Albion students thrown into middle of regional conflict in off-campus experience
By Dana Lorien Fay
Staff Writer

Albion students thrown into middle of regional conflict in off-campus experience

Marhaba and Shalom. A little Arabic and Hebrew are just two of the skills I acquired during my semester with the Great Lakes Jerusalem Program in Israel/Palestine. I also successfully dodged run-away donkeys and bicycle crashes, and learned that whenever I was offered a proposal of marriage I should hold out for the white camels. Israel/Palestine was slightly different than your average off-campus semester. During the almost two months that I and 18 other students spent in Israel and the area of still-to-be-created Palestine, we discovered a land rich in many cultures and heritages. Tragically, it is also in the grip of a conflict that is ripping it apart. I saw, firsthand, the story that the American media never tells in the sound bites of the six-o'clock news.

The Great Lakes Jerusalem Program is based at Earlham College in Indiana. I had never heard of Earlham. I had never planned to study the history, present, and possible futures of the Middle East Crisis. Suddenly, I was in the middle of it all-Jerusalem, the divided city of a divided region. To the north the land is wild and rocky, spotted with olive and carob trees. To the south, it becomes desert and the roads cut through cliffs and sand. I fell in love with both.

The first place the group lived was in East Jerusalem a block from Damascus Gate, one entrance to the walled Old City of Jerusalem. At the Jerusalem Hotel. The hotel is owned and run by Arab Israelis. These were the first people that we came to know in Israel. The first to teach us a few words of Arabic. And the first to smile generously when I attempted to pronounce those words.

Even the feel of the air against my skin was foreign at first. I was very conscious of being far outside of my native culture. It was uncomfortable. It was challenging. Then, I began to learn.

The open-air markets became a familiar sensation. The labyrinth of the Old City became navigable. We still had to be careful. The women in the group attracted sometimes-unwanted attention from Palestinian and Israeli men alike. Even as I began to feel a part of the city, I didn't know that the hardest part of my semester was only beginning.

It is easy to tell East and West Jerusalem apart. Separated by a five-lane highway, West Jerusalem is Israeli, affluent, and modern. It's streets are cleaner, it's culture more European, and it boasts the largest shopping mall in Israel, complete with movie theater. In contrast, East Jerusalem is more traditional, poorer, and Arab. That five-lane highway, called Road Number 4, separates two different worlds.

As our semester continued, I discovered the East Jerusalem-and the Palestine-that the American media doesn't show on CNN. The face of the Palestinian who is not throwing rocks from a sling or obscured by a terrorist's mask. It is the face of a people who have the same dreams of peace and prosperity as the Israelis who live just over the hill from them. It is the face of the people that I worked with at the Palestine Report, an online newspaper based in East Jerusalem. The face that has survived 50 years of occupation. Survived being treated as an inferior people, having their lands confiscated, homes destroyed, and facing the constant possibility of being arrested without charge and held indefinitely.

We also discovered the face of the Israeli who wants to finally end the fifty years of conflict. Who want to live side by with the Palestinians in peace. It is the face of the members of the Women in Black holding their vigil every Friday afternoon. They have stood, one afternoon a week, on the same corner in West Jerusalem for almost 20 years despite the prejudice and sexism that in the past has lead to their members being pelted with rotten fruit and dung.

After the group moved to kibbutz Tzora just outside of Bet Shemesh, we had the opportunity to work , play and live with a group of Jewish Israelis. I discovered the deep devotion of many in this socialist farming community to the land itself, and of their love for the state of Israel. With our Israeli host brothers and sisters, we talked about their hopes for the future, and about the mandatory army service that every Israeli teenager must serve.

As I came to learn about the history of Israel in the conflict over this tiny piece of land, all of my assumptions were challenged. Partially because very few off-campus programs involve being worried about terrorism.

The most recent round of violence began after Ariel Sharon (and 1000 armed security personnel) went to what the Jews call the Temple Mount and the Muslims call the Haram Al Sharif in October. At that point, continuing with the program from Israel/Palestine became more difficult. We watched the violence begin from the relative safety of the kibbutz. Watched as footage of the Israeli bombing of Ramallah showed in the background one of the buildings where a member of our group had done her internship. And, as we watched, we prayed we wouldn't recognize any faces.

When it was finally decided that we needed to evacuate, we left the area on Oct. 17th and reluctantly concluded our semester and coursework on the island of Cyprus-also disputed territory. The Turkish government has occupied the northern half of the island since the 70's.

I did not return to America with answers to the Middle East conflict. I did, however, return with lessons in cruelty and humanity that I will never forget. I will never forget the stories and images of the dead of this new Intifada. I will also never forget the story of the Palestinians who put down their rocks and the Israeli soldiers who put down their guns so that an elderly man could cross the road that they were fighting in and get home.

In the last week of September, I sat with two other students in the shop of Samir Jundi in the Old City of Jerusalem. He told us a story of a Palestinian who came to the land and said, "This land is mine". An Israeli then came to the land and said, "This land is mine". The two then began to fight over the land. Suddenly they both heard a voice, and the voice was the voice of the land. And the land said, "You are both wrong. You both belong to me".