Forth of July in Ramallah
Jul0
I have just returned to Jerusalem from Ramallah where I spent the afternoon having a 4th of July barbeque with an old friend from UNC, Brian Phelps. Even amidst the great beaches and nightlife of Tel Aviv and the history and spirituality of Jerusalem, I think it is likely to be the single part of this trip that will have the greatest affect on me.
Ironically, the trip was not all that exciting beyond meeting some cool people, and that’s just what made it special. I caught a bus to Ramallah at the Old City’s Damascus Gate. We drove through some traffic and through a border check that involved little more than some soldiers walking around the vehicle. Everyone knew the Friend’s Boys School where Brian lives and teaches, and they kindly gave me directions in very good English. On the way back, the border crossing was much more thorough with a series of gated turnstiles, metal detectors, and the like. Still, it certainly wasn’t overwhelming.
While in Ramallah, I enjoyed great barbeque, enjoyed the local beer (Taybeh), ate some amazingly good Kanapeh brought in from Nablis, lit a couple sparklers for the Fourth of July, and met tons of very cool people. One man, Andrew, is an old friend of one of my mentors at UNC, Terry Barnett. He has worked for a decade on preparing leaders for Palestine-Israel negotiations. Another guy is building a very cool company that builds micro-scale geothermal heating a cooling systems for buildings (hoping we may be able to do a carbon project!). They have good bars, a fairly robust arts scene, and very good food. Brian told me in all seriousness that he felt much safer on the streets of Ramallah than Jerusalem late at night. In short, it wasn’t fancy living, but it was quite comfortable living.
Spending time there made a conflict that I’ve heard about from my earliest memories much more real. In the similar experience to those that I had when I first went to China or to South Africa, that transition seemed to make both of the outliers in my emotions much stronger:
On the one hand, as I’ve experienced elsewhere, life really does go on. The security situation within Ramallah (unlike the Gaza Strip) really isn’t dire today, but I’m sure life went on even when it was. When you’re a million miles away, it is easy to forget how great humanity’s ability to adapt, to live, indeed to be happy, really is.
On the other hand, relaxing in Ramallah allowed me to understand just a little bit better what the pain of a violent conflict in your home would really be like. All those people around me were living their lives day-to-day, just like I live my own. Yet if I imagine my own life and livelihood being profoundly disrupted, as so many of theirs must have been repeatedly over the course of their lives, it is hard to imagine the fear, the sadness, even the hopelessness that one would have to battle as a result.
All in all, I am yet again humbled by the strength and vitality of a community far too often dismissed. I have a lot to learn.
