September 19th

Shalom from Israel!

I have now been here for one week, and really beginning to get
comfortable in this new experience and environment.

I am living in an insulated bubble, within another bubble.

Here in my new home at the Arava Institute, Israelis, Palestinians,
Jordanians, Americans, and one person each Finland live and work and
play and laugh and dance together. My friend who is starting his
third semester at Arava jokes that if you come only to Arava while you
are in the Middle East, you will return home and say: wow, the Middle
East is soooooooo amazing, there is no conflict, only people sharing
and loving and helping one another and working toward peace and
environmental leadership.

But no one here can deny the struggle that is the Israeli-Palestinian
conflict, which I am learning more and more about every day – in the
dining room, on the lawn outside our dorms, in the classroom, through
guest lectures. Yes, all of us here come from different backgrounds,
and have different relationships with the conflict. There are people
here who feel the struggle and oppression of Israeli settlements and
air strikes and checkpoints in their daily lives, while others know
only what they read in the newspaper about a region far away whose
people they have never met. But we come with a commitment to respect,
understanding, knowledge, and peace. This is my immediate bubble.

Kibbutz Ketura, the place that Arava calls home, is the larger bubble.
Here in the desert, just walking distance from the border, I can
stand in Israel and watch the sunset over the pink mountains of
Jordan. On the Kibbutz, men, women, families, volunteers, and
students eat together in the dining hall. No one earns a salary (all
income is funneled directly into the Kibbutz, and managed by
committees), and the members of the community take care of each other.
Becoming a member is a 1-2 year process, and each individual is
expected to contribute to the welfare of his or her neighbors.
Surrounded by a barbed wire fence that has been here since the
founding of the Kibbutz (previously an Army border-patrol settlement),
we create our own new community in which to process and address
current events, environmental challenges of the region, and our
cultural backgrounds and perspectives.

This first week has been an orientation week, so I have not yet begun
to work on my research projects yet. Here is an idea of what I’ve
been up to: Everyday we eat breakfast, lunch, and dinner in the dining
hall at three cafeteria-style tables that are reserved for the Arava
students. There is always salad (soooo many vegetables!!!!), toast,
cottage cheese, yogurt, jam, tahina, and hard-boiled eggs for
breakfast, and sometimes there are fried eggs or pancakes or today
French toast – I think to make the Americans feel at home. I really
enjoy eating salad for breakfast! In addition to salad, I have been
eating lots of humus and eggplant and pita and cake on Shabbat – soooo
delicious! On Wednesday, we walked to nearby Kibbutz Lotan, which is
dedicated to environmental stewardship. There, we made “seed balls,”
which are a collection of lots of different types of seeds (ideally
100 types) mixed with compost, clay, and water and rolled into a
little ping-pong sized ball. When dry, the seed balls are tossed onto
land that does not require irrigation (i.e. where it rains) and left
to root into the soil and blossom into full plants. The idea of
“natural farming” is that the plants that will grow from the seed ball
will be those that are most appropriate for the soil – brilliant! In
between informal lectures on campus life, the laundry system (also
communal), the Algae factory on the Kibbutz, the solar energy we are
developing, and Jewish pluralism and religious tolerance at Ketura, we
play soccer and swim in the pool and go hiking on the mountains in our
backyard. On Saturday, I went with Gillian (American) and Tamer
(Arab Israeli) to feed the two camels, and to visit the cows in the
dairy farm. There are dogs (who have owners) and cats (who don’t)
that wander around the Kibbutz at all times of day, and chickens and
bunnies (they don’t wander) – it is nice to be surrounded by so many
animals!

On a more serious note, culture and politics and international affairs
and the U.N. and foreign policy permeate our discussions. Sometimes
the conversations are light and friendly, and sometimes they are
heartbreaking and frustrating. While walking to our first
Peace-building and Environmental Leadership Seminar (PELS) meeting on
Friday, Tamer shared with me the story of how he was shot in the
throat during a riot at the end of the first Palestinian Intifada. He
was walking home from the Mosque with his father one Friday afternoon
in 1994 when he was nine years old. He didn’t wake up for three days.
Last semester, the Israeli Army stopped him on the street and ordered
him to take off his clothes while he was in Jerusalem. He had just
returned home from the Arava Institute, and was on his way to an
interview at the American Embassy. They interrogated him about where
he was going and what he was doing outside so early in the morning,
and hit him on the back with their guns, having no idea of his efforts
to make peace between Palestinians and Israelis.

I have read Nicholas Kristof’s book Half the Sky, about how many
countries are utilizing only half of their human resources by
subjugating women and denying them of rights and opportunities. I
have read about these women, and here, I am meeting their brothers. A
couple nights ago, a conversation about love evolved into one about
religion and culture and gender equality, and Abdullah told us that
his sister would not be allowed to come study at Arava. I told him
that Arava would be completely different if only men were allowed to
come study here – if there were not Israeli or Palestinian or American
women here to contribute their thoughts, ideas, perspective. Women
bring something different, and in communities where women and men are
given equal opportunities and rights, there is balance and prosperity.
He said that this is just the way the Arab culture is, and I so I
asked him: Just because these systems and traditions have been in
place for thousands of years – generations and generations – does that
make it right?

Achmad says he does not want to marry someone he loves, but rather
would prefer a traditional marriage that will last – love will grow,
in time. He says that statistically, traditional marriages are more
successful than marriages based solely on love, and I shared with him
my belief that if two people in a traditional marriage are miserable
with each other, and making their children’s lives miserable, but yet
are unwilling to consider divorce, I could not call that a successful
marriage. But mostly I’ve just been listening, and learning about
another part of the world, another culture that is so foreign to me.
And I definitely struggle to find the line between disagreeing with a
cultural tradition, and judging it as wrong.

As an American, I wonder why our government behaves as a protective
brother to Israel rather than a peaceful mediator between Israel and
Palestine. I can understand that Israel must stand strong in a region
so dominated by Arabs in order to defend the Jewish homeland, but I
don’t understand why, for example, Israel continues to build
settlements in the West Bank, and why anyone in the world can move to
Israel (expenses paid) even if they have no prior connection to the
country so long as they are Jewish, but Palestinian refugees who have
been forced from their homes are not allowed to return. I am just
beginning to skim the surface of these issues, and I am eager to learn
more!!! As a side note, Tamer will be the first to say that both the
Israelis and the Palestinians are right in their connection to and
desire to live on this land. A thousand years ago, it was everybody’s
home.

There is a village in East Jerusalem where Israelis and Palestinians
live peacefully together. They go to school together, and play
together, and their families invite each other into their homes, and
to parties and weddings. And when the kids grow up, they are brothers
and sisters. They may disagree over some issues, but they would never
hurt each other. Yesterday, Dr. Gershon Baskin, founder and director
of the Israel Palestine Center for Research and Information, spoke to
us on campus about Palestine’s decision to request recognition as a
state from the United Nations, and about the peace process with
Israel. He said that 65-80% of Israeli people and 65-80% of
Palestinian people want peace, and even agree on the parameters for
peace, but don’t believe there is a partner for peace on the other
side. But, there is hope, and we are all anxiously waiting to see the
outcome of the United Nations General Assembly this week.

On an entirely different note, my host family has invited me to dinner
tonight at the pool, and for homemade frozen yogurt at their house
tomorrow afternoon. In other words, I feel incredibly welcome and
safe and excited to be here, and looking forward to spending the year
getting to know my new friends at Arava, the Kibbutz community, the
land and people of Israel and of the surrounding region.

MUCH LOVE,
Erica