By Susan Moskwa

7:00 a.m. – I wake up to a rooster crowing across the street. Did you know that roosters keep crowing until they’re certain you’ve heard them (and then a bit more)? In the movies they only crow once, just as the sun rises. This rooster was far more persistent. But it was charming, because it was novel.

Chicken coop across the street from our hotel

9:00 a.m. – Zoughbi Zoughbi, founder & director of the Wi’am Palestinian Conflict Resolution Center

, speaks to us about the center and its mission and role. Today the Wi’am Center is quiet, although it’s frequently the site of Palestinian protests because it’s located right next to the Wall, and is one of the few places near the Wall that has trees, which provide welcome shade. (Most trees were bulldozed during construction of the Wall, but Wi’am has made an effort to replant.) Here one of our tour coordinators, Usama, shows us a tear gas grenade that landed in Wi’am’s playground.

Usama shows us an empty tear gas canister

Wi’am’s playground at the separation wall

We are like a sponge, absorbing the anger of the Palestinian people. When people like you come here to visit us, it helps us wring out the sponge so that we can go back and refill it.”
– Zoughbi Zoughbi, on the encouragement that he and his colleagues take from visits like ours

Zoughbi Zoughbi of Wi’am Palestinian Conflict Resolution Center

11:26 a.m. – The call to prayer sounds out from a minaret in the middle of the Aida refugee camp as we walk through the camp. Children follow us and try to get us to take their pictures and give them money. The camp was established in 1950 and many families still live there for fear of losing their right of return if they were to leave. (Others stay because they have nowhere else to go.) The camp’s walls are covered with artwork and graffiti remembering the villages that the refugees came from, supporting the Palestinian struggle, promoting peace, and remembering tragedies and indignities that refugees have suffered.

A housing structure in Aida refugee camp

WE WILL RETURN – Names of Palestinian villages

أهلاً وسهلاً — “Welcome”

Identity card wall art

Our group at the entrance to the Aida refugee camp.

Rusty door keys like this one symbolize the right of return for Palestinians, and a memory of home. Many families still carry keys from the homes they fled or were evicted from; many of those houses have since been destroyed.

4:00 p.m. – Sounds of singing. We visit the Church of the Nativity which houses the birthplace of Jesus Christ, where the tour group ahead of us spontaneously bursts into reverent song. Later, in the cave where the shepherds were supposedly sheltering when they received news of Jesus’ birth, our group sings Angels We Have Heard On High (in multi-part harmony).

Jesus’ birthplace – below the Church of the Nativity

Inside the church at Beit Sahour / The Shepherds’ Field

7:00 p.m. – Dalia Eshkenazi, one of the subjects of the book The Lemon Tree, talks to us about her experience growing up in Israel and discovering that her family’s house used to belong to an Arab family who had been forcibly evicted. She was a passionate and engaging speaker, and our dinner grew cold as we stayed long listening to her.

I instinctively hear the drone of war planes as a very friendly sound. If the Israeli Air Force hadn’t destroyed the Egyptian Air Force during the Six-Day War, Israel might not exist today. Those planes save me. But they also destroy me.”
– Dalia Eshkenazi, on feeling torn between Israelis’ experience and Palestinians’ experience

Dalia Eshkenazi