Category Archives: Anti-occupation

Exodus to Alberta

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Tea break during olive picking in Jayyous

This is a guest blog written by Ariel Katz, a Jewish American currently living in England.  She has a degree from Cornell University in Middle Eastern Studies, and has worked in Israel for Interns for Peace. She has a passion for Middle East peace, and writes fiction and non-fiction on the topic for outlets such as CGNews.  

 

This is a story of Exodus and diaspora.  Rema was looking for a doctoral programme in Canada, because Canada has a loose immigration policy.  She didn’t want England, she said.  Or America. Too difficult to get in.   She would have to learn English she realised.  She had a two year plan.  In two years, when her now 16 year old son turned adult, she would be free of her mothering duties. Free to start a new life.  Israel was a difficult place to live for anyone.  Even more so for a Palestinian Muslim woman.  Years ago she would have been called and have called herself an Arab. Times have changed. Identities have morphed.  “Arab” no longer means much.  It never had really.  Not more than a person whose mother tongue was Arabic.  “Palestinian” has a connection to a people who share a story.

Enat told the guy picking olives with her in the West Bank village that she was moving to Canada.  “It’s game over here now,” she told him.  People who want peace in Israel have nowhere to move but out and away.  It’s now illegal to talk about boycotting products from the West Bank settlements.  It’s akin to being a traitor.  She had always advocated peace with the Arab population in Israel.  She had always been active.  Recently she had given up, burnt out, and she was here picking olives.  Helping a Palestinian family harvest from their olive trees.  Permits were needed for the West Bank family members to get to their own groves.  Many olives fell to the ground and rotted due to lack of permits.

A bus load of Israeli volunteers form the Tel Aviv area came to help, to spend the day with the trees, picking.  There were no instructions, no “Pick this size not that size”. Just “Pick them all, we are not coming back.”  And pick she did.  She spent her Saturday, her Sabbath, picking olives for a family she had never met.  Mr and Mrs Ali, that was all she knew.  As she explained to a fellow Jewish peace activist that she had given up, she was raising her arms towards olive branches laden with ripe olives, reaching for them, picking them, lightening the burden on those gnarled branches which seemed wrinkled like old people.  She filled sacks with olives of all sizes.  It felt good to be outside, to be with nature, to be doing something useful, talking, working with like-minded people.  It was invigorating.  She had given up she said.  There was no way forward. She would leave soon.  Yet she was here.

And so it went.  Israeli citizens became disillusioned with the possibility of peace.  The government had taken more and more actions that incited anger and threatened the rights of the Palestinian population. What was the point of advocating peace when government actions were actively unravelling more good will than the peace groups could generate?  There comes a point when enough is enough.  Jews decided to leave because they were ashamed to live in a place that treated the Palestinian population with such contempt.  Palestinians were leaving because peace was elsewhere.  And where could they go once they had decided that staying wasn’t an option?  Somehow, they all decided on Alberta.

There was an exodus from Israel/Paelstine following the intolerable situation.  Some left because they wanted to, some left because they were too scared to stay.  And a large group of expats, both Jewish and Palestinian, ended up in Alberta.  They set up falafel stands with freshly made hummus.  They bumped into each other in shops selling olive oil from their homeland. They spoke together in Hebrew with Arabic slang thrown in – and in Arabic peppered with Hebrew.  You could hear the children of Abraham calling each other, “Ya uchi (O my brother).”   There were no borders in Alberta.  There were no segregated neighbourhoods.  The Jewish Israelis and Palestinians filled the gaps left by their missing family members by opening their homes to each other.  The smell of cumin was acceptable.  The situation was similar to that in other cities around the world, where the Hebrew and Arabic speakers feel closer to each other than to the other nationalities in the area.  They share roots.  They share stories and experiences.  They share nostalgia for the homeland that until now, they hadn’t found a way to share.

 

Olive Harvest Coalition, Jayyous October 2012

Sometimes what looks like a picture of peace is a symptom of war, or military occupation. What could be more like a picture of peace than a group of Israeli volunteers taking a break in the olive grove of a Palestinian family who have prepared lunch for their guests who have given up their Sabbath to help with the olive harvest? Representations of peace have a limited iconography to draw on: the dove, olive branches, lions lying down with lambs, mothers with children, and pastoral scenes in general. So, surely all the right buttons are being pressed in this picture of Israelis and Palestinians sharing a meal cooked on an open fire under olive trees. Surely this is peace?

No, it isn’t, because the photograph doesn’t tell the story of how this group of Israelis came to the land of the West Bank village of Jayyous on this late summer day. It doesn’t tell the story of how the Israeli separation wall cut off the villagers of Jayyous from most of their land, and how those villages have to obtain permits from the occupation authorities to pass through the two agricultural gates in the wall which are opened and closed by the army. It doesn’t show the map of how that security wall departs from the green line marking the 1949 armistice line between Israel and the West Bank, such that it wraps a noose around the Palestinian town of Qalqilya and zig-zags crazily by Jayyous that lies nearby. Nor does it tell the story of the Eyal checkpoint through which Palestinians from Qalqilya with permits may pass to work in Israel if they are prepared to get there by 4 am, be patient, and subject themselves to the rigorous security checks. That is a story told by Machsomwatch and its members.

Yet, the photograph and the event are both pictures of peace in another way. The Israelis (and some overseas visitors) have found a small, practical way to compensate their Palestinian neighbours for the damage to their lives and livelihoods caused by the separation wall, through an organization called the Olive Harvest Coalition. And the Palestinians of Jayyous have been willing to accept such help from citizens of the state that creates such harsh facts on their ground who had come in place of all those family members and other villagers who do not have permits to cross through the wall. As we spent our day picking olives and taking breaks for food and hot, sweet tea, working under the patient supervision of Ali who had to stretch his Hebrew to direct us, it was hard not to feel peaceful. No doubt there are plenty of Israelis who would think it dangerous for us to put ourselves in the hands of Palestinians, but the only danger was the perilous ride on the overcrowded tractor and trailer. In the midst of all this seemingly intractable conflict between two nations, a dozen or so Israelis could be the guests of Ali, his wife and son for a day, without mutual suspicion, or anxiety, or fear. It was so peaceful that not even we Israelis found anything to argue about. Maybe one day Ali and his neighbours will run a service offering fun days out for Tel Aviv families to experience the olive harvest in Jayyous. But there’s a wall that has come down first.