open and closed

Nablus is open. The constricting ring of checkpoints that has squeezed the city since the beginning of the Second Intifada has finally been relaxed, as part of the carrot-and-stick policy Israel has applied to the West Bank and Gaza. It is the first time in many years IFPB has been able to bring a delegation here.

Nablus was a center of resistance in the early 2000s, and was hit frequently and hard by the Israeli army. There are tales of long curfews, whole families killed, people bleeding to death in their homes because ambulances were denied passage. The walls of the oft-besieged Old City are dotted with martyr posters, and bullet holes.

But today, Nablus is bursting with life. Shops are open. Pedestrians pack the streets. The staff at the Yasmin Hotel enthusiastically carry our bags up the numerous stairs before we can learn that they're taking the stairs because the electricity is off. It's as if everyone is grabbing as much life as they can after years of being under various degrees of siege.

That night in the hotel many of us are hanging out in the lobby. The hotel staff are watching Arabic music videos and all of a sudden, despite the incredible heat, some of them start dancing dabke, Palestinian folk dance. Then they are teaching us the steps. There are many quick changes of weight and most of us are horrible at it, but everyone is laughing a lot. At midnight in the blazing heat in the middle of a scarred city, we are having a crazy dabke dance party.

The contrast to Hebron two days later is a shock. Hebron is unique in the West Bank in that Israeli settlers have moved right into the city center. As a consequence, Hebron is divided into two zones: H1, which experiences the "normal" conditions of the occupation, and H2, which is on military lockdown. Here for the first time we hear F-16s--a lot of them--and see soldiers on the streets--a lot of them. There are gates and checkpoints within the city, walls closing off streets for no reason other than to make life miserable for the Palestinian residents, and some of the craziest settlers in the West Bank.

Thirty seconds into our tour we're stopped by a soldier who tells our Palestinian guide Issa that he's not allowed to take us down the street on which he lives. Later a car full of settlers drives by and someone gives us the finger. And we're experiencing only a small slice of what it's like to live here. On some streets settlers have moved into the upper floors of the buildings and throw garbage, bricks, anything you can imagine down on the Palestinians in the shops below.

The desperation in Hebron is palpable. We are followed everywhere by flocks of kids begging us to buy something, a bracelet, a trinket, anything, ten shekels, five shekels. The Old City of Hebron used to be busier than Jerusalem. Now it's a ghost town. On many streets not a single shop is open. Some were closed by direct military order, but the slow grind of occupation, closure, hostile soldiers, and fanatic settlers has done its work on many more.

Nablus and Hebron are two sides of the same coin. The situation in Hebron is just a concentrated form of what's going on all over the West Bank--the relentless drive to force Palestinians out. Everyone who lives in an open area remembers what closure is like, and in the back of everyone's mind is the fear of going back to that. Nablus is only open at Israel's whim. In this way the occupation constantly pressures people to lower their expectations, to be grateful for the most minimal things: the ability to buy food, to run a business, to go to school, to walk down a street. To get people so focused on daily survival that they forget about things like self-determination and equal rights. The fact that it hasn't worked yet--not everywhere, not completely--is a testament to Palestinians' resilience.