I told a friend of mine that I wanted to visit some classes at one of the West Bank universities. He said: “Classes? They go to classes there?” and laughed in amazement. “It never occurred to me that they go to classes. All we hear about them is that they throw stones and burn tires.”
The doors on the classrooms at Bethlehem University have small glass windows. A stranger can peek through them and see the lesson in progress: the teacher, the pupils, and mostly the attentiveness. That is the first impression: the forward tilt—unconscious—of their bodies. The students hang on the teacher’s every word. I have a green notebook in which I write as I listen to people, as I stand and as I walk. A long day of studies awaits me today.
In the hallway, near the stairwell, stand a lecturer and his students, conferring together. They speak about Freud. Humor as a way of expressing aggression, she says. I did my master’s thesis on humor, he says. I also once took an entire course on humor, I remember, at the Hebrew University. We studied Freud and I wrote a long paper; I laugh quietly, to myself, like someone making a toast to another.
Hanging on the wall of the hallway is a very large bronze plaque depicting a lion cruelly overpowering a doe. Sitting under this familiar Palestinian symbol, on two chairs pulled together, are a boy and a girl. They whisper between them, her hair almost falling into his face. Ask people here about the role of politics in academic life, I note down to myself, and ask about permissiveness.
On the basement floor, the physics-department faculty lounge. Three professors take counsel with each other. Professor Zurub Abd-Al-Rahman explains their problem to me: the summer session generally runs six weeks, but because of the frequent closing of the university by the army, they have to make do with only four weeks of studies.
They refer to the calendar again and again, shaking their heads at each other with concern. We may need to give up on Electromagnetism B, one says.
The students won’t be able to grasp the material, another says, making question marks next to the courses in danger of being canceled.
The third, an American professor working here on a Fulbright grant, tells me: “We can offer only the basic courses, the ones most necessary for their degree. Nothing else that can really enrich them, or expand their horizons.”
Bethlehem University is fourteen years old. It was established by decree of the Vatican and has its backing. About 1,500 students study at the university; the faculty numbers about 130. The West Bank has five accredited degree-granting universities. They enroll about ten thousand students. The largest of them is Bir Zeit, at this writing shut down for four months by order of the military administration, in the wake of violent demonstrations there. A few thousand more Arabs study at teachers’ colleges, religious seminaries, technical schools, and commercial colleges. Bethlehem University is considered no less extreme in its politics than more-well-known Bir Zeit, and is known to be a stronghold of the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine, a Marxist Palestinian faction. But because of the Vatican’s support for the institution, the administration treats it with a bit more delicacy than it does the other West Bank universities.
Professor Hana Halaq suggests that I come with him to see the laboratories.
“When were you last closed?”
“We opened just yesterday, after three days of closure imposed in honor of your Independence Day. Here, this is our laboratory. Modest, I know. We make most of the equipment with our own hands. In the carpentry and metal shops.”
Poor and primitive equipment. Microscopes and measuring instruments and Bunsen burners, all ancient-looking. A demonstration for students was in progress, and I had a quick lesson in the refraction of light. To the extent I could judge, the explanation was on the level of an Israeli high school. But more impressive was how the students related to the material—with respect and interest. Their expressions were totally concentrated.
Could I sit in on a class session?
Caught off guard, Hana Halaq removes his glasses and polishes them.
Not at all?
He avoids my gaze.
“Are there things you prefer to hide?”
“It is not a simple matter to let an Israeli into a class session. It would cause some tension.”
“You mean that the students would be suspicious of a teacher who brought an Israeli to class? Even to a mathematics lesson?”
“Let’s continue our tour. I will show you our greenhouse.”
“Do you have courses in politics and current events here?”
“Take a look at the catalogue.”
The catalogue is attractive and written in English. On the cover is a photograph of the university’s stone quarters—the carved steeple with the statue of the Madonna above, and a large clock with its hands pointing to five minutes after twelve.
Course 201—Political Science 1. This course deals with the following subjects: social environment, the society’s metamorphosis into a political entity, types of sovereignty …
Course 304—The Palestinian Problem. Detailed study of the problem, focusing on decisive events. Historical documents, people and organizations involved in the situation. Object of the course: to clarify the problem, in an effort to understand it in perspective.
But there is also Course 311—Drama. Critical study of the development of the drama as a literary genre. There will be an emphasis on the influence of the classical and European theater on dramatic works in the English language …
Course 431—The Exceptional Child. Through comparison with the normal child, the course will survey the gifted, the creative, the retarded, the blind, and the socially inhibited child … There will be an emphasis on personal and social problems and on modern methods of treating them.
And this, too: Course 438—Israeli Society. This course is aimed at acquainting the student with Israeli society, and how its melting pot brought together groups so different and heterogeneous in their customs, traditions, and cultures, and made them into one homogeneous society composed of subgroups.
Hana Halaq leads me to the almost-empty greenhouse. A few shrunken cactuses and geranium plants. Biology students learn plant anatomy from these plants. From the greenhouse in which I stand I gaze outward, toward the wonderfully beautiful campus lawn—flower boxes, stone buildings, stately pine trees, gravel paths. Hundreds of students and they make hardly any noise. Most of them are sitting, during their break, in the sunlight, studying alone or in groups. It reminds one, slightly, of the pictures of Plato’s school in Athens.
I absorb their seriousness, penetrating even the glass walls of the greenhouse. Hard work is in the air of this small campus, an atmosphere of study. Whoever says that the universities are hothouses of terror does not understand the complexity of the issue. There is something deeper and more fundamental here. I wrote the following in my notebook: “There is no idleness. Not like the campus quadrangles I know. Here they seem, somehow, determined. Even during their breaks.”
* * *
Back to the bustling corridor. It is very crowded. A new, elegant wing of the university has just been completed, but the military administration approved it on condition that it not contain a single classroom—only a restaurant and administrative offices. It will not solve the overcrowding. Here, over the large stones of the floor, someone guides a wheelchair: the body and face of a small boy. Maybe a young genius. His chin droops on his chest. Thick glasses over his eyes. Everyone races between the classrooms. The space is full of youth and chatter. Boys and girls exchange glances. By the way, there are as many women studying here as men, and the teachers say the women are the best students: first, because the most talented men find their way to other countries, and a girl, as talented as she might be, will not go far from her father’s house; second, because they are less involved in politics. I note that almost all the students are well dressed. None is sloppy. You can feel that people come here with respect, almost in celebration. I try to guess at the backgrounds of those passing by me. Who is the son of the rich man, whose father and grandfather are educated and learned and sent the young man to continue the family tradition, and who is the son of the poor fellah, peasant, who only reluctantly gave up his son’s labor because the boy insisted on continuing his education and pleaded that the father allow him to change his life, because the neighbors said that the boy has the head of a government minister, because even if the family eats less bread during these years, the father himself feels that in making his son a student he is rebelling against the fate which is strangling him.
From among the milling crowd I make out a crown of red hair. The face of a young boy. Striding in the middle of a knot of students. This redhead from Bethlehem jokes non-stop, eager to entertain. I join them in their walk to class, look for the girl he is trying to impress, and think I have found her. I don’t think he’ll succeed.
* * *
Two short conversations:
Professor James Connolly, chairman of the English department: “I am here because it is an important service to the population. The students here are eager to learn. They are never satiated by their studies. In many ways I prefer them to those in England. Their motivation to gain knowledge is immense. Of course, the general level here is lower than in a Western university. We try to admit as many students as possible. There are difficult entrance examinations, but we accept mediocre students as well. We have to meet a great demand.”
“What do you teach here?”
“I teach English poetry. They are so sensitive to lyric rhythm! Maybe because the rhythm of the Koran flows in their blood.”
“What will you be teaching in your next class?”
“The poetry of John Donne.”
“How do they relate to his wild sensuality?”
“At first they are very confused. Then they are conquered.”
“And does what is called ‘the situation’ make its way into the class?”
“I try to prevent it. My status here as a foreign lecturer is very sensitive. Other teachers have been expelled from the West Bank after being accused of incitement. Sometimes, in English-language classes, I ask them to write a composition on what concerns them. Then I get not a few compositions on their suffering under the occupation.”
“And what do you do in such cases?”
He throws me a blue-eyed, British, sly smile: “Why, I correct the mistakes in the English, of course.”
Muhammad Haj Yihia teaches social work. He is a native of Teibe, an Israeli Arab village, and a graduate of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
“The first year here is hard for every student. Don’t forget that they generally come from a traditional society, that they are the products of an unadvanced public-school curriculum, and that they have for the most part studied only with others of their own sex. All this affects the students’ spirit and intellectual ability. They are not an open people. They are used to learning by rote, memorization, to having to guess at the desire of the authoritative teacher. At first they are incapable of working on their own and thinking as individuals. They lack even the tools needed to develop self-awareness.
“I, as a teacher, endeavor to pass on to my students the approach I learned at the Hebrew University: independence, critical thinking, and curiosity. I tell them not to base themselves on a single source of information, that they not accept anything I say as dogma, that they should always question. At first, they actually get angry at me: they do not succeed in overcoming the obstacles within them. Afterwards, they do overcome them and break loose. This is the most important education I can give them. I could have found work at the Hebrew University, but there I would have been only a lecturer in social work. Here I am also an educator. That is a big difference.”
* * *
A loudspeaker suddenly barks outside. From the window I see a student in a black leather jacket gathering people around him. Students from every corner of the courtyard come to listen to him. He voices a furious protest against the university cafeteria serving food today, at the height of Ramadan, the Moslem holy month of fasting. “Oh, it’s only a demonstration of fanatical Moslems,” says a Christian student working in the room, but those around me exchange quick glances.
As the demonstration continues, I talk with a student with an official position in the student government, who refuses to give me his name and who dictates a stream of tired and insincere declarations. He finds it necessary to raise his voice in order to be heard over the noise of the demonstration outside. The shouts coming from the demonstration now turn into the regular chants of a chorus. I get up to look and see that the pastoral courtyard already contains hundreds of students, gathered in tight circles around the speaker. He shouts a phrase, and they answer him with a roar, waving their fists in the air. To my surprise, they are now crying hostile anti-Israel and anti-occupation slogans. The object of their anger has switched so quickly. In the crowd are many white-kerchiefed women. They are the most extreme of the female Moslems who study here. Someone pulls me gently away from the window. Better that they not know I am here. Bring that man out to us, like Lot in Sodom. But even a stolen glance allows me to make out that redhead among the sea of darker ones. Now he is completely foreign, waving his fist with the others and thundering with all his might. Oddly, that is the main thing that remains in my memory from this moment—being totally disappointed with a person whom I did not even know.
One of those present in the room walks away from the window, looks at me, and says in a swallowed voice: “We have a little problem outside.” I examine the energetically moving lips of the official student, flower of the politicians, dictating to me his tired text, in which the sentences could easily be switched around without any damage to its actual intention, and as he speaks I write the following in my green notebook: Now, the truth. Are you afraid? Yes. And if something happens to you here, if they hurt you, do you think it will cause you to revise your opinions? To begin to surrender to hate? And if they were to hurt your child?
I set down the answer for the record and as personal testimony, and it is all written there, in the green notebook.
* * *
The campus calms down within half an hour, and I emerge into the courtyard. I present myself to a group of students and ask to talk with them. They giggle awkwardly and suddenly look very young. One of them takes up the challenge and rises. I am willing to talk, but not here. Her name is Raula, from Ramallah, and she is studying social work. “I wanted a profession that would allow me to give something to people. Something that would give me an opportunity to work with my heart and not just with my head or hands.” She leads me through the bustling courtyard, through the piercing glances, to a room that looks like the office of some sort of cultural committee: metal cabinets overflowing with posters, tables piled with pamphlets, stacks of newspapers. A red-tinted map of Palestine is stuck on a wooden board, with the caption “Palestine Is Ours.” On one wall is a picture of Che Guevera, and on another a drawing of a long-haired girl, with strong brown eyes. “Her name is Taghrid Batma,” Raula tells me, as her voice takes on a special color, as if she is telling a folktale. “Israeli intelligence agents killed her in ’82. Why? Because she was a good Palestinian. She organized many demonstrations and was an activist. That’s why.”
For some reason I do not feel like speaking to her about the side the Palestinians present to us, the Israelis, and I ask about the couple I saw whispering to each other in the corridor, about the glances exchanged between boys and girls in the courtyard, about that hardly hidden fluttering of eyes that makes the atmosphere of this campus more charged and potent than at Israeli universities. Raula laughs for a minute. “Relations between men and women here are very free. Why are you surprised? We are educated, progressive adults, and we know what to do with the culture we have acquired.”
“Did your parents agree that you live this way, so close together with men?”
“My mother knew exactly what happens here, and she sent me here anyway. Besides, we all know that the university is the greatest matchmaker for educated young people, so maybe Mother was thinking of that, too.”
“And does the situation allow you to study as well, or are your minds distracted by other things?”
“The occupation weighs down on us here. We never know if there will be classes tomorrow, or if they will allow us past the roadblocks on the way to the university. In class we are afraid to express our opinions freely, because we are afraid of spies. You know, two years ago they caught some collaborators here. They beat them and expelled them from here. Afterwards, some of them were found dead, and they never discovered who killed them. There is always tension in class, because everything is connected in one way or another to the situation. We really live under pressure, but that is what creates the motivation to keep at our studies and to continue with our daily lives. It is a pioneer challenge, because with all the disturbances and closures and pressures we still exist and study like in any other university in the world, and we do our best to get through all the material. That’s an iron rule with us, with the teachers and the students, a rule we accepted of our own volition: we make up all the required material, no matter what happens, even if it means classes in the evening, during vacations, at people’s houses. Here every class lasts at least an hour and a quarter, not forty-five minutes as at your university. We aren’t lazy. We have a goal, you know.” Her small mouth forms a determined circle. “We must educate ourselves, in opposition to what the occupation wants us to be. The occupation can numb, and we must fight that numbness. That is our mission. There are those among us who fight with weapons, and there are those who fight with speeches. We will fight with the help of education and thought.”