Jayyus skatepark

On the Today Programme on Wednesday 1^st April 2020 there was an item about 10 year-old Roxana Howlett from Exeter who had just won the Virtual National Skateboard Championship using ramps in her back garden. The event was moved online as a result of the Covid 19 pandemic. She was asked where she had travelled to take part in skateboarding events. The first country she mentioned was Palestine, through an organisation called Skatepal. She said it was ‘quite a poor country’ and they had very little equipment. ‘It was quite sad really’ but they had ‘brilliant skateparks’.   Here is a story I wrote some time ago but never published about the skatepark in Jayyous.

Saturday 21^st October 2017 was a day of celebration in Jayyus.  It was the official opening of the long awaited skatepark.

This is an imaginative development to give children something to engage with where there is very little else. I had come back on my annual visit with Juliane, my team-mate in 2012.

The skatepark wasn’t hard to find. The 600 square-metre concrete skate park stands next the boys’ school at the western end of the village. Set on a hill there is a beautiful view of the plain across Jayyus land and beyond that to Israel. The contentious separation barrier barring access for Jayyus farmers from nearly half their land was forgotten for the moment.

As we approached we could hear the drumming and music. It was definitely party day.  A young boy handed me a small snake and was visibly disappointed when I admired it. Honour was restored by my reaction to his friend’s attempt to hand me a small black wriggly thing with far too many legs. Everyone was in a good mood.

The great and the good had just had their photos taken and were standing around to watch the display. First came the leaders and instructors of the project, eager to show what could be done. There was a great deal of excitement as young, mostly men performed, each vying with each other to do something ever more daring. ‘Just what Jayyus needs,’ I thought ‘lots of adrenalin, and a way to let off steam doing something slightly dangerous which doesn’t involve the army.’ Then they withdrew and it was the children’s turn.

Suddenly, the park was awash with children: older and younger, boys and girls all together, bigger children helping littler ones.

One small boy was carrying a skateboard larger than himself. They had evidently been well instructed and had learned not to hurt themselves when they parted company from their skateboards; very few fell; most wore helmets.

It was particularly heart-warming to see the girls, normally so quiet and inactive, embracing it with confidence and enthusiasm.  Some wore t-shirts with the slogan ‘Walls can’t keep me from flying’. A young girl whizzed by me wearing a helmet over her hijab.

Walls can’t keep me from flying

The man behind the skateboarding project is Mohammed Othman who comes from Jayyus and knows its problems well. He has developed a youth empowerment programme that uses skateboarding and art as tools to teach community building and leadership skills to Palestinian girls and boys. He founded Skateqilya named after the nearby skatepark which they built in nearby Qalqilya. This is the fifth skatepark they have built across the West Bank. http://www.skateqilya.org/

Not long after the children began skateboarding, someone ran past me and I heard him say ‘Israeli friends’. I hoped he didn’t mean what I thought he meant. Looking down the hill, I saw three Israeli army jeeps and a humvee.  A t a rough guess that would mean about 15-20 soldiers. About half a dozen soldiers got out fully helmeted as if expecting trouble.

Mohamed shouted to us to keep the children in the skatepark but then turned to someone, ‘What happens if they fire tear gas into the park.’ He, and an Israeli friend of the project, went down to talk to the soldiers to ask them to keep away from the skatepark.

Over the next ten minutes or so we ‘fielded’ escaping children back into the skatepark and shut the gate. The older ones were desperate to go down to throw stones at the soldiers. In the end, they contented themselves with loud drumming, singing and making gestures towards the soldiers in the distance.

I spoke to the Israeli guy who declined to give me his name.  He was not from the skateboarding group, he said, but a friend of one of the organisers. The soldiers had complained that some children had thrown stones at them. He told the soldiers that that the children did not like the army coming into the village and if they didn’t come into the village, no-one would throw stones at them.

Word spread quickly. In Palestinian villages, the army spells trouble.  Mothers started arriving to take the little children home; some were crying. Adults who had been at the opening ceremony walked other small children back to their houses. We held on to the rest.

Eventually word went round that the army had left so we let the children out and walked down the village to get some lunch. We were half way down the main street when shouts went up, ‘jaysh’ (soldiers). The army were back, this time on foot.  It is unwise to attribute motives, but I could not help feeling it had all been calculated. You would have to be very stupid not to predict what would happen next. There were now about 50 uncontained children on the street. Someone threw a large stone. The soldiers responded with a huge amount of tear gas. It was inevitable. Children started running and we heard that the soldiers had arrested a child.

We couldn’t get home because of the tear gas, so accepted an invitation to take tea in someone’s garden. Sitting in the walled garden by orange trees and roses and sipping tea with miramia (sage) seemed surreal, given what was happening further down the street.

 

Back home afterwards, we heard that the arrested[1] boy had been was chased by the army off the main street and down the street where we were staying. Everyone went indoors and shut the windows and doors as the tear gas followed.

The local shopkeeper, Ibrahim, who also lives in this street, told us ‘When I see the army in the village, I shut my shop and go home.’ Palestinian shops have solid walls on three sides and glass with metal shutters at the front.  If you get tear gas inside, it is very hard to get it out again.

No one knows the effects of repeated exposure to tear gas. The family complex of flats where we were staying had three children under four, a two week-old baby and a pregnant woman.  The family are used to it, but nevertheless worry about how it will affect them all. A man down the street with chronic chest problems had to be treated by paramedics.

Under the Geneva Convention[2] tear gas is characterised as a chemical warfare agent, and so it is precluded for use in warfare, but it is allowed and very frequently used against civilians. In the West Bank, it is regularly used to break up demonstrations. It is almost always used when the Israeli army enters a Palestinian village.

This scene is played out in villages all over the West Bank. Israel’s position is that they need to enter villages for security reasons, security that is, not for Israel but for the illegal settlements. They can’t tolerate stones being thrown so they enter villages to arrest stone throwers. Israeli ex-soldiers from ‘Breaking the Silence’[3] have reported that they are instructed ‘to make their presence felt’.  There are over 200 illegal Israeli settlements across the West Bank with adjacent villages and soldiers making their presence felt. In Jayyus alone in 2017 there was a huge increase of army incursions during September and October and 23 arrests. It is always the same inexorable sequence. The army enters the village; children throw stones; the soldiers respond with tear gas and then arrest someone for throwing stones.

I found the day depressing. I wished the army would leave the village alone. I wished the children would not throw stones. I wished the army would not respond disproportionally.  I felt upset that the army couldn’t let a celebration take place without breaking up the party. Even if that was not their specific intention they did nothing to avoid it. No one else seemed particularly upset. In Jayyus, this is normal. They are used to it. They get on with their lives.

Postscript:

Visiting Jayyous two years later in September 2019, Juliane and I met a group of girls from Tulkarem, demonstrating considerable skateboard skills at the park.

Jayyus skatepark is alive and well.

 

Footnotes

[1] 16 year-old M was released after a few hours.

[2] Chemical Weapons Convention of 1993; signed by Israel in 1993 but not ratified.

[3] An Israeli NGO of former-soldiers who have chosen to speak out about the behaviour of the army in the West Bank.