Mr. Freeze comes to Ma’aleh Adumim
Filed under: A New Reality, General, Israeliness, Life, Politics
Palestinians build Ma'aleh Adumim. (Photo: Ariel Jerozolimski)
Critics have called it a draconian measure that takes no account the difference between settlement blocs in the national consensus, and ‘contentious’ settlements that could end up on the negotiating table.
I live in one of those ‘settlements’ in the national consensus – at least I’ve always thought I have (and anyone who doesn’t think so is evidently out of the national consensus). Ma’aleh Adumim is a city, actually, about eight kilometers (5 miles) from Jerusalem. As pleased as I am to be living there, I can see how its expansion with new buildings and homes in undeveloped areas could indeed put ‘facts on the ground’ that could alter the shape of a future Palestinian state.
So, as the liberal moderate I am, I can see some logic to the government’s freeze in that respect. However, as a neighbor discovered last week, it’s not just a freeze on approving new buildings.
He went to the local municipality to fill out a zoning license to build a porch and add a bedroom onto his apartment, which was originally built 15 years ago. He was told that all building permits, including additions to existing buildings, have been frozen.
I mean, c’mon guys. This apartment is already lost to the Palestinians – it’s not going to be part of their state, whether there’s an extra bedroom and porch or not.
In the meantime, there’s still a long line of Palestinian laborers queuing up each morning to enter my city to work on the construction of buildings which had previously been approved and are going up in desert areas where there have never been buildings before. If there was more thought put into this, maybe those are the areas where the freeze should be implemented, not on additions to 15-year-old buildings.
A Jerusalem encounter
A police roadblock in Jerusalem.
But sometimes, trying to hone in on a human aspect instead of looking at the dismal macro situation can provide a differnent view of the situation that Jews and Arabs find themselves thrown in together in the place both sides call their home.
I was waiting for a bus yesterday across from the Regency Hotel near Hebrew University’s Mount Scopus campus to take me through the tunnel and to Ma’aleh Adumim. A short distance away, at the intersection that leads to Wadi Joz, the police had blocked off the road and were redirecting traffic – evidently a common procedure during the busy days of Hol Hamoed Succot when so many extra visitors come to Jerusalem, but undoubtedly mighty annoying for residents of the area.
There was one other person at the bus stop, a young man in his 20s, wearing trendy sunglasses and holding a small overnight bag.
“Are you going to Beit She’an too? he asked me in Hebrew, revealing with his accent that he was Arab. I told him no, and we started talking about his journey.
“I’m going to Jordan to visit my sister. She’s lived there for years,” he said. “It’s easier for me to cross over the border at Beit She’an.”
Turns out his name was Khaled and he lives in Shuafat, the Arab neighborhood that borders the Jewish neighborhood of French Hill, next to Hebrew University.
We started talking about Jordan, and he offered some tips about visiting our eastern neighbor. “There’s not much to see in Amman, it’s best to just go to Petra. But don’t go to Akaba, they don’t like Jews there.”
“Are things quiet in Shuafat now,”? I asked, referring to rock throwing and tire burning that had taken place there in recent days.
“Yes, but you never know when it will start again. There’s a few instigators who start doing those things,” said Khaled, who said that he was entering his last years of a Master’s degree in business administration at the university.
“I don’t like living here,” he added, pointing to the roadblock a few feet away. “You can’t go where you want. When I finish my Masters, my girlfriend and I are leaving – to America, or maybe Europe.”
We tossed things around for a few more minutes until my bus arrived. Khaled and I shook hands, wished each other well, and I got on the bus leaving him waiting for his.
On the way back home, I reflected on the encounter and felt a certain sadness – if decent people like Khaled are throwing up their hands in despair and leaving the fate of Jerusalem to the rock throwers and tire burners, then our future looks bleak. I wanted to get off the bus and go back and tell him, ‘stay here, help us build a society that we can all live in together.’
But my bus was already entering Ma’aleh Adumim.
Hallelujah!
Filed under: A New Reality, coexistence, General, Israeliness, Life, Music
You just haven’t lived until you’re in a stadium with 49,999 other people, all of whom are singing along with Leonard Cohen as he performs “Hallelujah.”
This was just one of the countless transcendent, goose bump-invoking moments in Cohen’s concert Thursday night in Ramat Gan Stadium. It was one of those shows where you enter some kind of suspended time zone in which for three hours, somehow all seems to be right on the planet.
Full of joy, hope, great musicianship, and excrutiatingly beautiful moments, the show was perfectly placed only a few days before Yom Kippur, a time of reflection and self examination. Seeing and hearing Cohen sing his songs like in some long-carved-in-stone prayers transformed the stadium into the world’s biggest, yet most intimate synagogue. And when the singer offered a dramatic rendering of the Bikat Kohanim (the Priestly blessing) late in the show, it only added to that feeling.
The audience, consisting of ages from teen to Cohen-era 70s, hung on his every lyric and delivery. A few times when he kneeled, there were a few gasps from people fearful of a repeat of the fainting incident that occurred in Spain last week, but Cohen was only making the moves for dramatic effect.
The three and a half hour concert (including a 25-minute break in the middle), included a slew of encores, with Cohen seemingly unwilling to leave the stage on his last show of a huge European tour. In fact, he brought out all the crew members on stage, introduced them and thanked them at the end.
Even though there were definitely some Palestinians and Israeli Arabs in attendance, some involved in the Fund for Reconciliation, Tolerance and Peace, which was launched earlier in the evening with proceeds that Cohen donated from the show, I kept thinking how nice it would have been if the crowd had been half Jewish, half Arab.
If only Cohen’s message of hope, peace and reconciliation had been allowed to be heard in Ramallah as well, and not been banned by angry Palestinians who refused to let a planned concert take place there. Witnessing 50,000 Palestinians singing “Hallelujah” and applauding efforts for reconciliation would have been a real New Year gift for all of us.
Victims donating to victims
Filed under: A New Reality, coexistence, Israeliness, Life, Politics, War
Throughout the recent Gaza war and its ongoing aftermath, Israelis and Palestinians have been trying to paint themselves as “the real victims” and the other side as “the real perpetrators.” But if we’re all victims, then how can we possibly take responsibility for war spearheaded by our leaders? And if we’re all perpetrators, then why would we care?
The fact is, Operation Cast Lead has meant horrible levels of destruction for the infrastructure and people of the Gaza Strip, destruction which could have been avoided if Hamas hadn’t hidden behind the human shield of one of the most densely populated areas in the world. And as we’ve seen on ISRAELITY before, just because Israelis support our government’s recent war against a terrorist regime that’s been shooting rockets at us for years doesn’t mean that we’re numb to the damage done.
Two grassroots activists are trying to organize Israeli sympathy into material support for Gazan families whose lives and homes were recently under severe fire by the region’s military superpower. 27-year-old peacenik Lee Ziv and Sapir Academic College 25-year-old student Hadas Balas (pictured, doubling as a not-so-shabby singer-songwriter) decided to collect clothing, bedding, nourishment and other essentials from donors to bring them in to Gaza.
Ziv spoke with the Jerusalem Post this week:
“There is no connection to politics,” said Ziv. “We don’t represent a side, we just see an immediate need for blankets for people who have nothing to cover them at night and milk for infants who have nothing to eat.”
Since a short radio interview on Sunday morning, Ziv said her phone had been ringing off the hook. “Within two minutes of the interview, I had 40 voice messages. The response has been overwhelming. Schools have called asking how they can help. A father called who had three sons serving in the IDF in Gaza. A woman called who had a mortar fall on her house.”
The duo thought they’d be bringing one or two truckloads of supplies in today, but thanks to the viral snowball of their email campaign, media interest like the radio interview last week, and the bandwagoning on their efforts by some key human rights organizations, the donations have been so numerous that they’re spearheading a fleet of 10 full trucks.
According to coverage in Haaretz, the duo has accomplished this feat thanks to key help from organizations like Hashomer Hatzair in Jerusalem, Beit Hachesed in Haifa and Kibbutz Kfar Aza, the Qassam-battered community which has offered up its warehouses as a depot for the donations.
More information on donating to the operation can be found here.
Towards a Palestinian and Israeli Will and Grace
Filed under: A New Reality, Art, coexistence, General, Life, Politics
What a year it’s been for parties for Shimon Peres. First came his President’s Conference in May, which brought the great and glorious from all over the world to Jerusalem to walk the halls and decorate the foyers of the International Convention Center.
Now it’s the 10th anniversary of the Peres Center for Peace, and while the guest list for the three-day Tel Aviv event is slightly less glamorous this time round, it’s still full of notable notables from the president’s bursting rolodex.
I’ve always been a great admirer of the Peres Center. Set up in 1998 when optimism was running high and peace with the Palestinians looked a whole lot more likely, the center still survived the crushing setback of the intifada, which broke out two years later. Throughout these difficult years it kept pushing through with its message of peace, even when many decent Israelis and Palestinians had all but given up hope.
I went to the anniversary conference yesterday, and sat in on a session with actress Kathleen Turner on nurturing peace through culture and media.
From my own experiences as a journalist I know that spreading good news isn’t easy. Some years ago I suggested a series of articles about coexistence to a national newspaper in England. “Great stories,” the editor told me. “They should be written. But they’re not for us.” Nor for anyone else at the time either. Stories about peace don’t sell.
It’s a problem the guests ranging from Daoud Kuttab, a Palestinian journalist, to Prof. Federico Mayor, president of the Foundation for a Culture of Peace and Judith Miller, author and Pulitzer prize-winning journalist, brought up themselves.
Images of destruction are much more exciting to watch, explained Merav Michaeli, the moderator of the event. “Construction just isn’t that sexy,” she said.
They also stressed the importance of humanizing the other side. According to Aliza Savir, the DDG of the Peres Center, the success or failure of any official peace process is completely determined by the extent to which the public are given the opportunity to see the human side of their foe. “Any peace process should focus on humanization of the other side,” she said. “There’s a need to affect mind sets rather than altering political opinions.”
So what positive images could be sexy on TV? “I want to see a Palestinian and Israeli Will and Grace,” said Miller. “Obama wouldn’t be where he is today if it hadn’t been for the positive images of blacks in comedies and dramas on mainstream American TV.”
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