Dear Friends and Supporters,

Sometimes, the vibrant sense of commerce and life in Ramallah is one of the only things that continues to give me any hope.  Since the 1967 occupation of East Jerusalem, Ramallah has become the economic and political hub of Palestine, housing all governmental offices (besides those quasi-governmental and crippled offices in Gaza run by Hamas), and offering the visitor proof that even with all the difficulty, there is life, and a bustling one at that, on the other side of the wall.  But last week, when Israel's staunchest ally George W. Bush paid a visit to Abu Mazen, that sense of liveliness was, at least for the day, completely eclipsed.  A dark, gloomy atmosphere seemed to prevail over Ramallah when I arrived in the afternoon and it wasn't due to the fog that had shrouded the city for the day.  No, this quiet, almost spooky mood was due to the visit by George Bush, and the president's unparalleled ability to perform below rock-bottom expectations. 

George Bush's visit caused a complete shutdown in Ramallah.  Police dressed in new, starched uniforms patrolled the streets en masse, residents were forced to remain indoors for several hours, reporters clogged the vehicular checkpoint in Qalandiya…and George Bush decided it was all just a little bit funny.  There's really no way to describe the dismay, disappointment, and shock that Bush's ignorant and inane comments caused the Palestinian populations both inside the West Bank and elsewhere.  In case you haven't heard, Bush's helicopter was grounded due to dense fog the morning he was supposed to visit Ramallah, and so his forty-five-vehicle motorcade was forced to enter the city by road.  Initially, this offered Palestinians hope that maybe, by some miracle, George Bush might internalize the cold steel of the checkpoints, the hard concrete of the wall, and the burning glare of the soldiers and urge an end to the madness.  But that was all a dream, a fleeting glimpse of a reality that is far from being realized.  Instead, Bush found his trip through the VIP checkpoint to be quite agreeable: "You'll be happy to know, my whole motorcade of a mere 45 cars was able to make it through without being stopped... I'm not so exactly sure that's what happens to the average person."  Yes George, I am happy to know you weren't stopped, because the sooner your motorcade gets in and out of Ramallah, the sooner the peanut vendor can go back to work, the kids can go back to school, and people can have their city back.

As I mentioned, expectations of progress being made by Bush's visit were already extremely low in the West Bank.  People said he was here to do two things: Support Israeli security (Check!) and make people scared of Iran (Check!).  Even with Bush's single positive suggestion that Israel remove settler outposts, no progress has been made on the ground.  As David Shulman makes clear in his book, "Dark Hope" there is a gap between peace plans in their "road map" or "process" phase and the stark and violent reality of daily life.  As US newspapers continue to report on the "positive progress" being made in talks between Olmert and Qurei, I begin to feel like I've been in a coma and I start looking around to see the evidence of the "progress" that I must have missed.  Has that settlement on the hill been dismantled?  Are there less than three checkpoints in a two-hour car ride?  Did the army start allowing people free access to their land?  Was the wall taken down, or pulled back to internationally recognized borders?  But I haven't been asleep, it's the gap Shulman talks about, and the violent reality it perpetuates on the ground while the world thinks things are getting better.

Yesterday I was riding back from an event near the wall in a village of Zbuba to Jenin with two journalists and they asked me what I thought of Bush.  After I had rattled off my usual list of Arabic praise for my favorite president, one of them said, "Do you see what happens after Bush comes?  Look at Gaza, look at the assassinations all over Palestine, look at the suffering!"  And it's true.  Since Bush's visit, Israel's bombardment of Gaza has gotten out of control, killing 37 people in its first six days, assassinations in the West Bank rose with members of resistance groups being shot while working in their fields (including only a few kilometers from my front door), and nothing has gotten the slightest bit better for normal Palestinians.

I pass the army on my way to work, friends tell me about seeing the army in the village, I see the army at checkpoints, I see them in the distance from my window, I see them patrolling the road by the wall, and at night I see them by the lights of their military observation posts on hilltops surrounding the West Bank.  And every time I see them I get the same, sinking feeling- the vibrant sense of life and commerce of Ramallah is again eclipsed, and the words of Israel's staunchest ally repeat themselves in my head- "I'm not so exactly sure that's what happens to the average person."  Nope, it sure isn't.

Al Mahrifa tajlib al huriya (Knowledge brings freedom)

Salaam,
Andrew Pappone

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