http://www.smh.com.au/world/west-banks-paths-to-understanding-20120323-1vpad.html West Bank's paths to understanding Ruth Pollard March 24, 2012 a.. Road to Nazareth ... the hand-made ferris wheel of Jenin tourist park rises above the West Bank.
The Ferris wheel rises up like a giant sculpture in a sea of green, an unlikely punctuation mark signalling the start of a 12-kilometre walk through the gentle hills and quiet valleys of the northern West Bank. It is not long before red anemones, wild pink cyclamen and bursts of yellow corn marigold decorate the spring landscape and the ancient city of Nazareth shimmers in the distance. In a region scarred by conflict, it is easy to forget the beauty of this area. In the small villages and large towns that dot the landscape, Palestinians are getting on with life: running businesses, going to university, farming, renovating and restoring. It is the ''other face of Palestine, the one not represented in the daily images of the conflict'', says Stefan Szepesi, a Dutch economist and walking enthusiast. Frustrated by the limits of his diplomatic life, Szepesi, who worked for the European Union and later as an adviser to Tony Blair in the Office of the Middle East Quartet, realised he had to get to know Palestinians - and their land - much better. What started four years ago with Szepesi and four friends exploring the West Bank on foot has grown into a weekend walking group of internationals and Palestinians now numbering 235. Between them they have walked more than 10,000 kilometres. Along the way he has had tea with Bedouin shepherds in the Jordan Valley, wandered through an ancient Roman stadium in the tiny village of Sebastia, discovered monasteries in the desert of Wadi Qelt and a renovated Ottoman period citadel in the village of Ras Karkar. Now he has chronicled those journeys in his newly released book Walking Palestine: 25 Journeys into the West Bank. As we hike along one of those the trails between Haddad and Jalqamus outside the city of Jenin, once strangled by Israeli checkpoints after the violence of the second intifada, Szepesi describes the scope of activity he has observed across the West Bank. ''When most people think of the West Bank, they think of the occupation,'' Szepesi says. ''But there is another truth which is not often represented, of people trying to make the best of it.'' Walking, he says, helps people to understand the conflict better. ''You see the scars on the landscape but you also see … people just leading their lives.'' >From fair-trade olive oil in Burqin and the brewery in the village of Taybeh >to the Jenin tourist park, with its Ferris wheel and other rides hand-made by >local blacksmith-turned-businessman Ibrahim Haddad, Palestinians are working >to build a state, despite their deeply divided leadership and Israel's 44-year >military occupation, Szepesi says. Detailing all kinds of paths from paved roads to shepherd's trails, his book provides maps, information on historical sites, wildlife and local springs, as well as parking, public transport, accommodation, and - most importantly - where to eat. ''The unexpected encounters are just wonderful, they are the most important part of walking … I have never regretted accepting the offer of tea or coffee,'' he says. Jenin local Mohammed Atari is one of the guides featured in the book, one of the many Palestinians Szepesi has met during his walks in the West Bank. He has a degree in archaeology and peppers our walk with snippets of history and stories of the significant sites in the region, which feature remains from the Bronze Age, Roman-Byzantine, Crusader and Ottoman eras. As we move along the small dirt paths and through olive groves, past flowering almond trees and fields of quivering wheat, Atari stops to point out plants and flowers growing wild that are used in Palestinian cooking or as traditional balms or teas, rubbing the leaves between his fingers to bring out their delicate scent. We reach the highest point of the walk and turn to take in the view. >From Mount Carmel to Nazareth, and right across the northern West Bank, the >calmness is all-consuming. At 34, Atari is old enough to remember life before the second intifada and construction of Israel's ''separation barrier'' - a system of cement walls and wire fences running hundreds of kilometres through the West Bank. ''Before the wall we were all neighbours,'' he says. ''When someone died in a Jewish home we would go and show our sadness, and if we had a wedding they would come and dance with us to celebrate.'' All that has gone now, and instead, he describes the anxiety of villagers when they saw him painting the small red and white signs on rocks to mark this walk's path. They were convinced the land was being marked out to be taken by Israeli settlers. Indeed, Szepesi says the 25 walks in his book avoid the settlements, mostly because they are fenced in but also because of the tensions that can surround the area. In the book's foreword, lawyer, author and walker Raja Shehadeh says: ''Much of the landscape in the West Bank is rapidly being destroyed by roadworks, expansion of existing cities and the fast, unprecedented increase of Jewish settlements being established there in violation of international law … as a result many areas of outstanding beauty have been destroyed.'' Not all though. Our walk finishes in Zababdeh, a mixed Christian and Muslim village where churches rest alongside mosques and the largest school enrols Christian and Muslim students. The secret to this village is the ancient Byzantine mosaics in its Latin convent, thought to date to the 6th century. It is true, as Shehadeh writes: ''The best way to know a place is to walk it.'' Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/world/west-banks-paths-to-understanding-20120323-1vpad.html#ixzz1q546mFaR [Non-text portions of this message have been removed] ------------------------------------ Post message: [email protected] Subscribe : [email protected] Unsubscribe : [email protected] List owner : [email protected] Homepage : http://proletar.8m.com/Yahoo! Groups Links <*> To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/proletar/ <*> Your email settings: Individual Email | Traditional <*> To change settings online go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/proletar/join (Yahoo! ID required) <*> To change settings via email: [email protected] [email protected] <*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: [email protected] <*> Your use of Yahoo! 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