Sketching at Demascus Gate leads to trip to Bethlehem

This morning I was sitting on the steps outside Demascus Gate attempting to sketch.  I had been apprehensive up to this morning about the idea of sketching because the activity reduces the atmosphere and color of the place to black and white scratches on paper, an injustice to the scene.  While sitting there, I became involved in a conversation with a couple of Palestinians; one 28-year-old waiting for her mother for the day's shopping who was very interested in the drawing because she, too, enjoyed sketching.  After exchanging the necessary information about each other, I asked her what I should tell my students about Palestinians.  She said that they need to know what's going on underneath the surface, how difficult it is to live here.

Just after the conversation with the young woman, I met Yusef (Joseph), a physical therapist responsible for an extended family of his parents, wife, and three children, ages eight, five, and one.  Because of the way the native-born citizens of Bethlehem are being choked by the separation wall and Jewish settlements on all sides, tourism and industry (such as stone cutting for countertops and such) has been cut off from the world.  Yusef explained how tour buses were coming to town and only staying for about 40 minutes.  The buses come. They unload a block away from the Church of the Nativity, they reload, and leave.

I went to Bethlehem participating in Yusef's scam, which I recognized from the get-go.  For money, Yusef hustles to personally take individuals to a particular gift shop (where I bought a beautiful camel) in Bethlehem.  He hopes for a little money from me for the tour and a cut of anything I buy from the gift shop.

First we boarded the Palestinian bus to Bethlehem for six sheqels ($1) and rode through several local stops for about 40 minutes and disembarked on the West end of town.  Then, Yusef and I walked. He showed me where the israelis are currently constructing the wall.  There were Israeli military with machine guns guarding the operation.  We started to walk down to Yusef's friend's house for a closer look.  We made an about-face when Yusef saw razor wire stretched across the road about 30 meters in front of us.  Out of sight of the razor wire and it's guard, Yusef's friend stopped and talked to us from his car.  He had been driving around with groceries looking for the opportunity to get back with his family on the other side of the razor wire.  Had been waiting for four hours. 

Then Yusef took me to the front of half built Palestinian home which was supposed to overlook some ancient olive groves. Yusef left me standing in the street and returned a minute later with permission from the squatters who were living on the second floor, a cement three-story skeletal structure with concrete floors above and below.  There were just two walls in the shade of the second floor.  We passed one matress and a pile of belongings and reached the balcony. The entire extended family (minus) crowded together, all watching the construction and a large congregation of Israeli soldiers just across the ravine.  In the middle of the soldiers, I saw the sun flash off of a piece of equipment.  There were two men with a camera in the middle of the soldiers who were pressing them back to their vehicle.  I couldn't believe my eyes: in the foreground a guard and razor wire, then poor homes and the smoke of dump trucks and machinery, then the rebar for a section of wall parallel Highway 60, the a dry grass hill on the opposite hill with a street buildings, the camera men, and all those soldiers.

I've got much more to write, but I'm out of time.