West Bank refugee camp, December 1990 My first minute on the ground in Israel, a taxi driver slammed the car door on my hand. That pretty much colored my temperment for the rest of the trip. It was Christmas week and it was really cold in Jerusalem. It actually snowed once. I went to - I think it was a U.N. office - and they hooked me up with a Palestinian journalist who had lived in San Jose, CA. We visited a nearby refugee camp (Palestinians found it humorous that they could be called refugees on their own land) and met several families who discussed their situations while the journalist translated. During this time, the U.S. media had done an excellent job of portraying Palestinians as Muslim extremists and I think people forgot that all of the Christians of the Holy Land were, in fact, Palestinian and that Bethlehem, for example, was (is) a Christian Palestinian village. I even found one elderly Jewish Palestinian who eloquently described how everyone had once co-existed peacefully, how Jewish and Arab (
arab is an ethnicity by the way, not a religion) neighbors lived side-by-side without issue. I guess this would have been before the British Mandate of Palestine after WWI - or at least a long, long time ago.
Things have changed a lot since I visited the the
West Bank 16 years ago. Issues that have been allowed to fester have increased in intensity ten-fold. There has been too much suffering on all sides. I don't think there will be any peace in the Middle East until the Palestinians and Isreaelis are at peace, and I have felt for some time that the key to resolving this situation is a very small matter that will have an enormous impact and the world will wonder why it took so long.
I, unfortunately, lost my journal for this trip so I have no recollection of where most of these photos were taken. If anyone has any info, kindly email me.
The awful thing about the refugee camps was that they were surrounded by barbed wire and gun towers with Israeli soldiers and machine guns. I was too afraid to try to photograph them. It didn't foster any kind of nurturing environment, and for these kids, it was the only life they knew. Thank God kids are resilient.
In 1990 I believe it was illegal to fly the Palestinian flag and even to wear the colors of the flag meant serious harrassment by the military.
A bulldozed home - an Israeli military specialty. Families could be given as little as 15 minutes or as much as 24 hours notice to evaculate before a bulldozing. There were lots of justifications for this action, including your child being caught throwing rocks at soldiers.
A military barricade designed to make life less convenient
The home of a man who was missing. It was typical for men to be arrested and held without charge or trial. They could be held for years at a time.
I am really sorry that I don't know what city this was. It was fairly large. There was intense military activity on this road, which their jeeps had blocked, so I walked down the sidewalk to see what I could. It ended up being a roundup of men. Someone had likely thrown a molotov cocktail. I went up into an office building across the street to get a better picture.
On a more positive note, upper and middle-class Palestinians did manage to eek out a more "normal" existance. I visited the family of a friend in Ramallah.
As it may still be, Israeli teenagers were required to join the military when they turned 18, for three years. So the entire country was full of teenagers carrying automatic rifles.
The one thing that has exacterbated this conflict more than anything, I think, are the illegal
settlements. These are massive communities that have been built in the Occupied Territories in violation of the U.N. Security Council. Palestinian villages are destroyed to make way for settlements to be populated with Jewish immigrants. The life of an immigrant in Occupied Territory is quite different to that of the average Palestinian refugee.
An illegal settlement - you can see that it is substantial in size and not going anywhere soon
A illegal settlement school
A tree-line street of an illegal settlement
A settlement resident
This woman's village was next in line to be demolished for a new settlement. Again, I'm really sorry that I cannot come up with it's name, but the plight of this village had gained international notariaty and there were numerous Israeli activist groups attempting to save the village from destruction.
I'll close with some parting shots taken in Jerusalem (I had the same camera issue that I experienced in Egypt, that had to do with my light meter, so only the photos taken in dark alleys came out well).
A couple weeks ago I went to visit my friend at her hideaway in Beacon. By train, it was less than 2 hours from Manhattan. She has a little studio there where she composes music.
My all time favorite photo - her parents taking a stroll before they were married
