July 3, 2001

Today was a down day, classes starting tomorrow. Which was good, since the jetlag kept us awake until 5 AM. We made our way to the University, exploring the cafeteria and the library before heading to a lecture planned for the foreign students here to study Arabic and Palestine Studies. One hour later, we headed to Ramallah, because our elderly speaker couldn't walk the 1/2 mile across the road block to another taxi. Ramallah is Area A (fuller Palestinian control), the road is Area C (Israeli military control), and Birzeit is Area B (shared control, with full Israeli military access). The road currently is subject to random closures and delays, which vary from hour to hour in duration and severity. It was far too hot for an elderly man to be walking in the heat of the day.

Graffiti on the former Ramallah police station.

We met him at the Friends' School (the road to Ramallah was open by the time we finally got there), where Marthame first came to Palestine in 1993 for a three-week experience. Next to the school stands the former Palestinian police station, where two Israeli soldiers were lynched at the beginning of this Intifada. That place (and places in several other towns) was bombed later that day by the Israeli Army, and has remained in ruins. Someone had scrawled onto the walls, in English, "A settler a day keeps the doctor away."

The beauty - and quiet - of Ramallah’s Friends School.

Next door, the school's green and flowering gardens make a quiet refuge from the bustle (and sometimes the chaos) of Ramallah. What a juxtaposition, this place of destruction and death, a symbol of the ravages of war, side by side with peaceful gardens and a school built by Quakers, committed pacifists. Our speaker was an eloquent expert on Palestinian humor and folklore. He gave an insightful talk on the subject, citing jokes and folktales as much better judges of public opinion and morale than political speeches - they circulate if they resonate with the people, and they die if they do not. In particular, he contrasted the jokes of the first and second Intifadas. In the first Intifada , there was a general trend of optimism. One example he gave is of the Palestinian woman who gave birth to twins in an Israeli military hospital - the army had heard that the babies were boys, so they had soldiers near by. As he was being delivered, the first baby saw the Israeli soldiers in the room. He turned back to his twin, saying, "Bring some stones!"...There was a feeling of unity in the stories, a feeling of conquering the enemy (interestingly always identified as the occupying soldiers, not as the Israeli people), the triumph of youth.

Even tragedies are the subject of stories and jokes here, we suspect as a way to deal with difficult situations. For example, in 1994 after a settler killed 29 worshippers at the Ibrahimi mosque in Hebron, jokes such as this (alluding to the traditional stubbornness of people in Hebron) circulated: "Why didn't Baruch Goldstein kill more people in the mosque?" "Because their heads are so hard, the bullets bounced off!"

This Intifada, however, the jokes about tragedy seem to belie a defeated, hopeless morale. For example: A boy in Gaza asks his father for two shekels. "Why?"

"To go to the checkpoint and throw stones. I need one shekel for the taxi there, and one for the taxi back."

"Here's one shekel, son. You don't need another; they'll bring you back in an ambulance."

Now also the PA is the butt of many jokes (as are its leaders - these were too obscene for our professor to feel comfortable telling us, though Marthame's heard a few of them around Zababdeh before). Like jokes, folktales now seem to fall along the lines of pessimism, division, and distrust of leadership. The professor's analysis certainly matched what we had picked up in our conversations with people around Zababdeh over the past year.

We returned for dinner with the neighbors and an early night.