Nablus

A few weeks ago, I went on a day out with the UNRWA Operations Department in the northern city of Nablus, and the three refugee camps there – Balata, ‘Ein Bet Al Ma’ (Camp Number 1), and ‘Askar.

Nablus has always been vaguely defined – in my mind – by four things.

1. Knafeh.
2. Soap.
3. Crude jokes about gay people.
4. A story my mom tells about a guest lecturer while she was in college.

[As the lecturer spoke about the Arab-Israeli conflict, he glossed over a statement, “and Nablus, the capital of Palestine…” Mom stood up in protest. “What?! Since when?” The presenter famously responded, “Ma’am. History is defined by how we perceive it today.”]

And since then, I have always thought to myself, “Nablus, the capital of Palestine. Hah!”

Rightly so, I suppose.

Jerusalem, in the heart of all Palestinians, will remain Palestine’s eternal capital. Nevertheless, Nablus – on the other side of a series of brutal checkpoints – is a city worthy of more than its soapy knafeh fame.

The seven checkpoints encircling Nablus (a city squarely situated in the West Bank) enforce a system of occupation that makes Qalandiya look like a sterile Canadian border.

Apartheid by any other name would smell as sweet.

Once an economic hub of Palestinian society, Nablus has been crippled by a series of checkpoints designed to protect the 14 (internationally) illegal Israeli settlements, and the 26 doubly illegal (Israeli, international law) outposts that are maintained on Palestinian land around the city.

Nablus is a mercantile center, the northern focus of Palestinian education and Al-Najah University, and a medical necessity for Palestinians, housing multiple referral hospitals. Clearly, access to Nablus is vital.

In order to leave Nablus, any Palestinian citizen requires clearance from the Israeli Army. Once you have clearance, you have the honor to stand in line at one of the pedestrian checkpoints that take hours at a time. Oh. If you have a bag, be sure to walk to one side, have it scanned, and then stand at the line that will have increased exponentially in length.

The checkpoint is a free for all – people walk (the elderly take a taxi) to the edge of their city, where they then proceed to play the waiting game, only – if they’re lucky – to make it into what is, even technically speaking, Palestinian land. Take a taxi from the other side, though. Only 50 private cars were given permits through the checkpoint in 2007.

This checkpoint, and the permanency of the settlements it benefits – impending expansion as indicated by the conveniently placed outposts, residents accustomed and dedicated to their West Bank life – indicate, ever more, the increasing difficulty of a two state solution as created by Israel’s ever-so-dear “facts on the ground.” These settlements are far too entrenched as a part of Israeli society to be removed (this isn’t Gaza), and they would never subsist in a truly sovereign Palestinian state. New, outside of the box thinking is necessary if any solution is to be reached.

As we went into the camps, I suppose I wasn’t completely surprised. The refugees in Nablus – expelled from towns parallel to the northern West Bank city, like Yaffa – live in tight quarters within the small boundaries of their camp.

Balata – the biggest camp in the West Bank – has almost 30,000 refugees living on a tract of land barely big enough for two Ramallah hillside mansions. The streets are often not wide enough to walk through without sidestepping, and sewage pipes are clearly visible more than not as you wind your way through.

Refugees in the 18 West Bank camps are in a different situation than those in Lebanon, Syria, or even Jordan. While Palestinians in Lebanon are essentially banished to their camps as (a large) part of the Lebanese problem and never as part of its solution, the refugees in the West Bank cities could – theoretically – move out of the camps like the Jeffersons did to the eastside. But most don’t.

Why.

1. The most obvious answer is that moving out of the refugee camp is expensive. Taxes, higher utility prices, and distance from their children’s free schools are all things that West Bank refugees have to think about before moving out of the camps. The employment situation in the camp does not lend itself to residents moving out and integrating into their surrounding societies.

2. These people are not from Nablus. And they will, according to many of them, never be from Nablus. They don’t belong there. They are from Yaffa. Some are from Haifa. Others, in Al-Am’ari, for example, are from Ramleh. When I ask them, many refugees living in the camps tell me that they will continue living in the camp – despite the opportunity to leave and normalize – until they see the day when a return to Yaffa, to Haifa, and to Ramleh is possible. Compound this personal desire to stay, with societal pressure against leaving– leaving, according to many, is seen as an abandonment of the cause, and more grievously, an abandonment of hope, and you are left with a painful and virtually insoluble (at least within the two state solution) purgatory.

3. There is a stigma associated with the camps – that they are enclaves of crime and lawlessness, that their residents are “gypsies - nawwar” and that they have no business associating with those outside of the camp. In a word, they are often times not welcome in the surrounding cities.

I’ll be going back soon, inshallah.

And you'll have things you want to talk about.

I.

Will.

Too.

aaaaaa man.

It had been more than 10 years since I saw the starry Jordanian flag flying above the Shmisani Seffen Eleffen. So many things have changed in Amman; nonetheless, in a strange way, the change was entirely predictable.

There is no more King Hussein.

Fear not, though, for Jordanian blind allegiance to the Hashemite monarchy.

My ten-year absence from the kingdom, coupled with Hussein’s sheer enormity among his subjects, lowered my expectations for Abdallah’s presence as the newly crowned Simba.

I was wrong.

The seven-year reign of Abdallah II has clearly been rife with kingly photo shoots: in army fatigues, in regal abayas, in suit and tie, in Jordanian football uniform, with Queen Ranya, etc. etc. etc. Over almost every shop, on every main road, at the entrance of each mall, and (especially) in front of every government building, Abdallah’s boyish face looms large – often times alongside a photo of his father, and even sometimes as the last in a series of portraits of the Hashemite line.

Young people in Amman no longer claim they have “nothing to do,” as the uncreative members of our crew used to a decade ago. Amman got jealous of Dubai (and – to a lesser extent – Beirut.) There are now three (obnoxious) indoor malls, multiple outdoor shopping areas, tons of cafes, and even four or five nightclubs where people queue outside for hours to pay top dinar for a table. Ah, Amman. You try so hard.

The faces of the Sri Lankan housemaids change each time I go to Jordan. But they’re always there, giving their shy smiles and bowing their heads as I walk in the door, surprised by my acknowledgment. “Marhaba,” I say, “Shu ismik?”

She tells me her name is Raji and asks me mine. It’s the same thing I’ve been doing since I was ten; my family is used to it by now. Paid or not paid, the idea of, “Don’t touch! The girl will fix your bed; the girl will wash your dish; the girl will clean your room; the girl will warm your food,” has always made me cringe – especially with its
accompanying lack of gratitude, and especially when the attitude comes from otherwise kind, gentle people. My cousins always laugh when I take my plate to the kitchen, grab the sponge from the sink, and scrub it clean. Even Raji finds it odd, shrugging it off as a foreign kid who just doesn’t understand the social structure.

Thank you, mom. Thank you, Toledo. Thank you, Bodo’s. I like it better this way.

It snowed while I was in Amman. Six inches of the white stuff, piled high overnight in the streets of the Shmisani, Abdoun, Sweileh – you name it.

It was snowy on King Abdallah’s birthday. A gift from the heavens, the radio stations claimed as they played the songs singing the praises of the somehow storied king, and his erstwhile storied father. Ah, Jordan. You try so hard.