Back to school in Beit Jala, West Bank, Palestine

-- Debra Ricci, Ph.D.

Beit Jala, an ancient Canaanite city, overlooks the little town of Bethlehem from its vantage point on the eastern slope of one of the highest of the Judean Hills on the West Bank in Palestine. Beit Jala (“grassy carpet” in Aramaic) is still home to 15,000 Christian and Muslim residents while 70,000 of its residents have already fled, most of them Christians, to Central and South America. Mosques, churches, schools, houses, and trees full of olives, apricots, almonds, lemons, plums, apples and grapes cling to its vertical landscapes.

My husband and I arrived there on June 30, 2004, after only two email exchanges with the principal of a small Christian school letting him know of our interest in volunteering. We had learned of the school’s need for a secretary on a fact-finding trip to Palestine the previous January. The principal’s last email read simply, “We are expecting you on June 30.”

The school serves 125 of the most underserved Palestinian youth on the West Bank. Started by the Mennonites in 1962 as a boarding school for 7th through 12th grade boys, leadership transferred to the Arab Charitable Society of Beit Jala in the mid-1970s. Currently, two-thirds of the students are Christian and one-third Muslim; fourteen percent are female.

As is the case with most Palestinian institutions and agencies, the psychological stress and declining economy resulting from 38 years of military occupation was apparent. Not knowing exactly how we could help nor the extent of our roles, we prepared ourselves for the usual maintenance of office records, occasional mailings, grant writing and friendly support for all who entered the school office. But more importantly, we went there to live in solidarity with the Palestinian people, to be a peaceful and hopeful presence, to witness daily life under occupation, and to report it to the folks at home.

To our surprise, our activities shifted daily to accommodate a wide variety of other needs. Sometimes we were the school nurses. Sometimes we were ambulances or taxis or accompaniers to appointments for students and staff through checkpoints. All of the time we were listeners. However, the one role we hadn’t counted on, and the one that remained constant over the 10 months of our stay, was that of “house grandparents” to the 12 boys who boarded at the school.

We met altogether for the first time at breakfast on the first day of school. About 14 of us sat at two long tables in a clean and pleasant enough dining room adjacent to the school kitchen. We had been told beforehand that meals were eaten in silence. Two of the older boys, eleventh-grade twins George and Eduard, brought two metal pots of freshly hard-boiled eggs, pita bread, and two pots of steaming hot tea from the kitchen. George and Eduard had lived at the school since seventh grade; they knew the drill. From a stack of warped, stained melamine dishes, Eduard took one, glanced at its intended recipient, and waited for eye contact. A nod indicated that the boy wanted one egg (spoonful, piece, serving, etc.). Each boy was served his portion in the same manner. Had we not been paying attention moments earlier, we would have missed the table grace. A monotone, three-second succession of Arabic words barely disturbed the silence. Later we asked for a translation, but no one seemed to be able to offer one. This was our first clue that language might hinder our communication with the boys even though Palestinian students study English throughout elementary and secondary school.

For the next few minutes, the initial cracks of hard-boiled eggs were followed by gentle tinkling sounds of shells being tossed back into the steel pots piece by tiny piece. We never could get the eggs, fresh from the school is chicken farm, to peel all in one piece. The boys ate as boys do—not only because they were hungry, but also because they want to get to more important things as quickly as possible. I wondered if they were wondering, as I was, what our year together would be like. For the previous several year, their housefather had been a very strict old man who stood in the doorway while they ate. If anyone violated even a small rule, the old man would issue a punishment. (Corporal punishment is widespread in Palestinian schools.) We preferred to eat with the boys, to eat what they were eating, and to model the rules as we learned them.

All went well that first morning. As each boy finished his egg, bread and tea, he scraped his plate into a stainless steel pot, dumped his tea into another, stacked his dish and waited for the signal to leave the table. When everyone had finished, the table server would rap twice on the table. At that, the silence came to an abrupt halt as the boys gathered up the pots and dishes and bounded in unison for the kitchen. One boy washed, another rinsed, another dried and put away, another wiped down the tables and the last one wiped down the kitchen counters and floor. They followed this procedure after every meal. It took less than 10 minutes.

Their almost monastic schedule continued through the day. Breakfast (including dishes and sweeping the entryways) completed by 8 a.m., the boys joined their schoolmates as they all lined up for chapel outside the front doors. In assigned seats, students sat through seven periods of classes with two short breaks, one at 10:15 and the other at 12:00 noon. (Teachers rotated every 50 minutes while students remained stationary.) Lunch at 1:30 pm and supper at 6:00 p.m. followed the same procedure as breakfast.

During a brief free period after lunch until 3 p.m., some of the boys helped out at the school’s chicken farm. Here they could earn as much as five shekels a day (the equivalent of $1.25). At 3 pm, each boy returned to his classroom where he completed his assignments in the same seat he had occupied all morning.

Between 4:30 and suppertime, the boys were often joined by neighborhood friends for a game of soccer. After supper and clean up, they returned once more to their assigned seats for a second study period. Their last activity before going to bed was to prepare their classroom for the following day by sweeping the floor and straightening the desks. If any time remained, they could watch a professional soccer match together on TV in the library.

On the surface, the boys appeared to be happy with this arrangement. They laughed, joked, engaged in typical horseplay and displayed typical teenage interest in dancing and teasing each other. They shined on the football (soccer) field, making moves that would send U.S. parents of student athletes running to the store for helmets and kneepads, diving without fear onto the rocky, grassless surface. When asked what they wanted to do after graduation, their most common response was, “Play football.” Perhaps this was the most sensible answer since most of their fathers are out of work. With unemployment at 37-67 percent, the World Bank compares Bethlehem’s economy, so dependent upon tourism, to that of the U.S. Great Depression.

In the wake of the London transportation system bombings, I often ask myself if any of the boys we got to know over those 10 months could succumb to fundamentalism. Only one of the 12 boys displayed out-of-control anger and frustration. Several others, especially the younger boys, were unable to concentrate on their studies. In its 2003 annual report, the Beit Sahour YMCA states:

Palestinian children … have been exposed to extensive deprivation and violence. Due to the continuous incursions, strict military curfews, internal blockades in addition to the Apart-Hide Wall along the West Bank and Gaza Strip,…children began to suffer several dramatic[al] and behavioral changes…

Parents reported symptoms that ranged from sleeping disorders; increase in violence level among children; decreased level in school grading, decreased hope regarding the future; increased focus on [the] political situation and an undermined fundamental belief in the self and in right and wrong.

Like other people outside the U.S., Palestinians are inundated with American TV, films, advertising, products and government interference. But, unlike others in the world, Palestinians bear the direct consequences of U.S. funding to Israel to the tune of $15,139,178 per day (http://ifamericansonlyknew.org ).

Maybe this is why we arrived back in Minnesota in April with the feeling that we could never develop the kind of kinship Palestinians share with each other in close family systems. Aside from a few broad-brush intercultural textbook theories to guide us, we Americans have no experience on which to make sense of the many layers of nuance inherent in the Arabic culture. Without a great deal more exposure and study, we ask ourselves how we could possibly foster the kind of trust needed to bring about a just peace in a situation where all U.S. citizens are implicated and increasingly imperiled.

Debra Ricci, a class of ‘79 graduate, has taught relational and presentational communication courses at Metro State since 1983. She serves as a volunteer mediator and circle facilitator for Dispute Resolution Center in St. Paul. She and her husband Dwight Haberman speak on the Palestinian/Israeli conflict to interested groups, about their 10-month study and survey of peace and justice activities on both sides. Debra has developed a simulation exercise allowing persons to experience life under Israeli military occupation which is available to all Metropolitan State University faculty and students.

The Metropolitan Home || Calendar || Commentary || Masthead || Contact
Metropolitan State University Homepage

All material © Metropolitan 2005, except as noted. All rights reserved.