Here's a little diddy I wrote about a Palestinian environmental group.
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Some Palestinian farmers still use DDT, water pollution in Gaza has caused widespread birth defects, people regularly burn their trash, and these are only a few of Palestine’s environmental problems. Even while Palestinians begin to suffer the effects of pollution, most internationals and Palestinians view ecological concerns as insignificant compared the region’s political difficulties. Yet for those at the Environmental Education Center (EEC) the environment is inseparable from Palestine’s political future.

“Everything is connected to politics,” says Dua’, an environmental educator at the EEC. Hoping to reach Palestinians mired in the conflict, the EEC often emphasizes the connection between environmental protection and politics.

An issue like water consumption and distribution in Israel and Palestine cannot be separated from the conflict. Per capita the average Israeli consumes about five times as much water as the average Palestinian. In the summer months water shortages in Palestine can cause variety of economic and health issues.

To help average Palestinians address this issue in a fruitful manner, the EEC launched a water conservation campaign. Targeting students, teachers, housewives, and industry leaders the EEC hosted educational workshops and sponsored informational radio advertisements and posters.

All of these activities promoted practical water-saving measures that encouraged small steps, like saving water every time someone flushed the toilet by putting a two-liter bottle in the water tank. Factories, which often use drinkable water for industrial purposes, were encouraged to harvest and utilize rainwater from natural reservoirs, which are too polluted for consumption as drinking water.

“We don’t just give (participants) recommendations and leave it at that,” says Dua’. Working with about 1,000 school children and 100 housewives every year, the EEC tries to invite many of the same people to participate in their various workshops. This enables participants to develop a relationship with the EEC and attempts to make environmentalism a part of their life rather than a five-day seminar.

Participants are encouraged to become environmental leaders within their community. Last summer, the EEC hosted a summer camps for kids on leadership and taught them how to establish environmental protection clubs at their schools. After a lecture for housewives on the benefits of compost piles, one participant managed to get almost everyone in her neighborhood to start one.

Despite some participants willingness to change, in a country where littering is socially accepted behavior the fight against damaging attitudes ingrained in the culture is often the biggest challenge. Many Palestinians simply don’t understand the consequences of activities like burning trash or hunting birds for sport.

“Palestine is being polluted in a big way by the locals and the (Israeli) occupation,” says Nida Al Sarras, one of two teachers at Dar al-Kalima School who coordinates school activities with the EEC.

Sarras admits that although many of her students are actively interested in ecological issues, it’s difficult to motivate every student to care about the environment. Sarras often emphasizes environmental damage caused by Israelis, such as the uprooting of trees to rouse the students’ emotions and then encourages environmentalism as a practical solution.

Although young people are generally the most receptive, Sarras says that even with students progress is slow. “(Change) is not a matter of a day or a year; it will take a lifetime,” she says.

Limited funding also impedes the speed of change. “We have the ideas, we just need the money,” laments Buthina, an environmental educator at the EEC. Located just outside Bethlehem and with a staff of only four people, the EEC can only afford to focus attention on the Bethlehem district.

Currently most of it’s funding comes from the Evangelical Lutheran Church, Church of Sweden, the Swedish International Development Agency, and several others. However, the EEC complains that many potential donors say they’re wasting their time on the environment when there are larger issues at stake in Palestine.

An incomplete display of animals from different regions of Palestine is covered in dust and cobwebs. With limited funding, the EEC had to put construction of this exhibit on hold. Down the hall the collection of over 2,500 specimens of fossils, rocks, and stuffed animals from Palestine is crowded a small room. Many of the specimens are kept in cabinets because there’s not enough space to put them on display.

The collection is used to teach children about the uniqueness of Palestine’s wildlife and why it’s something worth protecting. “Throwing stones is one way to fight the (Israelis), but another way is to love your country,” says Buthina.
Even with skepticism and funding challenges, those at the EEC remain passionate about what they do. EEC Executive Director Simon Awad says, “After all the suffering that the Palestinian people have endured through history, they deserve to live in a healthy and green environment.”

Greetings-

I finally got around to uploading all my pictures so far. You can check them out here if you're interested.

http://tomapeter.shutterfly.com/

I'll probably upload some from my last trip here in July 2004 sometime soon. In the meantime here's what I've got.

This is a piece I wrote about Palestinians who illegally work in Israeli settlements. In terms of the article and topic, I'd have to say that this is the piece I've been the most excited about so far.

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At the peak of the second Intifada Mahmoud Hilu’s homemade bee-bee gun sparked allegations that he possessed larger weapons and connections to the militant wing of Fatah. The Israelis arrested him for questioning, kept in solitary confinement and usually questioned him for about nine-hours a day. Twice they interrogated him for three days straight without letting him sleep. After forty-five days and a brief court case he was fined 2,500 NIS and sentenced to a year in prison.

One might imagine that after such an experience Mahmoud wouldn’t aid the Israeli presence in the West Bank, but two months after his release he began risking his safety and imprisonment to work illegally in Bethlehem’s Har Homa settlement. Mahmoud’s brothers Hassan and ‘Ala sometimes work there as well.

The Hilu brothers are part of a number of Palestinians who work in Israeli settlements. While at least 13.6% of West Bank Palestinians work in settlements and Israel, it’s impossible to know the exact number. Few Palestinians possess the necessary travel and work permits, so many illegally enter settlements and get paid under the table. On Mahmoud’s work crew of about fifty workers, he says that only ten hold permits to enter Har Homa legally.

Over a hundred Palestinian workers leave for Har Homa around 3:00AM to arrive there by 6:00AM. Walking to the settlement on the direct roads would take about thirty or forty minutes, but to avoid detection the workers slink along a winding path that can take anywhere from an hour and half to three hours.

The path to Har Homa begins at an opening in the separation barrier around Bethlehem. Workers can’t avoid passing through it. “If they wanted to stop the workers from coming, they could just put two guards at the opening in the wall twenty-four hours a day,” says ‘Ala. Presently soldiers monitor the opening, but only sporadically.

Like his brothers, ‘Ala complains that the arbitrary Israeli policies for dealing with Palestinian workers. An Israeli soldier caught ‘Ala once and before sending him back to Bethlehem the soldier gave him tips for how to pass unnoticed. Other times soldiers have chased after his brothers on horseback. “It all depends on the soldier’s mood,” he says.

When workers get caught, most often they’re sent to the Gilo checkpoint separating Bethlehem from Jerusalem, briefly questioned and forced to wait in silence for one to fifteen hours before they’re released. Although workers can face three months in prison, most of the time they’re set free after several hours. Occasionally they’re beaten.

While evading the Israelis Mahmoud’s friend broke his leg. Unable to continue, Mahmoud helped his friend back to Gilo hoping to take a taxi from there to a hospital. At the checkpoint a soldier tried to detain them and when Mahmoud started to argue the soldier punched him. Mahmoud hit back. A group of soldiers intervened and beat Mahmoud before separating him from the other soldier. After some deliberation the soldiers had Mahmoud sign an agreement saying that he wasn’t beaten, told him he could take his “dog” to the hospital.

To ensure that detainees aren’t mistreated, the Israelis require all detainees to sign a document stating that they weren’t abused. Workers complain that soldiers often strike them and refuse to release them until they sign the document.

Inside the settlement, Israeli soldiers conduct random searches for illegal Palestinian workers. Hassan was caught laying tile in Har Homa, handcuffed, and made to sign a document stating he’d illegally entered Har Homa to work. The soldiers were about to take Hassan to the Gilo checkpoint when their superior officer appeared. He ordered the soldiers to tear up the arrest papers and let Hassan return to work. As the soldiers left, one shouted that he’d cut Hassan’s throat if he saw him in Har Homa again.

For the Hilu brothers the inconsistencies are so absurd they say you have to laugh sometimes. “It’s hard, but it’s funny,” chuckles Mahmoud.

Managed by Israeli-Palestinians most workers have limited interaction with Israelis and the settlers. Mahmoud consciously tries to avoid contact with them. When he had to make basic repairs on a settler’s home she refused to let him in the house without a supervisor present. She told him that left alone with her he might try to kill her. Mahmoud tried to make light of the situation, but eventually had to get his supervisor. When he entered the house the settler’s children screamed “Arab!” and hid.

At home the workers are met with a mixture of understanding and disappointment. Mohamed, the Hilu father, describes the settlements as a cancer. “I am against building the settlements, but this is a critical situation,” he says. Mohamed used to be a construction contractor in Jerusalem, but now travel restrictions prevent him from working there. In Bethlehem he found ten months of work over the last five years. Now three of his sons support the household of ten.

“I’d prefer to die rather than work in a settlement,” says Ba’ha Hilu, one of the brothers. Although he understands why his brothers work in Har Homa, he won’t compromise his beliefs to work there. Presently Ba’ha is unemployed and like the rest of his family, he’s supported by his brothers’ work in the settlements.

“I was like my brother, just thinking politically,” says Ala. “But my political beliefs will not feed my family.” Mahmoud says he doesn’t mind supporting his brother, because he knows he’d do the same for him.

All of the Hilu brothers believe that working in the settlements is wrong, but they feel like there’s no other choice. Before the Intifada Mahmoud had a job in Bethlehem that paid about 100 NIS a day. A friend offered him a chance to work in the settlements for 300 NIS per day, but he refused because he opposed their existence. But without work, he grimly accepts working in Har Homa for 150 NIS a day. If he could find a job in Bethlehem that paid 70 NIS a day he would stop working in Har Homa.

Here's an article I started writing about political tourism when I first arrived. I benched it for several months because I didn't think it was going anywhere. However, yesterday I decided to clean it up a bit, and try to give it a home at the Kuwait Times.
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The Alternative Tourism Group (ATG) bus, innocuously labeled “Shepherds’ Field Tours,” draws mixed reactions from the locals as it creeps along the winding roads in the West Bank town of Hebron. Two teenage boys see the tour bus, exchange befuddled glances and begin to laugh and wave. Hebron is not your normal tourist destination.

While constant friction between Jewish settlers and Palestinians deters most tourists from visiting Hebron, it’s largely what those on the ATG tour have come to see. Over the air-conditioned bus’s PA system tour guide Ayman Abu Al-Zulof explains, “We will be understanding the situation (in Hebron), and you will be feeling the tension.”

In the past tours of conflicts were reserved for diplomats and journalists; however, in Israel and Palestine a growing number of groups like ATG offer tours of the “situation on the ground” to anyone interested. The groups create a new breed of tourists in Palestine who challenge the notion of traditional tourism for better and sometimes for worse.

“Besides the Holy Land, (the Palestinians) have culture and the occupation,” says Ayman expressing his frustration with tourists who visit religious and historic sites in the West Bank and never interact with the local population. ATG tries to combat this problem by encouraging what it calls “human and cultural tourism.” In addition to showing tourists traditional attractions, ATG incorporates aspects of the political situation with its tours and can even arrange for visitors to stay with Palestinian families.

While ATG primarily offers tours other organizations, like the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions (ICAHD), use political tours to supplement to their normal activities. ICAHD specializes in protecting Palestinian homes in the Occupied Territories from demolition by Israel. To help raise awareness about their cause ICAHD conducts tours of greater Jerusalem, focusing on housing demolitions and Israeli settlement activity. ICAHD also conducts ten-day study tours, and works with other organizations to provide tours of the Negev and Northern Israel.

Political tourists represent a variety of backgrounds. They range in age from their early twenties to their late seventies. Most political tourists come from Europe or America, some have never visited Palestine, and others have visited it over twenty times. Some already support Palestine while others are Jewish Israel supporters. Yet, among all of them there seems to be an interest in seeing the Palestinian situation for themselves.

“The people that do these tours are not ordinary tourists,” explains Lucía Pizarro, who coordinates tours for ICAHD. “It is a special kind of people that are interested basically in with what’s going on with Palestinians.”

“I don’t think you can really imagine (the situation in Palestine) unless you’re here,” says a twenty-eight-year-old journalist from London who asked not to be named. He hopes the ATG trip will give him a personal perspective that will help him enrich the articles he writes about Israel and Palestine.

Denys and Liz Delahoyde, a retired British couple had already traveled to Israel and Palestine as pilgrims. They wanted to experience a different side of the region, so they decided to go on an ATG tour. As the couple prepares to lead a pilgrimage in the coming year, Denys believes “the sense of oppression” he’s felt in Palestine will allow he and his wife to include something in their program they wouldn’t have otherwise considered.

Hebronites cram together and push through the turnstile separating Hebron’s old market from the Ibrahimi Mosque as Denys stands watches. He shakes his head in disapproval and sighs, “This like cattle going through here.” On the other side of the checkpoint another ATG tourist asks her friend to photograph her in of the turnstile. Someone makes a joke just as the camera clicks and the tourist now has a photo of herself giggling in front of a checkpoint.

Although political tourism in Palestine strives to educate it creates the danger of turning the conflict into a sort of dark tourist attraction. Lucía Pizarro believes that most political tourists come with good intentions, but says it’s important to acknowledge this danger. Once while conducting a tour the Israelis detained her fellow tour guide. “We were laughing about it saying it’s great for the tour, as if it were a performance for the internationals, a circus almost.”

Ayman leads the tours through the abandoned Arab market on the edge of Hebron’s Avraham Avino settlement. Israelis have welded shut most of the shops’ steel security doors. Palestinians still occupy the apartments above the shops. Bars and iron screens cover the apartment windows overlooking the abandoned market.

A boy looks at the tour group through the iron grate covering his window. Ayman asks him why he’s put the bars over the window. The boy says it’s because the Israeli settlers throw rocks and trash. Ayman shakes his head and asks the tour group, “Do you think the Palestinians want to live in cages?”

Later in his office Ayman explains, “We don’t want (tourists) to cry about our situation, just to show them realities.”

Here's the updated piece I wrote on Nablus. I won't put up the edition the Kuwait Times published as they actually managed to edit in about one major grammatical error per paragraph, as well as several factual errors. C'est la vive. If you've already read the first draft of the Nablus piece you probably won't be terribly interested in reading the second draft. It just has several new additions.

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In the West Bank town of Nablus emergency medical technician (EMT) Mohamed Harshi had just dropped off his partner after a day of work. Driving down Nablus’ main road on his way to return the ambulance to the Palestinian Red Crescent Society (PRCS), Harshi spotted a small group of teenagers at the entrance to an unlit alley. They waved him down and led him to an unconscious teenage boy just inside the alley who’d just been shot in the head. It was unclear who shot him. Harshi loaded him into the ambulance, turned on the siren, and delivered the boy to the nearby emergency room.

Long considered one of the most turbulent cities in the West Bank many expect situations like Mohamed Harshi’s to be the biggest problem facing EMTs in Nablus. Although EMTs still contend with extreme situations, the principle challenge for PRCS’s emergency services in Nablus has arisen from non-emergency cases.

Five years after the Intifada started clashes between Israel and Palestine are decreasing, but the effects continue to shape the lives of Palestinians. In Nablus, checkpoints have increased the caseload for PRCS ambulances, frustrating EMTs and creating a funding shortage that threatens the future PRCS emergency medical services.

A day after finding the teenager, Mohamed Harshi and his partner Fadi Zagar deliver an older woman from the Bulata refugee camp to Nablus’ al-Watani hospital for hemodialysis, a routine medical procedure that rarely requires an ambulance under normal circumstances.

Non-emergency cases like these have become one of the most common and frustrating cases for EMTs in Nablus. Last October people traveling to and from the hospital for hemodialysis alone constituted for twenty-five percent of the people PRCS ambulances served.

PRCS began serving these non-emergency cases when Intifada started and the Israelis installed checkpoints that cut off Nablus from its surrounding villages and the rest of the West Bank. Home to the two largest hospitals in the north, Nablus’ medical facilities support locals, surrounding villages, and provide specialized medical services for Palestinians in northern cities like Tulkarem, Jenin and Qalqilila.

Sick people traveling to Nablus for routine medical procedures, like chemotherapy or hemodialysis, were too weak to cross checkpoints where they could wait for several hours often in extreme weather conditions. In response PRCS offered to transport non-emergency cases to and from the hospital, as Red Cross had an unofficial agreement with the Israelis that ambulances, whether Red Cross or PRCS, wouldn’t be delayed for more than fifteen minutes.

“This has put a burden on our shoulders,” sighs Dr. Awadeh. During the pre-Intifada years without the non-emergency cases PRCS in Nablus responded to about twelve calls a day. Now it responds to over thirty.

At the peak of the Intifada, Nablus dealt with nearly eighty cases a day. To cope with a caseload that large the staff size doubled to its current thirty-nine employees, EMTs slept at the center and worked twelve-hour shifts. While thirty a day is manageable some non-emergency patients can wait up to three hours for an ambulance to arrive. At least one ambulance is left on stand-by to ensure prompt responses to emergency cases.

“I talk to these people everyday, I know they’re not that sick,” says Mohamed Ramadan Saka, a PRCS EMT for the last eighteen years. While Saka is friendly with everyone he transports, he complains that driving someone from Nablus to Ramallah to visit an eye specialist makes him feel like a taxi driver.

Before the Intifada PRCS charged non-emergency cases to use the ambulance. A ride from Nablus to Ramallah cost 250 NIS ($50). When the second Intifada began PRCS removed the fee. Saka believes that half of the non-emergency cases would stop using ambulances if they cost more than a taxi. PRCS directors are discussing bringing back a fee, but they are still deciding how they will implement a fee.

Even if charging non-emergency patients reduces the number of cases, it still wouldn’t provide enough money to alleviate PRCS’s financial struggles. The larger staff size required to deal with the increased demand has taken a toll on EMT salaries.

EMT Radwan Abu Hamdan complains that the job pays, “little money and psychologically damaging (seeing so much violence).” Over the last five years PRCS has been unable to increase EMT salaries.

While Red Cross provides medical supplies for PRCS, the majority of its funding comes from private donors. However, in the midst of an ailing Palestinian economy contributions have nearly vanished. Every year during Ramadan PRCS in Nablus conducts a tele-athon. Before the Intifada tele-athons raised nearly 500,000 JD; tele-athons in recent years have raised only 15,000-30,000 JD. Additionally, new restrictions on wire transfers drastically decreased the amount of donations from locals living in the Gulf and other countries.

On Wednesday small groups of EMTs across the West Bank went on strike. EMTs felt that a new contract would reduce their income, while Jad Tawil, Communications Coordinator for PRCS says that EMTs will be “surprised” by how much they make with new contracts. An average EMT salary on these contracts would pay 2,500 NIS a month, roughly equivalent to the salary of a bank teller.

Even when the dispute is resolved, many within PRCS worry about how much longer funds will last. Not including fuel, operating an ambulance for one day costs about $180 a day. To meet the present demands PRCS in Nablus runs four ambulances everyday. With minimal donations, EMTs demanding larger salaries, increased caseloads and a large staff Dr. Awadeh wonders if PRCS will have enough money to offer emergency services. “We can’t ask people to work for free,” he says.

Dr. Awadeh sighs, “If the checkpoints were not there everything would go back to normal.” Almost everyone at the PRCS station in Nablus agrees.

The Israelis have indicated that within a month they will remove a dirt berm blocking the road between Nablus and Ayseera, one of Nablus’ villages. The barrier forces those in Ayseera to drive forty kilometers and pass through the Huwera checkpoint to enter Nablus. If the direct road reopens, Nablus would be only a ten-kilometer drive from Ayseera without any checkpoints. This would most likely create a substantial reduction in the number of people using PRCS ambulances.

While Dr. Awadeh is optimistic, he still has his doubts. “We’ll see what happens in a month,” he says.

Well, I've returned to the world of the living after spending several days so far below rock bottom you would have needed sonographic imaging equipment to see me. I don't have much time to write now, so here's an excerpt of an e-mail I sent my friend Heather Titus that says it all:

"Yeah.... About the Kuwait Times..... Well..... Yeah..... I sent them my revision about a week ago and I still haven't heard back from them..... Today I finally sent them a brief, groveling e-mail asking whether or not they're "still interested." It's been pretty depressing just waiting to hear back from them. First I started questioning my abilities, but when they couldn't even send me a rejection letter I started to question my worth as a living creature. A couple nights ago I sank past rock bottom. This excerpt from an e-mail I sent to my mother says it all:

"I just ripped a loud fart in the internet cafe. I really don't care any more. I just don't care. Well, I'm going to get going. Hopefully I don't get hit by a bus on my way home; it would be an inconvenience for whoever had to clean me up and the passengers who would get delayed."

Yeah..... So that happened..... Yeah...... I've seen the dark side, Heather. I've gone down deeper than the deepest pits of depression, to the bed rock of rock bottom, danced around and now I'm trying to climb back out again."

So that happened.

But just today I got an e-mail from the editor of the Kuwait Times telling me that she's definitely going to run my article, she's just been busy with stories about Saddam's trial. Since mine wasn't time sensitive it got pushed to the back of her desk. Anyway, the long and the short of it is that she's running it!!! I'm not sure when it comes out, but she said she'll e-mail me when it's going to run. So, I can now look people in the eye and tell them I'm a professional, paid journalist!!!

In other news, last night I met a gymnast from Luxembourg who teaches PE at a German school in Jerusalem. Apparently she liked what she saw, and gave me her phone number. Yeah, so that happened. I'm going to wait several days before calling her. I figure it's best to pretend like it's not the most exciting thing that's happened to my personal life in the last four years, or perhaps ever. A gymnast from Luxembourg?!?!

In the meantime I've been working on a story about Palestinians who are politically opposed to the existance of Israeli settlments, but they work in them because they're unable to find jobs in Bethlehem. More about that later.

Anyway, I just thought I'd write something and let the one or two people who accidentally read this thing from time to time, that I'm alive and well, and life seems to have given me a break from the cycle of degradation and depression.