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Moments of respite. Seven, maybe eight water tankers manage to fill up at the ‘Auja stream toward sunset. We are there to greet them. For once, no settlers come to ruin things.
Continue readingAugust 9-10, 2024 Ras al-‘Ain. Text: David Shulman
West Bank
July 19, 2024 Ras al-‘Ain. Text and photographs David Shulman
The Bitter Landscapes of Palestine, by Margaret Olin and David Shulman is now available through Intellect Books, Great Britain, or The University of Chicago Press, USA, or any of the usual places, like Amazon. Perhaps your local bookstore carries it.
The Mini-War of the Water continues apace.
It’s hot in Ras al-‘Ain, in more ways than one. It’s become a flash point. The settlers are fully focused on driving the shepherd families of this village out of their homes and fields. And it’s high summer. Nights are stifling in the tent where we sleep, though the flaps are open to the stars and the distant lights across the river, in Jordan. At 4 AM there’s a cool breeze, a tease; as soon as the sun rises, at around 6, the temperature hits 40 degrees Centigrade; by mid-morning, it’s somewhere between 45 and 50. Sometimes a strong wind blows boiling dust over everything and everyone—our tent, the sheep in their pens, the few vehicles parked on the gravel paths, the shacks of tin or asbestos, the scraggly trees. At first you don’t notice how thirsty you are. Then it hits you and won’t go away, no matter how much you drink. I feel the thirst, first, in my eyes, every minute (even drier than usual). And then there’s the other kind of thirst, in the heart.
Continue readingJune 17, 2024 Ras al-‘Ain and Mu‘arrajat, text and most photographs by David Shulman
Festive days in Palestine: ‘Id al-Adha, a time for families, feasts, picnics, prayers. The call to prayer, the azan, ends with a solemn, loving formula proper to these days: labbayka allahumma, “We are yours to serve, Lord. There is no other.” At Ras al-‘Ain, toward evening: dozens of cars, young men splashing in the fresh, cold stream, small circles smoking narghilehs in the shade, picnics; and the tankers from the village filling up with water.
Continue readingAn Only Kid: March 20-22, 2024, Mu‘arrajat, Magha’ir ad-Dir. Photographs, text: Margaret Olin
Before Pesach most years, I revise the Haggadah I began to compile decades ago. I gather material from traditional sources as well as from more recent alternative Haggadot created with various agendas in mind – political, ecological; or from commentary, unrelated literature, and remarks of friends and colleagues relevant to our family or to whomever we might be hosting at our seder table that year. I insert images that I find or create. Some years ago, I placed on the back cover of my Haggadah a photograph of a goat I met in the Jordan Valley, to recall the traditional song Had Gadya, an only kid, sung toward the end of the seder. It begins with the verse “an only ,kid, an only kid, my father bought for two zuzzim, and continues with a litany of woe, as the goat is eaten by a cat, that is then bitten by a dog, and, after a series of beatings and burnings and slaughter by various agents, including objects and living creatures animal and human, the song ends with retribution by the angel of death, who in turn succumbs to the Holy One, blessed be He, thus ending the carnage on a peaceful note, none of the predators left standing, like the end of a bloody Elizabethan play.
Continue readingMu‘arrajat, March 13, 2024, David Shulman
November 24, 2023 Wadi Jḥeish. Text: David Shulman, Photographs: Margaret Olin and David Shulman
Toward sunset we arrive, Yigal, Koby, and I. It’s my first time in Wadi Jḥeish (probably “Valley of the Mules”): a tiny hamlet of some 60 souls, all part of the large Nawaja‘ family that we know from nearby Susiya. Houses of cement blocks and stucco with flat roofs of aluminum and plastic. A trellis of dry grapevines. Potted plants and small garden plots of desert flowers. Rock underfoot. Two tall water tanks behind the houses, higher up the hill. A sheep pen. A few trees, including a small olive grove. Many children. From every spot you stand or sit, a wide-open stretch of the brown, stone-ripe hills. They’ve never been more ravishing. The village has changed since Peg saw it in 2018, when it was mostly tents; it’s more solid now, but no less vulnerable. Someone has drawn and painted red and white hearts, lots of them, on both sides of the door to the kitchen and sitting room, where we are to sleep. There’s also an inscription: baytkum ‘āmir bi’l-afrāḥ, May your house be filled with celebrations.
Continue readingSusiya, November 2-3, 2023. Text by David Shulman, photographs by Margaret Olin and David Shulman
Ein Rashash, September 4, 2023. text: David Shulman
avant-propos: Next year Intellect Press will publish The Bitter Landscapes of Palestine, a book of photographs and texts inspired by our work on this blog. Please consider donating to our kickstarter campaign to raise funds for the book. The campaign ends September 27. You can see our video, read our story and donate at this link. NB: the first, modest goal has now (Sept. 9) been met; donations are still very welcome and much appreciated.
Like so many Palestinian villages in the central West Bank, between Ramallah and Jericho, Ein Rashash is hanging by a thread in the perilous space between life and death. A massive program of ethnic cleansing is taking place before our eyes. Israeli settlers, religious in some perverted sense of the word, have perfected very effective methods to reach their goal. Readers of this blog are familiar with some of them.
Continue readingSeptember 1, 2023, Al-‘Auja: Text by David Shulman
avant-propos: Next year Intellect Press will publish The Bitter Landscapes of Palestine, a book of photographs and texts inspired by our work on this blog. Please consider donating to our kickstarter campaign to raise funds for the book. The campaign ends September 27. You can see our video, read our story and donate at this link.
‘Ein Samiya, Al Baqa’a‘, Wadi a-Siq, July 19, 2023. Text and photographs: Margaret Olin
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Two days ago occupation forces demolished the school in ‘Ein Samiya.
The school was the only building left standing in May when the villagers packed up and fled. In one of our posts, David Shulman related how, after months of terrorism by Jewish settlers, the occupation forces dealt the final blow by handing over a whole flock of sheep to settlers. I had not seen `Ein Samiya, so in July, when I came to Jerusalem, I asked activist Arik Ascherman, director of the NGO Torat Tzedek, to take me there. He readily agreed. Now feels like the right moment to post these pictures.
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