Back to Nablus

by Sarah

We went back to Nablus this weekend to evaluate some new mapping methods that will better our ability to cooperate with our partner organizations, ARIJ and ATLAS. The JumpStart team and volunteers have been mapping there for weeks, and on Saturday a dozen new volunteers came from the GIS department at Al-Najah University. The day went well, although a major difficulty was reached as we asked the mappers to take photographs of major buildings. Nablus folk were understandably wary of teams walking around with GPS devices, taking photographs, and writing notes, and the volunteers found they could not walk 100 meters without being stopped and asked what they were doing, why, and who they were. The solution JumpStart found is to provide them with identification cards as quickly as possible.

Unfortunately on Monday the suspicion of our mappers turned into a problem, as a pair of the GIS students were put in jail by the Palestinian police. They were quickly released after we were able to speak with the mayor, however operations will be slowed for a couple days while we communicate with the Nablus mayor and Palestinian Intelligence.

Returning from Nablus was long again, with an aggravating three hour wait at the checkpoint. We found it a good time to work on our laptops and connect to the free checkpoint WiFi, which was somewhat oddly available. “Nice, free internet… we should come back some time,” Jeff said.

The check points make the moving around a challenge, between cities and sometimes between villages. The soldiers, often victims themselves of pressure from their backgrounds, are often aggressive physically and psychologically, making life difficult for Palestinians and serving as a continual reminder that they’re under occupation, that they are not free.

There are around 630 check points in the west bank, usually made of some blocks of cement with a barrier, sometimes ditches, a cabin, barbed wire and some soldiers. There are even mobile check points that change position when they feel like it. “They want to surprise us!” commented Majd with a smile.

Children often sell chewing gum or other things to the cars waiting in the lines, in some check points they help bring people’s suitcases from one check point to another for a few shekels.

I admire the people here, I’m proud of them, when I see them stand up for what they believe, rebel to injustice, so often in nonviolence, demonstrate, perseverate, (one small but big example, here in Beit Sahour, since the beginning of the attacks on Gaza people have been meeting every day in the square at 6 pm with Palestinian flags and black flags in grief around a fire).

And we learn. Sure, coming from a cultural and social contest like ours in the west, it becomes difficult to understand, so we listen, we share, we ask, and once we identify and start to live the life here maybe we can understand a little, just a little, that feeling of impotence and frustration too, that strength that grows inside – “it’s probably the same feeling that superheroes feel in front of injustice,” I was telling Anas and Jeff yesterday after 3 hours and a half in a check point, "cause we all have a conscience".

When you see that you can make a difference in something or somebody, however small, you can’t pretend nothing happened. The hope for a better world is alive, but it must be fomented through concrete effort, and it starts from every single one of us, starting from everyday life, in Europe, Canada, America or wherever, from the way we spend our money, our attitude towards the weak and the marginalized, from the way we relate with other cultures and different religions… from our way of living in our world. For a different and more fair world, but if we don’t change direction and we don’t pass to new models that consider equality and justice in every level, it won’t be possible, but this, I repeat, starts from us.

The Nablus Adventure

Another day full of adventures and obstacles, the Jumpstart lead team went to Nablus to meet the GIS department at Al-Najah University, and to visit the Jumpstart team working in Nablus. The team set out in the morning from Bethlehem where they had been for the last two days meeting with the Applied Research Institute of Jerusalem. Traveling north they passed through the "container" checkpoint , also passing by the villages of Abu Dis and Eizariya, to Nablus through Za'atara checkpoint and Huwarra checkpoint which is the worst in the West Bank.

The way to Nablus was uneventful; we didn't wait for long at the checkpoints. When we arrived in Nablus, we first went to Relief International's office to meet the Jumpstart team and the volunteers who are working with us. We spent a productive but enjoyable time with the group as they expressed their appreciation for Jumpstart's efforts with them.

Then Chris and Anas went to the Al-Najah University to discuss the partnership between the university and Jumpstart. Their meeting was successful and they planned to have a training for the GIS students at the university the following week.

We reached the Hawara checkpoint by five, and hundreds of cars were waiting in line for the Israeli soldiers to let them pass. We found out that there were cars there that had been waiting at the checkpoint since three in the afternoon, two hours before we arrived. After a long three hour wait in the car it was finally our turn to pass through.

Huwara checkpoint has its own instructions which require passengers to exit their vehicles ten meters before the checkpoint and the driver of the car should drive alone to the soldiers, carrying the identity papers of all the passengers. So Anas, who was driving, dropped Majd and Chris ten meters before the checkpoint. They acted nonchalantly, despite the obvious hassle. Chris didn't know that he shouldn't move until the soldier calls him to get into the car, so he start walking to go into the car and suddenly the soldier was shouting "wakef.. wakef " in Arabic which means stop , but Chris didn't understand; he thought they were saying "Ok, ok" and he kept going until the soldier shouted louder. After the inspection and scrutiny the soldiers started calling for the people to get into the car ladies first then the men, real chivalry in action. Before the men are allowed into their vehicle they must lift their clothes to show that they have nothing hidden under their clothes. So Majd got into the car and they searched Chris by asking him to lift his clothes. The guard stopped searching him once she realized he was an international.


So we continued our great journey, to be stopped again by another checkpoint called Za'atara, which is five or ten minutes past Huwarra. An hour later we moved on again, but of course the story wasn’t finished yet. We dropped Majd off at Jaba’a checkpoint, between Ramallah and Bethlehem. Majd got the last taxi to Bethlehem. At the last checkpoint the soldiers stopped the car and asked for all the IDs. The guy sitting next to Majd gave a paper saying that he had been released from jail a few hours ago.

“Why were you in jail?” she asked.

The answer was that he had a work permit to work in an Israeli settlement, with permission only to go into the settlement. But he went with his boss (an Israeli settler) to Jerusalem to buy things for work. The Israeli police caught him their illegally, and he spent two months in jail.

After an hour checking his papers, the taxi moved on, and a long day of checkpoints was complete. From Nablus to Bethlehem in six hours – five at the checkpoints and one for the way…