A beaming girl waves a red, white, black and green flag next to a window with a bullet hole. It is her brother’s window, and this is a second time a bullet has pierced the glass above his head in his Gaza bedroom.
A monstrous wall surrounds them, keeping men from their fields, children from their schools and everyone from outside interaction. The wall fragments their country. In Bethlehem, it snakes through the city, dividing it in two. Plants line the Israeli side of the wall, the rich side. It is painted and, although imposing, it must make Israelis feel safe. The other side of the wall is bare and cracked; not even grass grows at its feet. It must make Palestinians feel trapped, claustrophobic.
I did not go to Palestine, but that was not why the photos that lined the windows of Uncommon Grounds were new to me. Despite growing up in Saudi Arabia and volunteering with several Palestinian Refugee agencies when I returned to the U.S., the stories told by the photographers, Georgetown students, remained unfamiliar. In their Sept. 20 presentation, “Voices from Palestine,” they shared photos and experiences from their recent trips to Palestine and refugee camps in surrounding countries.
It was the first time that I had heard Palestinian voices in the U.S. Maher Bitar (SFS ‘06) spoke of returning to his home in Akka, the home his grandparents were forced to flee. After going door-to-door and sharing tea with the town’s elders to track down the house, he finally found the home with the help of his cousin, an Orthodox priest.
But he was terrified rather than excited when he finally approached the house. He was scared to return because a new family lived there, and he worried they would think he had come to take his home back. Luckily, they welcomed him as family into the home that was both theirs and his.
Ruba Batniji (MAAS ‘06) remembered visiting her family in Gaza, making a point to show pictures of happy children playing and her cousin waving the Palestinian flag outside of her school. She wanted to emphasize that they were just like normal children. But normal seven-year-olds don’t ask college students their views on Bush’s Middle East policy. At the sound of army tanks, normal children would dive under the breakfast table like Ruba herself did. These children continued playing soccer, not even flinching at gun shots.
Emil Totonchi (SFS ‘06) isn’t Palestinian, but, being half-Iraqi, he soon learned the consequences of his appearance. He pointed to a picture of a deep valley-like alley, the top covered in metal mesh fencing. This was the Palestinian pathway through the city; the Israelis traveled on the street above. The fencing protected Palestinians from the objects so often thrown down from the open streets. It didn’t protect Emil from the bucket of water someone dumped on him, though.
A new friend, Rafiq, a Palestinian with an Israeli wife, used his wife’s car to take Emil out of the camp, something illegal for a Palestinian to do. When the Israeli military stopped the car, Emil avoided jail with a simple flash of his American passport, and they went on their way. In awe, Rafiq begged Emil to return in the fall, during harvest time. The wall, guarded by check points, separated them from any usable farmland. Rafiq wondered if, with Emil’s help, he could grow what he had once taken to marketplace, now barren as the wall halted both Palestinian and Israeli business.
Perla Issa (MAAS ‘06) told a different story of the Shatila Refugee camp in Lebanon. She described slum-like conditions where Palestinians are forbidden from holding any jobs other than manual labor. They have no hope of ever gaining citizenship, being promoted, returning home or even leaving the camps. They, more than even those in Palestine, are losing hope.
Listening to these stories, I could think of no perfect solution to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. Each speaker pleaded with us, stressing that these people did have hope. But the hope seemed to be crumbling away. I tried to focus on the colorful murals decorating the wall, but my eyes always drifted to the empty marketplaces and shattered windows.
I wondered why these images and stories, both sad and hopeful, were so unfamiliar to me, why they were never on TV or in our newspapers. It wouldn’t give us that perfect solution, but at least it would be better than ignoring an entire nation.
