Six people were injured in a shooting outside the Roman Amphitheater in downtown Amman after a concert there last week. Their injuries were thankfully not severe, and according to the Jordan Times they have basically recovered. The gunman, however, shot and killed himself while being chased by police. According to Reuters, the gunman--identified by Jordanian authorities as a resident of a Palestinian refugee camp just north of Amman--apparently thought his victims were Israelis. Only one was Israeli, though--Israeli Arab--and four were Lebanese members of a choir that had just performed at the amphitheater. The sixth was a Jordanian bus driver.
This is the third incident against foreigners--or people thought to be foreigners--that I am aware of that has taken place since we moved here in 2006. In September 2006 a British tourist was killed and six others injured in another shooting outside the amphitheater, and in March of this year a German tourist was stabbed in an area downtown not far from the amphitheater. According to the authorities, all three incidents were the work of lone perpetrators.
Although I wanted to post something about this latest incident, I was hesitant to do so, lest it contribute to the general perception I think some people have at home that the entire Middle East is a swirling cauldron of violence in which Westerners are apt to be shot or kidnapped at any moment. We have had a lot of visitors since we've been here, and most of them have told us stories about co-workers, friends and/or family members who thought they were crazy for wanting to come here. I also didn't want to sound like an alarmist (Look what's happening in Jordan!). However, these three incidents do represent something of a pattern--albeit over a long period of time. Also, since they involve the targeting of foreigners--or in this case people assumed to be foreigners--they are particularly newsworthy to me, a foreigner.
That being said, though--the closest I have come to being involved in this type of an incident still is from when we lived in Minneapolis. One night several years ago I was sitting on a friends' large front porch near our apartment doing some homework when I heard gunfire so loud it seemed to almost come from within the house. Without thinking, I bolted inside and ducked behind the door. Soon after, as police cars and ambulances converged on the area, I discovered that my ears were not lying: a man sitting in his back porch in the house directly across the alley behind the house where I was had been shot. The man's death was one of 47 homicides in Minneapolis that year.
So, although war rages on in Iraq, Israelis and Palestinians continue to fight, another burst of trouble just ended in Lebanon and Jordan may or may not--only time will tell, really--have some sporadic issues to deal with regarding violence against foreigners, we've got some problems in Minneapolis too.
Saturday, July 19, 2008
Friday, July 11, 2008
Lebanon: Outside Beirut
Here are some pictures of our travels outside of Beirut.
Jounieh, north of Beirut.
The small port of Byblos, about 45 minutes north of Beirut, where we saw...
pomegranate trees...
backgammon played in the market area by some small Roman ruins...
beautiful gardens...
flowers...
and churches.
A stream south of Beirut.
The city of Sidon, about 25 minutes south of Beirut, where we saw...
the old souq, or market...
a jumble of wires...
and watermelons overflowing.
Lebanon: Beirut
Yesterday we returned home to Jordan after spending about one month in Beirut. We really enjoyed enjoyed our time in another Middle Eastern capital, and came away with two big impressions of the city.
For one, from both the 23rd floor of the apartment where we were staying and from street level too, the buildings of Beirut shows the scars of violence and civil war it has suffered over the last several decades. After a 15 year civil war that ended in 1990, heavy bombardment by Israel in 2006, and sporadic bouts of unrest and fighting between and since--including skirmishes downtown and in other areas just before we arrived--the city probably has not been able to revamp its infrastructure and keep up with general maintenance the way other cities can. For example, many buildings are still pocked with bullet holes from the civil war, with occasional severely damaged buildings still holding residents in the units that are still somewhat liveable. Although much of the damage has been cleaned up, the 2006 bombing campaign of Israel left empty lots where buildings once stood, the result of vacuum bombs that--after impact--created a hole in the ground and then sucked their target down into it. Also, the paint or stucco of many buildings is peeling or falling off, leaving the brick underneath exposed. Combined with the pollution that had turned many of the buildings a dirty black or grey, parts of the city just looked in need of a 2008 makeover.
One shouldn't have the impression that the whole city was like this, though. A lot of work has been done and is being done in the city, and many new buildings have been erected and others have been restored. We are just not used to seeing bullet riddled buildings and the like, so such images tend to stay with us.
Also, Beirut is also a much more liberal city than Amman, or perhaps it is better to say it is much less conservative. It was rare to see a woman wearing the hijab, and many women were wearing the same kinds of outfits one might see women wearing on hot summer days in Minneapolis. Matt wore shorts every day--men rarely wear shorts in Jordan--and Annamarie wore tank tops and skirts. Also, it was common to see men and women hanging out together, which--as we wrote in a previous post--does not happen much here. To us, this liberalism gave the city a more relaxed feel, and because the atmosphere was so different from Amman, gave our time a vacation-like feel. Here are some pictures.
For one, from both the 23rd floor of the apartment where we were staying and from street level too, the buildings of Beirut shows the scars of violence and civil war it has suffered over the last several decades. After a 15 year civil war that ended in 1990, heavy bombardment by Israel in 2006, and sporadic bouts of unrest and fighting between and since--including skirmishes downtown and in other areas just before we arrived--the city probably has not been able to revamp its infrastructure and keep up with general maintenance the way other cities can. For example, many buildings are still pocked with bullet holes from the civil war, with occasional severely damaged buildings still holding residents in the units that are still somewhat liveable. Although much of the damage has been cleaned up, the 2006 bombing campaign of Israel left empty lots where buildings once stood, the result of vacuum bombs that--after impact--created a hole in the ground and then sucked their target down into it. Also, the paint or stucco of many buildings is peeling or falling off, leaving the brick underneath exposed. Combined with the pollution that had turned many of the buildings a dirty black or grey, parts of the city just looked in need of a 2008 makeover.
One shouldn't have the impression that the whole city was like this, though. A lot of work has been done and is being done in the city, and many new buildings have been erected and others have been restored. We are just not used to seeing bullet riddled buildings and the like, so such images tend to stay with us.
Also, Beirut is also a much more liberal city than Amman, or perhaps it is better to say it is much less conservative. It was rare to see a woman wearing the hijab, and many women were wearing the same kinds of outfits one might see women wearing on hot summer days in Minneapolis. Matt wore shorts every day--men rarely wear shorts in Jordan--and Annamarie wore tank tops and skirts. Also, it was common to see men and women hanging out together, which--as we wrote in a previous post--does not happen much here. To us, this liberalism gave the city a more relaxed feel, and because the atmosphere was so different from Amman, gave our time a vacation-like feel. Here are some pictures.
Looking out from the 23rd floor.
From the boardwalk.
Translation: America is the head of terrorism.
The former Holiday Inn, used as a sniper position in the civil war.
Construction near the waterfront.
A restored building.
Restored area of downtown.
In the neighborhood where we stayed.
A mosque.
Tuesday, July 01, 2008
The Root of the Problem
Last week I attended a conference at a seminary in Beirut—we’re still here in Lebanon now—in which three subjects were covered: Islamic Law, the Israeli/Palestinian conflict and Christian Peacemaking. I left with many things to think about, and I’m not sure exactly what I would say had me thinking the most or left the biggest impression on me. One statement on the Israeli/Palestinian conflict, though, made by one of the speakers—an Anglican minister who had spent many years in the region and who had written several books on the conflict—struck me as important to remember. “The root of the problem,” he said, “is not Islam, but dispossession.”
This is an important point to remember, especially considering the images we see and the news we hear in the United States. When it comes to this conflict and story, we hear on the news about suicide bombings and rockets attacks on Israeli civilian areas, and we hear about Hamas, the Islamic group that governs the Gaza Strip that the U.S. government classifies as a terrorist organization. To a U.S. audience, these are frightening, foreign things to hear about, and as such they can overwhelm all other considerations when contemplating this issue. An American watching the news and seeing images of cafes and discos blown to pieces and civilians heading to bomb shelters—because of suicide bombs attached to or rockets launched by Muslims—probably thinks, “Wow, Islam is a menace, it is the cause of this problem, and they will never give the Israelis peace.” Or something like that.
However, despite all this it is important to remember that the root of the problem is not Islam, but dispossession. I basically already believed this, but have never quite heard the issue articulated so succinctly. Very simply, there is a problem today because Arab Palestinians—Muslims and Christians—lost their homes. There is no problem without dispossession.
As I learned at the conference, 130 years ago the inhabitants of the land that is now the state of Israel were almost entirely Arabs. In the 1880s, Palestinians made up 95 percent of the population, with Jews at 5 percent. By around 1920, due to immigration from anti-Semitic Europe, Jews had become about 10 percent of the population, and by 1947, 31 percent. Palestinians probably weren’t losing their homes yet at that stage, but at the creation of the state of Israel by the United Nations in 1948, they started to. In the months before, during and after the subsequent war between Israel and the surrounding Arab nations, around 750,000 Palestinians left, fled or were forced out of their homes. Dispossession. This flight continued as the years went by, and accelerated again in 1967 with another war between Israel and its neighbors. Today, the population of Israel is 80 percent Jewish and 20 percent Arab. Recently I read there are also today around 5.5 million Palestinian refugees scattered around the world. Dispossession.
Several million of those Palestinians now live in Jordan, so I also know this from experience: I have a friend—a barber whose salon is around the corner from us—whose father’s family was forcibly removed in 1948 from their home in Safed, in the Galilee region of Israel. Nothing is left of the Arab village that once was there. The family of one of my Arabic teachers in Amman was forced out of their home in Jaffa, just south of Tel-Aviv, in 1948. They assume a Jewish family lives there now, and is also taking advantage of the fields of orange and lemon trees they once cultivated. Another friend—an old man who owns a tiny shop near us—remembers fleeing his home in Jerusalem amidst the chaos of bombs and explosions. I’ve met people who fled their homes in what is now Israel in 1948 and escaped to what is now called the West Bank, only to flee again in 1967. I know of people who still have the keys to the homes they left and lost. Dispossession.
I have problems with how Palestinians in general and Palestinians influenced by Islam in particular have gone about fighting for their land, and certainly the Arab states around Israel are no angels. This is a topic for another time. But this whole history of Palestinians being forced from their homes—indirectly out of fear or directly by Israeli forces—is why I think, and why we in the United States need to remember, that the root of this bloody, seemingly never-ending conflict in which both sides are constantly violently reacting to the other, is not Islam. It is dispossession. Dispossession.
This is an important point to remember, especially considering the images we see and the news we hear in the United States. When it comes to this conflict and story, we hear on the news about suicide bombings and rockets attacks on Israeli civilian areas, and we hear about Hamas, the Islamic group that governs the Gaza Strip that the U.S. government classifies as a terrorist organization. To a U.S. audience, these are frightening, foreign things to hear about, and as such they can overwhelm all other considerations when contemplating this issue. An American watching the news and seeing images of cafes and discos blown to pieces and civilians heading to bomb shelters—because of suicide bombs attached to or rockets launched by Muslims—probably thinks, “Wow, Islam is a menace, it is the cause of this problem, and they will never give the Israelis peace.” Or something like that.
However, despite all this it is important to remember that the root of the problem is not Islam, but dispossession. I basically already believed this, but have never quite heard the issue articulated so succinctly. Very simply, there is a problem today because Arab Palestinians—Muslims and Christians—lost their homes. There is no problem without dispossession.
As I learned at the conference, 130 years ago the inhabitants of the land that is now the state of Israel were almost entirely Arabs. In the 1880s, Palestinians made up 95 percent of the population, with Jews at 5 percent. By around 1920, due to immigration from anti-Semitic Europe, Jews had become about 10 percent of the population, and by 1947, 31 percent. Palestinians probably weren’t losing their homes yet at that stage, but at the creation of the state of Israel by the United Nations in 1948, they started to. In the months before, during and after the subsequent war between Israel and the surrounding Arab nations, around 750,000 Palestinians left, fled or were forced out of their homes. Dispossession. This flight continued as the years went by, and accelerated again in 1967 with another war between Israel and its neighbors. Today, the population of Israel is 80 percent Jewish and 20 percent Arab. Recently I read there are also today around 5.5 million Palestinian refugees scattered around the world. Dispossession.
Several million of those Palestinians now live in Jordan, so I also know this from experience: I have a friend—a barber whose salon is around the corner from us—whose father’s family was forcibly removed in 1948 from their home in Safed, in the Galilee region of Israel. Nothing is left of the Arab village that once was there. The family of one of my Arabic teachers in Amman was forced out of their home in Jaffa, just south of Tel-Aviv, in 1948. They assume a Jewish family lives there now, and is also taking advantage of the fields of orange and lemon trees they once cultivated. Another friend—an old man who owns a tiny shop near us—remembers fleeing his home in Jerusalem amidst the chaos of bombs and explosions. I’ve met people who fled their homes in what is now Israel in 1948 and escaped to what is now called the West Bank, only to flee again in 1967. I know of people who still have the keys to the homes they left and lost. Dispossession.
I have problems with how Palestinians in general and Palestinians influenced by Islam in particular have gone about fighting for their land, and certainly the Arab states around Israel are no angels. This is a topic for another time. But this whole history of Palestinians being forced from their homes—indirectly out of fear or directly by Israeli forces—is why I think, and why we in the United States need to remember, that the root of this bloody, seemingly never-ending conflict in which both sides are constantly violently reacting to the other, is not Islam. It is dispossession. Dispossession.
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