{Email Content}

Subject:
Howdy
Date:
Thu, 18 Sep 2003 13:28:24 -0600

Hi everybody, hope you are well. i am back in Jerusalem after a day
trip tao Ramallah, which was very interesting. tomorrow i leave for training, 2
days, then back here and off to the assignment.

i am very well, getting the hang of things {phones, taxis, etc}, and excited to get started. it looks like i'm gonna be a media contact for the olive harvest. the issues surrounding the olive harvest are access to their own fields due to
Apartheid Wall, checkpoints and also harassment by settlers. we will
see what the deal is exactly, it sounds like i will be able to maintain
good internet access, as far as i hear.
Ramallah was very interesting, this is where Arafat has been
quarantined for almost 3 years, if he leaves the compound he will be killed.

i got into the compound, saw the destruction there, if everyone recalls when he was holed up there as the IDF knocked down the rest of the Palestinian
legislative buildings, actually the entire infrastructure of the PA. his lil'
building is all thats left, complete destruction of all governmental buildings,
ministries etc. quite a scene. no word yet on why the PA hasn't been
able to perform as a governmental entity........
Its a Catch 22, i am realizing, as it is designed to be. i am afraid
my updates and opinions are not sounding too diplomatic, but this is the
situation i am discovering here. i had no idea how one sided and
contrived this situation is. so, please don't feel that i am feeding you
revolutionary rhetoric or something, i am going outta my way not to.
i am being forced to begin to explore the reality that this entire present
situation is a misleading and fictional pretense, the thing that is
happening here is not as two-sided as even i previously thought. i know
that conflicts with many of our ideas, even those of us who support
Palestinian soverignty.

at the heart of the situation is the desire to make life unliveable for locals so that others can move in. I am shocked by my misconceptions, take Islam here, for example. its not strict at all, its moderate, Palestinians Christians live side by side with Muslims, there is not a repressive feeling here in that sense, less so than Muslim India, Indonesia, Malaysia. Gaza is of course another situation of its own, i'm talkin West Bank. Friends, we have been given a smoke screen of religous conflict to cover the reality that this conflict is political, colonial and one of fairly naked aggression. we have NO idea what is happening here, i am completely blown away. i don't consider myself naive politically at all, but i honestly CANNOT believe what i am finding here. i thought i had a good sense of the situation, but i was fooled. truly, it is not as we think in terms of the tit for tat, the disbelief i feel is largely fueled by
my previous perceptions of Palestinians as a beleagured but fairly hostile
or extreme sort of folk. Not the case, this is a chill, chilll place
short of IDF actions.

i hope you don't think my perceptions are one sided or i
have lost my objectivity, i really haven't. Realizing this is not easy or
pleasant for me, i assure you. i get no pleasure from it at all. Ben