Lew Shaw’s Blog from Haifa

A Small World

I thought I’d relate an interesting encounter yesterday. I drove to Ben Gurion Airport to meet Rhonda’s flight. I got there a bit early and was sitting in the waiting area café drinking coffee. I heard a voice in Arabic at the table behind me that sounded very familiar. I looked around and there was Saed (doctoral student at Harvard who spoke at a film at Nehar Shalom) talking on his cell phone. He also recognized me and after he finished his conversation, he and his friend invited me to join them. His friend and driver was an Arab from east Jerusalem, and they were waiting to pick up an American teacher, arriving on the same flight as Rhonda.

Saed is in Ramallah for the summer teaching at a college preparatory program at the Friends’ school in Ramallah (his high school). For about a half hour we had a lively and open conversation about politics – an American-Israeli Jew, a Palestinian from the West Bank, and a Palestinian from Jerusalem. Since the discussion was so open, I got nervous for them and kept looking around to see if we were being observed (I was sure we would be).

When the flight arrived and Rhonda was coming into the arrival hall, two police officers confronted us and asked to see our documents. They were clearly baffled about what we all doing together. They called on their radios and two border police officers came. After they caucused for a while, I went over and explained in Hebrew that we hadn’t arrived together, that I was meeting a friend arriving from the US and happened to encounter the two Arabs, and that I knew Saed from Boston. Finally they returned all our documents and let us go. I apologized profusely to Saed and his friend for the trouble. Obviously they are quite used to random stops and interrogations, and yet again I got glimpse of how difficult (untenable) the situation is for them.