An American on the West Bank
Baron, Virginia
TANGLED HOPES IN THE HOLY LAND-II An American on the West Bank VIRGINIA BARON SOME MONTHS ago I spent some time in Israel, mostly on the West Bank with Christian Palestinian friends. When I...
...We drank tea, ate cookies, discussed the problems of heating the nursery...
...I have never been so awed by a material possession before...
...The fact that I was an unexpected guest did not diminish the enthusiasm with which I was greeted...
...Lydia Araj, the director of the Child Care Society, had summoned her committee members to be there to meet me, a representative of another volunteer movement in the U.S...
...Near the summit, the driver stopped the car, and pointed to the peak where a line of houses stood behind a metal fence...
...Anyone who has traveled in the Middle East knows that hospitality is the distinguishable trait characteristic of that part of the world...
...The newest need to be met by these capable and indomitable women is a child-care center for working mothers...
...We read the Haggadah as a family, celebrated the deliverance of the people of Israel from Egyptian bondage...
...To look at it, to hold it, was an aesthetic and emotional experience...
...It was confiscated a few months ago...
...Our Christian group fell into solemnity, passing the piece of Matzoh as if it were the Eucharist...
...Living under occupation means being subject to daily humiliation and harassment...
...Our car circled up the mountain past old stone houses and terraced fields to where we had a view of the valley below and across to the hills of Bethlehem...
...We have to accommodate...
...Beit Jala is an ancient Christian hill city, many of whose inhabitants trace their family history in the same houses for generations...
...The well-repeated phrase in Arabic, Ahlan wa sahlan, was translated for me as ' 'You are now among your family...
...When I traveled with my friends, even for a few miles, north to Ramallah or south to Beit Jala, in private cars or on buses or in "service" taxis, we were always stopped by Israeli soldiers and my friends were made to show their identity cards...
...Don't you think we have to accommodate...
...she asked.' "There is so much overcrowding...
...The organization was started in 1944 with funds raised through a bazaar held by Christian women to start a maternity clinic for mothers and infants...
...The mayor's wife arranged for a driver to take us on a tour of the town...
...recently embarked on a housing project for families with limited incomes...
...The families begged us to let their children have the apartments...
...All passengers on buses mist debark and line up to be put through this process...
...He said something in Arabic, and I waited to have his words translated...
...After the 1967 war, the women raised money to establish a fund to make loans available to small businesses, farmers, and students who would otherwise have been unable to attend universities...
...That night one of our group, a woman minister, conducted a seder with us as a run-through before a Lenten program planned for her congregation...
...bags and luggage are slashed and one must strip completely...
...Longingly, I looked at, touched, admired, a deep green velvet two-piece dress with a full skirt and bolero jacket, bom bordered in golden embroidery...
...After wondering why some cars and buses proceeded without inspection, I learned mat it depended on the vehicle's license plate...
...On my return, the committee was waiting for the "cot man'' to come so they could order cribs for the nursery...
...Strange for a Christian to feel an emotional attachment to a Jewish ritual but.it is a testament to the rich benefits of interfaith marriages, even failed ones...
...I was shaken into remembering that governments cannot be personalized, that an ideological enemy cannot be generalized, that people are victims of systems, and that the many are too often consumed by the will of a few...
...I felt violated...
...At the door of one of the ground-floor apartments, we were greeted by a young newlywed who proudly showed us her spotless, if sparsely furnished, apartment...
...We were all laughing...
...I sloshed through the snowy March streets to where I found my car—broken into, trunk lock ripped out, everything torn apart...
...The atmosphere at the Society would be familiar to many American women involved in volunteer movements in this country...
...The children searched for the Matzoh...
...Sophie was acting out the scene for us, pulling down the woman's skirts...
...But I weakened...
...BEFORE I LEFT the Child Care Society building, I stopped to meet the women who were embroidering in the crafts room...
...Soon, my companions predicted, there will be a school built, and stores and more houses behind the new boundary...
...The operation expanded to include a sewing center aimed at reviving the traditional embroidery of the Beit Jala district, while also enabling women to supplement the family's income by working at home...
...Stumbling, I made my way through, my head flooded with the collective memories of centuries of Christian anti-Semitism...
...Returning to Israel across the Allenby Bridge presents the ultimate "checkpoint" ordeal...
...In our situation, we have to make decisions that affect people...
...We will use some rooms in our old building for the day-care center...
...But what could we do...
...My beautiful Palestinian dress was gone...
...For the chaos that humanity keeps on having to accommodate...
...The Society runs summer youth camps and VIRGINIA BARON is director of communications for Church Women United, a national movement of Protestant, Roman Catholic, and Orthodox women...
...I assured her that I agreed about the need to accommodate...
...Directly to the north, there is a new Israeli settlement "so they can keep reminding us they don't intend to leave," the mayor's wife commented bitterly...
...His house is the one at the end up there...
...When we came to the section I had been assigned to read, my voice refused to speak...
...It shocked me to hear about complete body searches...
...As she and a Bedouin woman left the checkpoint station, they encountered an armed Israeli woman soldier...
...It's all right, I told her...
...Commonweal: 722...
...There are no places for young people to live, so they can't get married...
...I even wept...
...I couldn't afford it so I tried not to order anything...
...Afterwards Lydia told me, a tone of resignation in her voice, that the two ground-floor apartments were meant to have been the new day-care center...
...The frightened Bedouin woman threw her billowing skirts above her head in a reflex action to be searched again...
...There is no obstacle in your way...
...We ate together and read the service she had pieced together from many sources...
...Their fingers raced on rich cotton and velvet fabrics...
...They didn'tknow the joy of Passover...
...Linings of handOne-stringed "fiddle" played by shepherds tending flocks near Jerusalem...
...I excused myself, telling the group that I was grateful for the emotional jolt...
...Not only for my lost dress and the love it represented, for the women had wanted me to have it as a gift, but also for the hate that we don't seem able to surmount...
...The women told me about the difficulties of visiting in Amman, Jordan, where they all have relatives and friends...
...As the wife of a Jewish husband, I painstakingly prepared each element of the meal...
...Sometimes there are eleven people living in one room...
...That evening I attended a women's group meeting—women who are church-employed and meet periodically to focus on issues of racism, sexism, and classism...
...I was to add a Christian ending, the scripture from the Gospel of Luke about the Last Supper...
...It was thirty-two degrees and we huddled around the one electric space-heater as we talked...
...After chatting over cups of Turkish coffee, another welcoming ritual, we visited the new housing project...
...I held it up in front of me and showed it to everyone who came to our offices that day...
...An American who visited Israel and the West Bank carried my dress back with her and delivered it to my office a few weeks later...
...I have heard Arabs say,' 'This is your country," as they greet you on your arrival at the airport...
...We fell into political subjects as one always does in West Bank conversations...
...I felt perfectly at home with these women—but not with myself—because I was begining to feel the same way about Israelis as my Palestinian friends do...
...In the warm weather, you can see students studying under streetlights by the roadside 19 December 1980: 721 because there is no quiet at home...
...Passover has been a significant holiday for me over the past several years...
...The search is over...
...A woman took my measurements and I promised to return the next day for a fitting...
...When would I have such a chance again...
...From Jerusalem: City of Jesus (Eerdmans...
...I began to feel a portion of what it is like to become a stranger in the land of your birth...
...The committee included a principal of a girls' school, the treasurer of the society who also directs the sewing center, and the wife of the mayor of Beit Jala...
...Sophie, the principal, described her last return...
...Perhaps it was because of the awkwardness of attempting to duplicate another people's experience without having lived their history...
...One cold morning in February, I visited women who run a Child Care Society in Beit Jala, the twin city to Bethlehem...
...One is always greeted by the word "Welcome...
Vol. 107 • December 1980 • No. 23
