”

“What is your religion?” she insisted.

“I’m secular,” I said.

“Because, me, I’m Catholic.”

“That’s nice.”

“And I’m from Palestine,” she continued. “Where are you from?”

“America,” I said.

“No one’s really from America—” she began.

“—except the Native Americans,” I interrupted. “You know, the Indians.”

“But, clearly, you’re not Indian,” she smiled. “So where did your people come from?”

“My people?” Since I was young, I’d always answered such questions by saying “I’m Jewish.” Clearly, I couldn’t say that now. I unwrapped the candy, put it in my mouth, and smoothed the wrapper out on my knee. I imagined the square before me as a map; I mentally traced the circuitous route my Sephardic and Ashkenazi ancestors made.

I realized she was waiting for an answer. But all the countries my people had passed through seemed loaded. As I went through the list in my head, I became more and more convinced that naming any of them would reveal my Jewish background.

“My people—oh, you know, they’re from here and there. Everywhere, really. I’m very mixed.”

She glanced at the wrapper on my knee. I crumpled it up, used my fingers to push it into the palm of my hand.

“Part of my family came from Italy,” I said. “Guarnieri.” Though I was usually annoyed by it, in that moment I was glad for this remnant of my first marriage—an Italian last name. Different from the one my Italian ancestors on my mother’s side had carried, but Italian nonetheless.

“Now I have a question for you,” I said. “My husband will be spending part of the week with me. Is that okay?”

Some Palestinian landlords forbid female renters from having men over—it was best to check in advance. My partner and I had also decided to say that we were married as few people date openly in Palestine.

“Is he really your husband?” my landlady asked. “Or your boyfriend?”

“Well, we’re planning to get married,” I answered, mentally adding to the end of the sentence: if his family will approve.

“So he’s your boyfriend.”

“Yes,” I said, in Arabic.

“How many boyfriends do you have?”

Both the feminist and the old-fashioned lady who live uncomfortably together inside of me balked at the question. But I knew that I had to answer it. “Just one,” I said.

“Some of these foreign women have a different man coming over every day,” my landlady said, shaking her head. “I can’t have that here. The neighbors will talk. But if it’s just one boyfriend—and your relationship is serious—ahlan wa sahlan.”

Welcome. I’d passed the interview. The place was mine if I wanted it and provided I would stay for at least a year. Could I promise her that? How long had I been here? What was my visa situation?

I told my landlady that I’d just signed a two-year contract at the university and that I wasn’t too concerned about the bureaucratic issues.

“The Jews don’t like foreigners, you know. Four, five years and no more visa,” she wiped one palm with the other. “You’re done.”

I nodded.

“How long have you been in Palestine?”

“Over six years,” I answered, wishing I were a better liar, rushing to add that I’d been working as a journalist.

That seemed to satisfy her curiosity. But, in the months that followed, she would put things together. And later, during the 2014 war—after we’d lived in the same house for almost a year, after a visitor mistook us for mother and daughter, remarking on our similar features and frame and coloring, and after we’d felt our shared home shake when rockets hit the earth—my landlady would come into my apartment and ask: “You’re Jewish?”

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The Long Road to Bethlehem: Part One

March 28, 2015April 9, 2025 by adminin Palestine, Writing

+972 Magazine, March 28, 2015

It wasn’t the soaring arches or the elegant windows, with their curved caps. It wasn’t that the first room of the house was built in 1808. It wasn’t the jasmine that, like a woman letting down her hair, released its heavy perfume at night. It wasn’t the olive, loquat, lemon, almond, and apricot trees that filled the garden. Nor was it that the fruit from that garden seemed sweeter here in Bethlehem than it was in Jerusalem.

The apartment’s biggest selling point, in my landlady’s opinion?

The well.

She showed it to me the first time I saw the place, before I’d decided to rent the apartment. The well was hidden behind a curtain in the kitchen. She pushed the fabric back, revealing a deep recess in the wall. Inside the nook stood a pump and, on the floor, a large stone with a wrought iron handle. My landlady, who was in her seventies, gave the handle a tug. The rock lifted. There was a clunk as she placed it on the kitchen floor.

My landlady got on her knees and peered into the hole, a spot of night surrounded by chiseled white.

“See?” she tapped my calf, signaling that I should get on the floor, too. I obliged her.

I peered into the well. I didn’t see anything. But I could smell the collected rainwater below us.

My landlady put her hands on my back and pushed herself up. As she brushed the dirt off her knees, she explained to me that, if I were to take the apartment, we would share the well. And while our neighbors’ taps would run dry—as they always do here, eventually—we would never go without.

I remembered a long, waterless weekend I’d spent in Bethlehem in 2010. An American friend who lived and worked there had invited me to come celebrate his birthday. I was living in Tel Aviv then and had only been to Bethlehem once before, to work on an article for The National. The photographer who’d been assigned to the story also had Israeli citizenship. Unlike me, however, he had a car. That day, we’d left the Bethlehem area via the settler checkpoint outside the tunnels—a checkpoint we should have breezed through as two Jews riding in a yellow-plated vehicle. But the female soldier stopped us and asked for my ID. Nervous about the fact that I’d been in Bethlehem, which is off-limits to Jews who hold Israeli IDs, I gave the solider my American passport. She rifled through it looking for my visa. When she didn’t find it, she rolled her eyes at me, sighed, and asked me in Hebrew, “Where is your identity card?”

The photographer and I talked our way out of trouble. But I was rattled by the experience and feared that I’d be arrested the next time I was caught. Still, when my American friend asked me to come out to the West Bank for his birthday, I said yes. I told myself that I didn’t need to think too far ahead—I’d worry about leaving when it was time to leave.

When I got there, I found my friend’s house filthy; his kitchen sink overflowing with dirty dishes. “The water’s out,” he explained. He showed me how we could flush the toilet and brush our teeth using the water he’d saved in plastic bottles ahead of time. I would learn later that other friends keep buckets in their showers to collect the grey water. Because this is what you do in the West Bank, where you’re always waiting for the taps to go dry, where the Jewish settlements you can see from your window or that you pass on the road—the nice, neat, clean settlements that are locked away behind fences and surrounded by security—have green lawns and full swimming pools.

Despite the water shortage, what was supposed to be an overnight trip to Bethlehem turned into three nights of sleeping on my friend’s couch. Every time I thought about leaving, I remembered my confrontation with the female soldier. There are checkpoints on every side of Bethlehem: how could I get out of here without getting caught? And this time I was without a car: wouldn’t it be even more difficult on public transportation? Because I’d be coming out of a Palestinian area, I’d be on a Palestinian bus. And while settlers’ buses just roll through the checkpoints, Palestinian buses are always stopped, passengers IDs are always checked.

I couldn’t figure it out, and I dreaded the soldiers, so I just stayed. And stayed. I joked with my American friend that it would be easier for me to go to Jordan and take a flight from Amman to Tel Aviv than it would be to just take the bus home.

Finally, on the fourth day, I realized that I couldn’t just wait out the occupation. The checkpoints and soldiers weren’t going to disappear. And I needed to take a shower. I had to get back to Tel Aviv somehow.

When I left my friend’s apartment that day, I had no idea how I’d get home. Nor did I know that Bethlehem would soon be my home; that I’d end up moving here less than three years later, into a house—a house with a well—owned by refugees from Jaffa.

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