Today’s post is the second in a Beacon Broadside series: Observation Post by journalist and foreign correspondent Philip C. Winslow. Over a career that has spanned more than twenty-five years, Winslow has reported on world events for the Christian Science Monitor, the Toronto Star, Maclean’s magazine, ABC radio news, CTV News, and CBC radio. He also served in two United Nations peacekeeping missions and worked for the UN in the West Bank for nearly three years. He is the author of Victory For Us Is to See You Suffer: In the West Bank with the Palestinians and the Israelis and Sowing the Dragon’s Teeth: Land Mines and the Global Legacy of War.
A couple of worrisome stories out of Jenin in the northern West Bank recently. Not deadly clashes between Palestinians and Israeli soldiers this time, but internal events that threaten progress in a more indirect way.
A bit of background. Jenin– the town and its gritty, sprawling refugee camp, where from a hilltop you can look across the Green Line at the fields of Israel– has been a hot spot since the Arab revolt of 1936 – 1939. During this decade’s second intifada many Palestinian suicide bombers came from Jenin, and in April 2002 ferocious battles raged in the refugee camp, and the Israeli army flattened part of the camp’s center. Israeli military incursions and arrest raids continue, although with less frequency. Nearly 16,000 refugees, more than 42 percent of them under the age of 15, live in concrete-block buildings in the camp’s winding narrow streets and alleys.
Since the constant reciprocal violence of seven years ago, Jenin has pulled itself up by its bootstraps, with help and encouragement from outside, and has become a vibrant and energetic city. Palestinian police are back on the streets, the anarchic armed militias have been curtailed, some trade with Israel has resumed, and signs of normal life are popping up like tulips. As a friend reminded me, “Jenin is not the Wild West anymore.”
But some deep-rooted and distinctly anti-modern undercurrents run through Jenin camp and other conservative Palestinian towns, as in much of the Arab world. The first of the recent troubling stories was the torching of a non-profit West Bank music-teaching center for children, Al Kamandjati (it means ‘the violinist’ in Arabic), which burned up about $20,000 worth of musical instruments. No one was injured, and no one has admitted responsibility for the arson.
The second incident was a bad-tempered controversy over a concert given by a Jenin camp youth orchestra, the Strings of Freedom, for a group of Holocaust survivors in Holon, Israel. The event was part of an event called Good Deeds Day, sponsored by a wealthy Israeli woman. The Palestinian musicians, aged between 11 and 18, were meticulously trained in Jenin by an Israeli Arab woman, Wafa Younis, who lives in northern Israel.
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In the spoken gems that comprise Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount, the fledgling savior included this: When you pray, do so in the privacy of your own home. Shut the door behind you, and God– who sees what’s done in secret– will reward you. Don’t stand on the corner and pray in public, like the hypocrites.
