So we're in Ramallah, Palestine -- the West Bank.
"We" here means me, Claudia, and all four children. I have an assignment here that will last for five weeks. That's good in terms of, hey, five weeks of work. Somewhat less good in terms of leaving Claude and the kids alone for over a month. So after some discussion, we decided to bring everyone along.
Given our current state of economic uncertainty -- I'm between long-term assignments, and am likely to be so for the rest of the year, which means we'll be living from one short-term piece of work to the next -- this may strike some as a rather reckless decision. That's because it is, in fact, a rather reckless decision. Going through life constantly being reckless would be pretty stupid. But going through life never being reckless would be pretty boring. And you don't get that many opportunities to take your kids along for a month in the Holy Land.
So: here we are in Ramallah, the temporary capital of the Palestinian not-quite-state. We found a nice corporate apartment (three bedrooms, kitchen, swimming pool!) with a reasonable monthly rate; it's a bit farther out in the suburbs than we might have liked (yes, Ramallah has suburbs) but the kids seem happy enough. We got here three days ago; this weekend, we go explore Jerusalem.
So, if anyone's still reading this blog -- what do you want to know about Palestine?
Well, what are you doing? And what is there that we should know that doesn't get into the usual Western media narrative?
Posted by: Tony Zbaraschuk | June 07, 2012 at 11:22 PM
Palestinians are crazy about chocolate.
-- Not sure. What would be the usual Western media narrative, anyway? I think there are at least three of them.
Doug M.
Posted by: Doug M. | June 07, 2012 at 11:28 PM
Let's there, there's "Israel = South Africa = Nazis", and there's "Evil Terrorist Palestinians." Usually I see one or the other. What's the third?
Posted by: Tony Zbaraschuk | June 11, 2012 at 01:41 AM
I'd say the "Palestinians Bad / Israel Good" narrative has at least two major variants:The Bible Has Said So / All Muslims are Terrorists and Our Democratic Ally Must Defend Itself / America's Strategic Interests Are At Stake. Put another way, you have a narrative where the Palestinians are victims, another where they're monsters, and a third where they're an unfortunate obstacle or an irrelevancy.
Doug M.
Posted by: Douglas Muir | June 12, 2012 at 01:14 AM
And so, what is there that doesn't show up in these narratives that we should be aware of? :)
Posted by: Tony Zbaraschuk | June 12, 2012 at 03:02 AM