Some call it Israel, some call it Palestine, and some call it the Holy Land. After a total of seven months here (minus the month and a half when I was gone for the summer) I am still in love with this place. I know there are many not-so-happy things about it: it's hard to make a living here, the bureaucracy can be maddening, people can be rude, the buses are NEVER on time, and if you move into a new apartment, it's not going to look so new, etc.
But my mind is continuously opened by the people I meet, and I am still surprised by how welcoming people are. I feel like I've found real communities here. In America, relationships feel so scattered, but here, friendships, family, and relations with colleagues seem to be more important. For example, yesterday, I was at work in the afternoon, and I had finished lunch. I got up to wash my plate, and I came back to the table to listen to my colleagues a bit more (it's one of the best times for me to get some listening practice). I thought, okay, everyone's basically finished with lunch, and we'll all go back to work.
But instead, my colleagues launch into a whole discussion about the local elections, smoking cigarettes and deliberating for probably the next half hour. And me, an American, was thinking, okay, lunch time is over, so now I have to start work again, like there's some kind of red line I have to cross, neatly separating my day into sections in an agenda book.
Today I went to a political debate in the Bedouin city of Rahat. It is the biggest Arab city in the Negev. It was kind of funny because of the 7 candidates who were supposed to come, only two showed up, and they were best friends - lol. Also, each Bedouin hamoola (roughly translated as "clan" but not the same thing as a tribe) chose their own candidate.
It was interesting, from an anthropological perspective, to see how politics and culture mixed. For example, the two candidates discussed common civic issues like education, having a youth center, representation in the Knesset (Israeli parliament), etc. But then other issues arose, like the public voting for a candidate because they like his platform, and not because he's part of the same hamoola, and the obvious lack of a female candidate, despite that Rahat has 55,000 people (the two candidates present said they "couldn't find" a woman to run - lol).
Despite my joking though, this debate was very important. It showed a community trying to gather and utilize its own resources and people power to improve life for their residents. I don't know how much Rahat receives in terms of resources from the government, but as a minority in Israel, it seems the Bedouin are neglected by the state. Many Bedouin live in unrecognized villages, which do not receive electricity, plumbing, paved roads, etc. and these are basic necessities of the 21st century.
Rahat, of course, is a recognized city.
So now I got home, whew! Maybe I will write an article about the debates...but I still have a lot of questions. I will have to ask my co-workers tomorrow.
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