38

 

Aida Palestinian Refugee Camp

Bethlehem, Israel

“Dr. Thompson, are you sure that you won’t spend the night? It’s late, and we have a spare bed in the back.” Shira Dagher had practically planted her slight frame in front of the door, daring Elizabeth to push her way past her.

“Shira, if I didn’t know you better, I’d say you were planning to hold me hostage here in Aida.” Elizabeth smiled. “I can see the headlines— WORLD WITHOUT BORDERS PRESIDENT HELD AGAINST HER WILL IN PALESTINIAN REFUGEE CAMP.”

They both laughed.

“Yes, for sure,” Shira said. “An elderly grandmother holds an American physician much younger than her against her will.”

“I don’t know. You’re pretty wiry.”

“And tough. Don’t forget that.”

Elizabeth loved her visits to Aida, one of the larger Palestinian refugee camps in East Jerusalem that had long been at the heart of the conflict between Israel and the Palestinian people for control of the area. Aida had a large key over one of its entrances as a constant reminder to the refugees of a time when they would win their freedom in their own country.

Aida was easily one of the most beautiful Palestinian refugee camps—largely due to the efforts of residents like Shira, who built things of beauty throughout the camp with virtually no resources or money. It was part of Aida’s “beautiful resistance” to Israel’s settlements in East Jerusalem.

Shira had founded the Al Rowwad Children’s Theater near the center of the Aida camp. Elizabeth periodically made a personal swing through the camp for a pediatric clinic day at the theater. Mothers from the entire camp would bring their children for the day.

Elizabeth could easily have delegated her prenatal and pediatric care duties to one of the physicians on her NGO staff, but she was obsessed with Shira Dagher and the people of Aida. She visited the camp as often as she could—and stayed as long as she could.

An elderly Arabic woman with six grandchildren living in Aida now, Shira had spent nearly her entire life in the refugee camp. She was a permanent fixture in the community. Shira knew everyone, and the entire town knew and loved her.

Elizabeth considered Shira a friend, and the feeling was mutual. They’d grown up in vastly different cultures, with wildly disparate educations and social upbringings. Their religious beliefs were quite different. Yet Elizabeth felt closer to Shira than anyone. She admired and emulated Shira’s gentle yet fiercely positive spirit.

Shira Dagher could so easily have been distraught, distracted, and angry over her lot in life as a permanent refugee in the shadow of Jerusalem. But she didn’t live her life that way. She spent her days teaching children and her evenings easing the fears and worries of the night. It was all she’d ever known.

“One more coffee?” Shira asked Elizabeth. “You can get an early start in the morning.”

Elizabeth nodded reluctantly. “All right. I can see it’s hopeless.” It had been a very long day, with dozens of shots and vaccinations. She was dead tired. But she was interested in catching up with gossip from Shira, who seemed to hear news from all of the other Palestinian camps on a regular basis.

“Good!” Shira clapped her hands together. She hurried past Elizabeth toward the kitchen.

Elizabeth trailed behind. “So, what’s the mood of the camps?”

“About the peace talks with Israel?”

“Yes. Do people believe the talks are real?”

“Oh, we believe they are real,” Shira said, her back to Dr. Thompson. “What I don’t think very many believe is that it will lead to a homeland for us. We have heard these promises so many times, only to see them vanish like an early morning mist.”

“You know, they’re building a new city to the east of Beersheba, between the old city and the air bases,” Elizabeth said quietly. “They seem to be awfully serious about it. I’ve been there to work with the staff on the hospital.”

“Oh, I’m sure they’re serious about the buildings.” Shira set water on to boil. “But I don’t believe the city is for us.”

“For Palestinians?”

“Yes, for Palestinians. That is what the people are starting to say— that the city is not for us. I’ve heard it many times, from those in some of the other camps who’ve been trying to find out information on what is happening there.”

Elizabeth was confused. “But it’s precisely what was talked about in the peace plans—that there would be a contiguous land, with a capital city. That’s why they’re building there.”

“Jerusalem is my capital,” Shira said. “No one ever asked me if I wanted to relocate south to Beersheba. And many, many others feel as I do.”

“Even if you are guaranteed a homeland you can call your own? One that is finally, permanently free and is not separated from other parts of your country?”

“Geography does not make a country. Heritage does. And we have always lived in Palestine, in Jerusalem. We should not be asked to move.”

“Not even in the name of peace?”

“Not even for that.” Shira stopped rummaging for cups in the cupboard and glanced back over her shoulder. “You know, not all of your own country is connected, yet no one says anything of that. Certainly, the people of America consider everyone part of their country, whether they’re connected or not by land masses.”

“I suppose you’re right.” Elizabeth chuckled. “Alaska and Hawaii are part of the United States.”

“The United States,” Shira said. “It means that your people recognize who belongs in the country and who does not. It is that way with the Palestinians.”

“But surely, you can recognize that there must be an end to this conflict at some point. After all, Israel recognizes Jerusalem as its capital. So do you. Both countries cannot claim Jerusalem as their capital. It can’t possibly work.”

“And why not?” asked Shira.

“Because it’s nearly untenable, that’s why,” Elizabeth said. “Look at Berlin after the Second World War. East Berlin was separated from West Berlin by more than just a wall. The residents themselves yearned for one city, in one united country. However, it’s very difficult for two sovereign countries in the modern era to share a common capital.”

“But it is possible,” Shira insisted. “All I know is this: Jerusalem is my home. It is rightly the capital of my country, even if the world does not yet recognize it.”

Elizabeth felt like giving up. She’d been around and around on this subject with Shira and others in the Palestinian camps for as long as she could remember. It was the one impossible demand at the center of the interminable peace talks between the Palestinians and Israel that had dragged on for nearly a generation.

Neither side seemed willing to budge. Several Israeli prime ministers—including Judah Navon, at one time—had come close to partitioning Jerusalem and ceding land for a Palestinian state. Maps were drawn up, with parts of East Jerusalem settled by Arabs to go to a new Palestinian state, and the parts settled by Jews to go to Israel.

But inevitably, those maps and plans had been discarded. The plan to start fresh in Beersheba, in another part of Israel, was closer than anyone had come in quite a long time. It seemed strange to Elizabeth that someone like Shira would simply dismiss the possibility out of hand.

“So what did you mean, that people are saying the building going on in Beersheba is not for you? For the Palestinians?”

“The word in many camps is that it is not.” Shira had located the cups and was searching for the instant coffee.

“How would you know that?”

“Because we have seen many Jewish settlements start over the years. Some were begun for political purposes. Money shows up, buildings are constructed, and then the Israelis say that the land belongs to them and always has.”

“I know the history of some of the Jewish settlements,” Elizabeth said. “But that’s not what’s going on here.”

“No? So why are they building a modern city next to Beersheba? Why are the Americans spending so much money there, at the edge of a desert?”

Elizabeth was puzzled. The answers to the questions seemed obvious. “My country committed to the peace process. We have our own construction crews involved, and we’ve committed to building there. It is the right thing to do, and the American people have supported the effort.”

Shira turned and faced her friend. “But do your own people know who is paying for this new construction? And these people—these Americans—will see no direct benefit in anything they are doing in the Negev? They are building and constructing simply out of the goodness of their heart, with no other motive at all? Does that make sense to you?”

Elizabeth paused. She actually did believe that. Still, it was a fair question. After the United States invaded Iraq, toppled its dictator, and then installed a new, provisional government in the region, it had committed to large-scale construction in southern Iraq much like it had committed to building in the Negev.

In Iraq, the purpose of that vast American-led construction effort was to rebuild a country destroyed by back-to-back wars. Yet America now also had permanent, plentiful access to several of the largest supplies of oil anywhere in the world. Its construction efforts and partnership with both Iraq’s new government and its national oil and gas infrastructure assured a permanent source of oil in a troubled region.

The American government had always maintained that access to Iraq’s vast oil reserves was never part of the war equation. But the United States certainly was willing to take advantage of the situation in Iraq now that it had changed it through military force.

“I believe my country has honorable intentions,” Elizabeth affirmed. “The Israeli government would not allow the building to go on there if it was not a serious effort.”

“Oh, it is a serious effort,” Shira said. “And perhaps, someday, it will be for the Palestinians. But in the event that it is not, and the peace process collapses again, then people say that the building in Beersheba will serve another very useful purpose.”

“Another purpose?”

“I cannot say what it might be. But the Israelis—and the Americans— are not stupid. They build and plan, but they also prepare. Every settlement they’ve ever built has been that way. They build and plan with a purpose.”

“But you have no guess as to what that might be?”

“I do not.” Shira set the cups down on the table and took a seat. “But I can assure you that, if there is no peace, the Beersheba developments will be useful for something else. I am certain of it.”

The water started to boil. Elizabeth took the instant coffee from Shira and scooped some of it into her cup. Shira grabbed a towel, wrapped it around the handle of the water pot, and poured the steaming water into their cups. The aroma of hot coffee was tantalizing— the perfect end to a very long, satisfying day in Aida.

“You seem awfully sure of your suspicions,” Elizabeth said with a wan smile. “You have no hope for peace?”

“I always have hope for peace. But I also listen to what the people say, what they hear, what they believe as truth. Sometimes it is helpful just to watch what occurs and what is described, then wait to see what sort of reality and truth actually emerges.”

Elizabeth had to grin. Shira, though she could not possibly have known it, had just neatly summarized a leading philosophical argument that social science scholars had studied for generations. Reality could be shaped by perceptions, and truth was often a difficult construct in a world where people relied on competing stories that defined what they saw.

Jerusalem was as good an example as any on the planet. Three competing world religions all saw the city that was a stone’s throw from where they now sat as the epicenter of their faith, critical to their beliefs. Yet the city meant vastly different things to each, often in absolute, direct conflict to the simple truth on the ground.

Elizabeth nodded. “Wisely said, my friend. So you will wait on the peace process, to see what emerges, where it goes, and what might happen?”

“I will,” Shira said. “It is what I know. I have waited for a generation for a proper homeland for my people, with Jerusalem as its capital. I can wait a little while longer.”