MCC Palestine Update #91
December 17, 2003
This past week I received a Christmas card from our friends at the Wi’am Center for Conflict Resolution in Bethlehem. The illustration on the card (produced by Wi’am) was poignant and striking. Shepherds, sheep, donkeys, even Mary and Joseph find themselves separated from the Christ child by barbed-wire fences. Mary is pictured trying to reach through the fence to touch her son. The rays of the Christmas star, however, do manage to pierce through the barbed wire, shining down on Jesus in his simple manger. This card well summarizes the reality of Bethlehem and many other West Bank cities this Christmas: encircled by electronic fences, concrete walls, barbed wire. If Mary and Joseph tried to travel today from Nazareth to Bethlehem on the route they would have taken 2,000 years ago, they would be lucky to reach Jenin: checkpoints, roadblocks, barbed wire would stand in their way.
The good news of Christmas, however, is that, despite the roadblocks, the checkpoints, the fences and walls that create a reality of “separation” (apartheid), God’s incarnation is a reality. God’s incarnation in the Christ child extends into the Body of Christ, the church: despite the walls of separation being erected, the church in the occupied territories continues to witness to a reality of reconciliation that is built with bridges instead of walls. Palestinian and Israeli peacebuilders participated in this reality on Saturday, December 13, as they gathered in al-Ram north of Jerusalem to say NO to a future of walls that dispossess. The reality in the occupied territories this Advent is somber and grim, as Palestinians face being encircled and imprisoned by walls and fences. Yet hope can be found amidst this despair, as the church and Palestinian and Israeli peacebuilders witness through word and deed to a future consisting of bridges of reconciliation instead of walls of dispossession, aggression and hatred.
Please pray this Advent and this Christmas-season for the witness of the Palestinian churches and for the work of organizations such as Wi’am, Sabeel, and the Israeli Committee against House Demolitions.
MCC Project Update:
On December 26, Israeli Jewish members of Zochrot will visit the Bethlehem area as guests of the Badil Resource Center for Refugee and Residency Rights. The day will be an opportunity for refugee communities to become acquainted with this new Israeli organization that is dedicated to working on durable solutions for Palestinian refugees. Please have this meeting in your prayers.
Below you will find three pieces of analysis, all from MCC partners. The first, by Ghassan Andoni of the Palestinian Center for Rapprochement, looks at how the “separation wall” constitutes an act of aggression. MCC recently gave a grant to Rapprochement to assist with its media center (the International Middle East Media Center): visit its website, http://www.imemc.org/. The second piece is by Samia Khoury, a Palestinian Christian woman who serves on the board of MCC partner organization, the Sabeel Ecumenical Liberation Theology Center; Samia perceptively examines the reality behind what she calls “the Geneva hoopla.” The final item is a research bulletin from the Badil Resource Center for Refugee and Residency Rights; the bulletin examines how refugee participation in peace agreements addressing conflicts that have created refugees is essential to durable peace and reconciliation and discusses how Palestinian refugee voices have been excluded from political discussions concerning their future. This is the final update of 2003. Updates will resume in early January 2004.
--Alain Epp Weaver
1. Separation Wall, a Typical Mixture of Security and Aggression
Ghassan Andoni - IMEMC-Analysis, December 12, 2003
The UN General Assembly voted to demand for the International Court of Justice to give a legal advisory concerning the "separation wall". A resolution supported by 90 countries, opposed by 8, and around 60 countries abstained. It is still early to tell how significant this move can be. According to expert's expectations, it might take years for the court to conclude its work and issue an advisory. Therefore, it is likely that developments on the ground can take over any expected court decision. Israel faces a serious legal dilemma. To present a stand consistent with international law; it has to plea as an occupier power that "has the right to build fences and other types of constructions needed for security purpose". To plea as an occupation power contradicts the basic stand of all Israeli governments that defines the "territories" as disputed. Recognizing that Israel is an occupying power with certain rights stated in international law, would as well force Israel to recognize, as well, Jerusalem as an occupied territory. The story of the Separation wall is not different from that of settlements, closure, land grabs, settler's outposts, or by-passing roads. All were created for an alleged security reason, in few limited cases it was even possible to recognize that security need, but all of them were structured to serve an ideological or political purpose as well. In relation to the separation wall, every Israeli official stressed the need for the wall as pre-emptive to military attacks inside Israel, including suicide attacks. Yet, each of them avoided answering to why it needs to be built deep into the Palestinian territories and not on the green line. Even, the closest ally to Israel, namely the United States, could not but see another agenda in building the wall. Palestinian Prime Minister Ahmed Qurei expressed even interest in sharing the coast of the wall if it is built on the green line, but rejected for it to be built even a millimeter inside the Palestinian occupied territories. It is very right for Palestinians to point to the intentions to grab more land, force discontinuity to the Palestinian areas, define borders unilaterally, and being used as a way to collectively punish Palestinians. Israel could do, based on pure security assessment, a fence on the green line, and deploy more forces around settlements to "protect" them until their issue is addressed politically, yet rejecting to be partner to a truce agreement and continuing with the construction of the wall based on settler's interests reflects the set of priorities of the current Israeli government. In relation to road blocks and military check posts, it is clear that within a conflict period, more security measures are needed by even an occupying authority, yet, how security figures could explain the security need behind blocking the road between two adjacent Palestinian villages is still standing for an explanation. Recently, even army and security heads started to publicly criticize the policies of the current government as being counter productive and making Israel more vulnerable than protected. Amazingly enough, while the current government expressed no intention to compromise on any level, it became very forwarding, at least verbally, on the issue of easing Palestinian living conditions. This issue was until recently presented as the most security related issue of all. Confusing security needs with aggression becomes self defeating to security legitimate needs. No wonder why almost all the world, including the United States, are questioning and doubting the Israeli intentions and demanding for Israel to stop the aggressive act of building the wall deep inside Palestinian occupied territories.
2. The Hoopla in Geneva
by Samia Khoury
(Monday December 15 2003)
"It seems that all those dignitaries were getting together to endorse the redundancy of the United Nations and its resolutions since the stipulations of this initiative if implemented are supposed to supersede all previous UN resolutions. So in reality Israel is being rewarded for its intransigence and for defying the United Nations."
For the last couple of months, we have been reading details of the Geneva Initiative, and listening to opinions for and against this initiative. So finally the signing of this document took place in Geneva. But why all the fanfare. Listening to the music and singing one would think we are really celebrating Palestinian independence. It is bad enough that we commemorate November 15 the day of the announcement of the declaration of independence as independence day, when in reality we are still under military occupation. So was the hoopla in Geneva another overture for another date to add to our long list of commemorations?
It would be naive to think that people who have been dispossessed for over half a century and living under military occupation for the last thirsty six years are not anxious to live in peace. But it would be just as naive to think that the signing of this "unofficial document" in Geneva is really a "breakthrough in peace negotiations"
One would think that the region has learnt enough lessons from the various peace initiatives since the Madrid conference, which was based on UN Security Council resolutions 242 and 338. Initiatives that have been doomed to failure, basically because those UN resolutions and all previous ones, including the right of return have been defied by Israel all along. So what was magic about this initiative to make its fate any different? Did the occasion really warrant a celebration? It seems that all those dignitaries were getting together to endorse the redundancy of the United Nations and its resolutions since the stipulations of this initiative if implemented are supposed to supersede all previous UN resolutions. So in reality Israel is being rewarded for its intransigence and for defying the United Nations.
To contemplate making compromises on the right of return requires a clear mandate from the Palestinian refugees themselves. Those who continue to live in refugee camps in the Arab countries, and those who have been dispersed all over the world are the only ones who are entitled to speak on behalf of the refugees. We have heard people say that we need to be pragmatic since many, or most of the refugees might not want to return. To start with that is not an accurate assumption. Moreoever there is a difference between one's basic right and one's choice of how to deal with that right. So if some of the refugees do not want to return, it should be by their own choice, and not because somebody has made a deal on their behalf to deprive them of that right.
Palestinians have a historical narrative that asserts their rights, and there is no way peace negotiations can move ahead without the recognition of those rights. Unfortunately, Israel refuses to recognize its responsibility for our dispossession and for creating the refugee problem. Yet the Palestinians are demanded to make more concessions to their rights. Simply because, strategically they are powerless, they do not have the privilege of choice. Does this mean it is acceptable to trample over the powerless. In this century when the law of the jungle has been replaced by the United Nations, it would seem an unacceptable justification for the Palestinians to forfeit their rights simply because they are powerless.
It is indeed very sad that Palestinians are helping Israel to nullify the right of return. "Come on" they say; "do you really believe this can work out?" Why not? Or is it because Israel is involved, and it has become the norm that no power challenges Israel for its violations of international law. No injustice can be acceptable. Even if it is the norm, it remains immoral and illegal. So why should the Palestinians succumb to this logic and forfeit their right, especially that justice is on their side.
The widow in (Luke 18:1-8) was powerless, but she kept taking her case to the judge who "neither feared God nor cared about men." Yet she was persistent in pleading for "justice against her adversary" until he came to the conclusion that he needs to grant her justice so that she will stop bothering him and eventually wear him out. I do not think as Palestinians we have bothered the world conscience enough. We are the ones who have been worn out, and victimized. And to add insult to injury we have been labeled "terrorists." It is high time we are granted justice against our adversary.
The partition scheme in 1948 never worked out because it lacked justice and was based on creating a Jewish State on the land that was meant to be for all its citizens. With the present inequity, how do we envisage that a much smaller percentage of Palestine surrounded by an Apartheid Wall would be acceptable and will guarantee a viable and comprehensive peace. At the same time, if Israel is to be an exclusively Jewish State, how can it survive as a democratic and Jewish State when over 20% of its citizens are non Jewish. In the long run Israel will have to face this dilemma. Will an apartheid Jewish state guarantee its peace and security?
I was hoping that those experienced diplomats involved in the Geneva Initiative would have come up with an innovative solution to respond to the needs of both people. Maybe they should have thought of the one state solution which could help Israel in solving its dilemma, and it would help the Palestinians in realizing their right of return.
The effort that was put in the details of the Geneva Initiative seems a very serious effort, but likewise a similar effort could have been put in finding an inclusive and just structure for a binational democratic state that can be the solution for a comprehensive and viable peace amongst all the people who are destined to share this Holy Land without barriers or walls.
3. Peace Agreements and Public Participation – Lessons Learned
BADIL Occasional Bulletin No. 15 December 2003
This Bulletin aims to provide a brief overview of issues related to Palestinian Refugee Rights
Peace agreements—provisions on rights, refugees and participation: The following is the final part of a three-part series analyzing provisions in recent peace agreements. It deals with public participation. Parts I and II dealt with provisions on human rights and refugees in these agreements.
Always talked about but never included
Since the post-World War I Paris Peace Conference, Palestinians have been talked about, argued over and decided for but rarely included in any peace process.
Peace agreements are usually the result of negotiations between or among political elites followed by international assistance to facilitate implementation. It is the general public, however, who provide the best guarantee for effective implementation of peace agreements.
Agreements entail more than an end to conflict. They also address important questions related to the fundamental principles governing inter-state relations, the relationship between a state and its citizens (including human rights protections), legislative, executive, and judicial powers, good governance, and the allocation of state resources.
Public participation is therefore essential. Including the public at an early stage is critical for determining its will, not only in relation to ending the conflict, but also in determining the shape of the final peace. Public participation strengthens democratic principles and structures, expands the range of solutions to complex issues, lends greater legitimacy to agreements, engenders broad public ownership of the agreement and contributes to its long-term durability.
Recent comparative study of peace processes in protracted conflicts suggests that “where a peace process enables broad-based participation and public debate, intensely conflictual issues can be reclaimed as the normal subjects of political dialogue, problem-solving and constructive action.” This creates an environment where antagonists can more effectively resolve root causes of the conflict and ultimately take steps towards reconciliation rather than just conflict management.*
The following bulletin provides a brief review of the role of the public in the Palestinian-Israeli negotiation process and an overview of public participation in comparative perspective.
Palestinian-Israeli Negotiations
The Palestinian-Israeli peacemaking process has provided few opportunities for public participation, whether representative, consultative or direct. Historically, the Palestinian people have been denied the basic right to participate in key decisions concerning the conflict in Palestine.
During the 1919 Paris Peace Conference, following the end of WWI, for example, the major powers ignored the wishes of the Palestinian people in the selection of the Mandatory power for Palestine. “[W]e do not propose even to go through the form of consulting the wishes of the present inhabitants of the country.” For the major powers, the imposition of British rule in Palestine and the establishment of a Jewish national homeland in the country was “of far profounder import than the desires and prejudices of the 700,000 Arabs who now inhabit that ancient land.”
In 1947, the UN held consultations in the region concerning the future of the country, but then chose to ignore the wishes of the overwhelming majority of Palestinians who favored the established of a democratic state with equal rights for both Arabs and Jews rather than partition along ethno-national and religious lines. For the next several decades Palestinians and their leadership were largely excluded from successive peacemaking efforts.
It was not until the late 1980s that major international powers, most notably the United States, recognized the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) as the legitimate representative of the Palestinian people and as the designated interlocutor at the official level for peace negotiations. Peacemaking efforts, however, continued to exclude both consultative and direct forms of public participation.
Acceptance of the PLO as the body mandated to negotiate on behalf of the Palestinian people, however, came at a price. The PLO was required to forego the agenda set by the people themselves: liberation of their historic homeland and establishment of a democratic state. Palestinians were forced to accept UN Security Council Resolution
242 and the notion of ‘land for peace’ as the basis for a negotiated solution to the conflict.
The PLO had previously rejected Resolution 242 because it left Israel “many loopholes” for the continued occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip. It also ignored “the right of the refugees to return to their homes.” The resolution also lacked a clear legal framework for ending the conflict. In addition, the notion of ‘land for peace’ always assumed that there was a mutual exchange between the parties when in reality there is and was an aysmetrical relationship with Palestinians having neither land (which Israel was to withdraw from) nor peace (which they were required to provide).
Nevertheless, and at an early stage, Palestinians attempted to create the space for their involvement in the peacemaking process through both consultative and direct forms of participation. In the early 1950s, for example, refugees organized committees to raise their demands before relevant UN bodies such as the UN Conciliation Commission for Palestine (UNCCP). After meeting with refugees in Beirut, the Commission noted that it “was impressed by expressions of these spokesmen for the return of refugees to their homes to live there in peace with their neighbors.” The establishment of the PLO in 1964 constituted a new form of representative participation for the Palestinian people.
Exclusion gives rise to self-organization
Exclusion of refugees from the peacemaking process that began in Madrid in 1991 and continued in Oslo, combined with demands for better representation from their own leadership, gave rise to initiatives of political self-organization among refugee communities in the 1967 occupied West Bank, eastern Jerusalem, and Gaza Strip, inside Israel, and in the diaspora. These initiatives were as much an expression of concern about the exclusion of specific rights and demands of refugees as they were about the popular demand for better representation and the democratization of the ‘Middle East Peace Process.’
A series of popular refugee conferences inside Israel followed by similar conferences across the West Bank, Gaza Strip, in 1995-1996 set out the basic principles, proposed structures, and mechanisms of a popular campaign for refugee rights. The campaign was to be a broad-based, non-sectarian, independent movement comprised of Palestinian popular organizations and initiatives (refugee and non-refugee) in the homeland and in the diaspora to pressure and lobby for the protection of Palestinian refugee rights and a durable solution based on UN resolutions and international law.
The proposed structures – popular refugee committees, popular conferences, elected refugee councils and a General Palestinian Refugee Conference held inside the historic homeland and in the diaspora each with an elected General Refugee Council – had the aim of providing a popular mechanism for the struggle for legitimate national rights, democracy, civil and human rights, not replacing the PLO. In effect, self-organization was a means to take back the space that had been usurped from the refugees, among others. It was a means to assert their right to have rights.
Nevertheless, international actors and national leaders have been reluctant to create space for public participation in the peacemaking process. Camp David I and II, the secret Oslo negotiations, the subsequent talks over interim arrangements, and the most recent Road Map, all failed to provide scope for public participation. Representative participation was further weakened when part of the PLO political infrastructure resettled in Gaza under the terms of Oslo as the Palestinian Authority, only responsible for Palestinians in the occupied territories, and the exclusion of Palestinians outside these territories from elections for the newly established legislative council.
Moreover, these negotiations and related agreements shifted from an agenda articulated by civil society to one that was subject to political pressures. This is particularly evident in relation to the issue of Palestinian refugees. Refugees were more often than not considered as objects of humanitarian assistance rather than individuals with rights and as legitimate actors in the peacemaking process. “The refugees themselves were assessed, surveyed, quantified, classified, tested, and their living standards, housing conditions, economic and social interests became the objects of study. The refugees themselves were nowhere to be found.”** Moreover, as Israeli historian Ilan Pappe, has observed, the exclusion of refugees has effectively de-historicised the conflict, which no longer has an origin, and thus no longer the necessary means and mechanisms to resolve it.
More recent unofficial initiatives, including the Nusseibeh-Ayalon plan and the Geneva understandings also fail to incorporate room for effective public participation. While these initiatives may be considered as a form of quasi-civil society peacemaking they are, in the final analysis, understandings drafted between political elites. Both present the public with, in effect, a fait accompli, a take it or leave deal, much like the one former President Clinton and former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak offered to Palestinians at Camp David in July 2000. Subsequent attempts to garner popular support for these initiatives are just that, and not a serious effort to bring the public into the peacemaking process in a way that allows they themselves to shape the contours of peace.
These initiatives stand in contrast to other attempts to bring the public into the peacemaking process. In September 2000, for example, an all-Party British Parliamentary Commission of Inquiry came to the region to ask refugees how they envisioned a solution to their plight. Hearings were held in refugee camps in the West Bank, Gaza, Jordan, Lebanon and Syria. The hearings, which were later transcribed and published, constituted a form of participation through open consultation. They allowed refugees to define the parameters of a solution and elicited many creative options.
Public Participation in Comparative Perspective
There are various forms of participation can take: the public may be represented in negotiations by political parties and/or other organized sectors of civil society. Consultative mechanisms may be established to allow the public to voice its concerns, demands, and visions for a durable peace. Individuals may also directly participate in peacemaking, providing the opportunity to both formulate and implement agreements to resolve the conflict.
Experience shows that mechanisms for public participation in peace processes do not just materialize. People have to make them happen. Nevertheless, there are many useful examples of public involvement in peacemaking processes around the world*.
In Mali during the mid-1990s, well-respected local figures organized more than 50 community meetings in areas of the country where reconciliation was most difficult. The number of participants ranged from several hundred to more than 1,000. Village elders, religious and community leaders took responsibility for negotiating local arrangements to control arms, reintegrate displaced people and fighters and other sensitive issues. These local attempts at public peacemaking, supported by Norwegian Church Aid, followed the collapse of a government initiative to involve different sectors of Mali society in the process. Conclusions of the local meetings were eventually funneled into a broader, consolidated process.
The Convention for a Democratic South Africa (CODESA) attempted to provide an opening for some 27 organized groups, including political parties, trade unions and religious institutions, to negotiate a political settlement and lay the foundations for a new constitution. Delegates were chosen through a proportional representation list system and those selected were split into working groups around thematic issues with a rotating chair. Each group was assigned a resource person who researched and advised participants on best practices elsewhere in the world. Due to escalating violence and disagreements on the transitional process CODESA was eventually disbanded. But many of the ideas that had emerged were later included in subsequent multi-party negotiations. The public was also brought into the process over the new constitution through community-level consultation meetings held across the country. People could also contribute their ideas in written submissions dropped off at collection boxes in public locations.
In Northern Ireland, non-sectarian activists, many from the non-governmental sector, established a public forum known as Initiative 92. Its aim was to allow the general public to discuss central issues of the conflict that were otherwise raised in public discourse only by militants. Public hearings, organized by a seven-member commission chaired by an outside facilitator, were held across the country. The hearings were transcribed and published as a book which became the basis for follow-up activities aimed at stimulating public debate about the conflict and frameworks for peace.
The Guatemalan peace process also provided a significant degree of latitude for public participation. In the late 1980s the National Reconciliation Commission, comprised of representatives of 12 political parties, the government, the army and the Roman Catholic Church, organized a Grand National Dialogue. Nearly 50 different sectoral interest groups, including unions, business associations, and cooperatives participated with thematic commissions focusing on key issues of the conflict.
These talks contributed to the development of a general framework agreement. An elected assembly, which included representatives of 10 different social sectors, indigenous people and women, was subsequently authorized to draft papers on seven major issues to be resolved through the ongoing negotiations. However, the assembly began to lose influence as civil society leaders assumed new political positions and as talks assumed an increasingly bi-partisan format between the government and rebel forces.
Guatemalan refugees, moreover, organized themselves into commissions (Comisiones Permanentes) under which refugee leaders directly negotiated the terms of their return. These included public guarantee of their security; assurance of the right to return to lands; the right to organize and freely associate; guarantee that they would be subject to civilian and not military authority; and, the right to return under supervision of international observers. Refugee women subsequently organized themselves around their common objective to return to Guatemala and negotiate adequate conditions for themselves and their families. As several commentators have observed, refugees in Guatemala did not wait for peace, they helped forge it. Broad public participation also contributed to the democratization of institutionalized systems of exclusion.
In both Mozambique and Papua-New Guinea, grassroots initiatives including the involvement of church and women’s groups played an innovative role in developing and implementing peace agreements as well as in helping to consolidate the peace.
Public inclusion facilitates implementation
Political negotiators are often reluctant to open up the space for public involvement in the peacemaking process. Comparative experience, however, suggests that public participation, whether representative, consultative or direct, facilitates implementation of agreements and strengthens the durability of a negotiated peace.
A peacemaking process that fails to provide for public participation may exacerbate public mistrust and undermine the legitimacy of the agreement. Consultation on the contents of an agreement after it has been negotiated and signed is likely to be of only limited value because it is difficult to incorporate substantive input into the agreement at that stage. Peace agreements negotiated without adequate public participation may in fact be a trigger for further disagreements rather than reconciliation.
Public participation also provides a safeguard against a process that merely “recycles old power to re-legitimise it through new structures.” International involvement in the peacemaking process should strengthen and compliment initiatives for public participation rather than displace local ownership of the process or shift the agenda away from the priorities articulated by civil society.
*****
For a list of Principles to Guide Policy and Practice on public participation in peacemaking visit Conciliation Resources: http://www.c-r.org/pubs/occ_papers/PP_policy.shtml
* Catherine Barnes. Owning the Process: Mechanisms for Political Participation of the Public in Peacemaking. Joint Analysis Workshop Report, Conciliation Resources, 2002.
** Karma Nabulsi. Popular Sovereignty, Collective Rights, Participation and Crafting Durable Solutiosn for Palestinian Refugees. BADIL Working Paper No. 4, April 2003.
Wednesday, December 17
Tuesday, December 9
MCC Palestine Update #90
MCC Palestine Update #90
December 9, 2003
Prepare the way of the Lord! proclaimed John the Baptist from the hills of the Judean desert running down from the MCC office in East Jerusalem towards the Jordan Valley. John called on his listeners to repent, to turn around, and to prepare for a new reality. In Palestine/Israel this Advent season, Palestinians (Christian and Muslim) and Israeli Jews are worn out and exhausted by the current reality of violence, economic upheaval, and occupation. They await a new reality.
Mennonite Central Committee in Palestine works alongside churches and church insitutions that believe that the good news of Jesus Christ, the incarnation of God's nonviolent love, helps to turn people away from commitments to violence towards commitments to nonviolence. MCC also works with Israeli and Palestinian groups dedicated to helping turn people away from occupation and violent resistance against it and towards a future of peace and reconciliation built on foundations of justice. The Sabeel Ecumenical Liberation Theology Center equips the local Palestinian churches with resources to proclaim the coming of the Lord. The Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions prepares the way of the Lord by bringing Palestinians and Israelis toegether to rebuild Palestinian homes unjustly destroyed. As we on the MCC Palestine team prepare our hearts this Advent for the Lord's coming, we give thanks for the faithful witness of the Palestinian churches and of Palestinian and Israeli peacebuilders who, through their words and deeds, are making ready a way for Christ's coming.
MCC project update:
The Women's Training Program of the East Jerusalem YMCA began a training course for women in al-Jadawel area between Beit Jala and the Aida refugee camp. Your prayers for the training, which builds women's skills in livestock management, domestic gardening, conservation of natural resources, and dealing with finances, are solicited.
Mennonite Church USA has created a bulletin insert for congregational use this Advent, soliciting prayers for peace for the people of Bethlehem. You can access this worship resource at http://peace.mennolink.org/resources/bethlehem.pdf/.
Below you will find two pieces. The first, by Haaretz journalist Gideon Levy, examines what he describes as "an amazing combination of utter indifference and astonishing ignorance" among Israelis concerning the new realtieis being created by the "security fence"/"apartheid barrier." In the second, Haaretz journalist Danny Rubinstein takes a trip to Zububa village in the northern West Bank to see the impact of the barrier on that town.
--Alain Epp Weaver
1. Trying to hide the dark backyard
Gideon Levy
Haaretz, December 7, 2003
How many Israelis have actually seen the separation fence? How many have given any thought to its significance? Every foreign visitor interested in what is happening in the region makes visiting the fence a priority and world media constantly point their cameras at it - half a dozen foreign documentaries have already been shot along it. But most Israelis have never seen it. This ambitious strategic project that is going to make fundamental changes to the lnd, the landscape and relations between the peples, is passing through us with an amazing comination of utter indifference and astonishing ignorance.
Since the start of the settlement enterprise, which also took place with eyes deliberately closed in national blindness, there has not been a venture that with such speed created a new reality without any real discussion of its significance. Even environmental activists haven't piped up about how it is ripping up the landscape.
Just like the settlements, the project was started by the Labor Party while the Likud gave it the proper momentum, and just like the settlements, it will be a tragedy to be suffered for generations to come. Another year or in five, and the truth about the damage it caused will become evident, and then, just as with the settlements, it will be too late. After the settlements fulfilled their destructive purposes and capabilities, the separation fence is the next fateful obstacle Israel is putting up on the path to reconciliation with the Palestinians.
When its construction is completed, the two-state solution will be even further removed and practically impossible. The settlements and the fence are complementary and supplementary, together they form a victorious proposition - that with them in place it will never be possible to reach an equitable peace.
There's no doubt the people want a fence. The polls show that most Israelis are convinced that separation from the Palestinian people is a magic formula for eliminating terror and that the fence is the guarantee of it. Together with other mendacious myths, Ehud Barak is also largely responsible for that, by turning the separation concept into a vision. But Barak's mantra of "us here and them there" quickly turned into "them there and us here and also over there."
Palestinians are corralled into ghettos beyond the fence and Israelis remain on both sides. The result being carved into the hills and dales of the land separate not only Israelis and Palestinians, but also Palestinians from Palestinians. The vision of separation espoused by Barak, Haim Ramon and Benjamin Ben-Eliezer has turned into a vision of apartheid.
The first outrageous aspect of this is the harm down to the tens of thousands of Palestinian families after they went through all the tribulations of the occupation - closures, land grabs, house demolitions, humiliations, checkpoints and the settlers in their midst. Now they are being torn form their fields, work places and schools, from their families and the centers of their life, living behind a fence.
"Good fences make good neighbors?" No they don't, not when the fence goes through the neighbor's backyard, over his land, and displaces the neighbors from their own land. That makes for bad neighbors. Some 75,000 Palestinians who find themselves in fenced-in enclaves, some 100,000 residents of the northern Jerusalem neighborhoods cut off from the city and the thousands of farmers already displaced from their land, are the next reservoir of hatred and despair and the new infrastructure of terror.
Israel wanted a security fence as a response to terror? It could have been so simple. It should have put it up on the Green Line, without any deviations. Israel wants separation from the Palestinians? It's so simple - it should evacuate the settlements.
Indeed, the fence does not signal good tidings for the future of relations between the nations. Instead of seeking to establish two open civil societies, living side by side in cooperation, as is desirable and possible, a wall is going up. However, even if it is sad to think that Israel converted its expressed desire for peace and conciliation into separation, if the fence had gone up on the Green Line it would have been impossible to complain about a nation trying to defend itself, and despite the serious problems that fence would have created, it would have been possible to live with it. But the fence is being built in a large part of Palestinian territory. On that route, nobody can accept the argument that the fence is apolitical. Like other occupation measures - especially the settlements and checkpoints - the fence is being justified by security rationales that only provide cover for their real purpose. That is, smashing the last chance for an agreed upon arrangement between the sides.
The fence therefore means the precise opposite of its declared purpose. It is a fence for the perpetuation of conflict. It won't separate the peoples, but perpetuate the pathological connection between the two peoples, the connection between the occupier and the occupied, blocking any chance for the establishment of a viable Palestinian state.
The fence's construction is heading into its last stretch, from the "Jerusalem envelope" to the "Hebron envelope" and the route in the north, and horrifyingly, "the eastern fence." Soon Israel will find itself behind walls, trying to hide from the horrific reality of its own dark backyard, where it conducts a brutal, ruthless regime of occupation.
As sophisticated as the fence might be and as high as it might go, it will not manage to hide anything. Beyond it, the occupation will continue in all its fury, and Israel's chance of becoming a just society will recede ever further and further away - until it disappears.
2. The tortuous route to Zabuba: The villages along the way are all suffering from the closure. The fence, the walls and the collective punishments have turned everything topsy-turvy
Danny Rubinstein
Haaretz, December 7, 2003
Zabuba is a relatively small West Bank village with a mere 2,000 inhabitants. It is located in the Jenin region and can be reached by traveling north on the Wadi Ara (Iron Valley) highway and turning right at the Megiddo junction. After Kibbutz Givat Oz and the Israeli-Arab villages of Zalfa and Salem, there is an Israel Defense Forces facility alongside the big iron gates that close off the road east to Zabuba. The houses of the village lie beyond the separation fence, which, at this point, more or less runs along the 1967 border.Mohammed Issa Obeidi, head of Zabuba's agricultural association, who is better known as Abu el-Abed, last weekend invited guests to see what the fence has done to his village. But a jeep carrying border policemen, who arrived at the gates, announced it is absolutely forbidden for Israelis to cross over into the Palestinian territories. Abu el-Abed, who was standing a few hundred meters away, said via his mobile phone that it would probably be possible to cross at the Tura roadblock. To do so, it would be necessary to drive south on the Wadi Ara highway and turn in the direction of Katzir and Harish. There the fence goes into the West Bank to effectively annex the settlements of Shaked and Hinanit to Israel and the roadblock at that point allows limited access for Israelis into the West Bank. Most of those who want to cross are Israeli Arabs who have family in the villages on the other side, and the remainder are settlers who wish to reach far-off settlements that do not have bypass roads.Crossing at these roadblocks requires special caution. Cars have to approach the roadblock at a slow speed and must be waved forward by the soldiers. All the vehicles, therefore, stop several dozen meters from the crossing point, waiting for the soldiers to call them forward when they have examined the previous vehicle. It is a long wait. In the past, there have been many attacks at the roadblocks and the soldiers are suspicious of any movement that is contrary to orders. If a car approaches the roadblock without being waved forward by a soldier, it could come under fire. Every month, Palestinians are killed in this way at roadblocks and two lost their lives in the past month while trying to bypass the crossing point. The soldiers propose, and sometimes demand, that the Jews traveling to the settlements wait until there is a convoy that can be accompanied by the IDF, but if one insists, they usually let one go.After crossing, we stopped at the entrance to a small village on the main road, where the owner of a grocery store warned us not to attempt to reach Zabuba through the hills in a regular car. He said the vehicle could get stuck but that it was not dangerous from other points of view. We therefore traveled in a Volkswagen van, passing a tiny point known as Hirbet el-Turam, where the large village of Yabed used to dump its garbage. The spot cannot be missed since there is a pall of smoke there, although an order from the Israeli authorities forbids the Palestinians from bringing their waste matter there now. According to the van's driver, Israeli garbage trucks, accompanied by IDF troops, come every few days to unload garbage from the settlements, as well as from inside the Green Line. "We are good enough to collect your garbage," he explains.It is a 20-kilometer ride to Zabuba along tortuous roads. Last Saturday, it took an hour and a half. Many of the village roads were covered with pits, and in some places, the soldiers had placed piles of rocks. Olive and almond orchards lined the dry river banks and the paths through the fields we passed. From time to time, we had to stop to let yellow minibuses pass. With a little imagination, you could think you were in the Sahara on an adventure ride, except there were no sportsmen enjoying the fun but simply regular passengers, including women, children and elderly people. This is how one travels in the West Bank these past two years or so.What strikes one in Zabuba, as in many places in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, is that all the older men speak fluent Hebrew. Abu el-Abed, like his friend the council head Mohammed Yussef Jarradat, worked for years in Israel and had many Jewish friends and acquaintances. Zabuba lies close to the main road, about four kilometers from the Megiddo junction, from where there is easy access to Afula in the east, Hadera in the southwest and Haifa in the northwest. In fact, all the men in the village had worked in Israel, most of them in construction or some other manual labor. The younger men know less Hebrew. The 25-30 age group, for example, has hardly visited or worked in Israel and therefore knows little Hebrew. In the first years of closures after the Oslo Accords, most of the villagers still worked for Jewish employers, even though they did not have the necessary papers. Their number diminished over the years, however. Now that the fence is in place, no one works in Israel any more and all of them are unemployed.The only solution is for the villagers to try to live off agriculture. The village used to have almost 14,000 dunams of fertile land at the southern tip of the Jezreel Valley. According to the Arab lexicon, "Our land, Palestine," written by Mustafa Dabbagh, most of the village's lands belong to the Christian el-Moutran family from Lebanon. They lost their lands in 1948 since most of them fell inside Israel and the Ta'anach region villages were set up there. The home of the effendi, Najib el-Moutran, still stands in the center of the village, a little palace. It was recently refurbished with the help of a Jerusalem Christian fund and now houses the village council and a computer room for youngsters.A large banner hangs from the wall of the council chamber: "Stop the cancer - the racist separation fence." Some 200 dunams belonging to 95 Zabuba families were confiscated for the construction of the fence. On most of these lands were olive groves that had been the main source of income for the families over the past few years. Prior to that, large tracts of land had been taken over by the IDF for military purposes, such as the setting up of the nearby roadblock and facility. Today all the villagers have left is some 500 dunams and some of these are across the border and a special permit is required to reach them.The fence has effectively shut off Zabuba since the eastern access to Jenin or the southern access to Nablus are fraught with numerous difficulties. Those few villagers who have permits to work in Israel have problems getting through the various roadblocks. They first have to pass through the one at Arrabe, which opens only at 6 A.M., and then get to Jenin and the Jalemeh roadblock, so that they arrive in Afula only at about 10 A.M. "No one wants workers who arrive at 10," the council head says. There is no clinic in Zabuba, for example, and it is extremely complicated to get to a doctor in Jenin. Two villagers who recently made a pilgrimage to Mecca say the road from Zabuba to the bridge in Jericho took them 16 hours, almost as long as the 1,200 kilometers from Jericho to Saudi Arabia.The road back to the Tura crossing point, through the mountains, is equally tortuous. The villages en route are all suffering from the closure. The fence, the walls and the collective punishments imposed on the Palestinian population may have lessened the number of bombings inside Israel but they have turned everything topsy-turvy inside the territories. The entire population, according to the Nablus economist Hisham Awarthani, "is busy night and day trying to survive and dreaming of revenge." Indeed, the impression one gets from a visit to Zabuba is that no one cares about the Geneva Accord or Abu Ala's new government and all that interests them is the degradation they are undergoing and the desire to inflict similar pain on the Israelis.
December 9, 2003
Prepare the way of the Lord! proclaimed John the Baptist from the hills of the Judean desert running down from the MCC office in East Jerusalem towards the Jordan Valley. John called on his listeners to repent, to turn around, and to prepare for a new reality. In Palestine/Israel this Advent season, Palestinians (Christian and Muslim) and Israeli Jews are worn out and exhausted by the current reality of violence, economic upheaval, and occupation. They await a new reality.
Mennonite Central Committee in Palestine works alongside churches and church insitutions that believe that the good news of Jesus Christ, the incarnation of God's nonviolent love, helps to turn people away from commitments to violence towards commitments to nonviolence. MCC also works with Israeli and Palestinian groups dedicated to helping turn people away from occupation and violent resistance against it and towards a future of peace and reconciliation built on foundations of justice. The Sabeel Ecumenical Liberation Theology Center equips the local Palestinian churches with resources to proclaim the coming of the Lord. The Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions prepares the way of the Lord by bringing Palestinians and Israelis toegether to rebuild Palestinian homes unjustly destroyed. As we on the MCC Palestine team prepare our hearts this Advent for the Lord's coming, we give thanks for the faithful witness of the Palestinian churches and of Palestinian and Israeli peacebuilders who, through their words and deeds, are making ready a way for Christ's coming.
MCC project update:
The Women's Training Program of the East Jerusalem YMCA began a training course for women in al-Jadawel area between Beit Jala and the Aida refugee camp. Your prayers for the training, which builds women's skills in livestock management, domestic gardening, conservation of natural resources, and dealing with finances, are solicited.
Mennonite Church USA has created a bulletin insert for congregational use this Advent, soliciting prayers for peace for the people of Bethlehem. You can access this worship resource at http://peace.mennolink.org/resources/bethlehem.pdf/.
Below you will find two pieces. The first, by Haaretz journalist Gideon Levy, examines what he describes as "an amazing combination of utter indifference and astonishing ignorance" among Israelis concerning the new realtieis being created by the "security fence"/"apartheid barrier." In the second, Haaretz journalist Danny Rubinstein takes a trip to Zububa village in the northern West Bank to see the impact of the barrier on that town.
--Alain Epp Weaver
1. Trying to hide the dark backyard
Gideon Levy
Haaretz, December 7, 2003
How many Israelis have actually seen the separation fence? How many have given any thought to its significance? Every foreign visitor interested in what is happening in the region makes visiting the fence a priority and world media constantly point their cameras at it - half a dozen foreign documentaries have already been shot along it. But most Israelis have never seen it. This ambitious strategic project that is going to make fundamental changes to the lnd, the landscape and relations between the peples, is passing through us with an amazing comination of utter indifference and astonishing ignorance.
Since the start of the settlement enterprise, which also took place with eyes deliberately closed in national blindness, there has not been a venture that with such speed created a new reality without any real discussion of its significance. Even environmental activists haven't piped up about how it is ripping up the landscape.
Just like the settlements, the project was started by the Labor Party while the Likud gave it the proper momentum, and just like the settlements, it will be a tragedy to be suffered for generations to come. Another year or in five, and the truth about the damage it caused will become evident, and then, just as with the settlements, it will be too late. After the settlements fulfilled their destructive purposes and capabilities, the separation fence is the next fateful obstacle Israel is putting up on the path to reconciliation with the Palestinians.
When its construction is completed, the two-state solution will be even further removed and practically impossible. The settlements and the fence are complementary and supplementary, together they form a victorious proposition - that with them in place it will never be possible to reach an equitable peace.
There's no doubt the people want a fence. The polls show that most Israelis are convinced that separation from the Palestinian people is a magic formula for eliminating terror and that the fence is the guarantee of it. Together with other mendacious myths, Ehud Barak is also largely responsible for that, by turning the separation concept into a vision. But Barak's mantra of "us here and them there" quickly turned into "them there and us here and also over there."
Palestinians are corralled into ghettos beyond the fence and Israelis remain on both sides. The result being carved into the hills and dales of the land separate not only Israelis and Palestinians, but also Palestinians from Palestinians. The vision of separation espoused by Barak, Haim Ramon and Benjamin Ben-Eliezer has turned into a vision of apartheid.
The first outrageous aspect of this is the harm down to the tens of thousands of Palestinian families after they went through all the tribulations of the occupation - closures, land grabs, house demolitions, humiliations, checkpoints and the settlers in their midst. Now they are being torn form their fields, work places and schools, from their families and the centers of their life, living behind a fence.
"Good fences make good neighbors?" No they don't, not when the fence goes through the neighbor's backyard, over his land, and displaces the neighbors from their own land. That makes for bad neighbors. Some 75,000 Palestinians who find themselves in fenced-in enclaves, some 100,000 residents of the northern Jerusalem neighborhoods cut off from the city and the thousands of farmers already displaced from their land, are the next reservoir of hatred and despair and the new infrastructure of terror.
Israel wanted a security fence as a response to terror? It could have been so simple. It should have put it up on the Green Line, without any deviations. Israel wants separation from the Palestinians? It's so simple - it should evacuate the settlements.
Indeed, the fence does not signal good tidings for the future of relations between the nations. Instead of seeking to establish two open civil societies, living side by side in cooperation, as is desirable and possible, a wall is going up. However, even if it is sad to think that Israel converted its expressed desire for peace and conciliation into separation, if the fence had gone up on the Green Line it would have been impossible to complain about a nation trying to defend itself, and despite the serious problems that fence would have created, it would have been possible to live with it. But the fence is being built in a large part of Palestinian territory. On that route, nobody can accept the argument that the fence is apolitical. Like other occupation measures - especially the settlements and checkpoints - the fence is being justified by security rationales that only provide cover for their real purpose. That is, smashing the last chance for an agreed upon arrangement between the sides.
The fence therefore means the precise opposite of its declared purpose. It is a fence for the perpetuation of conflict. It won't separate the peoples, but perpetuate the pathological connection between the two peoples, the connection between the occupier and the occupied, blocking any chance for the establishment of a viable Palestinian state.
The fence's construction is heading into its last stretch, from the "Jerusalem envelope" to the "Hebron envelope" and the route in the north, and horrifyingly, "the eastern fence." Soon Israel will find itself behind walls, trying to hide from the horrific reality of its own dark backyard, where it conducts a brutal, ruthless regime of occupation.
As sophisticated as the fence might be and as high as it might go, it will not manage to hide anything. Beyond it, the occupation will continue in all its fury, and Israel's chance of becoming a just society will recede ever further and further away - until it disappears.
2. The tortuous route to Zabuba: The villages along the way are all suffering from the closure. The fence, the walls and the collective punishments have turned everything topsy-turvy
Danny Rubinstein
Haaretz, December 7, 2003
Zabuba is a relatively small West Bank village with a mere 2,000 inhabitants. It is located in the Jenin region and can be reached by traveling north on the Wadi Ara (Iron Valley) highway and turning right at the Megiddo junction. After Kibbutz Givat Oz and the Israeli-Arab villages of Zalfa and Salem, there is an Israel Defense Forces facility alongside the big iron gates that close off the road east to Zabuba. The houses of the village lie beyond the separation fence, which, at this point, more or less runs along the 1967 border.Mohammed Issa Obeidi, head of Zabuba's agricultural association, who is better known as Abu el-Abed, last weekend invited guests to see what the fence has done to his village. But a jeep carrying border policemen, who arrived at the gates, announced it is absolutely forbidden for Israelis to cross over into the Palestinian territories. Abu el-Abed, who was standing a few hundred meters away, said via his mobile phone that it would probably be possible to cross at the Tura roadblock. To do so, it would be necessary to drive south on the Wadi Ara highway and turn in the direction of Katzir and Harish. There the fence goes into the West Bank to effectively annex the settlements of Shaked and Hinanit to Israel and the roadblock at that point allows limited access for Israelis into the West Bank. Most of those who want to cross are Israeli Arabs who have family in the villages on the other side, and the remainder are settlers who wish to reach far-off settlements that do not have bypass roads.Crossing at these roadblocks requires special caution. Cars have to approach the roadblock at a slow speed and must be waved forward by the soldiers. All the vehicles, therefore, stop several dozen meters from the crossing point, waiting for the soldiers to call them forward when they have examined the previous vehicle. It is a long wait. In the past, there have been many attacks at the roadblocks and the soldiers are suspicious of any movement that is contrary to orders. If a car approaches the roadblock without being waved forward by a soldier, it could come under fire. Every month, Palestinians are killed in this way at roadblocks and two lost their lives in the past month while trying to bypass the crossing point. The soldiers propose, and sometimes demand, that the Jews traveling to the settlements wait until there is a convoy that can be accompanied by the IDF, but if one insists, they usually let one go.After crossing, we stopped at the entrance to a small village on the main road, where the owner of a grocery store warned us not to attempt to reach Zabuba through the hills in a regular car. He said the vehicle could get stuck but that it was not dangerous from other points of view. We therefore traveled in a Volkswagen van, passing a tiny point known as Hirbet el-Turam, where the large village of Yabed used to dump its garbage. The spot cannot be missed since there is a pall of smoke there, although an order from the Israeli authorities forbids the Palestinians from bringing their waste matter there now. According to the van's driver, Israeli garbage trucks, accompanied by IDF troops, come every few days to unload garbage from the settlements, as well as from inside the Green Line. "We are good enough to collect your garbage," he explains.It is a 20-kilometer ride to Zabuba along tortuous roads. Last Saturday, it took an hour and a half. Many of the village roads were covered with pits, and in some places, the soldiers had placed piles of rocks. Olive and almond orchards lined the dry river banks and the paths through the fields we passed. From time to time, we had to stop to let yellow minibuses pass. With a little imagination, you could think you were in the Sahara on an adventure ride, except there were no sportsmen enjoying the fun but simply regular passengers, including women, children and elderly people. This is how one travels in the West Bank these past two years or so.What strikes one in Zabuba, as in many places in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, is that all the older men speak fluent Hebrew. Abu el-Abed, like his friend the council head Mohammed Yussef Jarradat, worked for years in Israel and had many Jewish friends and acquaintances. Zabuba lies close to the main road, about four kilometers from the Megiddo junction, from where there is easy access to Afula in the east, Hadera in the southwest and Haifa in the northwest. In fact, all the men in the village had worked in Israel, most of them in construction or some other manual labor. The younger men know less Hebrew. The 25-30 age group, for example, has hardly visited or worked in Israel and therefore knows little Hebrew. In the first years of closures after the Oslo Accords, most of the villagers still worked for Jewish employers, even though they did not have the necessary papers. Their number diminished over the years, however. Now that the fence is in place, no one works in Israel any more and all of them are unemployed.The only solution is for the villagers to try to live off agriculture. The village used to have almost 14,000 dunams of fertile land at the southern tip of the Jezreel Valley. According to the Arab lexicon, "Our land, Palestine," written by Mustafa Dabbagh, most of the village's lands belong to the Christian el-Moutran family from Lebanon. They lost their lands in 1948 since most of them fell inside Israel and the Ta'anach region villages were set up there. The home of the effendi, Najib el-Moutran, still stands in the center of the village, a little palace. It was recently refurbished with the help of a Jerusalem Christian fund and now houses the village council and a computer room for youngsters.A large banner hangs from the wall of the council chamber: "Stop the cancer - the racist separation fence." Some 200 dunams belonging to 95 Zabuba families were confiscated for the construction of the fence. On most of these lands were olive groves that had been the main source of income for the families over the past few years. Prior to that, large tracts of land had been taken over by the IDF for military purposes, such as the setting up of the nearby roadblock and facility. Today all the villagers have left is some 500 dunams and some of these are across the border and a special permit is required to reach them.The fence has effectively shut off Zabuba since the eastern access to Jenin or the southern access to Nablus are fraught with numerous difficulties. Those few villagers who have permits to work in Israel have problems getting through the various roadblocks. They first have to pass through the one at Arrabe, which opens only at 6 A.M., and then get to Jenin and the Jalemeh roadblock, so that they arrive in Afula only at about 10 A.M. "No one wants workers who arrive at 10," the council head says. There is no clinic in Zabuba, for example, and it is extremely complicated to get to a doctor in Jenin. Two villagers who recently made a pilgrimage to Mecca say the road from Zabuba to the bridge in Jericho took them 16 hours, almost as long as the 1,200 kilometers from Jericho to Saudi Arabia.The road back to the Tura crossing point, through the mountains, is equally tortuous. The villages en route are all suffering from the closure. The fence, the walls and the collective punishments imposed on the Palestinian population may have lessened the number of bombings inside Israel but they have turned everything topsy-turvy inside the territories. The entire population, according to the Nablus economist Hisham Awarthani, "is busy night and day trying to survive and dreaming of revenge." Indeed, the impression one gets from a visit to Zabuba is that no one cares about the Geneva Accord or Abu Ala's new government and all that interests them is the degradation they are undergoing and the desire to inflict similar pain on the Israelis.
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