The Journey Continues

Saturday began with a tour and debrief of what is happening within the Bedouin community in Jerusalem. It was led by Angela, a representative of Jahalin, an organization that defends the rights of the Bedouin people and helps empower them to fight against their encroaching displacement under the Prawer plan (which will not be the first time that this community has been forced off their land).  We also spoke with Eid, a man of the Bedouin community about his work to help provide the children with the schooling that they need.

Angela talked about some familiar struggles with minority groups in the US. While they are struggling for survival and the resources which have been denied them, they are also building the houses of the settlements that are displacing them. We’ve heard this story all too many times.

Eid talked about what he saw to be the most important issue facing their community. Education. The schools that their children could go to (beyond the settlements) are an 18-22 kilometer walk away from their homes. Eid said this is an especially impossible for the young girls. Because the must cross the settlement-only highways by foot, 5 have been killed in car accidents and 4 injured. They were told that a bus would come pick them up, but this has yet to happen. Many of the children would hide out in the hills 3 km away and come home at the end of the day to avoid having to tell their parents that this was too much to bear. Eventually, they applied for permits to have their own school built, but they were denied. In general, the Bedouins are forbidden from building with brick and cement, so they gathered together to collect tires and clay from around them to build themselves a school.

We had the chance to visit this school and listen to Eid’s stories. Hey are receiving some aid from the UN, but they still have a demolition order out for the school. This is the case for many, many buildings all over Palestine, and the fight continues.

The next stop was the Freedom Theater in Jenin refugee camp. It was incredibly inspiring to see all the work that they do for their community. One thing, among many, that is missing from the youth of Jenin’s education is a cultural one. The theater was built in 1988 by a Jewish Israeli, Anna and her son Juliano. It served as a center for kids to come together and create. To create community and to create art. It was destroyed in 2002, during the second intifada, after Jenin was marked as a place that creates terrorists. The theater was later rebuilt, and is picking up where it left off. They have programs for kids of all ages to be able to express themselves through theater. They renamed the theater “Freedom Theater” to emphasize the ways in which theater can be used to lift that occupation of the spirit. They told us that the third intifada should be a fight of ideas, which is more dangerous and more effective!