A tale of two press briefings and other realizations

What I would give to see the charismatic and handsome Tony Blair in his American Colony hotel office.

Instead, I saw Jimmy Carter. (of course it was great but still…)

For the past two days, I did the 40-minute trip from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem to attend two press briefings. The first one by Jimmy Carter to the Israeli human rights community at the American colony hotel in Jerusalem. It wasn’t particularly impressive. He just gave us his itinerary in the region and then answered three to four questions from the press.

The second one was given by Gisha –Legal Center for Freedom of Movement (the organization I work for) and Hamoked –Center for the Defense of the Individual regarding the new Israeli procedures which effectively renders travel of Palestinians from Gaza to the West Bank impossible (unless of course its the other way around in which case, it is fine). This is the first time Israel has put in writing the criteria used to judge Gaza residents’ applications for a permit to go to the West Bank. More about the new regulations in the Jerusalem Post story here On our way back, my colleagues at work drove through Highway 443 or what they call the Apartheid Highway, and showed me all the walls, fences, and other things that divide. (It gave me an inspiration for another short story. Hope I can finish at least one by the end of summer!)

For someone whose main life revolves around the academe, its refreshing for me to see real people work in the real world, and in particular, to see a real NGO at work. And to write and research for things that actually have a definite outcome at the end. Of course, I love academia – but being outside for awhile is a nice change and makes me appreciate it even more. I had to remind myself that I’m not in academia when I had a eureka moment earlier and realized that I’m not going to write a paper or law review article around it.

On an unrelated note, I finally went to the specialty bookstore along Kikar Rabin and asked the lady for her suggestion -  if I can only buy one book (English translation of course) of an Israeli author, what would it be? She gave me A.B. Yehoshua’s The Lover, praising it as very good and very Israeli. Hmmm, I wonder what that means. I ended up getting that and Lawrence Wills’ Ancient Jewish Novels anthology. She told me to spend some time in the coffee shop and just read the book there. Too bad I need to do my laundry today. Not to mention eat something. I will do both now.