Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, January/February 1999, pages 74-77

Northwest News

Ghassan Andoni Offers Alternative Tourism to Palestine

By Kinga Bernáth

The Oregon Chapter of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee invited the local community to meet Ghassan Andoni, founder of the Palestine-based Alternative Tourism Group, at the First United Methodist Church of Portland, Oregon on Aug. 2. Andoni is a native of the Bethlehem-area Arab town of Beit Sahour, which has a population of 15,000, with an 80 percent majority of Christians and a 20 percent Muslim minority. During the intifada, he was imprisoned for being involved in Beit Sahour’s tax revolt, which called for “no taxation without representation.” He also started the “Rapprochement” movement with other Palestinians, initiating a dialogue with people who were also concerned about the continuing occupation and wanted to find constructive ways to deal with it.

Last summer, he toured North America to introduce his tourist agency to American and Canadian travel agents and people interested in visiting Palestine in a different way from the traditional guided tours. Why did a professor of physics at Birzeit University like Ghassan Andoni decide to start a tourist agency in Palestine?

The answer lies in his mission to help build an economic basis for Palestinians in Palestine so that they don’t have to give up their homeland in search of jobs elsewhere. “Three billion dollars are the revenue from tourism and pilgrimage to the Holy Land, of which 97 percent goes to Israel, and 3 percent goes to the Palestine area,” he said. “If we can raise our portion to 30 percent, that’s a billion dollars per year in our economy. The budget of the Palestinian Authority is less than that. For a community like ours this makes a big difference.”

The second part of Andoni’s mission is to show visitors the diverse and rich culture of Palestine, including that of the Christian minority, which has been underrepresented and even ignored by the official Israeli guided tours. “Eighty percent of the areas and the sites that visitors visit—usually Christians, pilgrims and tourists—are situated in highly populated Palestinian areas,” Andoni said.

“I took a sampling of people visiting Bethlehem. Ninety percent of them had no clue that there exists something called a Christian Palestinian. They come in highly guided tours, they stay all of their time and spend all of their money on the Israeli side of the Holy Land and [make] ‘transit visits’ to the sites, where you ‘hit and get out.’”

Seventy percent of Israeli tour guides take groups visiting Jerusalem to the Jewish Quarter and the Wailing Wall, while avoiding Arab, Palestinian and Christian sites and communities, according to Andoni. Therefore tourists get the impression that Jerusalem is a Jewish city.

Those tourists who are aware of and would like to visit sites of the “other” cultures are discouraged by their tour guides, who tell them they can go to the Palestinian side unguided but only at their own risk, for those are “highly dangerous” areas. For the average tourist, this means that he or she won’t go, said Andoni. “We receive about two million visitors a year. That’s about 60 million people in the last 30 years, who were subject to highly organized guided tours in which they were introduced to the country as having only Jewish history and Israeli culture. No wonder Israel has managed to establish so much empathy and loyalty in many countries.”

Andoni said he once read a report that quoted former Israeli Minister of Defense Moshe Dayan as saying that, “he might be ready to train a Palestinian as a pilot for a jet fighter but never as a tour guide.” So Andoni looked into the records and found that indeed not one Palestinian had been licensed as a tour guide within the past 30 years, while Israel “managed to build up a fleet of 4,000 licensed tour guides.” When he realized that both the visitors and the Palestinians were losing because of the biased and unfair Israeli tourist industry practices, he decided to create the Alternative Tourism Group in 1995.

Establishing and conducting business isn’t easy in Palestine. As Andoni put it, “our community is trying to expand to build more chances for its survival. And if you live in an area where you cannot move freely [and] cannot export-import freely, you have no chance to build an economy there. Nobody will come and invest where to go three miles between one town and another you have to wait for a permit and you might not get it.”

He said he had not been to Jerusalem for six years because his desire to pray in the Holy Sepulchre Church wasn’t good enough to get him a permit. In fact, he says, it was easier for him to travel to the United States than to travel the three miles to Jerusalem.

“Those are conditions imposed on us,” Andoni continued. “We know very much that the final objective of that is ‘why don’t you leave?’ But we can’t afford to leave. We are so attached there that our community can’t go elsewhere, it’s rooted there.”

However, his agency can now take advantage of new developments necessary for tourism. Since the Oslo agreement, his agency can contract Palestinian tour guides trained in Palestine and licensed by Israel, who can travel freely everywhere with their groups. They use the services of Palestinian bus companies and accommodate tourists in the four to five new hotels in the Bethlehem area.

The Alternative Tourism Group offers a variety of ways to introduce people to the rich culture of Palestine. Visitors can participate in conventional tours, stay with one of the 30 participating local families, do volunteer work, etc.

“Instead of eating at a restaurant, people are invited to share a meal with a local family for a more intimate and true encounter,” Andoni said. As an example, Christian tourists have the option of praying with the local community in their churches, as opposed to attending sermons reserved for foreigners.

They are accompanied by a Palestinian guide who is “not trained to brainwash them” but to show them the region in its diversity. Andoni explained that “[they] are not there to hide the Israeli side of the Holy Land. [They] want to enrich [the visitors’] experience by letting them come to all the different groups that live there.” The Alternative Tourism Group is already planning a number of international and local traditional events to celebrate the year 2000 in Bethlehem.

In Andoni’s words, “it helps people stay.”

Washington Report readers can reach the Alternative Tourism Group at P.O. Box 173, Beit Sahour, Palestine, via Israel, tel: 011- 972-2-277-2151, fax: 277-2211, E-mail, atg@p-ol.com, Web: www.patg.com

Sister Relations Between Northwest and Palestinian Episcopal Churches

The idea of a sister relationship between the Diocese of Jerusalem and the Diocese of Olympia in Washington State was conceived in early 1995. The Rev. Samuel Barhoum, rector of the Holy Family Episcopal Church in the village of Raineh, Israel (just outside Nazareth), had finished his seminary training in Berkeley, California, and met with interested members of the Seattle community at St. Mark’s Episcopal Cathedral. Explaining that sister relations between churches in the United States and Palestine/Israel play an important role in making the American public aware of the plight of the Palestinian people, he found a partner in the Rev. Stanley Fowler, Jr., the rector of St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church in Seattle, who had traveled to the Holy Land with his wife two years earlier.

In the summer of 1996, Reverend Fowler started a youth exchange program, taking a group of young people to a one-week conference to meet with Palestinian youth. The next year, he brought a group of Palestinian youths to Seattle and provided them the opportunity to visit churches and tell their story to the local community. The community of St. Andrew’s Church has also sponsored a preschool in Raineh, donating preschool supplies to kids.

“After the sister church relation was established,” Rev. Fowler recounted, “the Episcopal Diocese of Olympia entered into a companion relation with the Episcopal Diocese of Jerusalem,” with altogether eight sister church relationships so far. Seattle’s Trinity Episcopal Church has a sister church in Haifa, and St. Thomas’s Episcopal Church in Medina is paired with one in Ramallah, to name just two others.

Reverend Barhoum, who is the youth director for the Diocese of Jerusalem, said he is working to “support the people in the area so they don’t eventually have to leave.” Rev. Fowler is helping him by “promoting the Palestinian side of the story [and] supporting the ongoing survival of Christian churches in the Holy Land,” he said.

“Strengthening the community to support people to withstand the discrimination they’re experiencing” is one of his community’s goals in cooperating with the sister diocese, Reverend Fowler said. “The Christian community in the Holy Land is invisible to the rest of the community so part of the purpose of our sister relation is to help us become aware and advocates of Palestinian human rights, justice and peace.

“We have a genuine desire that both the Israeli and the Palestinian people can share a living space and develop their own cultures while being respectful of each other’s needs,” Rev. Fowler continued. He finds that “person-to-person contact” with the Palestinian people helps develop a sense of commitment here. That’s why Palestinian visitors always stay at host families in Seattle and Seattle travelers are accommodated at youth hostels operated by churches while in Israel.

The Diocese of Jerusalem consists of 28 churches. Most of them are in Israel/Palestine, with the rest in Lebanon, Jordan and Syria. Since the peace process began, Rev. Barhoum has been able to visit parishes in Jordan, but still can’t travel to those in Lebanon and Syria. However, Rev. Fowler, who is the co-chair of Companion Relations, assists in developing other sister relationships between the two dioceses. The Church Council of Greater Seattle has joined to help them in their efforts, most recently sponsoring the visit of three Palestinian Christian women in September who came to speak to the Seattle area communities about their experiences in Palestine.

Future plans include a number of trips, “people-to-people exchanges” with the sister diocese, and establishment of new sister parish relations. While Rev. Barhoum was visiting his sister parish in Seattle this summer, he went to Milwaukie, Oregon, to start talks about a sister church relation with Rev. Canon Richard Toll, rector of St. John the Evangelist Episcopal Church. Rev. Toll was Barhoum’s sponsor when he was studying in the United States. Other plans of Rev. Fowler involve talking to congressional representatives about the Palestinians.

During their visit to the community of St. John’s Church, Rev. Barhoum and his family had a chance to see Ralph Beebe and his wife, Wanda. Beebe, a retired professor of history at George Fox University in Newberg, Oregon, is the author of Blessed are the Peacemakers: A Palestinian Christian in the Occupied West Bank. The book is a biography of Audeh Rantisi, the father of Rev. Barhoum’s wife, Susan Rantisi Barhoum. First published in 1990 by Zondervan, then by Eagle Press in England, it became Choice Book of the Year in 1991. It is now republished in Palestine.

Oldest Shipwreck Gives New Glimpse of History

Dr. Cemal Pulak, of Bodrum, Turkey, vice president of the Institute of Nautical Archaeology, and a specialist in Bronze Age seafaring, maritime trade and technology, described the “oldest shipwreck ever found” in a program presented by the Friends of the Institute of Nautical Archeology at the Portland Art Museum. Dr. Pulak has directed the INA’s 11-year underwater excavation of the ancient shipwreck, found near the village of Ulu Burun in southern Turkey, which has expanded archaeologists’ knowledge of life in the 14th century B.C.

The findings confirm the extensive land and maritime trade that was taking place between Europe, subtropical Africa and the Middle East in ancient times, Dr. Pulak said. Among the remains were many copper ingots (from Cyprus) and, for the first time in the history of archaeology, tin ingots (from Asia), as well as the earliest glass ingots (from Canaan) ever retrieved. Ingots are specific units of raw material, smelted into a special shape which, according to some theories, resembles a cow hide. Bronze was obtained from melting together tin and copper from the ingots.

Other artifacts recovered from the shipwreck are Baltic amber beads, Mycenaean vessels, Cypriot pottery, Canaanite amphoras, raw ivory from Syria or Africa, ebony (African Blackwood), and spices such as sumac, coriander and black cumin. They also found the first ancient tablets that clearly describe the extensive trade of glass among about a dozen Mediterranean civilizations whose goods the ship was carrying. They uncovered a great number of personal items, which told much about the origins of the merchants, the people who worked on the ship, and even two wealthy nobles on board (as indicated by the presence of fine gold jewelry and two valuable Mycenaean swords). “It’s amazing what the wreck has—just about everything that would normally survive” under similar circumstances, Dr. Pulak said.

The event was made possible with the help of INA’s long-term supporters: the Portland Art Museum and the Middle East Studies Center of Portland State University.

Yossi Beilin and Faisal Husseini Speakers at Portland World Affairs Council

The World Affairs Council of Oregon presented its 1998 Annual Banquet at the Portland Hilton Hotel on Sept. 12. Honorary banquet chairs former Oregon Governor Victor Atiyeh and Rabbi Emanual Rose of Congregation Beth Israel introduced the speakers, Faisal Husseini and Yossi Beilin. The event was protested by some members of the local Jewish community holding flags and signs outside the entrance of the hotel.

The Oregon Interreligious Committee for Peace cooperated in the preparation of the banquet as well as the educational symposium following it the next day. OICPME chair Rabbi Daniel Isaak said “the World Affairs Council with our help and encouragement invited Mr. Beilin and Mr. Husseini because of their high rank, significant involvement and personal dedication to creating and implementing a permanent and lasting peace. To our knowledge no other community has provided a forum such as this for solutions to peace to be aired by individuals so intimately involved in the search for peace.”

Faisal Husseini, a member of the PLO executive committee with the portfolio for Jerusalem affairs, headed the PLO delegation to the Madrid peace talks. Yossi Beilin, a Labor Party member of the Israeli Knesset and a former deputy to Prime Minister Shimon Peres, is an architect of the Oslo accords. Both spoke about the current state of the peace process and possibilities for achieving peace in the Middle East.

At the banquet, Dr. Nohad Toulan, founding dean of the College of Urban and Public Affairs at Portland State University, received the 1998 R.W. Deweese International Citizen Award. An internationally recognized urban planner, Dr. Toulan has participated in major urban and regional projects in the United States, the Middle East, and North and West Africa, including preparation of the regional plan for the Holy City of Mecca in 1984-85. He serves as an adviser to the United Nations Development Program and many governments worldwide.

On the day following the banquet, Beilin and Husseini also spoke at a symposium presented by the WACO and the OICPME at Reed College entitled “The Future of Jerusalem.”

Faisal Husseini’s vision was to establish Jerusalem—which he described as “our capital,” pointing to Yossi Beilin and himself—as the most important financial center in the Middle East. The “five elements [that] have to be taken into consideration to achieve his vision,” he said, are “Palestinian, Muslim, Christian, Israeli and Jewish.” He emphasized the importance of the fact that “now people are more willing to talk about Jerusalem. Our goal is now to go on and encourage people to talk about a solution.”

Yossi Beilin, on the other hand, pointed out the overlaps of claims from both sides and made a joke that “we would have to multiply the world by seven to satisfy all territorial claims” in the world.

Without offering a specific solution, he said that although he would like to see no deadline for a solution because no solution exists, “time is not on our side, the extremists will get stronger. [Therefore] we have to get to a permanent solution as soon as possible. It is possible, but it will be criticized by both sides.

“The only good thing about the present solution is that nobody likes it,” he said. “It is a good departure point.”

Afterward, the participants shared their experiences and thoughts on the issue in four simultaneous workshops led by Ron Young, executive director of the U.S. Committee for Peace in the Middle East; Steven Wasserstrom, professor of Judaic Studies and Humanities at Reed College, and Rabbi Daniel Isaac, chair of the OICPME; Dr. Jan AbuShakrah, president of the Oregon chapter of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee; and Marlene Eid, coordinator of Palestinian studies at Portland State University, together with Rabbi Joseph Wolf of the Havurah Shalom Congregation.

A joint statement issued for the event by the Oregon Chapter of the ADC, the Muslim Educational Trust, and the Palestine Arab-American Association called upon the participants to acknowledge Jerusalem’s present reality before engaging in a serious discussion about the future of the city. The statement explained this reality as “Israel’s illegal occupation and annexation of East Jerusalem and its ongoing administrative and political policy in the city [which] preclude the necessary conditions for a city of peace built on the foundation of justice. These minimal conditions are respect for human rights and genuine equality, under political conditions that guarantee free and open access to religious sites for worship by the Muslims, Christians, and Jews.”

Canon Naim Ateek Visit

The Rev. Canon Naim Ateek, Anglican priest and advocate for Palestinian rights, visited the Pacific Northwest Sept. 23 to 28. Author of the book Justice and Only Justice: A Palestinian Theology of Liberation, Ateek is the Palestinian Episcopal director of the Sabeel Liberation Theology Center in Jerusalem. During his stay, he met with the local Christian communities at lectures, workshops, receptions and church services at the St. Paul Episcopal Church in The Dalles, St. Mark’s Cathedral and the First Presbyterian Church in Seattle, and St. Thomas’ in Medina, Washington.

On Sept. 28 he presented a lecture, “Justice and Justice Only: Palestinian Christian Perspectives,” at Westminster Presbyterian Church, with Tom Getman, director of World Vision International in Jerusalem. Getman, who had worked for 20 years on South African human rights issues, was legislative director for nine years to Senator Mark Hatfield in Washington, DC, and is a long-time member of St. Mark’s Episcopal Church on Capitol Hill. He and his wife live in Jerusalem and work in Gaza and the West Bank for World Vision, a Christian international relief and development organization with projects in 104 countries worldwide.

Ateek explained his ecumenical liberation theology to the audience. First of all, it is ecumenical, which means that it is “working to bring the Christian community closer together because we’re divided.” Second, it is a “prophetic ministry of church,” Ateek said, meaning that “the church cannot isolate itself from the community.” To familiarize everyone present with the story of Palestine, he gave a basic historical introduction to the land and its people.

“We don’t deny the Jews had their own story, pain, anti-Semitism—all in Europe,” he said. “[But] unfortunately it is the Palestinians who paid the price of European anti-Semitism.” He was a child when al-nakba (the catastrophe) was inflicted on the Palestinians in 1948 and 6,000 people were driven out of his town in a matter of hours.

As far as the future is concerned, Ateek envisions an ideal “Palestine with two peoples living in it in a democratic society, in peace.” He recognizes, though, that “today we’re working toward a two-state solution.” He added, “It was wrong to establish the state of Israel, it was an injustice. Today I accept it, but there must be a state for Palestinians, too, so we can have justice for the Palestinians, security for the Jewish people, peace and freedom.” He said his message for the Israelis is to stand up against discrimination. For the Palestinians he advises “to work for democracy so that Muslims, Jews and Christians can enjoy the same rights, responsibilities and benefits.” He called upon the audience to work toward justice.

Getman told the audience Jerusalem “has to be shared by all the religions; it cannot be administered by one religion or, as in the past, it will result in bloodshed.” He expressed his faith that just as nobody had thought apartheid could ever be abolished in South Africa, the injustice will one day come to an end in Israel-Palestine as well.

Getman also told the audience about the March 10 killing of three Palestinians by Israeli soldiers at a checkpoint they were trying to pass to get home from their workplace in Israel. They were heads of among the 53 poorest households in the West Bank village of Dura which the World Vision Curfew Relief had been assisting with work permits and food. “World Vision Jerusalem started an education assistance fund for the 17 children of the three murdered fathers,” Getman reported.

Iraq Affinity Group Demands “End Sanctions Now!”

Portland’s Peace and Justice Works Iraq Affinity Group, with the endorsement of the local groups Freedom Socialist Party, Radical Women, and Veterans for Peace, held a demonstration and rally in front of the Federal Building in downtown Portland on Oct. 1, 1998. They were protesting the U.N. sanctions and military force imposed on Iraq, and signed a “People’s Resolution,” calling for lifting economic sanctions against Iraq which they sent to the United Nations Security Council.

Dan Handleman, a member of the Iraq Affinity Group who was in charge of the “People’s Resolution,” traveled to Iraq in late 1997 with Voices in the Wilderness. He shared his travel experiences with the public, but told participants he is not able to show the video IFG shot in Iraq because it was seized by the U.S. government upon his return. The Iraq Affinity Group holds a public forum every January, commemorating the Jan. 16, 1991 beginning of the Gulf war.

Muslim Educational Trust Holds Portland Conference

Portland State University hosted and PSU’s Middle East Studies Center co-sponsored the 5th Annual Educational Conference of the Muslim Educational Trust on Nov. 6 and 7. The conference opened with an award night attended by 350 members of the local Muslim community at which MET president Muhammad Najieb described the MET’s accredited full-time Islamic school for kindergarten through the fourth grade established in 1997. The organization also operates a weekend Islamic school, where adults and children from some 60 families learn Arabic and the Qur’an.

The American Muslim Council, the local chapter of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, the MESC, the World Affairs Council and various state and government agencies are among supporters of the Islamic School of MET (ISMET) and other MET projects. Secretary Maqsood Chaudhary of MET’s board of directors presented a blueprint of the school’s proposed new building which will be ready for occupancy by November 2000.

Nadira Najieb of ISMET’s administration introduced 23 current students who, with the guidance of their six instructors, performed songs displaying their knowledge and Muslim pride. “Last year [the children] didn’t have uniforms,” Mrs. Najieb said. “This year they do. Now we have a full-time Islamic school—why not have a K-12 or even a K-college in the future?”

Keynote speaker Dr. Mahmoud Harmoush, director of the Islamic Center of San Gabriel, raised over $37,000 during the program to help fund the construction of the new school building.

MET executive director Wajdi Said awarded Dr. Jan AbuShakrah, professor of sociology at Portland Community College and founder and former director of the Palestine Human Rights Information Center in Jerusalem, the “Friend of MET” award. Dr. AbuShakrah is current president of the Oregon Chapter of the ADC and has organized several informational events on the rights of Palestinians.

Other awards were presented to Dr. Ezra Azhar for leadership, Hilary Clarke for community service, Jawad Khan for student contribution, and Nauman Quraishi for community service.

The second day of the educational conference included workshops on the following topics: “Lighting the Darkness of Ignorance within Ourselves,” “Past Achievements, Future Responsibilities,” “Islamic Civilization: A story Told Through Architecture,” “Racism and Ethnocentrism: Is this Islam?,” and “U.S. Elections 2000: Muslims at the Crossroad—Opportunity or Devastation?” Participants also were able to purchase books, hijab, jilbab and other goods from the Bazaar.