Unrecognized

Note: Our postings are now hopelessly out of chronological order as we try to catch up and write about events of the last several days when we had very little time and connectivity. This posting follows my earlier post, Two Moms, from our day volunteering in Bedouin schools. Several people have asked in Comments if we are going to write about our day in Ramallah on the West Bank. The answer is, yes! it was a fabulous and moving day, and we'll get to it. Keep following this Blog, as we'll keep posting even after we return home.


We had so much fun with the students of Al Najah ("The Success") Elementary School. We sat in a circle and each person said their name and their favorite candy (mostly chocolate). Then we played People Bingo, a huge success if I may say so. And finally a rousing game of Cockroach Tag. If you get tagged, you have to lie on the ground on your back with your hands and feet in the air. You can only rejoin the game if a compatriot rolls you over back onto your stomach. Evan and Gracie made memorable cockroaches! For the last several minutes of our time, small groups of kids gathered around each of us, talking and laughing, communicating great volumes with the very few words we shared in common. The bell rang, and more kids flooded out onto the playground with bags of chips and Bamba (peanut butter flavored cheese puffs, an Israeli junk food delicacy). We laughed, played, took photos and finally spirited ourselves away and out of the school.

Al Najah School is 100% Bedouin, located in the middle of the northern exposure of the Negev Desert. Next door to the school is a corral holding 100 goats, a half dozen camels and three horses. And yet as I walked the halls there I noted that the school smells exactly like an elementary school in Daly City or Oakland or Novato. That unique aroma of dust and concrete hallways mingled with urine, janitorial chemicals, and musty children’s socks is unmistakable to me. I recognize it as surely as I do the defining scent of a dry late summer oak woodland, a California tidepool or a damp winter redwood forest. The same goes for the kids themselves. They are Bedouins. Most of the children have never been to Jerusalem or Tel Aviv, much less another country. But they wear blue jeans and t-shirts, hoodies pulled over their foreheads even though it is warm out, and sporty basketball shoes. Some of the girls, only a few, wear head scarves. They all have dark Middle Eastern skin. And yet, they look like the kids you would see in Berkeley or Newark or San Francisco.


Here in the south, the controversy between Jews and Arabs revolves around whether the Bedouin villages are officially "Recognized" or "Unrecognized." The Bedouins were historically nomadic people. As their land has been subsequently taken over and colonized by Turks, English and Israelis, they have eventually settled into permanent or semi-permanent villages. Poverty and unemployment are the highest in Israel in these communities. If a village is Recognized, the government provides regular services, not comparable to those in Jewish towns, but adequate: roads, water, electricity, public schools, hospitals, etc. Unrecognized villages, no matter how long they have been in their present location or how many people live there, receive none of those services. Al Najah School is in the Recognized village of Arara. From there we went to a wonderful lunch with all our Jewish and Arab volunteer hosts in the community center of a neighboring Unrecognized Village.

Waiting for lunch

In the Community Center, falafel on the way

After lunch, an Arab man from the community center led us on a short walk to the top of a hill overlooking the village. We looked down on three different clusters of makeshift homes, corrals and other buildings. The clusters are separated by small dusty washboard dirt roads. This is the desert. It is dry and hot. Our host/guide spoke only Arabic and so one of the Jewish volunteers translated for him into English.

He told us how hard his people's lives are. Not only does the government not provide them with basic survival services, but periodically, the government sends bulldozers to knock down buildings in the village. He said some homes have been destroyed a dozen times only to be rebuilt by the owners who have no where else to go. He said if you are sick you must ride three different buses to find a hospital. He said, "You cannot imagine how hard our lives are, there are no words to describe it, but if you came to live with us for one day, just for one day, you would know." We look over the arid, unfriendly but nonetheless beautiful landscape, in sad silence, and begin to walk down the hill.

Yusef parking our bus in Bedouin Village

The Unrecognized Village

I quicken my pace from the middle of the pack up to the front and walk alongside our guide. "Excuse me, but can I ask you a question?" He motions to the young Jewish woman who was translating. I dare to be naive. "Why do you think the Israeli government will not Recognize your village?" He answers, quietly, measured, without stopping to think. He pauses every two or three sentences for the translator to catch up. "She wants the land. She wants to take our land to give it to the Jews. She wants the Bedouins to have less land for more people. And she wants the Jews to have more land. She says they cannot make services for our villages because it is expensive, but if one Jew wants to be a "lonely farmer," and have one house with no one else around, she will build roads and make water and electricity. But when hundreds of Bedouins need services, they cannot do it." The Jewish volunteer who has been translating waits for the guide to finish, then takes a step toward me away from him, and with anguish in her voice, quietly continues, "I was just translating, just telling you what he said, but I do not agree with it. He told you only one side. The whole point of what we are doing here, the Jews working with the Arabs, is that we are supposed to learn to think from both sides," her voice rose as she repeated, "He only said to you one side. I will tell you now the other side. Look around and see how spread out and disorganized these Bedouins are. Some live here, some live over there, some over there. We cannot possibly provide them with services. It would be far too expensive. If they move to a Recognized village, they can have these things. They used to move all over the land wherever they want to go. But this is not possible any more. It is not their land anymore. It was governed by the Turks, and then by the British and now it is with Israel. They think whatever they had with the Turks should be the same with the British or with Israel, but this is just not possible."


All I can think is that I really only knew of the Conflict between Palestinians and Israelis until very recently. This issue of land ownership with the Bedouins is as unrecognized as the villages themselves. And then I wonder, who chose the vocabulary of this hardship? On top of poverty, unemployment, and unhealthy conditions, could there be anything worse than being Unrecognized?