Palestinian history lessons

As a Citizenship teacher, one of the questions I was interested in exploring as part of our exchange was how young people learn about the history of Palestine and make sense of the situation in which they live.

It quickly became apparent that this learning was not confined to classrooms. Young people live and breathe the history of Palestine. It is in the names of the villages their families were forced to leave in 1948; the keys to their homes there; the scars, losses and tales of imprisonment of friends and family members; the coloured passes that control their movements; the friends and family members, views of olive trees and the Al-Aqsa mosque that they can't visit on the other side of the wall.

Our own learning began with the revelation that the place we were staying for the weekend residential, now a youth and sports centre, had been first a British and then Israeli interrogation centre, where some of the teachers we are working with had been imprisoned and tortured by Israeli security. It continued with the powerful stories of all of the amazing people we have met this week.

Visiting refugee camps also made it very clear what 68 years of occupation means. This challenged conceptions of what a refugee is and what a refugee camp looks like. Fara and Jalazone camps were not short term structures for people to stay in before seeking safety elsewhere, but now a built up record of how long Palestinian people have been hoping and struggling to return to their own homes.

Palestinian history, culture and identity is certainly a key part of the curriculum (shockingly censored in the Jerusalem schools run by the Israeli Ministry of Education), but asking about how this is taught in schools threw up a more pressing question for us – why is it not taught in our own schools? Visit after visit, we have been welcomed with open arms as people from Britain, but also reminded of Britain’s responsibility for the occupation, with the British Mandate and Balfour Declaration giving away land that didn’t belong to Britain to people who didn’t live there.

An important part of the history of Palestine is the international community not meeting their responsibilities towards Palestinian people, turning a blind eye to flouted UN resolutions, torture in Israeli prisons, the betrayal of the Oslo agreement, illegal settlements, the racist separation wall and countless other violations of human rights. Disturbingly, we have also heard that the UN Refugee Welfare Agency has been withdrawing funding from health and education services in refugee camps – as if it is giving up on Palestinian people returning to their homeland and would rather see them ‘move on’, out of refugee camps, even out of their country to Jordan.

So little is known about the realities of the occupation of Palestine in the UK. Media reports present flashpoints in a conflict rather than an occupation that has lasted 68 years. Higher profile is given to acts of violence coming from Palestinians than the daily violence of the Israeli state. With gaping holes in the UK curriculum and misinformation in the media, twinning projects such as this one are so important for making sure that people in the UK can begin to understand what occupation means and build effective solidarity with Palestinian people in their inspiring struggle for justice.

Thank you so much to everyone we have met over the last 10 days, for sharing your stories and welcoming us into your schools and communities.

PALESTINE DAY 6 AND 7 BACK TO SCHOOL

Today is the reason we've come. Past all the context and committees, failed bureaucracy and refugee camps,  today we go back to school. Still not used to the puny two hour time difference school starts at 5.30, two hours after the mosque and half an hour since the last mosquito bite. I roll out of bed through the shower to Saladin's mosque where I'm picked up with a fellow teacher to head to our twinned school.

We're greeted by rows and rows of classes stood in excited conversation about the start of the day. A teacher fiddles with a microphone and strides before the pupils as we watch from the ramp leading down to the playground. The counting begins: wahad, tithnain, talat. Wahad, tithnain, talat. Students' arms rise and fall in confused unison and the day's exercises begin. I am reminded of a friend who once told me how it was the small differences in roads that phased them the most about new countries. School is school as pedagogy is what you make of it but a week out of the UK system isn't enough to stop me checking for behaviour strategies, safeguarding issues, and all manner of jargon that's thrown at us in our day jobs. Palestine is more laid back than the UK, there is no data meticulously poured over in staff rooms, no schemes of work to plan from and by the looks of it no marking outside of lessons, though I'm sure this changes the higher the year. Students are not rigorously checked for understanding and scaffolding and differentiation are practiced only by the minority. The result? It's inconclusive. What impression can two days anywhere give you except for fading sketches. But the teachers seem relaxed, smiling, welcoming and keen to show off their students. And from this their students can feed. Like schools the world over there are some classes which cannot sit still or focus fortunately here they are in the minority. The students are engaged and enthusiastic. They brim with inquisitive desire and questions follow us wherever we go.

We observe lessons and practices, inform the students about our pupils in London and they write letters to send back to them. They are thoughtful and focused. A rare charm.

Rolling through the desert we spring out overlooking Jordan and the dead sea. The air threatens to turn pink as the sun prepares to dip down behind the West Bank and tell us our times up. But until then we cover ourselves in mud, laugh and float on with our contraband friends - the sad fact that our Palestinian or hijabi friends would usually be turned away is emphasised by a surprised Israeli couple who ask us how we managed to get in. But we did. After our mud spa we chew up and spit out our sunflower seeds and plans and set a course south for the world's oldest city.

Jericho has been on the lips of a few history teachers since its name was whispered in the queue for the plane. The ants had brought the night with them to the beach so Jericho was just a constellation of lights. We found a veranda from which you could make out the boarders of three countries and mulled over the intricacies of our trip so far, the small tragedies which people from Abu Dis face every day, the harassment because of their race. We've all been shocked about how normalised the residents here have been, many stories of being tortured in Israeli prisons, family assassinated and only slight indicators of pain.  For many this is a part of their story and they have come to accept maltreatment as usual. The girls at the UNRWA school don't even mention the wall until asked directly, the decidedly discriminatory barrier between people who once lived side by side, and you can only feel a sadness that these students will grow up feeling separate, different and inferior from people who live 20 minutes walk from their school gate. But this is also a testament to the optimism of many, that things can change and will change and we agree that we must look optimistically on our time here and the future of the colleagues, students and people we've met.

Jericho is now miles behind us, our van rides dusty through the sand-scowered valleys as another Arab power ballad sweeps us past the ghosts of hills and the future is on our lips again. This time: Jerusalem.

It's the little things

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A community so tight that it is sufficient to give a driver the name of the area and family name.

Palestinian civilians entering an ex-interrogation centre as free people and sleepirng we are e young in the same rooms previously occupied by those who had tortured their people.

A culture where imprisonment of young people is normalised as part of the struggle, and where the estranged receives a classic heroes welcome for daring to throw stones.

A class of students learning about the benefits and uses of  trains with the full knowledge they have never seen one on their land.

A people so generous that as well as showing us around their city, they ensure we are well fed, well rested and relatively safe.

A father who witnessed his son's gun riddled body deprived of emergency medicine and then made to needlessly wait hours before being allowed to bury him.

A typical morning line up where students pray together and pledge allegiance to their country and Palestinian cause.

A small 12 year old boy orphaned before his time - yet to meet his imprisoned father, then also made to live through the imprisonment of his mother.

Students so driven to learn they are leading the learning in their classrooms having prepared all their own resources and activities.

Being shown around an interrogation centre by the very people made to kneel for days until the moment they agree to free themselves into prison with a false confession.

Women adorning themselves with beautiful clothes and make up in preparation for weddings and engagement parties.

A poster drawing attention to child marriages and the subsequent meeting of a 15 year young bride concerned about community gossip.

Relaxing on a beautiful beach on the dead Sea then finding out our hosts had attempted to go the previous year but were denied entry as Palestinians.

Prostrating at al aqsa mosque, recognising the multi tiered system that permits us to do so but has prevented others.

Knowing it's olive picking season, when we see the fruit, as well as the line up of armed soldiers on the roadside in anticipation of the farmers.

Countless cups of traditional coffee and sweetened tea served in every office and house we enter.

A boy too young to be join a trip to London, but old enough to be arrested and given a prison sentence.

Palestinian children in the occupied territory of East Jerusalem studying a censored curriculum that denies them basic access to their history, geography and citizenship.

Passing three layers of armed soldiers before entering al aqsa mosque for asr, humbled by the magnificence of a space built for peaceful worship yet acknowledging how empty this mosque has now become.

The strong women of Palestine

Finding an affinity across cultures with people is challenging in most contexts and you look for similarities to prompt conversation, to feel comfortable together. You hope to connect in deeper and more significant ways.

I didn't expect that on a trip which focuses on setting up international links in education (an opportunity to discuss pedagogy, swap resources and find ways to educate young people across boarders about lives which are wholly different to their own) that I would confront a depiction of reality that would challenge my perceptions of how people can suffer the limits of an occupation - whether of territory or over the mind and body- with a dignity and strength that is overwhelmingly inspiring.

The belief that everyone is deserving of equal human rights is at the root of our finding ourselves thousands of miles from home, working and exploring from dawn until dusk. This trip would be exhausting and without reprieve if it was not for the tireless work of the strong, resourceful and positively feisty women who surround us with food, drink and the warmest company.

Their personalities shine through, pervade the awkward silences and dominate the masculine reticence to discuss anything beyond politics and polite intrigue into our differing family structures. They are unafraid of the language barrier: whether continuing in Arabic for three sentences after it has become clear that the content is impossibly obscured from the recipient or joyfully experimenting and laughing raucously when we've all tried tongue twisters across English and Arabic. 

Since arriving in Palestine it is not the women's bravery and ease in social situations or their amazing ability to host and attend to all the real and imagined needs of guests without a flicker of surprise that has struck me. It is that they have managed to forge for themselves an existence that in its familial centric boarders can be both fruitful and fun. 

I have laughed, listened and learnt from their stories and experiences: tales of child marriages (which are not uncommon), repeated difficulties with birthing, limitations in education with a lack of physical education and single sex classrooms, perceiving latent and unspoken violence . . . along side close-knit and female orientated celebrations which come in all forms - simply shopping and dressing yourself, your house or your friends in opulent and luxurious looking decoration, organising huge and raucous pre-wedding waxing rituals in which dancing is compulsory (as well as the many excuses for private and public solely female attended parties).

I know that I came here concerned about the human rights abuses that take place in a country which has been both condemned and forgotten by the global community and I will take away with me the sense that people in Britain have more to learn about and from Palestine than just the national crisis of identity. That there is a far more complex, gendered and difficult problem within communities and the education system here is clear. It is the comprehension of and acceptance of divisions and barriers that will help us come closer together as nations and people and for me the women and girls I have met in Palestine will be the driving force behind my desire to create stronger links across our cultures and schools.

Starting the residential

Beautiful to wake up to soft sun and friendly faces today, and we did so much this morning. Explored the grounds and looked at the olives and the area. Ate a big breakfast and began our workshops.  Started to share and learn and collect questions...so far, so very good

Separation Wall at Abu Dis

Thanks for your welcome

A really big thanks to our teacher friends for their great welcome to their homes and for the very delicious food - what a lot of effort but it was so much appreciated! Yesterday Rudaina and family and today Kefah and family.  This picture was after an unforgettable feast!

PALESTINE DAY 5 BACK TO SCHOOL

Saladin's minaret wakes us up at 4 to pray and the mosquitoes follow not long after to berate us for staying in bed. We've grown sluggish in the heat around Jerusalem but fresh falafel and a walk through down town Abu Dis wakes us out of our dreams. Today we have the pleasure of tours around the towns schools,  our group heads to Abu Dis Girls School,  Abu Dis Boys School,  the Nehru School (all state run single sex establishments) and the Arab Institute (a boys private school).

We wait in the headmistress' office of Abu Dis Girls School for the French teacher who excuses her perfect English before translating her stern director's greetings. We hear the same forgettable facts: population, subjects studied, curriculum, pathways, achievements of the students whilst we all pine to see some teaching. We are not disappointed. As we slip in and out of classrooms, down corridors, up staircases we see eyes widen in shock at the rare sight of international visitors, lips mouth muddled greetings in varied languages, guessing our nationality. The lessons we do disturb are a joy to see as a teacher. Polite, engaged students who are excited to greet visitors but also keen to continue their lessons and show their teacher that they are on task and hard working, attentive students. Before our jealousy had time to settle we were whisked into computer labs and libraries as well as into one of our host's biology lab, full of what can only be described as taxidermy misdemeanours. Our visit was epitomised by our visit to the outside canteen furnished with coloured stools made out of tyres and children surrounding their English teacher singing gleefully in all tones and shrieking like some sequel to the sound of music as we approached. The English teacher smiles proudly as she greets us as the song comes to an end. We leave full of optimism about teaching in the shadow of the wall.

Abu Dis Boys is another world. We begin our tour in their 5th Grade, 11 year old stare our at us, ask our names and show off their knowledge of ordinal numbers. Their command of English is impressive and the class seems positive and enthusiastic. As we progress down the corridor and up the years the class sizes increase and the behaviour becomes wild. By the end of the corridor we are at the 9th Grade. 50 boys in a room, or are meant to be. Some wander the halls, some sneak out of the front gate. Order is nowhere to be seen. It's sad to see the difference in education for the boys and we leave feeling deflated.

We stroll over to the the Arab Institute, a private boys school with accommodation for orphans and absent (often imprisoned) parents. We meet the headmaster and an 11year old boy with both his parents in jail before meeting some of the students who have prepared a presentation about the various Palestinian Ids. The boys here are so articulate and passionate that the Abu Dis Boys School has fallen out of our thoughts. It seems like it's fallen out of the thoughts of the educational authority as well.

After our lunch at Al-Quds University we plan twinning links with our Palestinian colleagues through broken English and cod Arabic. We hear about broken promises and ignored letters and make assurances that we will be better. Over dinner phones buzz with pictures and plans and we settle in to long conversations and thoughts for the future.

Playground at the Arab Institute

Sweet boys (said the teachers who gave them flowers) and a tear gas cannister (a new type we were told) that the Israeli army shot into ye playground a few days before.

Sebastia...

A long day today but that didn't stop us accepting the invitation by Abu Yasser to breakfast in Sebastia... and so glad we did. A memorable breakfast with everything tasty and good, and then a look at the Roman ruins.

Tom was the most excited! Or maybe I thought that he must be as he's a classicist.  But all of us loved being there and in the dreamy Palestinian hills in the autumn sunshine.

And then confronted with the current occupation reality: settlements. GROWING. EVERYWHERE.

PALESTINE DAY 3 CONTEXT

The days are melting into each other in the levantine sun. As we roll through another valley of olive trees and past another armed checkpoint to another town covered in posters of murdered youths - some with guns, some without - the normalisation of violence begins to sink in.

For us this is a shock. For our guides this is their life. We meet a man working for the Educational Authority in the Jalasa refugee camp whose son was shot dead by Israeli soldiers in Nablis whilst working two years ago. Every day a new story of violence and death. Yet the men in the refugee camp do not call for blood, but understanding and peace. They want their voices heard, voices frustrated by consecutive United Nations resolutions which have been ignored (181 - the partition of the two states in 1948 - and 302 - that UNRWA was to continue to help the Palestinian people until they had returned home or their issues had been settled - to name the two stuck in my mind).

We arrived in Anata late. Today was also the first time we have seen the wall. It's shocking. A 20 foot high wall pressed right up against Palestinian towns villages and refugee camps whilst on the other side spacious, green settlements flourish. The sheer display of inequality would be enough to shock most but the fact that these settlements flagrantly contravene the Oslo agreement and international law is baffling. Here is a barrier put up to allow the Israeli government divide the Palestinian people and to cut up the land which they are allowed to live on. It makes it more difficult to visit relatives who live in the different areas (A, B and C) and even more so Palestinians with their different coloured IDs (blue - Jerusalem: you can travel anywhere in Israel or the West Bank; green - West Bank only; orange - Gaza Strip only) who can be cut off from travelling to see friends and families.

And this is where children are brought up. Inside a cage where you are a second class citizen from birth. No opportunity to contact or even meet with your neighbouring counterparts. As we go to sleep after a long day of meetings, tours and discussions and we hear what may have been a few bullets in the background you can't help but feel helpless. What can you do when a wall stands so firm against any positive building of relationships? What happens if that's our guide's son?

A moment to reflect

Staring into the glowing screen of my phone at 1am and writing my first blog post of the trip, and indeed first ever blog post, I pause, repeatedly struggling to find the words. 

It's partially exhaustion from a busy schedule in the last three days: the meeting of so many incredible people who overwhelm with their generosity and open-hearted conversation, the climbing around and over Roman ruins for an hour too long, the exploring of the British-turned-Israeli-prison-turned-residency building for the CADFA team and the learning about its complex and disturbing histories, the three hour long lessons on the intricacies of life in Palestine over the last one hundred and fifty years, the sharing of dorms with brilliant new people and wanting to know them better but also needing to sleep, the hurried eating of yogurt with breads, rice dishes, hummus and the plethora of sugary treats before returning to presentations simultaneously in English and Arabic on our variable school lives, and those long drawn out and very nerdy teacher themed games on the bus. . .

But actually I think it's the mental exhaustion of trying to digest and fathom the lives of the Palestinian adults and children that I have met that gives me pause. I know that somewhere the stories I have heard might be reflected in print and that I could look up the historical facts of the growing Israeli dominance over Palestine and decipher just how the population of Palestinians in the West Bank has forcibly dwindled into patchy blots of green, annexed and broken by red boils across the map. But I could not recreate the experience of seeing the passion in people's eyes for a country they once fully occupied and called their home.

A place they determine to still call home, even when they are generations apart from touching soil in the township or village their ancestors lived in.

I could not fathom a life without freedom and one with enforced borders. That is, until the 3 metre, miles long wall stretched out in front of me, rude in its disruption of an otherwise seamless landscape and insensitive of the peoples it divides. 

Tomorrow we are visiting the schools in the local area of Abu Dis and I hope to see how, as with their general positivity and powerful rhetoric of hope, the teachers and students here continue to battle with and overcome the many problems and injustices they are facing.

مدير المدرسه عدنان حسين نرحب بالمعلمين من المملكه المتحده .طلاب فرحون بمدرسه تم تجديدها بالقريب من الساويه

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Waiting waiting

When we eventually got through the airport at Tel Aviv, three hours had passed and our electronic slips wouldn't open the exit gates. "Why were you so long? " asked the man at the gate. "You'd better ask them that," we said, referring to the security. We don't know what they had in their mind. During the three hours, we'd seen some people denied entry and others had waited 6 hours; we'd seen one young woman really stressed by being on her own, interviewed for ages; we'd been shouted at in an unnecessary way by security; and we'd been asked to promise we wouldn't be going to any demonstrations (as we aren't,  that bit's easy).  Then suddenly the passports came back - just after we took this picture - and we met our bus and set off into the dark and into Palestine.

Amazing work going on

Today teachers from the UK and Palestine are comparing their work in their countries (after lots of presentations over 2 days). Amazing stuff going on, so interesting... How do you manage without many computers... Talking to the kids about meeting soldiers in the street... How do we plan our lessons? ... How do children cope with the arrests of their classmates? ... Real excitement in the air... What a brilliant group of people, sure they're all great teachers (lucky students). Looking forward to the work on school twinning.

PALESTINE DAY 1

I'm writing this to you from a bent road in the back of a van taking us to Nablis. The man in the front is our leader and self proclaimed captain of Palestinian Football - but we're still to get to the bottom of that one and I'm sure my pigeon Arabic is to blame. 

It's been a long 48 hours. Buses, taxis, planes and shoes. (oh and detention benches but more on that later). Turbulence turns to motorway to unmanaged road, road which reinvigorated a bug inside one if us who is still investigating the intricacies of British mandate plumbing. (or maybe Israeli - we haven't been given the full history of our current residence). As we wind through the shaky hills out of Far'a green and yellow number plates flash past, some with kids hanging out of the windows, staring  out of thick glasses, others dodging curbside smokers outside glowing minarets. Despite the long start to our trip the car is buzzing. There is a definite relief in the air. Fourteen teachers, blowing out the double ended candles of a long half term and setting off to the occupied territories of Palestine,  intent on exchanging experiences and resources, remembering their initial meeting at the airport, green and clueless as to what the following days would have in store.

It sounds foolish, but like many of my generation I'm ignorant when it comes to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Apart from an old professor with a map showing the transition from the region in 1917 to 1993 my knowledge has been through reports and sporadic bouts with Wikipedia. And what does that really bring anyway. Facts can often be so dehumanising, reducing human loss to statistics, which we initially gasp at but quickly forget.  No,  today we had the hard hitting,  knife turning reality of life as a teacher in Palestine. In the UK we talk so much about the safety and welfare of students. We talk about how traumatic home lives can hinder a student's education. How would we act if our students were imprisoned for three months? Or had to miss school because they'd been shot in the legs for approaching a wall built through the middle of their town?

The stories become more and more traumatic as the day continues and the three hours spent held in a detention room whilst some of our group's passports were taken started to make more sense. We were here by the authority of the British council but today that means very little. Our leader can be aggressively harassed and our Muslim colleagues can be intimidated and interrogated whilst other people all around us  because of their ethnic or cultural backgrounds are deported through fear. Fear of a variety of things, but fear none the less. It is so sad to see.  Even more so because as soon as we enter Tel Asia airport a kindly enployee comes to help us find our bags. Probably unaware of our detention and uncaring about out race,  nationality or intentions but a true ray of hope.

Below us Nablis spreads out, fairylit in orange and blue. Tobacco smoke flows back and the night loses the formality of the day.

Tomorrow we will present our schools, exchanging ideas about pedagogy, behaviour and special needs teaching as well as being shown around our accommodation, a former detention centre used by British and then Israeli troops for interrogation and torture. 

But tonight we exchange stories about families, students and practise our various languages with a cup or shai or an ice cream cocktail as the fairy lights below us glow.

Travelling east

Talking, sleeping, drinking tea, listening to music, reading... and wondering what this exciting visit is going to be like.

Fara' Camp

We were welcomed by the public affairs committee of the refugee camp next to the place where we're staying.

They welcomed us to the camp and told us that people living here came from 84 different villages in the part of Palestine now called Israel and that the children are all aware of the places their families were from and answer the questions "Where are you from?" with the name of that village or town of origin.

They impressed upon us the British responsibility for the Nakba disaster that befell Palestine, and as it turned out that there were people in the room who hadn't heard of the Balfour Declaration, they explained how the British government had promised a land that wasn't theirs to a people who didn't live in it, and showed that this promise had been a major a influence on the process of Palestinian disposession, from which they are still suffering.

They said that UK teachers have a special responsibility to take their message back to people in Britain and work to make sure (1) that people know about the impact of the Balfour Declaration, (2) that our government doesn't keep taking the wrong position in the UN Security Council,  (3) make sure that people know that the Palestinian people love peace and have the right to resist the occupation and (4) that the UK government who had started the problem should join other countries in recognising a Palestinian state.

A political argument ensued in Arabic but the UK teachers were particularly impressed by the input of a local headmistress who said very strongly that "education is our only weapon". She emphasised that, despite high graduate unemployment, young people from the  amp work very hard for a good grade in school, a place at university and even for higher degrees.

زيارة الرد من بريطانيا الى فلسطين تشرين أول 2016

يصل اليوم الى فلسطين ضمن مشروع معلون في مهمة الذي تنظمة جمعية صداقة كامدن أبوديس ودار الصداقة للتبادل الشبابي في أبوديس وفد مكون من 15 معلم ومعلمة من مدارس بريطانيا للاقامة والعمل مع معلمي مدارس ابوديس والتوأمات الشريكة في الضفة الغربية حيث من المقرر ان تصل المجموعة الزائرة الى مركز الشهيد صلاح خلف في الفارعة باستضافة كريمة من المجلس الأعلى للشباب والرياضة حتى صباح الأحد القادم ليعودوا بعد ذلك للعمل مع مدارس ابوديس في نهاية الزيارة سيعقد مؤتمر للتوأمة بين المدارس البريطانية الفلسطينية في قاعة مدرسة إناث أبوديس الدعوة مفتوحة لكل المهتمين بالعمل المشترك بين الطرفين
الصورة من مطار لوتن للمجموعة البريطانية قبيل مغادرتهم الى فلسطين اليوم صباحاً

On the way!!

We'll soon have lots to tell you. Look out for the blog. We'll try and keep it up to date. We know there are lots of excited people and also school students waiting to hear! Special thoughts with Sarah, Tom and Raf who couldn't come ... hope you're well and all's well... #cadfa #teachersinaction 🛫

Twinning club at Dar Assadaqa

Nice to see these photos of the twinning club at Dar Assadaqa today!