Palestinians will impose closure on their own every now and then. Today Birzeit University closed. When I arrived all ready to pay my overdue library fines, I found a confused swarm of students around the closed front gate. I saw a long(ish)-lost acquaintance of mine named Ahmad (not the one who got his window smashed... another one) and he gave me the low-down. Apparently, some students affiliated with PFLP (Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine - a communist, secular party) gave some speeches on Saturday which offended some Fatah folks. Something happened, not quite sure what... but today students were pulling others out of classes and well... apparently it got bad. I heard beatings from one and stabbings from another but honestly, I have no idea who to believe. Meanwhile, I called my professor to confirm that class was indeed cancelled. It was. Then as I watched some guys jump the fence here and there, I talked a little politics with Ahmad (who's incidentally a Hamas supporter) and a friend of his, both of whom were upset over their wasted taxi-fare. Basically, the whole thing is sadly absurd. Ahmad's prediction is that all the shabab will be sharing hummus in the cafeteria tomorrow morning... provided the university re-opens... wataniya wahadi, I think is he how it put it. When I asked whether the culprits in this (the Fatah folks) would be expelled, he said "of course not" as did a new colleague of mine who teaches Arabic at a local high school here. Apparently, Fatah has, or can get, its fingers in anything and everything around here, including private predominantly-Christian universities, so unless someone dies, all will be forgiven, or rather, ignored.
wataniya wahadi = one nation
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment