Jerusalem, Old City: Orthodox on Shavuot

Friday, May 29, was a Jewish holiday called Shavuot. I went to the Old City to watch the Orthodox Jews pour in through the Damascus gate on their way to pray at the Western Wall, sometimes jogging — clutching their big fur hats to their heads, strollers rattling across cobblestones — to get to the Wall before sunset. I didn't know until now what the Shavuot holiday signifies. I just Googled it and found out that it marks the day when God handed the Torah over to Moses at Mt. Sinai.

I would have known last Friday, on Shavuot, when I asked four or five Orthodox to explain the significance of Shavuot to me. Each successive person looked at me with a look of disdain or discomfort, or some mixture of both. No one would answer me, or even respond to my "Shalom," and the dozen or so people that I made eye contact with and smiled at looked straight through me, as if I weren't even there. Maybe there's a prohibition against smiling on Shavuot — when the Orthodox observe Sabbath conditions — or maybe they were reluctant to speak to me for fear of embarrassment or because of poor English language skills. Whatever the case, the experience caused me to wonder if the Orthodox behave similarly to more secular Jewish Israelis, or if the silent treatment is reserved for foreigners and Arabs. Do they not condescend to acknowledge my presence because they are God's chosen people, and I am not one of them?

I walked home in the quickly cooling air of early evening. I stopped to take a picture of some Arab kids playing soccer in a park lit by electric lamps. A few of them came up to talk to me. We talked about all sorts of simple things — food, geography, soccer (mentioning Barcelona is a quick way to make friends, even if you, like me, know nothing about soccer), etc. Then I said I had to go, and as I started to walk away, I heard a kid yelling "Cous ukhtek, cous imek." Your sister's pussy, your mother's pussy. Two common insults hurled at me for no reason that I could understand, other than the fact that the kid probably thought it would be funny to make fun of me loudly in a language I couldn't understand. But I did understand, and I made him aware of the fact that I understood. I asked him why he would say such a thing.

Instead of apologizing, he threw a rock at me.

A Palestinian woman sells parsley next to the Damascus Gate as Orthodox Jews pour in on Shavuot


Foot traffic inside the Damascus Gate as Orthodox Jews make their way to the Western Wall


The Orthodox have large families, rivaling the Arab "population bomb" with their reproduction rates.


Orthodox men speculate on what's causing the blockage at the Damascus Gate.




Oranges and apples inside an Israeli soldier's helmet at the Damascus Gate.

Most Palestinians want unity gov't — but what do their leaders want?

I saw this Reuters article this morning and it reminded me of a survey I read about in a recent International Crisis Group report, titled "Gaza's Unfinished Business." The survey in the ICG report showed that 40% of Gazans had no faith in either Fatah or Hamas before the Israeli offensive, and that number has risen to 60% in the months since the offensive. The Bir Zeit survey reported in this article claims that 58% of Palestinians (from a sample of over 6,000 from Gaza + West Bank) want a unity government. They should have it — but their leadership stands in the way.

The fundamental principle of democracy — before you get into variations like representative democ., parliamentary, etc. — is, to put it roughly, "let the people decide, and give the people what they want." The will of the people should supersede political differences; in a parliamentary system, parties debate and oppose one another with the ultimate goal of achieving a political outcome that is satisfactory to as many of the "people" as possible, including underrepresented minorities.

Perhaps I am naïve, but if the will of the people is so clear in Palestine, why doesn't the leadership respect it? Both Fatah and Hamas claim to support democracy. In fact, Hamas often claims to be the only truly democratically elected government in the Middle East; the Islamic movement's supporters cannot get over the ironic rejection of Hamas' victory by the West, so keen to spread democracy, so much less keen to respect its outcomes. I am reminded of Caliban's remark to Prospero in The Tempest:

You taught me language, and my profit on't
Is I know how to curse

The sharp-tongued anti-America rhetoric that we hear from Hamas' leadership should not surprise us; we are, in so many ways, Prospero. We have given Hamas the tools to walk and talk like a democracy, and they are using their newly acquired skills to throw mud in our faces. And we should not expect anything different — our support for democracy in Palestine was always half-hearted at best, and never intended to allow for majority representation of Hamas.

But now that Hamas has the mandate in Gaza, and responsibility for 1.5 million people who are currently recovering from a catastrophic invasion, will they continue to curse us, and to curse Israel, without giving their own people what they so desperately want and need, the unity government that will be a critical step toward ending the siege and confronting the expansion of settlements in the West Bank? Will they continue to allow their resentment at being spurned by the Palestinian elite and the West to dictate the path forward? And as for Fatah, will they recognize Hamas as the coequal that they have clearly become? Or will they cling to power in the West Bank through underhanded means and deprive their own supporters of a viable political future?

What is it, really, that both Fatah and Hamas want? Do their priorities represent the people?