LIVING SPACE (RESILIENCE)
LIVING SPACE (RESILIENCE)
By Caecilia Johanna van Peski
Jerusalem, Israel, June 16, 2024
“Ibrahim, your bird is in a cage that is much too small!”, I exclaim to my Palestinian friend. We are drinking tea together this morning on the sidewalk in front of his shop. I measure the cage with the wooden bars by eye. A carpenter’s eye is not needed for this assessment; anyone can see that the cage is much too small for the bird. The animal hops nervously back and forth on its tiny stick. A few centimetres to the left, a few centimetres to the right, there is no more room to move. The bird cannot even spread its wings; the confines of the cage that is too narrow do not allow that.
‘What kind of bird is it?’ I ask further, while I watch the restless hopping back and forth of the bird. ‘A rose-finch,’ Ibrahim answers. ‘Do you see the red head, chest and rump? Beautiful bird, also sings very nicely, people love that. I raised the animal myself from the egg, the parents were caught in the wild. It is a migratory bird, but this one doesn’t go anywhere, it can’t see beyond its bars, has never been in the outside world. I also have goldfinches and swallows. Beautiful fully grown specimens, there is a demand for them.’
“Where do you get these exotics?” I ask him. He tells me how he buys the endangered species from Palestinian traders in Gaza. They catch the birds in the buffer zone around the Strip. They are illegal trappers, poachers really, and their hunting grounds are in a prohibited area. But that is where the birds are, Ibrahim says, in those zones where Gazans are not allowed to go. The trappers’ prey consists mainly of ring-necked parakeets, an invasive tropical bird species, that has spread across the region in recent years after escaping as pets. The bright green birds with red beaks are highly sought after as caged pets, Ibrahim says enthusiastically. “They are beautiful birds, and everyone loves them. The poachers get a lot of money for each green-flecked specimen, they catch the animals to earn a living and feed their children.”
Ibrahim elaborates on the trapping of the birds, which nest on Israeli farms on the other side of the fence, but fly into Gaza when workers enter the fields to tend crops. Palestinian bird catchers on the other side lure them with chirps on portable speakers and catch them in nets and other traps. Israel established a 300-metre buffer zone along the fence 15 years ago, and troops have kept a close watch on the border since then, looking for Palestinians suspected of sneaking into Israel, planting explosives or digging attack tunnels.
Last year, a bird catcher was shot dead by Israeli forces — Israel said troops fired at the man after he and two other men suspiciously entered the buffer zone. Palestinian human rights groups say Palestinian bird trappers have been shot before.
“Israel established a 300-metre buffer zone along the fence fifteen years ago, and troops kept a close eye on the border for Palestinians during that time.”
“How has bird hunting been going since the war broke out?” I ask Ibrahim. “There was no work in Gaza, so people had no income, but they did have time. There was nothing else to fill that time than hunting,” Ibrahim says, inspecting a parakeet that he is holding by both legs. “Look, that’s how the poachers do it. They tie the birds’ legs with wire to dry branches and then use the tied birds as bait.”
As I talk to Ibrahim, the alleys of the Old City of Jerusalem are quickly filling up. Palestinians from East Jerusalem enter the city through Herod’s Gate. It connects the outer-walled Palestinian neighbourhood of Bab az-Zahra with the inner-walled reality from the Arabian Nights. But things aren’t exactly fairytale-like here at the moment. The people living within the gates of the Old City are suffering from the outbreak of the Israel-Hamas war.
Since October, hardly any tourists have come to Israel or to Jerusalem’s Old City, and the Palestinians themselves have also been severely restricted in their living space in the old city centre. Vendors in the Muslim part of the city tell how, first of all, no one took their merchandise during the COVID pandemic. Since October 7, most Russian tourists who were the only ones who still wanted to come during Easter have also stayed home, except for a few extremely pious Orthodox tourists.
‘Our city has become a ghost town,’ Ibrahim mumbles. The left corner of his mouth hangs even more crooked today than it usually does. It is a sign of fatigue. I met Ibrahim years ago. At that time, he had not yet had his cerebral haemorrhage and was working as a watchmaker. He can no longer do that delicate work with a paralysed right arm. Forced by the new reality, he transformed his workshop into a place for making and selling wooden bird cages. The birds get the buyers as well. Resilient retraining by Ibrahim, despite being caged in his paralysis and situation.
But despite the resilient retraining, without tourists and with all the restrictions in the city, it remains a poor existence for Ibrahim and his family. In the meantime, both his wallet and his bird cages are almost empty. The bird catchers from Gaza were regularly shot at before the war, but when they moved quickly through the buffer zone they were familiar with, they were almost always too fast for the Israeli troops. The supply of birds was therefore uninterrupted. ‘Now no more Gazans come over the wall and most of my middlemen are probably no longer alive. I haven’t heard from them for months. Only the birds benefit from it.’
During my conversation with Ibrahim, a man has come to stand in the doorway. He is sounding out Ibrahim’s birds. ‘A lively rose-finch, sir’, I praise Ibrahim’s wares. ‘Did you know that birds are actually dinosaurs?’ I elaborate as part of my sales pitch. ‘Modern birds live like in a kind of Jurassic Park. They are closely related to the two-legged dinosaurs that could weigh up to 500 kilos; giants compared to our modern birds.
They had big snouts, big teeth, but not much between the ears. A velociraptor had a skull like that of a dog but a brain as big as that of a pigeon.’ The man stares at me. I take it as interest and enthusiastically dish out more current dinosaur knowledge (memories of a recent visit to the natural history museum).
‘To explain the miraculous metamorphosis from dinosaur to bird, scientists have developed a theory called “hopeful monsters,” which involves a leap from the 400-kilo tyrannosaur to our house sparrow. You can still see it in the birds’ feathers, and the way their wings are built. Birds also resemble dinosaur embryos. It’s remarkable how big evolutionary changes can come from a series of small evolutionary steps, don’t you think?’
The man is still staring at me, full of interest, I think. Then he speaks his first words: ‘You are a fool to believe this kind of nonsense, and you are guilty of blasphemy. God created the animals the way they are, there is no place for those insane intermediate forms that you talk about.’ The man storms off, leaving Ibrahim and me to stare. ‘Look what you have done just now’, Ibrahim grumbles. ‘I won’t get rid of my birds like this. Another cup of tea then?’
Bewildered, I drink my next cup of tea while I look with some shame at the rose-finch in its too-small cage. ‘Too small a birdcage, do you think?’, Ibrahim asks. ‘For one of those mini dinosaurs of yours, yes’, my understanding friend jokes. ‘Too small and too small for the rose-finch from Gaza’, Ibrahim says. ‘But the bird doesn’t know it, she was born in this cage.’
KLTZ (SD) drs. Caecilia Johanna van Peski (1970) studied Educational and Cultural Psychology and Civil-Military Interaction. She subsequently worked for the EU, NATO, OSCE and the UN. In 2024 she was deployed from the Royal Netherlands Navy to the Office of the U.S. Security Coordinator for Israel and the Palestinian Authority (USSC); station Ramallah - West Bank.
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