International Conference

Shaping Communities in Times of Crisis 
Narratives of Land, Peoples and Identities

6-12 November 2005

“Our Diaries Through The Wall” by The Stars of Bethlehem
Terra Sancta School for Girls – Sisters of St. Joseph-Bethlehem

The wall cannot stop their stories
Article By Phil Haslanger

At first, it seems like such a peaceful scene.

Ten teenage girls from Bethlehem are lying on a dimly lit stage, seemingly asleep. The lights come up a bit as the sun rises and the girls begin to stir. They stand up and look at their hands, then at their bodies. They slowly emerge from the peaceful world of their dreams. They see each other and begin to play before heading off to a day at school.

"I am a Palestinian girl who knows nothing," one girl says to the audience, adding after a long pause "...about politics." She talks about loving her country, but says at the end of her soliloquy "but I never felt it was a secure place."

In the next hour, these girls would graphically show why.

This play by 10 girls from the Terra Sancta School for Girls capped an intense day of stories Thursday from a female Philippine pastor, a German theologian, a Bedouin scientist, a former Israeli Knesset member, an American Jewish peace activist and a Lutheran deacon who works with children traumatized by the war in Yugoslavia. Yet as powerful as their stories were, none could match the impact of what these girls performed in front of the 100 or so folks from 23 nations attending a week-long conference on land, peoples and identity at the International Center of Bethlehem.

What the girls were performing were real stories they and their classmates wrote between the years 2000 and 2004, a period that included the Israeli seige of Bethlehem for about 40 days in 2002. Their English teacher, Susan Atallah, used the diary-writing exercise as a way for the girls to keep learing in the chaos of that period. Mohammad Awwad directed the dramatic version of those stories.

So the girls act out the confinement they felt when the Israeli troops declared a curfew on the town. With simple sticks and carefully choreographed movements, they created checkpoints, they created bars keeping them in their homes, they let loose the sense of frustration at not being able to go outside. But that was mild compared with what was to come.

The girls act out a 1 a.m. raid by the Israeli soldiers on one girl's home, they show her father being led away by the soldiers, they show the joy at his return tempered by the horror of the bruises on his face. "We couldn't believe they had done this to him," one girls says. "He didn't say anything. He just went to his room."

The sorrow lingers for a moment and then the girls return to childhood games. One girl holds a lit candle and proclaims, "I have dreams." She lists several, lighting candles as she walks, ending with, "I dream of living in peace."

A second girls enters to temper the dream with reality. "The task seems impossible," she says. "I feel helpless, powerless. How can I build a future out of a broken past? I want to cry and and never stop." She blows out the candles as she talks, leaving only one flickering at the end.

They portray the trap of poverty, the pain that the world cannot see and does not want to hear what is happening to them, the fear and depression that comes with the occupation and then as they dance, the sound of thunder morphing into gunfire shatters the air and strobe lights rake across the stage. One girl describes standing in her window, seeing an Israeli soldier giving orders to a taxi driver. The soldiers shines his spotlight on her and aims his rifle at her head.

What gives one person such power over the life of another, she asks. She refuses to turn away, saying she will not let him intimidate her. And then she his him laugh loudly.

"I"m not killed," she says. "My body is still alive. But my soul is not. It's murdered. Did he win?"

There is a cold wind on the stage. Then the sounds of shooting. It is the 23rd of March in 2003. A phone rings. The father answers and cries of despair are heard. The Israeli soldiers have shot up a car with family members in it. They have prevented an ambulance from coming to help. The man and his daughter in the car are severely wounded. Phones start ringing all over the stage, all over town. "What's happened? What's happened?" voices cry out.

A girl stands apart from the group. "But I was with her at school this morning," she says. "Christine was killed."

Christine is Christine Sa'adeh, the sister of one of the diary writers, a student at Terra Sancta School for Girls at the time.