(no subject)
Happy New Year...?\
I didn't quite finish that last entry. Truth is, it's exhausting. There's hours of discussion every day, hours more of compulsively checking Haaretz, hours more of thoughts gnawing at my brain.
There's a pretty powerful sense of unhappiness ruling over the masses here. People from all over the ethnic and political spectrum are wandering around with hollow, glassy eyes. With Israeli troops poised to invade Gaza, there aren't many for whom this isn't a life and death reality.
One of the greater tragedies here is just how detrimental this kind of sudden outburst of violence is to the peace process. There is a slightly older, very beautiful and eloquent woman in my conflict psychology class here who is working on some manner of graduate school. She has also been working on a dialogue social experiment bring Palestinian and Israeli women together, and we've had the fortune to hear a good bit about it. She looked a little lost and distraught today, our last class meeting. She had been working on her final analysis of the dialogue project Saturday. She was still working on it when the riots began just outside her apartment, and she was still working on it when she received an email from one of the Palestinian women.
She read much of the letter to us. It was latent with a disparaging vulnerability, and addressed the feeling of worthlessness associated with Palestinian identity. "Are our people so worthless to you? One Israeli soul costs us two hundred Palestinian souls?" It was miserable but shyly hopeful.
My classmate seemed more conflicted than I've seen before. She essentially felt like everything she worked for was useless. I paraphrase, but imagine a strong woman with blurry eyes and a voice on the verge of cracking: "What am I doing up here? Why am I writing this? Is it helping anyone? I just want my shiny new degree, but where does that leave the people here?"
Where, I wonder, does that leave any of us?
On the walk back from class, I talked about this with a Dutch classmate of mine. She was not immune from the cynicism that comes with conflict like this.
Her: I'm trying, now, to just remember that all the different parts of the peace movement, they're all drops in a bucket, and all of the drops are important...
Me: The fear, though, is that the drops are evaporating more quickly than they fall.
From there, I concluded (somewhat in contradiction) that even if we're not gaining any ground (though I choose to believe we are), we have to continue to work towards these foundations of peace. Conflicts have their way of breaking at some point, by some luck or miracle, be it the coincidence of pragmatic, empathetic leaders, or a unifying element, or some other thing to just make conflict impossible. When that happens, the current efforts will be necessary to carry out the change for lasting peace.
Classes are over. Pages upon pages to write and two relatively easy exams to prepare for. Ah, boy.
I didn't quite finish that last entry. Truth is, it's exhausting. There's hours of discussion every day, hours more of compulsively checking Haaretz, hours more of thoughts gnawing at my brain.
There's a pretty powerful sense of unhappiness ruling over the masses here. People from all over the ethnic and political spectrum are wandering around with hollow, glassy eyes. With Israeli troops poised to invade Gaza, there aren't many for whom this isn't a life and death reality.
One of the greater tragedies here is just how detrimental this kind of sudden outburst of violence is to the peace process. There is a slightly older, very beautiful and eloquent woman in my conflict psychology class here who is working on some manner of graduate school. She has also been working on a dialogue social experiment bring Palestinian and Israeli women together, and we've had the fortune to hear a good bit about it. She looked a little lost and distraught today, our last class meeting. She had been working on her final analysis of the dialogue project Saturday. She was still working on it when the riots began just outside her apartment, and she was still working on it when she received an email from one of the Palestinian women.
She read much of the letter to us. It was latent with a disparaging vulnerability, and addressed the feeling of worthlessness associated with Palestinian identity. "Are our people so worthless to you? One Israeli soul costs us two hundred Palestinian souls?" It was miserable but shyly hopeful.
My classmate seemed more conflicted than I've seen before. She essentially felt like everything she worked for was useless. I paraphrase, but imagine a strong woman with blurry eyes and a voice on the verge of cracking: "What am I doing up here? Why am I writing this? Is it helping anyone? I just want my shiny new degree, but where does that leave the people here?"
Where, I wonder, does that leave any of us?
On the walk back from class, I talked about this with a Dutch classmate of mine. She was not immune from the cynicism that comes with conflict like this.
Her: I'm trying, now, to just remember that all the different parts of the peace movement, they're all drops in a bucket, and all of the drops are important...
Me: The fear, though, is that the drops are evaporating more quickly than they fall.
From there, I concluded (somewhat in contradiction) that even if we're not gaining any ground (though I choose to believe we are), we have to continue to work towards these foundations of peace. Conflicts have their way of breaking at some point, by some luck or miracle, be it the coincidence of pragmatic, empathetic leaders, or a unifying element, or some other thing to just make conflict impossible. When that happens, the current efforts will be necessary to carry out the change for lasting peace.
Classes are over. Pages upon pages to write and two relatively easy exams to prepare for. Ah, boy.