(top to bottom: mural in Jenin camp, The Freedom Theatre, Project HOPE volunteers relaxing at the theatre)
It is Saturday, late November and winter is finally- and somewhat belatedly - putting out its feelers, they creep around the crumpled cuffs of my shirt and tease the exposed skin on the nape of my neck with late afternoon chills. I finally decide that I can leave the task of updating my blog for not a moment longer lest the fact fester in my mind for even a day more. The thing I find about the way that time hurtles us through particular passages in our lives, is that such assaults rob one of those moments of stillness and reflection required to make sense of the context in which one is living, and in this way I sit now, kicking only the top soil of my understanding instead of striking bedrock.
My mind turns repeatedly to the opening sequence of the film Blue Velvet and the way that the camera skims the idillic surface of the American dream before pitching headlong into the grassy shadows of a well kept lawn and the sinister realm of the dark insects that inhabit it. In a similar way, the situation here seems peaceful on a superficial level but the psychological and physical abuses are still suffered daily, the undercurrent of abnormality runs strong through the streets of this town. Rarely do I see or feel them directly, I hear a lot though, I heard one story just yesterday in fact, I heard that the settlers had found a well on Palestinian land nearby, a well belonging to the local people. They took it. They took it by force, with guns and the support of the army, now it is an Israeli well, this is normality. I hear stories like this almost daily and almost daily the anger writhes within me and for a while, takes my breath as if to show me how weak and ineffectual I am, this I usually conclude for myself in the course of 'normality'. An example of which sounds something like this: The week before last was the religious holiday of eid, me and the internationals went to Egypt for a few days, our palestinian friends did not, they are not allowed to go anywhere without the permission of the Israelis. We returned on the Thursday, F16's flew low over the city that day as they had all week, a few days later they pounded the town with sonic booms presumably incase their captive audience were in any doubt of just how oppressed they really are. A trifle, you may think and a trifle, it is true, relative to the atrocities of years gone by but still far from my pampered understanding of 'civilised behaviour'.
One fact that becomes increasingly evident is that the enemy within (The Palestinian Authority), is joining our ignorant interlopers on a level footing as the largest threat to the human rights of those resident in this corner of the globe, a less prudent man would hereby elaborate, alas though the oppression suffered by those native to these parts extends by proxy to anyone who may care for their wellbeing. On this, a visitor may admit, without propaganda, to feeling disempowered beyond words and like never before, and impotent in a way he never considered possible.
In a rather more positive story, the excellent weekly meetings that Project HOPE host turned up another amazing documentary last weekend when the group were shown the film Arna's Children (see following link for the full movie) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a6EXrA3UFwM , the film documents the way that the Stone Theatre in Jenin's refugee camp gave hope to a group of children therein, who had suffered immeasurably at the hands of the Israeli's during the first intifada. The youthful vitality and potential of the group in question is soon replaced with small arms and home made bombs however and as the film makers return to the camp five years later they find that all but a handful of the original group have been killed, most defending the camp against the occupation during the second intifada. The film ends with the death of one of the final surviving members in a missile strike, and the theatre - it seems - is buried along with any hope for good beneath the rubble of the ruined camp. With this in mind myself and a small group of local and international volunteers from Nablus decided to head over to Jenin to see if this was in fact the case. Happily we found there the latest incarnation of the theatre, renamed The Freedom Theatre, the new space is thriving like never before and providing a creative focus and emotional therapy for those who may otherwise (and quite understandably) feel limited to violence as their only form of resistance. The theatre is demonstrative of the notion of cultural resistance as a alternative to the former and stands as a beacon, shining a light upon the injustices suffered by those who populate it. It appears that hope remains here but I only ever find it in the shadows, the longer I spend here the more accepting I feel of my life's newly imposed limitations and the more I see hope for what it seems to be, all that is left.
