Letters from Palestine (44 page)

Today the temporary halt of rocket fire
coincided with the restoration of power to our home, at least for a
few hours, at about 5:00 p.m. My brothers went to their rooms and
played their video games, I sat on the couch and read, and my
sister went to take a nap. We tried to busy ourselves with regular
daily activities in a situation that is anything but
commonplace.

* * *

Editor’s Note: After this book went to press,
I finally did hear from Safa again. She had been traveling and was
mostly away from Gaza since we had lost touch. Now, she is back
there, writing articles again—and to me.

After meeting so many Palestinians in this
book, I hope you may want to continue to explore the rich diversity
of contemporary Palestinian life, both in the occupied Palestinian
territories—the West Bank and Gaza—and here in the United States.
If so, this concluding section of the book will give you a few
pointers as to how to proceed, and then, if you’re interested, you
can take it from there. I can guarantee that once you start looking
into some of these resources, you will find that they will quickly
lead to others, and eventually you can decide which ones to pursue.
What follows are simply some suggestions as to how to get started
and where to look.

Books

There are many fine and recently published
books that deal with various aspects of the Israeli occupation and
with contemporary life in Palestine. Below I will simply list a
half-dozen I have found particularly helpful and instructive. Most
of these books have extensive bibliographies and lists of other
resources, and you can’t go wrong with any of them.

Baltzer, Anna.
Witness in Palestine: A
Jewish American Woman in the Occupied Territories
. Boulder, CO:
Paradigm Publishers, 2007.

Christison, Kathleen and Bill.
Palestine
in Pieces: Graphic Perspectives on the Israeli Occupation
. New
York: Pluto Press, 2009.

Cook, Jonathan.
Disappearing Palestine:
Israel’s Experiments in Human Despair
. New York: Zed Books,
2008.

Makdisi, Saree.
Palestine Inside Out: An
Everyday Occupation
. New York: W.W. Norton, 2008.

Olson, Pamela.
Fast Times in
Palestine
. Seal Press, 2013.

Shehadeh, Raja.
Palestinian Walks: Forays
into a Vanishing Landscape
. New York: Scribner, 2007.

Shulman, David.
Dark Hope: Working for
Peace in Israel and Palestine
. Chicago: University of Chicago
Press, 2007.

Online Journals

There is an enormous amount of journalistic
material now available on the Internet and in the print media that
provides extensive and up-to-date coverage of all aspects of
Palestinian life. And of course, not just online journals, but
blogs galore and other forms of commentary and analysis. Here, I
will only list a few that I have found very worthwhile, but an
additional list of such resources will be found below at the
particular website I will mention.

The Palestinian Chronicle:
www.palestinianchronicle.com

Palestinian Think Tank:
www.palestinethinktank.com

Palestine Today!
www.theheadlines.org

The Washington Report on Middle East
Affairs:
www.wrmea.com
(also a print
magazine, available by subscription)

Electronic Intifada:
www.electronicintifada.net

Anna in the Middle East:
www.annainthemiddleeast.com

Mondoweiss:
www.mondoweiss.net

Documentaries

When Anna and I were first becoming
interested in Palestine, we found it extremely helpful to view as
many documentaries as possible, and during those first few months,
we watched more than a dozen of them and have seen at least a dozen
more since then. I won’t take the space here to list the specific
documentaries we found particularly instructive, but just refer you
to a single source, the Palestinian Online Store,
www.palestinianonlinestore.com/films. It has an extensive
collection of these documentaries (and other resources) that you
can peruse for yourself and then order those you might like to
see.

General Resources

For an additional list of books, websites,
films, and other resources, see Birthright Unplugged at
www.birthrightplugged.org/resources
.

Groups and Organizations

There are many groups and organizations
throughout the United States that are concerned with Palestinian
affairs, including the occupation. Many of these groups and
organizations of course are activist-oriented, but they also
provide a wonderful opportunity to meet and interact with
Palestinian people as well as others who are deeply knowledgeable
about life in Palestine. If you would like to continue your
explorations and understanding of the Palestinian experience in a
more personal and interactive way, such groups and organizations
offer some of the best opportunities.

Again, there are too many groups and
organizations to list here, but to get started, I recommend you get
in touch with the large umbrella group, the U.S. Campaign to End
the Occupation (www.endtheoccupation.org) which provides an
extensive listing of such groups in the United States. If for any
reason, you can’t find an appropriate group near you, Anna Baltzer
has advised me that you can write her at [email protected],
and she will do her best to help you find one.

Going to Palestine

If you find that you have become really
engrossed with the life and circumstances of present-day
Palestinians, the very best thing you can do is to go to the West
Bank (currently, it is virtually impossible for Americans to get
into Gaza, which is still under a tight blockade, as we have seen)
and see conditions there for yourself. I know that for Anna and me,
and I think most people would agree, no amount of reading, watching
documentaries, and following news reports can substitute for the
actual experience of spending time in Palestine itself so as to
observe conditions there and to meet and talk with Palestinians
themselves. Speaking just for Anna and myself, our time in
Palestine, limited as it was, proved to be invaluable. I can’t urge
a trip there enough for anyone who has come to have a real interest
in Palestine and its people.

Fortunately, there are many delegations that
travel regularly to Palestine, and you can easily find a list of
them on the End the Occupation website mentioned earlier. From my
personal experience, I can certainly recommend the group that Anna
and I travelled with, Interfaith Peace-Builders
(http://www.ifpb.org/delegations/upcoming.html). They orchestrated
a first-rate tour for us, with expert leaders, that was excellent
in every way.

More resources can be found on the Visit
Palestine page on the website of Pamela Olson, author of the
award-winning memoir
Fast Times in Palestine
:
www.pamolson.org/visitpal.htm

Kenneth Ring
, PhD, is professor
emeritus of psychology at the University of Connecticut, cofounder
of the International Association for Near-Death Studies (IANDS),
and a world-renowned expert on near-death experiences, a subject on
which he has published five books. Letters from Palestine is his
first book on Palestinian issues, though he has published articles
on contemporary events in Palestine.

Ghassan Abdullah
studied mathematics
and computing in England and now lives in Ramallah. He has also
lived in Syria, Lebanon, Italy, and Jordan, where he was president
of the Jordan Computer Society before moving to Palestine in 1994.
Once in Ramallah, Ghassan worked at Birzeit University for nearly a
decade. A former editor of computer and science journals, he is
currently active in several Palestinian civil society NGOs
concerned with heritage issues, human rights, development, and the
arts.