Among my preconceived notions about Arabs in general and Palestinians in particular is that they are very 'traditional' people. I expected them to spend long hours slaving over slow cooked dishes and eat only foods with names that I could not understand.

While there are plenty of dishes with names that I don’t know that take hours to cook, Palestinians are also connoisseurs of some international cuisines.

So to expand upon the theme of my last post…

Palestinians love to eat! I think that gossiping and eating are the two most common ways to deal with the stress of living under occupation.

Here in Ramallah…

There are a million fried chicken joints on the main strip.

One of the few benefits of lacking statehood status is that copyright laws are not enforced. There is a café called Stars and Bucks with a green circular logo that serves icy “Froppe Chinos”. Surely a Palestinian businessman with a sense of humor returned after a few years in America and decided open the place.

The other day I ate bubbling cheesy lasagna from a restaurant called Angelo’s filled with Palestinian American kids in tank tops on summer vacation visiting their bescarved aunts and mustached uncles.

Everything in Palestine comes with French fries.

There is a bakery here that makes the best cinnamon rolls that I’ve ever had my entire life. That is no exaggeration. Every time I walk by I have to buy some, even if I’ve just eaten.

Palestinians also make great pizza. The best pizza in town, according to those in the know, is the ironically named (from an American perspective, though it’s really just an ordinary Arab name) Osama’s Pizza.

The woman I stayed with when I first arrived, Om Hilel, makes mini pizzas with olives and onions and fresh tomato sauce.

All of the American candy bars can be found here in Palestine. In fact, my coworker discovered that I like Twix and now brings it for me every day.

Other coworkers stand over my desk and ask me what I’m planning on eating for lunch and insist that I share their shawarma or hummus or labneh.

We all develop strategies to deal with the overwhelming emotions that arise from the endless checkpoints, internal divisions and rediculously unnecessary suffering and misery of occupation.

But let me tell you, Palestine is not the place to go to if you want to trim down.

I’m in Amman now at a labor education conference with union activists from four different Arab countries—Jordan, Morocco, Palestine and Iraq.

The International Federation of Workers’ Education Associations, based in Manchester, England, recently opened a branch in Amman (IFWEA/AC) and is hosting the event. The director of DWRC, Hasan Barghouthi is the current chair of IFWEA/AC.

I arrived on Friday after two hectic weeks in which I worked on the conference for the new coalition of independent and democratic trade unions in Palestine and traveled to Tulkaram and Qalquiliya to do research on industrial zones.

There is so much to write about! I’ve been neglecting this blog and now I want to just pour everything onto the page at once. But I’m too lazy to write it all out and I don’t want to bore my patient audience so instead I will give you some lists.

Things I’ve seen in the past two weeks:

• Settlers dumping chemically treated sewage on Palestinian farm land and killing the olive trees

• An illegal settlement dump where Israeli factories disposed of toxic waste

• A children's park funded by USAID that Israel demolished just for fun

• The segregation wall cutting through the land of farmers who are no longer able to
tend to their crops

• A chemical factory that was removed from Israel by court order because it was making people sick so it reopened in the West Bank and now produces a toxic cloud over Tulkaram where the rates of respiratory disease and cancer have shot through the roof.

Strange things about Jordan:

• There are KFC’s and McDonalds and Burger Kings and Starbucks everywhere

• Female employees at Burger King wear hijab as part of their uniforms

• Women in tank tops and capris shop side-by-side with women in Niqab

• They put bowls of olive oil out on the breakfast buffet at the hotel

Some of the participants in the labor education conference:

• Wasim from Bagdad, dreamed of being an engineer but is now a math teacher. His favorite food is fish and the last book he read was Roots by Alex Haley.

• Mohammed Laharash from Rabat, Morocco, is a Geology teacher. His favorite food is a traditional Moroccan dish called Mashush, which consists of soft wheat rolled and cooked with chicken and onions and pistachios.

• Jihad Saboubeh Anibta is from Palestine and does gender education work. Her favorite food is makloobah. To make makloobah one cooks chicken, puts it at the bottom of a pot and adds fried eggplant and potatoes and rice on top. The pot is turned upside down before serving.

• Crystal is from South Africa and is in charge of education at IFWEA. She lives between London and Manchester. She dreamed of being a writer and her favorite food is tripe and trotters. The last book she read was Guns, Germs and Steel.

• Manal Al Zawi, from Bagdad dreamed of being a tour guide. She works for the Ministry of Agriculture. Her favorite food is called Dorma (stuffed vegetables).

The participants spent most of their introduction period talking about each-others’ food. Crystal suggested that they make a cookbook with their favorite recipes and call it “Eat to Struggle.”

That title aptly describes my life in Palestine.

The following is an excerpt from a letter my friend wrote about her experience in the West Bank. I'm reposting it here so that you can hear the perspective of another American living in Ramallah.

The amazing thing about post-Oslo Palestine is how conditions vary so
widely from city to city. Things have been normal, which in Ramallah
(wholly under Palestinian control) means quiet, but not other places.
In my old neighborhood, the Israeli army entered only a few times a
month. But in Jenin and Nablus, there are constant incursions and it
really isn't so safe. The craziest case is probably Hebron
(Al-Khalil), where the central old city is under Israeli occupation
and the rest is Palestinian. I visited there last month with my friend
Danielle and her family, which was unintentionally hilarious. The city
is really packed and bustling until you get into the old city, where
the market is canopied by garbage that the super-thoughtful settlers
throw from their buildings onto the Palestinians below. We went
visiting religious sites, which is when the fun started.

By Israeli law, Jews aren't allowed to enter the mosque, so Rachel's
super cute grandparents struck up a conversation in Hebrew with a
soldier outside. He told them to visit the settler area, which they
did, but afterwards he wouldn't let them out. Super cute grandparents
had mentioned that they were "from" Rehovot, and as Israeli citizens
(which they aren't) they wouldn't be allowed to enter the West Bank,
even the few feet where the rest of us were. I ran up to the soldiers
and started exclaiming that as American passport holders we were
entitled to go wherever we wanted. Rachel's grandma interjected
"This is Terry, from Ramallah" as if that would endear the teenager
with the automatic weapon to me.

After a few more minutes of shouting we (grandparents intact) crossed
the 5 feet back into the West Bank side, at which point another
soldier tried to redirect the Jewish part of our group to the settler
road. Then Rachel's mom started yelling "That's my daughter, I'm not
leaving without her" and her stepfather joined in "That's my daughter,
I'm staying." The soldier asked them "you're Jewish too?" to which
they answered "noooo." Soldier #2 paused to look at our increasingly
angry group of Palestinian Muslim tour guide, Jewish grandparents,
Unitarian and atheist parents, Christian negro, and Jewish college kid
- and decided it was soooo not worth it and let us all go. Fun with
borders, always!

The strange thing about blood is that it never looks real.

One time I arrived at the second avenue stop on the F train in New York City just after someone got knifed. The stabber and stabbee had been removed from the scene already, both still breathing. But a thick neon red puddle of blood remained.

The color and texture of the blood were so vivid. It looked like an overdone prop from a Hollywood set.

A few years earlier, when I was working as a union organizer, I rode the elevator up to the fourth floor of the San Francisco General Hospital in search of healthcare workers to invite to a union meeting. The elevator doors opened to a frantic scene of a man covered in blood lying unconscious on a gurney surrounded by doctors and nurses.

I stepped back into the elevator, walked outside, got in my car and drove back to the office.

It was a hospital after all, I shouldn’t have been so shocked. But I’m not good with blood. My stomach is too weak.

Yesterday, I saw a man shot in the head by a rubber bullet in Bil’in.

His friends ran with him in their arms, drenched in his blood. Their shirts and hands were stained surreal red. The man’s face was covered in blood.

I turned and buried my head in Tatsiana’s shoulder.

This isn’t supposed to be real. People don’t actually get shot in the head for trying to protect their land from illegal walls.

But they do. And I was there to witness it yesterday.

People ask why we go, over an over again, to play out this futile game with the IDF soldiers.

If the internationals and Israelis weren’t there, those bullets could have been real. More real that the rubber coated depleted uranium shot yesterday. Not because we are great protectors of the Palestinian people, but because in the eyes of the West, our lives are just worth more.

If they were shooting live ammunition there would have been no need to rush the man, who’s name is Ibrahim, away from the scene leaking unreal redness everywhere. Instead of just a chunk of his skull cracked and missing, he would have been dead.

He could have died anyway. The Red Crescent ambulance took him to the nearest hospital. He survived.

It is all too real.

(photo courtesy of Palestine Monitor)

While listening to my roommate and his equally hormonal barely post-pubescent friends joke about each others’ mothers and rave about their sexual prowess, I turned and rolled my eyes to our upstairs neighbor, the oldest male in the room.

“Te has has caído en la boca del lobo,” he laughed.

You have fallen into the mouth of the wolf, caught in the teeth of the enemy.

Meaning that I was catching a glimpse of the secret heart of boy sentiments—the world from the perspective of girl-crazy budding masculinity, a view rarely seen or comprehended by outsiders.

This made me think about seeing through different lenses.

My American goggles color everything around me and sometimes it’s difficult to imagine another tint to my surroundings.

When Europeans ask me why Americans have such bad politics, I usually remind them that despite their cultured manners, we still produce better music and movies. And if they push me too far, I might even blurt that their entire continent is little more than an American colony these days.

This might seem a little harsh and, well, American. Perhaps my frustration stems from traveling outside the U.S. and being told countless times how Europeans and Canadians are much better sweeter more intelligent and compassionate humans. But please, those people have it easy--free healthcare and education and they actually get to see images of war on TV.

I am always impressed by Americans that speak out against our war-mongering foreign policy. It’s simple enough for the rest of the world to say: “Oh look, those stupid American imperialists are at it again.” But for someone from inside ‘ el Corazon del grande Babylon,’ in the words of Manu Chao, it takes a strong commitment to independent and critical thinking.

Likewise, it takes incredible chutzpah for Israelis to challenge the actions of their government. Those in the heart of the Israel have the capacity to impact the policies of occupation and the Zionist agenda in ways that no one else can. All it takes is one glimpse through the lense of the Palestinian people for the Zionist dream to turn into a nightmare.

Here’s a small sample of Israeli peace organizations working for justice in cooperation with Palestinians:

Kov LaOved
B’Tselem
Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions
Mishtara

And, of course, nothing makes me happier than seeing people challenge authority with humor. This article appeared in the Israeli online magazine Ynet: “Israel Discovers Compassion.”

In case you thought that the IDF was lacking a sense of humor, read this BBC article about their heroic rescue of golden eagles from the oppression of Palestinian cages in Hebron.

It’s unfortunate that the freedom of birds is more important that that of the Palestinian people, but so it appears from inside la boca del lobo.

I got tear gassed in Bil'in on Friday.

I didn’t intend to. I meant to just observe the weekly protest against the construction of the separation wall between the West Bank and Israel (see Amali Tower's 6/10 post for another perspective on the protests). I wanted to watch unscathed from the top of the hill.

But the wind was on the side of the soldiers.

I saw fifteen to twenty canisters of tear gas shot. It was a generous dose, almost one for every two protesters, plus four for each Palestinian child.

Little boys. Seven, eight, ten years old threw stones impotently at heavily armed and shielded Israeli soldiers.

I watched in horror as the soldiers targeted the children.

They shot tear gas canisters and rubber bullets at little boys.

I meant to move away but I was frozen in awe. I do not know what words I could possibly use to describe the feelings that arose when I saw soldiers pick up their guns and aim directly at children.

I didn’t turn away until a friend grabbed my arm and said: “now we run.”

The air was thick with gas and there were protestors vomiting on the ground.

It’s hard to imagine what tear gas feels like if you haven’t experienced it.

The name ‘tear’ gas is a misnomer. It sounds so innocuous, as if it just makes you feel a little bit sad.

It should be called something more like burn your mucus membranes and make you feel like your lungs are being ripped out gas. Or, a million fire ants biting your eyes at once while you have an asthma attack gas.

Surely, there could be a more accurate name than tear gas.

My eyes and face burned excruciatingly and I felt like a rubber band was tied around my lungs.

A Red Crescent ambulance zoomed down the road to evacuate protestors gone limp or in convulsions from too much gas.

We took cover under a tree from the rubber bullets and gas canisters.

An Israeli protestor repeated over and over: “I’m so sorry for the actions of my government. I’m so sorry.” His eyes were red and weepy with gas.

An old Israeli woman passed around slices of onion to ease the tear gas symptoms. A media photographer dressed like darth veder with a helmet, mask and vest handed me some toilet paper to mop up my tears.

My eyes burned again when I washed my face hours later. I felt dizzy and head achy all weekend.

I haven’t slept well since. I’m not sure if it’s the effect of the tear gas or the image of the soldiers shooting at little boys that’s keeping me awake at night.

Waves of fury and despair keep rising up within me.

I want to take those young IDF soldiers, bend them over my knee and spank them until they are blue in the face. You do not treat other human beings like that. It is not OK to shoot tear gas or rubber bullets at children.

I’ve been going around telling everyone what I saw. “I can’t believe that they were shooting at the little kids,” I repeat waiting for an outraged response.

Again and again I hear: “Yes, they do that.”

They do that. It’s normal. It’s expected. No one is even shocked any more.

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I’ve decided that I don’t care about the Palestinian cause enough to suffer so. If there was a large body of water in Ramallah, I might feel differently. But, as it is, my only option is to give up on my solidarity work and move to Tel Aviv to partake in the sweet pleasure of lounging on the beach.

Can you imagine? Really, I want you to picture this in your mind. A horrendously hot day in Ramallah. 90 degrees or more. Dry miserable desert heat, sticky asphalt melting the soles of your shoes, offices with no air conditioning. No amount of water can relieve the headache of dehydration. Sweat seeps through your shirt forming awkward patches under your arms and the small of your back.

Can you feel it?

Now I want you to look out across the horizon and see the delicious cool comfort of the Mediterranean Sea. That’s it. From where you stand, sweating and cranky, you can see it off in the distance. Sweet relief almost within reach.

But not if you’re Palestinian.

If you have a West Bank ID, you will sooner be shot than allowed dip one toe in the ocean.

At least the Gazans have the beach. Of course, that’s not too safe either, as Israel regularly shoots at fishermen straying too far into the ocean and even killed seven people relaxing on the beach last summer, including a whole family of picnickers, minus the young daughter who was captured on film screaming as she watched over the corpses of her parents and three young siblings. (See the Human Rights Watch report on the investigation of the killings)

But wait, why risk death when there is water in the West Bank. The West Bank, Israel and Jordan all border the salty shores of the Dead Sea, the lowest point on Earth.

Unfortunately, Israel has set up checkpoints along the route. Palestinians are expressly banned the Dead Sea on the Israel side, but they are also routinely turned away from the section of the Dead Sea that falls within the occupied West Bank. Lest they strap rust and water proof explosives to their bodies and bob across the saltiest body of water on earth to fulfill their only mission in life (which according to Israel and the West isn’t just to live normal lives, raise families, go to school, work and maybe even enjoy the beach every now and then. No, of course not. If that were the case, then there would be no excuse for this inhuman occupation. So it must be that everyone, including old ladies, deceptively adorable children and cell phone chatting teenagers just want to martyr themselves in the name of Allah).

In a show of generosity, Israel has decided to allow Palestinians to visit the Dead Sea on Tuesdays. Only Tuesdays. Why not Thursdays? Or Saturdays, for that matter? Perhaps Israel ran some focus groups and found that these crazed terrorists were miraculously pacific on Tuesdays. Friday is the Muslim holy day and we all know what that means… Scary men with beards and women with headscarves that threaten Western values running around screaming “Death to America” and “Kill the Jews” and these are sentiments no one wants to pollute the lovely waters of the Dead Sea. So Fridays are out of the question. What about Sundays? The day of rest for those mysterious must be violent because they are Arab, but somehow less threatening, Christian Palestinians. They don’t even use the words Allah or Jihad. But they still use words like resistance and illegal occupation, so I guess Sundays are out as well.

So Tuesdays it is.

Here’s a novel idea, why not just end the occupation, take down the wall and let people live normal lives and enjoy the beach.

Then I wouldn’t be sitting here sweating and cranky in an office with no air conditioning. I’d be at the beach, swimming, laughing and joking with my all too normal and human Palestinian friends.

On the occasion of the Gay Pride Parade in Jerusalem on Thursday, Muslims, Christians and Jews united in their hatred of homosexuals.

It could be the answer to the middle-east conflict. It worked for the Republicans. They convinced impoverished Americans to vote for candidates that promised to slash welfare and cut healthcare funding by playing on their fear of queers.

Islamic militants and the racist Kach sect of Jews might disagree about the right of the Palestinian people to exist, but they would happily join together to throw stones at gays.

What other people do with their genitals is of prime concern to religious fundamentalists worldwide. While the material world grows increasingly unbearable, people turn to morality and scripture.

Orthodox Jews riot and Palestinians go into denial when the question of homosexuality arises.

Most people in the West Bank will tell you that homosexuality does not exist here.

“We don’t have those kind of people in Palestine,” they say.

But some Palestinians are more pragmatic about the issue.

“Why do we spend so much time worrying over these things,” asked my coworker. “When there is so much violence in the world, does it really make sense to focus on what people do in the privacy of their homes when they aren’t harming anyone?”

Good point.

We are planning a conference with the Director of the United Nations Millennium Campaign to discuss poverty in Palestine, and the unique challenge to achieving development goals under military occupation.

Most likely the conference will be canceled. The security situation in the West Bank is not so bad right now, despite the declared state of emergency. All of the violence so far has been targeted acts of retaliation against Hamas for its actions in Gaza.

But how can we talk about poverty when the government has been dissolved?

How can we talk about economic development when Hamas has just taken by force what it won by democratic election in Gaza?

How can we bring international partners to the table to discuss food insecurity when there are masked men shooting machine guns in the streets?

Life under military occupation is never dull. Now, in addition to the deaths resulting from daily Israeli military incursions, Palestinians are killing each other.

Hamas has taken complete control over Gaza. More than 120 people have been killed in the past week.

The coordinator of our Gaza office says that they were unable to leave the house all week. When bullets smashed through their windows, the entire family hid in the one room in the house with no windows. His one-and-a-half year old daughter now says “takh, takh” (colloquial Arabic for “bang, bang”) every time she hears gunshots. These are among her first words. Mommy, daddy, takh, takh, bang, bang.

Here in Ramallah, Fatah is trying to assert control. On Friday night, they raided the Hamas office across from my house, breaking all the windows and firing automatic weapons.

I stayed at home all day Friday in a state of confusion. We heard intermittent shooting but were unsure whether civil war had broken out or Palestinian kids were just setting off fireworks (I'll never understand how people in a conflict zone could be so fond of fireworks, but Palestinians love them).

Other frazzled internationals filled our apartment and we sat together waiting for news. We watched the great American movie Zoolander and I introduced my Palestinian friends to the jingoist satire Team America: World Police. We added each other to Facebook and Google chat. We answered each other's cell phones to comfort worried parents.

At around 2pm, my American friend Tiffany and I decided to venture out to the nearby store for supplies of water and chocolate. As we were walking to the store we heard shots coming from around the corner and grabbed hands and started running back toward the apartment.

A man passed us on the street and said: “don't be afraid, it's just Fatah firing in the air at al Manara" (that's the town square a block and a half from my house).

So we turned around and started out again giggling and reassuring each other that everything was OK. We could see a crowd of masked men with machine guns when we turned the corner to go into the shop.

I jumped every time I heard a shot.

The shopkeepers laughed and said: "Welcome to Palestine. In this city it is normal."

Other than my one adventure outside risking falling bullets because the people shooting to scare off Hamas forgot that the rules of gravity also apply to ammunition, the day was fairly mellow.

Yesterday was market day and the streets of Ramallah were filled again. Families walked past masked machine-gun toting men in the city center on their way to buy produce for the week.

As I crossed al Manara I passed by two Fatah security members greeting each other. Two men carrying machine guns kissed four times on the cheek in the traditional Arab greeting between close friends and family members.

This morning I complained to my coworker Jumana about being stuck inside all weekend.

“This is nothing,” she said. “You should have been here when we were under siege by the Israelis and couldn’t leave the house for two months because of the curfew. People snuck through the back roads risking getting shot just so they could come over and play cards and smoke hookah all day.”

Indeed, violence and insecurity are not new for Palestinians.

However, no one has ever seen Palestinians kill each other like this before. People here are horrified and devastated.

And none of us know what will happen next.

I seem to be following the Mossad. On Thursday I left Ramallah for the first time since my arrival and traveled to Hebron with a coworker to take a delegation of Danish trade unionists to meet with labor unions in the area.

The day before I arrived in Hebron, Israeli forces knocked on a door in the city looking for a young man. Finding him absent, they shot and killed his father and wounded his mother and brother. The mother, who is in her late 60’s, is still in critical condition.

Our first meeting was with the Temporary International Presence in Hebron, which established in 1994 after a settler from New York massacred 29 Palestinians while they were praying in a mosque. The TIPH is a joint effort between six European countries and the Israeli and Palestinian Security forces. Their mandate does not allow them express opinions about the conflict and they may not make their reports of violations of international law pubic.

However, one officer acknowledged that she was “shocked that religion could be used in such a hateful way” when she witnessed the violence of the settlers.

International law states that it is illegal to transfer the population of an occupying force into the territory that it occupies.

But Israel has done little to curb the actions of these wild-west settlers who take over buildings in the middle of the city and intimidate Palestinians with their Uzis.

By far, the most uplifting part of the day was our meeting with the Unemployed Worker Federation. We were greeted with a handmade sign that said: "welcome visitor" when we arrived to their run-down office with no running water. The members of the Federation formed a circle of chairs and my coworker whispered translation in my ear (the Danish workers had direct translation from Arabic to Danish), as we listened to their charismatic president speak about the dire poverty facing Palestinians.

Unemployment rates in Palestine have skyrocketed since the construction of the segregation wall in the West Bank and the complete closure of Gaza. Figures range from 40 to 60%. The Federation in Hebron represents 25,000 unemployed workers formerly employed in Israel. They are funded completely by member contributions and work together to find temporary employment and to help members in need of assistance.

After our meetings, the Danish workers invited us to go to the center of town to see the settlements, but I was with my Palestinian coworker who has a Jenin ID. If he was caught in Hebron, where Israeli soldiers routinely do illegal ID checks of Palestinians, he would likely be detained or arrested.

Yesterday marked the 40th anniversary of the illegal Israeli occupation of the West Bank, East Jerusalem, Golan and Gaza. Americans do not seem to realize that the Palestinians, who more often than not are depicted as crazed Jew-hating terrorists on TV, are living under military occupation.

Before I left for Palestine, someone warned me: "Don't do anything crazy like stand in front of Palestinian tanks."

The concern was sincere. At the time it seemed funny to me. Palestinians with tanks. Those who read the news have heard of Rachel Corrie, but in the American imagination, the Palestinians are always the perpetrators of violence and never the victims.

In the American imagination, the conflict of Israel and Palestine is between two equal parties at best, or between Arab aggressors and peaceful passive Israel at worst.

In the American imagination, it is completely plausible that the Palestinians killed Rachel Corrie with their powerful tanks.

This morning I unfolded the local newspaper and examined the front page photo of military tanks surrounded by Arabic script. I turned to my lovely landlady Om Hilal who was sitting across the table and asked: "Are these Israeli tanks?"

"Yes of course," she replied. "In Gaza. What did you think—Palestinian tanks? No my dear, we are very poor. They have tanks and we have qassam rockets."

She mouthed a listless whistle and made a sad hand gesture showing the rockets rising up from Gaza and falling into Israel.

It is true that the qassam rockets kill innocent Israelis, but there is a vast difference between hand-made rockets and a colossal military funded by the most powerful nation in the world.

Palestinians have suffered immensely under Israeli military occupation for the past 40 years. The murder of innocent Palestinians at the hands of the Israeli military is a part of daily life here.

Acknowledging that one party in the conflict is the occupier and the other the occupied is the first step on the path to peace.

The day before I arrived in Ramallah there was an Israeli Military incursion in the city. Undercover Israeli soldiers shot and killed one person and injured seven others. A woman in my office witnessed the shooting, which took place in the city center. The soldiers chased a group of boys from a pizza shop. They shot one in the ankles and then handcuffed and beat him. Then they shot him in the head. Apparently, he wasn't even the one they were looking for.

At the Ben-Gurion Airport in Tel-Aviv, I watched security officers pick all of the women with head scarfs out of the immigration line one by one and lead them away. I tried to keep my focus on the ground and think happy thoughts. When I got close to the front of the line they opened up the kiosks usually reserved for Israeli passport holders because their lines were empty. I walked up to a kiosk where the woman behind the glass looked like she was napping on the job. I asked her not to stamp my passport and told her I was here to visit family.

I'd gotten advice from everyone on what to say and what not to say at the airport. There was a clear consensus that if I mentioned my plans to go to Palestine, I would be interrogated, detained, searched and possibly turned away.

But with my list of names and addresses in Israel, I made it past security without incident.

I took a shuttle from Ben Gurion to Jerusalem but the driver refused to drop me at the check point because, as he said, "filthy Arabs are there."

I’ve always wanted to be a hero. One fantasy recurs during the emergency preparedness talks that airline stewardesses give upon take off. While other passengers are listening to their i-pods and reading trashy magazines (or maybe they’re all having similar Don Quixote day dreams?), I envision helping old ladies with their oxygen masks and calmly escorting crying men down the emergency-lit aisles onto the blow up slides, staying on till the last. I picture myself brave and quietly heroic.

This fantasy also serves to assuage the nagging fear that maybe I’d be a coward, pushing people out of the way, trying to save my own life first.

I want to know how I’d react in a real crisis.

Perhaps that explains some of the draw I’ve felt to go to a conflict zone. My airplane fantasy could be easily transposed onto land. I can see myself pulling old ladies from the line of fire, shielding a child with my own body, refusing to leave when others have fled to safety.

My dramatic fantasy life is partially fueled by violent movies and TV news. In a way, the images of real violence and suffering seem as ethereal and distant to me as those of Hollywood action flicks. Part of me just wants that suffering to be tangible, rather than fodder for another daydream.

In little more than a week I will be in the Occupied Palestinian Territories. I will see first hand the humiliation that Palestinians face at Israeli checkpoints, searched and questions as they watch Israeli settlers drive by unharrassed. I will hear the stories of house demolitions and suicide bombings. I will surely witness tremendous suffering, perhaps even violence.

I know that I will not be a hero this summer. Even in my most ego-maniacal fantasies I cannot flex my biceps and magically end the Israel-Palestine conflict. And so I’m afraid of feeling hopeless and weak. I’m afraid of crying during airport interrogations and losing my temper at checkpoints. I’m afraid that I will come running home with my tail between my legs because the real world is all so overwhelming and scary.

But I hope to contribute something positive, however small. I’ll be working with the Democracy and Workers’ Rights Center in Ramallah. I won’t be ending the occupation and probably won’t lead any crying men down emergency-lit paths, but maybe I can draw upon my experience in the American labor movement and support Palestinian union activists in their important work.

For now I’m trying to let go of my hero fantasies and prepare to enter a new and unknown reality.