Palestine

This is the first in a series of posts I will make about a trip to the West Bank via Israel. The posts will not be ordered chronologically but thematically, as they are being written now that I have left historical Palestine. This post is not about my general conclusions after, but about me and the reasons for the trip.

I am a young educated male of European culture and phenotype with a US passport who works with technology in North America, and I had never been outside of North America and Europe, as far southeast as Turnu-severin, Romania. Logically, I brought Euro-American assumptions about democracy, development, human rights, religion, freedom and the Middle East to the Middle East.

The posts are written from that base, so if nothing is mentioned about a specific issue in Palestine, one can assume that it is the same as in some average of Europe and North America. For example, though I may write it, I feel no need to write that "the food is good, everything is old, the houses are solid and they drive madly", because that's just a North American impression of the world and says more about North America than anything else. At the same time, I feel no need to write that "they're always late, they have so many children and they're very warm and friendly" because that's just a Central European impression of the world and says more about Central Europe than anything else.

In writing my experiences, I do want to challenge assumptions, but I do not want to engage in endless polemics. It is very, very difficult to live daily life among the occupied in the West Bank and not form some opinion of the Israeli occupation, but the fact is that even calling it an "occupation" is controversial in some circles. Even writing cannot be uncontroversial, because "the West Bank" is not the term used by settlers. I use "Palestine" neutrally to mean the whole area of Israel and the West Bank, because this is the term that the first Jews making aliyah also used.

I don't have a kind view of many governments, so my view of the Israeli government does not at all imply a kind view of the Palestinian government, to say nothing of the various monkey governments of Arabia, Iran and the United States of America. I would say that the people of Israel and the West Bank generally take a likewise negative view of all the governments. That said, I don't believe in collective guilt: there are good, bad and just different actions among every arbitrary group humans define, but it is wrong to assign guilt to someone for being Israeli or Jewish or Palestinian or Arab because of the actions of someone else in those groups or a government associated with those groups in the same way it is wrong to assign guilt to someone left-handed for the actions of someone else left-handed. There is, strictly speaking, no "they".

I must also say that I will write more about the West Bank than about Israel because many more people visit and know Israel, because Israel is more similar to the societies in which I have lived and because I ended up spending more time in the West Bank than in Israel. There should be no doubt that it is an interesting, beautiful and entertaining place, very friendly to guests, and without rival in many aspects. Every country has problems, but it is not in every country that I can confront people with those problems and have them treat me respectfully when they disagree.

The reason for the trip was some business in Ramallah.

Saha! | !ساحة



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