Tuesday, November 08, 2005

Quotes from the West Bank

Two weeks ago I was in Bethlehem. In the West Bank.

There are stories of border crossings, the current status of Palestinian civil society, and why the Palestinian women I've met are not what I expected (not a bad thing). But I'll postpone those stories for tomorrow.

Today I'll leave you with quotes. Quotes from the two conferences I attended. Also in attendance were European funders and advocacy groups, Palestinian and Israeli NGOs, and words spoken but till date not understood...

"If you dig a hole with a needle, you make a packet, then you take a spoon, then you take a shovel..."

He then adds, "They are from us who is doing it yknow, they are not from them."

This from the moderator, "It’s kind of like an active forum. It’s kind of like a weird animal."

"Mohammed, let’s go step by step. I’m really feeling like, yknow, a car turning round and round in a playground..."

"Mohammed, Laila... wait! Everything is missing… I’m not bullshitting myself, neither you guys here yknow… I explained yesterday, working on the Israelis and not with the Israelis… Mohammed you are really trying to put make-up on the face of the thing… This is the normalisation terms that we used and we ate shit!"


This is an open call to all translators; we're west-banking on you.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

hmmm cant fully grasp what is being suggested there! It seems taken out of context though. Oh well. Go figure@@@!

regards
gs

Nasrawi said...

Well, they're quotes taken randomly from an entire day's conference.

Honestly, I doubt even if put in context that they'd make much sense.

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