TravelStream™ news feed for member flatstanley on TravelPod's free travel blogs service http://www.travelpod.com/syndication/rss/flatstanley en-us Copyright ©2009 TravelPod.com Sat, 16 Feb 2008 00:53:19 -0500 http://www.travelpod.com http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/flatstanley/1/1203144600/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/flatstanley/1/1203144600/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/flatstanley/1/1203144600/tpod.html Sat, 16 Feb 2008 00:53:19 -0500 Flat Stanley Visits Palestine!

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Westport, Connecticut, United States

Hey everyone!
For those of you who enjoyed my blog, guess what?
Aunt Jen made a movie about me too!
"Flat Stanley: the Movie" and you can watch it here on YouTube!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dkg1TngHvuU

Love,
Flat Stanley
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/flatstanley/1/1199600340/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/flatstanley/1/1199600340/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/flatstanley/1/1199600340/tpod.html Sat, 19 Jan 2008 09:31:32 -0500 Flat Stanley Visits Palestine!

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Gaza, Palestinian Territory

Aunt Jen and I were asking ourselves: what do you bring to people living under siege? She has a big backpack and we figured we'd fill it up with rice, sugar, coffee, stuff like that. So we were kinda surprised when she called her friends in Gaza to ask what she could bring for them, and from everyone she got two answers:
Cigarettes and chocolate.

So, we arrived at Erez checkpoing, where almost no one is permitted to cross these days, with a backpack filled with cartons of cigarettes, chocolate, a few bottles of shampoo and two rechargeable strip lights, since there is now a fuel shortage in Gaza and electricity is being cut. Aunt Jen had gotten permission from the Israeli army to enter Gaza, but she didn't give the army my passport number for permission, so she had to smuggle me in the bag with the chocolate. Boy, was it hard not to eat some of it while we waited!

We spent two days going all over the Gaza Strip, from Rafah to Khan Younes to Jabalia, Beit Hanoun and Gaza City, meeting with NGOs, finding out more about the situation since the siege began and learning about how the Hamas takeover of Gaza Strip was affecting people, not to mention the internal fighting that led up to the takeover.

Aunt Jen's friend told her that there used to be 9,000 different products that were allowed into Gaza Strip but since the siege began, the number of products allowed in were exactly 12. From 9,000 to 12. I thought about Alex's 2nd grade class. It could be a good class exercise. If you needed to make a list of the 12 things most important to survival, what would you put? Gazans didn't even have the ability to choose their 12 items, they don't control their borders or what is allowed in or what--and who--is allowed out.

It also explained the requests for chocolate and cigarettes. Staple food items that were on the list of 12--such as rice, coffee, sugar--are available--inconsistently and overpriced, since they don't get brought in regularly or in enough quantities--but available. Cigarettes are only available on the black market--for over $10 a pack, and you can't get your hands on chocolate at all.

A lot was really sad during those two days and Aunt Jen didn't feel comfortable taking a whole lot of pictures.

But, we were able to meet one amazing family in Rafah, the Nasrallah family, and take a lot of photos with them.

The Nasrallah family are close friends of Cindy and Corrie, who in turn, are close to Aunt Jen. When Cindy and Craig's daughter, Rachel, was in Rafah in 2003, she was participating in non-violent work as a human rights activist. She and other activists tried to protect people's homes from being bulldozed as a form of collective punishment that is against international law. Rachel was run over and killed by a Caterpillar bulldozer while she was trying to protect the Nasrallah's home from being destroyed on March 16, 2003.

Aunt Jen had heard a lot about this family but had never met them before, so it's great that we could spend a few hours with them in Rafah. Boy, did I have fun meeting them, especially Dr. Samir! He is such a funny guy! And all the kids were trying to see if they could come up with more creative ways to pose with me in a picture. The littlest daughter was holding onto me when it was time for us to go. I know Aunt Jen would have liked to offer for me to stay with her, and I wouldn't have minded. But I knew that I have to be returned to Alex in a few weeks, so Aunt Jen had to take me back.

Still, it was wonderful to finally meet this family!

Back in Gaza city that night, I met a lot of friends of Aunt Jen's and I also learned how to smoke an arghila! First a cigarette, then an arghilla, what will I get corrupted with next?

We really didn't want to leave when the time came, there was too many more people to talk to and too much to still try to understand, but the border closes at 7pm and our flight was two days later--we needed to be able to get back to Jerusalem to get our things together. They asked Aunt Jen a lot of questions at Erez and for a moment she was nervous that maybe security was going to deny her entry back into Israel, even though it was the army who had given her permission to be there in the first place.

"What if they don't let us back in?" I whispered to Aunt Jen. The border between Gaza and Egypt was now sealed, the only way in and out of Gaza Strip was the crossing at Erez. "Will they send us back to Gaza...forever?" Aunt Jen motioned to me to be quiet--she had to smuggle me out the same way she smuggled me in--and I tried to lay very still in the bag of embroidery that we were bringing out that we had purchased from a women's collective in Rafah. I did my best to look like an embroidered wall hanging when the bag was on the x-ray machine, but I have to admit I was a little nervous of being discovered.

But we were able to leave Gaza without a problem in the end.
Aunt Jen said it made her sad that we could come and go from Gaza, but her friends and the other 1.3 million people there couldn't leave at all.
"Can't they pretend to be a piece of embroidery like me?" I asked.
Aunt Jen sort of smiled as she buckled me into my seat preparing to drive away from Gaza, but it wasn't a real smile and she didn't answer my question.
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/flatstanley/1/1199860380/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/flatstanley/1/1199860380/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/flatstanley/1/1199860380/tpod.html Wed, 16 Jan 2008 20:33:14 -0500 Flat Stanley Visits Palestine!

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Gaza, Palestinian Territory

Wow, I can't believe my time here is almost coming to an end!
Getting on that airplane five weeks ago feels like forever ago!

It was kind of amazing how easy it was to meet people and make friends. Everytime Aunt Jen introduced me to someone and told them about my buddy Alex's class project, people would smile and laugh and love to hold me or take a picture of me or come up with ideas of funny things for me to do. I guess sometimes a cute little two-dimensional guy can get access to people and places that aren't so accessible to everyone. So I feel pretty lucky about that.

I also feel pretty lucky to have met everyone I did. There's so many more people I met that we didn't take pictures of and so many other places I travelled to and so much I learned and saw. But here, at least, are a few other wonderful families that Aunt Jen introduced me to, her former coworker Issa and his family in Yatta, in the South West Bank, and the Maloul family in Silt il Dahar, a village in the North West Bank and good friends in Haifa and Ramallah.

There's a lot that's really messed up about the places Aunt Jen took me and the stuff I saw.

And there's even more worth protecting.

Aunt Jen is a little nervous about the airport--she said something about that list again, and how Gaza is now stamped in her passport so that could mean trouble. Well, if they search her bags and they find me, I'll just do what I always do. Smile. And, Aunt Jen advised me, it would be a good idea to say "Shalom" and if the security guards ask me where I learned Hebrew, I can say it's from preparing for my Bar Mitzvah. That's what Aunt Jen always does.

Time for Aunt Jen and me to get ourselves some shut eye and get ready to go the airport tomorrow!

I told Aunt Jen that I couldn't wait to tell Alex all about my trip and show him all our cool pictures. Aunt Jen says that there's lots I probably shouldn't mention to Alex, at least unless I don't want her to see Alex (or me) again until he's 18 years old, and something about using discretion. I nodded wisely, but actually, I have no idea what "discretion" means. What does she expect from me? I'm just a laminated paper doll!

Signing off now,
Salaam, Shalom, Peace,
FS
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/flatstanley/1/1229886120/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/flatstanley/1/1229886120/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/flatstanley/1/1229886120/tpod.html Wed, 16 Jan 2008 12:07:21 -0500 Flat Stanley Visits Palestine!

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Bi'lin, Palestinian Territory

Aunt Jen and I went to a village near Ramallah today called Bi'lin. In Bi'lin there have been non violent demonstrations going on for three years now against the wall that's being built, deep in the West Bank, separating the villagers from many dunams of their land.
We marched on the road towards where the Separation Fence is, chanting "la la, l'jidar!" (meaning "no, no to the wall!") and "la la ihtillal! (no, no to occupation!)
You know, I was drawn in a home where I was told that when Palestinians demonstrate they want to destroy all of Israel or throw the Jews into the sea, but the chants that I heard were against this wall taking the village's land, and against occupation, and even a chant against apartheid. I never heard any chant like "no no to the Jews" or "no no to Israelis."
Actually, I wonder if the people in the house where I was drawn know that lots of Israeli human rights activists are also demonstrating against this wall and against apartheid, side by side with the Palestinians, some internationals, and, of course, the occasional two-dimensional boy!
We started to march down the hill with our signs and our flags towards the soldiers who were blocking the way to the wall. Suddenly, the soldiers started to shoot tear gas and rubber bullets at us. I was so surprised! I had assumed that soldiers only shot people in self defense, but here we were being totally non-violent and got shot at first! After the soldiers started to shoot, then a bunch of young men started to throw rocks at them--but the cause and effect seemed pretty obvious to me. The tear gas and rubber bullets came first, and the stone-throwing after.
With the tear gas being shot, everyone dispersed into the olive groves on the sides of the road. Aunt Jen and I were crouched behind a tree with two other Americans, a young college student and an old lady over 70 years old. Suddenly, a tear gas canister was shot directly at us--not lobbed in the air like it's supposed to. The young man got hit in the head--I'm not sure if the canister hit him directly or there was also a sound bomb that exploded on us at the same moment--and the tear gas exploded right in our faces. The old woman couldn't open her eyes at all, and Aunt Jen and I helped lead her through the olive grove back onto the road. We didn't want to turn our backs on the soldiers to walk up the hill, because we heard about activists that have gotten shot at close range (and had rubber bullets lodged in their skulls) as they were retreating, but Aunt Jen and I needed to get this old woman up the hill and out of the range of fire. Aunt Jen could barely open her eyes herself but somehow we all managed to get up the hill. We heard later that the college student who was with us was taken to the hospital because his head was bleeding pretty badly, but we were told that he was okay.
After we were up the road, we thought we were out of the line of fire, but the soldiers moved up the road towards the village itself. Aunt Jen heard a rubber bullet whiz past her ear and we saw that the soldier who shot it was crouched behind a wall just a few meters in front of us.
Once it looked like the demonstration had dissolved into a dance between rubber-bullet-shooting soldiers and stone-throwing boys, and once Aunt Jen could see again, we left Bi'lin for Ramallah and then from Ramallah to Jerusalem.
Aunt Jen is a good guardian--she took me to an eye doctor in Jerusalem. She said I'm not used to tear gas and wanted to make sure my eyes were okay.

Aunt Jen was pretty proud of me--she said that most paper dolls, after having a tear gas cannister shot directly in their face and a rubber bullet whiz past their ear, may be scared or upset--but I just kept on smiling like I always do!

She emailed some of the pictures of the demonstration to a friend of hers, and this friend wrote an email back saying, "Do any of these people fighting for their nation think it's odd that you have a paper doll? Just wondering." Aunt Jen laughed and laughed but I was pretty insulted. I mean, can I help it if I'm two-dimensional??
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/flatstanley/1/1199495340/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/flatstanley/1/1199495340/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/flatstanley/1/1199495340/tpod.html Wed, 16 Jan 2008 00:13:20 -0500 Flat Stanley Visits Palestine!

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Beit Ur, Palestinian Territory

Aunt Jen and I went to demonstrations in Bil'in on our first two Fridays so I was surprised when she told me we were going to a different demonstration come the next Friday.
"is this also against the separation wall?" I asked her.
"Not exactly," she said. "This one is against the system of Apartheid Roads through the West Bank, specifically the Modiin Road, or 443."
I didn't know much about Apartheid or how it was used in South African, my formal education being very limited in my young, flat life, but Aunt Jen explained that apartheid basically is a systematic form of separation based on race. This 443 highway, she told me, is used to connect Jerusalem to Tel Aviv, but it runs directly through the West Bank. Not only was land taken from lots of Palestinian villages in order to build the road, but the people from those villages can't even use the road! It's for Israelis only.
So the demonstration, Aunt Jen told me, is to protest against the road being for Israelis only rather than for all people to use.

My first Friday at this demonstration we got to the village a little early and waited at the main intersection with a gradually growing group of Israeli and international activists, waiting for the Palestinians to be finished with Friday prayer, which is the typical time the demonstrations begin. The intersection was down in the valley; in order to actually get up to the highway we would have to walk on the road from the village main intersection to where it goes uphill, joining 443, but with big cement blocks at the entrance, preventing Palestinians from the village from driving onto the road.

But when we started to walk down the road towards the highway, chanting again against occupation like we had in Bil'in, soldiers were there waiting for us. So Yusuf, the leader of the demonstration cut to the right and began to walk up the grassy, rocky hill towards the highway. Soldiers met us at the top and cut us off there. So for about ten minutes we had a stand off, protesters and soldiers, a few meters from the highway, neither giving way, but no one using violence either. I had been told that at 443 demonstrations, the soldiers didn't use tear gas and rubber bullets as much, but they used their sticks a lot to beat the demonstrators.
The protesters had their flags, did their chants, made their point and began to walk away, back towards the village. The soldiers followed us. So close, in fact, that when Aunt Jen stopped to take a picture of a jeep, she heard a voice say in Hebrew "Pretty picture!" and when she turned around, she saw one of the soldiers looking over her shoulder at her digital camera.
"You wanna take a picture with my friend Flat Stanley here?" she asked him, and I looked at him, smiling as always. He raised his eyebrows, said nothing, and walked towards the jeep.
I guess people were lying about the soldiers not shooting tear gas and rubber bullets at Beit Ur because even before we got back to the road, ending the demonstration, the tear gas started, followed by a few rubber bullets, which of course, was followed by stone throwing by kids, giving the soldiers the excuse they wanted to chase the boys deep into the village.
Aunt Jen and I were taking our time walking (okay, Aunt Jen was walking, I was being carried) back to where the other activists were gathered around the corner of the intersection, and all of a sudden, we found ourselves in between the kids throwing stones and the soldiers shooting rubber bullets.
"Rule number one at a demonstration", Aunt Jen taught me, after a stone bounced off her arm. "Never get stuck in the middle between stone-throwers and soldiers!"
A little while later, we were sitting with a few Israelis on a cement block in the village intersection. Soldiers were still chasing stone throwing boys in the village, but the demonstration was over. We were waiting for a car to take us, respectively, back to Tel Aviv and Ramallah. It was nice sitting in the sun there. All of a sudden, a cloud of gas covered us. A jeep had pulled up right behind us and a soldier shot us with tear gas--we never even noticed it approaching. The Israelis got up and ran down the road. Aunt Jen grabbed me and started to move down the road as well but not fast enough. The tear gas got her, and by the time she ducked around the corner where the Israeli activists had taken refuge, her eyes were tearing up and burning. Thank goodness for the lamination that was covering my eyes! It works better than a gas mask--I never felt a thing!
The next week's demonstration was a lot bigger, lots of internationals and Israelis were called on to join the Palestinians. The bus from Jerusalem made it, but the bus from Tel Aviv was detained and not permitted to come, so there were around 50 less Israelis than there would have been. Aunt Jen left her passport with the guy who runs the little shop at the intersection, asking him to hold it until the demonstration was over.
"Why did you do that?" I aked her.
"In case I get arrested, I may get released without them knowing my identity--could help me from being deported."
"So where's my passport?"
Aunt Jen laughed. "Safe in Jerusalem, Stanley. You can get through checkpoints fine without it!"

Even without the busload of Israelis, the group was big enough to split into two--half of the demonstrators marched towards the highway from the main intersection like last week and the other half of us ran from a road up above through the field, all the way up to the highway itself, and spread ourselves out along the chain link fence that was barring us from getting on the road. Good thing Aunt Jen was carrying me, it would have been hard to run fast enough, especially since we were all expecting to get shot at or tear gassed at any moment.
Soldiers and police were on the road, with the fence between us. "It's forbidden to come onto the road!" they kept saying repeatedly. Some activists were taking picture of the soldiers. Some soldiers were taking picture of the activists. They took pictures of each other taking pictures.
Some people wanted to try to go out onto the highway and block traffic, which would pretty much be a sure-fire way to get arrested. I was glad my passport was in Jerusalem and Aunt Jen's at the shop. But that idea fizzled out pretty quickly.
Aunt Jen, her friend Huwaida and I ran down the hill behind where the soldiers were tear gassing the other group of demonstrators. I guess there was a strong wind blowing back, because the soldiers were choking and coughing and stinging from their own tear gas!
Then, after rubber bullets starting being shot, kids started throwing rocks and soldiers went after them, shooting rubber bullets at them.
But this time, Aunt Jen and I followed Huwaida's lead. We placed ourselves in front of the soldier to stop them from shooting.
"You don't need to shoot at little kids. Do you have a younger brother or sister? That's who you're shooting."
"If you would leave their village, they'd stop throwing stones!"
"Who do you think you're shooting anyway?"
we said to soldiers, who tried to ignore us and shoot around us. Well, Aunt Jen and Huwaida said to soldiers, is more like it. I was just kinda hanging out and smiling.
"If you went away, there'd be no stone throwing," Aunt Jen said to one soldier whose path she was blocking. "You're the one in their village."
"It was my village first." the soldier retorted.
I was a little surprised at that comment, because this soldier was Jewish Israeli.
"Really?" I wanted to ask. "You were born in Beit Ur? Your family comes from this village? Those olive trees you're standing next to, your father and grandfather planted and harvested them?" But instead, I just kinda smiled.
One soldier tried to give chase to the boys, who had run away up the embankment, and Aunt Jen stood directly in front of him, blocking left when he went left and right when he went right.
Finally, he pushed her aside and ran past her, muttering in Hebrew, "What a game!"
I wanted to ask him what game he was talking about, because I never thought that people demonstrating for freedom and equal rights and to hold onto land being taken away from them or kids getting shot at with rubber bullets might be called a game.
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/flatstanley/1/1199147460/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/flatstanley/1/1199147460/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/flatstanley/1/1199147460/tpod.html Tue, 15 Jan 2008 19:53:21 -0500 Flat Stanley Visits Palestine!

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Jenin, Palestinian Territory

Aunt Jen met her friends Dinky and Terry in Ramallah and then altogether we went to Jenin Refugee Camp to spend a few days at the Freedom Theatre.
The Freedom Theatre was started after Juliano Mer Khamis made a film called "Arna's Children", which was about what happened to a group of children his mom (Arna) had worked with in a theatre program she had started in Jenin Refugee Camp during the first initifada, in the late 1980's.
After large portions of Jenin Camp was destroyed in a massive Israeli invasion in April 2002, Juliana went back to find out what happened to the kids (now young men) who had been in his mother's theatre program and made the film "Arna's Children" documenting their multiple tragedies.
Juliano decided he couldn't just make the film and walk away, so, with a Swedish-Israeli man named Jonatan, they raised the funds to rebuild a children's theatre in the refugee camp and it's called the Jenin Freedom Theatre.
Aunt Jen and her friends Dinky and Terry are part of a group in New York that try to raise money for the programs at the theatre and they try to visit it once or twice a year.
I had never been in a refugee camp before, so I was eager to see what it looked like. Aunt Jen explained to me how different it was now than the first time she visited Jenin Camp, in May 2002, when rubble extended to the size of football fields in what is now the rebuilt camp.
We took a walk with some of the staff and participants around the camp and came to a tin horse.
"Can I take a picture with that horse?" I thought Alex would like that to add to the picture of me with the camel.
"Sure. You know what the horse is made of?"
"Tin and iron, of course!" I mean, I may be flat, but I have eyes and I can see that!
"Yeah--but it's tin and iron that came from all the cars that were flattened by tanks during the big battle in Jenin camp."
I guess maybe this picture is a little different from my camel ride after all.
We ate dinner that night in the staff's favorite restaurant and I also met Zakaria Zubeideh, a young man who was part of Arna's original theatre group and is one of the only survivors from that group. Zakaria had become the head of a militant group in Jenin who was fighting against the army during their invasions and was, for a time, top on Israel's most wanted list. From the time he was a young kid he always worked with Israelis in the peace camp, and, even while he wa still fighting, would meet and talk always to Israelis and Jews who wanted to work together to end the occupation. He is not fighting now, and instead, talks about starting a new cultural revolution, through theatre and arts, as a new way to challenge and fight the occupation.

On our way back from Jenin Camp, Aunt Jen and I passed through Ramallah again and I got to see Al Manara, the center of Ramallah city. I got to meet Arafat (okay, not really, but his poster is everywhere there!) and even drink coffee at the international coffee chain everyone knows...well...okay....I guess that's not quite exactly true either!
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/flatstanley/1/1198881480/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/flatstanley/1/1198881480/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/flatstanley/1/1198881480/tpod.html Tue, 15 Jan 2008 19:03:02 -0500 Flat Stanley Visits Palestine!

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Bil'in, Palestinian Territory

Aunt Jen was checking her email in the Old City one day when she saw something about her new friends in Bil'in. Two of the villagers who are organizers of the Bil'in Popular Committee Against the Wall had gotten beaten up by settlers.
Aunt Jen skimmed through the facts of the email quickly: Bi'lin's land, the part beyond the current route of the wall, juts up to the largest Israeli settlement in the West Bank, called Modiin Illit. Modiin Illit itself, actually, is built partially on Bil'in's land, and partly on other villages' lands. New neighborhoods of Modiin Illit are constantly being built, encroaching on more and more of Bil'in's lands. Often these neighborhoods start, Aunt Jen explained to me, in much the same way that the hilltop settler youth were trying to establish a presence in "E1" near the settlement of Maale Adumim--by placing an illegal caravan on the land and starting the process of settling there. These caravans are supposed to be illegal, but law in the country is unequally enforced.
As a way to establish a presence on their own land and as a tactic in creative resistance, villagers in Bil'in brought in their own caravan and established it on their own land, right in plain view of Modiin Illit. It was removed by police by force within hours. Even though it was on their own land, apparently there's a law about transporting caravans without a permit--so since the caravan had been illegally transported, it was removed.
So the people of Bi'lin got more creative, and one cold, rainy night, starting after midnight and finishing before sunrise, they built a one-room structure from cement, which they call the Center for Joint Struggle. The laws about building a permanent structure are more complicated than the laws about transporting a caravan, and so the case is still undecided in Israeli court, whether the Center will be allowed to remain standing or be destroyed. In the meantime, villagers from Bil'in, especially this one guy named Ashraf, maintain a 24 hour presence there.

I tried to process all that information, not easy with my two-dimensional brain, as Aunt Jen explained to me what she just learned in her email:

settlers from Modiin Illit were placing a caravan on Bil'in's lands, calling it a synagogue. Because of the presence at the Bil'in outpost, their activity was detected immediately by the villagers. Three villagers from Bil'in, Mohamed, Abdulla and Emad, ran right away to where the caravan was being placed and sat underneath it, in a nonviolent attempt to stop the caravan from being placed on their land. They were attacked and beaten by the settler. Emad's video camera was smashed, and he left so that his film wouldn't be destroyed. Abdulla was lightly injured and Mohamed was beaten seriously enough to be hospitalized.

Israeli police had promised to remove the illegal caravan but it had not yet been done. And no one knew if there would be more violence from the settlers. The email was asking Israelis and internationals to come to the caravan and Bil'in outpost both in solidarity, and as a form of protection, since Israeli settler and police may be less violent against internationals and Israelis than against Palestinians.

Aunt Jen called some of the Israelis she knew from Anarchists Against the Wall and some of the villagers from Bil'in to ask if she should come and when and how to get there. They told her that it would be good if she could come the next day and stay for several hours. So, in the morning, she told me we were going to the outpost.

"How are we going to get there?" I asked. If we went to the village of Bil'in and tried to cross through the separation fence, we would be stopped by soldiers. This was how the villagers themselves got to the outpost (there was a court case that Bil'in won in the Israeli Supreme Court in September judging that the route of the wall through their land is illegal, and, though the wall has yet to be dismantled, Bil'in residents are supposed to, in theory at least, have free access to pass through the gate to their lands beyond the wall), but internationals were prevented from passing through the gate.

"We have to go to the settlement of Modiin Illit, and we get there from the settlement."
"Are we going to drive there?" I asked. Aunt Jen had a friend's car she was borrowing.
"No. Sometimes the settlers have slashed the tires of activists' cars there."
"So how are we going to get there then?"
Aunt Jen smiled. "We'll take a settler bus!"
So, about an hour later, Aunt Jen and I climbed on a bus in Jerusalem called "Superbus" that took us directly to the settlement of Modiin Illit, which, I learned, is a Haredi settlement. We kind of stood out on the bus, as neither of us were wearing ultra-orthodox attire. Aside from the bus driver, we were the only ones who weren't.

We got off where Nir, an Israeli activist who was at the outpost also that day, told us to disembark and followed his instructions down to the main road and to the traffic circle, where he told us to wait for him. We sat on a block of cement near the traffic circle, watching the construction workers continue to build new neighborhoods for the settlement. Aunt Jen's cell phone rang. It was Nir, telling us he was there.
"Where?" Aunt Jen asked, looking around in each direction.
"On the other side of the fence!" There was a chain link fence on the other side of the road, separating the settlement, we soon understood, from Bi'lin's land (at least the part of the land not yet taken by the settlement.)
Aunt Jen walked towards the gate, which was padlocked, but Nir showed us how we could slip through a gap in the gate. Aunt Jen let me go first, seeing as I have experience slipping through and under doors, and she followed my lead.
Aunt Jen, Nir, Emad, and two other villagers from Bil'in and I walked on a dirt path through the dry, rocky hills, looking at billboards advertising new neighborhoods of the settlement yet to be built or currently under construction. We got to the place where the settlers had placed the caravan. The police had removed it at 7am, a few hours before we got there. Emad found a piece of his video camera that had been smashed.
We continued to where the Bil'in Center for Joint Struggle was located--just a bit up the hill from where the caravan had been placed--a one room cement structure, an area covered with sheet metal, a cleared out place for the kids to play soccer... this was the shape of Bil'in's resistance. Nir and Aunt Jen talked and I checked out some of the grafitti art on the Center and the covered area. "Enough with the occupation" was written in Hebrew on a side panel of iron sheeting, and Ashraf's name (Ashraf sleeps each and every night at the outpost to maintain a 24 hour presence there) was spray-painted on the cement room.
They made a barbeque and we sat and eat and played with the kids and watched the afternoon light change and smoked an argilla and, generally, had a very nice and pleasant afternoon.
"Hard to remember that the reason we're here today is that the villagers here got attacked yesterday for trying to nonviolently protect their land. It's kind of surreal," Aunt Jen said to me. I nodded wisely, making a mental note to look up "surreal" in my two-diimensional dictionary.
We left the outpost a bit before sunset, walking back down the dirt road between the rocky hills and slipping once again through the dented gate back into Modiin Illit, and caught the Haredi settler bus back to Jerusalem.
We sat behind the bus driver. Aunt Jen nudged me after the bus driver driving the bus for the settler bus company answered his cell phone. "You hear that? He's talking in Arabic. He's Palestinian!"
This bus driver could very well be from the village whose lands are being encroached by the settlement whose residents he shuttles back and forth every day from Jerusalem.
I think I'm beginning to understand more about that word "irony".
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/flatstanley/1/1198441560/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/flatstanley/1/1198441560/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/flatstanley/1/1198441560/tpod.html Tue, 15 Jan 2008 16:06:04 -0500 Flat Stanley Visits Palestine!

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Jericho, Palestinian Territory

Today was Eid al Adha, a Muslim holiday.
Aunt Jen told me we were going to Jericho, with the Al Jundis, my adopted family in Jerusalem. Apparently Aunt Jen always had traditional "Al Jundi" days with Sami and his brothers, Azzam, Mazin and Riyad, their wives and kids. Aunt Jen keeps talking about how big all the Al Jundi kids have gotten since she first met them, seven years ago. I asked Aunt Jen if in seven years she would comment on how big I got, but she just laughed and said that paper boys don't grow.

Anyway, Aunt Jen told me some really cool things about Jericho. One thing is that Jericho is the oldest city in the world that has been inhabited continuously. Also, Jericho is the lowest city in the world! On the way to Jericho we passed signs telling us when we reached sea level--and then we kept driving lower and lower and lower. Jericho is near the Dead Sea which is the very lowest place on the earth. I wanted to go there and float, but Aunt Jen said that it might be dangerous for me, even though I have a protective layer of lamination.

But Jericho was really nice. I got to check out the fruit and vegetable markets and saw where they are growing lemons and oranges. And they grow lots of bananas in Jericho and I got to ride on the banana truck!

Of course I had a great time with all the Al Jundi brothers and wives and kids and all of them wanted to take their picture with me, some of them many many times.

Sami and Mazin and Riyad made a barbeque with chicken and kabob and Aunt Jen said it was just like the good old days. I pretended to understand what she meant, but since I was only drawn a month ago, I don't have a real sense of what "the good old days" really means.

But Riyad tried to teach me how to smoke and everyone thought that was pretty funny. And Mazin held me a little too close to the barbeque and Aunt Jen got worried and said that her nephew Alex would be so upset if I actually caught on fire. I'm not sure if my protective layer of lamination does any good when it comes to fire...

but the best part of all is that i actually got to ride a real live camel! Alex loves camels! In fact, Aunt Jen has started a camel collection for Alex and she buys him camel statues everywhere she travels! She took a lot of pictures of me on the camel so we could send them to Alex. I said I thought he would like the camel photos almost as much as the photos of me getting shot at and tear gassed. Aunt Jen said that she's not going to show Alex THOSE pictures...

I got to eat some ice cream which was nice because I never had ice cream before.
We had fun in Jericho until long after dark and then went back to Jerusalem...
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/flatstanley/1/1200427920/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/flatstanley/1/1200427920/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/flatstanley/1/1200427920/tpod.html Tue, 15 Jan 2008 15:55:39 -0500 Flat Stanley Visits Palestine!

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Tel Aviv, Israel

After the Friday demonstration, Aunt Jen thought that perhaps I needed some good r&r so she took me to visit some friends of hers in Tel Aviv.
I got to meet her friend Yael and her boyfriend and then another friend Eli took me to hang out on the beach.
Eli pretended to mail me off, since I'm flat and all, but he was just joking. Aunt Jen would never let somebody drop me in a mailbox unless I was properly addressed and stamped...
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/flatstanley/1/1197916680/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/flatstanley/1/1197916680/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/flatstanley/1/1197916680/tpod.html Tue, 15 Jan 2008 14:00:33 -0500 Flat Stanley Visits Palestine!

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Jerusalem, Palestinian Territory

Aunt Jen said it was high time for my political education to begin. She and a journalist friend of hers took me to a place that has recently been the center of controversy called "E1". E1 is near the settlement of Maale Adumim and the settlers there are planning to expand their settlement to that area, but the Palestinians whose land it is are trying to resist having their land stolen. Lately, "hilltop settler youth" (these are the youth that put caravans on hilltops to create "facts on the ground" that will lead to new settlements) have been camping out at E1. Aunt Jen, her friend and I drove around E1 trying to find some Hilltop Settler Youth, but all we found is their abandoned camp site and an Israeli flag. It was Channukah and we got there close to sundown, so Aunt Jen said that maybe they had already gone home to light their menorah and celebrate the holiday of freedom. I said that sounded very nice. She said she was being ironic. I said, oh, I get it, but I didn't really. I'm still pretty newly drawn and I don't really know what irony is yet.
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