A Cup of Coffee, a Life of Conflict

On the day that I was to attend a Jewish wedding for the first time in my life, Israeli soldiers prevented me from leaving my West Bank village for seven hours while they carried out a massive arrest of Palestinian university students nearby.

This rude collision of events reminded me once again how the politics of the Middle East, especially those involving the fragile Palestinian-Israeli relationship, manage to find their way into every aspect of daily life. And how the turbulent political situation provokes an inner battle even in those of us who have, so far, kept things in perspective.

Usually, we cope by compartmentalizing our lives: political crisis, economic hardship, personal insecurity, relationships with “the other side.” The compartments are not supposed to mix. But this time, I could not keep them separate.

The bride was Emily. During the two months that we had worked together, she and I developed a pretty solid friendship, though Emily is an American convert to Judaism who believes in Zionism as the savior of the Jewish nation and I am a Palestinian American who believes that the Zionist state was realized at the expense of the Palestinian people and a great part of our homeland.

I had never been friends with a Jew before. During coffee breaks, Emily and I often touched on politics, but we were careful not to immerse ourselves. Sometimes, we would agree on the mistakes that one side or the other was making. And we even joked about how, if left to us, the whole peace process could be wrapped up over a cup of coffee.

I was excited about Emily’s wedding, about experiencing for the first time the culture and the traditions of a people who always have been alien to me. It offered an opportunity to see Israelis in a personal setting instead of as uniformed soldiers occupying my homeland.

Then, in February, Hamas started a new campaign of suicide bombings against the Israeli people and the peace process. In nine days, four suicide bombers exploded themselves in Jerusalem, near Ashkelon and outside the Dizengoff shopping center in Tel Aviv, the city where Emily lived.

In response to the Hamas attacks, Prime Minister Shimon Peres suspended all negotiations with the Palestinian Authority, refused to redeploy Israeli troops from Hebron as called for in the peace accords and imposed a closure on Palestinian areas of a magnitude that had never been seen before. My village and others were surrounded by Israeli soldiers and blocked off from access to the cities. About 60,000 Palestinians were prevented from going to their jobs in Israel. Even ambulances were not allowed through checkpoints.

The bombings and the government’s response began to dissolve the walls of my carefully constructed mental compartments. The political crisis in the peace process, the economic hardships of the closure and personal insecurity began to infringe on my relationships with “the other side.”

On that morning, I was awakened at 5 by a bright light shining through my bedroom window, the searchlight on an Israeli helicopter combing the area for students from nearby Bir Zeit University. As part of the closure, students from the Gaza Strip had been ordered by Israel to leave the West Bank. Apparently many had not, and they were being pursued.

My village of more than 1,000 Palestinians was among those sealed off. No one could enter or leave. Not even flashing a press card or an American passport would get me past the nervous but determined soldiers.

By noon, about 370 students had been detained and taken away in buses. The soldiers left and life was back to normal--for the Middle East. I was furious. What was I going to do about the wedding? To go would mean not belonging to the 2.2 million Palestinians who remain under closure. Not to go would mean disappointing a friend on her special day.

I went.

The wedding was held in Jaffa, a mixed city of Israeli Arabs and Jews. When the bride saw me, she called happily across the garden of what had been an Arab family’s house before the state of Israel was created in 1948, “They sealed off your village and you made it.” We hugged as a helicopter flew over the gathering.

The ceremony was conducted outside under an arched entrance to the garden. The unquestionably Arab architecture made a picturesque setting. The couple also stood under a wedding canopy known as a chuppa, which the rabbi said symbolized the home they would create in the land of Israel. I was disturbed that he was saying this in what once had been a Palestinian home. The ceremony concluded with the groom smashing a glass with his foot. This, I was told, symbolized the destruction of the Jewish Second Temple.

As the glass broke, I could hear the Muslim call to prayer from a nearby mosque. And suddenly the complexity and sensitivity of our coexistence was painfully clear. Definitely, it will take more than a cup of coffee to complete this peace process.