Humans of the Holy Land, Post #19: Tulkarem
You are a college student. You’ve been studying for your calculus exam the past three days, but you’re still not quite sure if you have a full grasp of Taylor series yet. You step inside the class, a few tense minutes pass while you wait to start. You receive the test and peer down at the questions, your brain accelerating at an instant. The moment after you begin, however, you hear gunfire from outside. Lots of gunfire. You try to focus, but attention on this exam question is being dragged away by the ongoing violence outside your window. It’s been like this for weeks, but it’s still so hard to concentrate. You then feel a stinging pain in your eyes, your nose, and you know what’s coming next. Everyone gets out of their seats. The class runs out of the class, fleeing as the painful tear gas overwhelms whatever exam jitters you just had. You all leave the classroom, but where to go? The tear gas has surrounded the building. The exam has already left your mind, for the only thing to think about is where you can breathe. Each day, you go through this, but weeks after, the tear gas still feels the same.
Welcome to Khadoori University.
Khadoori was established in 1930 as an agricultural college in Tulkarem, the first agricultural college in the Middle East. It has expanded over the years to offer degrees in technical disciplines, becoming a university in the last ten years. Khadoori has served as the starting point for regional leaders in agriculture, including six graduates who went on to become Minister of Agriculture in Jordan.
Khadoori’s location, however, has proven extremely problematic. It lies directly on the pre-1967 border with Israel. Following the war that year, Israel took 200 acres of university land. Later, they built the separation wall on Khadoori’s campus, taking more land in the process. They transferred a chemical factory from inside Israel to right next to the campus in order to circumvent environmental laws in Israel. This factory, located next to the university’s agricultural area, has polluted the environment and poisoned the grounds of this institution specializing in agriculture. Additionally, an Israeli military training field was placed inside Khadoori’s campus. As in times past, since October, with the start of the ongoing unrest, the military have shot at protesting students with live bullets, rubber bullets, tear gas, pepper spray gas, and dirty water has been sprayed over university buildings. These military incursions occur daily. Students have been arrested, classes are forced to cancel from tear gas, and the educational process is completely paralyzed.
Obviously, having a military training field in occupied territory on university school grounds seriously violates international law and human rights of students and the occupied. Proud students around the world boast how there is no other university like there’s. The students of Khadoori, however, can truly lay claim to this.
During my time in Khadoori, I was given a tour of Khadoori’s campus. Located just ten minutes away from the Mediterranean Sea (with a wall between it, of course), the campus’s beautiful greenery lives up to its reputation as an agricultural institution. The buildings, the greenery, everything was picturesque. However, reaching the further end of the campus, adjacent to the greenhouses was the chemical factory and military training field. Already, there was an ambulance parked, waiting for injured students. At that point, soldiers remained inside the military bases overlooking the campus. A couple students threw rocks that fell halfway towards these soldiers, but soldiers began shooting at all the students nonetheless. “This is one of the calmest days,” commented a student accompanying me.
I was talking with a female student early on, asking her what she was studying. She explained that this was her last semester, “and I can’t wait to graduate.” As a recent graduate, I was perplexed. “It’s so stressful and scary being a student here. I can’t be near the soldiers. I don’t feel safe anywhere on campus as a woman. I just can’t wait to leave.” Whenever we approached the soldiers, she was visibly distressed.
Walking around the campus, it was only gunshots that were heard at first, but soon enough, the action started to heat up. I was in the center of the campus at one point, speaking with a professor. Our noses and eyes began to feel irritated as tear gas reached halfway across the campus.
I walked towards the soldiers to see what was happening. The soldiers had made their way across the field and was now launching bullets, tear gas, pepper spray, and sound bombs toward the students. There was a sniper from the tower. The greenhouses had already been left untended for weeks due to the clashes, and tear gas destroyed more plants on school grounds. The whole half of the campus was being affected by the tear gas as people cried their way out of class not because of failing that calculus exam, but because there were literally tear-inducing agents in the classroom.
Suddenly, the soldiers launched dozens of tear gas canisters around us, and the students and I were sent running, fighting the burning sensation of tear gas.
Observing the clashes, I realized a bit more why Israel decided to put a military training ground on school grounds. Soldiers would follow the pattern of spraying 20 gas bombs at once. Students would flee for their lives, and the soldiers used this moment to advance further towards the campus center. Indeed, this was a prime place for an IDF training ground, for they had at their disposal thousands of Palestinian students — ironically in training themselves — to use as practice for the typical pattern I’ve found in such clases: Israeli provocation (i.e. Israeli soldiers training on school grounds), Palestinians acting upon these provocations (i.e. some students throwing rocks), and the soldiers using this as an impetus to use excessive force on targeted and surrounding populations, encroaching further on the land in the process.
Oh yes, Khadoori is a perfect place for the Israeli military to train.
Along with another man living nearby in Tulkarem, here are some of the human beings I met here.
Jamal
Jamal is the director of Khadoori’s library. The library is adjacent from the chemical factory and military training field. I worked in one of the libraries on my college campuses, and we would always have events to try to get students to come to the library. Jamal has a bit more difficult task of getting students here. You know, with the tear gas, bullets and all.
“I am very afraid for the students,” he said, “there is just nothing that I can do to make sure this library is a safe, healthy, quiet environment for them to study. Just last week, they sprayed dirty water all over the building. The smell was unbelievably terrible, and it remained in all of the building for days. No one could enter the library. You can hear shooting here, and many of our windows are broken from it. We are suffering every minute facing the gas and the bullets.”
The library staff are severely affected by the military. “My assistant’s eyes have been permanently affected by the gas,” commented Jamal, “especially the toxic pepper spray, because we have been exposed to it continuously for two weeks. His vision has blurred and his eyes can’t remain still. There was a worker in the library who was pregnant. The toxic gas entered in all of the building, and she was caught in it. The baby died that day.”
I am always worried about the students,” he said, “they are my sons and daughters. I don’t want them to go out, and I am worried what they face when they go out towards the soldiers. Students complain to us all the time that they need a quiet place, they need somewhere to study, but I can’t provide it when they shoot twenty gas bombs at once.”
This dilemma has been apparent for years. In 2002, the old library was burned down by the military, “and many valuable books were burned as well.”
Throughout our conversation, gunfire could be heard from outside. The military incursions were just starting at the moment. As the day went on, however, the fighting intensified. An hour later, I watched the clashes from the library roof. I saw from the roof a window that had been broken by a military projectile. After a minute, the tear gas reached us, and we were forced to go back inside.
Going down through the library, the library study spaces were basically empty. With the constant sound of gunfire and the irritation of tear gas, no one was doing any last-minute memorization there.
Inside the lobby of the building, people were running from outside, escaping the severe effects of the tear gas that had ensnared the outside area. Students lay on the floor in agony while others wondered how to possibly make it to class with the tear gas all around. This scene did not resemble a college campus. Watching these students struggling to breathe inside a school library, it all reminded me a bit of Harry Potter, actually. Perhaps it was because I had recently read a letter from a Palestinian girl to J.K. Rowling how she always saw her people as the students in Hogwarts battling against the Death Eater. The lives of these students 18 to 21 all felt far more real than those Hogwarts students at the moment, of course. This was the school library. And yet, even here, Jamal could do only so much to keep his students safe.
“Husayn”
Husayn was my main guide when going around Khadoori. He came from the Tulkarem area, and enrolled in Khadoori to study mechanical engineering. “However,” he said, “Tulkarem is a very poor city, and I needed to pay for my education. So I took two years off from school to work so I can help pay for my education.”
However, Husayn is the type of self-motivated individual that doesn’t need a classroom to push him to learn. “You can always self-learn,” he said, “like I learned English with YouTube. So many things you can teach yourself. Right now, I am teaching myself how to do parkour. I want to do all those cool tricks!” Husayn is a fascinating guy, someone who can do a complete split and play soccer with the best of them.
Having self-taught in so many disciplines, Husayn now involves himself in the community. Along with welcoming guests to the university, he also teaches classes in math, science, and English for children in the city of Tulkarem.
However, Husayn finds it difficult being a student at Khadoori. Husayn was more sensitive to the tear gas than I was, and being exposed to only a little would cause great pain for him. “It’s so hard here,” he said, “my classes are weeks behind now. At first, they canceled classes, but once they saw that there would be tear gas and bullets every day, they decided to keep the classes going while everything is going on outside. I know a lot of students, myself included, who find it difficult to keep our grades up. We don’t have a place to study, and while classes are going on, it’s hard to concentrate with the gunshots outside and the tear gas coming into our classroom. It makes me so frustrated! I worked so hard to teach myself, and it was great. Now, after I worked so hard to have the opportunity to be taught by college professors, I feel like the occupation is taking away that opportunity for me. I lose so much time in class…and even when I’m there, it doesn’t feel normal. Just last week, we were in the middle of an exam, but we had to leave the classroom because of the soldiers. I have had so many exams cancelled over the years because of them. It’s so confusing, it makes me angry….what am I supposed to do?”
This normally placid young man showed anguish as he spoke. Husayn’s greatest ambition is to learn in life, and he has overcome many obstacles to do so. The occupation on campus, however, is not an obstacle that could be overcome so easily.
Though Husayn showed anger and frustration, he did not like students throwing rocks. “The administration tries to keep kids from throwing rocks at soldiers, for their own protection,” he explained, “I personally don’t think students should do it. Look at them,” he said. We observed students hiding behind scraps of metal while soldiers shot at them. “Some of them throw rocks, and it doesn’t come close to doing anything to them. They have guns. Throwing rocks does nothing, but the soldiers can just use it as an excuse to shoot everyone and launch the tear gas all over campus. I get it, because we feel like there’s nothing else we can do. It just makes me upset when I see my friends get shot. It’s tough. Every bullet is so terrible to hear, because you know that every single one is hitting a friend of yours. But over time, we all get used to it.” And he’s right; just as people were dodging bullets meters away, other students were joking on the way to class as if they had just finished a game of ultimate Frisbee.
“I can never get over the situation here,” he said, “I love my friends here. I love learning. But being a student here…it’s so difficult. The occupation makes sure this is not an environment where you can learn anything but pain and suffering. I just wish…I just wish… for us students to go to school without worrying about tear gas or bullets in the classroom. Please, just let me learn!”
Anas
Anas is in a very particular situation as a student at Khadoori. He is fully Palestinian, and his parents grew up in a village nearby Tulkarem. However, they moved to the United Arab Emirates before Anas was born, where he grew up in Abu Dhabi. He then went to high school in Jordan, where he picked up his Jordanian accent. He explained, “You don’t have a real accent in the UAE because most people are from other countries. I went to private school, so I was only with internationals there. So after my time in Jordan, people here recognize that I’m not from here.”
Three months ago, Anas came for the first time in his life back to his homeland to study at Khadoori. In many ways, being in Palestine has been a huge change for him. “The first month, I didn’t like it so much. Compared to Abu Dhabi, things aren’t as developed. In the UAE, everything in the city is so nice. Even the street lights have fancy designs there. However, I really have come to love it here. The community is so close. So quickly, everyone gets to know each other. In Abu Dhabi, people didn’t get to know their neighbors. But here, the entire community is like a family for you.”
After being enmeshed in the community, Anas considers his Palestinian identity much stronger. “In all my identification,” he said, “it lists me as being Jordanian. But now that I am here, that I have a green ID like everyone else, that I am a part of the community, I feel so much more Palestinian. Also, when seeing the occupation itself, it is completely different. Yeah, of course, I had an idea of what was going on here from my family — the killings, the arrests, the demolitions, everything — but it is just so different to experience it yourself. It opens up your eyes to what your people are truly facing. So when I hear my uncle talk about his experiences using nonviolent resistance against the occupation, being imprisoned for fighting for his people’s freedom, it makes me so proud to be Palestinian. I am so proud to be a part of these people who face so much, but still have the will to struggle for their rights and freedom.”
However, this transition has by no means been easy, particularly going to Khadoori for school. “The first time I saw the clashes with the soldiers, I couldn’t believe my eyes. I looked at the soldiers pointing their guns at the students. The students weren’t doing anything. Some of them threw rocks that didn’t come close to the soldiers from far away. Would they shoot at us, I wondered? But then, they did! They shot everyone! They launched tear gas at the students, the buildings, everyone! How could this be real!” While Anas is yet to really adjust to it all, he has been shocked to see how desensitized to it the others students are. “The other students are so used to everything,” he said, “I just can’t believe it all. They see their friends getting shot every day, and they are able to just live normally. Every bullet I hear, I know it is a student getting shot. How can I think like that? How can I feel safe?”
Anas remembers the first time he faced danger from the soldiers. “I decided to walk back from school once,” he explained, “As I was walking I looked next to me, and just above me were soldiers pointing guns at my face. I froze and my heart started beating extremely fast. I thought I would have a heart attack. I never experienced this before, and it was terrifying. I didn’t know what to do, and the soldiers just screamed at me, ‘[Walk]! [Walk]!’ It terrified me so much.”
Going to Khadoori has been very difficult for Anas, and it has even lead him to consider leaving already. “Imagine having this every day,” he said, “every day you go to college, you are shot at, you have tear gas in your classroom. The day I cracked was when I learned about the mustarabeen. While there were clashes, students screamed that there were mustarabeen and to lift all our shirts. I didn’t know what this was, but I did it anyways. I asked people what mustarabeen were. They told me that they were Israeli soldiers who would dress up like us, but with guns. They would go in crowds and shoot at students or push students towards the other soldiers to arrest them. This was just a day after I saw them ambush students from two sides. I never think it could reach this inhumanity. I ran home and I called my parents to tell them that I wanted to leave Palestine. I just couldn’t take this fear anymore. My parents told me to wait to see how it is. The university is a fifth the cost of what it is in Jordan, and the university in Jordan is a fifth of the cost in the UAE, so they hope that I can make it through.”
However, going to school has become a daily struggle psychologically. “My classes are already three weeks behind. At this rate, we won’t have a break between semesters. Today, the tear gas reached my class. The professor tried to act like everything was normal because he didn’t want us to fall behind any more. We were unable to keep our eyes open. The professor tried so hard to teach, but it was impossible. We all had to leave the classroom, and we never got to finish the lesson. It’s been like this every single day. This is not an environment to learn! This is not an environment to become an adult!”
Throughout this experience, Anas’s concept of the situation has evolved greatly, or “modified,” as he put it. “It’s like with the soldiers,” he said, “I don’t get it when I look at them. These soldiers have children. How are they able to kill another person’s child and then come back to their own children? How can they be so cruel to young students? It’s only when you see it for yourself that you see that these soldiers have all the power, so they use any reason to hurt everyone on the campus as much as possible. And yet, people in Israel, in America, they all believe what the media says is happening. Today, you can’t even trust your brother with the truth with his self interests. How can you trust the internet or media? How can you believe these things?”
It was very sad to hear much of what Anas said. I came to adore my time with Anas. Besides the conflict, we discussed the difficulties Muslims have in the world. Staying at his uncle’s house, Anas prayed in front of me. After, he chuckled, saying, “I was thinking while I was praying, how when I say Allahu Akbar, people in America don’t even know what that means. They only think it means you’re a terrorist.” We had a long discussion about this, talking about how disconnected many Israelis and Westerners are from the individuals of this religion distorted by media and government. I wish that people came here to see how genuinely good people are here, I told him.
“I do, too,” he told me, “I wished that they would see how the army actually is here, and I wish how Palestinians and Muslims really are. People need to understand the people and religion more than what the media makes you think. The media makes everyone think that we are all programmed to kill Jews. I don’t care if you’re Jewish. I don’t care about any of those things. Zionism only takes a religion like Judaism, and it distorts it for its own political goals and to gain power. It’s just like ISIS. Those people aren’t Muslims. They only use Islam for power and what they view it as. It’s sad, because we forget what ideologies are and who human beings are. They are different, but no one understands that ever.”
I asked him if he thinks he will stay in Palestine. “I don’t know,” he replied, “I hope I can make it. I really do love everyone I have met here. But I don’t know if I can take what we have to deal with for four years. There’s no humanity in this education.”
Fayez
I arrived at Fayez’s home a little later than I was hoping. My time at the university had gone a bit longer than I had planned. I thought I was going to return to Nablus after, but it was already 5 PM and it had begun pouring rain outside. I asked Fayez, a charismatic Palestinian man with the classic walrus mustache, if it would be possible to speak to him quickly so I can get back to Nablus before transportation stopped.
“Well, you can if you want to, of course,” he said, “but I would prefer if you stayed here. Relax, you can have dinner here, talk about things after, and you will stay at our house tonight. Tomorrow morning, I can show you the farm.” I felt like I was intruding, but, per usual, Fayez insisted this was not the case. “No!” he exclaimed, “Stay, make this your home. This is your home now, don’t worry.”
I gave in to his insistent hospitality, and I am thankful that I did. Beyond enjoying wonderful traditional Palestinian dinners and breakfasts, I got to know a lovely family (including Anas, Fayez’s nephew), and I felt at home like I haven’t in quite a bit of time.
After our meal, Fayez sat down with me and shared some of his story. It’s difficult to contain everything that Fayez has to say, for this man can talk for hours and hours. Luckily, it’s impossible to lose focus when listening to a man of such charisma. With strength and passion, Fayez described his incredible life to me.
Fayez grew up in this same home, just the floor below us, in Irhat, a village outside Tulkarem. His family had been farmers on this land for generations.
In 1978, when he was still in high school, he was arrested for two weeks. “They thought I was active then,” he said, “as students, we created a small committee to help poor students who couldn’t afford food. That was my activism at the time, but they still arrested me.” After high school, Fayez looked to pursue further studies outside the country. Reaching the border, he was arrested for 36 days and prevented from continuing his studies abroad. “They asked us many questions, and they beat us very hard. They said that they had information that I wanted to go to Lebanon to join the PLO, but I never had this idea. But after 36 days, they decided that they would permanently ban me from leaving the country.” Fayez never did go to college.
After being denied access to education, Fayez started working locally. He worked at a factory for a few years. In 1984, his father passed away, after which he received his father’s farmland. Fayez didn’t do anything with the farm at first. However, six months after, he was told by people in his community that Israeli soldiers were now using his father’s land, building a small camp there. At that point, Fayez decided to start working his father’s land. He returned to the land, implanting irrigation pipes and planting. The soldiers continued working on his land, however, uprooting plants and destroying his irrigation pipes. The soldiers beat him multiple times while he tried to work his own land. Eventually, he was able to have the soldiers leave his farm.
While Fayez at first wasn’t very interested in the farm, to see his own plants grow created a special connection for him. “To see the flower, and then after the apples, and to pick your apples, it’s not enough to describe it. It isa feeling beyond words. You feel that special connection with you, the plant, and the land.”
With his newfound connection with his work as a farmer, Fayez became active in asserting the rights of the farmers against the occupation during these years. A couple years later, Fayez married his current wife, and shortly after, he had his first child.
The following year, the First Intifada began. During this time, Fayez had become socially active. He has been the head of multiple farmer unions and other organizations since then, building agricultural communities to help support farmers who face discrimination from the occupation while organizing nonviolent actions against the occupation. One night, soldiers came to his house and took him to prison. Fayez was put under administrative detention for six months at a time, and his sentence was renewed for two years. “They thought I was an activist, but they had no information. I never have thought about endangering anyone around the world, Jewish or anyone else. But I have enough humanity to support those who are suffering. Me, I’m an activist, but I took the nonviolence route. My teachers in resistance were Mandela, Martin Luther King, Jr. and Gandhi.” Fayez showed me the books he had by Gandhi and Nelson Mandela, perched prominently on his desk.
“I came back from the prison,” he said, “and all I wanted was to see my daughter. When I finally saw her, I cried out, ‘Katya!’ She saw me, though, and she started crying and ran away. She didn’t know I was her father. It hurt my heart so much that my own daughter didn’t know it’s me.”
Fayez was issued a special identification that barred him from entering Israel. “When Israeli soldiers see your ID, they will start beating you. Not only can you not go to Israel, but you can’t travel between cities without being beaten.”
Since this time, Fayez has been a leader in the Palestinian community in organizing demonstrations and other acts of nonviolent resistance to the demonstration. This hasn’t stopped soldier violence against the demonstrations, nor has it stopped them from arresting Fayez.
However, Fayez’s leading role has also led him to speak internationally about the situation in Palestine, speaking at the International Criminal Court and other international organizations regarding justice. “I don’t have tanks, I don’t shoot at anyone. I fight through nonviolence and speaking about what is happening.” Naturally, whenever he returns from abroad, he is forced to stay at the border for 12 hours at a time, sometimes even being denied entry into the West Bank.
In 1984, Fayez’s neighbor had much of his farm confiscated by the military. Israel built a chemical factory there, in an attempt to circumvent environmental laws in Israel proper. Wind in Palestine mostly blows west to east. Thus, most of the time, the dangerous chemicals coming from the factory goes over Tulkarem, but not his farm. “However,” he said, “there are about 30 days in the year where the wind changes directions. One morning, I went to the farm, and I saw that everything was white. I knew that this white powder was coming from the chemical factory. It was not only my farm, though. It was before the wall, so the powder was over the farms of my Jewish neighbors also. All our plants died from this powder.” There had been other cases in Israel where such instances were grounds for having the factory removed. “The Jewish neighbor went to the same court, but the Israeli court this time said that we didn’t have a report endangering our land and family. Us and our neighbor, we understood that it was a political answer because this was affecting the Palestinian farmers. Our Jewish neighbor continued arguing with the court. The judge told him, ‘I am sorry that this is happening to you. I promise that when the wind goes from the east to the west, I will close this part of the factory.’ So the other 300 days in the year when the chemicals are going to our Palestinian city of 70,000 people, it doesn’t matter!”
Eleven Israeli factories have been put in the Tulkarem area, using area in the West Bank to circumvent Israeli environmental laws.
In 2002, the separation wall was built on Fayez’s property. Now, he was surrounded by the wall and the chemical factory. For 18 months, his property was blocked off by a fence, and he was unable to come onto his land. The separation wall cut Fayez off from two-thirds of his farmland, which remains on the other side of the wall. For the five years during the Second Intifada, he was unable togo to his farm, due to both curfews and the threat of being shot at by soldiers. “Three times,” he said, “while we were under curfew, they destroyed our farm completely. Completely! We needed to rebuild everything, and every time, we lost one million shekels.”
The soldiers still have not stopped destroying his farmland. He has had cases where plants were not growing properly. “Experts came to see what was happening he said, “and they could determine that these plants were poisoned by the soldiers.” During the night, soldiers have come to cut down his plants and destroyed his greenhouses. Many times, soldiers have shot at him while tending to his fields. Soldiers have brought tanks and driven them across the field, destroying everything in the process. “Why do they do this? For nothing!”
One blessing in disguise that has resulted from all of this is his firm commitment in employing permaculture techniques and avoiding the use of all chemicals in cultivation. “1989, when I saw the dangers of this chemical factory, I started to ask to myself what were the effects of chemicals.” Fayez began to attend workshops to understand the role chemicals have on crops and general livelihood. “I still remember it, it was all so much. I realized how many people died because of these chemicals, how the ozone layer has been destroyed, how the ecosystems are being destroyed. These chemicals are destroying everything!” Fayez first went to the court to try to bring change about the factory, but to no avail. Afterwards, Fayez began writing articles, filming documentaries, organizing demonstrations, and inviting international environmentalists to remove this factory.
“I once said to myself, ‘Fayez, maybe you can’t change anything more from their side, but maybe you can change from your side.’ I began to have clean, organic planting. I attended workshops internationally to learn about permaculture and organic farming.” Today, Khadoori brings their agricultural students to his farm to learn organic farming techniques.
The next morning, after having lovely breakfast together, we went to Fayez’s farm. Walking side-by-side with the chemical factory and with the separation wall in front of us, Fayez showed me the various techniques he employed on the farm. Using compost, collecting rainwater, and utilizing natural fertilizers, the operation Fayez had was impressive. Today, Fayez’s farm is the leader in all of Palestine for environmentally-friendly agriculture. For a man who once had no desire to farm like his forefathers, Fayez now is a man leading an agricultural revolution alongside a revolution of resistance in Palestine.
Looking over at the wall, I found myself questioning once again how it can be possible to keep such a kind man fenced like an animal. How can it be possible to keep all of these people fenced? To destroy and take their land, to poison it with the chemicals you would keep your own people away from. There is no justice, and Fayez was doing all he could to make his own justice, but their was no recognition of the basic goodness in his heart.
In spite of all that he faces, Fayez is hopeful that with international support, the occupation will end. “When I speak around the world, in the community, in my home,” he said, “I fight for justice, and I know from Gandhi, from Mandela, that we will take down this occupation. People in the world must know what is happening, and they must join us in our fight to take down this wall and end this occupation.”
