Letters from the Field

August 2007

Dear Friends,

Shalom, Salaam, Peace be to you! We recently returned from Israel and Palestine and wanted to share some of our experiences.

For two weeks in July, Juliet Spohn Twomey, associate director of La Casa de Maria and Capacitar board member, and I offered six Capacitar workshops to over 180 women and men in Nazareth and Kiryat Shmona, Israel; and in Jenin, Ramallah and Barta'a, West Bank, Palestine. Both Juliet and I had visited this region years ago as pilgrims and members of delegations, so the changes for us were very dramatic.  The Middle East is complex on all levels-religious, political, cultural, sociological-so I will limit this letter from the field to sharing reflections through the eyes of people with whom we worked and shared life. 

We were invited to offer our first Capacitar workshops in the Middle East by Women in the Center, a group based in Nazareth, that was started by six women after the second Lebanon war last summer. Feeling helpless and voiceless as women as they faced the bombings and violence, they joined together to provide a place where women desiring peace and healing could claim their voices, be heard and empowered. The mission of Women in the Center is to build bridges of understanding by bringing together women of diverse backgrounds-Israeli Jews and Arabs, Christians, Palestinians, Muslims, Druze and the different cultures of the region. The Center is housed atop the hills of Nazareth in the Grand New Hotel, recently reopened by the Arab owners. Because of the violence and economic problems of the recent past, the hotel had been closed for four years.  The Israeli board of tourism steered pilgrims away from staying in Nazareth, a city with a predominantly Arab population. So when Wisam, the owner of the hotel, reopened and heard about the project of Women in the Center, he welcomed them with gracious Arab hospitality, and gave the group a lovely large room alongside his restaurant and patio where they could offer workshops and gather people for meetings and events. A few weeks before our visit, Wisam, in another act of generosity and compassion, brought to his hotel a busload of Israeli families from Sderot, the town in the Negev that had been bombed by missiles from Gaza. He invited the families at his own expense for a weekend respite in Nazareth. He asked other friends to help as well, by bringing gifts and food, taking the families on a tour of Nazareth, and by this hospitality and goodwill, showed the Israelis that Arabs don't have to be their enemies.

Our connection with Women in the Center began in January of this year at La Casa de Maria in Santa Barbara where the women participated in an interchange with Beyond Words and Women's Interfaith Peace Initiative. As part of the program the women experienced a one-day Capacitar workshop and were very enthused by the impact of the work.  They felt that the practices and methods would be very helpful for people in Israel and Palestine and they wanted to learn more. So emails flew back and forth during six months of planning, until Juliet and I finally arrived in mid July and were warmly greeted by Miri in Tel Aviv airport. Juliet and I thought it was significant that we started our first Capacitar workshops in Nazareth, a town we grew to love. Juliet is a member of the Immaculate Heart Community, dedicated to Mary of Nazareth, and is also associate director of La Casa de Maria Retreat Center, literally the “House of Mary”.  I was a Sister of the Presentation of Mary for some years and am currently an associate member.  So we truly felt Mary's presence blessing our Capacitar beginnings in Nazareth. Part of the time we were guests of Wisam and stayed in his Grand New Hotel, and on other days we stayed with Rina and her Jewish family on Kibbutz Nir David; with Sylvia, a Christian Arab woman in Nazareth; and with Lara and her son in the beautiful town Rosh Pina in the Northern Galilee.  Our two weeks were nonstop with visits to special places of pilgrimage in Nazareth, Mount Tabor, Cana, the Sea of Galilee, Migdal (the home of Mary Magdalene on her feastday), Capernaum and Jerusalem. And we led workshops in Nazareth, Kiryat Shmona near the Lebanese border, and on the West Bank in Ramallah, Jenin and Barta'a.  For the workshops our Capacitar Emergency Kit of basic practices had been translated by members of Women in the Center: to Arabic by Asmahan Mansur, and to Hebrew by Aura Hammer.  Asmahan, Aura, and Sylvia Margia also served as our interpreters in Arabic and Hebrew for the workshops.  Participants ranged from psychologists, social workers, teachers, health professionals, and adolescent girl leaders from Creativity for Peace (a program of interchange between Palestinian and Israeli teens), to Palestinian childcare workers, grassroots leaders and women in sewing and craft cooperatives on the West Bank.

From the moment we stepped foot in the region we enjoyed the warm generous hospitality of the people everywhere.  And we also observed the challenges and felt the stressful, often traumatic energy, that Israelis and Palestinians face daily. There are many excellent books, films and resources describing the Israeli/Palestinian conflict over the last hundred years.  My comments will focus specifically on several issues that continued to run through our discussions with individuals and groups: namely, living with ongoing trauma and violence; checkpoints; the wall; and the draft of Israeli youth.

Living in the Midst of Trauma and Violence--CTSD
As we drove to the Mashabim Trauma Center in Kiryat Shmona for our workshop with psychologists, Aura pointed out to us the charred trees, the shells of buildings and the places destroyed last summer during the second Lebanon war when bombs, the Katyushas, fell daily for a month. We later found out that the local people were waiting again this summer for more bombs from Lebanon.  Kiryat Shmona, with a population of about 22,000 people, is very close to the Lebanese border and a sitting target for Hezbollah attacks.  The center currently serves 286 traumatized patients, a 12-fold increase in clients since the war.  As we started our workshop, Dr. Muli Lahad, founder and director of Mashabim, asked if he could share with his staff and colleagues some recent trauma research done with the local population.  The new study shows that one-third of the residents of communities that were bombarded in the second Lebanon war are suffering from moderate to severe posttraumatic stress.  The population in the North discovered they had no one to depend on: the government was not there, the local authorities were disintegrating and the army did not function as planned.  And at the moment 90% of the people studied do not believe the situation will get better. Dr. Muli's staff reported a high level of exhaustion from dealing with this ongoing stress and trauma.  So there was great interest in the Capacitar practices, especially for use for self care among the psychologists and social workers.

As we worked with this fine group of dedicated men and women who give untiring service to Israelis and Arabs affected by the violence, I reflected on the new concept appearing in the literature: CTSD-Continuing Traumatic Stress Disorder, as different from PTSD-Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.  With CTSD the violence, stress and fear are ongoing, and the person doesn't have the opportunity to leave behind the trauma and move into healing and recovery.  One author described the CTSD suffered by Palestinians living in the West Bank. Daily these people face checkpoints, the presence of the Israeli military on their lands, shortages of food and water, very limited access to medical services, unemployment or very limited job opportunities, great difficulty in moving from one place to another, body searches, harassment and humiliation.  And CTSD is also a condition of many Israelis as they await the next suicide bomber or act of violence in their towns.

The Wall
One of the looming presences that has become a source of great contention and controversy is the wall-the Israeli West Bank barrier.  In many ways the wall reminded me of our own great barrier wall along the US border with Mexico.  Someone along the way quipped that it was most likely designed by the same firm. The barrier is an ugly structure made up of a network of fences, vehicle-barrier trenches with nearly 200 feet of exclusion areas, and sections of 25-foot high concrete walls. The wall has been built mainly on Palestinian lands, along the 1949 Armistice line, the “Green Line” between Israel and Jordan that now demarcates the West Bank.  In many places, villages like Barta'a where we offered our first workshop, were cut in half by the wall, with orchards, homes and productive farmlands taken over in the building of the structure.  To date 436 miles of the barrier have been built, and the Jerusalem Post reported in July that it may not be fully constructed until 2010, seven years after its planned completion.  Israelis refer to the barrier as “the security fence” or the “anti-terrorist fence”. Palestinians refer to the barrier as the “racial segregation wall”, and even more strongly, the “Apartheid Wall”. Supporters say that the wall is a necessary structure to protect Israelis from Palestinian terrorism and suicide bomb attacks that increased after the second Intifada (the holy war). Opponents assert that the barrier is an illegal attempt to annex Palestinian land under the guise of security, that it violates international law, that it has the intent or effect to pre-empt final status negotiations, and that it severely restricts Palestinians who live nearby, limiting their ability to travel freely within the West Bank and to access work in Israel.

We saw the impact of the wall even in the running of our workshops.  Aura and Sylvia commented during our coordination meeting that we would have to wait to start our workshops to give the Palestinian participants sufficient time to pass through the wall and negotiate the many checkpoints set up by the Israelis.  As one by one the Palestinian women arrived, tired and frustrated from the ordeal, we could feel the physical and emotional impact that the wall and the checkpoints had had on them.

Checkpoints
On the first day of our workshop with the youth group, Creativity for Peace, Sylvia quietly told Juliet and me that one of the Palestinian girls had been detained at one of the checkpoints and would probably not arrive that day.  She had stood up to an Israeli soldier, refusing to be strip-searched.  After several hours of detention and humiliation, the 17 year-old girl finally arrived with her mother, very upset by the ordeal.

The checkpoint experience was mentioned time and again as one of the great sources of anxiety and trauma for the Palestinians, as they are humiliated, questioned unreasonably, searched, screamed at and often detained. There are approximately 600 Israeli checkpoints on the West Bank. The rationale for the checkpoints is that they are meant to impair the efforts of potential suicide bombers. The Christian Science Monitor last year reported on Machsom Watch, a concerned group of nearly 400 Israeli women who take turns standing at Israeli-controlled checkpoints watching for human rights violations and harassment of Palestinian civilians by Israeli soldiers. Each patrol produces a report that is put on their website. Many of the checkpoints that the women monitor are actually within the West Bank, rather than at border points. As one member of Machsom Watch said, these interior checkpoints are “to prevent free passage of Palestinian residents between their villages and towns. The checkpoint hours of operation and procedures are often arbitrary and changed, making access to jobs, schools, and hospitals for many Palestinians at best, time-consuming and at worst, impossible.”

Juliet and I had several experiences of checkpoints that gave us a better understanding of the reality. Jenin was especially memorable.  For entry into the city of Jenin we needed an Israeli military pass that was obtained for us by Harry, our Israeli host and guide for the day. Harry, a medical professional from Germany, has lived with his family in Israel for a number of years. He is a member of the Middle Way, a peace group committed to nonviolent witness and action in the region. Besides running his own practice, Harry offers voluntary medical services in Jenin, because very few Palestinians have access to medical care.

Harry warned us in advance that it might take an hour or more to cross the Jenin checkpoint. He described how difficult this can be in extremely hot weather as people wait in long lines for hours in the scorching sun. As we approached the entry to the checkpoint, a tall handsome young Israeli soldier stood guard with his state-of-the-art assault rifle.  Harry greeted the young man warmly and presented our documents. As a practitioner of nonviolence, Harry has gotten to know many of the soldiers in his weekly crossings into West Bank and always treats them kindly and with great respect. Harry explained that Juliet and I were visiting Jenin to teach a women's group Capacitar practices to work with their stress and trauma.  At that the young man quipped back in Hebrew: “I could sure use some of that.” And he proceeded to ask Harry what he could do to stop chewing his nails and fingers because he had so much anxiety. With that comment I popped into the conversation and described how Capacitar works in places of trauma, and then explained how the Fingerholds might help him with his fears and anxieties. Anxious to learn and try out the practice, the young man called over another soldier and asked him to hold his weapon so he could hold his fingers! After a few moments he smiled and waved us onward into the checkpoint process. The checkpoint itself consists of a long series of passages (almost labyrinthian), turnstiles, surveillance cameras, observation windows and finally the booth where a very serious official questions you, checks your documents and tells whether you are accepted or rejected for entry into Jenin. Beyond the booth lies another series of similar passages and turnstiles that lead out to the other side. Fortunately there were only a few people ahead of us in line, so we managed to cross into Jenin within a half hour.

Later in the day when we crossed back into Israel we saw a group of Palestinian women carrying large boxes and bundles on their heads, bringing back goods from the Israeli side after a day of work or shopping. Juliet and I watched with great compassion as the women tried to negotiate their heavy loads, pushing and pulling them through the tall iron turnstiles as green and red lights flashed indicating when the turnstile would move.  Some of the Arab men standing nearby helped the women, who with grace and dignity lifted the loads back onto their heads and proceeded to the next humiliating part--the search and the interrogation process. Our own bags were very thoroughly searched.  Because of the workshop I was carrying an ipod, speakers, batteries, camera and a variety of other materials. So all of this was opened up and scrutinized.  At times the guards would yell or speak very demandingly to us. Each time Harry answered them with great courtesy and respect. In border workshops in the US I have counseled Mexican women how to use the Capacitar practices to stay centered and calm when they deal with the Juarez/El Paso border guards.  In the same way we tried to suggest in our workshops with the Palestinian women how the practices could help them stay centered and peaceful during the difficult process at checkpoints.

We had a taste of the frustration of Palestinians as we started our workshop in Jenin at a women's handcraft and sewing cooperative, the Women's Cultural Society. The group was founded several years ago by the mother of a journalist who was brutally shot by Israeli soldiers and left to die in the streets. She wanted to heal herself and in the process bring together village women to reclaim their traditional Palestinian embroidery and generate some income. The translator for our workshop was the woman's second son, Jawad, who had studied abroad, knew something about alternative healing and understood some of the concepts we were going to teach. As we entered the dimly lit meeting room we saw a circle of large tables around which sat 38 women garbed in long black dresses with different colored veils, along with several children and two squirming babies. Juliet and I introduced ourselves to the group, and since we were running late, I started to lead a couple of Tai Chi moves to relax the women. During the second movement I heard one women ask Jawad, in Arabic, an angry question that he did not want to translate for me. Having facilitated in different languages for many years, I knew that it was essential to understand what was going on, so I pressured Jawad to tell me what she had said.  He gulped and somewhat apologetically proceeded to translate: “How can these exercises and what you want to teach us help us with the oppression of our lives, with the checkpoints, with the violence and injustice of the Israeli military, with the poverty and lack of resources and with the policies from your country?” With that the room erupted into comments from everyone, “Why are these American women here, when they should be home working to change their own government!”  Juliet and I looked at each other and knew that our role was to listen to what the women needed to say and to let them vent some of their anger and frustration.  We were perhaps some of the first Americans who could be there to listen to them.  We later heard that many of the women had very just reasons for their anger. Many had lost their lands, some had lost their husbands or sons in the violence, some of their family members were in Israeli jails, and all of them continuously suffered the humiliation and frustration of daily life on the West Bank. After about ten minutes of being present to what they were saying, I finally stepped forward to explain why Juliet and I had come to Israel and Palestine and what Capacitar was all about. Capacitar began in Nicaragua during the war years of the 1980s when our US political embargo was destroying the country. As a small group of women we wanted to bring hands of healing and empowerment to the people of Nicaragua, to make up for the arms and weapons of destruction that our tax dollars had supported. And for that reason Capacitar is committed to working in places of war, violence and trauma, especially in places where our own country has promoted this. After these comments I then asked the women if they wanted to learn some of the Capacitar practices that had helped people in many other places.  A quiet came over the group and Juliet stepped forward to teach the women the Fingerholds. They especially responded to the holds and the acupressure points for pain, since many of them had health problems with no access to medical care. It turned out that the woman who first asked the angry question, was in a lot of pain with a serious problem in her neck.  Harry offered his services at the end of the workshop and gave the woman some relief.  For lunch Jawad's mother and a group of the women cooked some of their typical Palestinian dishes and fed us with their wonderful warm Arab hospitality. The women also asked us to come back the next day because they knew that many other village women around Jenin would want to learn the Capacitar practices. We promised that we would return another time and walk in solidarity with them as they worked to heal their community.      

Israeli Draft of Youth
As Juliet and I reflected on the Jenin experience, as well as on the violent energy we felt in so many places, it was evident that much of this is the result of multigenerational trauma from the long history of conflict between the Israeli and Palestinian peoples.  One institution that is perpetuating this violence and trauma is the military through its draft of all Israeli youth. At age 18 young men must serve three years in the military, and young women two years. Israeli Arabs are exempt from this service, as are youth who ask for exemption or alternative service for reasons of religion, health or conscience.  One article that I read recently said that some youth purposely fail their physical or psychological exams so that they can get an exemption for reasons of mental health. During our visit we talked with several mothers who had sons in the military or who were getting ready to join the service.  In Rosh Pina we stayed with Lara and her son who was of draft age.  Several of his best friends were joining the military within the month, so the boys were packing to leave for one last vacation together in Europe. Lara said that in high school there was a lot of peer pressure on the young men to join the fighting units, rather than go for other military jobs away from the action.  You were considered a “wimp” if you didn't go for the fighting.  Another mother shared how her children had changed significantly. They were so hardened after their basic training and didn't want to talk about the violent things they had to do.  One man I met along the way told me of a new website that some of the Israeli soldiers had created as a forum to tell about what the military was actually doing and as a way to unburden themselves.

As Juliet and I went through checkpoints or places of security we noted that the men and women in these jobs were all very young, probably in their early twenties. We felt like their grandmothers, and yet they wielded great power and absolute control over what we could do or not do. This was certainly the case at Tel Aviv airport as we left the country. We arrived about 4:30am for our 8:00 flight.  As we entered the line to check in, a young Israeli woman questioned us about where we had been, what we had done, and with whom we had met.  We kept our responses very short, saying that we were pilgrims visiting some of the holy places, and had also worked with a group of women for peace in Nazareth. After about 15 minutes of interrogation the woman left for a moment and then returned carrying luggage tags with a big “3” printed on the labels.  We later learned that you are classified on a security scale of 1 to 6. “One” means that you are completely safe and no risk, and “6” means that you are subject to further surveillance and more questioning and you definitely are a big risk.  The man sitting next to me on our flight back to London shared that he was classified as a “6”.  He was a ministry student, had studied several courses in Jerusalem and Bethlehem, and worst of all, was married to a Palestinian woman back in the US. He said that he was grilled mercilessly for nearly an hour and his course notes, personal journal and luggage were completely torn apart.  Juliet and I just had about a thirty-minute luggage ordeal. My examiner was a young man who had actually lived in the US. After taking apart everything in my suitcases, he commented at the end of his search, that he loved the Trader Joe's organic chocolate truffle bar that I had tucked in my carryon case. At one point I considered offering the chocolate bar to him, but I thought better not to because I didn't want to be accused of bribing a guard! As we continued to meet these young soldiers, I reflected on how they were another generation continuing the violence for no other reason than they had to do service for their country.

Future Plans
Our last workshop in Nazareth gave Juliet and me deeper insight into what we wanted to have as our future focus when we returned to Israel and Palestine.  The workshop, sponsored by Women in the Center, brought together 26 women from a wide variety of backgrounds.  Half of them were Arab and Palestinian childcare workers.  Present were Jews, Christian and Muslims. The women wore everything from full long black dresses and veils to shorts and thin strapped tops. Most came tired and burnt out from family responsibilities, the reality of their lives and personal traumas.  And all desired to heal themselves and learn practices that they could use with their families and communities.  In the course of the two days a Jewish woman who had never been in the company of Palestinians, said to me: “I realize how much I have been missing by not opening myself to the Arab and Palestinian people.  I can never go back and I want more of this. I realize that in spite of all our differences and conflict, we are truly one at a very deep level!”

Two quotes come to mind in closing this letter from the field.
From the Qur'an--“It is the servants of the all-Merciful One who go about the earth in modesty and who answer: “Peace” when accosted by those who talk to them rudely.”

And from Rabbi Harold Kushner: “A prominent Jewish prayer concludes 'May He who made peace in the heavens grant peace to us on earth.'  What does it mean to create peace in the heavens?  Ancient man looked up into the sky and he saw the sun and the rainclouds. And he would say to himself, 'How can fire and water, sun and rain co-exist in the same sky?  How do they get along? It must be a miracle. The sun says, 'If I dry up the rainclouds the world will not survive without rain.' The clouds say, 'If we extinguish the sun the world will perish in darkness.' So the fire and the water make peace, realizing that if either one of them achieved a total victory, the world could not endure. . . .How can Arabs and Israelis learn to live together? Irish Catholics and Irish Protestants? Black South Africans and white South Africans? It takes a miracle for them to realize that if they won, if they had it all and the other side had nothing, the world could not survive their victory. Only by making room for everyone in the world, even for our enemies, can the world survive.  May God who showed us the miracle of Shalom, of making room for each other and giving up the illusion of victory in the heavens, grant us a similar miracle to all of us who inhabit the earth.”

As Capacitar we are committed to walking in solidarity with the people of Israel and Palestine, and are currently looking for funding so that an in depth training can be offered there starting in 2008-2009.  Thank you for your continued support as together we work to heal ourselves and heal our world.

Peace and blessings,
Pat Cane
Capacitar International Founder/Director
www.capacitar.org