There's been resistance to such treatment over the years. Plenty of American Jews are vocal in their opposition to settlers participating in a system that smells of hypocrisy and apartheid. And some of them are not happy to have their Never Again vigilance co-opted by zany-eyed Zionists. Palestinian resistance to the Occupation began in earnest with Yasser Arafat, the first president of the Palestinian National Authority, and co-winner of the 1994 Nobel Peace Prize. Arafat, for all his alleged faults, undeniably pushed for autonomy and self-rule -- a struggle that continues, but without effective or visionary leadership. He called for the First Intifada ('uprising') in December 1987, following an incident at the Erez checkpoint during which four Palestinians were accidentally killed by an Israeli and set off an emotional firestorm. It lasted until 1993. The Second Intifada (known as Al-Aqsa) went from 2000-2005.
From Carl Jung to Margaret Mead, we've learned as humans over time that we will seek answers to continuous horrible events by collectively believing in supernatural forces, which often coalesce around atavistic figures imbued with special mysterious powers to be feared. "Badia's Magic Water" by Maya Abu al-Hayat is a story of sympathetic magic -- word gone out -- rumors that -- there's talk -- people are saying -- that this woman Badia has a magic potion that heals. Born of a dead baby lost during the First Intifada, after which she developed eczema, Badia's herbal potion cures it, and as she takes a job washing the dead, providing their last ablutions and shrouding, she gains a rep as a healer.
Folks come from all around Ramallah to get some of Badia's holy water. Sometimes they go to extremes, Badia recalls, with regret:
the woman who once snuck into the autopsy room to steal some of the magic water that had spilled off a girl's corpse, to use it for some spell or ritual, who, when Badia tried to remove her, had bent down to where the water pooled on the ground and tried to lick it up.
You can't help but interpret such extreme behavior as a failure of modernity to take hold in a culture beset by the mindset of ancient and tyrannical bugaboos. There's a biblical apocrypha feel to it. It seems like it will take a miracle to save the Palestinians. But, at the same time, though Badia can't help "those that don't believe," she is self-amused at her power. Al-Hayat expresses it with simplicity:
No dead today: the schedule is blank. Badia sighs, removes her coat, puts on her clean white gown, and drinks the special tea of herbs she brewed herself.
Superstitions, right? They are even behind the Occupation, when you think about it.
The Book of Ramallah is a simple, concrete collection of tales that reveals some of the 'tender mercies' and often-humorous day-to-day travails of Palestinians going about their business under Israeli occupation. The tales humanize and almost laugh at political solutions to anything. (Eat, drink, and be merry: Tomorrow we build the pyramids, as some wise man once said.) In doing so, they help us re-realize, paradoxically, that a political solution is a decision of people, not autonomous systems of power. It's a gentle, non-confronting set of stories that bring refreshing energy to the ongoing crisis for Palestinians in the West Bank and elsewhere in their diaspora.
Readers who want a deeper, more engaging (but entertaining) understanding of how the region fell so miserably into conflict between the Palestinians, largely displaced from their homeland, and Israelis who see their state as a historical and spiritual manifest destiny, may want to watch the 4-part BBC series The Promise (2011), which recounts the events that led to the turmoil, beginning with the fall of the Ottoman Empire, the realignment of Arabia by the British, the promise made to Jews in The Balfour Declaration, and the Never Again militancy brought to Jewish emigration to the region by the Holocaust.
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