The importance of being open

For a year and a half, the Israeli human rights organization B'tselem has been handing out Sony videocameras to Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza to document abuses by the settlers and soldiers. I'm writing about the project, called "Shooting Back," and so last Thursday I went to Susiya, an area of the West Bank south of Hebron to meet some of the Palestinians who have gotten the cameras. Susiya is the name for three separate, neighboring things - the Palestinian encampment, the Israeli settlement, and the ruins of an ancient Jewish community.

It was a surreal day; we were in Palestinian Susiya, a community of 30 families who live in half-built houses camouflaged as tents. This is accomplished by building a concrete wall about three feet high, then putting up metal bars and draping a large tarp over the whole structure. It is built similarly to a greenhouse, except with half-brick walls. From the inside, it feels like a real room; from the outside it looks like a flimsy black tent. The person I spoke to there says this tactic helps prevent the IDF from demolishing the structure as an illegally built home.


The interesting thing about Susiya is that although this is a community that is off the electric and water grids, where a corral of goats stands next to the pseudo-tents, five families there have learned to use Sony Handycam videocameras. They charge them with solar panels and then use the cameras to film the hills, from which they say Jewish settlers descend and attack them. The Susiya Palestinians have caught a few clips which gained press notoriety, including this one.



Interviewing the Palestinians who film was fascinating, as was seeing how people survive on a lonely hilltop where water must be trucked in and electricity is so limited that refrigerators and microwaves are all turned into storage space.

But what I also found eye-opening was the attitude of my traveling companion, a Jerusalemite named Shai who is active in the left-wing organizations who work in Susiya. We met up in the Jerusalem Central Bus Station, took a (government-subsidized) public bus to Kiryat Arba, which is just outside of Hebron, and from there took another (government-subsidized) public bus to the Israeli settlement of Susiya. We began walking along the road to Palestinian Susiya and our contact there picked us up. On our way back, we hitched rides through the West Bank until we returned to Jerusalem.

Shai had an easy-going attitude that I have found to be rare among passionate leftists. On our way to Hebron, we sat across the aisle from one of his classmates at Hebrew University, a woman who lives in the Migdal Oz settlement outside of Jerusalem. She and Shai kept a friendly banter, teasing each other about having to educate me with right and left wing views on Israel. On the way into the West Bank, Shai pointed out Arab villages, and his friend the sites of terrorist attacks.

As we walked onto the second bus, Shai saw a settler woman holding onto an adorable baby with giant eyes in a onesie, and he stopped to coo at him. The woman looked delighted to have someone take an interest in her kid.

Once we were in Susiya, Shai caught up with our host, whom he knows well, and played with his baby.


And as we hitched back, he started up conversations with our drivers, one of whom was an Israeli man using the West Bank as a shortcut between the desert town of Arad and Jerusalem, and the second who lived in a newly constructed settlement near Jerusalem.

It was refreshing to see someone like Shai connect with such wide-ranging elements of Israeli and Palestinian society. The story I wrote about Hebron was about how the left and right in Israel are so polarized they barely speak. This is hardly a recipe for national discussion on the future of the state, which desperately needs to happen so Israel can tie up the unfinished business in the West Bank, get permanent borders and move beyond tribal politics.


That's not to say that Shai isn't loyal to what he believes in; I met him two weeks ago at a protest in the West Bank put on by Combatants for Peace, an Israeli-Palestinian group devoted to nonviolent resolution of the conflict. He was part of a group of about 200 Israelis and Palestinians who stood on the side of a highway to agitate for freedom of movement for everyone in the West Bank (see above). But Shai showed me that there is room for openmindedness that transcends political opinions.