fun with bedouins

We all went to a place called 'tent of nations' for dinner. It was a really nice place, gorgeous view way up on a hill. Tent of nations is basically a plot of land that has been owned by the same family since ottoman times. They showed us the caves there in which they used to live. The place is completely surrounded on all sides by settlements, and the israelis are doing everything in their power to confiscate this land. Because of this, they have tried to make it a fun place for internationals to come, work, help with summer camps, and generally have a presence to try and deter incidents from the settlements. Still many of the things that happen are ridiculous. Besides being terrorized by the settlers, they also have a new problem on their hands. The owner build a small fence around his chickens to keep them together, apparently this violates israeli building code, even though its his land, and its not even a building, so now they are coming to destroy it. There was also an infringement on this because of the actual tents, which are now set for 'demolition' which i guess is just tarp confiscation.

All these things aside, it is a very beautiful and nice place. We had a palestinian poet, and some bedouins to play music for us and sing songs together. They were incredably excited that i was from texas because apparently, we texans are the closest thing to the bedouins america has. They wanted me to sing some songs from my homeland, the best i could come up with was 'home on the range' and 'the eyes of texas are upon you', which was generally embarassing and only occured after they started chanting TEXAS, TEXAS. It was great, i was asking them to play marcel khalife songs, and we were all singing together. It was really beautiful and nice. I think we all needed to just take some time out in the country. I definitley felt better after getting to meditate on the land and situation from such a beautiful place. I was only sad that my camera could not capture the true beauty of the sunset there.