"There's so much despair but there's also this laughter that's as prevalent as the despair is. And [there's] this incredible brightness in peoples' eyes. They look at each other when the shelling is over—and the eye contact here is amazing—and people start laughing. It's like, what else are you gonna do?
"It's getting harder to be clear about it the longer I'm here. When I was in New York and Seattle, this was a really political situation, but being here now, it's become very personal. I have a family here now, I have friends here now, I'm called a daughter, a sister. It's harder to face the reality of the situation. People I'm living with, they say this is no life, that their children won't be able to live."
QUQIUE KIERZENBAUM/GETTY IMAGES
Demonstrating against Israeli army policies on March 14 in Ramallah.
QUQIUE KIERZENBAUM/GETTY IMAGES
Demonstrating against Israeli army policies on March 14 in Ramallah.
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As she says this, I am wondering whether Schurr's "not being clear" any longer and taking this "cut-and-dry" issue personally has led her to greater insight, or whether it is a symptom of how easy it is to get sucked into the rage that provides seemingly endless fuel for all sides in this conflict.
Near the end of a long conversation, I ask Schurr what she will do when she returns to the United States. She starts into a well-practiced recital of the work that is needed to end U.S. support of the Israeli occupation, but stops:
"I could have answered that question before I left, but now that I'm here . . . I don't know. I don't know that I want to come back."
And, softly, on the phone from Bethlehem: "The stars are out tonight."
In Seattle, it's still a warm and sunny day. There's a helicopter overhead. It's a traffic copter. But what if it weren't? What if it were an F-16, or some gunship, hovering over a highway only the occupiers were allowed on, spitting fire or bullets at us? What if it were impossible to step outside without dodging bullets? What if, my health conditions notwithstanding, I could expect to be rounded up, arrested, jailed, and beaten every now and then, just for my age, gender, and race, just so I knew who was boss? What if I couldn't get electricity or water or medical care or food, let alone a job or a future for my children? What if my whole city were in the same situation? For 35 years? And what if the rest of the world was doing nothing about it?
Or what if my country—with the same population as Washington state—founded in genocide, hated by its neighbors, unique in the world, felt itself under siege, not knowing whether the next trip to a pizza parlor or mall would end in fiery death? And we had the military might to punish all who lived where the attackers did?
Would we be acting any differently from either side?
gparrish@seattleweekly.com
