Flying the flag for peace

A civil engineer from the UAE is to become the first Palestinian to climb Mount Everest, but his companions are not who you might expect.

It is handy that two of the climbers going up Mount Everest with Ali Bushnaq next March are short.

That should make it easier if he follows his friends' advice and throws them off the top.

His friends are joking, probably. But this is no ordinary Everest expedition, so it is tricky to see where the joking stops. Palestinians do not normally climb mountains with Israelis.

Even for Ali Bushnaq, a 42-year-old civil engineer born in Nablus but brought up in Jordan and Al Ain, the idea was startling.

"I thought about it a few times," he says. "Not many people believe you can speak to the other side, the opposition. I've never dealt with an Israeli person. I always thought of them as the people who took our land."

Yet when the approach came in mid-2003 he could not turn down the challenge of becoming the first Palestinian to scale Everest.

Now, he is making his final preparations for an expedition in which he and two of his people's foes are placing their lives in each other's hands.

Ali Bushnaq's involvement in the Everest climb came through his friend Suzanne Al Houby.
She had recommended him to Lance Trumbull, a 37-year-old Californian climber with unusual ideas about mountaineering as a route to spiritual enlightenment.

In his online bio on the expedition's site (www.everestpeaceproject.org) Trumbull describes how he found inspiration for what he called the Everest Peace Project.

On October 2, 2002, at 15,000 feet over a valley in India, "a vision or a sudden burst of inspiration overcame him".

"Only an hour had passed but within that short period of time Lance had envisioned his new mission in life," it goes on.

"Never before had his life's purpose been so clear: he was going to organise an Everest Climb for Peace that would promote a global community of peace, teamwork and cultural understanding."

No wonder, perhaps, that Ali's initial reaction to Trumbull included slight reservations.
Trumbull reports that his own first impression was simply, "this man is big."

Action man

Ali Bushnaq is, in fact, a 6'5", 225-pound animated Action Man — a resemblance made even more unmistakeable by a neat beard.

His measured, precise manner — enlivened by touches of dry humour — also suggests he also has the average tolerance of a civil engineer for West-Coast spiritualism.

The rest of the team were equally keen to check out Ali. "Everyone needed to know if I was the right person," he says.

In general fitness Ali has plenty of form. For 15 years he was a fanatical rugby player, until five knee operations eventually forced him off the pitch. He began climbing while studying in the US and has visited Nepal five times.

But, unlike the Israeli members of the group, he is not a professional mountaineer.

From the start, the challenge was not just to restrain any impulse to chuck his fellow climbers from the summit, but also to get there in the first place.

To bond and to help prepare him for the Everest climb in April, the team has already scaled Kilimanjaro and Mount Shasta in California.

In a couple of weeks Ali and Israeli climber David Yifrah will reunite to climb Jordan's Wadi Rum, where they first met in June last year.

"It was very important that I and the Israelis should get along," Ali says.

"They were already in the team. It was weird. Their English is very bad so we communicated by e-mail, not telephone."

On both sides, there were plenty of misconceptions to overcome.

"The Israelis said that I didn't qualify," Ali says. "They said that Palestinians are not educated, and don't speak English very well. I told them that it was their mistake. Israel's rules make Palestinians poor and less culturally exposed, but many of us are educated and doing well."

Joking

"They were joking and also serious," he says. "For them it was the first time they have talked to an Arab who is also a friend. I think some of their questions came from their friends."

But despite initial diffidence, the team swiftly gelled. Any remaining wariness between Ali and Trumbull evaporated on the chilly slopes of Kilimanjaro.

"He is a very caring person," says Ali. "I understand him much better now. On the mountain, he saved the life of a climber from another expedition suffering from cerebral and pulmonary edema. In the middle of the night he went over, organised a rescue effort and gave him an injection from our own team's supplies."

Also, in confirmation of Trumbull's optimistic vision, a close friendship has developed between Ali and the two Israeli climbers, David (Dudu) Yifrah and Micha Yaniv.

"I really like the guys," says Ali. "They are normal people with normal problems, and I feel with them for their problems. They are very similar to us. Their customs are just like our customs. They even make exactly the same coffee."

Having exchanged gifts to formalise their friendship, Ali wanted to bring them to meet his parents at their house in Jordan.

"It is very important to hear from their mouths directly what they are saying about us," he says.

"It's very important to know their feelings. Just dealing with them, I learnt that they are normal people and not that aggressive against us. People like us can do a far better job than politicians."

Still, Ali was not especially surprised that his father greeted the idea of their visit with a deeply puzzled "Why?!"