The world is full of anomalies. It is hard to describe how I feel sitting on the balcony of the Palm Hostel in Jerusalem overlooking Damascus Gate and its conjugal Palm trees. I mailed by camera home yesterday and I am hoping that the universe will deliver it safely to my doorstep. I am leaving Palestine with nothing but my experience. My videos must follow me by post because of security at the airport. I found out too late that my footage will not back up to DVDs so mailing the entire camera was the only way. It is a hard disk which means the hardware that stores the footage is inseparable from the camera.

But what now? I'm not really sure how to go about my normal life anymore. It takes a trip like this to shake all your perceptions of reality and render you perplexed and even more restless than before. So I think all I can do now is upload some last pictures because I don't know what else to say. Maybe I will write one last post in a few days when I am in the states and have digested some things.

I went to a demonstration today in Jerusalem against the evictions in Sheikh Jarrah. Here are some pictures.

Sunset in Nablus.

Pictures from a demonstration in Iraq Burin, a village outside Nablus where land has been confiscated for the building of settlements. Unlike the villages of Bil'in and Nilin who have been organizing for years, the people of Iraq Burin just started demonstrating regularly in the past few weeks. Yesterday there were about 150 people, with some 25 internationals. The action quickly turned violent with soldiers firing rubber coated steel bullets, possibly live ammo, and long range tear gas missiles (not the rubber canisters they normally fire in Bil'in). Boys were throwing stones. Thirty soldiers were attacking us from the hills. The terrain is rougher here than in Bil'in. I tripped and fell as we were running away from continuos volleys of gas and fire.

On Sunday I spent the night on a street in East Jerusalem.

Two families, in total 53 people, have been evicted from their apartments in the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood of East Jerusalem/Al Quds. They have set up a tent outside their home and some of the older men sleep there every night to show that they are determined to stay. I came, along with a Turkish girl volunteering at the International Solidarity Movement, to hear their story, and to be present if the new occupants of their home or Israeli police tried to harass them.

If you ever visit this country, you will quickly become familiar with a type of sensation that feels something like paralysis. Never did I  feel this more than my night in Sheikh Jarrah. I could hardly speak to the evicted tenants under the tent that was now there home. What was I supposed to do? There was nothing that I could do here. "This is now our kitchen," an older man pointed to a plastic table with a kettle and some plates on it under the tent. "Would you like some Arabic coffee?" Three teenage Jewish boys walked by smirking at us. A Palestinian man shouted at them. In the seized apartment, I saw a man attaching a camera to the wall. I looked over at the guy sitting next to me, staring intently, with strong energetic eyes at this man putting a camera outside the home. As if he was trying to monitor strangers in his neighborhood. I took the man up on the Arabic coffee and he started to tell me the story of his family's eviction.

In 1948, after the creation of Israel, the Hanoun and Ghawe families were made refugees. The United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) gave them these homes from which the Israeli government has now evicted them. Since 1972, Jewish settlers have been waging a legal battle to take ownership of these properties, ultimately succeeding two weeks ago. They forged legal documents which allegedly proved that this land in Sheikh Jarrah was owned by Jewish residents during the Ottoman period. The families fought hard to continuously appeal the settlers claims to their land until they finally received an eviction notice this past February. On August 2, after six months of refusing to leave,heavily armed Israeli police broke into the Hanoun and Ghawe homes, shattered windows, and threw the residents out onto the street. Within one hour, the new tenants had arrived and occupied the homes.

What should I have said to all this? "I'm sorry"? I tried uttering this and then I immediately felt ignorant. Ignorant for thinking that somehow these words could make things better. Because they don't. The last thing these people need is my useless pity. The Turkish girl with me was similarly speechless. She took out a pack of cigarettes, offered me one. I smoked three. I've never smoked in my life. When I was inhaling, I just wanted to cry. I missed my family so much. I couldn't cry though. What was the point of crying when, after all, I have a home to go back to?

It was cold that night. I was wearing a sweater over my long sleeve, and I had wrapped myself good in a blanket. I was sitting in a chair until early in the morning. The police came by two times throughout the night with their blue sirens flashing. Both times they just looked out at us and then left. Around 3am, the Turkish girl had to go to the bathroom. One of the sons took us to the hotel room where his mother and younger brothers and sisters were staying so that we could use the bathroom. A small room for a mother and four children who until two weeks ago were sleeping inside their home.

This is how these people are literally made strangers in their own neighborhoods, to their homes and farms.

A lot has happened since my last post. My workshop ended on Friday. first let me tell you about that.

I almost wish I had had another week with these kids. Sometimes I forget how deep a passion I have for theater. The day of the performance, I went to Bil’in again to demonstrate against the nightly raids and arrests that have been happening in recent weeks there. I was wary to go because I wanted to rest and take it easy before my students performed in the evening. But I decided to go. There was an Israeli press group at the demo so there was relatively less tear gas. Tear gas and chemical water cannons are probably not the best for your nerves on an opening night, but I promised myself that this would be part of the package for me in coming to Palestine. To be present and to show solidarity, this is important to me.

There was something refreshing about coming back from Bil’in and walking into the theater. Seeing my students, doing a dry cue-to-cue with lighting, running through sound cues, working beats with my actors, this is sublime. My love affair with theater and acting is a volatile one. Sometimes it feels unsustainable. But on Friday, it brushed me with an old familiarity. Mahmoud Darwish’s poetry bellowed from my students' mouths like smoke and made shapes in the air. 15-year-old kids became creatures chasing a dark legacy, crawling in blue light and engaging with exile, dislocation, emergence, and fierce pride. Of course this was a vision that only materialized when I was watching the piece. In the end, the performance was very rough and unpolished. A work in progress in every sense. One more week would have been enough. But I didn’t come to Ashtar to give a performance. I actually came because I was curious. I don’t know if they know it, but I didn’t teach those kids a damn thing. It’s really not that hard to make interesting pictures with bodies in a performance space. Especially if you are as talented as many of them were. The truth is that I was curious about kids who live here. Curious about how they relate to a fraught history. I wish I could have spent more time with them.

I saw a Barbie doll with hijab being sold in a shop yesterday. Hijabi Barbie's knockers are as big as those of White Barbie. Just as over-proportioned. The only difference between White Barbie and Hijabi Barbie is the Hijab part.

Edward Said, can I get you to break this one down?

On my way to Ramalla this morning, my service was stopped at both checkpoints. There were four women and four men in my car, including myself and the driver. At the first checkpoint, a soldier took all our passports to his booth. We waited for ten minutes. When he was done, he didn't walk back to the car but instead motioned the driver to get out, walk all the way to the booth and get the passports. Once the driver got our passports, we were on our way.

At the second checkpoint, one soldier asked for our passports while another one walked around to my side of the car. He opened the door and told me to get out of the car. He walked me away from the car and asked me what I was doing here. He said "Do you know that Ramalla is dangerous for you? Why are you going there?" I said I was visiting and I told him I could take care of myself. "Do you know how dangerous it is? They're Arabs." I didn't know what to say to this.

We walk down the road and he leads me to another soldier. This one asked me a series of questions, one right after the other. "Do you have a camera? Why are you here alone? Why don't you go to Israel?"

How should I answer this one... Well, I do have a camera but I did not want to volunteer that information. I felt the same way about question number 2. So I skipped these two and went right to question #3: Why don't I go to Israel? "I might be going to Haifa for a couple days," I said in all honesty. I want to see what it's like inside Israel. "Oh, it's beautiful, go to Haifa. Yeah, you need to go there. Haifa, yeah Haifa," they both nodded in agreement.

The first soldier took me around the car again. He had one last thing to say: "Watch your pockets in Ramalla. It's dangerous." I get back in the car. His final words, laughing as if the whole thing was a big joke: "Have a nice day."

Thanks asshole.

I was too busy filming the checkpoint to take pictures of the men crowed behind the steel bars. These pictures don't show them rushing and shoving and holding onto the bars waiting to get through. But they do give you an idea of just how massive the line is. This is from the back. You'll notice that the line curves to the right alongside the wall where the barred-off narrow walkway begins. You can see the top of the walkway against the wall. This is between 4:30am and 5am.

Jerusalem makes me sick to my stomach. It is a repulsive city. I apologize for saying this. There are six checkpoints set up around Jerusalem. I woke up at 4:30am to visit one of these checkpoints, gather footage and talk to the people there. At the checkpoint between Bethlehem and Jerusalem, a row of steel bars runs the course of the Wall and creates a narrow walkway. Every morning starting at 3am, thousands of Arab men on their way to work inside Israel are herded like animals behind these metal bars. So close to each other, they wait to get through. Every half hour or so, there is a rush forward and they shove and clamor over each other. It is loud and chaotic. And sickening.

I walked the entire stretch of steel bars and filmed it, up to the point where the men go inside the checkpoint through the metal round robin doors where soldiers await inside booths to check their IDs, fingerprints, to question them. I did not want to film. It felt so unnatural to add to this humiliation by sticking a camera in their faces. But I swallowed that feeling and filmed. And some men talked to me. I don’t know how these families stay here and endure this. I sure as hell would have left by now. But to them, simply existing is a form of resistance. Leaving is what Israel wants. When Israeli politicians refer to the Arab population as a “cancer” and “demographic time bomb” staying put is the only way Palestinians can fight back. No matter how difficult or humiliating. In spite of everything, leaving would be defeat. Palestinians learned that in 1948 and 1967.

Israel has unlocked the secret to reconfiguring the demographic makeup of Jerusalem. The Wall traces a circuitous path through the city and consolidates Jewish neighborhoods in a nebulous center while isolating Palestinian neighborhoods on the other side of the wall. The borders of Jerusalem have been effectively redrawn by the wall to make it as Jewish as possible. At the same time, travel to Jerusalem for Palestinians who work in the city and throughout Israel becomes a routine humiliation.

I keep coming to the conclusion that this industry of segregation and demographic reconfiguration, with all its trappings of concrete walls, checkpoints, and watchtowers, is too rabid to subsist. Something has got to give. Maybe it is out of exhaustion and hopelessness that I need to believe this. But to covet something so mercilessly, and to maintain possession over it with such force, what is the point anymore? So all of Historic Palestine lies under Israel’s control. What is the point when they have to reconfigure borders of cities, erect massive concrete walls, herd Arabs through checkpoints every morning? When you have to evict people from their homes as they're doing right now in East Jerusalem? What is the point when maintaining control means doing whatever possible to win a grotesque war of demography? What is the point?

Yes. Some institutions are too monstrous, too rabid to last forever. Something has got to give.

Two of my students at my theater workshop in Ramallah. The Eshtar Theater does theater of the oppressed among other stuff. I am teaching kids 14-16 years old. They are each working on Mahmoud Darwish poems. Next Friday, a week from today we will share the poems with an audience. The performance will be an abstract movement piece drawn from mostly Viewpoint training that I've done at school. It has been challenging teaching a workshop where the material we are working on is in Arabic but I am very pleased with these students. We all recognize the universal language of imagination through the body and voice. Little by little, we explore the poetry as a group. 

Monday is my last day with Siraj in Beit Sahour. I will be living in Ramallah for the remainder of my workshop. After that, I have two weeks left. There is still so much I need to do for my documentary project. I have seen so much here. I'm not sure what the focus of my film should be any more. Theatre and Struggle? Palestinian Youth? I don't know. I feel restless. And overwhelmed. As usual. But all right.

On Monday, Israeli soldiers raided homes in Bil'in and arrested leaders of the Popular Committee. It is hard to imagine that an international like me can go and demonstrate every Friday and then during the week, soldiers spill into houses and arrest people.

Activist groups are calling for a letter drive to pressure the Israeli judge to release all Bil'in prisoners immediately. So far there have been over 20 arrests, the majority of the prisoners are under 18. This is the letter my friends and I wrote.

Re: Israeli Military Tribunal for the Prisoners of Bil’in,

It is with an unyielding conviction that we make an appeal for the release of Mohamad Khatib as well as all the other Bil’in residents currently in Israeli custody. The arrest of non-violent demonstrators is a truly appalling and grotesque act. As an established judicial institution, your court has a responsibility to apply due process to all the Bil’in prisoners and to immediately release them.

The residents of Bil’in are involved in nonviolent demonstrations against the building of a concrete barrier that penetrates, divides, and isolates their village. This wall has been deemed illegal not only by the Israeli High Court itself, but also by the International Court of Justice as well as the international community at large. Let us remind you that these nonviolent demonstrations are not criminal activities. Therefore, holding the residents of Bil’in any longer is a gross abuse of their human rights and displays a blatant disregard for universally established legal principles. In addition, it is even more unacceptable that a majority of these prisoners are children under the age of 18. Unwarranted and indiscriminate detention of minors is simply cruel and unusual.

Many of us have visited the village of Bil’in several times and each time, we have been welcomed by many families including those of the arrested villagers. In talking to them and learning about the situation of their village, it has become clear to us that the demonstrators currently in Israeli custody are unequivocally devoted to nonviolence.

As members of the international community, we do not tolerate the human rights abuses perpetrated against these civilians and we will not be silent. We demand the immediate release of all these prisoners.

Furthermore, we believe that the tactics used by the Israeli military during these demonstrations are illegal under international law. Thus, we strongly advise you to begin a thorough investigation regarding these measures.

Sincerely,

International Volunteers at the Palestinian Center for Rapprochement Between People

You can go to International Solidarity Movement website for more info. Send letters to bilinlegal@gmail.com

Lila (my friend from Siraj) has a cousin in Khalil (Hebron) who gets dialysis treatment for his kidney failure three times a week. He has a permit to go to Jerusalem. I filmed him going through the Bethlehem checkpoint which is a checkpoint you physically have to walk through, metal detectors, fingerprint scanning machines and everything. Once we are inside, a big brother intercom tells me to stop filming. A soldier walks over to me in a lot of menacing gear but I'm too mesmerized to be frightened. He makes me play him the video. Than he asks me to delete it. I pretend to push some buttons and tell him it's all done. He lets me go. The video is still in my camera. Totally lucked out.

Hebron, known to its Palestinian inhabitants as El Khalil, is the only city in the West Bank where Israeli settlements are situated inside the city, not on hills isolated from dense Palestinian city centers. The Old City has concrete walls and fencing running all through it, segregating the Jewish settlers from the Palestinians. A man takes us on top of his roof where we see settlers on the other side. There are two giant cylindrical towers with stars of david on them. These contain water for the settlers. Palestinians, on the other hand, store their water in tanks on their roofs. When water is cut off, they must fill up their tanks. A "water man" goes through a list of homes who need water and fills their tanks one by one. Some families are fortunate enough to have wells.

All throughout the Old City of Khalil/Hebron, wired nets are stretched from wall to wall over our heads. This is to protect from the garbage and filth that the settlers throw over onto the Palestinian homes. Looking above us,we see that garbage sits on the netting and blocks out the sun. On the rooftop, settlers are visible on the other side.

In Israel’s “administration” of the West Bank, Khalil holds a special classification. 20% of Hebron is controlled by Israel in the area known as H2. This means that 20% of Hebron belongs to merely 400 Jewish settlers. The city's 150,000 Arabs live in the 80% that is administered by the Palestinian Authority. It is an interesting ratio. I left Khalil with a bad taste in my mouth.

Ebrahim's sculptures in Bil'in. Medium: tear gas canisters, rubber, and steel bullets.

Every Friday is Tianenmen Square in Bil'in.