Ex-local woman spends Thanksgiving in West Bank
Who would ever have thought that I would have spent Thanksgiving Day 2006 in Ramallah, West Bank, Palestine! Ramallah was at one time a Christian city and the cultural center of the West Bank. It was the final residence of Yasser Arafat and now the site of his memorial. Just 10 miles north of Jerusalem, Ramallah is now almost totally closed off by the Separation Wall.
I left work early on Thursday afternoon to catch one of the Palestinian “service,” 18 passenger vans which serve as the bus transportation from East Jerusalem to the surrounding areas. This was my first trip on my own and I was a bit apprehensive. I was told that bus 18 would take me through the Kolandia checkpoint and right into Ramallah. But the bus didn’t come. I waited for over an hour and a half before it finally arrived. It was getting dark and the route was an unknown to me.
At first I was OK, as the bus drove down the main street, but then we turned and I started getting nervous as the paved road became a series of seemingly one-lane dirt roads, with cars and buses coming towards us. The road wound through side streets and run down neighborhoods…then the Wall appeared. This, of course, was the reason for the detour. And a 15-minute bus ride became over half an hour.
We reached the checkpoint and were all told to get off the bus. We walked through a series of turnstiles and into a parking area. But there was no bus to pick us up for the remaining few miles into the city. I walked towards a cab and was about to ask the driver how to get to the city, when I felt myself falling. In the dark I hadn’t noticed a large ditch that had been dug in the middle of the parking lot and which wasn’t marked. I lost my balance as I fell and landed hard on the pavement. The left side of my face took the brunt of the fall, but thankfully I was OK. I continued walking and eventually flagged down a bus. 10 minutes later I arrived at the bus terminal, connected with a friend and arrived in time for a bountiful Thanksgiving meal, turkey and all the trimmings, Palestinian style.
My fall and conversations with Palestinians that night and the next morning again made me aware of the daily effects of the Israeli occupation on the Palestinian people. The area around the Kolandia checkpoint is nothing but potholed roads, dust, barbed wire, rocks and rubble. Permits and passports are needed to pass through. A young man I spoke with who had studied in the U.S. and held American and Palestinian citizenship told me that because he is Palestinian he cannot get a permit to go to Jerusalem. This applies to all residents of Ramallah. The people of the West Bank have no freedom of travel even in their own land.
While the world focuses on terrorism and violence in many parts of the world, the Palestinian people daily experience a quiet, sustained violence that affects every breath they take. Their human rights are daily being taken away; their lives have no sense of normalcy. Every day, land is confiscated, olive trees are uprooted, and the Wall continues on its path, separating families from land and from each other. And yet they persevere with dignity and graciousness.
And, in spite of all of this, they gathered with us, a few Americans and internationals, and helped us celebrate Thanksgiving.
A former Uniontown resident, Tina Whitehead is living in East Jerusalem as a volunteer with Sabeel, a Palestinian Christian movement. She’s being supported by churches and individuals of the United Methodist Church, Western Pennsylvania Conference.