The Israel I know, knew!

Having worked (volunteered) in Israel for nearly a year (3 visits over 3 years) (2006-2008) the news about violence is Gaza is deeply disturbing.

Swati and me volunteered for Play for Peace and lived in #Eilaboun, a predominantly Christian Arab village in Galilee, North Israel.

Here are few things I like to share, 

We had no clue before stepping in Eilaboun that 20% of Israel population is #Arab (Muslim, Christian, Druz, Bedouins). The percentage of Arab population was 50% or more when Israel came into existence in 1947. These are not Palestians living in #Gaza or #Ramallah.

These are people who hold Israeli Passport / Nationality, in a country that calls itself, "Jewish and Democratic state". One can imagine how complex it must be for the Israeli Arab community to be Israeli Citizen and to be a Palestinian ethnically at the same time.

During our time we worked with children, adolescents, youth and adults running practice peace session, training facilitators.

We worked with Arab and Jewish communities extensively.

While doing a training with principals of schools, one of the principal took us to the side and asked us about one of the activity, (an action song - making melodies in my heart) and with great concerned asked us, haven't any one objected to this song! Seeing our blank faces she shared that it is a prayer, one of the line of the song was, 'to the king of kings'! Obviously, come to think of it!

In some of the programs where we got Arab and Jewish young people together it was the first time for the young people to interact with each other. There village sometimes were as close as 2 kms.

We were able to go to Ramallah once to do a teacher training for a Quaker school.

We also visited Nave Shalom / Wā?at as-Salām (Oasis for Peace), a rare community where both Arab and Jewish families stay together.

We often saw young people in Army Uniform with guns (the youth have compulsory army service after grade 12 for 2 years) hanging around bus stops going for their duties, joking, laughing.

We heard that government had to make rules to ensure their uniforms are not low waist as the trend was!

We often visited Jerusalem and the old city and visited the holy sites of Judaism (the Wailing Wall), Islam (Dome of the Rock /Qubbat al-?akhrah) and Christianity (burial site of Christ) that are short walking distance from each other.

This part of the city also has a big market where you can buy interesting T-Shirts, ("IDF - My job is so secret that even I don't know what I am doing). Once I travelled back with 3 PET Bottles of soft drink filled with freshly pressed Olive Oil, It lasted us for 2 years.

Our friend and host dropped us some distance from 'the wall' as it is not advisable for him from where we crossed over to Ramallha for 3 days.

From the Isralie side the wall is just the wall, concrete blocks, dividing lines. As we crossed over to the occupied territory, the wall acquired a life, full of graffiti. We even saw a Gandhi drawn there.

We also discovered the diversity within the Jewish community, ethnic, Geo-political, religious! Russian Jews, Jews from Arab, African Continent (Mizrahim), Jews from Europe(Ashkenazi)., from Latin America. Jews, Orthodox Jews, Ultra Orthodox. Even the followers of Islam had diversity, Bedouin, Druz, Religious Muslims and Muslims.

We also immensely enjoyed Pita, Humus, Arabic Pizza( using Zathar), Falafel, Tahini, Argila(sort of Hukka), Olives. 

One of the major program we did involved getting Arab and Jewish children to come together and do olive picking.

Once while visiting a Jewish family, our host profusely apologized to us for the nuisance Israeli tourist (young people) create while visiting India. She had heard stories that we had not heard till that time.

In my last visit in 2008, I had just finished a trip to Afghanistan and went to Israel. The visa of Afghanistan was just opposite side of the Israel Visa. The young security office wanted to know what I do, he asked me to explain what is Play for Peace . I asked him for his hand (not like that) and played 'GOTCHA' (finger catch, if you please), and got through smoothly!

For more stories of our time in Israel, please visit https://pfpisrael.blogspot.com/