At a vast Arab school on the outskirts we attend a lecture given by Muhammed Zeidan, Director of the Arab Association for Human Rights. Alexandra is greeted by excited children, boys yelling, girls staring, some come and touch her hair. Even here in this 'open' Palestinian area, European children are a rarity, Christian pilgrims prefer to stick to the main tourist sites, their largely Israeli tour guides telling them that not to is 'unsafe.'
Zeidan's insights into Israeli politics is chilling, in a gentle yet certain tone he says:
'Israeli political society has been moving to the right since 1977...In ten years Avidor Lieberman could be the Prime Minister' there are some gasps from our group.
'Everyone who is now seen as extreme and far right in ten years time becomes 'the centre' in political terms.'
The 'cantonisation' of Historic Palestine into ever smaller sections, breaks not only the cultural identity, it creates social and economic differences between cities, villages, even families. Contact between the separate, disunited people, between Gaza and Ramallah, the refugees in Jordan, to those in Lebanon is fading, fading. The situation for Native Palestinians, now labelled 'Israeli Arab's is particular in that any communication they make between themselves and their brothers and sisters in the West Bank, or Syria, or Lebanon, is tacitly forbidden by the State of Israel. Calls are logged, emails routinely browsed, contact with 'enemies' of the state can lead to harrassment by the authorities, or imprisonment. Israel considers most Arab nations 'enemies' and the West Bank a closed military zone. More fragmentation, disconnection.
The road to Haifa is a revelation. How green and verdant is the land here. Forests, line the hillside, flowing down to fields of abundance. Israeli cities shine their new story into the heat haze, Kibbutz, line our way, built on the bricks and rubble of razed Arab villages.
At the Arab Youth Centre 'Baladna' in Haifa we are hosted by Jowan Safadi, a young 'Israeli Arab' whose fashionable, curled, cool appearance blends seamlessly with his Jewish peers.
Before 1948, Haifa's population was roughly 20 per cent Jewish. Many families had been there generations, others joining the slowly growing population in the 1920's and 1930's. During the Nakbah more than eighty per cent of Haifa's Arab population were driven from the verdant hillside, the coastal city and the surrounding villages. Winding above the world famous Baha'i gardens is a street lined in some places with Jewish villas in others the cement apartments of the poorer Arab inhabitants. The road is called Ben Gurion. It was here that in 1948 hundreds of Arab families were fenced in by the invading Jewish terrorists. They were told that if they set foot out of the cordon they would be shot. Today the fences are gone, but the social and economic divisions remain. Haifa is now an 80 per cent Jewish city.
Jowan a twenty something musician whose parents are '48ers' deals with young Arabs who struggle today with a confused identity. For the grandchildren of Palestinians who did not flee during the Nakbah, are rejected by the Arab world. Their passports tell the world they are "Israeli's" they will not find work in Arab nations easily with that. Jowan tells us that to compound this problem, there are many university courses and jobs that are closed to them at home. Bio chemistry, atomic research, yes, it's funny to even imagine a Native Palestinian of the highest talents getting a job in those industries within Israel. More, acting, radio broadcasting on Israeli channels, limited to non existant says Jowan. Their is not a glass ceiling here but a religious ceiling, jobs for Jews is a social policy enacted by corporations both big and small, segregating the Native minority, maintaining Jewish dominance in the economy and politics.
Jowan was unlike any Palestinian I have met before in my journeys in the West Bank, Gaza and refugee camps in Jordan. He is Westernized, cooller (by which I mean less open, the 'chai and chat' friendliness of his peers the other side of the check points, removed by the society around him into which he must blend to survive.
Drugs he says are a problem for young Native Palestinians. Fuelled by frustration. I remember earlier in the day, outside the sparking Arab school in Nazareth the plump teenage boy, who seeing my blonde self and my equally blonde, Swedish companion walking in the sunshine, ran over to us.
'You want drugs?' he shouted up at me excitedly.
Why would you ask that I wondered aloud?
'Because drugs are good' he shouted, making his friends laugh. Behind us in the school car park a fist fight broke out amongst two other boys. It was serious, ending up in a punching bundle on the ground, cheered on by dozens.
It is all too easy to forget the 48'ers, the persecutions they suffer, the growing fear of 'transportation from this, their land of 'milk and honey.'
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