From the old city’s Damascus gate, Eitan, Samuel, a Dutch anthropology student and I tread through the strange faces and smells of a Ramadan bazaar until we reach what seems to be an East Jerusalem bus station.

“What kind of passport do you have?” Samuel asks, as it dawns on me that if not for the last name, in his jeans, plaid button down and sleek glasses, I would have mistaken my first Arab-Israeli friend for a hirsute Jew — perhaps a Yeminite, Iraqi, or even a Persian member of the tribe like myself.

“None. Just my American driver’s license,” I explain while fumbling through my overstuffed wallet to prove it.

“Where is your passport?”

“In my suitcase in Efrat.”

“Efrat.” He pauses to make sure I feel his dusky eyes on me. “Like the settlement?” he inquires while sneaky beads of sweat make their way down his caterpillar eyebrows.

It turns out that Eitan only has his newly acquired Israeli identification card on hand and the meal lies in an alphabetical area of northern Judea and Samaria (either A, B, or C ) — illegal for an Israeli to set foot in.

“Why in the world would you make aliya [move to Israel], man?” Samuel probes Eitan in a voice on the border of sardonic and serious.

To beat the checkpoints we devise two schemes:

1. Plan A: From Ramallah, we take one of those shared Arab taxis to Gush Etzion junction — frequently the site of attacks by Palestinians against settlers — south of Jerusalem and Bethlehem in the West Bank. From there, we would hitch-hike back to the nearby Jewish settlement of Efrat.
2. Plan B: If the dinner ends too late, stay by Samuel’s friend in Ramallah, then catch a bus to Hebron in the morning, and from there hop on a Jewish bus straight to Jerusalem’s Central Bus Station.

Simple? No. Safe? Far from it.

Nonetheless, it was my last week in Israel and curiosity would not allow for my parting sans a peak at the other side. I spent my entire year studying in a Gush Etzion Jewish settlement, yet I knew next to nothing about my neighbors. A gust of remorse or fear of missing out rushed over me for not having looked into this earlier.

From Hummus to Habibti

Now at the meal, a chortling note or two slipped out as I imagine the color my parents’ faces would turn upon hearing that their only daughter is in a quaint village just outside Ramallah. After mixing and mingling for quite some time, we begin a circle of introductions.

First, an Italian-Palestinian participant tells how he actually met his fiancĂ©e through YaLa, and thanks to Israel’s strict marriage regulations for Arab-Israelis and Palestinians — a response to a dangerous phenomenon in the late intifada — he and his fiancĂ©e plan on calling America their new home. The man then sings a rendition of Pete Seeger’s We Shall Overcome, a civil rights anthem, followed by an unidentifiable Italian opera number.

The singing did not stop there.

“It’s actually my birthday,” our host discloses with an audible smile.

“Happy Birthday to…” we sing in unison, then in Arabic too.

“Yom huledet Sameach. Yom hule…” Eitan and I started singing the Hebrew version only to be shushed for fear of inciting unsuspecting neighbors.

Fragrant tea is served and, accordingly, Eitan and I pull our plastic chairs closer to those around us. Mani, a Palestinian working in a Hebron bank, is a dark man in his late twenties who carries a sweet gentleness belied by a pugnacious appearance. He breaks into a story.

“I was in Israel once and officers asked for my documentation,” he says with gesticulations reminiscent of a Talmud student.

“I told them I didn’t have a permit. ‘When do you get a permit?’ I asked the soldiers. ‘Only when you’re sick or working, but not for enjoying yourself. I don’t need a permit to party!’ They laughed and let me go.”

Meanwhile, another touching Israeli-Palestinian story was transpiring in a chair near me, between Eitan and the man to his left.

“I am also programmer but I like to call myself a hacker,” says Sebastian. A Ramallah resident and computer science student, Sebastian, is barely 20-years-old like Eitan. “I got arrested three times by the PLO.”

I listen as Eitan, Sebastian and Mani prattle in a very foreign language — computers. Nonetheless, I do manage to catch a snippet between Javascripts.

“I once took down the  website, those extreme Jews who meet up with Ahmadinejad,” Eitan boasts as he collects a round of high fives from the men.

Here on the other side of the wall, in a village where  and children play “Arab and Army,” Eitan found his alter-ego. He met a guy just like himself, instead of a national, political or religious figurehead on the media. He successfully began to see the “other” as the “self.”

Over one meal we broke bread and taboos; we created innovative solutions to seemingly invariable problems; and we managed to reduce toxic gaps between two sides (I strategically broke a few Torah commandments too).

Can we bring this individual amiability to the masses? If Arabic speakers and Hebrew speakers can share a laugh; if we use the same computers; if we all like to party; if we all just want to be with the ones we love, why can’t we all just get along?

From “I” to “You”

Headlines of stealthy prisoner swaps, bellicose rhetoric, and settlement building do not imbue hope for peace; rather, individual interactions like this one humanize the “other,” transforming an objectified relationship of an “I” into that of a personal “You” and pave the path to long lasting changes on top.

After all, the recent agreement to resume peace talks is partly due to John Kerry’s very own face-to-face intercession. If there is hope for peace in the days to come, it will lie in some power, or some people, who overcome negative assessments, and surpass the perilous polarity plaguing our countries.

Flailing his hands inward as a signal to encircle him, Mani tells us he has “a monumental idea.”

“Are you ready?” I give him a thumbs up, topped by a wink.

“Why don’t you guys hack every media outlet… for peace?!”

Eitan, Sebastian and a few others share a skeptical glance then a roaring laugh.

We have seen so many use this power on the ; why not bring it over to the good?

I put out my hand reflexively, not to shake his but to clap as if to assure Mani that his proposal is neither naive nor inane.

In the corner, I spot a strange head covering, the last I would expect here: a yarmulke.

This Gush Etzion resident ends up driving Eitan and I right up to my friends’ home in Efrat, dropping off Samuel in Jerusalem on the way. With our driver’s white beard and that knitted circle on his head, the checkpoint is no problem.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51łÔčÏ’s editorial policy.

Image: Copyright © . All Rights Reserved

The post Not a Peace Talks Article (Part 2/2) appeared first on 51łÔčÏ.

Heading deep into the desert, from Ramallah to a small Palestinian village couched between the Judean hills, I can’t help but ask: “Who built this paved road beneath my tires and when?” I am shadowing the footsteps of so many who have made the trip before me.

They were either Arab families returning from the big city; shepherds seeking grazing land; Benjaminites en route to the Temple; Shin Bet officers looking for terrorists; or if they were reporter pilgrims, trying gauge the climate of a town immured by a wall. As my lemony taxi reaches the village, darkness softly replaces a rainbow sunset over the naked valley studded by only a handful of distant domes and spires.

I am not on my way home or to encroach on that of another. My destination is actually uncertain, but I know it involves food. After overhearing a confirming phone call, I assume my friend who sent me that Facebook invite waits outside a gated house near the Madrasa — which, if freshman Arabic serves me right, is a school — with about 40 Palestinians and Israelis inside breaking Iftar together.

Only 20 minutes from Jerusalem, these streets feel light-years away from the H.Stern and Ralph Lauren boutiques lining the Mamilla center I often pass to reach Ben Yehuda St. My hungry eyes take in new square apartments, next to a pile of rubble; old cement homes, next to a pile of stones; store fronts dressed in foreign graffiti of black, green and red, next to a pile of soot; and pockets of young people, next to a mound of rubble mixed with stones but not a trace of soot.

The car breaks. Samuel, the Arab-Israeli photographer I met just a few hours ago, rolls down his window to ask a group of smiling kids on bikes too big for their still growing frames, where the MadrasaÌęŸ±Čő.

“Those are some VIPs,” Samuel quips. “Very important Palestinians,” he explains to us, thwarting the silence about to fill the car.

After a year in an orthodox Jewish seminary, I’ve almost grown averse to shaking hands in Israel. As the Biblical law forbids touching the opposite sex until marriage, I’ve grown so careful with my arm that I now catch myself snubbing friendly gestures from females who just want to make my acquaintance.

Yet while feeling the hairy fingers of my host – a burly Palestinian male — gently wrap around my own, I indulge in a minor slap in the wrinkly face of history.

My First Iftar

This is not your presidents’ meeting, and definitely not your neighbors’ Iftar. Israelis, Palestinians, and an anthropology student from Amsterdam gathered in this West Bank village, as part of an initiative led by the , to express support of renewed Kerry-Abbas-Netanyahu peace talks.

But it is more the faces I share this meal with than those on TV which interest me.

Growing up in a home with both a Persian mother and grandmother, while being fed Abrahamic stories at school, I can attest to the raw ambivalence of Middle Eastern hospitality. It’s a phenomenon that will leave a guest confused over which sentiment supersedes — bonhomie or awkwardness.

When entering a Persian house, blistering chai, assorted nuts, fresh fruit and at least a fancy bowl of , the traditional pistachio Persian nougat associated with manna that Hebrews ate in the desert, await the guest — but there’s one catch. Before any conversation or digging in, the visitor must refuse his hosts’ every offer twice and accept upon the third, in a process which has become great material for , taroof.

I can feel the Persian pressure as my guest offers familiar smelling rice and meat, but the weight of kosher guilt is even heavier.

“I actually just ate. Shukran though.” I lie on his third insistence, trying not to break too many commandments at one village.

What exactly is an American-Persian Jewish girl even doing in an unidentified Palestinian village? How it all transpired is as nebulous as the difference between nebulous and Nabulus to me as well; yet I do know something started with a Facebook message around five that same afternoon.

The previous week, at a friend of a friend’s house warming party in Jerusalem, I met an interesting Middle East reporter who also doubles as a striking Edward Cullen doppelganger. Edward, my friend – a Technion professor in his late thirties — and I started blathering for some time over banal topics like Ivy League educations, which led into a heated round of Jewish geography. Beside us, a group of Argentinians who recently moved to Israel amassed into a group picture pushing Edward into the frame, who then dragged the professor along with him.

“Do you think he was gay?” my friend asked on the way out. “He wore a tight pink V-neck, and he definitely seemed more into me than you.”

The following Tuesday, Edward sent a Facebook invite my way. I didn’t catch a title, but the description read: “A blessed gathering breakfast in Ramallah, on the honor of Yala and the start of new peace negotiating. For the Israelis, Palestinians and international.”

“Why organize breakfast at six in the evening?,” was my initial reaction. But on the second read, I understood he invited me to literally break the month-long Muslim fast with real Palestinians. I messaged the listed people regarding transportation. Nevertheless, as no one responded, I figured Ramallah would have to wait.

Around five in the afternoon, I get that tingly sensation. You know, the fuzzy feeling one gets as a powder blue Facebook inbox turns a tantalizing red, indicating “you’ve got chat!”

“Meet at Givat Hamivtar station at 5:30,” reads Edward’s message.

Even with the help of a prayer quickie, there is no way I can make it in time. Edward suggests I travel with his friend, Samuel, whose last name blew a shofar and announced his origins — Arab. I wonder if this is all just a plot to kidnap seminary girls; after Gilad Shalit, the public might have had enough with this whole steal a soldier and get 1,027 prisoners free deal — what about the everyday woman?

Discounting the danger, I summon my friend Eitan to join, head in a cab, and look through my prayer book for an appropriate psalm.

*[Read the on November 10.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51łÔčÏ’s editorial policy.

Image: Copyright © . All Rights Reserved

The post Not a Peace Talks Article (Part 1/2) appeared first on 51łÔčÏ.