AN INTRODUCTION TO THE BARBER OF BARTA'A

 

For over two decades THE INTERNATIONAL DEPARTMENT, GIVAT HAVIVA has been

Introducing seminar participants to Barta'a village in Wadi Ara,  facilitating dialogue with the local Arab population – those in West Barta'a with Israeli citizenship, those in East Barta'a, Palestinians under the Palestinian Authority

 

  

In the hot seat: David Mendelsohn of the International Department getting a short back & sides from Rateb Kabaha; visiting his neighbors spice shop and chatting with International Department guests whilst cutting a local Palestinians hair in his old salon

 

Some call it the Green Line, others the Divide, the Seam or Border.

Then again, there are those who address the 1949-1967 line between the State of Israel and the West Bank (Judea and Samaria) annexed by Jordan in 1950, as the Armistice Line.

However, whatever expression you might use, one thing is for sure, today it is one of the hottest political potatoes around.

There were actually four armistices brokered between Israel and neighboring countries during 1949.  One man received the Nobel Peace Prize for his tireless efforts that year – his name barely mentioned in present times.  United Nations negotiator and former civil rights activist Dr. Ralph Bunche, the son of a barber and grandson of a black slave, received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1950 in recognition of his mediating skills.

Ralph Bunche came to mind recently when I was talking to someone who shared the same profession as the outstanding negotiator's father.  Rateb Kabaha is not a black American, wasn't born into slavery nor did he at any time sit around a table with Israelis and fellow Palestinians and try and figure a way out of the conflict that is older than he.

He is, however, a barber by profession – taught the trade by an Israeli Jewish barber of Moroccan background he befriended during a twenty year period he lived and worked in Tel Aviv – before the first Palestinian uprising (intifada) in 1987.

Rateb was born in a small West Bank village, residing in a portion of that village that when divided by the Green Line, Divide, Seam, Border, Armistice Line, whatever one wants to call it, ended up annexed to the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan.

The name of the village is Barta'a –West Barta'a, inside – by a few inches - the State of Israel, and East Barta'a, from 1950 to 1967 ruled by Jordan, taken over by Israel after the 1967 War but following the 1993 Oslo and Wye Agreements, ended up as an Area B under the Palestinian Authority – but Israel having the final say as far as security is concerned.

So, basically Rateb Kabaha is Palestinian, born in the then freshly annexed Jordanian ruled West Bank.  Like his parents and older siblings, he received Jordanian citizenship and in present times lives under the Palestinian Authority in an Area B – on the Israeli side of the security fence.

Confused?  So are the people who live there.

The so-called 'Green Line' runs diagonally through Barta'a – dividing it in a rather strange way that leaves three-quarters inside the West Bank and one-quarter, part of the State of Israel.  The Green Line is actually a two-meter wide ditch, full of rubbish chucked in mostly by the Palestinians of East Barta'a who have no real organized refuse collection.  The Green Line is anything but green as it is filled with cardboard boxes, broken wooden pallets, rusty piping, old clothes, household rubbish and – excuse the description, but there is no other – the guts of slaughtered animals from local slaughter-houses, although 'house' is not quite a word that should be used to describe a metal shipping container, placed alongside the ditch and turned in to a rather bloody business.

Rateb lives and works about one hundred paces from the ditch.  His former home stood on a main T-junction that over the last few years became a heaving commercial center frequented by shoppers looking for cheap bargains – the majority of the shoppers being Israeli Arab Muslim and Druze, some of whom coming from as far away as Acre and Galilean villages in their bargain hunting.

Following devastating Palestinian terrorism in Israel after the second intifada, many Palestinian businessmen moved themselves and their wares as close to the Green Line, and their Israeli customers, as possible.  A few years ago Rateb Kabaha suddenly found himself sitting on some of the most lucrative real estate in East Barta'a – a Palestinian tax-free zone in present times.  The land his somewhat small house and tiny barber shop stood on suddenly became much sought after.  Rateb did something that very few Palestinians would have contemplated years ago – he sold his home.  A close relative and businessman made Rateb an offer he could hardly refuse.  Sell us your property, they said, and we will pull it down, build a complex of eight shops on two floors, and on the third floor – a new home for you.  Ah, and yes … one of those premises will be yours to open up a new barbershop.

Now, who could refuse such an offer – especially a Palestinian with 8 children, a few of whom still in school and eyeing a university education, to follow in the footsteps of their elder brothers and sisters.

Sell the house he did, a huge crater replaced the Kabaha family abode.  The family moved in to a small house nearby, rented from another family until their third storey new home completed.

 

         

Rateb Kabaha (in blue shirt) with group of kibbutz volunteers on study tour, and right, with Birthright-Taglit students from Canada

 

Within a very short time indeed the new shops on the successful East Barta'a shopping block were constructed, rented out and filled with spices, clothes and bits and pieces imported from Asia.

Is Rateb now a happy man – new barbers shop on the main road of a bustling commercial area, new home almost completed and constant flow of folks in and out, some for a haircut, others for a cup of strong coffee and to watch the television fixed high up on the wall just inside the doorway?

Rateb is not exactly over the moon on the other side of the Green Line.  He is not allowed to go over that ditch and in to the State of Israel.  Should he do so and get stopped by Israeli border or regular police, he could be heavily fined, even imprisoned – and even more serious, would end up with a police file.

So, one hundred paces forward that's all he can go.  How about backwards?  Now that's another story.  He has about one and a half kilometers between his abode and the Reichan checkpoint in the security fence.  Open from six in the morn until ten at night, Rateb has to pass through the checkpoint in order to go deeper in to the West Bank to visit family, go to the bank or to undertake other tasks in Jenin – the nearest town but also an Area A – Autonomous and under the Palestinian Authority.

Rateb has not passed through the checkpoint for a number of years even though he has extensive family also on the other side.  Should he need hospitalization – P.G. he will not – he would have no choice but to go to Jenin for medical attention.

"It can sometimes take hours to get from one side of the checkpoint to the other and the same coming back.  I find it all so degrading, embarrassing – my dignity is stripped from me," he explains.

So not forward and not very far back – Rateb moves within a very small area, and the same for his wife and their offspring.

The eldest daughter is a pharmacist.  She qualified at Al-Najah University and works in a small chemist shop, half way between her father's barbershop and the ditch cum 'border.'  In other words, she works fifty paces from the family abode, and fifty paces from the other side of the divide where she is not allowed to go to.

The salary for the young lady working in East Barta'a and that of a qualified pharmacist fifty paces down the road and over the Green Line is about one-third, or even less, than that of a professional peer.

"I worked so hard to put her through university, and her brothers – and look what happens.  Her salary is an insult but what choice is there.  If she were to work elsewhere in the West Bank, she would have to pay rent and her keep would be much more expensive than within the family home – so really, no choice but to accept the situation.  Nobody can dictate that we should also like it!" he says with a grimace.

A son who graduated with a degree in sport education makes pitas in a local bakery and two other sons are still at university.

Rateb speaks fluent Hebrew.  In actual fact he speaks Hebrew better than many longtime Jewish immigrants in Israel.  He didn't learn Hebrew in a formal way as immigrants do but on the job.  When he began working in Tel Aviv he prepared meat for kebabs in local restaurants.  He lived in a rented room in Jaffa for two decades and when the elderly owner died, stayed on in the property until the married daughter, living in Britain, decided to sell the building.

During this period he befriended a Jewish barber who convinced him it would be useful for him to learn his profession.

"Sammy said that none of us knows what the future holds and maybe cutting hair would come in useful at some time," explains Rateb with a grin.  "I cannot even begin to imagine how we would have survived all these years if it had not been for Sammy the barber taking that time to teach me," he adds.

 

July 2009

Text & Photos: Lydia Aisenberg