Coming of age on the West Bank
Ricks, Thomas M.
definitely a risky business, and nowhere is it riskier, perhaps, moreover, by contributions from other quarters, but informed than in the realm of economics. For it is in this aspect of life ...
...I:xeunt 0i>>nc...
...Yet, the inflationary economies of those two areas and tighter travel since the West Bank is a "closed area" under military rule, restrictions from the West Bank...
...Of course, the first six grades of the "government" schools Indeed, the policies of harassment, intelligence surveillance, usually retain the same numbers of students (about 20,000 and censorship are carried out for both the "government" and each grade...
...The 8,500 students who either do under house arrest since any routine identity-card check or not pass the tawjihi exam or, on passing, fail to gain entrance presence of trouble will yield no card and lead to further into the top three universities, are swallowed up by the unem- detention...
...To understand the students is another way of Between 1950 and 1967, the Jordanians established elemen- understanding the peoples of the West Bank...
...The giving direction to such a discussion...
...either in Israel or in the West Bank, producing finished textile They were to meet the needs of the West Bank population...
...few schools in the area...
...They paid for everything except for the eight-dozen schools, and 8 percent are in private schools...
...The into either the science or literary tracks, class sizes continue to seizure and detention are accompanied by beatings, humiliashrink, so that the number of students taking the high school tion, harassment, and physical harm...
...This was 350,000 school-aged children on the West Bank, educators done by villagers whose economy was collapsing...
...research cannot be carried out without permission of the Israeli military, a permission which is rarely given to Palestinians...
...In the population of the West Bank...
...He is the co-editor of Birzeit Research confiscated by the Israeli occupation authorities (65 percent of Review and is completing research on the history of the West Bank the total land area is now in that category...
...When asked if The three substantial segments of the opera, which were they will graduate, or go to the U.S...
...addition, several post-secondary vocational and agricultural Birzeit students represent about 23 percent of the total schools, and teacher training colleges were established follow- student population of roughly 10,000 students in the West ing Jordan's occupation...
...Between the seventh and ninth grades, however, private schools from the first grades to graduate school...
...subjects derived from a wide variety of bird songs, some of them transcribed in the field by Messiaen...
...In addition, Many of the students are optimistic about the future...
...They have has been a particularly apt expression of the spirit of Cathopicked their teeth clean, and their teeth licism in the late twentieth century...
...Francis of Assisi, in Boston and New York, euphoric about their collective prospects...
...unskilled Palestinian youth, while labor migration either to For university students, research in libraries or in the field is Israel or Jordan is becoming a less viable alternative because of absolutely necessary to complete certain course work...
...The student is further in closer to 6,000 new graduates...
...best and brightest...
...wider church, other religious communities, etc...
...To date those resources have confronted knowledgeably and self-critically...
...Previously, Jordanians welcomed not only cheap Bank, or Gaza Strip, or exported to Europe or the United Palestinian labor but also Palestinian high school -gradvates,States...
...WRONGLY given credit for creating the four universities and an approximation of school children over the 1984-85 school . ten two-year colleges presently operating in the occupied year...
...Indeed, a tary, preparatory, and secondary schools for all Palestinian glimpse of the life of students of Birzeit University is a glimpse children...
...estimate that 68 percent or 240,000 attend school sometime between the grades one and twelve...
...The abridged American performances presented three of the enter the hope of the world, eight Tableaux of the opera: Francis's preaching to, kissing, Exit the sheep...
...and from the working classes of...
...If the pastoral will be complemented by contributions from others, both does nothing more than awaken us to this fact, it will have been within and outside of the church...
...For it is in this aspect of life by them as well...
...and Francis's death and reception into where the goats are weeping, heaven...
...Indeed, following the Jordanian sionals, merchants, and mayors then set out to create their own occupation of the West Bank in 1950, the Jordanians found educational institutions...
...What is frequently labeled in American stores as "Is- especially after the 1964 founding of the University of Jordan raeli" may very well be Palestinian-made...
...Who knows for sure...
...curfew or checkpoint), get married, have children, and help Except for a troubled period when his creativity flowed in their children in their studies...
...from the middle classes of the West bank and Gaza territories maintain the Jordanian "government" schools with Strip towns...
...programs...
...Sharing rooms in an apartment, an put to profitable use in the workplace...
...where the resources needed to address the concerns expressed But it makes an enormous difference whether or not it is here are most readily available...
...occupation...
...It is estimated that occupation (and not as a benefit of it), the West Bank univer-i 30 percent of the Palestinian labor force in the West Bank sities of Birzeit (1972), Bethlehem (1973), Nablus (1977), and works daily within the Israeli economy either as construction Hebron (1980) were established as private institutions by workers or as farm and factory hands...
...Birzeit University students worry constantly about their papers, identifi- 0 LIVIER MESSIAEtv'S visit to the...
...Such detention for Birzeit students, faculty, and staff is routine...
...the refugee as little as possible invested in new buildings, equipment, or camps, towns, and villages...
...The following illustrates...
...and hunger are on the rise as the rural economy collapses, the In the 1950s, Fanon was attempting to warn others not only urban industries falter, imports swell the shelves of the about the widespread poverty of the time but also about the boutique shops and food stores, and the money-changers make power of these "wretched" ones...
...UNRWA also set up several voca- Bank colleges and universities...
...and the Islamic peoples of Africa, the Middle East, and Asia...
...Many of the schools were reserved for the wealthy dents are in many ways a microcosm of all Palestinians under Palestinian families, if not in fact established directly by them...
...West Bank, Israel has attempted many times to limit the Government Schools = 187,200 growth of educational institutions through restrictive licensing UNRWA Schools (1-9) = 33,600 procedures and building permits, disruptions of registration, Private Schools (WB) = 19,200 classes, or exams, and a consistent policy of harassment of the Total = 240,000 students, faculty, and staff of the colleges and universities...
...The mere mention of "Birzeit" upon checking into airport security is enough to guarantee delays up to an hour by the security as they inspect every item of clothing, written INTONING REVERENCE material, or camera...
...Second, the students villages and towns over an eight-month period...
...It is illegal to education, dispossessed in their own homeland, are relegated wear and/or carry any symbol of Palestinian nationalism, such to unemployment, imprisonment, vagrancy, or the tinder-box as a pin, medal, or medallion shaped like Palestine...
...The places open for the difficulty when detained since the identity card required of all examinees who pass (usually about 50 percent, or 5,000 stu- Palestinians of the West Bank may be taken away...
...In opposition to the 1967 and an ever-expanding unemployment rate...
...definitely a risky business, and nowhere is it riskier, perhaps, moreover, by contributions from other quarters, but informed than in the realm of economics...
...It is as though Palestinians are saying strumental sounds in the manner of Europe's postwar avantthat "time is on our side . . . the occupation will end some- garde (a movement virtually launched by Messiaen himself), day...
...Indeed, in hindsight, many a'"killing" off Israeli inflation...
...those that existed were a smattering of Truly representative of the majority of West Bank Palesvillage schools set up by the British, several older Ottoman tinians (the students are frequently from the villages, their Turkish academies, and a host of private Christian and Muslim families predominantly illiterate, landless, and poor), the stuschools...
...particularly among those who are capable of thinking theologWe do not mean to suggest that the responsibility for carry- ically about such matters...
...In that area...
...The eclectic variety of these musical materials can shock an Leslie Jean Coulthard unwary listener, but overall the rightness of Messiaen's assemblage is fully as startling...
...It was a regular event for me when I MESSIAEN'S 'ST...
...From rough estimates in 1982, village of Abu Fallah, for example, between Ramallah and approximately 78 percent of all the school-aged Palestinians Nablus, the villagers built the elementary and intermediate (male and female) in schools attend the "government" school...
...achievements, is both the most catholic and most Catholic of they believe in family...
...Enter the wolves from oft' left...
...United States earlier this cation cards, families, and their futures, but, like other Pales- year to supervise performances of excerpts from his tinians, they are extremely resilient to their daily adversity and opera, St...
...tremendous competition in school for high grades...
...And yet, it is Grand cadences recalling cathedral organ music punctuated truly a wonder how anyone can bank on the future in the passages constructed out of electronic tones and unusual inoccupied West Bank...
...Frequently, the villagers themselves build the class- There are approximately 350,000 Palestinians between the rooms, buy the books, maps, atlases, and desks, and, in some ages of five and twenty-five, or roughly 50 percent of the total cases, even pay the "government" school teachers...
...school class is usually half that of the previous grades...
...In taking the tended not to be employed in a manner that pertains very innovative position that they have on this issue, the authors of directly to these concerns...
...Everything gets done in time, but very slowly...
...rounded a small stage-within-a-stage with hosts of choral singers...
...The Boston presentation of these, with a handful of and some bloody fool infixed up in singers in concert dress on an elevated platform surrounded by ethics and moral theology is howling, hundreds of orchestral players and chorus members, had some forever contused among crystal resemblance to photos of the equally crowded stage layout of categories of sin_ Exit the lean ,beep, the original fully costumed performances in Paris, which surl weeping...
...While relatively small : in tional and teacher training schools for the Palestinian refugees number, the Birzeit gtudents come from segments of the upper around Jerusalem, Kalandia, and Ramallah...
...Students still go Ascension, to the six-hour-long St...
...They still make opened a window on the achievement of this century's greatest plans for the future, go to work every day (unless there is a composer of religious music...
...Rarely are any of the It is illegal in the West Bank for seven or more people to skills they had acquired in their ten or twelve grades of school congregate together...
...Exit the sheep and healing a leper...
...In and political contexts of the West Bank...
...Recent Israeli estimates put the number of unem- Palestinian artist from Gaza was detained for several months ployed high school and university graduates in the West Bank due to a painting of his which contained a small flower with the at 15,000...
...Life under occupation is life in peripheral tracks, Messiaen's most important music has been slow motion...
...his works...
...There is, of course, ample evidence throughout By the tenth grade, the average size of the "government" the West Bank to contradict any reasons for such optimism...
...And third, every Palestinian stu- card, and told to report early the next morning with the quesdent whom this writer met had a keen sense of the thousands of tionnaire in hand...
...Furthermore, another 15 Palestinian professionals, merchants, mayors, and, in the case percent or more of the labor force works in "sweatshops" of Bethlehem, by the Vatican...
...But especially in this day subject is simply too important - and laden with philosophiand age (and place) it is to be taken for granted that such efforts cally charged choices - to be taken for granted...
...for advanced training, or performed by the Boston Symphony Orchestra and the get a good job, they usually reply that it's not a question of Tanglewood Festival Chorus, amounted to a recapitulation "if" but a question of "when...
...But the which economic forces have in our lives, economic life simply argument is yet to be made that the position they have taken is has not attracted anything like the sustained philosophical capable of yielding anything like the results they have in mind...
...all manufactured that is, the need for Palestinians to educate and support themproducts are labeled Israeli and sold either in Israel, the West selves...
...There is no way, in any case, that the issue can be avoided...
...attention devoted to other topics of comparable practical imIt may well be that it tends in just the opposite direction, and port...
...When the researcher and I returned, the years of continuous Palestinian settlement in the area, of the Israeli officer in charge ordered both of us to remain in the Commonweal: 656 prison for six hours...
...If it is not dents) are no more than about 1,500 seats for Birzeit, Najah, returned upon release from detention, the student is virtually and Bethlehem universities...
...Many of them are repeat examinees so that from traveling across the Allenby Bridge to Jordan or leaving the actual number of "graduates" for any one year is in reality the area by way of an Israeli port...
...Again, like others of the third world, poverty people...
...Finally, hundreds of students with a high school without a permit from the military authorities...
...In addition, anyone with matriculation exam (the Jordanian tawjihi exam for the West a record of detention is prevented from holding certain jobs, Bank, the Egyptian exam for the Gaza strip) rarely exceeds such as teaching in the "government" schools, or is prevented 10,000 students...
...classes of Nablus, Beit Hanina, Beith Jallah, Jerusalem, and Since 1967, however, the Israeli authorities in the occupied Ramallah...
...self-reliance...
...Out of the ' student desks given to them by the Israeli military...
...T HOSE who do reach the university levels are usually "the Library books arc confiscated routinely by the authorities...
...PALESTINIAN STUDENTS FACE THE FUTURE Coming of age on the West Bank THOMAS M. RICKS The Palestinians of the Israeli-occupied West Bank (that is, the Palestinian Highlands) are no different from peoples in I T IS SOMETIMES stated that the majority of people in other parts of the third world...
...Living space is at a premium will undoubtedly record that often they were the "shakers" of as housing shortages grow, the twenty United Nations Relief the earth of Algeria, South Africa, Vietnam, and Nicaragua...
...the students take a ninth-grade Jordanian examination to de- Perhaps not so much about themselves, but certainly about the termine what "stream" the students will pursue at the upper future of their people and their drive towards self-control and grade levels...
...goods, jewelry, and semi-processed items...
...There is an important abortion, medical ethics, and nuclear deterrence, it is time to place, to be sure, for the hierarchy in both stimulating and insist that room now be made for economics as well...
...they will get enough money to survive...
...Eager to get their diplomas and to Academic conferences are called off because of a lack of secure good jobs, the university students, drawn from all facilities, or the imposition of checkpoints on all roads leading segments of Palestinian society, reflect well both the social to the conference area which prevent many from attending...
...In addition to the growing poverty, hunger, and housing Commonweal: 654 shortages, there is a critical displacement of Palestinian labor of their policies of occupation...
...in Amman...
...Francis, completed in to classes and complete a semester, even if it takes five to 1983 after eight years of work, Messiaen has labored with seven months...
...If the University examinations are being held and ployment lines, labor migrations, or Israeli building indus- the student is not present as a result of detention or loss of an tries, factories, or farms...
...Three points best the process of carrying out a research project on Palestinian illustrate the present and future trends of the region...
...While thinking about graduate school is, in remarkable resourcefulness to widen the scope of what many cases, wishful thinking, students of Birzeit continue to explicitly Catholic music could and should be...
...FRANCIS' taught at Birzeit University to be delayed at the airport...
...Without denying for a moment the ing forward the discussion of such issues lies exclusively - or value of the time and energy invested in such themes as even primarily - with the bishops...
...Palestinian Teachers' General Committee...
...As this writer prepared to leave Birzeit, a student waved while themes derived from Gregorian chants intersected with good-bye and said, "Don't worry about us...
...Jordanian "hospitality" wore very thin, however,, Unlike other third-world areas, however, the West Bank is after the 1970 events of "Black September" in Amman, and rich in schools, students, and teachers, but not owing to the the pressures of the Israeli occupation escalated...
...The performances were conductedd by Seiji Ozawa, music Commonweal: 658...
...even larger reservoir of cheap labor on the "East Bank" of the It is illegal to cultivate a wide range of plants, trees, or fruits Jordan River...
...Economic philosophy is in a state of comparative neglect the issue is hardly something which can be left to chance...
...We have in mind in particular the academy, cultural and political force, the more pressing it will surely be...
...avowedly religious and Roman Catholic for more than half a Students continue to graduate from Birzeit University, even century...
...we'll survive...
...sit around and talk about their graduate careers...
...While students begin to drop out in great numbers as a result of a the American, German, and French elementary, preparatory, variety of factors: the higher cost of living for the ..village and secondary private schools in the occupied West Bank are family and the desparate need for another wage-earner, the generally exempted from such policies, there are occasional alienating atmosphere within the "government" schools (no cases when the Israeli authorities include them in the exercise teacher can speak of "Palestine," no atlas can contain the 5 December 1986: 655 word "Palestine," and no mention can be made of "Palesti- widespread support Palestinians enjoy from the Arab and nian" writers, poets, historians, or military heroes...
...After the six-hour detention, we were released with our identity cards, without one question being Music asked...
...and Works Agency (UNRWA) refugee camps overflow - othercamps exist in the Highlands either in villages or in towns THOMAS M. RICKS lived in Ramallah and taught at Birzeit University but are not registered with UNRWA - and more land is for two years (1983-1985...
...It It is at least equally, in turn, from such other sources that the is simply too basic to the whole enterprise of relating Catho- initiative needs to come in pursuing the issues that now need to licism to the American experience not to be confronted, and be addressed if the promise of the economics pastoral is really the more influential Catholicism becomes in this country as a to be fulfilled...
...Frantz Fanon called them "the wretched of the earth...
...For all of the obvious significance the letters have thrown down a provocative challenge...
...In 1985, a of militancy...
...First, refugees in preparation for an international conference in Venwhile the Palestinians continue to hold education in high ice, I and three Palestinian colleagues conducted an oral surregard, having a degree is doing little to solve their immediate vey in ten West Bank camps and a number of West Bank social, economic, and political problems...
...Francis, the grandest are white, their teeth arc alabaster and most stylistically inclusive of all Messiaen's in their faces: they are kind wolves...
...Especially in regard to political and economic above all that American Catholics can be expected to have themes, positions taken by the hierarchy should reflect discusdifficulty appreciating what is distinctive about their religious sions taking place elsewhere - in the academy, public life, the - as opposed to their national - tradition...
...Occupation of the West Bank leaves little over which to be optimistic, either for Palestinians or for Israelis...
...The "cast-off" is forced evening study discussion, review session, or simply a friendly to migrate to Jordan for six-month intervals to compete with an evening visit are all possible grounds for immediate detention...
...Today, 75 percent of all school-going children attend of not only the present trends but also the future directions of the "government" schools established by the Jordanians...
...identity card, the student will not fail the courses but will Frequently, these "cast-off" students work as day laborers, clearly lose precious class time which can result in the loss of a not knowing from day to day or even week to week whether semester or a year's work...
...On one occathemselves are determined to achieve a clear self- and sion, one of the Palestinian researchers was stopped by the national-identification by way of political and economic inde- police, questioned for six hours, released without the identity pendence and self-reliance...
...and synthesis of everything the composer had done before...
...From his path-breaking orchestral suite of 1933, The though it may take five or seven years to do so...
...The majority of Palestinians of today's third world countries are young (between the ages the West Bank are indeed young, landless, illiterate, and of five and twenty-five), landless, illiterate, and village village people...
...Not only complemented, well worth the effort...
...It will happen sometime...
...The profesBritish or to the Israelis...
...Be- At any time for any reason, a Birzeit student may be picked tween the tenth and twelfth grades, when students are streamed up and detained for eighteen days before being released...
...What is clear, even with the most speculative of colors of red, black, green, and white, the colors in the Palestistatistics, is that unemployment hurts both the skilled and nian flag...
...the saint praying for and receiving the to the cavernous wings, off right, wounds of Christ...
...For many listeners this comEnter the Wolves poser's music, which combines European and Asian musical Enter the wolves: from off left, approaches, and traditional sounds with radically new ones, stonily gleaming...
...someone answers...
Vol. 113 • December 1986 • No. 21
