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| Wall and crossing point into Israel. (Isabel Maxwell) |
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Isabel Maxwell is President of Maxwell-Communications Network, specializing in assisting
Israeli companies with their cross-border expansions; She is Chair of the
Social Entrepreneurs Fellowship Program of Israel Venture Network; a
member of the Board of Governors of the Peres Center for Peace and a
Director of the American Friends of the Yitzhak Rabin Center. She has been dividing her time between Israel and California for the past decade.
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By Isabel Maxwell
May 27, 2006
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| Black-clad militants ride the jeep through the center of Ramallah. (Isabel Maxwell) |
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Almost 6 years ago now, I paid some business visits to Ramallah and Gaza, in the twilight 'halcyon days' of Oslo. My purpose for going this time was to visit a young woman friend of my son's who has been working for an international NGO in Ramallah for the past year, meet her Palestinian friends and generally take a walk around the center.
At 8.30am in the morning, I begin my visit back to Ramallah, in a No 18 taxi-van which leaves from near-by American Colony Hotel in East Jerusalem, bound for Ramallah. My fellow passengers are mostly Arab with a few westerners who all, most likely, work for NGOs in Ramallah. The trip is pretty quick, past Atarot, the old Jerusalem international airport and then on through predominantly Arab neighborhoods, to Ramallah.
For those of you who hear the name "Ramallah" often on CNN, but have little clue where and what it consists of, Ramallah is the second city of the P.A. after Gaza, located on a major crossroads in the West Bank, just North of Jerusalem, and has a commanding view of its surroundings. About 220,000 residents live in the Ramallah district of which about 35,000 live in the city itself. It's relatively modern and has many Jerusalem-style high-rise buildings. In fact, that's one of the things I notice most - despite the years of Intifada, is that construction seems to have gone on apace and there are really some very fine buildings and more going up everywhere.
The first thing I realize as we drive into Ramallah, is that we can! There are no restrictions -- no border -- no stops - except that one cannot miss the wall and the 21st century border crossing back out to Israel. Oh my g-d, it looks just like the pictures on the TV of Guantanamo Bay Prison. Sorry, but it does.
The taxi service drives to the middle of Ramallah and we all get out. I ask to take a walk up the main drag, Rukab Street, towards the central Square -- Al-Manara -- marked by the interesting lion statues of the 4 founding families of the city. I don't feel scared or worried, but definitely curious and watchful. The streets are teeming with the people of this city, and their cars, their bright yellow taxis and their trucks. It feels like a normal city in the sun, just with different citizens -- except that things are not very normal, and those who live here know it and feel it in spades. And soon enough, I will realize it for myself.
I am hungry and we go to a small simple restaurant for breakfast, which we get to walking through a large covered market where fruits and vegetables are sold, all good produce, for prices that are creeping up and up. We are served with delicious hummus and eggplant and omelet but no utensils, and I get a lesson in how to fold and dip my pieces of pita bread so that it becomes a form of small spoon -- perfect. And we laugh at the thought that "The Queen" (I was raised in England) would never come to eat here. But looking around even this little restaurant, is sobering -- the two photos of young men on the walls are of two of his sons, deceased. I do not know under what circumstances. Death it seems, is all around, in thought as well as in deed.
We walk out into the street and begin walking away from Al-Menara back up Rukab Street - The welter of police in a bewildering number of different uniforms, are all whistling and beckoning on the traffic, or lounging around their cars and jeeps. Quite suddenly, there is a loud horn and round the corner comes a site that gives me a start -- it's a large hummer-type jeep with a masked gunman on the top, complete with black ski mask and black clothes, his rifle to attention ... too late to catch a photo from the front. As it careers past, I swing my camera and catch it from the back, where two more gunmen are looking out from the back. This is not Gaza, it feels out of place here in the sunny streets of Ramallah at 1'oclock in the afternoon.
The only vaguely touristy thing I do, is visit the Muqata where Arafat was besieged for the last 2 years of his life, and where he is now buried. Al-Mukata (Ramallah Prison) was actually established by the British in order to detain revolutionaries during the Mandate. Jordan used it as a military base. Then Israel used it as a prison for arresting Palestinian activists. The P.A. under Arafat transformed into a security compound which became Arafat's personal 'prison' for the last 2 years of his life.
On this day in 2006, the whole square around the Muqata is almost deserted except for a few token guards. The building of Arafat's tomb and new mosque rising up behind it, is progressing. It looks like a cross between a mini Hajj and a mini Arc de Triomphe, which is ironic when I remember that Paris was in fact the city where he died.
There is nothing else to do here. We drive back to Manera Square and begin our rounds of the center again. I have the weirdest feeling of being like the owners of a merry-go-round, yet I do not control when it starts or stops, nor who gets on it or off it. Round and round we go - walking up and down the main drag and the two main intersections of Ramallah -- where if you stand for just a few minutes, someone will yell at you out of a car window -- "Ahlan!" And it's a car-load of your friends. Or you will bump into more of your friends on the same walk-about. There is literally nowhere to go and very little to do.
"Back in that little breakfast restaurant, I had tried to find out what my Palestinian host wanted. A young good-looking intelligent man in his early 20s, "S" was courteous, but seemed both reserved and depressed. "What do we want? We want justice. You live in a graveyard here". We stare at each other for more than a few seconds. He gets up abruptly and says he needs to go smoke a cigarette. But ten minutes later, it becomes very apparent that he is not coming back. I feel upset. Clearly we are both upset. I feel like I do in the middle of a phone conversation when the phone goes dead and suddenly you realize that the caller is not calling back and that you cannot reach him yourself. And all you are left with is to wonder, to reflect, to finish the talk by yourself.
A unilateral disengagement of conversation.... I realize that this is just one Palestinian's personal reactions and that I have not remotely taken the time to check the pulse of anyone else, so to speak, but it shook me nonetheless.
Postscript: Four days later, I find out that S had not known I was [half] Jewish and when I happened to mention during our conversation that my father's family had been killed in the Shoah, he was appalled at the notion of being bought unknowingly into contact with a half Jew. That's why he walked out. This discovery made me feel even sadder.
Unilateral Disengagement is happening on both sides!
Views expressed by the author do not
necessarily reflect those of israelinsider.
 
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