Letters from Palestine (28 page)

So the land process started from 1991, and
it’s still going on today, and always they put more burden on us,
requiring more papers, asking more questions, so that one day we
will give up. But we will never give up. And then they said you
will need eyewitnesses, we need people who lived on the land,
planted trees, et cetera. Once we brought fifty people, laborers,
and family members in front of the court. We were standing outside
about five hours, waiting, and then a soldier came to us and said
we have no time to talk with you today—come back tomorrow.

And then we did it the next day, and then
they said to us, you need to survey the land again. We have an old
map for the land from 1916. They said this was done by hand, and
now we have to have another one done by computers. So we did that.
They gave us fifty-five days to do it, and it cost us about 15,000
shekels to do it. We presented it, and the case was postponed a
couple of times. Then they said that part of the land was not
cultivated, and according to the Ottoman law, what is not
cultivated belongs to the state. And, still today, we are
continuing to fight in front of the court in a legal way for this
land.

Then, during the years from 1994 until 1998,
the case was postponed. But, during 1998 until 2000, we had a lot
of troubles from the settlers in the nearby settlements. They came
a couple of times and uprooted trees. They also came three times
and started to construct a road through our property, but we
stopped all the road plans by court action. And the last time, in
2002, they came with big bulldozers and machines, and for three
days they were working on our property until we were able to stop
the building of the road through a court order from the High
Court.

The settlers were very angry and uprooted
about 250 olive trees from our property. They smashed our water
tank on the land, and they threatened my mother, who is seventy
years old. She was at home at that time on the land, and they were
threatening her with guns.

Now, in 2002, we got a paper from the
Military Courts. It’s only about two sentences, saying we do not
have enough proof for this land. And now our lawyer said we have to
continue to fight legally for our case, and this decision was taken
for political reasons. He said we have to present this case in
front of the High Court.

Now, a Palestinian lawyer from the West Bank
is not allowed to represent us in front of the High Court, so we
had to have a Palestinian lawyer from Jerusalem. We found one, and
he said this case is going to cost you a lot of money, and at the
beginning, we have to start with building this case from
scratch.

A couple of months later, the first session
was held in the High Court. During the first hearing, the judge was
not happy with the military representative. She asked him why he
declared the land as a state land without any proof. She gave him
sixty days to write the proof again. But this sixty days limit was
not adhered to, and the case was postponed a couple of times
because they said this case is very complicated and we need more
time to study it.

Then we heard through our lawyer that they
were now requiring that we find a land surveyor from Israel to
survey the land again, go to Istanbul to check all the documents,
go to England and check also maps, and so on, and then write his
report. We found one through our lawyer. He said, this is going to
cost you $70,000.

We started to offer an opportunity for
people to sponsor this issue, and we did it two years ago. And the
report was written and was given to the High Court, and since that
time, until one month ago, we heard nothing. We then heard from our
lawyer that we can register the land. But what does that mean?
Maybe it means that they have finally conceded that the land
belongs to us, that they recognize us as the owners of the land.
But we still need to go through a process, and we don’t know what
that will bring.

Now, this is a very long story, and
sometimes a very depressing one. We are sometimes very frustrated
because we have to wait through a lot of problems, a lot of
troubles, and a lot of stress and difficulties. But we didn’t give
up because we believe that one day the sun of justice will rise
again. And, we believe that our frustration will change into a
positive outcome.

Throughout this long ordeal, we thought, why
not invest our frustration in a positive way and start a good
example there. So then the idea for the project Tent of Nations
came to life, and the idea of this project is to develop a simple
infrastructure for a meeting place for encounters with people from
different cultures, religions, and backgrounds.

So we started to open the area for people to
come and visit us and spend some time there. The idea of the Tent
of Nations is to bring people together, but, on the other side, to
help people be connected to their land because we believe that a
land without people has no future as well as a people without land
also has no future. So, people and their land should be connected
to each other. And this is what we believe, in and this is the idea
of Tent of Nations—connecting people to the land.

With this idea in mind, we started to
organize some activities and programs. We started with a tree
planting campaign between January and March. We invited people from
different countries and continents, Europe and the States,
Australia, Africa, and, of course, Palestinians and Israelis. We
are trying to bring people together to plant trees on the land. The
idea of planting trees is to bring life to this place, to make it
green, and prevent it from confiscation. But on the other hand, it
also helps to bring people together in a cooperative spirit.
Because after planting trees we sit together, we have a cup of tea,
a cup of coffee, and we exchange our ideas and experiences. This is
a way of getting people together, to get to know the land, to learn
about each other face to face.

We also opened a program for volunteers, so
we are inviting people to come for a short period of time as well
as a long period of time, so we have volunteers coming for as
little as one day or as long as one year. Some people come just for
a special program, but we also have long-term volunteers who come
for one year, like service students. Instead of going into the
military, they are coming to us and helping us for thirteen months,
staying on the land, showing presence, and at the same time helping
to develop the land with us and the Tent of Nations project.

We also started a summer camp with summer
activities for children and young people. The idea of this summer
camp is to offer this place in nature for young people, for
children from different religions, to come together. We do these
summer camps for Palestinian children, and the idea is to connect
these children with nature in order to show them, from the
beginning, that land should be the major thing in their lives.
Through these camps, we try to give the message to the children to
be positive, to think in a good way, in a constructive way, and to
get to know other children face to face and also to learn from each
other’s experience. With these children, we do some activities,
like sports, music, painting on stones, and theater. So we like to
create these activities in order to show young people that out of
nothing you can achieve something. We also take them hiking and
help them learn about each other through hearing music and telling
stories to each other. We also have a youth exchange program
outside the country, especially with Europe, and we try to send
young people outside to learn about other countries and to become
ambassadors of their own land and country, and conversely we invite
our partner groups to come visit us and do a project with us, like
summer camps and work camps.

During our work camps, we work together. And
in the afternoons, we do field trips. And in the evenings, we have
meetings. So we have different kinds of activities, like the grape
harvest, the almond harvest, the olive harvest. All of these things
are important to show other people coming from outside that land is
very important for us, and agriculture is part of our tradition,
and we want to keep people connected to their land. After these
camps, we will try to do something like a small festival and will
try, hopefully at the beginning of next year, to establish a
farmers’ market and invite other farmers to sell their products
here. It’s a way to create more awareness of this issue and to help
people stay connected to their land.

We also have a women’s project in the
village of Nahalin, where we started with computer courses for
women there. This idea is being developed now to create a women’s
center there, and the idea is to strengthen the role of women in
our society because women should play a big role in shaping the
future. We also try to offer this place for any kind of activity,
like bringing families with their children and so on.

With these kinds of things, we try to help
people stay connected to their land. And we hope that Tent of
Nations will reach its goals and will help others to think the same
way we think. We hope that this story, this very difficult story,
which went through a lot of problems and so on, will be like a sign
for a good future and a symbol for peace.

We also have some future plans for this
place. We are planning on having a peace center and maybe a peace
village with its own facilities. And we will try with this project
to be connected with a vocational training center and school. And
we try to be positive, to think in a positive way, because through
our vision, we try to achieve our goals. Everybody needs to have a
vision and to have a dream, but not just to have this dream in our
hearts or minds, but to work to realize it.

Our idea for Tent of Nations started as a
dream of my father, but my father died in 1976. And now, more than
thirty years later, the Nassar family, still the owner of this
land, is trying to make this dream into a reality—to achieve this
goal through the Tent of Nations.

_PHOTO

My name is Shireen Jamil Abu Khiran. I am
twenty years old. I was born in Jordan into a middle-class family
and have four bothers and one sister. However, I have lived most of
my life in the Al-Arroub refugee camp, close to Bethlehem. I am
very proud of where I came from. Of course, I have faced a lot of
struggles growing up, but I am making it, day by day. After
attending school in Palestine, I was able to continue my studies in
the United States at Bridgewater College in Virginia, where I am
currently a senior with a full scholarship. My scholarship was
provided by the Hope Fund (www.thehopefund.org), an organization
that has helped many Palestinian refugees like myself and to which
I am extremely grateful. I am majoring in international relations
and minoring in culture studies. I would love to continue my
studies after I am finished here by attending a graduate school
where I can get a degree in international law and women’s
rights.

Since I am also a peace activist, I have
worked with many organizations for peace, women rights, children’s
rights, and conflict resolution. In the future, I am determined to
work at the United Nations and also for different types of
nongovernmental organizations where I can help my people and other
people who need help and support, because I have been in this
struggle for a long time, and I know how much it means when there
is someone who can help. Someday, I hope to have my own NGO where I
can continue to focus on issues of women’s and children rights and
also deal with the problems of social conflict and war.

* * *

I first encountered Shireen when I read a
story by her in a “zine” that she and a couple of other women,
including Hannah Mermelstein, had put together called
We Won’t
be Silent: Palestinian Young Women and Girls Speak
. I was in
touch with Hannah at the time, and impressed by Shireen’s feisty
spirit and impassioned way that she wrote, I asked Hannah if she
would kindly provide Shireen’s email to me. I definitely wanted
Shireen’s voice in our book.

Eventually, I heard back from Shireen, who
was then, as she still is, an undergraduate at a college in
Virginia—and seemingly always freezing cold, burdened with
impossible workloads, involved in a million activities, and
suffering various ills, all of which made it nearly impossible for
her to respond to my increasingly importunate requests of her. But
in time, she would be writing me hilariously amusing letters, full
of complaints about her trials as a student and saturated with more
exclamation points and question marks than words sometimes. Here is
a typical sample of Shireen’s epistolary style, unedited:

Dear Ken,

HOW ARE YOU??????????? i hope you are doing
very very very very very well!

well i have been doing much better! weather
is a little bit better but at night it gets freezing and oh my god
they cut the heat already at school and i was like are you
seriuse??????????? like one time i had to sleep in my coat!! no
joke!!! until they put it on again because it was still freezing in
the night! i am ready for some SUN!!! and my health is much better
but one of my ears is really hurting and i went to the doctor and
she was like ummm i do not know what is wrong with it!!! i was like
wow! this school is killing me! and tell me why we had food
poisoning in the school with some students! i was like bridgewater
need some renovation or something because this is crazy!!! and i
lost my contacts and now i can’t see anything because my glasses is
really old and my vision got worse since then and now i have to
make a new test for my vision! and now since we have like one month
left or so i have so many things due to my teachers and it is like
a race with all of this pressure! i have to do some more
presentations about palestine, i am doing a documentary on
international students at my school for one of my classes and a
whole research on that subject as well, and oh my god today we saw
this documentary that is called born into brothels and it was
CRAZY, and very emotional, it was basically about prostitution in
india in the red line area and its effect on women and children it
was very inspiring! now i know for sure this is where i want to go
with all of my studies i want to concentrate on women, children and
refugees issues! i can’t believe all of these things that are going
in the world and how we can be ignorant about them! i want to try
to visit as many places and help as many people as i can! oh my god
it affected me so much and i think you should see it if you did not
it is great documentary and the woman who did it done great job
with these kids but what was crushing is that after she put them in
boarding schools their parents took them out i HATED that i HATED
it how are you going to crush a kid’s dreams like that??? ahggg!!!
it just really hit me! it reminded me of a lot of the students who
do not have opportunities back home and how lucky i am to have what
i have and how much harder i have to work so i can help other
students and also my family in the future!