Lessons from the Berlin Wall
By Daphna Berman
Haaretz
24 January 2004

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/386143.html

Sita Balthazar has spent many nights lying on the cold stone floor under her bed, eating M&Ms and listening to the gunshots outside her window. "There are some days when I ask myself what I'm doing in a place where people are shooting at each other and I'm a target for both sides," says Balthazar, a resident of Abu Dis. 

For the German-born lawyer who speaks neither Hebrew nor Arabic, life in the West Bank has certainly been trying. Until two weeks ago, she would climb the fence outside her apartment nearly every day for her commute to Al-Quds University, where she teaches English. Since the erection of an eight-meter high wall just five minutes away from her home, however, even that has become impossible. Still, Balthazar insists that she has no intentions of leaving. 

"As someone who has experienced the tragedy of the Berlin Wall and the military occupation of Berlin, I cannot possibly walk away from the creation of another wall," she says. "This wall is being built on a different continent, for different political reasons, and in a different century, but its consequences can only be as devastating - No wall can prevent a very determined person from getting to the other side-whether to seek freedom or conduct a horrific suicide bombing." 

Balthazar, whose mother escaped East Germany in 1962, spent every summer of her childhood visiting family in a village outside of Berlin. Although she moved to France as an infant, Balthazar says that her childhood was nevertheless marked by military checkpoints, body searches, and the presence of soldiers on every street corner. "I grew up in two different worlds," she says of her life in both France and East Germany. "In one you were free, and in the other, you were not - I saw the contrast early on." 

"People in Abu Dis look at me and say that I don't understand anything that is going on here," continues 29-year old Balthazar. "Then I tell them about my background and let them decide." 

Until early last week, Balthazar would begin most days by waiting patiently in line to climb over the makeshift fence near her home. She would make sure there were no soldiers on the other side, carefully scale the wall, and then walk to a nearby gas station to catch a shared taxi to East Jerusalem. Balthazar's German passport allows her to travel freely, she says, and by her own estimates she is one of the few university staff members who travels to the Al-Quds campus with relative ease. 

"In some ways, I get away with a lot," she says. Some soldiers let her pass because they notice her passport and eagerly comment about a grandfather who was born in Germany. Others note her American residency card as a sign of good faith, and let her pass unhindered. And Balthazar is also convinced that her middle name, Sarah, helps bypass inquisitive soldiers as well. "They like the name for some reason," she says. 

Still, Balthazar says there are days when she spends half an hour arguing with soldiers at various checkpoints between her apartment and the university campus. "I usually lie and say I'm going to the
Israel museum or Yad Vashem," she admits. "If I said that I was going to teach, I'd never get anywhere." As one of the few blond haired women to regularly climb over the wall in Abu Dis, Balthazar says she often draws unsolicited attention. "No one understands why I am here," she explains, noting that many Palestinians assume that she is Jewish. Neighbors in Abu Dis, for example, greet her with "shalom," even though she counters with the Arabic "marhaba," and friends warn her against going to Hebron, for fear
she'll be mistaken for a settler and attacked. "In Hebron and Nabalus they attack settlers, which is just as crazy as building a wall," she says. "They're just not used to foreigners or tourists anymore." 

A good day for Balthazar is one in which her students show up to class. The university's campuses in Beit Hanina and East Jerusalem are often inaccessible to students in the West Bank, and the students who do show up for class, she says, are often apathetic and unqualified. Because the university has become a
protective shield of sorts, students are admitted to study independent of their academic merits, and according to Balthazar's own estimates, only about a quarter of her students are interested in their education. A third of the students in her English classes, she adds, don't understand a word she says. 

"My students don't trust me as much as I wish they would," Balthazar notes, somewhat sympathetically. In a conversation about the UN or international politics, they will parrot each other in professing their love for the United States. "I think they're afraid that I'll tell on them," she says. 

Balthazar, in the meantime, admits that there are days when she isn't quite convinced she's using her time effectively. "As a lawyer, I sometimes think I could be using my knowledge more," she says. 

Still, Balthazar seems to be enjoying the challenge. She is hoping to help set up a humanitarian law center at the university, and has become increasingly active in the Palestinian Human Rights Monitoring Group. She might need to move in the coming days to an apartment on the `right' side of the separation fence, and she continues to wonder what she's doing in a place where her motives continue to be seen as dubious from both sides. Still, Balthazar is convinced she'll stick around for a little while longer. "I don't want to be an expert on foreign affair because of newspapers," she says. "I'd rather live the life of a Palestinian than read about it."