Soldiers on the roof

I was on potato-peeling duty for dinner in the CPT apartments, and was lamenting the fresh bag of potatoes I'd just been given, when I heard someone yell that there were soldiers on the roof. Since I will take confronting people with guns over peeling potatoes any day, I dropped everything, grabbed my camera, and ran upstairs.

When I got to the roof, Paulette was arguing with maybe six soldiers about their right to be there. After talking with others, it seems I arrived rather early in the encounter, though I did miss her trying to shoo them away (literally by waving her arms at them and saying "shoo! shoo!"). They had also challenged her to prove she lived there, though that didn't really go anywhere.

Paulette had a camcorder, and I began recording video on my camera as well (though the batteries died shortly thereafter). Pete was also taking multiple photos.

As the soldiers still refused to leave, we broke into a round of "Joy to the World." I hope no videos surface of this, as I was definitely singing in the key of H. They climbed to a higher level of the roof, and we followed them.

The soldiers began arguing with Paulette about their practices in Al-Khalil and various other relevant issues, and I don't remember the specifics of that conversation. After a while, Paulette went back downstairs, and I found myself alone with the attention of a semi-circle of soldiers.

"Forgive me," I said. "I'm new here, and I can't really speak to what's happened. But I just want to say what I've observed. There's all this fear that everyone has a knife, or a gun. You've mentioned specific attacks that happened five months ago, or several years ago, anywhere in the country. I'm from the United States, which in some places is a very violent country. I've lived in a city where people are killed every day, often for the color of their skin, not once every five months. I've worked with kids who live in neighborhoods where nine-year-olds are carrying guns and selling drugs. But if someone where to ask me if I wanted the army to come occupy the city to make it safer, I would say absolutely not. I would be horrified by the thought."

That launched us into a very long conversation, most of which I'm sorry to say I can't recall all that well, so what follows will just be snippets of what I remember. At some point, some of the other delegates started talking to the soldiers, so that after a while I was talking to just one of them--Yadid (which means "friend"), the tallest, who I was later told had been acting disrespectfully to Paulette before I arrived. Joseph and two Canadian girls, who were traveling independently and staying the night with CPT, also joined in.

There was some argument between the soldier and one of the girls about territory and history, but I tried to keep the conversation on the current actions of the military.

What I would call Yadid's central argument was that the occupation, checkpoints, and detentions in the street are all necessary to keep people safe and prevent terrorist attacks. He also claimed that if Israel were not occupying Palestine, then the Palestinians (I presume; it was more of a "they") would be occupying Israel. I told him that while I did not at all agree with that position, if it were the case, CPT would be there working with them. He seemed genuinely glad to hear that.

He mentioned his desire to keep his family safe, and that became our common ground. I told him I, too, want his family to be safe, and we acknowledged that we had the same goal and different ideas of how it could be achieved.

Yadid had a very different impression of the safety of Palestinian areas than I. "If I came into these places without my vest and my gun, they would throw rocks at me or shoot me," he said. I replied that I had walked through these neighborhoods, and had never felt unsafe. "Yes," he said, "because they know you're their friend."

"Why can't you be their friend?" I asked. "And besides, I have had Palestinians tell me 'Shalom' because they think I am Jewish. I have still felt completely safe, and nothing has happened to me."
I also talked with him about some of my research on terrorism, and he seemed genuinely interested in it. I talked about Jihad, since he had asked about September 11, and he jumped at my comment that concessions would not appease that breed of terrorist, linking them to Hamas. Hamas, I assured him, is Islamist nationalist, and is a very different kind of terrorist organization. I told him a psychiatrist had found that 50% of suicide bombers out of Gaza had their homes destroyed as children, which traumatized them and thrust them into a desparate situation.

"And why were their homes demolished?" he asked triumphantly. I told him they were built without permits, and he responded, "It is the same in any country! What happens in your country if someone builds something without a permit?"

One of the Canadian girls jumped in and pointed out that elsewhere one would pay the fine and be done with it, whereas here they must pay a fine, have their home demolished, and pay for the demolition anyway.
I added that of the over 6,000 building permits requested inthe Hebron district in 2009, only 13 were granted. He commented on the subjectivity of data, but I think such a startling hard number gave him something to think about.

Finally, the people below must have gotten impatient with us, because we were called in for supper. The soldiers were invited to join us (on the condition that they leave their guns outside), but they said they couldn't. I got Yadid's e-mail address on the condition that I would not bombard him with pro-Palestinian literature. "I think you are completely wrong," he told Joseph and me, "but maybe it is good that you care about something enough to come all this way. It is better than sitting at home and doing drugs."

That, to me, became the most important part of the conversation. It is neither an easy nor a common thing to respect the value of another's passion when it fuels a position so opposed to one's own. Seeing that recognition gave me hope for dialogue between the various sides of this conflict.

They left when we did, which suggests they were just waiting for us in order to save face.

When I reflected later in the evening on what had transpired, I realized something else I had observed: in the past, soldiers have been scary to me. I have placed upon them the "older than me/taller than me" impression. This changed Wednesday night. Talking to Yadid, I realized he was just a kid, probably younger than me (I'm guessing twenty, because Israelis generally go into the army at 18 and he commented that he has nine months left). He had a gun and a uniform, but it did not make him more informed than me, and I did not have to yield to his authority. At the same time, he became a real person. It's hard to explain, but I feel that conversation greatly helped me to understand the soldiers here.
 
-Nick