On Palestine

Beit Falasteen, home of Munib Al-Masri, Nablus, Palestine (2013)

I’m not sure where to begin.

I have visited Palestine twice, but I have seen very little of it. And what I did see and experience there left me with no desire to return.

This has nothing to do with the land, which is verdant and resplendent, nor with the Palestinians themselves, who are wonderful and hospitable and resilient to a degree that no people should ever have to be.

I have seen but the faintest glimpse of what it means to live under occupation—but this glimpse was enough to sear itself into my retinas, to emblazon itself permanently on my mind.

I am well-versed in the history of the conflict: I have taken classes and written theses. I have read all the literature, from Herzl to Kanafani. I have studied the meaning behind the words in Marcel Khalife’s songs. I have sat with countless Palestinians, across multiple generations, and I have heard stories that could turn your heart to stone.

I have met Palestinians who were forced out of their homes during the Nakba in 1948, who traveled on foot from Jaffa to Amman. I have met Palestinians who were forced out of Ramallah in the 1970s, kicked out of their home without warning, forced to take only what they could carry, and never allowed to return. I have met Palestinians whose parents were forced to leave the West Bank in the late 1990s, because they could no longer protect their children from harassment by IDF soldiers—because they feared that they would be forced to watch the rape of their own daughters, with no recourse to fight back or retaliate or defend them.

Forced. This is always the operative word.

Life under occupation does not leave much room for choice.

I am not going to use this blog post to provide you with a history lesson. I am not going to use this blog post to get on my soapbox, or to try to persuade you to adopt a particular stance or position.

But I am going to use it to tell you the story about my second, and final, trip to the West Bank.

It was over a decade ago, and I was heading to Nablus to meet with Munib Al-Masri: I was helping him edit a book about his house, a colossal architectural masterpiece modeled after an exquisite Palladian villa (but, you know, even larger and more grandiose).

Welcome to Beit Falasteen (‘House of Palestine’), home of Munib Al-Masri, which rests atop a hill overlooking the city of Nablus

For those of you who don’t know, Munib Al-Masri is the wealthiest Palestinian in the world: he made most of his money in oil and gas, along with various other diversified business endeavors. He was also once a close confidant of Yasser Arafat.

I leave Amman around 2:00 in the afternoon on a Thursday, picked up from my office by Munib’s driver. On our way down to the ‘bridge’ (the border crossing in the Jordan Valley, not far from the Dead Sea), he hands me an envelope with Munib’s Palestinian passport, asking that I take it to him.

At the border, the Israeli guards take one look at my own passport—with its stamps from numerous Arab countries, and a photo that no longer resembles me—and usher me into an interrogation room.

This is not my first interrogation at the border. In 2010, when I was traveling to Jericho to audit a hotel, I spent a good hour or so being pried with questions. “Why do you live in Jordan? How long will you stay there? What do you mean you don’t know?” The tone of these questions was all too clear: they could not fathom why I would willingly live amongst Arabs, or why I was visiting the West Bank but had no plans to visit Jerusalem or Tel Aviv. Eventually, they let me through, but not until the interrogation left me on the verge of tears, begging them to just send me back to Jordan.

This time, I am determined to be as open and forthcoming as possible.

“Did anyone give you anything to transport across the border?” “Yes: a passport.”

It is as if I am carrying a bomb. I offer to open it for them, but they shout me down and urge me to back away from my belongings. They scan the envelope carefully while they keep the barrels of their guns locked on me.

I spend hours in this interrogation room—and then another—before they finally let me pass through. I am met by another driver on the other side of the border, who drops me off at Munib’s house around 10:30 at night. I am led down into the kitchen, where my host fixes me some food and sits with me while I eat, as his granddaughter balances on his knee. I am profusely apologetic for my lateness, but Munib is unphased: “Don’t worry about it; it’s normal for us.”

After a quick meal, I retire to one of the guest rooms on the top floor of the house and soon fall asleep.

I wake up around 6:00 the next morning, and after preparing myself, I wander down the stairs and into the main rotunda of the home—the centerpiece of which is an enormous statue of Hercules. One of the doors is cracked open, and I peek outside to find Munib already well into his busy morning, sitting on the porch with a local architect; he is financing the building of a mosque in the city, and this architect is responsible for the design.

In the daylight, the realities of my surroundings begin to sink in: Munib’s house sits high on a hill above Nablus. On the opposite hill, an illegal settlement lurks in the distance. Munib bought up as much of the land around his home as he could, in an effort to prevent these settlers from trying to grab up more of the territory that does not belong to them.

A view of the hillsides of the West Bank from the greenhouse

But even the richest man in Palestine cannot buy his way out of occupation: during the construction of the home, the Second Intifada kicked off and IDF soldiers occupied his land, delaying the construction and leaving his property in utter disarray.

Munib Al-Masri’s home sits atop incredible history—quite literally. When excavation first began, the ruins of a fifth-century Byzantine monastery were discovered beneath the earth. Excavators worked under the cover of darkness, afraid that IDF soldiers would spot their work in the daytime and use these ruins as justification to take over the land.

Today, this monastery is preserved beneath the home like a museum—yet another priceless relic on display, alongside the countless paintings and statues and books and artifacts and curio, hailing from all over the world.

But what, I wonder, is the occupier’s position on culture? Does history hold any currency if it excludes them? Will beauty deter destruction?

Over the course of the morning, Munib gives me a tour of the property, while simultaneously meeting with architects and lawyers and journalists, entertaining his young granddaughter, and tending to a Herculean array of tasks.

A local architect, me, Munib, and his daughter Mai (an accomplished director and filmmaker) at the entrance to the property

After lunch—everything Munib eats is sourced directly from his own land, right down to the wheat for his bread—the architect and I wander outside. Off to the side of the house, an assortment of ancient Roman ruins and relics are arranged haphazardly across the lawn. I recline on one of them, a great piece of stone that has been carved into a shape that resembles a chaise longue, while the architect expands on his admiration for Munib. He is the richest man in Palestine, doing everything he can to help and support his community, and it is still not enough.

Resting after lunch

Later, in the library, Munib is interviewed by two journalists from The Guardian. They are asking questions that he must be tired of answering (questions so obtuse that even I am struggling to avoid rolling my eyes), but he answers them anyway.

A collection of photographs in Munib’s study: bottom photo is Munib and the late King Hussein; the one on the right is Munib with Yasser Arafat

A couple of hours later, I am at the border once again, waiting for the bus that will drive me back over ‘the bridge’ to Jordan. While waiting, I strike up a conversation with an Austrian man who is conducting his PhD research, a study on borders within borders, cities within cities; he has spent the last couple of months in Tel Aviv/Jaffa, and now he is heading to Amman. I offer him a ride with Munib’s driver, and later send him the contact details of a couple people who can help with his dissertation.

You see, in Amman, too, there are borders within borders. There is West Amman, where I have always lived, and there is East Amman, where I have only ventured a small handful of times. It is occupied largely by Palestinian refugees. Refugee camps like Amman’s Wehdat Camp, the Baqa’a Camp just north of Amman, the Gaza Camp in Jerash: all of these were once temporary accommodations for a displaced population. All of them have now hardened into permanent cities. I have been to all of them. None are places you should go.

While studying in Amman during university, I enrolled in a class on the Arab-Israeli conflict. During that course, our professor took us on a rather ill-advised trip to the Wehdat Camp in East Amman, where we met with survivors of the Nakba. They spoke to us about their experiences for a while, before one of the speakers—a tall old man—stood up and left. “Why should I talk to them?” he asked as he walked out of the room, pointing to us, this small group of mostly white American college students. “What good will it do?”

I have never wanted so badly to disappear from a room. What right did I have to sit before these survivors and demand that they explain the injustices that had been leveled against them?

Why should Palestinians be forced to relive their traumas when their words continue to fall on deaf ears? Why must an occupied and imprisoned and displaced population be forced to continually justify both its existence and its resistance?

Will there ever be a day when ‘forced’ is no longer the operative word for the people of Palestine?

If you take anything away from this post, let it be this: when you look at the actions of resistance happening in Gaza, or in the West Bank, stop looking at these acts as choices. When you are starved and beaten and backed into a corner, survival itself is an act of force.