We've now been working on the Right to Education campaign
here in the West Bank for one month. It feels like a ridiculously short time,
and yet we've seen more new things than we could have imagined possible - and all in between updating our
newsletter, creating databases of our contacts, and running a student survey.
Palestine has so many beautiful and varied landscapes. The
places we've been, from the plains of the Jordan Valley to the hills of Nablus,
are all the more memorable because of the people we've met there.
Recently we made a trip to the town of Nablus. As well as sampling some local knafeh (syrupy pastry dessert filled with a stringy cheese), we went to ask locals one important question: "what does education mean to you?" The answers we received were 100% positive and passionate - a real inspiration. Our gallery of responses will be a great update for Facebook and Instagram. Look out for our Humans of Nablus!
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| “[Education] gives me confidence. It allows me to deal with people from all around the world.” |
Our Nablus trip also led us to experience the famous
Palestinian hospitality. One of the women who chatted to us in the market was
keen to know more about our project. When she heard we were documenting ways
the occupation affects education she invited us to her village, and three
days later we were being made to feel right at home in her living room in Burin, eating
her amazing home cooked dolmas (rice wrapped in vine leaves) with yoghurt. She
explained that she invites internationals to her home whenever she can so that they
can see the realities of life here, both good and bad.
Her warmth made it even harder to hear about what she had to
say about life in the village. Settlements just over the hill and IDF
incursions onto village land have brought a great deal of suffering to the villagers. From
her roof she could point out houses on the edge of the village that had been
targeted by violent settlers and now stand empty. She said a baby and a
pregnancy had been lost in the violence, which was too much for the families to
bear. We were also introduced to a woman whose son
had been killed after throwing a Molotov cocktail, just two months earlier.
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| Pre-school children dancing in Burin. |
In such an environment, of course, schools are affected. Our
host was a force of nature and led us briskly around Burin's four village schools.
In a boys' primary school we spoke to the headteacher about the psychological impact
of settlements on the children. We were shown the boys' secondary school, which
has an IDF watchtower built on its grounds. In the girls' school, we could
stand in the playground and see the spot where the teenager was shot; girls
shout at the soldiers when they see them, we're told. The kindergarten provided
us with some light relief, where we had tea and watched the children perform a
dance routine for us, smiling massively as they tried to wow us.
Saying goodbye
to the children was tough, saying goodbye to our host was even harder. I felt
like I was leaving a family member.
After that day of ups and downs we had one night to rest
before it was off to one of the most infamously tough places in the West Bank: the ancient town of Al-Khalil, or Hebron. This unusual site is famous for its
settlements, which, due to the town's torrid past and religious significance,
encroach upon the town centre itself. We explored the old town, a Palestinian
area that feels like a ghost town. Shops were boarded up and
streets deserted. As we made our way to H2 - the area of Hebron designated as
under Israeli control - we saw children travelling home from school, watched
over by international volunteers who told us that they face abuse and stones.
For the second time in two days we found ourselves ushered
into a Palestinian home and facing more food than we could ever possibly eat. The
Azzeh family, who live within the H2 settlement, a literal stone's throw from
settlers' houses, fed us traditional maqlouba (rice and chicken cooked
"upside down") and told us some of the problems they had faced living
where they do. Not least of these was the physical assaults they had suffered.
It was hard to learn that the woman who had invited us into her home and cooked
for us had lost two pregnancies due to being beaten by settlers. Her daughter
had also been attacked on her way to school many times, at one point leaving
her with a broken arm. The defacement of the local school and intimidation of its pupils is an ongoing attack on Palestinians' right to education by settlers.
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| Graffiti sprayed on the side of Qurtuba Girls' School in Hebron. |
It's hard for me to understand how anyone could have the resolve to live with such hardship, and to see their family suffer as a result. Hearing stories like this, I had to ask why the family
remained in H2. "I trust my eyes - this is my home," the father
responded. "I struggle, and I teach my children to struggle." The people we've met who
live by the Palestinian ideology of sumud, staying on land despite the
challenges of the occupation, continue to awe me.
The Right to Education team have taken these experiences
back to our work, such as our #didyouknow facts on social media. As we noticed
that many social mediaites use #didyouknow, we've started using the hashtag
#bt3rf (pronounced b-tagh-raf), which means "do you know?" in Arabic.
As well as being shorter, this gives us a more unique hashtag, which you can
now follow for pure Right to Education info! You can find our factoids on Instagram and
Twitter.
To cap it off, this Sunday just gone we hosted a discussion
on education in Palestine. We brought together two of the areas we had looked
into: prisoner education (represented by Emsat Mansour, a former prisoner
turned campaigner) and international law (represented by Wael Abunemeh of Al
Haq). Thanks a million to our speakers for sharing their expertise, and to our audience
for being equally as impassioned.
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| Wael Abunemeh and Emsat Mansour |
No wonder we were too worn out to stay up and watch the UK
election! We'll instead pin our hopes on the Eurovision Song Contest next week.
Salaam
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