Jurish
We left Rosh Ha'Ayin at 14:15. When we arrived at 15:00 at the club, a few girls were already waiting for us, the others arrived later. We began with coffee and cake and a conversation about their events during the past week. Then we again sang "Yesterday". We watched the original version of the song, as sung by the Beatles. We read the text, stressing the experience of reading, clarification of the words and their use.
We continued reading and learned two poems by Samih Al Qassim, the Druze-Palestinian poet. We talked about the atmosphere which is reflected by the poems: the suffering of war, the relations of occupier occupant, the ties to the home and the earth and the yearning for peace. We then split into two groups. One group worked on the adaptation of the text of "Happiness" from the book "My third Unseen" with a vocabulary translated into Arabic.
A second group assembled with great excitement and joy an English alphabet puzzle. The exercise included finding words beginning with each of the letters of the ABC.
Some of Samih Al Qassim's poems:
The Wall Clock
My city collapsed
The wall clock remained
Our neighbourhood collapsed
The wall clock remained
The street collapsed
The wall clock remained
The square collapsed
The wall clock remained
My home collapsed
The wall clock remained
The wall collapsed
On went
The clock
by Samih al-Qasim
Travel Ticket
On the day you kill me
You'll find in my pocket
Travel tickets
To peace, To the fields and the rain, To people's conscience. Don't waste the tickets.
by Samih al-Qasim
Harriet Lewis, Neomi Ben Tzur (reporting)
15:00 Shosh and Hadas remain at Jurish to teach the girls, and we drove with Nadim on a tour. Our destination today is the village of Duma, situated west of Jurish, east of road no. 458. Cultured plots, new houses in the process of being built and small workshops welcome us at the entrance to the village. We arrive for a meeting with N. and his family. For the past few months N. doesn't have work. For four years he worked for a contractor in Jerusalem, and his ankle was wounded in the course of his work. He was hospitalised in the Hadassa Ein Karem hospital for 22 days and underwent complicated operations. Since the accident the Jewish contractor ignores him and so does the national security. N. limps; he walks with difficulty. It will be a long time until he will be able to go back to work and support his family. He tells us in Hebrew, which he speaks fluently, about life in the village.
Duma today has 3500 inhabitants, and its area is about 6 sq.kms; about 1700 of the villagers have been living abroad since 1967, most of them in Jordan. Not all of them can return at least to visit their home village. Most of those who are prevented from returning, including N.'s cousin, received permission to leave for Jordan for a few months with a time limit. The punishment of those who didn't return at the specified time is that they will not see their homeland and the family members they left behind. This is part of the system to decrease the population which the conquering state uses on the conquered populace.
N. and his wife M. have nine daughters and two sons. M. is energetic and was elected to be a council member ("as she has brains" her husband compliments her). She takes care of matters of sport and. By virtue of her office she is in direct contact with European organizations, and navigates donations from these organizations for improvement of sport and education.
Like other villages Duma too was arbitrarily divided between areas B and C. The dividing line between the two areas is road no. 458. The villagers who have plots in what became C area hurried, immediately when the news of the division became known, t o build on their land. The army prevented them from entering the area and issued demolition decrees. M. connected an Arab lawyer from Beit El, and the European organization she is in contact with to supervise his work and advise him. As a result, the demolition decrees were not implemented. But without demolition life would be impossible: so it seems. Now the army harasses the inhabitants of a house which is located mostly in B area and only 11 meters are situated in area C. The house is now designated for destruction. What an absurdity. What wickedness.
Road No. 458 which, luckily, the village lies east of, has become the object of the settlers scheming; they throw stones on the villagers' cars.
Settlers of violent settlements such as Esh Kodesh, Kida or Ahya don't usually reach the village owing to the distance. On the other hand the army raids the village once or twice a month. Soldiers invade the houses and arrest people. During these activities the entrance to the village is blocked.
17:00 We say goodbye to the couple and return to Jurish. Shosh and Hadas are already waiting.
17:30 Tapuah Junction. Even at this hour there is no military presence at the parking lot. Two soldiers are sitting at the bus station. The sewage cascade near the industrial zone of Barkan is dry.
18:00 Back to Rosh Ha-Ayin.