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Showing posts with label Palestinian people. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Palestinian people. Show all posts
And now a message from the Palestinian Authority: Walk in the footsteps of Jesus, enjoy some savory hummus and stuffed grape leaves, and please, please, please spend the night. If you squint, you might not see the watchtowers, barbed wire, and rifle-toting Israeli soldiers.
The Palestinian government is making a push to attract tourists to Bethlehem, Jericho, Hebron, and other historic religious sites—going so far as to call Jesus “the first Palestinian.” While tourism to Israel has steadily increased in recent years, Palestinian-controlled lands—which include many of the major Biblical sites—have seen scant benefit as Israel maintains a tight military grip over the West Bank.
Sure, there’s an annual rush to Bethlehem at Christmas. But even then, most visitors come on day trips to check out Manger Square and the Church of the Nativity, spending little time—or cash. Archaeological jewels such as the Khirbet Bal’ama water tunnel near Jenin and the Sebastia Roman colonnade outside Nablus get scarce traffic. And the new, white-marble Yasser Arafat museum in Ramallah? On a recent weekday afternoon, it had just three visitors. Although political tensions make it tough to attract tourists, Saeb Erekat, secretary-general of the Palestine Liberation Organization, envisions sunbathing and spas on the Dead Sea, bike trails through the Jordan Valley, and Christians flocking to Bethlehem year-round. “If we had an independent state, it would be magnificent,” he says.
Tourism in the Palestinian territories rebounded slightly in 2016, to 2.4 million foreign visitors, up from 2.2 million the previous year, but below the 2.5 million in 2014, government data show. Few, though, remain for the night. Palestinian hotels registered 906,000 stays by foreign visitors in 2016, down from 1.1 million in 2014. In Israel, by contrast, foreigners logged 8.5 million nights in hotels last year. While government figures show Israel got more than $6 billion from tourism in 2016, the Palestinian lands registered less than $1.1 billion in 2014, the most recent data available.
Just as problematic for the Palestinians, the vast majority of visitors arrive via Israel, so Israeli tour operators and hotels get first crack at serving them. Responding to frustrated hoteliers, the PLO issued a report last year on the “annexation of tourism,” charging that Israelis had rebranded some of the most popular West Bank sites as being in the “Holy Land” to obscure their Palestinian identity. Yossi Fatael, head of the Israel Incoming Tour Operators Association, barely disputes the complaint. “All tourists go through our system,” he says. Palestinian areas “are an extension of our product.”
The Palestinians’ ambitions, though, run smack into an infrastructure nightmare. While Jerusalem and surrounding Israeli-controlled towns have European-quality roads, restaurants, and hotels, beyond the walls and fences in the West Bank the potholes grow, and the accommodations suffer. Bethlehem’s Jacir Palace, the only five-star hotel in the area, boasts a grand lobby in the century-old residence of a former mayor, but the paint is peeling, the carpets are worn, and the heat doesn’t always work. While Jerusalem’s Old City is a dense web of narrow lanes dating back millennia, with historic sites such as the Western Wall and the Church of the Holy Sepulchre (where Jesus is said to have risen), Bethlehem has little to offer strolling tourists. Manger Square is a barren expanse surrounded by souvenir shops selling cheap olive wood renderings of the Madonna and Child, pearl-inlaid boxes, and T-shirts saying, “I Love Palestine.” Beyond the square, the small old town can be explored in an hour or two, and it pretty much shuts down at sunset. “An odd sense of oppression” pervades the city, says Mary Starkey, a 62-year-old retiree visiting from Britain, after passing through an Israeli checkpoint.
Starkey’s view may have been colored by her lodging: the Walled Off Hotel, which advertises “floor-to-ceiling views of graffiti-strewn concrete.” Recently opened by the London street artist Banksy, the three-story guesthouse stands across a narrow alleyway from a 26-foot-high wall that divides much of the West Bank from areas settled by Jews. “We hope to raise international awareness of how ugly this wall is and in that way contribute to peace,” says hotel manager Wissam Salsaa.
Israel has done a better job of nurturing tourism in a conflict zone. Tel Aviv has cultivated a young, hip vibe with cafe-lined boulevards and surfing on its beaches. There are a growing number of ecotourism ventures in the southern desert and wine trails in the Galilee. And visitors flocking to Jerusalem don’t seem put off by security measures such as armed guards restricting entrance to the Dome of the Rock or off-duty Israeli soldiers roaming the streets with machine guns. “I had mixed feelings when I passed through the checkpoints,” says Leonardo Governatori, a 40-year-old engineer from Italy visiting Bethlehem. “But it’s an experience to see how people live here.”
The bottom line: While tourism to Israel has surged recently, the West Bank hasn’t benefited much. The Palestinian Authority aims to change that.
Having just this month bicycled the length of the West Bank in Palestine from Jenin in the north to Hebron in the south, I feel no need to play “they say, I say” with the arguments put forth by the writers from the Jewish Federation and the Jewish Community Relations Council. Rather, I choose to honor the hundreds of enterprising, decent, welcoming folks I met and spoke with as we pedaled over sharp hills from town to town. They spoke of entire lives spent under military occupation and terror by Israel. Of homes and lives destroyed. Of people burned to death in their own home. I met the owner of a brewery struggling to conduct a viable business, but sabotaged by Israeli diversion of water from her town to illegal settlements; of product going bad while waiting to go to port through a commercial checkpoint closed for long periods and unjustifiable reasons. How can you brew beer without water? In spite of it all, they dance debka, they play the oud, they write poetry, they welcome strangers, Jewish strangers, into their homes.
The “conflict” is not a conflict, and it is not complex.
It is a massive violent presence by a military significantly funded by our own American tax dollars, and a ceaseless and courageous resistance to that presence by a civilian population. The nonviolent Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement arose 12 years ago from this resistance and will continue until the abuses end. When the human rights abuses end, BDS will end. Omar Barghouti made this very clear in his talk at Yale recently. He can’t wait for it to end. He looks forward to fulfilling the other passions in his life: philosophy and choreography. We honor Omar for his dedication to the struggle for human rights, and look forward to dancing with him when, not if, that struggle succeeds.
Love this story….on a recent trip to Palestine as we were biking through the beautiful countryside and enjoying the food and the hospitality of the people I could not help but notice the countless dogs and cats that just seemed to be wandering around on their own. As I asked our tour guide about the welfare of the animals I immediately realized the ridiculous nature of my question as he indicated the folks in Palestine are having enough trouble just surviving with the water shortage and all of the rules and regulations imposed by the Israeli government. This lady is doing a good job in a difficult situation–she has a good heart–best wishes and prayers for her facility, not to mention it shines a light on the situation and the suffering, in general. Shining a light on the suffering in Palestine--dogs and people, too--what about the children. from the anguspost.com:
"This is not about politics this is not religious, this is pure human ethics.”
The war between the Israelis and Palestinians is timeless, and one known all too well by most of the general population. The thought of the two groups working together seems decades away from now. However, a recent situation involving shelter animals has struck the hearts of thousands of readers. The safety and well-being of stray dogs has convinced this community to finally work together.
Just east of Bethlehem, in a town called Beit Sahur, the only Palestinian-run animal shelter in the West Bank was in danger of shutting down last week. A crowd-funding campaign was created through Headstart, in which they were asking for NIS 50,000 in order to keep the shelter running. As of Sunday, August 28th, more than NIS 74,000 had been raised. The most incredible part of all of this is that over 400 of the backers were Israeli.
Thanks to hundreds of Israeli donations, it appears [the shelter] will continue its mission of protecting dogs and cats.
The campaign was started and is hosted by Preserving the Rights of Animals (PTROA), an Israeli organization, which will collect funds, and distribute the money to the Beit Sahur shelter. There are currently 60 dogs within their care.
There are currently 60 dogs at the small Palestinian-run shelter.
The shelter in Beit Sahur is run by a 38-year-old woman named Diana Babish. Before opening the shelter, Diana Babish was the regional branch manager of the Jordan Commercial Bank. She also has a Masters Degree in international cooperation and development from Bethlehem University.
Babish opened the shelter one year ago, in hopes of aiding the homeless animal population of Bethlehem, as the numbers have risen drastically throughout the years of war.
In an interview with Jerusalem Post, Babish described the reason why she believed an animal shelter was necessary for Bethlehem and surrounding areas.
The idea for a shelter came when I saw how dogs are being treated. Dogs are not a priority animal here and municipalities poison them.
Babish searched for a plot of land to build an animal shelter, but was turned down at every opportunity. Eventually, she was able to convince the Beit Sahur Municipality to provide a small piece of land, where she began construction of the animal shelter.
She paid for the construction out of her own pocket.
Preserving the Rights of Animals helped raise enough money to keep the shelter open.
President of Preserving the Rights of Animals, Yoram Erez, stated that Babish “didn’t know what kind of trouble she was getting into,” as the epidemic of homeless animals began to overflow her small shelter.
Within months, she was over $3,000 in debt to contractors, and forced to pay daily for the upkeep of the facility.
Though Diana Babish has been able to cut costs by feeding dogs chicken and rice from wedding services, she is still overburdened with expensive medical bills.
Babish often takes in dogs who are injured or sick, and many are in need of greater care than she can give them. Dogs in need of medical treatment are sent to Israeli veterinarians, where the medical bills add up quickly. One dog’s medical bill was over NIS 45,000. Thankfully, PTROA helped cover the cost.
After aiding Babish with her veterinarian care, they aimed to assist her further by creating the crowd-funding campaign. Yoram Erez believes that Babish is headed in the right direction.
The situation is not good for many dogs and cats in the Palestinian Authority, but I think Diana is the point that we need to start from to make a change.
Yoram Erez and PTROA hope that they will be able to raise enough money to open a larger, more modern animal shelter in place of the one Babish has created. They hope to have an open door policy, where both Israelis and Palestinians will have equal access.
For now, they are working in the field to help homeless animals, while raising money to keep Babish’s shelter afloat.
Animals, whether they are in Palestine or in Israel, have to be helped. This is not about politics, this is not religious, this is pure human ethics. I thank all the people for their love and support.
On a recent trip to Palestine one could not help but notice the tragedy of the Roman Ruins as our tour guide shared the story of the Israeli government preventing archaeological excavations in this historic town.
We were literally walking on roman Mosaics--yes, many scientific groups wanted to explore the area but they are barred from making progress and preventing tourism from helping the economy of this beautiful, friendly and historic Palestinian town.
Our guide said as we walked through the ruins of the Roman Amphitheatre, "If you look at the pictures from three years ago you will see that things look different now, there was a wall there and part of the theatre but the Israeli government bulldozed this area to make a parking lot."
This amazing story and sentiment runs through the villages and countryside of Palestine. Their olive groves, centuries old farmlands and simply water for the household are often diverted by the Israeli settlements. Yes, their settlement swimming pools are full as the original villagers struggle to bathe their children.
It is an odd situation and a grave story and one wonders how it is justified.
Trying to get the word out about this land of delicious food, important history and unending vistas of almond orchards and olive trees.
I wish everyone could visit this historic land and learn the story of Palestine.
Highly recommending the Siraj Center and Bike Palestine for an eye opening vacation and adventure.
Please feel free to share your thoughts.......I found this story from the Daily Beast to further illustrate the situation.
Israeli settlers from Shavei Shomron have recently started dumping untreated sewage on the farmland in Sebastiya, a small Palestinian town in the West Bank just north of Nablus. Today, Sebastiya organized its first popular demonstration in 36 years specifically to draw attention to the issue of the sewage contaminating their lands.
“We want to farm our land in peace,” Ahmed Kayed, a resident of Sebastiya and the organizer of today’s protest, told me. “But the settlers are cutting our olive trees, keeping us from our land. Now their sewage is flowing through our land, poisoning it.”
Kayed hopes that today will be Sebastiya’s first of many weekly popular demonstrations like those in Bil’in, Ni’lin and Nabi Saleh. In preparation, he proudly unfurled a sign that read, “This is our land. Get the shit out of here!”
As a village, Sebastiya is known for its picturesque Roman ruins dating back to 800 BCE, making Sebastiya one of the oldest and most historic villages in the West Bank. Before 1967, these ruins were a major tourist attraction of the Middle East. However, since the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) occupied the land, tourism has plummeted with several shops being forced to close, draining the small town’s economy. Once the first Israeli settlement was built in 1975—the second Israeli settlement in the West Bank ever, preceded only by Hebron—the village became characterized by settler violence.
Now it is known for their sewage.
At the demonstration, 150 activists—including Israelis, internationals and Palestinians from Sebastiya and surrounding villages—marched en masse from the village to the valley. On one side of the valley is a grove of olive trees, each of them tagged with a note in Arabic notifying the farmer that it will be cleared. Above the olive grove, the American suburb-like perfectly painted white houses and red roofs of the Shavei Shomron settlement are perched on the highest hill, overlooking the entire valley. IDF soldiers stood guard next to two tanks, midway down the mountain between the Palestinian protesters and the Israeli settlement.
A trickle of sewage flowed like a small creek through the valley’s clearing.
“It is quite obvious that Palestinians in the West Bank are oppressed, and important that conscientious people support them in their struggle,” Kobi Snitz, an Israeli activist from Tel Aviv, told me when I asked him what brought him here. “Especially Israelis, since this violence clearly takes place in our name.”
Despite the stench of sewage, Palestinian Muslim protestors carried their rugs and performed Friday noon prayers on the land in the valley—bowing and murmuring “Allahu Akhbar” while surrounded on one side by olive trees marked for destruction, and on the other by the Israeli settlement responsible for the trickle of sewage and eight IDF soldiers in plain sight with their fingers on the trigger, ready to shoot high-velocity teargas canisters into the crowd.
Once Friday prayers had ended, the protestors—waving Palestinian and Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine flags—advanced up the side of the mountain, drawing kuffiyehs over their mouths and noses in anticipation of the onslaught of suffocating teargas from the IDF soldiers. True to form, the IDF soldiers responded by firing teargas canisters—routine for a West Bank demonstration—sending protesters running back down the mountain and away from the clearing, crying, coughing and spluttering the suffocating gas out of their eyes and mouths, leaving their land filled with the clouds of noxious teargas and the ever-present stink of sewage.
