MCC Palestine Update #94
January 30, 2004
At the risk of sounding like a broken record, the one issue that continues to dominate the thoughts and efforts of people here--Palestinians, Israelis, and others--who work for peace and reconciliation is the ongoing construction of the separation zone throughout the occupied Palestinian territories.
In February, the International Court of Justice will hear arguments regarding the legality (or, more precisely, the lack thereof) of the separation wall being built. Israel is trying to sell its walls, barbed wire, and electronic fences to the world as a “terror-prevention fence,” arguing that the zone is merely a temporary security measure. A visit to any of the communities that are being devastated by the separation wall should be enough to dispel any illusion that, from the Israeli perspective, the walls and fences are temporary; at a time of economic and budgetary crisis in the country, Israel is sinking millions of dollars into the construction of the separation zone. The walls and fences, coupled with the “unilateral separation” or “unilateral Disengagement” plan that the Sharon government is promoting, are designed to solidify the gains of Israeli colonization of the occupied territories while absolving it of any responsibility for the population of the occupied territories (leaving the international community to pump in relief aid to keep the Palestinian economy from complete collapse). Palestinian and Israeli proponents of peace and reconciliation, of course, also believe that the wall is temporary, but temporary because injustice will not endure forever. Over the coming months, expect to keep hearing news about the wall as it tightens its grip on Palestinian communities and to hear stories of Palestinians and Israelis who oppose the wall.
The Israeli “peace bloc,” Gush Shalom, has put together helpful material explaining why the wall is not a “security fence,” available at http://www.gush-shalom.org/security/english.html
For a look at why these fences are walls are “bad fences that make bad neighbors,” visit http://www.nad-plo.org/f1.php
MCC Project Updates
*On January 16, 2004, workers with Zochrot, an Israeli organization dedicated to promoting serious conversation within Israel about Israel's responsibility for the Palestinian refugee crisis and about durable solutions for Palestinian refugees, met with two people in two communities inside Israel, one Jewish and one Palestinian. Eytan Bronstein, director of Zochrot who also works as a youth coordinator at the School for Peace at Neve Shalom/Wahat el-Salam, joined a Palestinian-Israeli (Palestinian living inside Israel with Israeli citizneship) colleague, Nada Matta, on visits to Kibbutz Bir'am and the village of Jish.
Kibbutz Bir'am was built on lands belonging to the villagers of Bir'im, a Palestinian village whose residents were evacuated by the Israeli military in 1948, with promises that they would be allowed to return. In 1951, former residents of Bir'im and of another village, Ikrit, petitioned the Israeli High Court, asking to be allowed back to their homes. The High Court ruled that the villagers could return, providing that no "emergency decree" had been issued against the villages. The Israeli military soon issued such decrees, and in 1953 it blew up the homes in Bir'im, leaving only one of the village's two churches standing. The former residents of Bir'im, many of whom ended up in Jish, were classified by the new State of Israel as "present absentees," and their lands were turned over by the Israeli "Custodian of Absentee Property" to Kibbutz Bir'am.
In the first ever such encounter between internally displaced Palestinians and members of Jewish communities built on their lands, Zochrot trainers will facilitate an encounter between eight former residents of Bir'im, now in Jish, and eight residents of Kibbutz Bir'am, in which participants will talk about their histories, their present lives, and their hopes for the future. "This is a very exciting project," shares Bronstein. "Facing the refugee issue is very difficult for us as Israelis, but we have to do it for the sake of peace and reconciliation." Bronstein and Matta will conduct several preparatory meetings with the two groups alone, leading up to a weekend encounter March 5 and 6 in Nazareth. Zochrot workers are also working with two other communities—the Israeli Jewish agricultural town of Yaad and refugees from the village of Mi'ar--in preparation for another possible encounter. These encounters supplement Zochrot's ongoing work of conducting tours for Israeli Jews to the sites of destroyed Palestinian villages and of placing signs in Hebrew and in Arabic with the names of former streets, homes, and public buildings.
*Mennonite Central Committee and the Union of Agricultural Work Committees have been assisting 21 Palestinian farmers in the southern West Bank city of Halhul to prepare their land for cultivation and to plant it with fruit and nut trees. The farming families, all of whom live at or close to the poverty line, were chosen to participate in the project based on their willingness to commit their labor and their limited financial resources to cultivating thirty acres of stony land, building retaining walls to prevent soil erosion, and digging cisterns to collect rainwater. In late January, farmers began planting the newly reclaimed land with over 5,000 fruit and nut seedlings, including apple, almond, pomegranate, and peach seedlings. 'This project represents a real step towards financial security for us,' shared Ashraf al-Masri, one of the participating farmers. MCC contributed US$125,000 this past year towards this project. This past year was the third year of a three-year partnership with the Union of Agricultural Work Committees to assist economically vulnerable farming communities: other communities that benefitted from the project were Khirbet Abu Falah village near Ramallah in 2002 and the villages of Raba' and Zababdeh in the northern West Bank in 2001.
Below you will find two pieces. The first, by Haaretz journalist Gideon Levy, looks at how the great Palestinian city of Nablus is dying, as its historic buildings are destroyed, its intrastructure ruined, its citizens captive to frequent curfews, invasions and increasing lawlessness, and its economy in tatters. In the second piece from CounterPunch, Israeli air force pilot Yonathan Shapiro shares why he joined the ranks of the Israeli pilots who refuse to fly missions into the occupied territories; Shapiro’s reflections highlight that the character of Israeli combat in the occupied territories is a far cry from a “just war” (what Israeli military doctrine calls “purity of
Arms”).
--Alain Epp Weaver
1. Only the knafeh is still sweet
By Gideon Levy
Haaretz, 25 January 2004
NABLUS, West Bank - The knafeh here is still the best in the world, living up to its reputation. In the early evening, Abu Salha's pastry shop, by the side of the road that climbs to the Refidiya neighborhood, is deserted, the shelves almost empty. A salesperson wearing transparent gloves slices the traditional sweet oriental hot cheese delicacy, the taste of which is the only thing that remains unchanged in this beaten and battered city.From one visit to the next, one sees Nablus declining relentlessly into its death throes. This is not a village that's dying behind the concrete obstacles and earth ramparts that cut it off from the world; this is a city with an ancient history, which until just recently was a vibrant, bustling metropolis that boasted an intense commercial life, a large major university, hospitals, a captivating urban landscape and age-old objects of beauty.An hour's drive from Tel Aviv, a great Palestinian city is dying, and another of the occupation's goals is being realized. It's not only that the splendid ancient homes have been laid waste, not only that such a large number of the city's residents, many of them innocent, have been killed; the entire society is flickering and will soon be extinguished. A similar fate has visited Jenin, Qalqilyah, Tul Karm and Bethlehem, but in Nablus the impact of the death throes is more powerful because of the city's importance as a district capital and because of its beauty. A cloud of dust and sand envelops the city, which gives the impression of being a combat zone during a cease-fire; its roads are scarred, its electricity poles and telephone booths are shattered, government buildings have been reduced to heaps of rubble. But the true wound lies far deeper than the physical destruction: an economic, cultural and social fabric that is disintegrating and a generation that has known only a life of emptiness and despair. More than any other place in the territories, a state of anarchy is palpably close here.There is no city as blocked and sealed as Nablus. For the past three and a half years it has been impossible to maintain even a semblance of ordinary day-to-day life here. It is impossible to leave or enter. Some 200,000 people are prisoners in their city. The checkpoints at Beit Iba, Azmurt and Hawara, which cut off the city from all directions, are the strictest roadblocks in the West Bank. Even women in labor and elderly people have a hard time crossing, and most of the city's residents no longer even try.Nablus also suffers from a very large number of casualties. In the latest Israel Defense Forces operation in the city, which was given the devilish name of "Still Waters," no fewer than 19 civilians were killed, six of them children, and 200 were wounded, according to a report of the Palestinian Human Rights Monitoring Group. These are the dimensions of a large-scale terrorist attack, only without the public attention, and it's all happening in a period of significant respite in Palestinian terrorism. Who is going to investigate this wholesale killing and the killing of children, including Mohammed Aarj, 6, who was shot while standing in his yard, eating a sandwich? Afterward, the IDF refused to allow an ambulance to evacuate him, according to the Palestinians.Atrocities have been perpetrated here under cover of the total media disregard of the events, residents of Nablus claim. Neighbors saw Abud Kassim being held by soldiers, and then a gunshot was suddenly heard: he was killed in his yard; Ala Dawiya was found dead with nine bullets in his chest; Fadi Hanani, Jibril Awad and Majdi al-Bash were shot to death at short range, according to the testimonies; the civilian Muain al-Hadi and his cousin Basel were ordered to escort Israeli soldiers as a "human shield," contrary to the explicit ban on the use of this procedure. No one in Israel heard about any of these events and no one will investigate them.Within this reality live tens of thousands of people who have done no wrong. What's being inflicted on them is known as collective punishment and it is considered a war crime. They get up in the morning without knowing what the IDF has wrought in their city during the night and what it will do during the day. Most residents have long since lost their livelihood. Of course, it's possible to argue that they brought it all on themselves because of the terrorist attacks that originated in the city, but that argument cannot justify all the killing and wrongdoing. In the meantime, despite everything, some people are still buying delightful knafeh from Abu Salha.
2. CounterPunch.org, January 23, 2004
Each Day the Government Becomes More Dictatorial: An Israeli Pilot Speaks Out
By YONATHAN SHAPIRA
I am Yonathan, one of the initiators and signatories raeli pilot’s letter. Until some weeks ago I was a pilot and active leader in a squadron of “Blackhawk” helicopters in the air force. On the eve of last Yom Kippur I was called for an interview with the commander of the air force, wherein he told me that I was dismissed and that I was not a pilot anymore in the Israeli air force and all this because I announced that I will not agree to take part in obeying illegal and immoral orders.
And now during the last few months the commander of the air force has been making the rounds of the bases and the flight crews and announcing that a large and powerful organization supports our group, and the military will find it and expose it to all. On this present festive occasion, I want to disclose to you who this large and powerful body is. It is an organization on whose knees we grew up and were educated on.
I want to read to you two of the basic values of--the Israel Defense Forces.
Human Dignity: The IDF and its soldiers are obliged to honor human dignity. Each human being should be respected, regardless of his race, creed, nationality, gender, status or his social role.
Purity of arms: The soldier will use his weapons and his might only to achieve his objective, to the degree that this is required for the purpose, and will retain his humanity even during battle. The soldier will not use his weapons and his might to hurt persons who are not fighters, or prisoners, and will do everything in his power to prevent an assault on their life, their body or their property.
Let’s go back now to the night between 22 to 23 of July 2002. It is late at night, the F16 squadron is at the air force base. The crew which is on-call consists of a pilot and a navigator. Scramble to Gaza. Waiting for the order to attack. The order is received. The bombs are dropped. Landing. De-briefing, and return to routine.
On this specific mission a one-ton bomb was dropped (equal to a hundred suicide bombs) on a house in the Al-Deredg quarter in Gaza, one of the most crowded neighborhoods in Gaza, indeed in the whole world. During this action 14 human beings were killed and more than 150 others were wounded. Four families, 9 children, 2 women and 2 men, were wiped out by the crew of the airplane that executed this mission and hit the target in the full belief that they were defending Israelis. They honestly believed this.
This is what Dan Halutz (commander of the air force) had to say about the mission: “I declare that everything taking place before the mission is justified according to my moral compass…”
And to the pilots he said: “Sleep well tonight … you executed this mission perfectly.”
We did not sleep well that night, and we continued not to sleep when:
On August 31, 2002--when Darama was annihilated and with him 4 children.
On April 8, 2003--when Arbid and Al-Halabi were annihilated and with them 2 children and 5 adults.
On June 10, 2003--During an attempt to annihilate Rantisi, a girl, a woman and 5 men were killed.
On June 11, 2003--when Abu-Nahal was annihilated and with him 2 women and 5 men.
On June 12, 2003--when Salah Taha and with him a one-year old infant, a woman and 5 men were annihilated. And more, and more...
And also three months ago in a blitz of five attacks 2 wanted persons were wiped out and with them another 12 innocent people. Minister Effi Eitam and high officers in the IDF do not like the expression ‘innocent Palestinians’, they prefer to call them “bystanders”. Altogether 211 persons were killed in the action, among these about half (86) onlookers.
And what kind of security did we get in return? Attacks and more attacks, we in our Apache and they in their suicide bombs, together in a dance of madness towards suicide.
So we did not sleep at night and we wrote this letter:
“We, air force pilots in reserve duty, who were raised on the values of Zionism, sacrifice and contributing to the State of Israel, we have always served on the front lines, willing to perform any assignment, difficult or simple, in order to protect the State of Israel and to strengthen her.
“We, veteran pilots and active pilots together, who served and still serve the State of Israel during long weeks each year, object to perform illegal and immoral orders of attacks that the State of Israel performs in the territories.
“We, who were raised to love the State of Israel and to contribute to the Zionist enterprise, refuse to take part in the attacks of the air force in concentrations of civilian population.
“We, for whom the IDF and the air force are inseparable parts of us, refuse to continue and harm innocent civilians.
“These actions are illegal and immoral and are a direct result of the ongoing occupation, which corrupts Israeli society as a whole.
“The continuation of the occupation delivers a mortal blow to the security of the State of Israel and to her moral strength.
“We who serve as active pilots--fighters, leaders, and instructors of the next generation of pilots--declare hereby that we shall continue to serve in the IDF and the air force in every assignment in the defense of the State of Israel."
We spoke to more than a hundred pilots, among them veteran commanders in the air force, many were afraid to sign but supported our idea--and as proof: nobody leaked even a word. And maybe it is important to tell you on this occasion in short who signed the letter. This is an opportunity to get to know some of those “traitors who aided terrorism.”
I will start with the active pilots: Major Yotam--active Apache-pilot Captain Tomer--active F-16-pilot Captain Ran--active fighter-navigator Captain Zur--active F-16-navigator Captain Alon--active Blackhawk-pilot Captain Amnon--active Blackhawk-pilot Captain Yonathan--active Blackhawk-pilot Captain Asaf--active F-15-pilot and instructor in the field of fighting at the school of flying Lieutenant-colonel Eli--fighter pilot and active instructor at the school of flying Brigadier-general Yiphtah Spector--fighter pilot and active instructor at the school of flying.
An additional 20 veteran pilots joined this initiative, fighters who flew in the wars of Israel, some of which were more justified and some less justified. Amongst these pilots: Colonel and doctor Yigal Shohat--fighter pilot who was in Syrian captivity and later served as chief medical doctor of the air force. Lieutenant-colonel Yonathan Shahar--fighter pilot and flight commander in the six days war. Lieutenant-colonel Abner Raanan--fighter pilot who was awarded the Israel Prize for Security for developing intelligent weapons systems. Professor Motti Peri--helicopter pilot and today head of the economy faculty at the Hebrew University. Professor Nahum Karlinski--fighter pilot and historian at Ben-Gurion University. Lieutenant Yoel Pieterberg--senior test-pilot in the air force, amongst the founders of the first Apache squadron, leader of the Cobra squadron in the Lebanon war, and awarded a medal by the chief of staff, one of the planners and executors of the ‘Karin A’ mission. Captain Moshe Bukayi--transport pilot who was awarded a citation for Courage during the Sinai War. Major Hagai Tamir--fighter pilot and architect was also the outstanding trainee during Dan Halutz’s pilots training course.
Two weeks after publication of the pilots’ letter a report appeared in the “Seven Days” supplement of “Yedioth Aharonoth” newspaper, wherein five brigade commanders, colonels in the professional army, photographed in uniform and carrying weapons, declare their support for Sharon, the settlers and the policy of annihilations. Knesseth Member Yuval Steinitz and his friends raised no hue and cry on this occasion. Even the Minister of Defense did not call them supporters of terrorism, and did not decry the fact that they expressed their opinion while in uniform.
Why?
Because they represent the consensus. They support the government. A government which from day to day becomes less and less democratic, and more dictatorial.
If we were to ask a citizen who lives in a state which turned into a dictatorship, at what moment exactly did this happen? He would not be able to give an answer. It is a incremental process, often much of which is hidden from view.
But there are elements that are not hidden and I would like to give an example: A few months ago the Chief of Staff (a person in uniform) declared that every member of Hamas is a target for annihilation.
With your permission I would like to read you the response of the army spokesman and the army prosecutor, regarding complaints addressed to the IDF a decade ago, in the year 1993. At the time the prosecutor and spokesperson claimed that role of the ‘Mista’Aravim’ unit is not to annihilate:
“The IDF dismisses this claim absolutely. There was not, and there will not be any policy or reality in the IDF of intentional annihilation of wanted persons. The instructions for opening fire are twofold: ... the principle of the sanctity of life is a basic value in the IDF. There is no change whatsoever, and there will be no change in this matter.”
So what does this statement suggest? Have we not crossed the red line? Or can we perhaps continue a bit further? Many people say that we have not yet reached the red line and that for the time being one must not refuse...we must continue to obey. And this position reminds me of the red water line of the Sea of Galilee. Every time the level of water in the lake crosses the red line we lower it a little.
When my country finds itself in the situation similar to a plane in a wild nose-dive towards the ground, I have three options: I can jump out, and leave Israel. I can continue indifferently to let the plane dive and crash bringing about everybody’s death or I can pull the stick with all my legal strength, and try to save myself from crashing. We are about to crash. So we pulled the stick and people asked us how we could do this considering that terrorism is rampant in the streets. And I reply--you are right, and regretfully I know this from close up.
For the past years I have volunteered for ‘Sela’--an organization helping new immigrants who are victims of terrorism, I assisted the wounded during their period of recovery, and I guided groups of orphans and of bereaved family members.
Each person is a world unto him or herself and each bereavement has many circles of grief and hurt, like a small stone thrown into the water gives rise to nearly interminable rings. Grief, pain, want, anger, despair and more ... so we must fight this criminal terrorism.
If I must kill a suicide bomber on his way to a terrorist attack, and even pay with my life for this, in the knowledge that I save other human lives--I will do this with all my heart. But none of the so-called selective annihilations was directed against a terrorist on his way to an attack (and the IDF corroborates this).
So we must fight terrorism, but at the same time we must fight not to become more and more like the terrorists. The fact that buses explode here, does not justify Sharon, Mofaz and Air Force Chief Dan Halutz decision to ‘unintentionally’ kill nine children in their sleep, and to sow terror in a population of millions who live under a reign of closures, curfews and checkpoints.
A population enclosed by walls and camps, under the guns of an enormous and frightening army, equipped to the teeth with jet-planes which shake the skies, and attack-helicopters who time and again send rockets into cars and into the windows of houses, in crowded and destitute cities.
So I said that I would with all my heart sacrifice my life to stop, even with my own body, a suicide terrorist, and maybe the time has come to speak about my faith. After all, what are we talking about? That we lost our faith in a system that sends us to enforce a scandalous and doubted policy.
We do not believe the head of State, the Minister of Defense and the highest of our commanders, when they send us to send rockets to places where, afterwards, we learn that we killed women and children. When Air Force Chief Dan Halutz lies to the press--then nonsense is written in the newspapers. But when Dan Halutz lies to the pilots--innocent citizens are killed, or, as we call them today: “non-involved” persons. (quoted from the ‘Terminator’).
An army consisting of fighters who are not convinced of the rightness of their way, is a weakened army! A pilot who leaves on an assignment, must be able to trust the system, to be 100 percent sure that it weighed the strategic, tactical, and morally right considerations.
The pilot has practically no way of knowing what is hidden behind the target he aims at. And it is naive to require of him to decide in real time to determine whether he considers the order fit or not to execute--because in real time it is extremely difficult to make such considerations.
In addition, pilots have to know these days another crucial fact. They should know the nauseating statistics of the assignments they are being sent to carry out. Fifty percent of those killed as a result of “selective extermination” missions in populated areas are innocent civilians. When one suppresses in the planning and execution the practically certain result of fifty percent civilian casualties, then the “pure intentions” of the planners is no longer pure; it is tainted.
I would like to quote from a recent article, was initiated by the air force spokesperson, in which Apache-pilots (not refusers) were interviewed about the dilemma’s facing them: An experienced helicopter pilot told the interviewer: “It is likely that in another couple of years I’ll say to myself: you are an idiot, you crossed red lines”.
Another pilot spoke about a set of values which underwent change in the last two years:
“I would not have believed that I would send rockets into Jenin, Gaza and Tulkarem, and I am doing it. Maybe they’ll send me to shoot rockets at Umm-El-Fahm (an Israeli city)? Today this looks crazy, but it might happen in another year. Perhaps we’ll shoot rockets at Arafat’s office, maybe a rocket at Arab houses in Jaffa--this is the kind of thing that I believe I will not do. But today I shoot rockets 100 meter away from people, just to get them to disperse, and two years ago I would not have entertained the thought that I would carry out such actions; we have become indifferent.”
Yet another pilot says: “Sometimes I come from a debriefing after a successful extermination and I know up front that the countdown for another attack has started”.
I have seen much blood lately during my service in the squadron. In between dropping commando troops at the outskirts of cities in the West bank, I had to evacuate dozens of wounded, including IDF soldiers and civilians, some of them children who were suffered horrible wounds. At times we would evacuate the wounded to a hospital, scrub the blood from the floor of the helicopter, and return to bring more.
And I ask myself--why? Are we really so obtuse and naive to think that we can repress 3.5 million people who have lost all fear of death? Aren’t we going crazy too? Apparently we are.
It seems to me that we are a society in an advanced psychotic state, a kind of split personality and the only way many of us survive is to close up and to disappear into our own bubble. And if anything is really worthwhile blowing up--it is this bubble.
How can we blow up the bubble? Very simple--get to know the facts.
So let’s briefly examine what has happened to us in the past three years? In the territories: 2289 Palestinians have been killed in the territories by Israeli security forces, amongst them 439 minors under the age of 18. At least 128 Palestinians have been put to death without trial by Israel.In the course of their execution 88 additional Palestinians were killed. 32 Palestinians were killed by Israeli civilians. 9 foreign nationals were shot and killed by bullets from Israeli security forces. 196 Israeli civilians were killed by Palestinians. 180 members from the Israeli security forces were killed by Palestinians. 86 Palestinians were killed by Palestinians on suspicion of collaboration with Israel. 29 Palestinians were killed by Palestinian security forces.
In Israel: 377 Israeli civilians, 80 members of the security forces and 32 foreign civilians were killed by Palestinian inhabitants of the territories. 48 Palestinians were killed by the security forces. The IDF confirms that among the 2289 Palestinians that were killed by our forces only 550 were bearing arms or were fighters. What happened to the remaining 1739?
Before I finish, I would like to share with you some hair-raising moments from the last two difficult months: During the interview of my dismissal I sat opposite the commander of the air force and I heard him say repeatedly with burning eyes that all the missions we performed, including the most difficult ones, are highly moral, and even Professor Asa Kasher agrees. Further on in the conversation and by his own initiative Dan Halutz, Commander of the air force and candidate for the office of Vice Chief of Staff –spelled out before me the value of blood as he sees it--in descending order, from Jewish blood down to the blood of a Palestinian.
I have heard many infantry soldiers say, and to my deep regret I have also read in a letter that was sent by one of the pilots who objects to our acts, that “our heroism today in the air force of 2003 is not to endanger our lives either under anti-aircraft fire or when fighting enemy aircraft; our heroism today is expressed in that we succeed to overcome the catastrophic feelings that arise in us as a result of our being ‘professional assassins’ in the service of the State of Israel. Our heroism is to overcome all this with courage, and to get up every morning with a renewed choice to be good soldiers who are willing and ready to take upon ourselves any mission.”
This same shift of responsibility from the shoulders of the soldier and its exchange for a sense of fulfillment of “valor” in coping with his difficult task, is what enables pilots to perform the worst crimes against humanity.
Friday, January 30
Monday, January 19
MCC Palestine Update #93
MCC Palestine Update #93
January 19, 2004
Over the past two weeks, the increasing physical isolation of the Palestinian people has been dramatically highlighted. First, Israel began replacing the makeshift wall of concrete blocks around Abu Dis near Jerusalem, over which Palestinians going to work, to visit family, to school, to hospital, had scrambled, with massive 9 meter tall concrete barricades. A curfew has been placed on the area within 40 meters of the new wall as construction work proceeds, confining people there to their homes. The early Zionist leader Ze'ev Jabotinsky talked about the need to encircle Israel with an "iron wall" against its neighbors: through concrete, barbed wire, electrified fences, and electronic sensors, this vision is becoming a reality.
For years now Israel has had the capacity to seal off the Gaza Strip, having built an electrified fence around it (and with the sea cutting it off from the other side). At its discretion it could cut off the flow of Palestinian workers to Israel, of Palestinians to Israeli hospitals for specialized treatment, of Palestinians wishing to travel through Egypt, of international visitors (aid workers, tourists, student groups) to Gaza. Since May 2003, it has become very difficult for internationals to enter Gaza. International aid workers "coordinate" their entry with the Israeli authorities, notifying them days in advance of their planned entry. Now, with the ongoing construction of the walls and fences, Israel is gaining the capacity it enjoys in Gaza in the West Bank, as it encircles Palestinian cities and creates reservations in which Palestinians are kept tightly sequestered. For now, aid workers, tourists, and other internationals can still usually make it into West Bank cities. On January 4, 2004, however, Israel announced a new regulation, handing out fliers to visitors arriving at Israel's borders, informing them that they could only enter areas under the Palestinian Authority's control (the extent of such control being purely nominal) with the prior written authorization of the Israeli military; no contact information was given for obtaining such authorization. For now, this new measure appears to be aimed by peace activists protesting the wall; the Israeli military has made it known that anyone approaching the wall is liable to arrest and deportation. International aid agencies such as MCC worry that the day will not be far off when the Israeli military authorities begin demanding prior coordination to enter Bethlehem, or Hebron?such coordination is practically essential already if one wants to enter Jenin.
In summary: Palestinians are not only being walled off by walls and fences, they are being isolated from international visitors by an Israeli government who would like to keep them out of sight and out of mind. Jeff Halper, director of the Israeli Committee against House Demolitions, an MCC partner organization, put the matter bluntly following a visit to the towering wall being erected in Abu Dis: "It's hard to find words for such evil." MCC supports ICAHD in its work to educate Israelis about the humanitarian and political impact of the wall and the broader process of colonization. MCC also supports the work of the Palestinian Environmental NGO Network and the Applied Research Institute-Jerusalem, two Palestinian organizations that gather information about the wall and seek to disseminate that information to the rest of the world. For current news about the wall and its impact, visit: http://www.stopthewall.org/. For an in-depth study of the wall, visit http://www.arij.org/.
Below you will find three pieces. The first, by Gideon Levy, suggests that "Israel's real friends will increase the pressure on the [Israeli] government" by criticizing the separation barrier. The second, by Ghada Ageel, a graduate student from the Gaza Strip, paints a moving, harrowing portrait of unarmed Palestinians, fed up with being blocked at a checkpoint for hours, who simply start walking towards the checkpoint, even as Israeli soldiers open fire. The final piece, by Lily Galili of Haaretz, examines the construction of the Abu Dis wall.
--Alain Epp Weaver
1. Cry, our beloved country
By Gideon Levy
Haaretz, January 11, 2004
Perhaps, after all, the world will save Israel from itself. Perhaps Israel's real friends will increase the pressure on the government. Perhaps they will understand that, even in Israel, external pressure is not always bad, because it may be the last chance to bring Israel back on the straight and narrow and make it a more just state.The last attempt is modest, at present, but bodes well. The UN, an institution not highly thought of in Israel, resolved to bring the separation fence to the International Court of Justice in The Hague (ICJ), another institution sneered at in this country. This has already aroused surprising nervousness in Jerusalem's government corridors. Where the outcry of the Palestinians and the protest of the extreme left failed, the UN succeeded. This is not bad news. Suddenly Jerusalem officials discovered the wrongs the fence was causing. After most of its construction was completed, incarcerating thousands of families in compounds without anyone caring, a feeling of discomfort arose in Jerusalem. Yosef Lapid even warned of turning Israel into South Africa in the eyes of the world.Good morning, justice minister, but your warning is too late. South Africa has been here for a long time already, and this is how most states of the world see it. Still, better late than never, only it's a pity the justice minister needed The Hague threat to understand that the fence his government built is an apartheid fence.Had he bothered to go and see with his own eyes the thousands of school children waiting every morning, in all weather, for the IDF or Border Police jeep to arrive and open the gate for them on their way to school, the farmers cut off from their fields, the patients kept away from their clinics, the villages locked and bolted and the sight of a town behind barbed wire, he would not have needed the threat from The Hague to understand the injustice. After the settlements, the fence is the next punishment to be forced on the Palestinians. Israel, as usual, ignored it.South Africa was saved from itself and became a fair state, first and foremost because of international pressure exerted on its government. Had it not been for the economic sanctions and political isolation, perhaps apartheid would have lasted forever. Most of the fighters against apartheid saw the international pressure as a blessing and encouraged it. Regrettably, this applies to the Israeli occupation as well.The pressure on apartheid South Africa began with a decision of the same ICJ the fence has now been brought before. From there, it's a short step to imposing economic sanctions and other boycotts, until the regime collapses and justice is established in the battered country. This could be the narrative of events in our case too. Anyone who fears for Israel's moral image should not be afraid of this.Even without the wall, the Israeli occupation could be compared to South Africa's apartheid, even if the Israeli ideology is less despicable. Don't roads for Jews only, as most West Bank roads are today, justify the comparison? Aren't roadblocks distinguishing among people on the sole basis of origin racist?It is regrettable that the fence reached The Hague. It is a pity Israel did not understand by itself that everyone may build a fence for his defense, but only on his own territory, not his neighbor's. Those who were supposed to raise a hue and cry against the fence that imprisoned people and usurped their land, kept mum. Those whose job it was to preserve the state's moral image and prevent what the fence is causing to tens of thousands of innocent people, betrayed their duty.The media were not interested, the justice minister waited for The Hague, the attorney general gave everything the stamp of approval and the Supreme Court said not a word. Only the threat from The Hague managed to raise doubts.Now the fence track around a few imprisoned villages is being modified, in an attempt to correct a little of the evil. What happened? Didn't the IDF know before that Hirbat Jabara would be fenced in from all directions, that Azun would perish behind the fence and that some of Joyous' houses would be cut off from the village? Didn't they look at the maps? Didn't they read the reports? Or the world newspapers?It is sad that fear of the ICJ fell on this project of iniquity, rather than fear of the High Court of Justice in Jerusalem. Thus, The Hague was left as the last recourse for justice in Israel.The hope that international institutions will rescue Israel from its evil doing is very problematic. But when the institutions of law and justice of the state fail, there is no recourse but to turn to the international one. Just like it would have been better had the whites in South Africa understood themselves that their regime was based on evil, it would have been better if those in power in Israel understood finally that our occupation regime is based on terrible evil that should have ended a long time ago.When this does not happen, when 37 years go by and the occupation only becomes more brutal, when the Israeli consciousness is not being "seared" and does not internalize the enormity of the wickedness, there is no choice but to turn to the world for help. "Cry, the beloved country," wrote South African teacher Alan Paton in 1948 about his country's sick regime. The enlightened world cheered. But when the beloved country does not cry out itself, only curls inwardly in indifference, there is no choice but to turn to the world, so that it cries out instead.
2. At a checkpoint in Gaza, courage and fear
Ghada Ageel, International Herald Tribune
Wednesday, January 14, 2004
http://www.iht.com/articles/124836.html
ZAHRA, Gaza. Last month, I went to visit my cousin Muhammad Aqil Abu-Shmaleh at the European hospital. Muhammad had been wounded in October in an Israeli missile strike that killed two of its intended targets and a bystander. A piece of shrapnel had plunged into Muhammad's spinal cord and left him paralyzed. He had been at the wrong place at the wrong time.
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The life of my family has now been turned upside down as we fight for Muhammad's physical and psychological health. The one comfort we have is the outpouring of concern and support from our neighbors in Khan Yunis, from Israelis of good will, and from friends the world over.
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On our way home from visiting Muhammad, my husband Nasser, my 3-year-old son Tariq and I were stuck at the checkpoint between Khan Yunis and Gaza City for more than six hours. This should be a 40-minute trip.
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At 6:50 p.m., the Israeli soldiers finally allowed some cars to pass. After five minutes they closed the checkpoint again. The people stuck on the other side of the checkpoint became so angry that they left their taxis and started to walk, challenging the Israelis and their guns. I felt a mixture of shock that people in Gaza were confronting guns with their chests, pride that Palestinians could do such things, when it was all too possible that nonviolent resistance could result in their death, and fear of what would happen.
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I had good cause for concern. Israeli soldiers started to shoot toward the people. It was very close and absolutely terrifying. I have lived with war, violence and occupation for all of my 33 years, but will never become accustomed to the horror and the fear.
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Adding to my fear was the presence of our son. Close by, a young man was shot in the back of his leg. Incredibly, the people continued to walk. Friends of the youth put him in our car.
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The youngster was bleeding and crying and his sobs mixed with those of my child. There is a powerful instinct, which I believe all mothers have, to protect children at any cost. But there, at that time, I felt totally powerless. Yet I was not completely immobilized. I started to shout at people to open the way for our car to move. At the same time I punched the numbers I know all too well for the hospital to send an ambulance.
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After 15 minutes of shouting and maneuvering, we got the youth into an ambulance. I discovered I had lost my voice from screaming.
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My family's refugee camp, Khan Yunis, was recently attacked twice in one week by Israeli forces. Dozens of homes were demolished, like the hundreds of others in Gaza and the West Bank that have been reduced to rubble over the past three years. Many families came to my parents' home to take shelter. It may be 2003, but in my mind we have traveled back to 1948 when my parents and hundreds of thousands of our people fled their homes.
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What more does Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's government want of us? What benefit is gained by the Israeli Army keeping civilians waiting for hours at checkpoints? How can Israel's leaders justify driving us from our homes 55 years ago and then setting their sights and bulldozers on our refugee camps?
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How can it be conscionable for good people anywhere that Palestinians are forced to flee from place to place, never to return home?
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Having seen my cousin lying in a hospital bed and a teenager bleeding profusely in the back of our family car with my 3-year-old looking on, I realize that there is no place to run and no place to hide in Gaza. My son was not physically harmed, but how can a 3-year-old process what my mind can scarcely comprehend? His psychological processing consists of running around the house, cocking his finger like a gun and shouting, "Tah, tah, tah" to imitate the sound of the Israeli bullets so recently fired in his direction.
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When Nasser and I married we thought a just peace was a real possibility. We thought we would be able to offer our children safety and a hopeful future. I went so far as to study Hebrew in Israel. But our hopes for the future of our family and our people have not been met.
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The occupation continues because Sharon's government continues to think it can have both quiet and occupation. It cannot.
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When you see people walk unarmed into gunfire to reach their destination you realize that they are striving for something more than a physical destination. This is what I believe can be best expressed as the very human desire for freedom. No power and no force can enter our hearts and extinguish it.
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That day of Palestinian freedom will be sped up considerably if such spontaneous, nonviolent displays of principle and courage receive more coverage in the United States and elsewhere. We need no U.S. Army to fight for us. We ask only for a commitment to evenhandedness.
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We have suffered long enough.
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*
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The writer, a doctoral student at Exeter University, Britain, lives in Gaza.
3. Wailing wall
By Lily Galili
Ha'aretz, January 16, 2004
With great speed, the original low, irrelevant wall is being replaced in East Jerusalem with a new structure that resembles some vast mythological dragon. All around are people who thought they'd already seen everything during the occupation, watching the scene in disbelief
If Jesus had been born 2,000 years later, he would have had a hard time bringing about the famous miracle of Bethany, in which he bid Lazarus - who had died four days earlier and was buried in a cave, wrapped in shrouds - to "come forth." This conjecture is not based on new information about changes in Jesus' skills, but on the height and impact of the wall that is now being built in the town of Azzariyeh, next to Jerusalem, the Bethany of the New Testament, whose Arabic name derives from the name of Lazarus. The local Palestinians, showing surprising humor in view of the massive barrier that is being erected in front of their homes, joke that the wall would have made it impossible for even Jesus to get to the place. And even if Jesus would have found passage problematic, it's easy to understand how flesh-and-blood Palestinians feel in the face of the "obstacle" that is being built in front of their eyes - a concrete wall, 8 meters high, made of slabs that are connected to one another. There are many objections to the Israeli use of the word "obstacle," as though it were a euphemism to avoid the open use of the word "wall." In fact, though, "obstacle" is an extraordinarily accurate word in this case. A wall is just a wall, but this threatening concrete monster is rapidly becoming a true obstacle in every sphere of life.According to a study by the United Nations Office for Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), which is based in East Jerusalem, the wall in this area will disrupt not only the mobility of the Palestinians, but also their access to education and health services, and sources of livelihood - all basic, existential needs that the Fourth Geneva Convention is intended to protect and ensure. The opposition of OCHA to the fence is not all-inclusive; it is based on the route of the fence and its infringement of these basic human rights. Up to their nosesOn Monday of this week four heads were looking out of a window on the second floor of a residential building in the town of Abu Dis, which abuts on the Old City of Jerusalem to the east. They watched with astonishment as the slabs of the wall were connected to one another, each new piece bringing the wall closer to the very tip of their nose, like some sort of looming mythological dragon. The heads belong to four students who attend Al-Quds University, three of them studying nursing, the fourth, political science. All four are from the West Bank, two from the Tul Karm area, the other two from Hebron. Like young people everywhere, they sought not only higher education, but also independence away from home in the big city; and, like other Muslims, they wanted to be close to the mosque in Jerusalem. Instead, they got the fence in their face, two meters from the entrance to their house. It started off as a low fence, 2.5 meters tall. Even then, when it was first to be built, three months ago, it was a visual blight, but that, it turns out, wasn't the end. Many photographs documented local residents, including elderly people and children, climbing over that nascent version of the wall. This week it grew taller. In the meantime the four are imprisoned in their residence, without electricity - which was cut off because of the construction - and subjected to ear-splitting noise. They can't even leave their apartment, because of the roadblocks that have been set up everywhere in order to protect the wall. "I have already missed an important exam in English because of this," says Mohammed Lutfi Huseen, who was born in Kuwait, where his father teaches English, and returned here alone three years ago. "This is not what I dreamed about," he adds with an embarrassed smile.Now Huseen is watching as the ineffective low wall is being transformed into a high wall. The forklifts, the bulldozers, the generator that was brought in so the work could continue at night - they are all back. With a speed uncharacteristic of Israel the irrelevant wall is being uprooted and replaced with the new structure. All around are people who thought they had already seen everything in the course of the occupation, and are watching the scene in disbelief. "They have killed my business," says Hassan Ekermawi, who has a grocery store in the gas station that has now become a construction site. "Before this, people used to come to buy from Abu Dis, from Azzariyeh, from the eastern part of Sawahra. It's all one unit of Jerusalem, you know. Now no one comes." The grocery store will, in fact, remain on the Jerusalem side, but the customers will be on the other side, behind the wall. "Do you know what the strangest thing about this story is?" he asks and replies himself, "that we, the Jerusalem Palestinians, are paying for this whole project with our taxes, with the cut in my father's old-age pension. I am not talking about politics now, I am talking about life." About 10 meters away, on the other side of the road along which the wall is being built, all the stores are closed. It's hard to avoid wondering who decided that the Jerusalem shop owner on the right side of the road is so much friendlier to Israel than his colleague on the left side, which will now become "territories." Now six 14-year-old students arrive at the area of the wall. They are making their way from their school in Jerusalem to their homes in Azzariyeh. They all have Jerusalem residence cards, but they live in the territories. They know that this is probably the last time they will be able to do this route on foot, to jump over the low wall and get home safely. At the speed with which the work is being carried out, with an incentive of NIS 500 for night work per worker, it's likely that their route will be blocked by a high wall within a day or two.They are asked what they think will happen. "Our parents will try to rent houses in East Jerusalem," they say. This, too, is part of the weird logic in this story. The implicit intention of the route chosen for the fence - which can be summed up by saying that Israel will get as much land as possible and the Palestinians as little as possible - doesn't always work in reality. According to OCHA, about 15 percent of the 11,000 residents of Abu Dis and about a quarter of the 16,000 residents of Azzariyeh have Jerusalem ID cards. Some of them, those who can afford to pay the rocketing prices of the apartments in East Jerusalem, where demand has soared due to the wall, are moving to the other side. Defeated logicIf the wall has any demographic logic, it is defeated by events on the ground. One of the speakers in a symposium about the wall that was held this week at the Van Leer Jerusalem Institute was Terry Bulata, principal of the New Generation School in Abu Dis. She has a Jerusalem ID card, though her husband has a "territories" card. "If the idea was to make life hard for us with the wall, so that we will leave, that is not about to happen," she says. "We have learned the lesson of 1948: We are not going anywhere."Nor is Ibrahim Qiresh going anywhere, though he could if he wants. Twelve years ago he moved with his wife and their 9 children from Wadi Joz in East Jerusalem to Azzariyeh, where prices were cheaper. He built his home on a steep hill in the town, which is a suburb of Jerusalem, and then rebuilt it after it was demolished by order of the municipality. A finely wrought window adorning the facade of the house is the professional pride of Qiresh, a metalworker who counts many Israelis, including artists, among his friends. In the past month a 9-meter-high wall has arisen in front of Qiresh's house, cutting him off from the lovely view of the slopes of the Mount of Olives. In his workshop, where he also has a large dovecote - he raises the birds for pleasure, explaining, "I can't bring myself to slaughter them for food" - he says that until now his life was pretty orderly, even if by moving he lost his entitlement to National Insurance Institute child allowances and to Kupat Holim health maintenance organization services for himself. An Israeli friend helped him obtain private health insurance, as though he were a foreign resident. "It's as though I am living abroad," he guffaws. Still, the Jerusalem residency card afforded him a certain mobility, and clients would come from Tel Aviv to order special window frames. In the course of the intifada, with its prolonged closures and curfews, he lost his livelihood, and now his life is about to be ruined, too. Even now, with the wall only in the construction stage, the Jerusalem card, which was once an asset, has become a liability. Whenever he arrives at a checkpoint, or tries to get home on foot via the Mount of Olives in order to bypass checkpoints, he is told, "Go back to Jerusalem." "I don't know what is going to happen now, with the wall," he says. "I live in Palestine, but the police keep sending me back to Jerusalem. But I can't go back to Jerusalem. I tried, but even the simplest apartment there costs at least $500 a month. I haven't got that. When the wall is completely finished, I will close the workshop. We will be in a prison. What can we do. When God brings a person into the world, he calculates his life." Devastating effectsHowever, other elements are also intervening in that calculation. While we were conversing, a curfew was suddenly imposed on Azzariyeh. According to the official version, there was a "serious security problem"; according to the Palestinian version, the curfew was intended to help get the wall built faster. Within minutes, the town, once a favored shopping area for Jerusalem's Jews, too, becomes a ghost town. The gates of the shops are slammed shut, people disappear into their homes. From the area next to the high wall, Border Policemen in a Jeep can be seen shooing pedestrians from the bottom of the Mount of Olives toward Azzariyeh. One of them was a young mother who was holding an infant newly born at Makassed Hospital on the Mount of Olives; another was an elderly woman who was returning home from an examination after open-heart surgery. She could barely trudge through the muddy ground, and was assisted by men who saw her plight.But even life as an extreme sport will change once the wall is in place. The residents of Azzariyeh will be cut off not only from their natural attachment to Jerusalem, but also from the hospital that serves them. "Maybe we will die," a women from Azzariyeh says with bizarre merriment as she walks home from a visit to her brother, who has undergone a serious operation at Makassed. But even the right to transit by foot, which is still possible, is ultimately not going to help 10-year-old Abdullah Iyyad. He was born with broken bones in his legs. When he was a year old, his family used all its resources to spend four years in Philadelphia, where there is a children's hospital that specializes in surgery of this kind. The family returned to Azzariyeh 5 years ago. Abdullah, wheelchair-ridden, was sent to a special school, which is also a treatment center, on the Mount of Olives. Before the wall - people here divide their lives into "before" and "after" - Adnan Iyyad, Abdullah's father, brought his son to a taxi that waited every morning by the gas station at the entrance to Azzariyeh, lifted him out of the wheelchair and placed him in the cab, which had yellow (Israeli) license plates. Within three minutes the boy was in school. Now it's a different story. The road from the gas station is blocked and the taxi has to take a long roundabout route via the Ma'aleh Adumim road to the Mount of Olives. Instead of NIS 15, the cost of the trip before, Abdullah's father now has to pay NIS 80 every day to get his son to school. He himself can't drive the boy, because he doesn't have an entry permit for Jerusalem. Because of the steep expenses, the family doesn't have the money to pay for Abdullah's physiotherapy, which costs NIS 30 per treatment, or for gas to heat the house. The wall and the innumerable checkpoints have also had a devastating effect on the livelihood of Adnan Iyyad: Residents of Jerusalem no longer bring him their television sets to repair. The new route is also taking a toll on Abdullah's schooling. Every morning the cab is stuck in traffic jams at the checkpoint, as they wait for the residents of Ma'aleh Adumim - a city east of Jerusalem, in the West Bank - to make their way to work safely. Nearly every day he is late for his first lesson. Taking the approach that everything is relative, Adnan says he envies healthy people who until now could climb over the low fence. After all, it's impossible to lift a wheelchair weighing 75 kilograms over the fence. Until now there was a small gate in the low fence and he was able to carry his son through it, if the soldiers let him. Now the gate is being sealed with concrete and the Iyyad family has a new problem. Like everyone else, they are unable to imagine what life will be like after Azzariyeh is completely sealed off by the wall. Something of that emerging reality can be seen at the "Container Checkpoint." In the West Bank, Ibrahim Halsa's kiosk (which functions in a container) is at least as famous as the Ha'oman 17 nightclub in West Jerusalem. The reason is that the checkpoint between the Jerusalem village of Sawahra and the twisting road that leads to Bethlehem and effectively connects the northern and southern sections of the West Bank, is named after this kiosk, which is no more than an old hut in which Halsa has sold sweets, Coca-Cola and shoe polish for the past 12 years. Until not long ago, it was situated at the bend in the road and was easily accessible to customers. When the permanent checkpoint was established, Halsa was told to move his kiosk to a different road, where passing cars can't possibly stop, so his already meager income was wiped out. Halsa thus joined the growing number of the poor in the West Bank, where unemployment is rampant and which is being abandoned by international aid organizations that are fed up with the unending occupation. After arguing among themselves, the representatives of these organizations reached the conclusion that responsibility lies with the occupier and that by assisting the residents, they were effectively underwriting the occupation. Sawahra is an integral part of the bloc of villages that includes Azzariyeh and Abu Dis, meaning the "territories," but it is also an integral part of Sawahra, which is in Jerusalem, meaning Israel. Now the wall, which is already under construction here, will divide the two parts of Sawahra, and the entire bloc that will remain in the territories is supposed to shift its urban affinity from Jerusalem to Bethlehem. It sounds simple, but it involves the uprooting of a whole fabric of life. For example, instead of being able to walk four kilometers to Makassed Hospital, those on the West Bank side will have to make a trip of 18 kilometers along a winding trail that is known in Arabic as the "Valley of Fire." The checkpoint, which brought about endless traffic jams even before the fence sealed the area hermetically, seems to have no logic. If the intention of the fence in the Jerusalem area is to cut off the city from the West Bank, why stick a checkpoint in the heart of what has now become a central road that links the north of the West Bank to the south? "There is a security event," a grim-faced Border Policeman says, explaining the long line of cars backed up at the place. An ambulance that had tried to make its way through the narrow space on the side was stuck in that traffic jam this week. The driver simply gave up and stopped along the shoulder. In the ambulance was a 7-year-old boy suffering from brain cancer, who was on his way home to a village near Hebron after receiving chemotherapy in Jordan. The boy's father, Faiz Aidah, a graduate of Abu Dis University and a social worker by profession, stepped out of the ambulance. The chilling calm with which he accepted the situation - the result of a cruel process of adjustment - was harder to take than any outburst of hysteria would have been. Every 20 days he makes this journey with his son, "and it's the same situation every time," he says. Afterward he would explain that it's nevertheless easier to get to Jordan for treatment than to Hadassah University Hospital on nearby Mount Scopus, which entails a route studded with no end of checkpoints. "The fence around Jerusalem in the east is not separating Israelis from Palestinians, but is separating 200,000 Palestinians, who will remain in Israel, from 82,500 Palestinians outside the fence," was how Colonel (ret.) Shaul Arieli, who was involved in the Geneva Accord, summed up the situation in the symposium held at the Van Leer Institute. "The political consideration overcame the security consideration."The situation was summed up less neatly by Ayoub Saadi Abu Saad, a 25-year-old construction worker, who arrived breathing heavily after a panicky run. In the morning, when he crossed the open field between Azzariyeh and Jerusalem on his way to work, as he does every morning, he ran into Border Policeman, who told him, "Palestinian, go to Palestine." So he ran. In a few days even that route will be impossible. "They are closing us in like birds in a cage," he says. "Now all they have to do is cover it with a net and we won't be able to fly, either." Then he bursts out laughing, pleased with his metaphor - though a lot less pleased with the situation.
January 19, 2004
Over the past two weeks, the increasing physical isolation of the Palestinian people has been dramatically highlighted. First, Israel began replacing the makeshift wall of concrete blocks around Abu Dis near Jerusalem, over which Palestinians going to work, to visit family, to school, to hospital, had scrambled, with massive 9 meter tall concrete barricades. A curfew has been placed on the area within 40 meters of the new wall as construction work proceeds, confining people there to their homes. The early Zionist leader Ze'ev Jabotinsky talked about the need to encircle Israel with an "iron wall" against its neighbors: through concrete, barbed wire, electrified fences, and electronic sensors, this vision is becoming a reality.
For years now Israel has had the capacity to seal off the Gaza Strip, having built an electrified fence around it (and with the sea cutting it off from the other side). At its discretion it could cut off the flow of Palestinian workers to Israel, of Palestinians to Israeli hospitals for specialized treatment, of Palestinians wishing to travel through Egypt, of international visitors (aid workers, tourists, student groups) to Gaza. Since May 2003, it has become very difficult for internationals to enter Gaza. International aid workers "coordinate" their entry with the Israeli authorities, notifying them days in advance of their planned entry. Now, with the ongoing construction of the walls and fences, Israel is gaining the capacity it enjoys in Gaza in the West Bank, as it encircles Palestinian cities and creates reservations in which Palestinians are kept tightly sequestered. For now, aid workers, tourists, and other internationals can still usually make it into West Bank cities. On January 4, 2004, however, Israel announced a new regulation, handing out fliers to visitors arriving at Israel's borders, informing them that they could only enter areas under the Palestinian Authority's control (the extent of such control being purely nominal) with the prior written authorization of the Israeli military; no contact information was given for obtaining such authorization. For now, this new measure appears to be aimed by peace activists protesting the wall; the Israeli military has made it known that anyone approaching the wall is liable to arrest and deportation. International aid agencies such as MCC worry that the day will not be far off when the Israeli military authorities begin demanding prior coordination to enter Bethlehem, or Hebron?such coordination is practically essential already if one wants to enter Jenin.
In summary: Palestinians are not only being walled off by walls and fences, they are being isolated from international visitors by an Israeli government who would like to keep them out of sight and out of mind. Jeff Halper, director of the Israeli Committee against House Demolitions, an MCC partner organization, put the matter bluntly following a visit to the towering wall being erected in Abu Dis: "It's hard to find words for such evil." MCC supports ICAHD in its work to educate Israelis about the humanitarian and political impact of the wall and the broader process of colonization. MCC also supports the work of the Palestinian Environmental NGO Network and the Applied Research Institute-Jerusalem, two Palestinian organizations that gather information about the wall and seek to disseminate that information to the rest of the world. For current news about the wall and its impact, visit: http://www.stopthewall.org/. For an in-depth study of the wall, visit http://www.arij.org/.
Below you will find three pieces. The first, by Gideon Levy, suggests that "Israel's real friends will increase the pressure on the [Israeli] government" by criticizing the separation barrier. The second, by Ghada Ageel, a graduate student from the Gaza Strip, paints a moving, harrowing portrait of unarmed Palestinians, fed up with being blocked at a checkpoint for hours, who simply start walking towards the checkpoint, even as Israeli soldiers open fire. The final piece, by Lily Galili of Haaretz, examines the construction of the Abu Dis wall.
--Alain Epp Weaver
1. Cry, our beloved country
By Gideon Levy
Haaretz, January 11, 2004
Perhaps, after all, the world will save Israel from itself. Perhaps Israel's real friends will increase the pressure on the government. Perhaps they will understand that, even in Israel, external pressure is not always bad, because it may be the last chance to bring Israel back on the straight and narrow and make it a more just state.The last attempt is modest, at present, but bodes well. The UN, an institution not highly thought of in Israel, resolved to bring the separation fence to the International Court of Justice in The Hague (ICJ), another institution sneered at in this country. This has already aroused surprising nervousness in Jerusalem's government corridors. Where the outcry of the Palestinians and the protest of the extreme left failed, the UN succeeded. This is not bad news. Suddenly Jerusalem officials discovered the wrongs the fence was causing. After most of its construction was completed, incarcerating thousands of families in compounds without anyone caring, a feeling of discomfort arose in Jerusalem. Yosef Lapid even warned of turning Israel into South Africa in the eyes of the world.Good morning, justice minister, but your warning is too late. South Africa has been here for a long time already, and this is how most states of the world see it. Still, better late than never, only it's a pity the justice minister needed The Hague threat to understand that the fence his government built is an apartheid fence.Had he bothered to go and see with his own eyes the thousands of school children waiting every morning, in all weather, for the IDF or Border Police jeep to arrive and open the gate for them on their way to school, the farmers cut off from their fields, the patients kept away from their clinics, the villages locked and bolted and the sight of a town behind barbed wire, he would not have needed the threat from The Hague to understand the injustice. After the settlements, the fence is the next punishment to be forced on the Palestinians. Israel, as usual, ignored it.South Africa was saved from itself and became a fair state, first and foremost because of international pressure exerted on its government. Had it not been for the economic sanctions and political isolation, perhaps apartheid would have lasted forever. Most of the fighters against apartheid saw the international pressure as a blessing and encouraged it. Regrettably, this applies to the Israeli occupation as well.The pressure on apartheid South Africa began with a decision of the same ICJ the fence has now been brought before. From there, it's a short step to imposing economic sanctions and other boycotts, until the regime collapses and justice is established in the battered country. This could be the narrative of events in our case too. Anyone who fears for Israel's moral image should not be afraid of this.Even without the wall, the Israeli occupation could be compared to South Africa's apartheid, even if the Israeli ideology is less despicable. Don't roads for Jews only, as most West Bank roads are today, justify the comparison? Aren't roadblocks distinguishing among people on the sole basis of origin racist?It is regrettable that the fence reached The Hague. It is a pity Israel did not understand by itself that everyone may build a fence for his defense, but only on his own territory, not his neighbor's. Those who were supposed to raise a hue and cry against the fence that imprisoned people and usurped their land, kept mum. Those whose job it was to preserve the state's moral image and prevent what the fence is causing to tens of thousands of innocent people, betrayed their duty.The media were not interested, the justice minister waited for The Hague, the attorney general gave everything the stamp of approval and the Supreme Court said not a word. Only the threat from The Hague managed to raise doubts.Now the fence track around a few imprisoned villages is being modified, in an attempt to correct a little of the evil. What happened? Didn't the IDF know before that Hirbat Jabara would be fenced in from all directions, that Azun would perish behind the fence and that some of Joyous' houses would be cut off from the village? Didn't they look at the maps? Didn't they read the reports? Or the world newspapers?It is sad that fear of the ICJ fell on this project of iniquity, rather than fear of the High Court of Justice in Jerusalem. Thus, The Hague was left as the last recourse for justice in Israel.The hope that international institutions will rescue Israel from its evil doing is very problematic. But when the institutions of law and justice of the state fail, there is no recourse but to turn to the international one. Just like it would have been better had the whites in South Africa understood themselves that their regime was based on evil, it would have been better if those in power in Israel understood finally that our occupation regime is based on terrible evil that should have ended a long time ago.When this does not happen, when 37 years go by and the occupation only becomes more brutal, when the Israeli consciousness is not being "seared" and does not internalize the enormity of the wickedness, there is no choice but to turn to the world for help. "Cry, the beloved country," wrote South African teacher Alan Paton in 1948 about his country's sick regime. The enlightened world cheered. But when the beloved country does not cry out itself, only curls inwardly in indifference, there is no choice but to turn to the world, so that it cries out instead.
2. At a checkpoint in Gaza, courage and fear
Ghada Ageel, International Herald Tribune
Wednesday, January 14, 2004
http://www.iht.com/articles/124836.html
ZAHRA, Gaza. Last month, I went to visit my cousin Muhammad Aqil Abu-Shmaleh at the European hospital. Muhammad had been wounded in October in an Israeli missile strike that killed two of its intended targets and a bystander. A piece of shrapnel had plunged into Muhammad's spinal cord and left him paralyzed. He had been at the wrong place at the wrong time.
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The life of my family has now been turned upside down as we fight for Muhammad's physical and psychological health. The one comfort we have is the outpouring of concern and support from our neighbors in Khan Yunis, from Israelis of good will, and from friends the world over.
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On our way home from visiting Muhammad, my husband Nasser, my 3-year-old son Tariq and I were stuck at the checkpoint between Khan Yunis and Gaza City for more than six hours. This should be a 40-minute trip.
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At 6:50 p.m., the Israeli soldiers finally allowed some cars to pass. After five minutes they closed the checkpoint again. The people stuck on the other side of the checkpoint became so angry that they left their taxis and started to walk, challenging the Israelis and their guns. I felt a mixture of shock that people in Gaza were confronting guns with their chests, pride that Palestinians could do such things, when it was all too possible that nonviolent resistance could result in their death, and fear of what would happen.
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I had good cause for concern. Israeli soldiers started to shoot toward the people. It was very close and absolutely terrifying. I have lived with war, violence and occupation for all of my 33 years, but will never become accustomed to the horror and the fear.
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Adding to my fear was the presence of our son. Close by, a young man was shot in the back of his leg. Incredibly, the people continued to walk. Friends of the youth put him in our car.
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The youngster was bleeding and crying and his sobs mixed with those of my child. There is a powerful instinct, which I believe all mothers have, to protect children at any cost. But there, at that time, I felt totally powerless. Yet I was not completely immobilized. I started to shout at people to open the way for our car to move. At the same time I punched the numbers I know all too well for the hospital to send an ambulance.
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After 15 minutes of shouting and maneuvering, we got the youth into an ambulance. I discovered I had lost my voice from screaming.
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My family's refugee camp, Khan Yunis, was recently attacked twice in one week by Israeli forces. Dozens of homes were demolished, like the hundreds of others in Gaza and the West Bank that have been reduced to rubble over the past three years. Many families came to my parents' home to take shelter. It may be 2003, but in my mind we have traveled back to 1948 when my parents and hundreds of thousands of our people fled their homes.
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What more does Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's government want of us? What benefit is gained by the Israeli Army keeping civilians waiting for hours at checkpoints? How can Israel's leaders justify driving us from our homes 55 years ago and then setting their sights and bulldozers on our refugee camps?
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How can it be conscionable for good people anywhere that Palestinians are forced to flee from place to place, never to return home?
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Having seen my cousin lying in a hospital bed and a teenager bleeding profusely in the back of our family car with my 3-year-old looking on, I realize that there is no place to run and no place to hide in Gaza. My son was not physically harmed, but how can a 3-year-old process what my mind can scarcely comprehend? His psychological processing consists of running around the house, cocking his finger like a gun and shouting, "Tah, tah, tah" to imitate the sound of the Israeli bullets so recently fired in his direction.
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When Nasser and I married we thought a just peace was a real possibility. We thought we would be able to offer our children safety and a hopeful future. I went so far as to study Hebrew in Israel. But our hopes for the future of our family and our people have not been met.
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The occupation continues because Sharon's government continues to think it can have both quiet and occupation. It cannot.
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When you see people walk unarmed into gunfire to reach their destination you realize that they are striving for something more than a physical destination. This is what I believe can be best expressed as the very human desire for freedom. No power and no force can enter our hearts and extinguish it.
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That day of Palestinian freedom will be sped up considerably if such spontaneous, nonviolent displays of principle and courage receive more coverage in the United States and elsewhere. We need no U.S. Army to fight for us. We ask only for a commitment to evenhandedness.
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We have suffered long enough.
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The writer, a doctoral student at Exeter University, Britain, lives in Gaza.
3. Wailing wall
By Lily Galili
Ha'aretz, January 16, 2004
With great speed, the original low, irrelevant wall is being replaced in East Jerusalem with a new structure that resembles some vast mythological dragon. All around are people who thought they'd already seen everything during the occupation, watching the scene in disbelief
If Jesus had been born 2,000 years later, he would have had a hard time bringing about the famous miracle of Bethany, in which he bid Lazarus - who had died four days earlier and was buried in a cave, wrapped in shrouds - to "come forth." This conjecture is not based on new information about changes in Jesus' skills, but on the height and impact of the wall that is now being built in the town of Azzariyeh, next to Jerusalem, the Bethany of the New Testament, whose Arabic name derives from the name of Lazarus. The local Palestinians, showing surprising humor in view of the massive barrier that is being erected in front of their homes, joke that the wall would have made it impossible for even Jesus to get to the place. And even if Jesus would have found passage problematic, it's easy to understand how flesh-and-blood Palestinians feel in the face of the "obstacle" that is being built in front of their eyes - a concrete wall, 8 meters high, made of slabs that are connected to one another. There are many objections to the Israeli use of the word "obstacle," as though it were a euphemism to avoid the open use of the word "wall." In fact, though, "obstacle" is an extraordinarily accurate word in this case. A wall is just a wall, but this threatening concrete monster is rapidly becoming a true obstacle in every sphere of life.According to a study by the United Nations Office for Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), which is based in East Jerusalem, the wall in this area will disrupt not only the mobility of the Palestinians, but also their access to education and health services, and sources of livelihood - all basic, existential needs that the Fourth Geneva Convention is intended to protect and ensure. The opposition of OCHA to the fence is not all-inclusive; it is based on the route of the fence and its infringement of these basic human rights. Up to their nosesOn Monday of this week four heads were looking out of a window on the second floor of a residential building in the town of Abu Dis, which abuts on the Old City of Jerusalem to the east. They watched with astonishment as the slabs of the wall were connected to one another, each new piece bringing the wall closer to the very tip of their nose, like some sort of looming mythological dragon. The heads belong to four students who attend Al-Quds University, three of them studying nursing, the fourth, political science. All four are from the West Bank, two from the Tul Karm area, the other two from Hebron. Like young people everywhere, they sought not only higher education, but also independence away from home in the big city; and, like other Muslims, they wanted to be close to the mosque in Jerusalem. Instead, they got the fence in their face, two meters from the entrance to their house. It started off as a low fence, 2.5 meters tall. Even then, when it was first to be built, three months ago, it was a visual blight, but that, it turns out, wasn't the end. Many photographs documented local residents, including elderly people and children, climbing over that nascent version of the wall. This week it grew taller. In the meantime the four are imprisoned in their residence, without electricity - which was cut off because of the construction - and subjected to ear-splitting noise. They can't even leave their apartment, because of the roadblocks that have been set up everywhere in order to protect the wall. "I have already missed an important exam in English because of this," says Mohammed Lutfi Huseen, who was born in Kuwait, where his father teaches English, and returned here alone three years ago. "This is not what I dreamed about," he adds with an embarrassed smile.Now Huseen is watching as the ineffective low wall is being transformed into a high wall. The forklifts, the bulldozers, the generator that was brought in so the work could continue at night - they are all back. With a speed uncharacteristic of Israel the irrelevant wall is being uprooted and replaced with the new structure. All around are people who thought they had already seen everything in the course of the occupation, and are watching the scene in disbelief. "They have killed my business," says Hassan Ekermawi, who has a grocery store in the gas station that has now become a construction site. "Before this, people used to come to buy from Abu Dis, from Azzariyeh, from the eastern part of Sawahra. It's all one unit of Jerusalem, you know. Now no one comes." The grocery store will, in fact, remain on the Jerusalem side, but the customers will be on the other side, behind the wall. "Do you know what the strangest thing about this story is?" he asks and replies himself, "that we, the Jerusalem Palestinians, are paying for this whole project with our taxes, with the cut in my father's old-age pension. I am not talking about politics now, I am talking about life." About 10 meters away, on the other side of the road along which the wall is being built, all the stores are closed. It's hard to avoid wondering who decided that the Jerusalem shop owner on the right side of the road is so much friendlier to Israel than his colleague on the left side, which will now become "territories." Now six 14-year-old students arrive at the area of the wall. They are making their way from their school in Jerusalem to their homes in Azzariyeh. They all have Jerusalem residence cards, but they live in the territories. They know that this is probably the last time they will be able to do this route on foot, to jump over the low wall and get home safely. At the speed with which the work is being carried out, with an incentive of NIS 500 for night work per worker, it's likely that their route will be blocked by a high wall within a day or two.They are asked what they think will happen. "Our parents will try to rent houses in East Jerusalem," they say. This, too, is part of the weird logic in this story. The implicit intention of the route chosen for the fence - which can be summed up by saying that Israel will get as much land as possible and the Palestinians as little as possible - doesn't always work in reality. According to OCHA, about 15 percent of the 11,000 residents of Abu Dis and about a quarter of the 16,000 residents of Azzariyeh have Jerusalem ID cards. Some of them, those who can afford to pay the rocketing prices of the apartments in East Jerusalem, where demand has soared due to the wall, are moving to the other side. Defeated logicIf the wall has any demographic logic, it is defeated by events on the ground. One of the speakers in a symposium about the wall that was held this week at the Van Leer Jerusalem Institute was Terry Bulata, principal of the New Generation School in Abu Dis. She has a Jerusalem ID card, though her husband has a "territories" card. "If the idea was to make life hard for us with the wall, so that we will leave, that is not about to happen," she says. "We have learned the lesson of 1948: We are not going anywhere."Nor is Ibrahim Qiresh going anywhere, though he could if he wants. Twelve years ago he moved with his wife and their 9 children from Wadi Joz in East Jerusalem to Azzariyeh, where prices were cheaper. He built his home on a steep hill in the town, which is a suburb of Jerusalem, and then rebuilt it after it was demolished by order of the municipality. A finely wrought window adorning the facade of the house is the professional pride of Qiresh, a metalworker who counts many Israelis, including artists, among his friends. In the past month a 9-meter-high wall has arisen in front of Qiresh's house, cutting him off from the lovely view of the slopes of the Mount of Olives. In his workshop, where he also has a large dovecote - he raises the birds for pleasure, explaining, "I can't bring myself to slaughter them for food" - he says that until now his life was pretty orderly, even if by moving he lost his entitlement to National Insurance Institute child allowances and to Kupat Holim health maintenance organization services for himself. An Israeli friend helped him obtain private health insurance, as though he were a foreign resident. "It's as though I am living abroad," he guffaws. Still, the Jerusalem residency card afforded him a certain mobility, and clients would come from Tel Aviv to order special window frames. In the course of the intifada, with its prolonged closures and curfews, he lost his livelihood, and now his life is about to be ruined, too. Even now, with the wall only in the construction stage, the Jerusalem card, which was once an asset, has become a liability. Whenever he arrives at a checkpoint, or tries to get home on foot via the Mount of Olives in order to bypass checkpoints, he is told, "Go back to Jerusalem." "I don't know what is going to happen now, with the wall," he says. "I live in Palestine, but the police keep sending me back to Jerusalem. But I can't go back to Jerusalem. I tried, but even the simplest apartment there costs at least $500 a month. I haven't got that. When the wall is completely finished, I will close the workshop. We will be in a prison. What can we do. When God brings a person into the world, he calculates his life." Devastating effectsHowever, other elements are also intervening in that calculation. While we were conversing, a curfew was suddenly imposed on Azzariyeh. According to the official version, there was a "serious security problem"; according to the Palestinian version, the curfew was intended to help get the wall built faster. Within minutes, the town, once a favored shopping area for Jerusalem's Jews, too, becomes a ghost town. The gates of the shops are slammed shut, people disappear into their homes. From the area next to the high wall, Border Policemen in a Jeep can be seen shooing pedestrians from the bottom of the Mount of Olives toward Azzariyeh. One of them was a young mother who was holding an infant newly born at Makassed Hospital on the Mount of Olives; another was an elderly woman who was returning home from an examination after open-heart surgery. She could barely trudge through the muddy ground, and was assisted by men who saw her plight.But even life as an extreme sport will change once the wall is in place. The residents of Azzariyeh will be cut off not only from their natural attachment to Jerusalem, but also from the hospital that serves them. "Maybe we will die," a women from Azzariyeh says with bizarre merriment as she walks home from a visit to her brother, who has undergone a serious operation at Makassed. But even the right to transit by foot, which is still possible, is ultimately not going to help 10-year-old Abdullah Iyyad. He was born with broken bones in his legs. When he was a year old, his family used all its resources to spend four years in Philadelphia, where there is a children's hospital that specializes in surgery of this kind. The family returned to Azzariyeh 5 years ago. Abdullah, wheelchair-ridden, was sent to a special school, which is also a treatment center, on the Mount of Olives. Before the wall - people here divide their lives into "before" and "after" - Adnan Iyyad, Abdullah's father, brought his son to a taxi that waited every morning by the gas station at the entrance to Azzariyeh, lifted him out of the wheelchair and placed him in the cab, which had yellow (Israeli) license plates. Within three minutes the boy was in school. Now it's a different story. The road from the gas station is blocked and the taxi has to take a long roundabout route via the Ma'aleh Adumim road to the Mount of Olives. Instead of NIS 15, the cost of the trip before, Abdullah's father now has to pay NIS 80 every day to get his son to school. He himself can't drive the boy, because he doesn't have an entry permit for Jerusalem. Because of the steep expenses, the family doesn't have the money to pay for Abdullah's physiotherapy, which costs NIS 30 per treatment, or for gas to heat the house. The wall and the innumerable checkpoints have also had a devastating effect on the livelihood of Adnan Iyyad: Residents of Jerusalem no longer bring him their television sets to repair. The new route is also taking a toll on Abdullah's schooling. Every morning the cab is stuck in traffic jams at the checkpoint, as they wait for the residents of Ma'aleh Adumim - a city east of Jerusalem, in the West Bank - to make their way to work safely. Nearly every day he is late for his first lesson. Taking the approach that everything is relative, Adnan says he envies healthy people who until now could climb over the low fence. After all, it's impossible to lift a wheelchair weighing 75 kilograms over the fence. Until now there was a small gate in the low fence and he was able to carry his son through it, if the soldiers let him. Now the gate is being sealed with concrete and the Iyyad family has a new problem. Like everyone else, they are unable to imagine what life will be like after Azzariyeh is completely sealed off by the wall. Something of that emerging reality can be seen at the "Container Checkpoint." In the West Bank, Ibrahim Halsa's kiosk (which functions in a container) is at least as famous as the Ha'oman 17 nightclub in West Jerusalem. The reason is that the checkpoint between the Jerusalem village of Sawahra and the twisting road that leads to Bethlehem and effectively connects the northern and southern sections of the West Bank, is named after this kiosk, which is no more than an old hut in which Halsa has sold sweets, Coca-Cola and shoe polish for the past 12 years. Until not long ago, it was situated at the bend in the road and was easily accessible to customers. When the permanent checkpoint was established, Halsa was told to move his kiosk to a different road, where passing cars can't possibly stop, so his already meager income was wiped out. Halsa thus joined the growing number of the poor in the West Bank, where unemployment is rampant and which is being abandoned by international aid organizations that are fed up with the unending occupation. After arguing among themselves, the representatives of these organizations reached the conclusion that responsibility lies with the occupier and that by assisting the residents, they were effectively underwriting the occupation. Sawahra is an integral part of the bloc of villages that includes Azzariyeh and Abu Dis, meaning the "territories," but it is also an integral part of Sawahra, which is in Jerusalem, meaning Israel. Now the wall, which is already under construction here, will divide the two parts of Sawahra, and the entire bloc that will remain in the territories is supposed to shift its urban affinity from Jerusalem to Bethlehem. It sounds simple, but it involves the uprooting of a whole fabric of life. For example, instead of being able to walk four kilometers to Makassed Hospital, those on the West Bank side will have to make a trip of 18 kilometers along a winding trail that is known in Arabic as the "Valley of Fire." The checkpoint, which brought about endless traffic jams even before the fence sealed the area hermetically, seems to have no logic. If the intention of the fence in the Jerusalem area is to cut off the city from the West Bank, why stick a checkpoint in the heart of what has now become a central road that links the north of the West Bank to the south? "There is a security event," a grim-faced Border Policeman says, explaining the long line of cars backed up at the place. An ambulance that had tried to make its way through the narrow space on the side was stuck in that traffic jam this week. The driver simply gave up and stopped along the shoulder. In the ambulance was a 7-year-old boy suffering from brain cancer, who was on his way home to a village near Hebron after receiving chemotherapy in Jordan. The boy's father, Faiz Aidah, a graduate of Abu Dis University and a social worker by profession, stepped out of the ambulance. The chilling calm with which he accepted the situation - the result of a cruel process of adjustment - was harder to take than any outburst of hysteria would have been. Every 20 days he makes this journey with his son, "and it's the same situation every time," he says. Afterward he would explain that it's nevertheless easier to get to Jordan for treatment than to Hadassah University Hospital on nearby Mount Scopus, which entails a route studded with no end of checkpoints. "The fence around Jerusalem in the east is not separating Israelis from Palestinians, but is separating 200,000 Palestinians, who will remain in Israel, from 82,500 Palestinians outside the fence," was how Colonel (ret.) Shaul Arieli, who was involved in the Geneva Accord, summed up the situation in the symposium held at the Van Leer Institute. "The political consideration overcame the security consideration."The situation was summed up less neatly by Ayoub Saadi Abu Saad, a 25-year-old construction worker, who arrived breathing heavily after a panicky run. In the morning, when he crossed the open field between Azzariyeh and Jerusalem on his way to work, as he does every morning, he ran into Border Policeman, who told him, "Palestinian, go to Palestine." So he ran. In a few days even that route will be impossible. "They are closing us in like birds in a cage," he says. "Now all they have to do is cover it with a net and we won't be able to fly, either." Then he bursts out laughing, pleased with his metaphor - though a lot less pleased with the situation.
Sunday, January 4
MCC Palestine Update #92
MCC Palestine Update #92
January 4, 2004
What I took away from Christmas 2003 in Palestine was a feeling of hope about and thankfulness for the dynamism of the Palestinian churches. These are not emotions that one usually encounters in writings about the Palestinian churches. Many people have written in the past about the fragility on the Palestinian churches. Some highlight the impact of emigration on the churches, as Palestinian Christians, with their economic and cultural ties to the West, emigrate to Europe and North America in search of better economic opportunities and greater political stability for their families. Others such as Israeli government officials and Joshua Hammer in a recent book and article for Newsweek present Palestinian Christians as being oppressed and discriminated against by the majority Muslim population.
If you spend any significant amount of time with Palestinian Christians, you will quickly learn that claims of Palestinian Christians being persecuted by Palestinian Muslims are distortions of complicated realities. With the Palestinian Authority basically a tattered shell, lawlessness is on the rise in the occupied territories, and with it all types of conflicts: rent disputes, land disputes, family and clan disputes, disputes among Christian denominations, disputes between villagers and city-dwellers, refugees and non-refugees, and more. Palestinian Christian partners of MCC urge Western Christians to be skeptical of reports of Christians being persecuted. [An example: a relative of mine was listening to a Christian radio station this past month, and heard an American preacher, claiming to be reporting from Bethlehem, saying that the "Muslims" were not allowing Christians to go to Bethlehem; in reality, it was the Israeli authorities who were hindering Christians from the West Bank from getting to Bethlehem.] Claims of Christian persecution are a routine and easy method in which the occupying power seeks to divide and conquer. The complex reality of life in the occupied territories, including life for Palestinian Christians, can't be reduced to radio sound bites or catch phrases for magazine articles.
If Palestinian Christians are not oppressed, the ongoing emigration of Palestinian Christians (who emigrate at a similar rate to Muslims of the same economic class, but whose overall numbers are much harder hit) does present a worry to the churches. MCC will continue to walk with the Palestinian churches, as it has for over 50 years, as they seek to witness and minister in this difficult setting. This Christmas, however, I was not overwhelmed by a sense of worry by those around me but rather by joy and a vibrant spirit of dynamic presence.
My family and I celebrated Christmas this year in Zababdeh, a small village in the northern West Bank, the only population center in the north with a majority Christian population, where we had taught English for three years in the early 1990s. The local Catholic church, where we worshipped, was fuller than we had ever seen it, with at least 700 crowded inside during the Christmas Eve and Christmas Day services and a couple hundred more outside. The impression we took from Zababdeh this Christmas was of a Christian community integrated into its surrounding society, dedicated to maintaining a vibrant Christian presence in the land. Examples that stood out for us included: the priest making a cell phone call during the Christmas Eve service so that two young Christian men from the village, currently in Israeli administrative detention, awaiting charges, could hear the congregation sing a hymn to the tune of Adeste Fideles; speaking with Awad, a friend in his mid-30s who now works for the public relations department of the current Palestinian Prime Minister, Ahmed Qureia; chatting with Reem, one of our former students, who now coordinates an emergency employment program in Muslim villages around Nablus for Save the Children; hearing Iyad, the vice-principal of the Catholic school where we once taught, describe how the school brings Muslim and Christian students together in friendship.
Keep the Palestinian churches in your prayers. As they struggle with dwindling numbers and as they seek to be faithful disciples under military occupation, Palestinian Christians ask for our prayers of encouragement. But remember also to give thanks for the energy and vibrancy within the Palestinian churches, churches that live out a minority witness to the God who became incarnate in this land.
Below you will find two pieces. In the first, from the London Review of Books, Israeli historian Ilan Pappe looks at what he calls the "prehistory" of the Geneva Initiative, explaining that it fails to provide a durable solution to Palestinian dispossession and to the plight of Palestinian refugees. In the second piece, from the on-line journal Bitter Lemons, Bir Zeit University political scientist Ali Jarbawi discusses Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's plan for "unilateral separation" and examines how Palestinians might and should respond to these plans.
--Alain Epp Weaver
1. The Geneva Bubble
Ilan Pappe on the prehistory of the latest proposals
London Review of Books, January 4, 2004
Even though we live in an age of intensive and intrusive media coverage, TV viewers in Israel were lucky to catch a glimpse of the meetings that produced the Geneva Accord. The clip we watched in November showed a group of well- known Israeli writers and peaceniks shouting at a group of not so well-known and rather cowed Palestinians, most of them officials of the Palestinian Authority.
Abba Eban once said that the Palestinians never missed an opportunity to miss an opportunity, and that, more or less, was what the Israelis were saying now. This was their last chance, the Palestinians were told: the current offer was the best and most generous Israelis have ever made them. It's a familiar scene. The various memoirs produced by the major players in the Oslo Accord suggest that much the same sort of thing was said there, while leaks from the Camp David summit in 2000 describe similar exchanges between Clinton, Barak and Arafat. In fact, the Israeli tone and attitude have barely changed since British despair led to the Palestine question being transferred to the UN at the end of the Second World War. The UN was a very young and inexperienced organisation in those days, and the people it appointed to find a solution to the conflict were at a loss where to begin or how to proceed. The Jewish Agency gladly filled the vacuum, exploiting Palestinian disarray and passivity to the full.
In May 1947, the Agency handed a plan, complete with a map, to the UN Special Committee on Palestine (UNSCOP), proposing the creation of a Jewish state over 80 per cent of Palestine - more or less Israel today without the Occupied Territories. In November 1947 the Committee reduced the Jewish state to 55 per cent of Palestine, and turned the plan into UN General Assembly Resolution 181.
Its rejection by Palestine surprised no one - the Palestinians had been opposed to partition since 1918. Zionist endorsement of it was a foregone conclusion, and in the eyes of the international policemen, that was a solid enough basis for peace in the Holy Land. Imposing the will of one side on the other was hardly the way to effect a reconciliation, and the resolution triggered violence on a scale unprecedented in the history of modern Palestine. If the Palestinians weren't happy with the Zionist idea of partition, it was time for unilateral action. The Jewish leadership turned to its May 1947 map, showing clearly which parts of Palestine were coveted as the future Jewish state. The problem was that within the desired 80 per cent, the Jews were a minority of 40 per cent (660,000 Jews and one million Palestinians). But the leaders of the Yishuv had foreseen this difficulty at the outset of the Zionist project in Palestine. The solution as they saw it was the enforced transfer of the indigenous population, so that a pure Jewish state could be established. On 10 March 1948, the Zionist leadership adopted the infamous Plan Dalet, which resulted in the ethnic cleansing of the areas regarded as the future Jewish state in Palestine.
Palestine was not divided, it was destroyed, and most of its people expelled.These were the events which triggered the conflict that has lasted ever since. The PLO emerged in the late 1950s as an embodiment of the Palestinian struggle for return, reconstruction and restitution. But the refugees were ignored by the international community and the regional Arab powers. Only Nasser seemed to adopt their cause, forcing the Arab League to express its concern. As the ill-fated Arab manoeuvres of June 1967 showed, this was not enough. In June 1967, the whole of Palestine became Israel; the new geopolitical reality demanded a renewed peace process. At first the UN took the initiative, but it was soon replaced by American peacemakers. The early architects of Pax Americana had some ideas of their own, but they were flatly rejected by the Israelis, and got nowhere. American brokering became a proxy for Israeli peace plans, which were based on three assumptions: that the 1948 ethnic cleansings would not be an issue; that negotiations would only concern the future of the areas Israel had occupied in 1967, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip; and, third, that the fate of the Palestinian minority in Israel was not to be part of a comprehensive settlement. This meant that 80 per cent of Palestine and more than 50 per cent of Palestinians were to be excluded from the peacemaking process. The formula was accepted unconditionally by the US, and sold as the best possible offer to the rest of the world. For a while - until 1977 - the Israelis insisted on another precondition. They wanted to divide the West Bank with the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan. (The 'Jordanian option', as it was called, was later adopted by the Reagan Administration as its own peace plan.) When Likud came to power in 1977, the option dropped from view - the new Government was not interested in any kind of agreement or compromise - but it was revived in the days of the national unity government, 1984-87, until the Jordanians realised that the Israeli Government would not relinquish the entire West Bank even to them.
The Israeli occupation continued unhindered in the absence of a proper peace rocess. From its very first day - long before the suicide bombers - there were house demolitions, killings of innocent citizens, expulsions, closures and general harassment. The 1950s and 1960s saw the rise of the ever- expanding settler movement, which brought with it not only land expropriation but also further brutality. The Palestinians responded with a radical form of political Islam, which by the end of the first twenty years had become a force to reckon with. It was bolder in its resistance to the occupation than anything that had preceded it, but equally harsh in its attitude to internal rivals and the population at large. Neither movement, any more than the Likud Government before them, showed any interest in a diplomatic effort to resolve the conflict.
Frustration in the occupied areas intensified until, in December 1987, the local population rose up against the occupiers.In due course the violence ended and a new period of peacemaking began, very like the previous ones. On the Israeli side the team was extended to include academics as well as politicians. Once again, it was an Israeli endeavour seeking American approval. Once again, the Americans tried to put forward some ideas of their own: the Madrid process of 1991 was part of an American attempt to justify the first Gulf War. There were ideas in it with which the Palestinians could agree. But it was a long and cumbersome business and in the meantime a new Israeli initiative was developed.
This initiative had a novel component. For the first time, the Israelis were looking for Palestinian partners in the search for their kind of peace in Palestine. And they aimed at the top - the PLO leadership in Tunis. They were lured into the process by an Israeli promise, enshrined in Article 5, Clause 3 of the Oslo Accord, that after five years of catering for Israeli security needs, the main Palestinian demands would be put on the negotiating table in preparation for a final agreement. Meanwhile, the Palestinians would be allowed to play with independence. They were offered the opportunity to form a Palestinian Authority, decorated with the insignia of sovereignty, that could remain intact as long as it clamped down on any resistance movement against the Israelis. For that purpose, the PA employed five secret service organisations, which compounded the occupiers' abuses of human and civil rights with those of the indigenous Administration. Palestine's quasi-autonomy had little bearing on the occupation. In some areas it was directly enforced, in others indirectly. More Jewish settlers arrived, and harassment continued everywhere. When the Palestinian opposition retaliated with suicide attacks, the Israelis enriched the repertoire of collective punishment in such a way that support for the suicide bombers grew by the week.
Six years after the signing of Oslo, the 'peace camp' once more came to power in Israel, with Ehud Barak at its head. A year later he was facing electoral defeat, having been over ambitious in almost every field. Peace with the Palestinians seemed to be the only salvation. The Palestinians expected the promise made in Oslo to be the basis for the new negotiations. As they saw it, they had agreed to wait five years: it was time to discuss the problem of Jerusalem, the fate of the refugees and the future of the settlements. The Israelis once more devised the plan, enlisting even more academics and 'professional' experts. The fragmented Palestinian leadership was unable to come up with counterproposals without outside help, and sought advice in such unlikely places as the Adam Smith Institute in London. Not surprisingly, the Israeli plan alone was on the negotiating table at Camp David in the summer of2000.
Endorsed by the Americans, it offered withdrawal from most of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, leaving about 15 per cent of original Palestine for the Palestinians, in the form of discrete cantons bisected by highways, settlements army camps and walls. No capital in Jerusalem, no solution to the refugee problem and total abuse of the concept of statehood and independence. Even the fragile Arafat, who had hitherto seemed to be happy with the Salata (the perks of power), having never exercised Sulta (actual power), could not sign a document that made a mockery of every Palestinian demand. He was immediately depicted as a warmonger. Unarmed demonstrators showed their dismay in the autumn of 2000 and were shot by the Israeli Army. The Palestinian response was not late in coming: the resistance was militarised.
Three years into the second intifada, the peace effort resumed once more. The same formula was at work: an Israeli initiative catering to the Israeli public and Israeli needs disguised as a piece of honest brokering on the part of the Americans. Three initiatives appeared in 2003. The first has already won American support: the road map. At the end of that road, 10 per cent of Palestine will be divided into two huge prison camps - one in Gaza and the other in the West Bank - with no solution to the refugee problem and full Israeli control of Jerusalem. The initiators are still looking for a prospective Palestinian chief warden. Having lost Mahmoud Abbas, they are pinning their hopes on Ahmad Qurei. The second is the Ayalon-Nusseibeh proposal, based on a total Israeli withdrawal from the Occupied Territories (apart from greater Jerusalem, which takes up about a third of the West Bank) in return for a Palestinian undertaking to relinquish the refugees' right of return. I suspect that Sari Nusseibeh, the president of al-Quds University and former PA representative in Jerusalem, is repeating a ploy he attempted in the first intifada, when he suggested the de jure annexation of the Occupied Territories to Israel, so as to show the Israelis that Israel could not include the West Bank and Gaza within its borders and still be at once Jewish and democratic. He now hopes to expose Israel's unwillingness to evict the settlements. The Ayalon-Nusseibeh plan has so far failed to impress the Israelis, but it did depress the refugee communities and I wonder whether it was worth it. Ami Ayalon, the head of Shin Bet from 1996 to 2000, lives in the former village of Ijzim, from which the Palestinian population was expelled in 1948.
And now we have the Geneva bubble: an impressive production both as a document and as a Hollywood-style ceremony. It will probably never become a reality, but it's worth taking a look at. Its basic features are described by David Grossman in the introduction to the Hebrew version. For the first time, there is full Palestinian recognition of the right of the Jewish people to a state in Israel and recognition of Jerusalem as Israel's capital. The document offers practical and detailed solutions to the refugee problem; a problem that has caused all efforts until now to fail. There is also in the document a promise that the majority of the Jews living beyond the Green Line will remain in their homes and become part of the state of Israel. There is also a Palestinian commitment to demilitarise the Palestinian state and allow no foreign troops to be stationed in it. What catches the eye, not only in this preface but in the document as a whole, is that while the refugees' right of return is an obstacle that has to be removed if peace and reconciliation are to be achieved, the Jewishness of Israel - i.e. the Jewishness of the original state with the annexed blocks of settlements in the Occupied Territories and greater Jerusalem is not an obstacle at all. On the contrary, what is missing according to this logic is Palestinian recognition of the new greater Israel. And what is offered to encourage the Palestinians to recognise the state built on the land from which they were ethnically cleansed in 1948 and that was taken from them in 1967? What is the generous offer the Israeli peaceniks loudly urged their counterparts on the Geneva campaign not to pass up? A mini-state, built on 15 per cent of what used to be Palestine, with a capital near Jerusalem and no army. On close reading, the authority and power vested in the aforementioned state bear little relation to any notion of statehood we might derive from global reality or political science textbooks. Far more important, the Geneva project would leave the refugees in exile. The small print says that the Palestinian refugees would be able to choose either to return to what's left of their former country or stay in their camps. As they will probably choose to wait until the international community fulfils its commitment to allow their unconditional return under Resolution 194, they will remain refugees while their compatriots in Israel continue to be second-class citizens in the remaining 85 per cent of Palestine.
There is no acknowledgment of the cause of this conflict, the 1948 ethnic cleansing; there is no process of truth and reconciliation that will make Israel accountable for what it did either in 1948 or afterwards. Under these circumstances, neither the Palestinians nor the Arab world at large will feel able to accept a Jewish state.
In a celebration in Tel Aviv, the architects of the Geneva Accord played over and over again a popular song called 'And Tel Aviv Will Be Geneva'. But Tel Aviv is not Geneva; it is built on the ruins of six Palestinian villages destroyed in 1948; and it shouldn't be Geneva: it should aspire to be Alexandria or Beirut, so that the Jews who invaded the Arab world by force could at last show a willingness to be part of the Middle East rather than remain an alien and alienated state within it.
18 December 2003
Ilan Pappe teaches political science at Haifa University and is chair of the Emil Touma Institute for Palestinian Studies.
2. We will give you more of us
an interview with Ali Jarbawi from Bitter Lemons
Bitterlemons.org: What was your impression of Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's "disengagement plan"?
Jarbawi:” Sharon was giving the Palestinians an ultimatum: "either you accept my roadmap with the 14 alterations injected by my government (and this is the maximum that you will get out of me) or we are going to unilaterally give you less than that. The choice is yours--if you opt for negotiations, I can give you more, but you should know (and this is a tacit understanding) that the most you will get even then is the most that is offered in 'my roadmap', which includes only the land inside the wall."
Bitterlemons.org: Why this proposal now?
Jarbawi:” First, I don't think that Sharon is changing his ideology, but practically, there are many things that he wants to take into account. He wants to please the American administration, but he also wants to use this time during which the American administration is entering an election campaign to push for his own interests. He also wants to send a message to Israeli society because he was criticized internally for having no plan. Third, he wants to kill the Geneva accord. I think that Sharon has reached the conclusion--and this might be the one item that he has changed his mind about--that after wanting all of "Eretz Israel" to become a Jewish state and advocating for a long time for the expulsion of Palestinians, their physical transfer is impossible. Now, instead of a practical transfer, he wants to implement the "legal transfer" of Palestinians. Legal transfer means that while we will live inside "Eretz Israel", we will not be part of the state of Israel, meaning we will not reach a situation of apartheid and Palestinians will no longer be able to opt for one state. Basically, he has in mind that part of the West Bank will be incorporated into the state of Israel. The wall is the marker; it is not a security barrier, but the border. Put the Palestinians in cantons and let them call that a state, but that state will not be sovereign, will not be independent. If Palestinians accept this through negotiations, then Sharon is ready to give it to them. If they do not, then he is going to remove the Israeli military presence from small areas and sit tight until Palestinians agree to return to his plan, which he will disguise under the roadmap. The second stage of the roadmap calls for a temporary state; this is the temporary state made permanent.”
Bitterlemons.org: Why did the meeting between prime ministers Sharon and Ahmed Qurei' never happen?
Jarbawi: From a Palestinian perspective, why should it happen? I don't understand why the Palestinian prime minister would go and meet with Sharon, especially after his speech. The Palestinian reaction to the speech was that we reject unilateral actions. A meeting with Sharon now means that we accept negotiations instead. The question is, on what basis? On his roadmap and the 14 qualifications? The greatest thing that Sharon gained from this ultimatum is that his roadmap will become legitimate and will become the maximum Palestinians can achieve.
Bitterlemons.org: In this situation, what can the Palestinian Authority do?
Jarbawi: I think that the best way to face Sharon's ultimatum is not to meet with him, but to offer him and Israel a Palestinian ultimatum in return. The Palestinian ultimatum would be: "We know that you want to squeeze us into cantons and thereby cheat us and the world of the two-state solution. We agree to a two-state solution--we have indicated this for a long time--but that two-state solution must be based on the 1967 borders, give and take minor exchanges. As such, we are giving you a few months (maybe six months) and as a measure of trust, we will offer you a Palestinian truce [during that time]. If, however, the wall continues to be built and the settlement expansion policy continues in these six months, then we will understand that you are closing the gates to a two-state solution. "If so, then we will accommodate you. In that case, we are going to close the two-state option forever, and from then on, we will pursue the establishment of just one state. Further, from then on, you will have to bear the consequences of your occupation. We will dissolve the Palestinian Authority and you won't have the Authority there to cripple with your actions, even as you blame it morning and night. Then you will have to deal with the Palestinian people, meeting us on equal terms 20 or 30 years from now when there is one vote for every person. "The meaning of all of this is that if you are afraid of the political effects of demography, then we are going to use it against you. Beware."
Bitterlemons.org: What are the dangers of this approach?
Jarbawi: Any plan should have its alternative built in, and this requires more discussion among Palestinians. We should tell Sharon that if he doesn't accept the two-state solution [in order] to separate from us, then we will give him more of us. To give Israel more of us means that we have to dissolve the Palestinian Authority. In order for the Palestinians to get a fully sovereign, independent state on the 1967 borders, Palestinians should use the only thing that Israel and Israelis are afraid of, i.e. the political effects of the demographic factor. Thus, the one-state solution is the medium for gaining the two-state solution. Now the question is, will the Authority dissolve itself? That is the question that remains to be answered.
-Published 22/12/2003 Bitterlemons.org
Ali Jarbawi is a professor of political science at Birzeit
University
January 4, 2004
What I took away from Christmas 2003 in Palestine was a feeling of hope about and thankfulness for the dynamism of the Palestinian churches. These are not emotions that one usually encounters in writings about the Palestinian churches. Many people have written in the past about the fragility on the Palestinian churches. Some highlight the impact of emigration on the churches, as Palestinian Christians, with their economic and cultural ties to the West, emigrate to Europe and North America in search of better economic opportunities and greater political stability for their families. Others such as Israeli government officials and Joshua Hammer in a recent book and article for Newsweek present Palestinian Christians as being oppressed and discriminated against by the majority Muslim population.
If you spend any significant amount of time with Palestinian Christians, you will quickly learn that claims of Palestinian Christians being persecuted by Palestinian Muslims are distortions of complicated realities. With the Palestinian Authority basically a tattered shell, lawlessness is on the rise in the occupied territories, and with it all types of conflicts: rent disputes, land disputes, family and clan disputes, disputes among Christian denominations, disputes between villagers and city-dwellers, refugees and non-refugees, and more. Palestinian Christian partners of MCC urge Western Christians to be skeptical of reports of Christians being persecuted. [An example: a relative of mine was listening to a Christian radio station this past month, and heard an American preacher, claiming to be reporting from Bethlehem, saying that the "Muslims" were not allowing Christians to go to Bethlehem; in reality, it was the Israeli authorities who were hindering Christians from the West Bank from getting to Bethlehem.] Claims of Christian persecution are a routine and easy method in which the occupying power seeks to divide and conquer. The complex reality of life in the occupied territories, including life for Palestinian Christians, can't be reduced to radio sound bites or catch phrases for magazine articles.
If Palestinian Christians are not oppressed, the ongoing emigration of Palestinian Christians (who emigrate at a similar rate to Muslims of the same economic class, but whose overall numbers are much harder hit) does present a worry to the churches. MCC will continue to walk with the Palestinian churches, as it has for over 50 years, as they seek to witness and minister in this difficult setting. This Christmas, however, I was not overwhelmed by a sense of worry by those around me but rather by joy and a vibrant spirit of dynamic presence.
My family and I celebrated Christmas this year in Zababdeh, a small village in the northern West Bank, the only population center in the north with a majority Christian population, where we had taught English for three years in the early 1990s. The local Catholic church, where we worshipped, was fuller than we had ever seen it, with at least 700 crowded inside during the Christmas Eve and Christmas Day services and a couple hundred more outside. The impression we took from Zababdeh this Christmas was of a Christian community integrated into its surrounding society, dedicated to maintaining a vibrant Christian presence in the land. Examples that stood out for us included: the priest making a cell phone call during the Christmas Eve service so that two young Christian men from the village, currently in Israeli administrative detention, awaiting charges, could hear the congregation sing a hymn to the tune of Adeste Fideles; speaking with Awad, a friend in his mid-30s who now works for the public relations department of the current Palestinian Prime Minister, Ahmed Qureia; chatting with Reem, one of our former students, who now coordinates an emergency employment program in Muslim villages around Nablus for Save the Children; hearing Iyad, the vice-principal of the Catholic school where we once taught, describe how the school brings Muslim and Christian students together in friendship.
Keep the Palestinian churches in your prayers. As they struggle with dwindling numbers and as they seek to be faithful disciples under military occupation, Palestinian Christians ask for our prayers of encouragement. But remember also to give thanks for the energy and vibrancy within the Palestinian churches, churches that live out a minority witness to the God who became incarnate in this land.
Below you will find two pieces. In the first, from the London Review of Books, Israeli historian Ilan Pappe looks at what he calls the "prehistory" of the Geneva Initiative, explaining that it fails to provide a durable solution to Palestinian dispossession and to the plight of Palestinian refugees. In the second piece, from the on-line journal Bitter Lemons, Bir Zeit University political scientist Ali Jarbawi discusses Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's plan for "unilateral separation" and examines how Palestinians might and should respond to these plans.
--Alain Epp Weaver
1. The Geneva Bubble
Ilan Pappe on the prehistory of the latest proposals
London Review of Books, January 4, 2004
Even though we live in an age of intensive and intrusive media coverage, TV viewers in Israel were lucky to catch a glimpse of the meetings that produced the Geneva Accord. The clip we watched in November showed a group of well- known Israeli writers and peaceniks shouting at a group of not so well-known and rather cowed Palestinians, most of them officials of the Palestinian Authority.
Abba Eban once said that the Palestinians never missed an opportunity to miss an opportunity, and that, more or less, was what the Israelis were saying now. This was their last chance, the Palestinians were told: the current offer was the best and most generous Israelis have ever made them. It's a familiar scene. The various memoirs produced by the major players in the Oslo Accord suggest that much the same sort of thing was said there, while leaks from the Camp David summit in 2000 describe similar exchanges between Clinton, Barak and Arafat. In fact, the Israeli tone and attitude have barely changed since British despair led to the Palestine question being transferred to the UN at the end of the Second World War. The UN was a very young and inexperienced organisation in those days, and the people it appointed to find a solution to the conflict were at a loss where to begin or how to proceed. The Jewish Agency gladly filled the vacuum, exploiting Palestinian disarray and passivity to the full.
In May 1947, the Agency handed a plan, complete with a map, to the UN Special Committee on Palestine (UNSCOP), proposing the creation of a Jewish state over 80 per cent of Palestine - more or less Israel today without the Occupied Territories. In November 1947 the Committee reduced the Jewish state to 55 per cent of Palestine, and turned the plan into UN General Assembly Resolution 181.
Its rejection by Palestine surprised no one - the Palestinians had been opposed to partition since 1918. Zionist endorsement of it was a foregone conclusion, and in the eyes of the international policemen, that was a solid enough basis for peace in the Holy Land. Imposing the will of one side on the other was hardly the way to effect a reconciliation, and the resolution triggered violence on a scale unprecedented in the history of modern Palestine. If the Palestinians weren't happy with the Zionist idea of partition, it was time for unilateral action. The Jewish leadership turned to its May 1947 map, showing clearly which parts of Palestine were coveted as the future Jewish state. The problem was that within the desired 80 per cent, the Jews were a minority of 40 per cent (660,000 Jews and one million Palestinians). But the leaders of the Yishuv had foreseen this difficulty at the outset of the Zionist project in Palestine. The solution as they saw it was the enforced transfer of the indigenous population, so that a pure Jewish state could be established. On 10 March 1948, the Zionist leadership adopted the infamous Plan Dalet, which resulted in the ethnic cleansing of the areas regarded as the future Jewish state in Palestine.
Palestine was not divided, it was destroyed, and most of its people expelled.These were the events which triggered the conflict that has lasted ever since. The PLO emerged in the late 1950s as an embodiment of the Palestinian struggle for return, reconstruction and restitution. But the refugees were ignored by the international community and the regional Arab powers. Only Nasser seemed to adopt their cause, forcing the Arab League to express its concern. As the ill-fated Arab manoeuvres of June 1967 showed, this was not enough. In June 1967, the whole of Palestine became Israel; the new geopolitical reality demanded a renewed peace process. At first the UN took the initiative, but it was soon replaced by American peacemakers. The early architects of Pax Americana had some ideas of their own, but they were flatly rejected by the Israelis, and got nowhere. American brokering became a proxy for Israeli peace plans, which were based on three assumptions: that the 1948 ethnic cleansings would not be an issue; that negotiations would only concern the future of the areas Israel had occupied in 1967, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip; and, third, that the fate of the Palestinian minority in Israel was not to be part of a comprehensive settlement. This meant that 80 per cent of Palestine and more than 50 per cent of Palestinians were to be excluded from the peacemaking process. The formula was accepted unconditionally by the US, and sold as the best possible offer to the rest of the world. For a while - until 1977 - the Israelis insisted on another precondition. They wanted to divide the West Bank with the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan. (The 'Jordanian option', as it was called, was later adopted by the Reagan Administration as its own peace plan.) When Likud came to power in 1977, the option dropped from view - the new Government was not interested in any kind of agreement or compromise - but it was revived in the days of the national unity government, 1984-87, until the Jordanians realised that the Israeli Government would not relinquish the entire West Bank even to them.
The Israeli occupation continued unhindered in the absence of a proper peace rocess. From its very first day - long before the suicide bombers - there were house demolitions, killings of innocent citizens, expulsions, closures and general harassment. The 1950s and 1960s saw the rise of the ever- expanding settler movement, which brought with it not only land expropriation but also further brutality. The Palestinians responded with a radical form of political Islam, which by the end of the first twenty years had become a force to reckon with. It was bolder in its resistance to the occupation than anything that had preceded it, but equally harsh in its attitude to internal rivals and the population at large. Neither movement, any more than the Likud Government before them, showed any interest in a diplomatic effort to resolve the conflict.
Frustration in the occupied areas intensified until, in December 1987, the local population rose up against the occupiers.In due course the violence ended and a new period of peacemaking began, very like the previous ones. On the Israeli side the team was extended to include academics as well as politicians. Once again, it was an Israeli endeavour seeking American approval. Once again, the Americans tried to put forward some ideas of their own: the Madrid process of 1991 was part of an American attempt to justify the first Gulf War. There were ideas in it with which the Palestinians could agree. But it was a long and cumbersome business and in the meantime a new Israeli initiative was developed.
This initiative had a novel component. For the first time, the Israelis were looking for Palestinian partners in the search for their kind of peace in Palestine. And they aimed at the top - the PLO leadership in Tunis. They were lured into the process by an Israeli promise, enshrined in Article 5, Clause 3 of the Oslo Accord, that after five years of catering for Israeli security needs, the main Palestinian demands would be put on the negotiating table in preparation for a final agreement. Meanwhile, the Palestinians would be allowed to play with independence. They were offered the opportunity to form a Palestinian Authority, decorated with the insignia of sovereignty, that could remain intact as long as it clamped down on any resistance movement against the Israelis. For that purpose, the PA employed five secret service organisations, which compounded the occupiers' abuses of human and civil rights with those of the indigenous Administration. Palestine's quasi-autonomy had little bearing on the occupation. In some areas it was directly enforced, in others indirectly. More Jewish settlers arrived, and harassment continued everywhere. When the Palestinian opposition retaliated with suicide attacks, the Israelis enriched the repertoire of collective punishment in such a way that support for the suicide bombers grew by the week.
Six years after the signing of Oslo, the 'peace camp' once more came to power in Israel, with Ehud Barak at its head. A year later he was facing electoral defeat, having been over ambitious in almost every field. Peace with the Palestinians seemed to be the only salvation. The Palestinians expected the promise made in Oslo to be the basis for the new negotiations. As they saw it, they had agreed to wait five years: it was time to discuss the problem of Jerusalem, the fate of the refugees and the future of the settlements. The Israelis once more devised the plan, enlisting even more academics and 'professional' experts. The fragmented Palestinian leadership was unable to come up with counterproposals without outside help, and sought advice in such unlikely places as the Adam Smith Institute in London. Not surprisingly, the Israeli plan alone was on the negotiating table at Camp David in the summer of2000.
Endorsed by the Americans, it offered withdrawal from most of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, leaving about 15 per cent of original Palestine for the Palestinians, in the form of discrete cantons bisected by highways, settlements army camps and walls. No capital in Jerusalem, no solution to the refugee problem and total abuse of the concept of statehood and independence. Even the fragile Arafat, who had hitherto seemed to be happy with the Salata (the perks of power), having never exercised Sulta (actual power), could not sign a document that made a mockery of every Palestinian demand. He was immediately depicted as a warmonger. Unarmed demonstrators showed their dismay in the autumn of 2000 and were shot by the Israeli Army. The Palestinian response was not late in coming: the resistance was militarised.
Three years into the second intifada, the peace effort resumed once more. The same formula was at work: an Israeli initiative catering to the Israeli public and Israeli needs disguised as a piece of honest brokering on the part of the Americans. Three initiatives appeared in 2003. The first has already won American support: the road map. At the end of that road, 10 per cent of Palestine will be divided into two huge prison camps - one in Gaza and the other in the West Bank - with no solution to the refugee problem and full Israeli control of Jerusalem. The initiators are still looking for a prospective Palestinian chief warden. Having lost Mahmoud Abbas, they are pinning their hopes on Ahmad Qurei. The second is the Ayalon-Nusseibeh proposal, based on a total Israeli withdrawal from the Occupied Territories (apart from greater Jerusalem, which takes up about a third of the West Bank) in return for a Palestinian undertaking to relinquish the refugees' right of return. I suspect that Sari Nusseibeh, the president of al-Quds University and former PA representative in Jerusalem, is repeating a ploy he attempted in the first intifada, when he suggested the de jure annexation of the Occupied Territories to Israel, so as to show the Israelis that Israel could not include the West Bank and Gaza within its borders and still be at once Jewish and democratic. He now hopes to expose Israel's unwillingness to evict the settlements. The Ayalon-Nusseibeh plan has so far failed to impress the Israelis, but it did depress the refugee communities and I wonder whether it was worth it. Ami Ayalon, the head of Shin Bet from 1996 to 2000, lives in the former village of Ijzim, from which the Palestinian population was expelled in 1948.
And now we have the Geneva bubble: an impressive production both as a document and as a Hollywood-style ceremony. It will probably never become a reality, but it's worth taking a look at. Its basic features are described by David Grossman in the introduction to the Hebrew version. For the first time, there is full Palestinian recognition of the right of the Jewish people to a state in Israel and recognition of Jerusalem as Israel's capital. The document offers practical and detailed solutions to the refugee problem; a problem that has caused all efforts until now to fail. There is also in the document a promise that the majority of the Jews living beyond the Green Line will remain in their homes and become part of the state of Israel. There is also a Palestinian commitment to demilitarise the Palestinian state and allow no foreign troops to be stationed in it. What catches the eye, not only in this preface but in the document as a whole, is that while the refugees' right of return is an obstacle that has to be removed if peace and reconciliation are to be achieved, the Jewishness of Israel - i.e. the Jewishness of the original state with the annexed blocks of settlements in the Occupied Territories and greater Jerusalem is not an obstacle at all. On the contrary, what is missing according to this logic is Palestinian recognition of the new greater Israel. And what is offered to encourage the Palestinians to recognise the state built on the land from which they were ethnically cleansed in 1948 and that was taken from them in 1967? What is the generous offer the Israeli peaceniks loudly urged their counterparts on the Geneva campaign not to pass up? A mini-state, built on 15 per cent of what used to be Palestine, with a capital near Jerusalem and no army. On close reading, the authority and power vested in the aforementioned state bear little relation to any notion of statehood we might derive from global reality or political science textbooks. Far more important, the Geneva project would leave the refugees in exile. The small print says that the Palestinian refugees would be able to choose either to return to what's left of their former country or stay in their camps. As they will probably choose to wait until the international community fulfils its commitment to allow their unconditional return under Resolution 194, they will remain refugees while their compatriots in Israel continue to be second-class citizens in the remaining 85 per cent of Palestine.
There is no acknowledgment of the cause of this conflict, the 1948 ethnic cleansing; there is no process of truth and reconciliation that will make Israel accountable for what it did either in 1948 or afterwards. Under these circumstances, neither the Palestinians nor the Arab world at large will feel able to accept a Jewish state.
In a celebration in Tel Aviv, the architects of the Geneva Accord played over and over again a popular song called 'And Tel Aviv Will Be Geneva'. But Tel Aviv is not Geneva; it is built on the ruins of six Palestinian villages destroyed in 1948; and it shouldn't be Geneva: it should aspire to be Alexandria or Beirut, so that the Jews who invaded the Arab world by force could at last show a willingness to be part of the Middle East rather than remain an alien and alienated state within it.
18 December 2003
Ilan Pappe teaches political science at Haifa University and is chair of the Emil Touma Institute for Palestinian Studies.
2. We will give you more of us
an interview with Ali Jarbawi from Bitter Lemons
Bitterlemons.org: What was your impression of Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's "disengagement plan"?
Jarbawi:” Sharon was giving the Palestinians an ultimatum: "either you accept my roadmap with the 14 alterations injected by my government (and this is the maximum that you will get out of me) or we are going to unilaterally give you less than that. The choice is yours--if you opt for negotiations, I can give you more, but you should know (and this is a tacit understanding) that the most you will get even then is the most that is offered in 'my roadmap', which includes only the land inside the wall."
Bitterlemons.org: Why this proposal now?
Jarbawi:” First, I don't think that Sharon is changing his ideology, but practically, there are many things that he wants to take into account. He wants to please the American administration, but he also wants to use this time during which the American administration is entering an election campaign to push for his own interests. He also wants to send a message to Israeli society because he was criticized internally for having no plan. Third, he wants to kill the Geneva accord. I think that Sharon has reached the conclusion--and this might be the one item that he has changed his mind about--that after wanting all of "Eretz Israel" to become a Jewish state and advocating for a long time for the expulsion of Palestinians, their physical transfer is impossible. Now, instead of a practical transfer, he wants to implement the "legal transfer" of Palestinians. Legal transfer means that while we will live inside "Eretz Israel", we will not be part of the state of Israel, meaning we will not reach a situation of apartheid and Palestinians will no longer be able to opt for one state. Basically, he has in mind that part of the West Bank will be incorporated into the state of Israel. The wall is the marker; it is not a security barrier, but the border. Put the Palestinians in cantons and let them call that a state, but that state will not be sovereign, will not be independent. If Palestinians accept this through negotiations, then Sharon is ready to give it to them. If they do not, then he is going to remove the Israeli military presence from small areas and sit tight until Palestinians agree to return to his plan, which he will disguise under the roadmap. The second stage of the roadmap calls for a temporary state; this is the temporary state made permanent.”
Bitterlemons.org: Why did the meeting between prime ministers Sharon and Ahmed Qurei' never happen?
Jarbawi: From a Palestinian perspective, why should it happen? I don't understand why the Palestinian prime minister would go and meet with Sharon, especially after his speech. The Palestinian reaction to the speech was that we reject unilateral actions. A meeting with Sharon now means that we accept negotiations instead. The question is, on what basis? On his roadmap and the 14 qualifications? The greatest thing that Sharon gained from this ultimatum is that his roadmap will become legitimate and will become the maximum Palestinians can achieve.
Bitterlemons.org: In this situation, what can the Palestinian Authority do?
Jarbawi: I think that the best way to face Sharon's ultimatum is not to meet with him, but to offer him and Israel a Palestinian ultimatum in return. The Palestinian ultimatum would be: "We know that you want to squeeze us into cantons and thereby cheat us and the world of the two-state solution. We agree to a two-state solution--we have indicated this for a long time--but that two-state solution must be based on the 1967 borders, give and take minor exchanges. As such, we are giving you a few months (maybe six months) and as a measure of trust, we will offer you a Palestinian truce [during that time]. If, however, the wall continues to be built and the settlement expansion policy continues in these six months, then we will understand that you are closing the gates to a two-state solution. "If so, then we will accommodate you. In that case, we are going to close the two-state option forever, and from then on, we will pursue the establishment of just one state. Further, from then on, you will have to bear the consequences of your occupation. We will dissolve the Palestinian Authority and you won't have the Authority there to cripple with your actions, even as you blame it morning and night. Then you will have to deal with the Palestinian people, meeting us on equal terms 20 or 30 years from now when there is one vote for every person. "The meaning of all of this is that if you are afraid of the political effects of demography, then we are going to use it against you. Beware."
Bitterlemons.org: What are the dangers of this approach?
Jarbawi: Any plan should have its alternative built in, and this requires more discussion among Palestinians. We should tell Sharon that if he doesn't accept the two-state solution [in order] to separate from us, then we will give him more of us. To give Israel more of us means that we have to dissolve the Palestinian Authority. In order for the Palestinians to get a fully sovereign, independent state on the 1967 borders, Palestinians should use the only thing that Israel and Israelis are afraid of, i.e. the political effects of the demographic factor. Thus, the one-state solution is the medium for gaining the two-state solution. Now the question is, will the Authority dissolve itself? That is the question that remains to be answered.
-Published 22/12/2003 Bitterlemons.org
Ali Jarbawi is a professor of political science at Birzeit
University
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