The Other Birthright

The billboard on the Israeli side of the towering security wall built between Jerusalem and Bethlehem to reads, “Peace Be With You,” Israel Ministry of Tourism.” Michele Chabin

The billboard on the Israeli side of the towering security wall built between Jerusalem and Bethlehem to reads, “Peace Be With You,” Israel Ministry of Tourism.” Michele Chabin

by Michele Chabin
Israel Correspondent

Bethlehem, West Bank — Life isn’t very rosy in the Dehaishe refugee camp, located at the edge of Bethlehem, for young men raised during two violent uprisings.
While the camp’s parents push their children to get a college education — and just about every home boasts a computer — young graduates find it extremely difficult to obtain employment in the depressed job market. The Israeli government bars boys over the age of 16 from entering Israel for security reasons, a situation that limits both employment options and marriage prospects. And because Bethlehem is a hotbed for terror cells, the Israel Defense Forces conducts periodic patrols in the camp’s narrow, fetid alleyways.
Residents say the towering cement wall the IDF built around the town to prevent

terrorists from entering Israel has turned it into a glorified prison.
Frustrated with their situation, six friends, all of them residents of Dehaishe and students at Bethlehem University, spent hours last December trying to come up with a solution.
How, they asked themselves, can we make the world sit up and take notice? And how can we get diaspora Palestinians to champion our cause?
“For 40 years we’ve fought our struggle with guns and bombs, and we ourselves used to throw stones. But now we realize there has to be another way to accomplish our goals,” 19-year-old Ahmed Laham, one of the clean-cut young men in the group, told The Jewish Week in the formal sitting room of his family’s home at the entrance to Dehaishe. “Our fight needs to be ideological.”
The result of the late-night brainstorming, Laham, a business administration major, said, was a program to encourage diaspora Palestinians to spend a couple of months in “their ancestral homeland.”
It was not until several days after they came up with the plan, Laham said, that the group discovered, during an Internet search, that more than 150,000 young Jews have already participated in a similar program: birthright israel.
Though the friends decided to call their initiative Birthright Palestine (Taglit birthright israel declined to comment) “the programs aren’t really similar,” insisted another of the group members, Muhanad A-Qaisi, a 19-year-old social work student.
“Birthright israel runs for 10 days. Palestinians living in the U.S. or Europe need a longer time to immerse themselves in Palestinian society, to learn what it’s like to live here and experience our suffering.”
It is no coincidence that the program’s first session will begin in mid-May, just in time to commemorate the 60th anniversary of the “Nakba” (catastrophe), the Arabic term for Israeli Independence Day.
Organized by the just-created Palestine Center for National Strategic Studies (PCNSS), the tiny NGO the friends created in Deheishe, in cooperation with the long-established Siraj Center of Holy Land Studies, a travel-study center in nearby Beit Sahour, the program is intended for first- and second-generation, Western-born Palestinians over the age of 18.
In contrast to the free trips provided to birthright israel participants, the young Palestinians are expected to pay their own way for a two- to three-month stay (shorter stays are also possible) in Dehaishe, where they will live with refugee families in the camp (or, if they choose, a guest house), learn Arabic, volunteer and tour the West Bank, Israel and possibly Gaza. The program is expected to cost up to $3,000.
The program’s goal, the organizers say on the Birthright Palestine Web site (www.birthrightpalestine.com), is to bring Westernized Palestinians back to “Palestine” in order to “unite and witness firsthand how their brethren are living under illegal Israeli military occupation, while assimilating them into Palestinian society.”
The Web site tells the Palestinian descendants, “the reason you are living in a foreign state is due to the fear of persecution in your homeland simply for being born an Arab. We are assuming that your parents did not leave their native homeland by choice and rather unwillingly abandoned their homes due to the grave difficulties that they faced under occupation and war. Thus, your parents, as well as their descendants (you) are technically refugees.”
Judging from what he has heard about Birthright Palestine’s Web site, Gerald Steinberg, director of the Conflict Resolution program at Bar-Ilan University, said the Palestinian organizers “appear to be using the birthright israel framework to promote the Arab-Israeli conflict. It appears they will invite speakers and organizations that oppose compromise and promote militancy, that promote boycotts and sanctions against Israel. Apparently, they hope to create Palestinian activists in the U.S. and Europe who will actively promote their cause.”
While their Web site’s statements resemble those found on the sites of far-left-wing Palestinian and Israeli organizations that blame Israel for all of the Palestinians’ woes, those involved with the program insist it will focus on cultural enrichment and service to the Palestinian community rather than militancy.
“Palestinian Birthright is not a resistance program,” insists George Rishmawi, coordinator of the program’s facilitator, Siraj, and a co-founder of the controversial International Solidarity Movement (ISM), which enlists young people to stand in front of Israeli bulldozers and perform other acts of so-called “nonviolent resistance.”
Sitting in the beautiful gardens at Bethlehem University, where hundreds of fashionably dressed Muslim and Christian students socialized in the early spring sunshine, Rishmawi said the goal is “to encourage Palestinian parents to send their children to Palestine. If they’re worried about their children’s safety, they won’t let them come.”
Asked whether participants will be permitted to join ISM or other such groups, Rishmawi, who said he left ISM several years ago, replied, “ISM has its own program. We’re not promoting ISM here. We’re not planning to include direct nonviolent actions. If they go on their own, it’s their responsibility. There are risks, and we cannot take responsibility for their safety.”
Rishmawi said program participants will spend much of their time learning about contemporary Palestinian society by living with Palestinian families and by performing internships with local organizations.
The program, he insisted, “is not politicized. If there’s a law student we’ll look for an organization that can use a law student. If someone is a graphic designer we’ll find an organization that needs a graphic artist.”
Participants will tour sites in the West Bank (“cities, universities, refugee camps”) and Israel, where they will visit destroyed Palestinian villages. They will also meet Arab citizens of Israel in the North and in the Negev, some of whom live in villages not recognized or funded by the Israeli government.
When requested, the program will facilitate a visit to a participant’s “ancestral village,” Rishmawi said.
Since publicizing Birthright Palestine in a limited way less than a month ago, “a handful” of young people have signed up for the program “and many, many more have expressed interest,” Rishmawi said. “I’m certain we will have many coming next summer.”
That’s the dream of six college students from Dehaishe, who wonder what life is like on the other side of the security barrier.
“Do you know I’ve never been to Jerusalem,” Laham said of the city just a couple of miles down the road, “unless you count the day I was born in Mokassed,” an east Jerusalem hospital.
“The students who live in Jerusalem and study at Bethlehem University can come and go as they please,” Al-Qaisi said, his voice full of frustration. “They can go to Al Aqsa, they can go to Jaffa, to Haifa, to the Dead Sea. I can see [the Jewish neighborhood] Har Homa from our school. This isn’t justice.”
If Birthright Palestine accomplishes anything, Al-Qaisi said, “it will prove to others that we in Palestine have a lot of energy and determination. This program is a way to improve our situation. We want people to know that despite everything, life goes on.”

Westchester Jewish Conference

Westchester’s Jewish Community Relations Organization