The Rashaida Bedouins

No one I know knows anything about them or where they're located. I met Juma at Metzokei Dragot who gave my number to Mohammad who runs the Bedouin guest tent. Mohammad has called me since every 3 days or so to find out when I'd be coming to visit with them. They've just begun hosting Israelis and internationals at their place so they seem to be over-exuberant in trying to get guests to come.

Hubby was nervous at me going to the middle of nowhere so I gave him Mohammad's number "just in case". What is there to be nervous about if you don't believe the "other" is your enemy?

I went with a couple of my adventurous friends who have travelled extensively. They love new experiences. We travelled to the Jewish settlement of Efrat, then on winding roads east towards Tekoa. In front of us was a sign forbidding entrance to Israelis. To the left was a handwritten sign that said "Maaleh Amos" in Hebrew. That's the Jewish settlement that's closest to the Rashaida Bedouin village. We travelled past hilly olive groves in the valley between desert and mountain ridges. The roads were winding and beautiful. We obviously missed our destination and Mohammed directed us to where we had to go.

"The sign to Maaleh Amos is on a rock" he explained.

Oh, sorry. I was looking for a normal sign, not a Flintstone-type sign. Go figure. We retracked until we got to the sign, up past Bedouin ruins and got to Maaleh Amos. One of the Bedouins waiting there asked if we were going to Mohammed's place. Yes, we are. He jumped into our car as if it's just normal to jump into peoples' cars and directed us past his Bedouin village of Rashaida where the girls' school's windows and frames are colored pink and where camels roamed wild. We veered off the asphalt onto a non-paved road up hills and over who knows what for about 15 minutes until we got to a large tent up on top of a hill with views that were unbelievably stunning.

The Rashaida tribe lived in nearby Ein Gedi until 1948 when they moved uphill and since 1984 lived in the place where they are now living. Our host Mohammad has two wives and 11 children. The younger man who rode in the car with us, spoke perfect Hebrew and told us that the Arabic the Bedouin speak is closest to classical Arabic, which means he can understand all dialects. The families don't work out of their village and all work is done around the home, raising flocks of sheep, goats and camels and some vegetables. I wondered out loud what on earth do they ever get upset about? No mortgages, no taxes, no bills, no rushing to the office, no boss, no standing in line for hours at the supermarket, no traffic jams. Nothing. I asked Mohammad if his wives get along. He says they do. They're mostly secular, although there is a mosque in their village, no one feels pressured to go to prayers, although most fast during Ramadan. Inside the tent, the mattresses are made of sheeps' wool and the covering made out of goat hair, so that when it rains, the hair expands and covers any holes, making the tent waterproof. Amazing self-sufficiency.

Meanwhile, we wondered how in this empty place did people suddenly show up at the tent to check us out? Kids, older men, men in turbans, teens, etc. They seem to have come out of nowhere. A musician began to play on the stringed instrument called "sumsimeyeh" or something like that.

The camels appeared and I was asked to milk it. Huh? Are you putting me to work already? I'm not even there an hour! I squeezed and milk poured out. That milk collected in a tin was our beverage soon after, and I never tasted anything as wonderful and sweet. And of course, so fresh. Not from a shelf in a supermarket.

We took a walk to where Mohammad's dad lives, in the valley below and met with everyone there.

Then climbed into one of their vehicles to ride to an old Jordanian military outpost that was in use pre-1967. I felt like a kid again riding in the open back on the bumpy roads. The young man riding with us told me I should listen to Arabic music. I told him that I do and we sang some familiar tunes. He tells me to listen to Fairuz in the morning.

"I always listen to Fairuz in the morning with my coffee."

"Why? What happens if you listen to Fairuz in the evening?"

"No. She's much better in the morning. I listen to Om Kolthum in the evening. There's nothing like Om Kolthum in the evening."

Hmmmm. Have to give it a try.

It was almost time for us to leave. We didn't want to travel the unmarked, unpaved roads in the dark. But it was hard to leave this serene place. These people, this tribe, is looking to get tourists to visit with them. We joked how we left the car unlocked and it was still there, as was my cell phone.  You and your valuables are safe as a guest of the Bedouin. They welcome people to sleep over in their comfortable tents and share breakfast, lunch and dinner with them, with a bonfire at night and camel riding and hiking during the day. It sounds ideal and we promised that we'd get more people to visit and would visit over the weekend ourselves sometime in the near future.

The Big Fright

I had planned to go to Abed's wedding for a few months, and the time kept getting closer and closer. On Tuesday he called to officially invite me. On Friday, I found out that a close female friend of mine was invited too. I was thrilled because Abed had told me that this was going to be a very traditional Arab wedding. The men and women would be separate. I would not know anyone in the women's section and was happy to have a friend with me.

Meanwhile, over the weekend, the look on my husband's face got drabber and drabber. We discussed this over dinner last night. He was adamant that I should not go. The wedding was going to be in Abu Dis, a Palestinian neighborhood east of Jerusalem, behind the big wall. He told me again over coffee with friends this morning. Our friends told me they'd be frightened to go too.

The fear is so great here of the other that everyone is afraid for their lives. It's unfair. But I can't go by the "talk" of others. Is it true that Arab neighborhoods are dangerous for Jews? Hubby was telling me horrific things that could happen to me over there...I was starting to feel nervous myself.

This is supposed to be a wedding celebration of a close peace associate of mine. I told my husband and children and friends that if it were so dangerous, he'd warn me to stay away because of tensions in the area. This is what had been done in the past when we were supposed to go to Bethlehem one year and there were tensions between our peoples. There are always tensions between our peoples - look at the tension in Acco. But this tension between peoples who more and more I feel are the same is, to me, artificial. It can be zapped away. It's not easy, but I know it can be done.

I was starting to get flutters in my stomach as the time got closer to the wedding because of my family's concerns. It was starting in a couple of hours.

Logistics. How do we get there? Is it safe for Israelis to take their car to Abu Dis? I wrote a few emails to Palestinian friends who live in the area, and my friend wrote some of her friends.

Yes, it's safe to take a car with Israeli license plates. It's Area B in our sectioned-off land which has A,B,C as its sections.

The Israeli man who came with us decided to leave his car in my neighborhood and we took a Palestinian car service recommended by a friend. He said he'll pick us up in 10 minutes. That's 20 minutes in Palestinian time.

We drove up and down a couple of hills until we got to Abu Dis, a large Palestinian university town. We were immediately greeted with smiles, and separated from our male colleague, shown to the women's section. Again. More smiles. We were greeted by Abed's relatives who had never met us before. We were led up to the dancing area by his mother to dance with her. My friend and I seemed to be the only Jewish women there. We noticed Abed's mother could pass for one of our aunts. She looked more Jewish than Arab, we thought, and imagined her cooking up a vat of kreplach soup.

Sitting with all these women, I wondered where does all this fear of the other come from? As different parts of the wedding ceremony were happening, the woman sitting next to me, who treated us like VIPs as soon as we walked in, gave me a running commentary in Arabic, which I understood only a few words. I picked up a couple of new Arabic words from her which I believed were - aris (bride) and aroos (groom). I was quite pleased with myself to have guessed what those words meant.

When the men came in, the women who weren't covered up to begin with, covered up their bare arms and hair. The men lined up to greet the groom and many gave him money. There were necklaces of dollar bills put around the groom and bride. Then the bride and groom cut the many tiered wedding cake with what looked like an antique ceremonial dagger.

My friend commented that this wasn't an Arabic cake. Yeah, it's more Jewish than Arabic, I told her. It was sponge cake with coconut frosting. Kiddush cake. Two wine glasses were filled with Coca Cola for the bride and groom to give a toast to each other.

It could have very well been a Jewish wedding in an ultra-orthodox wedding hall. They also have separate rooms for men and women for dancing.

And I wondered again, where the fear of the other comes from. Are our respective societies feeding each other lies about one another so that we can't become close?

And I thanked God for taking fear out of my heart and so being able to have an opportunity to see a traditional Arab wedding in a Palestinian village and to mingle and dance together with the women guests.

Trouble in the 'hood

I've been having interfaith meetings for months, quietly, at my home. It all started with a chanukah party and then grew into a full-fledged proper interfaith group.

The last time I announced on the local email group list that this week's meeting was going to be on Wednesday instead of Thursday (as seeing Paul McCartney took precedence), a very frightened woman emailed the 1,000 member group as follows:

"'Jerusalem Gypsy' is asking people to come to her house for an interfaith meeting with Arabs from Abu Dis. Meeting with Arabs will only encourage their
welcome to move to our city. We already have some Arabs living here, but
encouraging more to come by these welcome meetings, will change our city from being a safe neighborhood to a French Hill or Pizgat Ze'ev where the Arabs that moved there,(Piz'gat Ze'ev has 100 Arab familes and French Hill has a larger influx of Arab familes and growing daily. Jews won't buy there now.). This influx of Arabs
which started slowly and increased only brought terror. Terror with Arab gangs
fighting Jews in the streets, terror in car thefts etc. Do we need to encourage this
on the Chatline?"

I then received a whole slew of emails from frightened people asking me to stop my meetings and have them instead in Jerusalem or somewhere else.

I then wrote back to the entire group telling them that "many antagonizing and marginilizing attitudes are those that, in fact, encourage terror, while attitudes that build mutual respect (like ours) eliminate the roots of terror (you can not terrorize someone you do not hate and you think is human and you care for)." which only brought even more bizarre responses.

Some emails were totally retarded - people screaming at me in all caps that they had always felt safe in the city and now that I am inviting Arabs, all hell will break loose. Some were one sentences "Neville Chamberlain thought the same in 1939", one blamed me for causing strife among the Jewish people in our community, and some were totally against this but were willing to dialogue with me. One said I'll lose my friends, not knowing I have no friends to begin with - so it really doesn't matter :-)

My major point to them in individual emails was this: if our community allows in daily hundreds of arab workers for construction, gardening, garbage collection, municipal workers, house cleaners - every day from 6:00 - 3:00 pm, then WHY is a once-a-month meeting of 1 1/2hours with five educated professional men who happen to be Arab Moslems, who have the necessary permits to enter, causing such a ruckus?

Are the Times a-changin'?

I could feel myself glowing when a person living in my "settlement" stopped me at the local mall and remarked, "You seem to be doing such interesting things!" And she was smiling, and I gathered she really didn't mind what I was doing.

So what am I doing?

I am trying to gather together a group of local people from my community, which is over the green line, and taboo for those that are politically correct (I'm not, obviously) together with Palestinians. We had a first meeting in February and I advertised the second meeting on our local e-mail list. I didn't get one hate mail.

Instead, I met another woman waiting at the bus stop who told me "I'm doing such wonderful things." She looks like the typical settler woman, wearing a long skirt and head-covering. I didn't expect such a wide smile from her either!

True, they haven't yet come to our interfaith meetings, but if I keep on pushing, maybe they will. It certainly is attracting a lot of interest on the outside.

A BBC reporter is doing a radio show about it. A researcher from one of Israel's top universities is also attending. I know she will discover in her research that attitude change after encounters such as these do occur. Perhaps educators will begin implementing "encounters" in elementary schools and so on, as part of curriculum. Who knows where this can lead to? I'm hopeful.

And somehow, even Saudi's King Abdullah got into the picture by saying he believes in interfaith dialogue, and that he includes Jews in it as well. Well, I'll be danged, if that little bit in the paper didn't surprise the ass off me. It sure did. And it made our meeting delightful, while our group of about 13 people said they would surely welcome the King as a guest at our next meeting.

Peace Festival at Tantur

This Palestinian Hip Hop band was cute. Don't remember the name of the band. But it was great to hear their music....