MCC Palestine Update #82
August 21, 2003
My family and I returned to Jerusalem on August 10 after having been in the US for two months. I wish that I could say that we returned to optimism and improved conditions for our Palestinian friends and colleagues, but unfortunately little has changed. The apartheid wall continues to be built in the northern West Bank and around parts of Bethlehem, Jerusalem, and Ramallah; settlement construction continues, including in isolated parts of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip; the network of 220 plus checkpoints and roadblocks remains more or less unaltered, meaning that travel within the occupied territories remains as miserable and at times as dangerous as before. The road map, as University of Chicago professor Rashid Khalidi noted, is in danger of becoming road kill; the road map, some Israeli peace activists have suggested, has become a “road to nowhere.” Will the road map lead to a real end to the occupation, or is it designed instead to solidifying the Israeli occupation while rendering meaningless such terms of “viable” and “contiguous?” The view from the ground strongly suggests the second answer.
Several strong books on the Palestinian-Israeli conflict have come out already in 2003. Some recommendations:
Gary M. Burge. Whose Land? Whose Promise? What Christians are not Being Told about Israel and the Palestinians. Cleveland: The Pilgrim Press, 2003. Burge, a professor of New Testament at Wheaton University, has written a very helpful exploration of how Scripture addresses the question of land and how to read these texts in the light of the current reality of dispossession in Palestine/Israel.
Bishop Munib Younan. Witnessing for Peace: In Jerusalem and the World. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2003. Munib Younan is the Bishop of Jerusalem in the Evangelical Church of Jordan, Jerusalem. Younan’s book is a Christian call for nonviolence and for a future of peace based on justice.
Wendy Pearlman, ed. Occupied Voices: Stories of Everyday Life from the Second Intifada. New York: Thunder’s Mouth Press/Nation Books, 2003. Over the course of 18 chapters the reader hears the voices of nearly 30 different Palestinians from different walks of life.
Amira Hass. Reporting from Ramallah: An Israeli Journalist in an Occupied Land. Semiotext(e) Active Agents Series. Cambridge, Mass.: distributed by MIT Press, 2003. This book brings together 37 news reports and opinion pieces filed between 1997 and 2002 by Amira Hass of Ha’aretz, the only Jewish Israeli correspondent on Palestinian affairs to live in the occupied territories. Together, these pieces help the reader understand why the Oslo process failed and the roots of the second Palestinian uprising (intifada) against the Israeli occupation.
The four books above can all be ordered via Amazon or any major bookstore. A final book, an invaluable resource on the separation/apartheid wall being built through the occupied territories, is available directly from the Palestinian Environmental NGO Network, PENGON:
PENGON. Stop the Wall in Palestine: Facts, Testimonies, Analysis and Call to Action. Jerusalem 2003. Contact PENGON at outreach@pengon.org for information about ordering.
Below you will find three pieces, all from the Israeli newspaper Ha’aretz. The first, by Danny Rubinstein, examines how Israeli measures are serving to undermine the Palestinian ceasefire. The second, by Gideon Levy, looks at how Palestinian children, unlike their parents, who interacted with a variety of Israelis, are growing up interacting only with two kinds of Israeli Jews: soldiers and settlers. Finally, Amira Hass dissects the “logic” of occupation.
--Alain Epp Weaver
1. Favors that breed contempt
By Danny Rubinstein
Ha’aretz, August 18, 2003
There is a significant gap between the way the Israelis and Palestinians view how to deal with the cease-fire's current danger. The difference can be found in all of the gestures and easements Israel has been granting Palestinians to preserve the hudna - moves the Palestinians perceive as mockery.
For example, the possibility was brought up this past weekend of Israel's allowing Palestinian Authority Chairman Yasser Arafat to travel to Gaza for two days to visit the grave of his sister Yusra, who died last week and was buried alongside family members in Khan Yunis. The Israeli side depicted this as a humanitarian gesture, while the Palestinian side looked at it quite differently. Customers at the Damascus Gate newsstand in Jerusalem's Old City who saw a report about this on Saturday asked jeeringly: For how long did Arafat receive a permit from Israel? Did he wait a long time? Will Israel agree to extend his stay in Gaza? As far as the Palestinians are concerned, giving Arafat permission represents the patronizing and humiliating attitude of Israel's government toward their national leader, and nothing more. Certainly not a humanitarian gesture.
Easements at the checkpoints that will allow the transporting of goods into Palestinian cities, an increase in the number of permits for Palestinians to work in Israel, and permission to re-open the Palestine Polytechnic Institute in Hebron are, according to an editorial in the daily Al Quds, nothing but "a farce." "What right at all does Israel have to prevent the passage of goods into Palestinian cities? And what did Israel get out of the closure of the polytechnic college apart from deepening hatred?" asks the editorial.
Near the Qalandiyah checkpoint in north Jerusalem this weekend, an elderly man was heard saying cynically: "From the bottom of my heart, I really thank the soldiers of the Israeli army at the checkpoint for letting me return home at 9:30 in the evening from a visit to my sick mother." (The checkpoint is closed to people coming from Jerusalem at 9:00 P.M.) One of the women volunteers from Machsom Watch said she had met quite a few Palestinians who circumvented the roadblock via the tortuous path passing through the quarries to the east, and was amazed to find they had official documents allowing them to cross the checkpoint. They said it was better to go through the hills than to go through the humiliating roadblock.
Even the planned withdrawal from four cities in the West Bank, which is perceived in Israel as a far-reaching concession, looks to the Palestinians like something quite piffling. This can be understood from the cartoon published Saturday in the Al Ayyam newspaper, which shows a Palestinian holding a newspaper with a headline about the impending withdrawal as he and his wife gaze longingly at the walls of Jerusalem and the mosques on the Temple Mount. In other words, what do we need the four cities for? The main thing is Jerusalem.
Things reached a ridiculous level with the release of 76 prisoners last Friday. These were criminal prisoners, mainly thieves and poor workers who were caught in Israel (some in East Jerusalem) without permits.
The Israeli government did not conceal this, but did not stress it either. For its part, the PA announced it had not asked for the release of those thieves - in fact, it was even opposed to their release.
This did not stop Israel from announcing last week that due to the terror attacks in Rosh Ha'ayin and Ariel, it would postpone the release. For now, Israel is postponing this gesture to the Palestinians that, as they see it, is "a meaningless gesture that we reject outright," in the words of Saeb Erekat.
The government of Israel, in this case, is playing only with itself. We Israelis say that we're doing them a favor and debate whether the Palestinians are deserving of the favor now or whether we should postpone it - whereas in the Palestinians' eyes, it is beneath contempt. As the PA decided, no official representative came to greet those released prisoners.
2. The generation that ‘doesn’t know Joseph’
By Gideon Levy
Ha'aretz, August 10, 2003
Israel's contact with the next generation of Palestinians - those who grew up under the occupation - and its attempts to achieve peace with them, will be far more problematic than with the generation that preceded it. This is something we need to be aware of and take into account.
No past generation grew up in conditions as severe as those that afflicted the members of the current generation in the territories. Indeed, there is no place in the Western world where children live in comparable conditions. A year ago, a report by USAID, the U.S. Agency for International Development, found that about a quarter of the children in the territories suffer from malnutrition, either prolonged or passing. A United Nations agency found at the time that 62 percent of the Palestinians did not have sufficient access to food. Since then, the situation has only been aggravated.
A similar state of affairs exists in the health system, in which all medical treatment, including vaccinations and first aid, is a complicated, and at times impossible, bureaucratic process. One need only participate in one of the events held by Physicians for Human Rights to see the health conditions in which children are growing up in Israel's backyard.
It is not only food and physical health that these children lack. From Jenin to Rafah, hundreds of thousands of children are suffering from psychological traumas whose impact is difficult to gauge. These are children who, in the past three years, have been exposed to death in truly frightening dosages, to destruction, shooting, tanks in the streets, soldiers invading their homes in the middle of the night, arrests, beatings and multiple forms of humiliation.
Some of them lost their friends, in some cases before their eyes: 230 Palestinian children under the age of 15 and another 208 aged 15-18 have been killed since September 2000. Many others have been rendered paralyzed or disabled, and their friends have been exposed to horrors. One doesn't have to be a psychologist to understand that children who live with deep anxiety for such a lengthy period will suffer mental problems. And, of course, hardly any of them are getting professional assistance.
These children are growing up with deprivations that are hard for an Israeli parent or child to imagine. They have never seen a beach, have never been in an air-conditioned room, have never splashed around in a swimming pool, have never been on a bus, have never gone on a trip anywhere - they can only dream of being on a train or a plane. Some of them were unable to leave their homes for months on end, or leave their villages for years.
Day and night in the same village, without a community center, without a sports field, without books, toys or games. They have never been to an amusement park, they have no idea what a computer is, they have never been to a movie theater, seen a play, visited a museum, attended a concert or taken part in extracurricular activities. For months they couldn't even get to school.
Their cultural and social world was formed by the conditions of their lives under the closures and sieges imposed by Israel. Some of them have never seen their grandparents, even though they live in a nearby town; others have never seen their imprisoned brothers or fathers (in some cases, both parents are in Israeli detention) since visits to prisons became impossible. Many children, too, have been arrested and given severe punishments without any consideration for their age, and have been jailed together with adults.
However, it is not only the living conditions ofthe Palestinian children that should be causing Israelis sleepless nights. Because in addition to their distress, for most of which Israel is responsible, this is a generation that "did not know Joseph." Their fathers worked in Israel, in some cases from a very early age, working its fields, building its houses, cleaning its streets or doing commerce with Israel. From childhood they were exposed to Israelis, becoming familiar with both their ugly and their good sides and even learning their language. Consequently, the attitude of that generation toward Israel is more complex: the great majority of that generation still believes in peace and some of it aspires to emulate Israel in certain spheres.
In contrast, the children of the present generation are totally cut off from us. Their only exposure to Israel is through two figures: the soldier who bursts violently into their home in the dead of night, smashes a hole in the living room wall with an ax and humiliates their parents; or the settler, who has plundered their land and sometimes also abuses them.
This is a generation that has never heard of nonviolent, unarmed Israelis. The only Israelis today's Palestinian children - tomorrow's generation of adults - have seen are those who imprison them in their homes, shoot them, beat them and humiliate them. They don't need the incitement doses in day camps or Palestinian television to mold their worldview. All they have to do is look around at what is happening close to home.
When they come of age they will carry these memories with them. They will not be able to forget the spectacles of horror they were exposed to, or those they hold responsible for them. Thus before our eyes a generation is growing that is not only hungry, psychologically traumatized, unhealthy and without proper education - but is also thirsty for revenge and consumed by hatred. This is a message that should be of deep concern, not only to the parents of these wretched children, but to us all.
3. Primordial illogic and primitive cruelty
By Amira Hass
Ha’aretz, July 23, 2003
There is nothing more logical than setting arbitrary times of day when a Palestinian is allowed to leave his home and come back to it. There is nothing more logical than forbidding him to leave his field in a pickup truck to take his crops straight to market. It is logical to forbid him to receive guests, to take a donkey-drawn wagon, to ride a bicycle, to visit his parents a few kilometers away - or to bring a goat into his house "without coordination" so as to provide some fresh milk for his children.
There is nothing more logical than to fence the Palestinian into his village, neighborhood, and land, with an electronic barrier, and then set a minimum age to leave,. It is logical to appoint 19-year-old soldiers to watch the gate, which is sometimes opened on time and sometimes not, and to impose the rules - 29-year-olds are not allowed out, 30-year-olds are, pregnant women are allowed out, non-pregnant woman are not.
It is logical to forbid all crossing when the Shin Bet suddenly requires it, leaving outside a 65-year-old man who went out to buy something a kilometer and a half away, or a young man who went for dental treatment, or a mother whose children stayed at home because only children under the age of 21 are allowed out.
It is so logical to forbid a Palestinian to go to the beach 300 meters from his home, and to prevent half a million people from nearby towns from going to the beach. It is so logical. After all, that's what army commanders and soldiers do, day in and day out, hour by hour, in Gaza, in the Siafa area in the north and the Mawassi in the center of the Strip.
It's logical, because the IDF's mission in the heart of Gaza - which it did not leave in 1994, despite the Oslo legend - is to guarantee the safety and security and lives of Israelis whose government continues to encourage in moving to occupied territory. It is logical because Israeli governments since the 1970s and on, Labor and Likud, decided to settle Jews in the main open areas in the narrow Gaza Strip, in the prettiest area of dunes and on the most spectacular beach, in an area blessed with fresh water compared to the rest of the Gaza area.
It is logical to lock people up in their homes and villages, and to sabotage the farming of their land because it is logical to subsidize the Jewish settlement in the land of the forefathers of Gush Katif and northern Gaza. It is logical to connect Jewish settler homes to electricity and water while forbidding Palestinian neighbors from connecting to the electricity grid and the water and sewage lines.
It sounds cruel to lock people up in their homes and uproot their groves and orchards that they spent decades nurturing. But it's a logical cruelty, Israel is convinced, if that is what it takes to foil the cruelty of others - to prevent an armed Palestinian attack on a nursery school or a plant nursery or to plant a landmine on the route of a tank that is patrolling to protect the nursery school and the plant nursery.
During the Oslo years, many good Israelis made do with the logical thought that "eventually" the settlements in Gaza would be dismantled. Logic and policy are two different things. Meanwhile, even before the bloodshed broke out in September 2000, the settlements in Gaza expanded, their infrastructures were improved and their security required the army to dictate various Draconian prohibitions of movement for a million Palestinians.
The northern Gaza Strip, with its minuscule settlements, was cut off from the rest of the strip and de facto annexed to Israel. Palestinian representatives tried to speak to the logical minds of their Israeli counterparts at the negotiating table. It didn't work. On the contrary, the number of settlements in Gaza only grew.
With subsidizes and expanding infrastructures and good roads and an expanding market for their worm-free lettuce - why should they leave? And why should the government dismantle the settlements when the Palestinians themselves signed the agreements that did not require the settlements to be dismantled? The quiet that most Palestinians kept most of the time proved to Israelis that it was possible to get peace with the settlements.
That quiet relieved the Israelis of the duty to deal with the primordial illogic, the primordial cruelty - establishing the settlements. The governments used the Palestinian quiet to continue developing the settlements. And after September 2000, what the appeals to logic did not accomplish, the armed attacks certainly won't accomplish. After all, Israel will never give in to terror.
Even before any Qassam rockets were fired at Sderot, the army shot to death people who dared approach settlements and the fortifications that protect the settlements. Some were armed, but many were simply shepherds and peasants and their stone-throwing children. All the farmland around the settlements was shaved down to nothing - raked, flattened and demolished, to improve the vision of soldiers preserving the settlements. How logical.
Thursday, August 21
Tuesday, June 3
MCC Palestine Update #81
MCC Palestine Update #81
June 3, 2003
The “roadmap” to peace being promoted by the United States and others is, it seems, gaining some momentum. Israelis and Palestinians will meet with US President George Bush, European officials, and Arab leaders in summits in Egypt and Jordan in only a couple of days. The Israeli cabinet, after weeks of foot-dragging, endorsed the roadmap, albeit with multiple caveats. Palestinian Authority prime minister Mahmoud Abbas (Abu Mazen) speaks optimistically of securing a truce that would bring about a suspension of violence. Israel has spoken of easing the tight closure it maintains within the occupied territories. [Meanwhile, Israel continues to refuse to allow international workers with humanitarian and development organizations such as MCC to enter the Gaza Strip.]
Are these developments cause for optimism, for hope? For hope, certainly: who cannot but hope, even against evidence to the contrary, that bloodshed and dispossession will end? For optimism, perhaps not, especially given the ongoing construction of the so-called “separation wall,” a wall that is robbing farmers of their land, allowing for the seizure of water resources, isolating thousands of people from other towns and villages, and creating a de-facto border that will surround any Palestinian “state” to which the roadmap gives birth, imprisoning it within ca. 40% of the West Bank. The first three pieces below, by Ran HaCohen, Amira Hass, and Neve Gordon, all examine the incompatibility of the so-called separation wall with a lasting, durable peace.
Ariel Sharon, this past week, told his Likud faction, that the time had come to stop ruling over 3.5 million Palestinians, the time had come to “end the occupation.” Again, cause for optimism? If by “ending the occupation” Sharon meant a complete withdrawal from the territories Israel occupied in 1967, of course. If, however, “ending the occupation” simply means for Sharon relieving Israel of the responsibility placed upon it by international law to safeguard civilian wellbeing in the occupied territories and to do such tasks as run hospitals, operate schools, etc., while continuing to hold on to 60% or more of the occupied territories, then Sharon’s call to “end the occupation” is sadly not cause for hope but rather a cynical semantic game. The final essay below, by Gideon Levy, looks at the invisibility of the occupation to Israeli consciousness.
I will be on my MCC “home leave” from June 6 to August 9. There will be no MCC Palestine Updates during this time. There are a plethora of on-line resources on the internet, of course, for those who wish to stay abreast of current happenings in Palestine/Israel and who want good commentary. To keep the list brief, I’ll recommend two:
Electronic Intifada
http://www.electronicintifada.net/
Ha’aretz: This Israeli newspaper contains both news reports and commentary from Israelis on the conflict. The opinion pieces cover the wide range of Israeli public opinion. You will probably have noticed that these updates routinely include pieces by Ha’aretz journalists Amira Hass and Gideon Levy, with their critical perspectives on the occupation. Analysts Danny Rubinstein and Akiva Eldar also provide consistently incisive commentary on events.
http://www.haaretzdaily.com/
--Alain Epp Weaver
1. The Apartheid Wall
May 21, 2003
by Ran HaCohen
[Note: if the photo and the map do not appear, go to http://www.antiwar.com/hacohen/h052103.html for the full article.]
Only alert readers may have noticed that the Israeli-biased American "Road Map to Peace", already being imposed on the Palestinians, has not even been accepted by Israel's rejectionist government. Asked about it, Secretary of State Colin Powell said that accepting or not accepting it "didn't really matter" – when Israel is concerned, to be sure; I have a hunch that had the Palestinians declined to accept it, the American reaction would have been quite different.
But for once, I agree with Mr. Powell: it really does not matter. A central function of the "Road Map" is to distract from the actual map of the Palestinian territories. This map is being radically altered, and unlike the Road Map, which will be forgotten like all its cynical forerunners ("Zinni Plan", "Tenet Plan", "Mitchell Report", "Regional Peace Conference" etc.), the geographical map of Palestine is here to stay, with a huge Wall now being built in its middle – the "Security Fence" in official Israeli language, in fact an Apartheid Wall.
PM Sharon has long opposed the idea of a barrier between Israel and the West Bank. As late as April 2002, Sharon was still rejecting it – in spite of public pressure, in spite of demands raised by both Israel's President and the Head of the Secret Service, and, above all, in spite of hundreds of Israeli civilian victims to Palestinian terrorism, whose death could have been prevented by such a fence. Not before June 2002, in what was portrayed as a victory for Labour's leader Ben-Eliezer (then Defence Minister in a unity coalition) imposed on Sharon against his will, was the huge construction project finally launched.
Since, unlike their ruling junta, most Israelis do want to end the occupation, support for the Fence is overwhelming. Most Israelis believe it will bring security, and eventually turn into a border between Israel and a Palestinian State. Israel's millionaires, as Yedioth Achronoth exposed (22.11.2002), have a special reason to celebrate: hundreds of Palestinian olive trees on the route of the fence are rooted out by the constructors, smuggled and sold for the gardens of rich Israelis (up to $5.000 for an ancient tree). Palestinian owners who dare ask for compensation for their often only source of income are driven away by threats and beating.
Change of Heart?
The junta's change of heart towards the Wall happened only after "Operation Defence Shield" of April 2002. As long as Israeli terror victims could be used to justify the repeated incursions into autonomous Palestinians areas, no fence was built. After "Defensive Shield", when Israel had finally managed to reoccupy the entire West Bank and to destroy the Palestinian Authority (existing in name only ever since), the Wall could be erected.
But the deeper reason for the apparent change of heart is that the junta found a way to use the Wall for its ends: as part of its project of destroying the Palestinians. This cannot be grasped without taking a look at the actual route of the Wall.
Why, you may wonder: isn't the Wall following the Green Line separating Israel from the West Bank? – Not quite. If this had been Israel's intention, we could have had Peace long ago. The whole point is that Israel refuses to give up the West Bank, and building a Wall on the Green Line is the last thing the junta had in mind. The Wall is constructed deep in Palestinian territory, in order to rob as much Palestinian land and water as possible. A good example is the small village of Mas'ha, where a joint group of Palestinians, Israelis and internationals has set a small camp trying to attract attention and to fight the ongoing atrocity.
Mas'ha as Example
The village of Mas'ha is adjacent to the Israeli settlement of Elkana, about 7km away from the green line. On April 2003, Israeli bulldozers started to separate Mas'ha by an 8m high concrete wall from its only remaining source of livelihood: agricultural land, mostly olive trees. 98% of the lands of Mas'ha will be placed on the Israeli side of the fence. The fence also disconnects the road from Jenin to Ramallah, a segment of which will now be in the Israeli side of the fence.
It wasn't only land greed that sent the bulldozers to the lands of Mas'ha. These lands are on the western part of the large water reservoir originating in the West Bank, whose waters flow under the ground also to the centre of Israel. Out of 600 million cubic metre of water that this reservoir provides in a year, Israel withdraws about 500 million. Control over the water sources has always been a central Israeli motivation for maintaining the occupation. The first settlements, like Elkana, were located in critical locations for drilling. Since 1967, Israel has prohibited Palestinians from digging new wells, but in the lands of Mas'ha there are still many operating older wells. In isolating the village from its wells, Israel attempts both to control the water reserves, and to eliminate livelihood sources, thus forcing its residents out.
I went to Mas'ha a couple of weeks ago. The huge barrier was not yet complete: it consisted of a 3m deep trench, which we could still cross with some difficulty at a shallow point, and of a razed plateau, 80 – 130m wide, on which the gigantic wall, with barbed wire, cameras, patrol road etc. would be built (see picture from another location). It's not a make-shift fence: it's a huge barrier meant to be there for decades, creating a durable new physical reality. It twists like a snake around the cultivated hills, encircling the village on three sides just a few steps away from its last houses. The owners of the lands were told there would be gates in the wall, which would enable them to access their lands; "they just didn't tell us who will hold the key", say in bitter irony the siege-learned farmers, who have already ost most of their lands to the settlements of Elkana and Etz Ephraim, all built on Mas'ha's lands in previous decades.
And Mas'ha is just one non-unique example. Out of 12.500 dunums of the village of Jius, 600 dunums are confiscated for 6km of wall, and 8.600 dunums will be on its Israeli side. The 550 families, half of which used to work in Israel when this was still possible and were then pushed back to agriculture, now lose their last source of income (Giedon Levi, Ha'aretz 2.5.2003).
Secrets and Lies
It may be clear by now why the junta refuses to give information about the route of the Wall, as B'tselem Newsletter describes in detail. The Green Line is 350km long; present reports speak of a 600 km long Wall on the west side of the West Bank alone. – Alone? – Yes: because – as Ha'aretz (23.3.2003) mentioned en passante just once, without any details, comment or follow-up – yet another, eastern wall is planned. This crucial information virtually escapes public attention. Since most Israelis think the Fence is built along the Green Line, they do not even suspect another wall encircling the Palestinians from the back as well.
Just two months before the fence plan was confirmed in his cabinet, Sharon was quoted in Yedioth Achronoth (26.4.2002). The journalist was outraged by what he considered Sharon's pretexts against erecting a wall. Sharon is accused of exaggerations, turning the simple project of a 350km fence along the Green Line into an unfeasible 1.000km long enterprise:
"Sharon's favourite way to inflate data is simply to double the numbers. 'You cannot have a fence just on one side of the seam zone', he told police officers, 'You have to have fences on both sides, and there is the Jordan Valley where another fence on both sides is needed'. […] To sabotage the separation […], Sharon is talking about two different routes: two fences on different locations on the seam line, and yet another two fences between Israel and Jordan. This way, you really get to 1.000km".
But Sharon was not exaggerating: we now know that the western barrier is already 600km long, and adding a similar fence on the east makes Sharon's numbers look rather underestimated. What the journalist did not realise, was that Sharon was just pretending to oppose the fence, while planning its actual route so as to maximize Israel's share of the territory; that the Eastern fence would not be built between Israel and Jordan, but in the middle of the West Bank; and that Sharon, to get public support, wisely presented the Apartheid Wall as his pragmatic surrender to Labour and to public pressure, while in fact it was his scheme, elaborated by him long before he found the opportunity to carry it out, camouflaged as yielding to dovish pressure to strengthen his "moderate" image.
The Actual Map
The following map, prepared by Palestinian sources – based on the parts of the wall already erected, those under construction, and confiscation orders issued to land owners – shows approximately what Israel is up to. Leaving the lion's share of the West Bank outside the Wall in Israeli hands, even what looks like two contiguous Bantustans are in fact crisscrossed by chains of Israeli settlements and roads-for-Jews-only.
The UN Resolution of 1947 allocated 45% of British Mandate Palestine to a Palestinian State. In 1948, Israel occupied 78% of the land, leaving just 22% – the West Bank and Gaza – to the Palestinians. This is all they have been demanding since 1993. Now, Israel is robbing more than the better half of these 22% left. Six million Israelis are to have about 90% of the land (and water), whereas three-and-a-half million Palestinians, many of them refugees, are pushed to starve into what is left, locked behind gigantic walls in open-air prisons, with no land, no water and no hope. The moral way to peace, love and security, no doubt.
The Apartheid Wall will be 8m high and probably 1.000km long. For comparison, China's Great Wall – the only human-made object seen from outer space – is 6.700km long, whereas the Berlin Wall was a dwarf, just 155km long and 3,6m high. Keeping silent on this gigantic project and its genocidal implications, meant to prevent any fair future settlement (not to mention the Road Map), is a moral crime, of which almost the entire Western media is guilty.
–Ran HaCohen
2. The state Sharon is talking about
Amira Hass
Haaretz, May 28, 2003
Talk and declarations have more influence than facts and actions on the ground. This can be seen once again in the contradictory reactions - furious or welcoming - to the government's approval of the road map and to the fire-breathing statements by Ariel Sharon that it's wrong to rule over 3.5 million Palestinians, that occupation is not good, that there's no alternative but to agree to the establishment of a Palestinian state. The facts on the ground, which don't create as strong an impression as the rhetoric, are established every day. The facts are called the separation fence and security fences around settlements, security roads and bypass roads that continue to cut off the Palestinian villages from each other and the villages from their land, and construction in the settlements that were already vastly expanded during the Oslo era to the point where they constitute about half the total area of the West Bank. These facts are determining - and will continue to determine - the area where the road map will be applied, the area where the entity known as the "Palestinian state" will be established. A visit to the area, where the Public Works Commission, the Defense Ministry, Housing Ministry and the IDF bulldozers are busy at work, makes it possible to see why it's easy for Prime Minister Ariel Sharon to talk about a "Palestinian state." A consulting team from the Palestinian negotiations department has drawn up a future map, based on these facts on the ground. The team will give it to the ambassadors and envoys who are so enthusiastic about Sharon's statements. According to the facts on the ground, the "state" will apparently be comprised of three enclaves cut off from one another inside the West Bank - in addition to the Gazan enclave, and with no guarantee the settlements inside the enclave will be dismantled. The "separation fence" has been described as "temporary," but it is a wall with hefty fortifications taking up a lot of land, and it has already scarred the Tul Karm-Qalqiliyah area, the most prosperous Palestinian farmland, thus sabotaging one of the cornerstones of Palestinian economic security. The massive construction in Jerusalem and its environs, from Bethlehem to Ramallah, and the Dead Sea to Modi'in, has already ruled out any Palestinian urban, industrial or cultural development worthy of the name in the area of East Jerusalem. The southern enclave of the West Bank, from Hebron to Bethlehem, will be cut off from the central enclave of the Ramallah area by an ocean of manicured Israeli settlements, tunnel roads and highways. The northern enclave, from Jenin to Nablus, will be cut off from the center by the massive settlement bloc of Ariel-Eli-Shiloh. Presumably Sharon's intentions for an eastern separation fence will also come into being - after all, his talk about a state is more persuasive to the American administration than the land Israel continues to effectively expropriate from the Palestinians. The Jordan Valley will remain outside the Palestinian state, and between it and the divided Palestinian "state" there will be settlements with tiny populations and enormous land reserves, like Itamar, Nokdim and Tekoah, as well as huge settlements like Ma'aleh Adumim. Last Friday, Yedioth Ahronoth's weekend magazine published a useful report for all those who never go to the territories, detailing the long-term significance of the separation fence, accompanied by a map that bears a striking resemblance to the map prepared by the Palestinians. There have already been many reports about how tens of thousands of villagers have been cut off from their lands, how some villages have been imprisoned between the two sides of the "fence," and how Qalqiliyah has been cut off entirely. There have also been reports about how the separation fence is constantly being moved eastward, by settler demand. But the Yedioth reporter, Meron Rapaport, went a step further, asking key people in the settlements about those facts. According to the quotes from Ariel Mayor Ron Nahman, he has already seen the map of Palestinian enclaves being created by the fence: "That's the same map I've seen every time I've visited Arik [Sharon] since 1978. He told me he's been thinking about it since 1973." A settler from Einav, referring to himself as "very right-wing," regards the fence as a disaster: "It's an economic death sentence for the Palestinians," Shmil Eldad told Rapaport. "There are people here who want to make a living and it's creating more hatred," he added. But Moshe Immanuel from Salit justifies the fence: "The Palestinians lost in 1948 and 1967 and they will lose this time, too ... That's what happens, those who lose in war, lose." David Levy, head of the Jordan Valley Regional Council, knows the fence will keep the area "inside," meaning inside Israel. He says he knows, on the basis of meetings with Sharon and maps Sharon has shown him. The Palestinians are exhausted by the unequal struggle with Israel, which is a world-class military power. Maybe that's why, lacking any alternative, they might decide to accept the Bantustan state that is meant to absorb hundreds of thousands of refugees. The "closure camps" will nurture poverty and economic distress, without any room for development. Whether their children agree to continue living in "peace" in suffocating enclaves, is another question entirely.
3. Can bad fences make good neighbours?: Israel's separation wall is being used to annex territory
By Neve Gordon in Jerusalem
The Guardian - 29 May 2003
Although Mazmuriah is located less than 20 minutes' drive from my Jerusalem apartment, all roads connecting the small village to the city have been blocked off.Using roundabout roads that wind across the hilly terrain of the southern Jerusalem municipal border, we took more than an hour to reach the village. The Palestinian residents invited us. They wanted to tell Israeli peace activists about their imminent expulsion, about their fear of being forced to move from their ancestral land. They wanted to tell us about the bad fence. But first some background. After the 1967 war, Israel annexed some 70sq km of land to the municipal boundaries of West Jerusalem, imposing Israeli law on this area. These annexed territories included not only the part of Jerusalem that had been under Jordanian rule but also an additional 64sq km, most of which had belonged to 28 villages in the West Bank.Unlike most of the inhabitants of the annexed villages, who were subsequently registered by the Israeli civil administration asIsraeli residents (as opposed to citizens), the inhabitants of Mazmuriah were given West Bank identity cards.This created a juridical situation straight out of Kafka. The Mazmuriah residents and their houses belong to different legal andadministrative systems: the houses and land are part of the Jerusalem municipal system, while the inhabitants are residents ofthe West Bank and therefore subjected to Israeli military rule.Using its juridical control of the land, in 1992 Israel classified the area in which the village is located as "green land" - land thatcannot be built on and is basically a nature reserve. The idea was to strangle the local population, prohibiting them from constructing any new houses.Simultaneously the Jerusalem municipality also refused to provide basic services to the village such as extending water and sewage lines. Later, after the eruption of the second intifada, all roads between the village and Jerusalem were closed off, thus forcing the residents to become dependent on the West Bank for their livelihood and their children's education.What appeared to be a "legal anomaly" slowly became the grim reality of everyday life. Although they live on land annexed by Israel, for all practical purposes the Palestinian residents themselves do not belong to Jerusalem; they are West Bankers. The only "defect" in this grand plan is that they still reside in the annexed area. It is this so-called defect that Israel now intends to fix.Accompanied by border policemen, a coordinator for the Israeli housing ministry, defence ministry, and Jerusalem municipalityrecently showed the residents a map of where the separation fence will pass. The fence, the residents learned, would surround the village on its southern side and thus separate it from the West Bank. Even if the residents are allowed to stay, their watersupplies will be cut off, they will not be able to reach work and their children will be unable to go to school. To make things clear, however, the Israeli official notified the Palestinian residents that, because of the village's proximity to the planned separation fence, they would have to move.Israel's goal, it appears, is to expropriate the land "uninhabited". It is highly unlikely, however, that the villagers will actually beforced out of their homes. A more intricate strategy will be employed.Creating a physical barrier between the village and the West Bank and not allowing the inhabitants any contact with either thePalestinian Authority or the Jerusalem Municipality will undermine their existence. Ultimately they will have to leave the village of "their own accord".This scheme of expelling a whole population from their land is in blatant violation of basic rights as well as all the agreements that Israel has signed, not least the principles laid out in the "road map". In Israel we call this policy "transfer".While the end of this story has yet to be told, the first 145 km of the separation fence will be completed in two months' time, violating the rights of more than 210,000 Palestinians residing in 67 villages, towns and cities, according to the Israeli human rights group B'tselem.The crux of the matter is that the fence is not being erected on the 1967 borders, but is being used as a mechanism to expropriate Palestinian land and create facts on the ground that will affect any future arrangement between Israel and the Palestinians. Already in this early stage, 13 communities - home to 11,700 people - have become enclaves or bantustans imprisoned between the fence and Israel. Thirty-six communities, in which 72,200 Palestinians reside, will be separated from their farmlands that lie west of the fence.Yehezkel Lein from B'tselem concludes: "In the past, Israel used 'imperative military needs' to establish settlements on expropriated Palestinian land and argued that the action was temporary. The settlements have for some time been facts on the ground and Israel now demands that most of them be annexed to Israel. As in the case of the settlements, it is reasonable to assume that the separation fence will also be used to support Israel's future claim to annex territories."Good fences, the American poet Robert Frost once wrote, make good neighbours. The question the Israeli government must ask itself is, "What do bad fences make?"Neve Gordon teaches politics and human rights at Ben-Gurion University
4. Clueless About the Occupation
Gideon Levy
Ha'aretz June 1, 2003
At long last, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon has started to talk about the occupation, but doesn't have a clue about the subject. Nor do many in his close circle - cabinet ministers, advisers, army generals, politicians - have any idea what the occupation is all about.
When the prime minister's confidants boast about the wealth of experience the veteran statesman has accumulated - "He has already seen it all," they say - they need to be reminded that there is one thing, at least, that Sharon has never seen: He has never seen the Israeli occupation, certainly not the occupation as it has evolved in the past few years, with all its ugliness and cruelty.
What does Sharon know about life under curfew, in communities that have been under siege for years? What does he know about the humiliation at checkpoints, or about people being forced to travel on gravel and mud roads, at risk to their lives, in order to get a woman in labor to a hospital? About life on the brink of starvation? About a demolished home? About children who see their parents beaten and humiliated in the middle of the night? About prisoners and detainees held without trial who haven't spoken to their families for more than two years? About dialysis patients who are unable to reach the hospital for treatment?
Tul Karm, for example, was under continuous curfew without a break last week. Does Sharon try to imagine what it's like to live under unbroken curfew for days and weeks, without leaving the house, without a fresh supply of food or medicines, in crowded homes filled with children and old people? What in the world does the prime minister of Israel know about the soldiers' behavior and the distress of the local residents? Isn't it important for him to know, to at least know?
But how will the prime minister find out about life under the occupation if the only information he gets comes from army and security sources? The focus of interest of these elements is fighting a short-term war against terrorism, preemption and liquidation. It is impossible to get a full and true picture from them.
In the past, the coordinator of government activities in the territories was a source of some information about the goings-on in Palestinian society and about its distress. However, since the appointment to the position of Major General Amos Gilad, who recently retired, even that partial source of information has been blocked completely. Gilad saw his position as that of a kind of alternative director of Military Intelligence; and instead of representing the plight of the Palestinians before the decision-makers, as he was supposed to, he chose to be one more anti-Palestinian propagandist.
For example, he constantly insisted that there is no hunger in the territories. But did he bring to the prime minister's attention the findings of international agencies indicating that an entire generation of Palestinian children is suffering from serious malnutrition?
Israeli prime ministers have long stopped visiting the Palestinian territories and rarely meet with their residents. This lack of knowledge on the part of those who will ultimately decide the fate of the territories without having the least idea of what is going on in them is almost macabre.
It wasn't always like this. At the beginning of the occupation, Israeli leaders visited the territories and met with representatives of the Palestinian population. They were not always genuine representatives. Usually, they were a group of venerable "dignitaries," as they were called - mukhtars, elders and heads of clans. Still, leaders such as Moshe Dayan and Yigal Allon, the founding fathers of the Israeli occupation, were familiar with the territory to some extent and knew some of the people there.
Sharon, in contrast, knows only maps. It is no coincidence that he resorts to them so frequently: You don't see people on maps. Sharon rolls out his maps at every opportunity, demonstrating great knowledge of every hill and every tree in the territories, and completely ignoring the people who live there and their needs. From this point of view, Sharon is the direct descendant of some of the leaders of the Zionist Movement who also ignored the Palestinians and talked about "a land without a people for a people without a land." There is not one Arab to be seen in the exhibition of historical photographs mounted now in Tel Aviv by the Jewish National Fund.
In this sense, Sharon is also the authentic representative of the majority of Israelis: They, too, don't have a clue about what is really going on in the territories. Most of them don't want to know either. The process by which they form their opinions is also based on lack of knowledge, partial knowledge or distorted knowledge. However, in the case of the prime minister, at such a critical moment, such ignorance is deplorable.
June 3, 2003
The “roadmap” to peace being promoted by the United States and others is, it seems, gaining some momentum. Israelis and Palestinians will meet with US President George Bush, European officials, and Arab leaders in summits in Egypt and Jordan in only a couple of days. The Israeli cabinet, after weeks of foot-dragging, endorsed the roadmap, albeit with multiple caveats. Palestinian Authority prime minister Mahmoud Abbas (Abu Mazen) speaks optimistically of securing a truce that would bring about a suspension of violence. Israel has spoken of easing the tight closure it maintains within the occupied territories. [Meanwhile, Israel continues to refuse to allow international workers with humanitarian and development organizations such as MCC to enter the Gaza Strip.]
Are these developments cause for optimism, for hope? For hope, certainly: who cannot but hope, even against evidence to the contrary, that bloodshed and dispossession will end? For optimism, perhaps not, especially given the ongoing construction of the so-called “separation wall,” a wall that is robbing farmers of their land, allowing for the seizure of water resources, isolating thousands of people from other towns and villages, and creating a de-facto border that will surround any Palestinian “state” to which the roadmap gives birth, imprisoning it within ca. 40% of the West Bank. The first three pieces below, by Ran HaCohen, Amira Hass, and Neve Gordon, all examine the incompatibility of the so-called separation wall with a lasting, durable peace.
Ariel Sharon, this past week, told his Likud faction, that the time had come to stop ruling over 3.5 million Palestinians, the time had come to “end the occupation.” Again, cause for optimism? If by “ending the occupation” Sharon meant a complete withdrawal from the territories Israel occupied in 1967, of course. If, however, “ending the occupation” simply means for Sharon relieving Israel of the responsibility placed upon it by international law to safeguard civilian wellbeing in the occupied territories and to do such tasks as run hospitals, operate schools, etc., while continuing to hold on to 60% or more of the occupied territories, then Sharon’s call to “end the occupation” is sadly not cause for hope but rather a cynical semantic game. The final essay below, by Gideon Levy, looks at the invisibility of the occupation to Israeli consciousness.
I will be on my MCC “home leave” from June 6 to August 9. There will be no MCC Palestine Updates during this time. There are a plethora of on-line resources on the internet, of course, for those who wish to stay abreast of current happenings in Palestine/Israel and who want good commentary. To keep the list brief, I’ll recommend two:
Electronic Intifada
http://www.electronicintifada.net/
Ha’aretz: This Israeli newspaper contains both news reports and commentary from Israelis on the conflict. The opinion pieces cover the wide range of Israeli public opinion. You will probably have noticed that these updates routinely include pieces by Ha’aretz journalists Amira Hass and Gideon Levy, with their critical perspectives on the occupation. Analysts Danny Rubinstein and Akiva Eldar also provide consistently incisive commentary on events.
http://www.haaretzdaily.com/
--Alain Epp Weaver
1. The Apartheid Wall
May 21, 2003
by Ran HaCohen
[Note: if the photo and the map do not appear, go to http://www.antiwar.com/hacohen/h052103.html for the full article.]
Only alert readers may have noticed that the Israeli-biased American "Road Map to Peace", already being imposed on the Palestinians, has not even been accepted by Israel's rejectionist government. Asked about it, Secretary of State Colin Powell said that accepting or not accepting it "didn't really matter" – when Israel is concerned, to be sure; I have a hunch that had the Palestinians declined to accept it, the American reaction would have been quite different.
But for once, I agree with Mr. Powell: it really does not matter. A central function of the "Road Map" is to distract from the actual map of the Palestinian territories. This map is being radically altered, and unlike the Road Map, which will be forgotten like all its cynical forerunners ("Zinni Plan", "Tenet Plan", "Mitchell Report", "Regional Peace Conference" etc.), the geographical map of Palestine is here to stay, with a huge Wall now being built in its middle – the "Security Fence" in official Israeli language, in fact an Apartheid Wall.
PM Sharon has long opposed the idea of a barrier between Israel and the West Bank. As late as April 2002, Sharon was still rejecting it – in spite of public pressure, in spite of demands raised by both Israel's President and the Head of the Secret Service, and, above all, in spite of hundreds of Israeli civilian victims to Palestinian terrorism, whose death could have been prevented by such a fence. Not before June 2002, in what was portrayed as a victory for Labour's leader Ben-Eliezer (then Defence Minister in a unity coalition) imposed on Sharon against his will, was the huge construction project finally launched.
Since, unlike their ruling junta, most Israelis do want to end the occupation, support for the Fence is overwhelming. Most Israelis believe it will bring security, and eventually turn into a border between Israel and a Palestinian State. Israel's millionaires, as Yedioth Achronoth exposed (22.11.2002), have a special reason to celebrate: hundreds of Palestinian olive trees on the route of the fence are rooted out by the constructors, smuggled and sold for the gardens of rich Israelis (up to $5.000 for an ancient tree). Palestinian owners who dare ask for compensation for their often only source of income are driven away by threats and beating.
Change of Heart?
The junta's change of heart towards the Wall happened only after "Operation Defence Shield" of April 2002. As long as Israeli terror victims could be used to justify the repeated incursions into autonomous Palestinians areas, no fence was built. After "Defensive Shield", when Israel had finally managed to reoccupy the entire West Bank and to destroy the Palestinian Authority (existing in name only ever since), the Wall could be erected.
But the deeper reason for the apparent change of heart is that the junta found a way to use the Wall for its ends: as part of its project of destroying the Palestinians. This cannot be grasped without taking a look at the actual route of the Wall.
Why, you may wonder: isn't the Wall following the Green Line separating Israel from the West Bank? – Not quite. If this had been Israel's intention, we could have had Peace long ago. The whole point is that Israel refuses to give up the West Bank, and building a Wall on the Green Line is the last thing the junta had in mind. The Wall is constructed deep in Palestinian territory, in order to rob as much Palestinian land and water as possible. A good example is the small village of Mas'ha, where a joint group of Palestinians, Israelis and internationals has set a small camp trying to attract attention and to fight the ongoing atrocity.
Mas'ha as Example
The village of Mas'ha is adjacent to the Israeli settlement of Elkana, about 7km away from the green line. On April 2003, Israeli bulldozers started to separate Mas'ha by an 8m high concrete wall from its only remaining source of livelihood: agricultural land, mostly olive trees. 98% of the lands of Mas'ha will be placed on the Israeli side of the fence. The fence also disconnects the road from Jenin to Ramallah, a segment of which will now be in the Israeli side of the fence.
It wasn't only land greed that sent the bulldozers to the lands of Mas'ha. These lands are on the western part of the large water reservoir originating in the West Bank, whose waters flow under the ground also to the centre of Israel. Out of 600 million cubic metre of water that this reservoir provides in a year, Israel withdraws about 500 million. Control over the water sources has always been a central Israeli motivation for maintaining the occupation. The first settlements, like Elkana, were located in critical locations for drilling. Since 1967, Israel has prohibited Palestinians from digging new wells, but in the lands of Mas'ha there are still many operating older wells. In isolating the village from its wells, Israel attempts both to control the water reserves, and to eliminate livelihood sources, thus forcing its residents out.
I went to Mas'ha a couple of weeks ago. The huge barrier was not yet complete: it consisted of a 3m deep trench, which we could still cross with some difficulty at a shallow point, and of a razed plateau, 80 – 130m wide, on which the gigantic wall, with barbed wire, cameras, patrol road etc. would be built (see picture from another location). It's not a make-shift fence: it's a huge barrier meant to be there for decades, creating a durable new physical reality. It twists like a snake around the cultivated hills, encircling the village on three sides just a few steps away from its last houses. The owners of the lands were told there would be gates in the wall, which would enable them to access their lands; "they just didn't tell us who will hold the key", say in bitter irony the siege-learned farmers, who have already ost most of their lands to the settlements of Elkana and Etz Ephraim, all built on Mas'ha's lands in previous decades.
And Mas'ha is just one non-unique example. Out of 12.500 dunums of the village of Jius, 600 dunums are confiscated for 6km of wall, and 8.600 dunums will be on its Israeli side. The 550 families, half of which used to work in Israel when this was still possible and were then pushed back to agriculture, now lose their last source of income (Giedon Levi, Ha'aretz 2.5.2003).
Secrets and Lies
It may be clear by now why the junta refuses to give information about the route of the Wall, as B'tselem Newsletter describes in detail. The Green Line is 350km long; present reports speak of a 600 km long Wall on the west side of the West Bank alone. – Alone? – Yes: because – as Ha'aretz (23.3.2003) mentioned en passante just once, without any details, comment or follow-up – yet another, eastern wall is planned. This crucial information virtually escapes public attention. Since most Israelis think the Fence is built along the Green Line, they do not even suspect another wall encircling the Palestinians from the back as well.
Just two months before the fence plan was confirmed in his cabinet, Sharon was quoted in Yedioth Achronoth (26.4.2002). The journalist was outraged by what he considered Sharon's pretexts against erecting a wall. Sharon is accused of exaggerations, turning the simple project of a 350km fence along the Green Line into an unfeasible 1.000km long enterprise:
"Sharon's favourite way to inflate data is simply to double the numbers. 'You cannot have a fence just on one side of the seam zone', he told police officers, 'You have to have fences on both sides, and there is the Jordan Valley where another fence on both sides is needed'. […] To sabotage the separation […], Sharon is talking about two different routes: two fences on different locations on the seam line, and yet another two fences between Israel and Jordan. This way, you really get to 1.000km".
But Sharon was not exaggerating: we now know that the western barrier is already 600km long, and adding a similar fence on the east makes Sharon's numbers look rather underestimated. What the journalist did not realise, was that Sharon was just pretending to oppose the fence, while planning its actual route so as to maximize Israel's share of the territory; that the Eastern fence would not be built between Israel and Jordan, but in the middle of the West Bank; and that Sharon, to get public support, wisely presented the Apartheid Wall as his pragmatic surrender to Labour and to public pressure, while in fact it was his scheme, elaborated by him long before he found the opportunity to carry it out, camouflaged as yielding to dovish pressure to strengthen his "moderate" image.
The Actual Map
The following map, prepared by Palestinian sources – based on the parts of the wall already erected, those under construction, and confiscation orders issued to land owners – shows approximately what Israel is up to. Leaving the lion's share of the West Bank outside the Wall in Israeli hands, even what looks like two contiguous Bantustans are in fact crisscrossed by chains of Israeli settlements and roads-for-Jews-only.
The UN Resolution of 1947 allocated 45% of British Mandate Palestine to a Palestinian State. In 1948, Israel occupied 78% of the land, leaving just 22% – the West Bank and Gaza – to the Palestinians. This is all they have been demanding since 1993. Now, Israel is robbing more than the better half of these 22% left. Six million Israelis are to have about 90% of the land (and water), whereas three-and-a-half million Palestinians, many of them refugees, are pushed to starve into what is left, locked behind gigantic walls in open-air prisons, with no land, no water and no hope. The moral way to peace, love and security, no doubt.
The Apartheid Wall will be 8m high and probably 1.000km long. For comparison, China's Great Wall – the only human-made object seen from outer space – is 6.700km long, whereas the Berlin Wall was a dwarf, just 155km long and 3,6m high. Keeping silent on this gigantic project and its genocidal implications, meant to prevent any fair future settlement (not to mention the Road Map), is a moral crime, of which almost the entire Western media is guilty.
–Ran HaCohen
2. The state Sharon is talking about
Amira Hass
Haaretz, May 28, 2003
Talk and declarations have more influence than facts and actions on the ground. This can be seen once again in the contradictory reactions - furious or welcoming - to the government's approval of the road map and to the fire-breathing statements by Ariel Sharon that it's wrong to rule over 3.5 million Palestinians, that occupation is not good, that there's no alternative but to agree to the establishment of a Palestinian state. The facts on the ground, which don't create as strong an impression as the rhetoric, are established every day. The facts are called the separation fence and security fences around settlements, security roads and bypass roads that continue to cut off the Palestinian villages from each other and the villages from their land, and construction in the settlements that were already vastly expanded during the Oslo era to the point where they constitute about half the total area of the West Bank. These facts are determining - and will continue to determine - the area where the road map will be applied, the area where the entity known as the "Palestinian state" will be established. A visit to the area, where the Public Works Commission, the Defense Ministry, Housing Ministry and the IDF bulldozers are busy at work, makes it possible to see why it's easy for Prime Minister Ariel Sharon to talk about a "Palestinian state." A consulting team from the Palestinian negotiations department has drawn up a future map, based on these facts on the ground. The team will give it to the ambassadors and envoys who are so enthusiastic about Sharon's statements. According to the facts on the ground, the "state" will apparently be comprised of three enclaves cut off from one another inside the West Bank - in addition to the Gazan enclave, and with no guarantee the settlements inside the enclave will be dismantled. The "separation fence" has been described as "temporary," but it is a wall with hefty fortifications taking up a lot of land, and it has already scarred the Tul Karm-Qalqiliyah area, the most prosperous Palestinian farmland, thus sabotaging one of the cornerstones of Palestinian economic security. The massive construction in Jerusalem and its environs, from Bethlehem to Ramallah, and the Dead Sea to Modi'in, has already ruled out any Palestinian urban, industrial or cultural development worthy of the name in the area of East Jerusalem. The southern enclave of the West Bank, from Hebron to Bethlehem, will be cut off from the central enclave of the Ramallah area by an ocean of manicured Israeli settlements, tunnel roads and highways. The northern enclave, from Jenin to Nablus, will be cut off from the center by the massive settlement bloc of Ariel-Eli-Shiloh. Presumably Sharon's intentions for an eastern separation fence will also come into being - after all, his talk about a state is more persuasive to the American administration than the land Israel continues to effectively expropriate from the Palestinians. The Jordan Valley will remain outside the Palestinian state, and between it and the divided Palestinian "state" there will be settlements with tiny populations and enormous land reserves, like Itamar, Nokdim and Tekoah, as well as huge settlements like Ma'aleh Adumim. Last Friday, Yedioth Ahronoth's weekend magazine published a useful report for all those who never go to the territories, detailing the long-term significance of the separation fence, accompanied by a map that bears a striking resemblance to the map prepared by the Palestinians. There have already been many reports about how tens of thousands of villagers have been cut off from their lands, how some villages have been imprisoned between the two sides of the "fence," and how Qalqiliyah has been cut off entirely. There have also been reports about how the separation fence is constantly being moved eastward, by settler demand. But the Yedioth reporter, Meron Rapaport, went a step further, asking key people in the settlements about those facts. According to the quotes from Ariel Mayor Ron Nahman, he has already seen the map of Palestinian enclaves being created by the fence: "That's the same map I've seen every time I've visited Arik [Sharon] since 1978. He told me he's been thinking about it since 1973." A settler from Einav, referring to himself as "very right-wing," regards the fence as a disaster: "It's an economic death sentence for the Palestinians," Shmil Eldad told Rapaport. "There are people here who want to make a living and it's creating more hatred," he added. But Moshe Immanuel from Salit justifies the fence: "The Palestinians lost in 1948 and 1967 and they will lose this time, too ... That's what happens, those who lose in war, lose." David Levy, head of the Jordan Valley Regional Council, knows the fence will keep the area "inside," meaning inside Israel. He says he knows, on the basis of meetings with Sharon and maps Sharon has shown him. The Palestinians are exhausted by the unequal struggle with Israel, which is a world-class military power. Maybe that's why, lacking any alternative, they might decide to accept the Bantustan state that is meant to absorb hundreds of thousands of refugees. The "closure camps" will nurture poverty and economic distress, without any room for development. Whether their children agree to continue living in "peace" in suffocating enclaves, is another question entirely.
3. Can bad fences make good neighbours?: Israel's separation wall is being used to annex territory
By Neve Gordon in Jerusalem
The Guardian - 29 May 2003
Although Mazmuriah is located less than 20 minutes' drive from my Jerusalem apartment, all roads connecting the small village to the city have been blocked off.Using roundabout roads that wind across the hilly terrain of the southern Jerusalem municipal border, we took more than an hour to reach the village. The Palestinian residents invited us. They wanted to tell Israeli peace activists about their imminent expulsion, about their fear of being forced to move from their ancestral land. They wanted to tell us about the bad fence. But first some background. After the 1967 war, Israel annexed some 70sq km of land to the municipal boundaries of West Jerusalem, imposing Israeli law on this area. These annexed territories included not only the part of Jerusalem that had been under Jordanian rule but also an additional 64sq km, most of which had belonged to 28 villages in the West Bank.Unlike most of the inhabitants of the annexed villages, who were subsequently registered by the Israeli civil administration asIsraeli residents (as opposed to citizens), the inhabitants of Mazmuriah were given West Bank identity cards.This created a juridical situation straight out of Kafka. The Mazmuriah residents and their houses belong to different legal andadministrative systems: the houses and land are part of the Jerusalem municipal system, while the inhabitants are residents ofthe West Bank and therefore subjected to Israeli military rule.Using its juridical control of the land, in 1992 Israel classified the area in which the village is located as "green land" - land thatcannot be built on and is basically a nature reserve. The idea was to strangle the local population, prohibiting them from constructing any new houses.Simultaneously the Jerusalem municipality also refused to provide basic services to the village such as extending water and sewage lines. Later, after the eruption of the second intifada, all roads between the village and Jerusalem were closed off, thus forcing the residents to become dependent on the West Bank for their livelihood and their children's education.What appeared to be a "legal anomaly" slowly became the grim reality of everyday life. Although they live on land annexed by Israel, for all practical purposes the Palestinian residents themselves do not belong to Jerusalem; they are West Bankers. The only "defect" in this grand plan is that they still reside in the annexed area. It is this so-called defect that Israel now intends to fix.Accompanied by border policemen, a coordinator for the Israeli housing ministry, defence ministry, and Jerusalem municipalityrecently showed the residents a map of where the separation fence will pass. The fence, the residents learned, would surround the village on its southern side and thus separate it from the West Bank. Even if the residents are allowed to stay, their watersupplies will be cut off, they will not be able to reach work and their children will be unable to go to school. To make things clear, however, the Israeli official notified the Palestinian residents that, because of the village's proximity to the planned separation fence, they would have to move.Israel's goal, it appears, is to expropriate the land "uninhabited". It is highly unlikely, however, that the villagers will actually beforced out of their homes. A more intricate strategy will be employed.Creating a physical barrier between the village and the West Bank and not allowing the inhabitants any contact with either thePalestinian Authority or the Jerusalem Municipality will undermine their existence. Ultimately they will have to leave the village of "their own accord".This scheme of expelling a whole population from their land is in blatant violation of basic rights as well as all the agreements that Israel has signed, not least the principles laid out in the "road map". In Israel we call this policy "transfer".While the end of this story has yet to be told, the first 145 km of the separation fence will be completed in two months' time, violating the rights of more than 210,000 Palestinians residing in 67 villages, towns and cities, according to the Israeli human rights group B'tselem.The crux of the matter is that the fence is not being erected on the 1967 borders, but is being used as a mechanism to expropriate Palestinian land and create facts on the ground that will affect any future arrangement between Israel and the Palestinians. Already in this early stage, 13 communities - home to 11,700 people - have become enclaves or bantustans imprisoned between the fence and Israel. Thirty-six communities, in which 72,200 Palestinians reside, will be separated from their farmlands that lie west of the fence.Yehezkel Lein from B'tselem concludes: "In the past, Israel used 'imperative military needs' to establish settlements on expropriated Palestinian land and argued that the action was temporary. The settlements have for some time been facts on the ground and Israel now demands that most of them be annexed to Israel. As in the case of the settlements, it is reasonable to assume that the separation fence will also be used to support Israel's future claim to annex territories."Good fences, the American poet Robert Frost once wrote, make good neighbours. The question the Israeli government must ask itself is, "What do bad fences make?"Neve Gordon teaches politics and human rights at Ben-Gurion University
4. Clueless About the Occupation
Gideon Levy
Ha'aretz June 1, 2003
At long last, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon has started to talk about the occupation, but doesn't have a clue about the subject. Nor do many in his close circle - cabinet ministers, advisers, army generals, politicians - have any idea what the occupation is all about.
When the prime minister's confidants boast about the wealth of experience the veteran statesman has accumulated - "He has already seen it all," they say - they need to be reminded that there is one thing, at least, that Sharon has never seen: He has never seen the Israeli occupation, certainly not the occupation as it has evolved in the past few years, with all its ugliness and cruelty.
What does Sharon know about life under curfew, in communities that have been under siege for years? What does he know about the humiliation at checkpoints, or about people being forced to travel on gravel and mud roads, at risk to their lives, in order to get a woman in labor to a hospital? About life on the brink of starvation? About a demolished home? About children who see their parents beaten and humiliated in the middle of the night? About prisoners and detainees held without trial who haven't spoken to their families for more than two years? About dialysis patients who are unable to reach the hospital for treatment?
Tul Karm, for example, was under continuous curfew without a break last week. Does Sharon try to imagine what it's like to live under unbroken curfew for days and weeks, without leaving the house, without a fresh supply of food or medicines, in crowded homes filled with children and old people? What in the world does the prime minister of Israel know about the soldiers' behavior and the distress of the local residents? Isn't it important for him to know, to at least know?
But how will the prime minister find out about life under the occupation if the only information he gets comes from army and security sources? The focus of interest of these elements is fighting a short-term war against terrorism, preemption and liquidation. It is impossible to get a full and true picture from them.
In the past, the coordinator of government activities in the territories was a source of some information about the goings-on in Palestinian society and about its distress. However, since the appointment to the position of Major General Amos Gilad, who recently retired, even that partial source of information has been blocked completely. Gilad saw his position as that of a kind of alternative director of Military Intelligence; and instead of representing the plight of the Palestinians before the decision-makers, as he was supposed to, he chose to be one more anti-Palestinian propagandist.
For example, he constantly insisted that there is no hunger in the territories. But did he bring to the prime minister's attention the findings of international agencies indicating that an entire generation of Palestinian children is suffering from serious malnutrition?
Israeli prime ministers have long stopped visiting the Palestinian territories and rarely meet with their residents. This lack of knowledge on the part of those who will ultimately decide the fate of the territories without having the least idea of what is going on in them is almost macabre.
It wasn't always like this. At the beginning of the occupation, Israeli leaders visited the territories and met with representatives of the Palestinian population. They were not always genuine representatives. Usually, they were a group of venerable "dignitaries," as they were called - mukhtars, elders and heads of clans. Still, leaders such as Moshe Dayan and Yigal Allon, the founding fathers of the Israeli occupation, were familiar with the territory to some extent and knew some of the people there.
Sharon, in contrast, knows only maps. It is no coincidence that he resorts to them so frequently: You don't see people on maps. Sharon rolls out his maps at every opportunity, demonstrating great knowledge of every hill and every tree in the territories, and completely ignoring the people who live there and their needs. From this point of view, Sharon is the direct descendant of some of the leaders of the Zionist Movement who also ignored the Palestinians and talked about "a land without a people for a people without a land." There is not one Arab to be seen in the exhibition of historical photographs mounted now in Tel Aviv by the Jewish National Fund.
In this sense, Sharon is also the authentic representative of the majority of Israelis: They, too, don't have a clue about what is really going on in the territories. Most of them don't want to know either. The process by which they form their opinions is also based on lack of knowledge, partial knowledge or distorted knowledge. However, in the case of the prime minister, at such a critical moment, such ignorance is deplorable.
Monday, May 19
MCC Palestine Update #80
MCC Palestine Update #80
May 19, 2003
Each May brings the commemoration of two very different events in Palestine/Israel. Israelis mark their Independence Day (held on May 7 this year, as it is observed according to the Jewish calendar): Israeli flags are draped from nearly every balcony, flown from almost every roof, and attached to many cars. On May 15, however, Palestinians remember al-Nakba, the Catastrophe, the forceful eviction of over 700,000 Palestinians from their homes in 1948, Palestinians who live as refugees and who to this day have been denied the possibility of returning to their homes and properties, this despite UN resolutions, international law, and accepted practice in other refugee cases to give refugees the choice of whether or not to return. Palestinian refugees—those from 1948 and their descendants—now number in the millions, with many of them still living in camps in the occupied territories, Syria, Lebanon, and Jordan.
A just and durable peace will not be achieved by simply brushing aside the question of refugee return. Mennonite Central Committee is this year supporting efforts by two organizations, one Palestinian and one Israeli, to help raise awareness of al-Nakba within Israeli society and to generate discussion within the Israeli public about how refugee return could be a key component to a durable peace rather than an obstacle to peace. The Badil Resource Center for Refugee and Residency Rights in Bethlehem this month issued a Hebrew-language packet on the right of Palestinian refugees to return aimed at Israeli audiences: journalists, academics, politicians, peace activists, etc. Zochrot, an Israeli organization whose name means “those who remember,” meanwhile, held a ceremony in Tel Aviv on May 15, remembering al-Nakba. Zochrot will be conducting a series of tours over the coming months for Israeli Jews to destroyed Palestinian villages inside Israel and will be helping to distribute Badil’s Hebrew-language packet. More on Zochrot and Badil can be found at:
http://www.nakbainhebrew.org/position-eng.php/ [The rest of the site is in Hebrew]
http://www.badil.org/
One disturbing event for international NGOs like MCC has been the indefinite closure of the Gaza Strip to all foreigners (except for some diplomats) since May 19. Palestinians, of course, are also not allowed in or out of Gaza. Humanitarian organizations like MCC who work with Palestinian organizations in the Gaza Strip to provide needed services to women, children, persons with disabilities, the economically marginalized, etc., require free and unhidered access. MCC and other NGOs have written to the members of the Quartet, noting that this indefinite closure of the Gaza Strip by the Israeli military authorities is not an auspicious way to inaugurate the roadmap to peace.
Below you will find four pieces. The first, somewhat lengthy piece, is a set of frequently asked questions issued by the Negotiations Affairs Department of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) on Palestinian refugees. The second piece, by Tel Aviv University professor Tanya Reinhart, examines the probable fate of the “roadmap” to peace issued by the “Quartet,” a roadmap that the Israelis have yet to accept (and to which they are demending 14 major changes). The final two pieces, by Ha’aretz journalists Gideon Levy and Danny Rubinstein, look at the continued travel restrictions and humiliations faced by Palestinians at military checkpoints and while trying to live normal lives in the occupied territories, this despite calls from the Quartet to ease travel restrictions on Palestinians.
--Alain Epp Weaver
1. Frequently Asked Questions Concerning Palestinian Refugees
Produced by the Negotiations Affairs Department, PLO, May 2003
1. Who are the Palestinian refugees?
The Palestinian refugees are approximately 726,000 Christians and Muslims (amounting to 75% of the Arab population of Palestine) who resided in what is now Israel and who fled or were expelled prior to, during and after the 1948 War to create a state for Jews in Palestine. They and their descendents are often referred to as the “1948 refugees.” See map: Population Movements, 1948-1951, www.nad-plo.org/maps/populationmovements.htm
In 1967, an additional 200,000 Palestinians[1][1][2][2] fled their homes in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip when Israel launched a war against Jordan and Egypt, capturing and occupying the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and the Gaza Strip (the Occupied Palestinian Territories). They and their descendents are often referred to as the “1967 displaced persons.”
Neither the 1948 refugees nor the 1967 displaced persons have been allowed by Israel to return to their homes in what is now Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories.
2. How did they become refugees?
Like all refugees, the Palestinians left their homes out of fear for their safety due to the military conflict. Many fled due to direct military assaults on their towns and villages; others were forcibly expelled by Zionist forces. Massacres of Palestinian civilians created an atmosphere of fear that understandably caused many Palestinians to seek safety elsewhere. The most famous massacre occurred in Deir Yassin (not far from what is now Israel’s Holocaust Memorial) where, by most conservative estimates, Jews murdered more than 100 Palestinian men, women and children.[2][2][3][3]
Israelis understandably have a difficult time accepting that their independence came at the expense of the indigenous Palestinians, who were dispossessed of their homeland and property. Consequently, Israel perpetuates a number of mythologies with respect to the causes of the Palestinian refugee crisis, including: Arab armies ordered the Palestinian refugees to flee; Arab radio broadcasts ordered the Palestinians to leave; Palestinians do not originally come from Palestine, and that the refugee crisis was the result of a war started by Arabs (even though the New York Times documents thousands of Palestinian refugees prior to any Arab invasion). These mythologies have been debunked not only by newspaper reports, UN documents and Palestin! ian sources, but also by Israeli historians such as Ilan Pappé and Benny Morris.
Most importantly, even if such theories were true, none negates the Palestinian right of return: under international law, refugees have the right to return regardless of the circumstances by which they became refugees.
3. How many Palestinian refugees are there?
Today, the original Palestinian refugees and their descendents are estimated to number more than 6.5 million[3][3][4][4] and constitute the world’s oldest and largest refugee population, making up more than one-fourth of the entire refugee population in the world.[5] They include:
· 4 million 1948 refugees who are registered with the United Nations;
· 1.5 million 1948 refugees who are not registered by the United Nations either because they did not register or did not need assistance at the time they became refugees;
· 773,000 1967 displaced persons; and
· 263,000 internally displaced refugees (see question 5 below for more on the internally displaced).
See map: Palestinian Refugees, 2001, www.nad-plo.org/maps/refugees6.htm
4. Where do the Palestinian refugees live?
Palestinian refugees live around the world, though most live within 100 miles of Israel’s border.[4][4][5][6] Half of the refugees live in Jordan, one-fourth in the Occupied Palestinian Territories, and approximately 15 percent live in Syria and Lebanon. An additional 263,000 live in Israel. The remainder live scattered around the world, primarily in the rest of the Arab world, Europe and the Americas. [5][5][6][7]< /P>
More than 1.3 million Palestinian refugees live in 59 UN-administered refugee camps in the Occupied Palestinian Territories, Jordan, Syria and Lebanon and 12 unrecognized refugee camps: 5 in the West Bank, 3 in Jordan and 4 in Syria.[6][6][7][8] See map: The Palestinian Diaspora, 1958, www.nad-plo.org/maps/thepalestiniandiaspora.htm
5. Why are there Palestinian refugees in Israel?
In 1948, approximately 32,000 Palestinians left their homes but remained within the borders of what became Israel. These Palestinians have never been allowed to return to their homes and villages in Israel, despite the fact that they are Israeli citizens. Their homes, like the homes of other Palestinian refugees, were either demolished or given to Jews.
6. What happened to the property of the Palestinian refugees?
Following the 1948 war, approximately 531 Palestinian villages and towns were destroyed or resettled by Jews in an attempt to erase any evidence of a non-Jewish history and attachment to Palestine. Many destroyed Palestinian villages were rebuilt as Jewish towns and given Hebrew names. See map: Palestinian Villages Depopulated in 1948 and Razed by Israel, www.nad-plo.org/maps/palvildep.htm
7. Have the Palestinian refugees been compensated for their property losses?
No. Conservative estimates of the current value of Palestinian property stolen or destroyed by Israel run well into billions of dollars, though estimates can vary based on whether non-material losses and compensation for host countries are included.
8. Do the Palestinian refugees have the right to return to their homes?
Yes. Under international law, civilians fleeing a war are entitled to return to their homes. This right is embodied in:
UN Resolution 194 - (passed on 11 December 1948 and reaffirmed every year since 1948):[7][7][8][9]
“…the [Palestinian] refugees wishing to return to their homes and live at peace with their neighbours should be permitted to do so at the earliest practicable date, and that compensation should be paid for the property of those choosing not to return and for loss of or damage to property which, under principles of international law or in equity, should be made good by the Governments or authorities responsible.”
Universal Declaration of Human Rights:
“Everyone has the right to leave any country, including his own, and to return to his country.” (Article 13(2)).
International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination:
“…State Parties undertake to prohibit and to eliminate racial discrimination on all its forms and to guarantee the right of everyone, without distinction as to race, colour, or national or ethnic origin, to equality before the law, notably in the enjoyment of…[t]he right to leave any country, including one’s own, and to return to one’s country.” (Article 5(d)(ii)).
International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights:
“No one shall be arbitrarily deprived of the right to enter his own country.” (Article 12(4)).
International Practice - In Bosnia, East Timor, Kosovo, and Rwanda refugees have had their right of return honored. In Kosovo, the right of return was considered a “non-negotiable” issue. See PLO Negotiations Affairs Department, Double Standards: How the International Community has Taught Israel that it is Above the Law, www.nad-plo.org/Double%20Standards%20Report.pdf
9. Why haven’t the Palestinian refugees been able to return to their homes in Israel?
Israel refuses to abide by international law with respect to the rights of the indigenous non-Jewish population. Israel defines itself as a “Jewish state” and Palestinian refugees are Christians and Muslims. Jews from all over the world, and even converts to Judaism, are allowed to immigrate to Israel under the “Law ! of Return,” but in a clear demonstration of religious/ethnic discrimination, the indigenous Palestinian Muslim and Christian populations are banned from returning to their homes.
10. Doesn’t the right of return threaten Israel’s “Jewish character”?
The end of religious/ethnic discrimination with respect to the right of return threatens nothing other than discrimination itself. Allowing Christians and Muslims to return to their homes does not negate Jewish historical attachment to Israel nor does it deny the rights of Jews to immigrate to Israel. The right of return seeks only to address historic injustices and affirm the rights of the indigenous non-Jewish population.
11. Why can’t the host countries simply absorb the Palestinian refugees?
The Palestinian refugees are not from the host countries: they are from what is now Israel and have the right to return to Israel. While many countries have granted Palestinian refugees full citizenship, acquiring rights in another country does not negate a refugee’s right to return home.
12. What has the international community done about the Palestinian refugees?
The international community has largely supported the Palestinian right of return and the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) which is the primary relief organization responsible for the welfare of the refugees. Nevertheless, the international community has failed to take any concrete measures to force Israel to abide by international law and allow the refugees to return.
13. Can’t the Palestinian refugee crisis be resolved through financial compensation to alleviate the poverty?
The term “refugee” does not refer to economic status – it is a legal status: financially successful refugees who have obtained citizenship in other countries are still refugees and still have the right to return. In addition to their right of return, all Palestinian refugees have a right to compensation for their losses.
14. How can the 55-year plight of the Palestinian refugees be resolved?
There can be no comprehensive solution to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict without honoring the rights of Palestinian refugees. Palestinian refugees must be given the option to exercise their right of return, though refugees may prefer other options such as: (i) resettlement in third countries, (ii) resettlement in a newly independent Palestine (even though they originate from that part of Palestine which became Israel) or (iii) normalization of their legal status in the host country where they currently reside. What is important is that the refugees decide for themselves which option th! ey prefer – a decision must not be imposed upon them.
15. How was the issue of refugees addressed in negotiations with Israel?
At Camp David, Israel refused to discuss the issue of refugees, arguing that it bore no responsibility for the creation of the refugee problem or its solution. In December 2000, US President Clinton, through the “Clinton Parameters,” adopted the concept of choice but by excluding the most fundamental option of allowing refugees to choose to return to Israel, the Clinton Parameters effectively negated the legal rights of Palestinian refugees. At the Taba negotiations, Israel continued to press for an abandonment of ! the right of return. Palestinians should not be the first people in history forced to abandon their right of return.
For additional information on Palestinian refugees, please visit:
BADIL - A Bethlehem-based resource center for Palestinian refugee rights. http://www.badil.org/
Shaml - A refugee rights organization whose mandate is to create regional and global public awareness about the conditions of Palestinian refugees and strengthen links between Palestinian communities in the Diaspora and the homeland. http://www.shaml.org/
The Palestinian Return Centre - An independent academic/media consultancy specializing in research, analysis, and monitoring of issues pertaining to the dispersed Palestinians and their right to return. The site offers a monthly newsletter as well as photo, audio, and video galleries. http://www.prc.org.uk/
UNISPAL - A searchable database that contains full-text documents of the United Nations relevant to the question of Palestine and the Arab-Israeli conflict, including refugees. www.domino.org/unispal.nsf
UNRWA - The United Nations Relief and Works Agency is the main provider of basic services - education, health, relief and social services - to over 4 million registered Palestine refugees in the Middle East. http://www.unrwa.org/
Al-Awda, The Palestine Right to Return Coalition - A grassroots organization whose objective is to fulfill the right of Palestinians to return to their homeland and their right to full restitution of all their confiscated and destroyed property in accordance with international law. http://www.al-awda.org/
Palestine Remembered - A website created to highlight the towns and villages destroyed by Israel in 1948. http://www.palestineremembered.com/
Deir Yassin Remembered - A website created to highlight the Deir Yassin massacre. http://www.deiryassin.org/
For a bibliography, please visit www.nad-plo.org/permanent/bibliography.pdf
2. THE GUARANTEED FAILURE OF THE ROAD MAP
Tanya Reinhart
Yediot Aharonot, May 14, 2003
Every few months, a "peace plan" is pulled out of the drawers of the white house and keeps the public discourse busy for a few weeks. Although this ritual has a fixed pattern and predetermined end, it is curious that many in Israel are still tempted to believe that this time it is different.
The Road Map announces that this time "the destination is a final and comprehensive settlement of the Israel-Palestinian conflict by 2005". To check if it offers anything concrete in this direction, it is necessary to first get clear regarding what the conflict is about. From Israeli discourse one might get the impression that it is about the right of return: the Palestinians are trying to undermine the mere existence of the state of Israel with the demand to allow their refugees to return, and they are trying to achieve that with terror. It seems that it was forgotten that in practice this is a simple and classical conflict over land and resources (water). The Road Map document as well manifests complete absence of any territorial dimension.
The demands from the Palestinians are clear: to establish a government that will be defined by the U. S. as democratic, to form three security forces which will be defined by Israel as reliable, and to crush terror. Once these demands are fulfilled, the third phase is to begin, at which the occupation will miraculously end. But the document doesn't put any demands on Israel at this third phase. Most Israelis understand that there is no way to end the occupation and the conflict without the Israeli army leaving the territories and the dismantlement of settlements. But these basic concepts are not even hinted at in the document, which only mentions freezing the settlements and dismantling new outposts, already the first stage.
The first stage is more substantial, because it repeats the Tenet plan. In this stage Israel is expected also to "withdraw from Palestinian areas occupied from Sept 28 2000... [and to restore] the status quo that existed then". There is no doubt that fulfillment of this demand can contribute greatly to establishing some calm, even if a temporary one. Had I believed that the European representatives in the quartet could bring this plan to implementation, I would have welcomed it. But there is no basis for such a belief. The Tenet plan has come into the spotlights many times before. The last round was what appeared to e an American cease-fire initiative in March 2002, for which Zinni and Cheney were sent to the region. Already then Sharon clarified that he does not agree to this demand, and he only agrees to easing the conditions for the population in areas in which quiet will be preserved (Ha'aretz, Aluf Ben, 19.3.02). This did not prevent the U.S. from pointing at the Palestinians as the side that refused the cease fire. With the end of this initiative, Israel embarked on the "Defensive Shield" spree of destruction, with the blessing of the U.S.
Israel responded also to the Road Map with the same old objections. It further emphasized that a negotiated halt to terror is not sufficient and what is required is a visible clash between the new security forces and the opposition organizations (namely, a civil war). Israel even demands that a Palestinian declaration of end of conflict and renunciation of the right of return must be given as a precondition at the beginning of any process, and not at the end. Again, none of this undermines the U.S. position that Israel is the side that is seeking peace, the side "whose security is the key to the security of the world", as Condoleezza Rice put it. The U.S. is ruled today by hawks whose vision is an unending war. Israel, whose leaders are always eager to go on another war, is an asset in this vision. There is therefore no basis for the belief that the U.S. will allow anyone to force Israel to make any concessions.
In March 13, 2002, at the eve of Zinni's peace visit in the previous round, the Israeli army welcomed him with an attack on the Jabalya refugee camp in Gaza, in which 24 Palestinians were killed in one night. Now it has welcomed Powell with a wave of arrests and deportation of international peace activists. In the Pax Americana, there is no room for peace activists. Peace will be brought by the tanks.
http://www.tau.ac.il/~reinhart
3. Empty gestures
Gideon Levy
Ha'aretz, May 16, 2003
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/pages/ShArt.jhtml?itemNo=293336&contrassID=2&subContrassID=14
&sbSubContrassID=0&listSrc=Y
It is forbidden to stand, to smoke, to speak, to read a newspaper, to look to the side. They sit like this for an hour, and hour and a half, with their legs amid the garbage. Several male conscripts and one female soldier stand over them, rifles poised, with their armored truck parked on the side. "Mamnu'a"- "That's forbidden!" soldier H. growls at someone who tries to violate orders by lighting a cigarette. H. is armed and protected from head to toe. His round glasses peek out from under a helmet that's too big for him and covers his boyish face. His armored vest rests heavily on his scrawny body. At the dusty checkpoint near the town of Beit Anoun on the outskirts of Hebron, about 50 Palestinian men sit at the soldiers' feet on the filthy pavement and wait. It's not hard to guess what kinds of feelings are building up inside them and what kind of hatred they must feel, sitting there in the trash like animals waiting for their masters' orders. It's harder to guess what is going through the minds of the soldiers who are standing over them, making sure they do not move or speak or smoke. This happened last Sunday, when U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell was shuttling between Jerusalem and Jericho. Israel Radio announced that the "closure has been lifted in the territories" and the lead headline in the International Herald Tribune said: "Israel Lifts Limits on West Bank Travel." At the checkpoint on the edge of Hebron, a group of residents who hadn't heard the news was sitting in the dirt. All they had wanted to do was to pass on foot - there is no other way - from their town to Hebron across the road, or back. They sat there silently until H. returned from a patrol car parked nearby, ID cards in hand, and began calling out one name after the other. Maybe their release was accelerated because we media people sat down there, too. Or maybe because they had been humiliated enough. They got up, one after the other, shook the dust off their clothes, took their ID cards from the soldier without saying a word and continued on their way. One of them was held back: "Captain Omer wants to meet with you," the officer told him, and both sides appeared to understand each other well. The last of the men to go on his way, a 24-year-old shoemaker named Mamoun Zidat, who wears his hair slicked back with gel, was on the way from his shop in Hebron to his home in Bani Naim. By the time he gets there, he may have to endure another one or two humiliation rites. He says he's used to it already. Two or three times a week, the soldiers block his way, inside the occupied territories. The soldiers get into their armored vehicle and drive away. Not far away, in Hebron, the entire area under Israeli control is as deserted as when a curfew is in force. The settlers' wives haughtily walk the streets, while the Palestinian residents hardly dare look out of their shuttered windows anymore. Essentially, a "transfer" is taking place here, in plain sight. About 2,000 stores, market stalls and businesses have closed and been abandoned here, and hundreds of families have left their homes, according to the estimate of B'Tselem researcher Musa Abu Hashash. He is the one who exposed the case of the killing of Amran Abu Hamdiya in Hebron by Border Police officers, who are currently being tried. His organization is currently preparing a special report about the transfer occurring here. The residents apparently can't take it anymore. Only the poor remain, waiting for donations. On the side of the road that leads down from Tzurif to Emek Ha'ela, two figures stand behind a blue Border Police jeep. The Border Policeman is restraining a Palestinian's hands behind his back with plastic handcuffs. The one being handcuffed is a young man dressed in jeans and a tattered T-shirt. As soon as we draw near, the policeman hurries the Palestinian into the jeep and drives off. Border Police spokeswoman Liat Perl: "This is a regular crew (of Border Police volunteers) that detained a Tzurif resident at a construction site, because his entry is restricted due to a criminal past. The young man tried to flee, they stopped him, handcuffed him and put him in the jeep. After they had a talk with him, and he promised not to return, they let him go." Such is the easing of the closure. The southern town of Dahariya is blazing in the heat. It's harvest time now, and two Thursdays ago, the Samamra family decided to go out to their land - 12 dunams of wheat and sheep fodder, eight kilometers southeast of their home in Dahariya. The harvest lasts a week, during which time they usually stay out in the field with the sheep, who eat the remains of the harvest. That Thursday, the mother, Amana, the eldest son, Omar, 23, his brother Hilal, 16, and their cousin Kamal, 15, set out early in the morning with their sheep and donkeys. Omar works as a mailman; he took a break to work on the harvest. Hilal, a 10th-grader, took time off from school. The father of the family died some years ago. On Friday, their water ran out and Omar decided to take the sheep to drink near one of the houses closest to the family's land. Hilal and Kamal went too, alongside the settlers' road between Hebron and Be'er Sheva. Suddenly, says Omar, a white Renault van with yellow license plates pulled up. A large, bearded man with a kippa on his head and a rifle in his hand got out and ordered them in broken Arabic to get away from the road. He was about to leave when he saw Omar writing the car's license plate number in the sand; he wanted to complain to the Red Cross. The bearded man backed up. "Do you want your name to be on Al Jazeera?" he asked, threateningly. The man made a call on his cell phone and soon afterward a black Toyota appeared and two uniformed men got out; Omar says they were wearing Border Police uniforms. The vehicle had yellow civilian license plates. One of the men took out handcuffs and handcuffed Hilal and Kamal. They were blindfolded with a black cloth. Omar got on the donkey and escaped. Hilal speaks in a terse monotone, but his brother says that he has recovered from the anxiety that gripped him since then. Kamal is in worse shape: He has not uttered a word since the incident. Hilal says that after they handcuffed and blindfolded him, he felt that he was being peed on. Then came the beating: slaps and kicks that went on for about 15 minutes. Then Hilal heard the attackers driving off. At 5 in the afternoon, Omar, who had come back with two other shepherds, found his brother and cousin laying there in handcuffs, with the sheep having dispersed in all directions. He used a scythe to slice through the handcuffs and then went off to collect the sheep. Thirteen were on the verge of collapse, six had died - from dehydration, Omar believes - and another six disappeared. He shows photos of the dead sheep. They finally made it back home at 10 P.M. Now they are afraid to go back to their land. Amana won't let them go. So what happened on Friday afternoon, on the settlers' road between Hebron and Be'er Sheva? Who was this civilian? Where did he come from, and who were the men in uniform he summoned? The IDF Spokesman: "The event you describe was investigated, despite the paucity of details, and is not familiar. It should also be noted that the IDF does not have any vehicle of the kind described." A Border Police spokesperson added that there was no Border Police activity in the area at the time.
"Easing the closure": A Palestinian in handcuffs soon to be bundled into a jeep by Border Police.
(Photo by Miki Kratsman)
4. The point of control
Danny Rubinstein
May 18, 2003
The list of demands raised by Palestinian Prime Minster Mahmoud Abbas in his meeting with U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell, included all the familiar items: an end to the Israeli raids and assassinations, prisoner releases, settlement freezes, and an Israeli withdrawal from areas that used to be in Palestinian control.
But ask anyone on the street, anywhere in the West Bank and Gaza, what they hope for more than anything else, and most will answer: it's the checkpoints. They want the Israelis to get rid of the checkpoints.
To judge by the Palestinian press, the editors of newspapers apparently have tired of the subject. The number of reports and articles about what goes on at checkpoints has been dropping lately, apparently because there's not much new to report. Still, there's practically no street corner conversation, from Rafah to Jenin, that doesn't touch on the checkpoints.
Everyone knows the problem firsthand. The residents of the West Bank (and less so Gazans) cannot leave their towns and villages - all the roads out are blocked. Arab vehicles are not allowed on the roads, except with special permits. Anyone who leaves home reaches a checkpoint, and if they get through the first one, they no doubt end up at a second or third or more on their way to their destination.
They arrive by private car or public transport, and then have to get out to go through the army controls on foot. Many bypass the checkpoints via dirt roads and paths through the hills. The checkpoints totally disrupt the Palestinian economy, because workers can't get to work, merchandise can't get to shops and raw materials can't get to manufacturing plants. The school system and health system barely function because of the checkpoints.
At the major checkpoints, there seems to be constant chaos. Long lines of cars, yellow taxis, white vans, and trucks all jockey to move ahead in line. On the side of the roads are improvised parking lots, full of private cars and vendors selling food, drink and almost anything else to those waiting. All around are huge concrete cubes and barbed wire, and the entire area is filthy, strewn with trash. Above it all is a heavily fortified guard post, with an Israeli flag fluttering on top.
His friends call Bethlehem University administrator George Sahar, Dr. Checkpoint. He says that the checkpoints have become the core of Israeli-Palestinian relations. The checkpoint, he says, is now the place where the Palestinian meets the Israeli. "It's where the Israeli soldier delivers a personal, clear and direct message to every Palestinian man, woman and child, young and old, who passes through - and the message is, `I don't want peace with you.'"
Sahar lives in Beit Hanina, south of Ramallah and every day he has to go to Bethlehem University. Like all those who go through a checkpoint, he never knows how long the journey will take and whether he will even make it.
"It's the gate to heaven or hell," say some Bir Zeit University students waiting in line to get through the Qalandiyah checkpoint. They refer to the permanent state of uncertainty that reigns at the checkpoints. They imply there's no way of knowing what will happen. Maybe you'll get through in a few minutes, maybe you'll have to wait hours, and maybe they'll close the checkpoint and tell you to come tomorrow.
"You're in the hands of the demon," goes the Arabic _expression which the students quote. The demon controls your fate and you feel helpless. The soldiers can suddenly arrest you, because your name is similar to that of a wanted person. Or because they are looking for a relative of yours and meanwhile want to interrogate you. One of the students says that sometimes there are Israeli intelligence agents at the checkpoints who try to recruit new informants.
The Palestinians are flooded with photographs (published in the press) and stories of humiliation at checkpoints. Hisham Urthani, a well-known economist from Nablus, tells of what happened a few weeks ago at the checkpoint at the entrance to his city. He waited for more than an hour and when he finally reached the soldier who would check his papers, Urthani mentioned he was in a hurry. The soldier got angry. "You're in a hurry? Then go back to the end of the line."
Urthani, who was enraged, waited in line again and when he reached the same soldier the second time, the Bethlehem University administrator mentioned that he knows many Israelis, some in positions of power, and that he would be complaining to them.
"Nice," said the soldier. "So whom do you know, for example?"
Urthani, who regularly takes part in academic conferences and often meets Israelis, thought for a second and said, "Shimon Peres, for example."
That apparently was the wrong answer. The soldier said, "Well, if you know Shimon Peres, then you should go ask him for a job at a checkpoint, because you won't get past me today."
Urthani went home ashamed and humiliated, and wondered whether to complain. He decided not to. In a phone conversation from home, he explains that among his acquaintances and neighbors, there are quite a few who have lost relatives in the intifada. He knows people who were left crippled, and people whose sons are in prison or lost all their property, so how can he start a campaign of complaints because one soldier insulted him at a checkpoint?
One day, as he was on his way from the university to Beit Hanina, says George Sahar, he was made to wait in line for about an hour-and-a-half near Rachel's Tomb, north of Bethlehem. It was very hot and he was exhausted. He eventually made it through the checkpoint, but after a few hundred meters on foot, he was amazed to see another checkpoint with a long line. Again he waited and waited, until he cracked, and began shouting. One of the soldiers aimed a rifle at him. In retrospect, he knows he was close to death, because he nearly charged the soldier out of frustration. But he was lucky. The people around him grabbed him and one woman told the soldiers that she knew him and that he's a little crazy.
The conditions at checkpoints can change from minute to minute. A lot depends on the orders reaching the soldiers from various levels of the chain of command, in light of changing reports. The soldiers sometimes accelerate the pace of people moving through and sometimes slow it down or sometimes simply close the checkpoint without warning. The Palestinians, of course, haven't got a clue when and why the changes take place. Many in the territories are convinced it's all a matter of the mood of the soldiers and their commanders.
What is clear is that the Palestinian ability to adapt is amazing. When the soldiers just start heading toward the concrete cubes and barbed wire to close the passageway through the checkpoint, the entire Palestinian convoy lined up to get through immediately starts moving to find an alternative route. Within minutes, the pedestrians have found their way to dirt paths that bypass the checkpoint. The yellow taxis and white vans show up and with them the hundreds of vendors who had turned the sides of the road leading to the checkpoint into a shopping center.
"Duty-Free Palestine" is what those teaming markets at every checkpoint are called. People need to wait for hours, so they can be sold things. You can buy anything at a checkpoint, from a shoelace to a refrigerator, and of course food and drink. There are dozens of stalls and improvised sheds, and the prices are very low. The vendors don't pay rent, city taxes or any taxes at all, and there are no water and electricity bills, so they can keep their prices very low.
It's odd to remember that up until 12 years ago there were no permanent checkpoints between the territories and Israel nor inside the territories. For 24 years, from 1967 to 1991, the Erez and Karni junctions at Gaza, which now have full-fledged border control systems considered among the largest in the world, were open roads without a soldier in sight or any border control procedures at all. There were terrorist attacks then, too, though not like now, but according to the policies laid down by defense minister Moshe Dayan after the Six-Day War, there was freedom of movement throughout the entire land, for both Jews and Arabs.
No doubt, many a Ph.D. dissertation or master's thesis will be written about when and how the Israeli perceptions changed, leading to the checkpoint policies. Whatever those studies show, the checkpoints are now the essence of Israeli control over the Palestinians, and there is no chance that they will be removed any time in the near future.
May 19, 2003
Each May brings the commemoration of two very different events in Palestine/Israel. Israelis mark their Independence Day (held on May 7 this year, as it is observed according to the Jewish calendar): Israeli flags are draped from nearly every balcony, flown from almost every roof, and attached to many cars. On May 15, however, Palestinians remember al-Nakba, the Catastrophe, the forceful eviction of over 700,000 Palestinians from their homes in 1948, Palestinians who live as refugees and who to this day have been denied the possibility of returning to their homes and properties, this despite UN resolutions, international law, and accepted practice in other refugee cases to give refugees the choice of whether or not to return. Palestinian refugees—those from 1948 and their descendants—now number in the millions, with many of them still living in camps in the occupied territories, Syria, Lebanon, and Jordan.
A just and durable peace will not be achieved by simply brushing aside the question of refugee return. Mennonite Central Committee is this year supporting efforts by two organizations, one Palestinian and one Israeli, to help raise awareness of al-Nakba within Israeli society and to generate discussion within the Israeli public about how refugee return could be a key component to a durable peace rather than an obstacle to peace. The Badil Resource Center for Refugee and Residency Rights in Bethlehem this month issued a Hebrew-language packet on the right of Palestinian refugees to return aimed at Israeli audiences: journalists, academics, politicians, peace activists, etc. Zochrot, an Israeli organization whose name means “those who remember,” meanwhile, held a ceremony in Tel Aviv on May 15, remembering al-Nakba. Zochrot will be conducting a series of tours over the coming months for Israeli Jews to destroyed Palestinian villages inside Israel and will be helping to distribute Badil’s Hebrew-language packet. More on Zochrot and Badil can be found at:
http://www.nakbainhebrew.org/position-eng.php/ [The rest of the site is in Hebrew]
http://www.badil.org/
One disturbing event for international NGOs like MCC has been the indefinite closure of the Gaza Strip to all foreigners (except for some diplomats) since May 19. Palestinians, of course, are also not allowed in or out of Gaza. Humanitarian organizations like MCC who work with Palestinian organizations in the Gaza Strip to provide needed services to women, children, persons with disabilities, the economically marginalized, etc., require free and unhidered access. MCC and other NGOs have written to the members of the Quartet, noting that this indefinite closure of the Gaza Strip by the Israeli military authorities is not an auspicious way to inaugurate the roadmap to peace.
Below you will find four pieces. The first, somewhat lengthy piece, is a set of frequently asked questions issued by the Negotiations Affairs Department of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) on Palestinian refugees. The second piece, by Tel Aviv University professor Tanya Reinhart, examines the probable fate of the “roadmap” to peace issued by the “Quartet,” a roadmap that the Israelis have yet to accept (and to which they are demending 14 major changes). The final two pieces, by Ha’aretz journalists Gideon Levy and Danny Rubinstein, look at the continued travel restrictions and humiliations faced by Palestinians at military checkpoints and while trying to live normal lives in the occupied territories, this despite calls from the Quartet to ease travel restrictions on Palestinians.
--Alain Epp Weaver
1. Frequently Asked Questions Concerning Palestinian Refugees
Produced by the Negotiations Affairs Department, PLO, May 2003
1. Who are the Palestinian refugees?
The Palestinian refugees are approximately 726,000 Christians and Muslims (amounting to 75% of the Arab population of Palestine) who resided in what is now Israel and who fled or were expelled prior to, during and after the 1948 War to create a state for Jews in Palestine. They and their descendents are often referred to as the “1948 refugees.” See map: Population Movements, 1948-1951, www.nad-plo.org/maps/populationmovements.htm
In 1967, an additional 200,000 Palestinians[1][1][2][2] fled their homes in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip when Israel launched a war against Jordan and Egypt, capturing and occupying the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and the Gaza Strip (the Occupied Palestinian Territories). They and their descendents are often referred to as the “1967 displaced persons.”
Neither the 1948 refugees nor the 1967 displaced persons have been allowed by Israel to return to their homes in what is now Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories.
2. How did they become refugees?
Like all refugees, the Palestinians left their homes out of fear for their safety due to the military conflict. Many fled due to direct military assaults on their towns and villages; others were forcibly expelled by Zionist forces. Massacres of Palestinian civilians created an atmosphere of fear that understandably caused many Palestinians to seek safety elsewhere. The most famous massacre occurred in Deir Yassin (not far from what is now Israel’s Holocaust Memorial) where, by most conservative estimates, Jews murdered more than 100 Palestinian men, women and children.[2][2][3][3]
Israelis understandably have a difficult time accepting that their independence came at the expense of the indigenous Palestinians, who were dispossessed of their homeland and property. Consequently, Israel perpetuates a number of mythologies with respect to the causes of the Palestinian refugee crisis, including: Arab armies ordered the Palestinian refugees to flee; Arab radio broadcasts ordered the Palestinians to leave; Palestinians do not originally come from Palestine, and that the refugee crisis was the result of a war started by Arabs (even though the New York Times documents thousands of Palestinian refugees prior to any Arab invasion). These mythologies have been debunked not only by newspaper reports, UN documents and Palestin! ian sources, but also by Israeli historians such as Ilan Pappé and Benny Morris.
Most importantly, even if such theories were true, none negates the Palestinian right of return: under international law, refugees have the right to return regardless of the circumstances by which they became refugees.
3. How many Palestinian refugees are there?
Today, the original Palestinian refugees and their descendents are estimated to number more than 6.5 million[3][3][4][4] and constitute the world’s oldest and largest refugee population, making up more than one-fourth of the entire refugee population in the world.[5] They include:
· 4 million 1948 refugees who are registered with the United Nations;
· 1.5 million 1948 refugees who are not registered by the United Nations either because they did not register or did not need assistance at the time they became refugees;
· 773,000 1967 displaced persons; and
· 263,000 internally displaced refugees (see question 5 below for more on the internally displaced).
See map: Palestinian Refugees, 2001, www.nad-plo.org/maps/refugees6.htm
4. Where do the Palestinian refugees live?
Palestinian refugees live around the world, though most live within 100 miles of Israel’s border.[4][4][5][6] Half of the refugees live in Jordan, one-fourth in the Occupied Palestinian Territories, and approximately 15 percent live in Syria and Lebanon. An additional 263,000 live in Israel. The remainder live scattered around the world, primarily in the rest of the Arab world, Europe and the Americas. [5][5][6][7]< /P>
More than 1.3 million Palestinian refugees live in 59 UN-administered refugee camps in the Occupied Palestinian Territories, Jordan, Syria and Lebanon and 12 unrecognized refugee camps: 5 in the West Bank, 3 in Jordan and 4 in Syria.[6][6][7][8] See map: The Palestinian Diaspora, 1958, www.nad-plo.org/maps/thepalestiniandiaspora.htm
5. Why are there Palestinian refugees in Israel?
In 1948, approximately 32,000 Palestinians left their homes but remained within the borders of what became Israel. These Palestinians have never been allowed to return to their homes and villages in Israel, despite the fact that they are Israeli citizens. Their homes, like the homes of other Palestinian refugees, were either demolished or given to Jews.
6. What happened to the property of the Palestinian refugees?
Following the 1948 war, approximately 531 Palestinian villages and towns were destroyed or resettled by Jews in an attempt to erase any evidence of a non-Jewish history and attachment to Palestine. Many destroyed Palestinian villages were rebuilt as Jewish towns and given Hebrew names. See map: Palestinian Villages Depopulated in 1948 and Razed by Israel, www.nad-plo.org/maps/palvildep.htm
7. Have the Palestinian refugees been compensated for their property losses?
No. Conservative estimates of the current value of Palestinian property stolen or destroyed by Israel run well into billions of dollars, though estimates can vary based on whether non-material losses and compensation for host countries are included.
8. Do the Palestinian refugees have the right to return to their homes?
Yes. Under international law, civilians fleeing a war are entitled to return to their homes. This right is embodied in:
UN Resolution 194 - (passed on 11 December 1948 and reaffirmed every year since 1948):[7][7][8][9]
“…the [Palestinian] refugees wishing to return to their homes and live at peace with their neighbours should be permitted to do so at the earliest practicable date, and that compensation should be paid for the property of those choosing not to return and for loss of or damage to property which, under principles of international law or in equity, should be made good by the Governments or authorities responsible.”
Universal Declaration of Human Rights:
“Everyone has the right to leave any country, including his own, and to return to his country.” (Article 13(2)).
International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination:
“…State Parties undertake to prohibit and to eliminate racial discrimination on all its forms and to guarantee the right of everyone, without distinction as to race, colour, or national or ethnic origin, to equality before the law, notably in the enjoyment of…[t]he right to leave any country, including one’s own, and to return to one’s country.” (Article 5(d)(ii)).
International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights:
“No one shall be arbitrarily deprived of the right to enter his own country.” (Article 12(4)).
International Practice - In Bosnia, East Timor, Kosovo, and Rwanda refugees have had their right of return honored. In Kosovo, the right of return was considered a “non-negotiable” issue. See PLO Negotiations Affairs Department, Double Standards: How the International Community has Taught Israel that it is Above the Law, www.nad-plo.org/Double%20Standards%20Report.pdf
9. Why haven’t the Palestinian refugees been able to return to their homes in Israel?
Israel refuses to abide by international law with respect to the rights of the indigenous non-Jewish population. Israel defines itself as a “Jewish state” and Palestinian refugees are Christians and Muslims. Jews from all over the world, and even converts to Judaism, are allowed to immigrate to Israel under the “Law ! of Return,” but in a clear demonstration of religious/ethnic discrimination, the indigenous Palestinian Muslim and Christian populations are banned from returning to their homes.
10. Doesn’t the right of return threaten Israel’s “Jewish character”?
The end of religious/ethnic discrimination with respect to the right of return threatens nothing other than discrimination itself. Allowing Christians and Muslims to return to their homes does not negate Jewish historical attachment to Israel nor does it deny the rights of Jews to immigrate to Israel. The right of return seeks only to address historic injustices and affirm the rights of the indigenous non-Jewish population.
11. Why can’t the host countries simply absorb the Palestinian refugees?
The Palestinian refugees are not from the host countries: they are from what is now Israel and have the right to return to Israel. While many countries have granted Palestinian refugees full citizenship, acquiring rights in another country does not negate a refugee’s right to return home.
12. What has the international community done about the Palestinian refugees?
The international community has largely supported the Palestinian right of return and the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) which is the primary relief organization responsible for the welfare of the refugees. Nevertheless, the international community has failed to take any concrete measures to force Israel to abide by international law and allow the refugees to return.
13. Can’t the Palestinian refugee crisis be resolved through financial compensation to alleviate the poverty?
The term “refugee” does not refer to economic status – it is a legal status: financially successful refugees who have obtained citizenship in other countries are still refugees and still have the right to return. In addition to their right of return, all Palestinian refugees have a right to compensation for their losses.
14. How can the 55-year plight of the Palestinian refugees be resolved?
There can be no comprehensive solution to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict without honoring the rights of Palestinian refugees. Palestinian refugees must be given the option to exercise their right of return, though refugees may prefer other options such as: (i) resettlement in third countries, (ii) resettlement in a newly independent Palestine (even though they originate from that part of Palestine which became Israel) or (iii) normalization of their legal status in the host country where they currently reside. What is important is that the refugees decide for themselves which option th! ey prefer – a decision must not be imposed upon them.
15. How was the issue of refugees addressed in negotiations with Israel?
At Camp David, Israel refused to discuss the issue of refugees, arguing that it bore no responsibility for the creation of the refugee problem or its solution. In December 2000, US President Clinton, through the “Clinton Parameters,” adopted the concept of choice but by excluding the most fundamental option of allowing refugees to choose to return to Israel, the Clinton Parameters effectively negated the legal rights of Palestinian refugees. At the Taba negotiations, Israel continued to press for an abandonment of ! the right of return. Palestinians should not be the first people in history forced to abandon their right of return.
For additional information on Palestinian refugees, please visit:
BADIL - A Bethlehem-based resource center for Palestinian refugee rights. http://www.badil.org/
Shaml - A refugee rights organization whose mandate is to create regional and global public awareness about the conditions of Palestinian refugees and strengthen links between Palestinian communities in the Diaspora and the homeland. http://www.shaml.org/
The Palestinian Return Centre - An independent academic/media consultancy specializing in research, analysis, and monitoring of issues pertaining to the dispersed Palestinians and their right to return. The site offers a monthly newsletter as well as photo, audio, and video galleries. http://www.prc.org.uk/
UNISPAL - A searchable database that contains full-text documents of the United Nations relevant to the question of Palestine and the Arab-Israeli conflict, including refugees. www.domino.org/unispal.nsf
UNRWA - The United Nations Relief and Works Agency is the main provider of basic services - education, health, relief and social services - to over 4 million registered Palestine refugees in the Middle East. http://www.unrwa.org/
Al-Awda, The Palestine Right to Return Coalition - A grassroots organization whose objective is to fulfill the right of Palestinians to return to their homeland and their right to full restitution of all their confiscated and destroyed property in accordance with international law. http://www.al-awda.org/
Palestine Remembered - A website created to highlight the towns and villages destroyed by Israel in 1948. http://www.palestineremembered.com/
Deir Yassin Remembered - A website created to highlight the Deir Yassin massacre. http://www.deiryassin.org/
For a bibliography, please visit www.nad-plo.org/permanent/bibliography.pdf
2. THE GUARANTEED FAILURE OF THE ROAD MAP
Tanya Reinhart
Yediot Aharonot, May 14, 2003
Every few months, a "peace plan" is pulled out of the drawers of the white house and keeps the public discourse busy for a few weeks. Although this ritual has a fixed pattern and predetermined end, it is curious that many in Israel are still tempted to believe that this time it is different.
The Road Map announces that this time "the destination is a final and comprehensive settlement of the Israel-Palestinian conflict by 2005". To check if it offers anything concrete in this direction, it is necessary to first get clear regarding what the conflict is about. From Israeli discourse one might get the impression that it is about the right of return: the Palestinians are trying to undermine the mere existence of the state of Israel with the demand to allow their refugees to return, and they are trying to achieve that with terror. It seems that it was forgotten that in practice this is a simple and classical conflict over land and resources (water). The Road Map document as well manifests complete absence of any territorial dimension.
The demands from the Palestinians are clear: to establish a government that will be defined by the U. S. as democratic, to form three security forces which will be defined by Israel as reliable, and to crush terror. Once these demands are fulfilled, the third phase is to begin, at which the occupation will miraculously end. But the document doesn't put any demands on Israel at this third phase. Most Israelis understand that there is no way to end the occupation and the conflict without the Israeli army leaving the territories and the dismantlement of settlements. But these basic concepts are not even hinted at in the document, which only mentions freezing the settlements and dismantling new outposts, already the first stage.
The first stage is more substantial, because it repeats the Tenet plan. In this stage Israel is expected also to "withdraw from Palestinian areas occupied from Sept 28 2000... [and to restore] the status quo that existed then". There is no doubt that fulfillment of this demand can contribute greatly to establishing some calm, even if a temporary one. Had I believed that the European representatives in the quartet could bring this plan to implementation, I would have welcomed it. But there is no basis for such a belief. The Tenet plan has come into the spotlights many times before. The last round was what appeared to e an American cease-fire initiative in March 2002, for which Zinni and Cheney were sent to the region. Already then Sharon clarified that he does not agree to this demand, and he only agrees to easing the conditions for the population in areas in which quiet will be preserved (Ha'aretz, Aluf Ben, 19.3.02). This did not prevent the U.S. from pointing at the Palestinians as the side that refused the cease fire. With the end of this initiative, Israel embarked on the "Defensive Shield" spree of destruction, with the blessing of the U.S.
Israel responded also to the Road Map with the same old objections. It further emphasized that a negotiated halt to terror is not sufficient and what is required is a visible clash between the new security forces and the opposition organizations (namely, a civil war). Israel even demands that a Palestinian declaration of end of conflict and renunciation of the right of return must be given as a precondition at the beginning of any process, and not at the end. Again, none of this undermines the U.S. position that Israel is the side that is seeking peace, the side "whose security is the key to the security of the world", as Condoleezza Rice put it. The U.S. is ruled today by hawks whose vision is an unending war. Israel, whose leaders are always eager to go on another war, is an asset in this vision. There is therefore no basis for the belief that the U.S. will allow anyone to force Israel to make any concessions.
In March 13, 2002, at the eve of Zinni's peace visit in the previous round, the Israeli army welcomed him with an attack on the Jabalya refugee camp in Gaza, in which 24 Palestinians were killed in one night. Now it has welcomed Powell with a wave of arrests and deportation of international peace activists. In the Pax Americana, there is no room for peace activists. Peace will be brought by the tanks.
http://www.tau.ac.il/~reinhart
3. Empty gestures
Gideon Levy
Ha'aretz, May 16, 2003
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/pages/ShArt.jhtml?itemNo=293336&contrassID=2&subContrassID=14
&sbSubContrassID=0&listSrc=Y
It is forbidden to stand, to smoke, to speak, to read a newspaper, to look to the side. They sit like this for an hour, and hour and a half, with their legs amid the garbage. Several male conscripts and one female soldier stand over them, rifles poised, with their armored truck parked on the side. "Mamnu'a"- "That's forbidden!" soldier H. growls at someone who tries to violate orders by lighting a cigarette. H. is armed and protected from head to toe. His round glasses peek out from under a helmet that's too big for him and covers his boyish face. His armored vest rests heavily on his scrawny body. At the dusty checkpoint near the town of Beit Anoun on the outskirts of Hebron, about 50 Palestinian men sit at the soldiers' feet on the filthy pavement and wait. It's not hard to guess what kinds of feelings are building up inside them and what kind of hatred they must feel, sitting there in the trash like animals waiting for their masters' orders. It's harder to guess what is going through the minds of the soldiers who are standing over them, making sure they do not move or speak or smoke. This happened last Sunday, when U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell was shuttling between Jerusalem and Jericho. Israel Radio announced that the "closure has been lifted in the territories" and the lead headline in the International Herald Tribune said: "Israel Lifts Limits on West Bank Travel." At the checkpoint on the edge of Hebron, a group of residents who hadn't heard the news was sitting in the dirt. All they had wanted to do was to pass on foot - there is no other way - from their town to Hebron across the road, or back. They sat there silently until H. returned from a patrol car parked nearby, ID cards in hand, and began calling out one name after the other. Maybe their release was accelerated because we media people sat down there, too. Or maybe because they had been humiliated enough. They got up, one after the other, shook the dust off their clothes, took their ID cards from the soldier without saying a word and continued on their way. One of them was held back: "Captain Omer wants to meet with you," the officer told him, and both sides appeared to understand each other well. The last of the men to go on his way, a 24-year-old shoemaker named Mamoun Zidat, who wears his hair slicked back with gel, was on the way from his shop in Hebron to his home in Bani Naim. By the time he gets there, he may have to endure another one or two humiliation rites. He says he's used to it already. Two or three times a week, the soldiers block his way, inside the occupied territories. The soldiers get into their armored vehicle and drive away. Not far away, in Hebron, the entire area under Israeli control is as deserted as when a curfew is in force. The settlers' wives haughtily walk the streets, while the Palestinian residents hardly dare look out of their shuttered windows anymore. Essentially, a "transfer" is taking place here, in plain sight. About 2,000 stores, market stalls and businesses have closed and been abandoned here, and hundreds of families have left their homes, according to the estimate of B'Tselem researcher Musa Abu Hashash. He is the one who exposed the case of the killing of Amran Abu Hamdiya in Hebron by Border Police officers, who are currently being tried. His organization is currently preparing a special report about the transfer occurring here. The residents apparently can't take it anymore. Only the poor remain, waiting for donations. On the side of the road that leads down from Tzurif to Emek Ha'ela, two figures stand behind a blue Border Police jeep. The Border Policeman is restraining a Palestinian's hands behind his back with plastic handcuffs. The one being handcuffed is a young man dressed in jeans and a tattered T-shirt. As soon as we draw near, the policeman hurries the Palestinian into the jeep and drives off. Border Police spokeswoman Liat Perl: "This is a regular crew (of Border Police volunteers) that detained a Tzurif resident at a construction site, because his entry is restricted due to a criminal past. The young man tried to flee, they stopped him, handcuffed him and put him in the jeep. After they had a talk with him, and he promised not to return, they let him go." Such is the easing of the closure. The southern town of Dahariya is blazing in the heat. It's harvest time now, and two Thursdays ago, the Samamra family decided to go out to their land - 12 dunams of wheat and sheep fodder, eight kilometers southeast of their home in Dahariya. The harvest lasts a week, during which time they usually stay out in the field with the sheep, who eat the remains of the harvest. That Thursday, the mother, Amana, the eldest son, Omar, 23, his brother Hilal, 16, and their cousin Kamal, 15, set out early in the morning with their sheep and donkeys. Omar works as a mailman; he took a break to work on the harvest. Hilal, a 10th-grader, took time off from school. The father of the family died some years ago. On Friday, their water ran out and Omar decided to take the sheep to drink near one of the houses closest to the family's land. Hilal and Kamal went too, alongside the settlers' road between Hebron and Be'er Sheva. Suddenly, says Omar, a white Renault van with yellow license plates pulled up. A large, bearded man with a kippa on his head and a rifle in his hand got out and ordered them in broken Arabic to get away from the road. He was about to leave when he saw Omar writing the car's license plate number in the sand; he wanted to complain to the Red Cross. The bearded man backed up. "Do you want your name to be on Al Jazeera?" he asked, threateningly. The man made a call on his cell phone and soon afterward a black Toyota appeared and two uniformed men got out; Omar says they were wearing Border Police uniforms. The vehicle had yellow civilian license plates. One of the men took out handcuffs and handcuffed Hilal and Kamal. They were blindfolded with a black cloth. Omar got on the donkey and escaped. Hilal speaks in a terse monotone, but his brother says that he has recovered from the anxiety that gripped him since then. Kamal is in worse shape: He has not uttered a word since the incident. Hilal says that after they handcuffed and blindfolded him, he felt that he was being peed on. Then came the beating: slaps and kicks that went on for about 15 minutes. Then Hilal heard the attackers driving off. At 5 in the afternoon, Omar, who had come back with two other shepherds, found his brother and cousin laying there in handcuffs, with the sheep having dispersed in all directions. He used a scythe to slice through the handcuffs and then went off to collect the sheep. Thirteen were on the verge of collapse, six had died - from dehydration, Omar believes - and another six disappeared. He shows photos of the dead sheep. They finally made it back home at 10 P.M. Now they are afraid to go back to their land. Amana won't let them go. So what happened on Friday afternoon, on the settlers' road between Hebron and Be'er Sheva? Who was this civilian? Where did he come from, and who were the men in uniform he summoned? The IDF Spokesman: "The event you describe was investigated, despite the paucity of details, and is not familiar. It should also be noted that the IDF does not have any vehicle of the kind described." A Border Police spokesperson added that there was no Border Police activity in the area at the time.
"Easing the closure": A Palestinian in handcuffs soon to be bundled into a jeep by Border Police.
(Photo by Miki Kratsman)
4. The point of control
Danny Rubinstein
May 18, 2003
The list of demands raised by Palestinian Prime Minster Mahmoud Abbas in his meeting with U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell, included all the familiar items: an end to the Israeli raids and assassinations, prisoner releases, settlement freezes, and an Israeli withdrawal from areas that used to be in Palestinian control.
But ask anyone on the street, anywhere in the West Bank and Gaza, what they hope for more than anything else, and most will answer: it's the checkpoints. They want the Israelis to get rid of the checkpoints.
To judge by the Palestinian press, the editors of newspapers apparently have tired of the subject. The number of reports and articles about what goes on at checkpoints has been dropping lately, apparently because there's not much new to report. Still, there's practically no street corner conversation, from Rafah to Jenin, that doesn't touch on the checkpoints.
Everyone knows the problem firsthand. The residents of the West Bank (and less so Gazans) cannot leave their towns and villages - all the roads out are blocked. Arab vehicles are not allowed on the roads, except with special permits. Anyone who leaves home reaches a checkpoint, and if they get through the first one, they no doubt end up at a second or third or more on their way to their destination.
They arrive by private car or public transport, and then have to get out to go through the army controls on foot. Many bypass the checkpoints via dirt roads and paths through the hills. The checkpoints totally disrupt the Palestinian economy, because workers can't get to work, merchandise can't get to shops and raw materials can't get to manufacturing plants. The school system and health system barely function because of the checkpoints.
At the major checkpoints, there seems to be constant chaos. Long lines of cars, yellow taxis, white vans, and trucks all jockey to move ahead in line. On the side of the roads are improvised parking lots, full of private cars and vendors selling food, drink and almost anything else to those waiting. All around are huge concrete cubes and barbed wire, and the entire area is filthy, strewn with trash. Above it all is a heavily fortified guard post, with an Israeli flag fluttering on top.
His friends call Bethlehem University administrator George Sahar, Dr. Checkpoint. He says that the checkpoints have become the core of Israeli-Palestinian relations. The checkpoint, he says, is now the place where the Palestinian meets the Israeli. "It's where the Israeli soldier delivers a personal, clear and direct message to every Palestinian man, woman and child, young and old, who passes through - and the message is, `I don't want peace with you.'"
Sahar lives in Beit Hanina, south of Ramallah and every day he has to go to Bethlehem University. Like all those who go through a checkpoint, he never knows how long the journey will take and whether he will even make it.
"It's the gate to heaven or hell," say some Bir Zeit University students waiting in line to get through the Qalandiyah checkpoint. They refer to the permanent state of uncertainty that reigns at the checkpoints. They imply there's no way of knowing what will happen. Maybe you'll get through in a few minutes, maybe you'll have to wait hours, and maybe they'll close the checkpoint and tell you to come tomorrow.
"You're in the hands of the demon," goes the Arabic _expression which the students quote. The demon controls your fate and you feel helpless. The soldiers can suddenly arrest you, because your name is similar to that of a wanted person. Or because they are looking for a relative of yours and meanwhile want to interrogate you. One of the students says that sometimes there are Israeli intelligence agents at the checkpoints who try to recruit new informants.
The Palestinians are flooded with photographs (published in the press) and stories of humiliation at checkpoints. Hisham Urthani, a well-known economist from Nablus, tells of what happened a few weeks ago at the checkpoint at the entrance to his city. He waited for more than an hour and when he finally reached the soldier who would check his papers, Urthani mentioned he was in a hurry. The soldier got angry. "You're in a hurry? Then go back to the end of the line."
Urthani, who was enraged, waited in line again and when he reached the same soldier the second time, the Bethlehem University administrator mentioned that he knows many Israelis, some in positions of power, and that he would be complaining to them.
"Nice," said the soldier. "So whom do you know, for example?"
Urthani, who regularly takes part in academic conferences and often meets Israelis, thought for a second and said, "Shimon Peres, for example."
That apparently was the wrong answer. The soldier said, "Well, if you know Shimon Peres, then you should go ask him for a job at a checkpoint, because you won't get past me today."
Urthani went home ashamed and humiliated, and wondered whether to complain. He decided not to. In a phone conversation from home, he explains that among his acquaintances and neighbors, there are quite a few who have lost relatives in the intifada. He knows people who were left crippled, and people whose sons are in prison or lost all their property, so how can he start a campaign of complaints because one soldier insulted him at a checkpoint?
One day, as he was on his way from the university to Beit Hanina, says George Sahar, he was made to wait in line for about an hour-and-a-half near Rachel's Tomb, north of Bethlehem. It was very hot and he was exhausted. He eventually made it through the checkpoint, but after a few hundred meters on foot, he was amazed to see another checkpoint with a long line. Again he waited and waited, until he cracked, and began shouting. One of the soldiers aimed a rifle at him. In retrospect, he knows he was close to death, because he nearly charged the soldier out of frustration. But he was lucky. The people around him grabbed him and one woman told the soldiers that she knew him and that he's a little crazy.
The conditions at checkpoints can change from minute to minute. A lot depends on the orders reaching the soldiers from various levels of the chain of command, in light of changing reports. The soldiers sometimes accelerate the pace of people moving through and sometimes slow it down or sometimes simply close the checkpoint without warning. The Palestinians, of course, haven't got a clue when and why the changes take place. Many in the territories are convinced it's all a matter of the mood of the soldiers and their commanders.
What is clear is that the Palestinian ability to adapt is amazing. When the soldiers just start heading toward the concrete cubes and barbed wire to close the passageway through the checkpoint, the entire Palestinian convoy lined up to get through immediately starts moving to find an alternative route. Within minutes, the pedestrians have found their way to dirt paths that bypass the checkpoint. The yellow taxis and white vans show up and with them the hundreds of vendors who had turned the sides of the road leading to the checkpoint into a shopping center.
"Duty-Free Palestine" is what those teaming markets at every checkpoint are called. People need to wait for hours, so they can be sold things. You can buy anything at a checkpoint, from a shoelace to a refrigerator, and of course food and drink. There are dozens of stalls and improvised sheds, and the prices are very low. The vendors don't pay rent, city taxes or any taxes at all, and there are no water and electricity bills, so they can keep their prices very low.
It's odd to remember that up until 12 years ago there were no permanent checkpoints between the territories and Israel nor inside the territories. For 24 years, from 1967 to 1991, the Erez and Karni junctions at Gaza, which now have full-fledged border control systems considered among the largest in the world, were open roads without a soldier in sight or any border control procedures at all. There were terrorist attacks then, too, though not like now, but according to the policies laid down by defense minister Moshe Dayan after the Six-Day War, there was freedom of movement throughout the entire land, for both Jews and Arabs.
No doubt, many a Ph.D. dissertation or master's thesis will be written about when and how the Israeli perceptions changed, leading to the checkpoint policies. Whatever those studies show, the checkpoints are now the essence of Israeli control over the Palestinians, and there is no chance that they will be removed any time in the near future.
Wednesday, April 30
MCC Palestine Update #79
MCC Palestine Update #79
April 30, 2003
This past weekend my family and I were in Zebabdeh, a village in the northern West Bank where Sonia and I taught English for three years at the local Catholic school. Christians in Zebabdeh’s three churches—Roman Catholic, Greek Orthodox, and Anglican—were celebrating Easter together on the Eastern calendar. [Christmas is celebrated jointly on the Western calendar.] The small Greek Catholic community, which worships with the Roman Catholic community, was represented by a deacon who was still in his seminary studies when we were is Zebabdeh 10 years ago. We were privileged to worship once more in Zebabdeh, joining the Roman and Greek Catholics for the Good Friday, “Saturday of Light,” and Easter morning services. The church building was bursting at the seams with people, fuller than I had ever seen it. Amidst the economic, social, and political troubles engendered and exacerbated by the ongoing Israeli occupation, Palestinian worshipers this weekend offered up a dynamic and vibrant proclamation of the Gospel that death does not conquer, but that it has instead by trampled under foot by Jesus’s life, death and resurrection. Amidst the desperation in Palestine/Israel, I and other MCC workers are blessed by many signs of hope: Israelis and Palestinians working together to rebuild a destroyed home, for example, or grassroots demand for training in nonviolence. Without diminishing these signs of hope, however, this past weekend in Zebabdeh drove home for me once more one of my fundamental sources of hope: the worship and witness of the Palestinian churches and the commitment of Palestinian Christians as followers of the risen Lord.
The two news items from Palestine/Israel that have been getting the most attention recently have been questions about whether or not the designated Prime Minister, Mahmoud Abbas (Abu Mazen) would be able to form a government and whether or not the “Quartet” (US/UN/Russia/European Union) would then release the so-called “road map” which is to chart the way to a Palestinian crackdown on violence against Israeli civilians, an Israeli settlement freeze, and the establishment of a “provisional” Palestinian state in ca. 40% of the West Bank and 60% of the Gaza Strip by the end of 2003, with a final status agreement wrapped up by 2005. Israel has sent envoys to Washington with a list of 14 objections (trimmed down and consolidated from an original list of over 100 objections) to the road map. While Palestinian leaders have for the most part embraced the roadmap and while many average Palestinians are desparate for any stability that might, even if only temporarily, strengthen a crumbling economy, most Palestinians are also skeptical that the “road map” will pave the way for a permanent resolution of the conflict. The ongoing construction of the “security wall” throughout the West Bank, the continued construction of illegal colonies, and Israel’s blanket refusal to acknowledge even a symbolic right of return for Palestinian refugees (let alone real refugee choice) feed this skepticism. The road map is an attempt to revitalize the incremental style of the Oslo process, a process that supposedly aims at a viable two-state solution. Palestinians increasingly doubt that a viable state will be the real destination of the road map; rather, they fear, the road will be blocked at the interim phase, leaving Palestinians with a “provisional” state in discontiguous parts of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, no connection to Jerusalem, no dismantling of Israeli colonies, and no control over land, borders or water. The Israeli colonization process, they suggest, may have already undermined a viable two-state solution. I have addressed these matters in a recent article in the Christian Century (May 3, 2003), which I include below. I have also included a piece by Tel Aviv University professor Tanya Reinhart on how the “separation wall” is dispossessing Palestinians in the West Bank villages of Bidia and Mash’a.
A final note. I will be in Egypt for regional MCC meetings and retreat from May 3 to 13. There will therefore be no updates during this period.
--Alain Epp Weaver
1. The slow death of a Palestinian solution
Beyond Two States
Alain Epp Weaver
The Christian Century
May 3, 2003
A viable two-state solution to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict is dying; perhaps it is already dead. This reality should prompt new theological and political analysis among Christians and others who yearn for justice, peace and security for Palestinians and Israelis.
The Negotiations Affairs Department of the PLO recently issued a policy analysis arguing that “Israel’s on-going colony construction and other unilateral measures in the Occupied Palestinian Territories are effectively pre-empting the possibility of a two-state solution of a viable Palestinian state alongside Israel” (at http://www.nad-plo.org/). If not reversed, these facts “will force Palestinian policy makers to re-evaluate the plausibility of a two state solution.” Chief Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat, in a December opinion piece in the New York Times, warned that the Israeli government, through its actions in the occupied territories, was preparing a “ghetto ‘state’” for the Palestinians, “surrounded by Israeli settlements, with no ability to defend itself, deprived of water resources and arable land, with an insignificant presence in Jerusalem and sovereign in name only.”
Since Ariel Sharon became Israel’s Prime Minister in March 2001, the growth of existing Israeli settlements (what Palestinians prefer to call colonies) and the construction of new ones have skyrocketed. Satellite imaging identifies 24 new colonies in the West Bank, the expansion of 45 more, and the establishment of 113 new “outposts,” that is, caravans placed on hilltops that are later developed into full-fledged colonies. The placement of new colonies and outposts is strategic and multifaceted. First, Jerusalem is being progressively encircled by rings of Israeli colonies which break up the contiguity of Palestinian neighborhoods in East Jerusalem and which separate East Jerusalem from the rest of the West Bank.
Second, the “separation” wall (what Palestinians call the Apartheid Wall) is reconfiguring the geographical terrain: the wall, whose construction is most advanced in the northern West Bank, allows Israel to deepen the integration of its illegal West Bank settlements into Israel proper, thereby isolating Palestinian towns and villages from each other, solidifying control over water resources, and paving the way for future land confiscations by preventing farmers from reaching their farmland. The international media has often portrayed the wall as running along the “Green Line” separating Israel from the occupied territories. In fact, the wall cuts far into the West Bank; if the wall is completed along projected paths, it will mean the de facto annexation of at least 10 percent of the West Bank into Israel. (For more on the Apartheid Wall, see the “Stop the Wall” at http://www.pengon.org/.)
These various developments leave Palestinian population centers separated from one another and will create various isolated “cantons” (what Palestinians, referring to South Africa under apartheid, call “Bantustans”) within 35-40 percent of the West Bank: the canton of Bethlehem for example, or of Ramallah, Nablus/Jenin, Hebron, etc. These cantons might be left disconnected, or perhaps they would be granted what Sharon recently dubbed “transportation contiguity” in the form of bridges or tunnels to connect them.
Thus, the Israeli settlement enterprise in the occupied territories over the past decades has been about establishing a matrix of roads and settlements by which Israel can, directly or indirectly, control all of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. Journalist Amira Hass, writing in the Israeli newspaper Ha'aretz in January, highlighted the military significance of the settlements and their road networks: “Israel’s decision-makers, who over the last 20 years have carefully planned the location of every Jewish settlement in the West Bank and every water pipe and electricity pylon, also knew how to plan a ramified network of roads that would become a key weapon against the Palestinians. If you are good children and accept the dictate of the settlements, you can use the roads. If you are bad children we will lock you into the tiny prisons that these roads so cleverly created.” The past decade has witnessed these roads and settlements making these prisons ever smaller and exit from them ever more difficult.
Israeli colonial expansion, therefore, is putting the nails in the coffin of any plans for a viable two-state solution to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. Talk of “roadmaps” devised by the “Quartet” (United States, United Nations, European Union and Russia) for the creation of a Palestinian state by 2005 appear naïve at best and dangerous at worst. It is naïve because current Israeli colonial expansion is undermining the viability of a Palestinian state. It is dangerous, since Israel likely will offer to accept as a “painful compromise” a Palestinian “state” in the discontinguous 35-40 percent of the West Bank. Palestinians assume that, following the US-led war against Iraq, tremendous international pressure will be brought to bear upon them to accept a “provisional” state in less than half of the West Bank with, at best, a vague timetable for any further Israeli withdrawals. The current Israeli leadership has made it clear that it does not believe that the roadmap will lead to a full withdrawal from the occupied territories. Israeli journalist Akiva Eldar, for example, observed in Ha'aretz that Israeli defense officials “regard the road map as mere ‘lip service’ and expect it to eventually be shelved together with all of the [Bush] administration's previous plans for the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.”
How should advocates for justice, peace and real security for Palestinians and Israelis respond to this emerging reality? First, we should free ourselves from the conceptual bind of seeing “statehood” (be it Palestinian or Israeli) as an end in itself. Various Christian bodies—denominations, church-related organizations—have called for an end to the Israeli occupation of the West Bank, East Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip and for the establishment of a Palestinian state alongside the State of Israel. What is there to say, however, if Israeli colonial expansion has undermined a viable two-state solution?
Advocates for a just and lasting peace should not be ultimately concerned with whether or not a Palestinian state comes into being. After all, Israel (and the United States, and perhaps the European Union) might eagerly back the creation of a “provisional” state—doomed to indefinite provisionality—comprising discontiguous Bantustans. This would not bring justice and freedom for Palestinians, nor stability or security for either Palestinians or Israelis. Statehood, from a Christian perspective, is simply not an end in itself. What is a good in and of itself is the flourishing and the well-being of all who inhabit “Mandate Palestine,” that is, present-day Israel, the West Bank, East Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip. If current realities have undermined a two-state solution, then those who care about the well-being and security of Palestinians and Israelis must dream of new ways for Palestinians and Israelis to be able to live side by side in justice, freedom and equality.
If a viable two-state solution is eclipsed, then Palestinians will need to struggle against an apartheid reality in the occupied territories and work for equal citizenship in a binational state, in which Palestinians and Israelis are equal citizens before the law, in all of Mandate Palestine. The vision of one, binational state must not be dismissed out of hand by advocates of a just peace, even though many will find it difficult to move beyond the language of “two states” to which they have become wedded. Further, advocacy for one, binational state will be perceived as being against the State of Israel and thus as anti-Zionist. Support for a two-state solution has allowed many Christians to avoid a theological reckoning with Zionism, not resolving the question of whether the creation of a sovereign state which denies Palestinian refugees from 1948 the right to return to their homes and insists on maintaining a “Jewish demographic majority” is a theological good. Some Christians, like those committed to dispensationalist readings of Scripture, warmly embrace Zionism. If Zionism necessarily means the creation and preservation of a “Jewish demographic majority” at the expense of the rights and well-being of Palestinians, then advocacy for one-binational state is indeed anti-Zionist. Other Zionisms, however, such as a ‘cultural Zionism’ that looks for a revitalization of Jewish life in the land while not depending on sovereign and demographic control, might emerge as possibilities compatible with a binational vision.
Perhaps the unexpected will occur and Israel will dismantle its colonies in the occupied territories, with a viable Palestinian state emerging next to Israel. If this happens, we will have cause for rejoicing. We must, however, soberly confront the possibility that the day of the two-state solution has already been eclipsed and start thinking through the theological and advocacy implications.
Alain Epp Weaver is country representative for Mennonite Central Committee in the occupied Palestinian territories.
2. SOPHISTICATED TRANSFER
Tanya Reinhart
Yediot Aharonot, March 10, 2003; translated from Hebrew by Irit Katriel
On the eve of the Iraq war, fears were expressed in different circles that under the cover of war, Israel may attempt a transfer of Palestinians in the “seam line” area of the northern West Bank (Kalkilya, Tulkarem). Last week, the army produced a scene from this scenario. On April 2 at 3 AM, a large force raided the refugee camp of Tulkarem, blocked all the roads and paths with barbed wires and announced on loudspeakers that all males aged 15 to 40 must go to a certain compound at the center of the camp. At 9 in the morning, the army began to transport the gathered males to a nearby refugee camp. This time it was only a staged scene, and the residents were allowed to return after a few days. But the producers of this show made sure that its significance would not escape the participants and the audience. They took special care that evacuation be done with trucks - an exact re-enactment of the 1948 trauma. As one of the residents described his feelings when he got on the truck, "all the memories and childhood stories of my father and grandfather about the Nakba came back” (Regular, Ha’aretz, March 4, 2003, attached below).
Many interpret this show as a “general rehearsal” for the possibility of a future transfer. There is no doubt that the current government is mentally prepared for transfer, but it is not certain that the “international conditions” are ripe for executing this in the way that was staged. The war Iraq has become to entangled for the U.S. to to risk opening another flashpoint. But transfer is not just trucks. In the Israeli history of “land redemption” there is also another model, more hidden and sophisticated. In the framework of the “Judaization of the Galilee” project, which has begun in the 1950s, the Palestinians that remained in Israel were robbed of half their lands, isolated in small enclaves, surrounded by Israeli settlements, and gradually lost the bonds that held them together as a nation. Such an internal transfer is occurring now in the occupied territories, and it has been escalated during the war.
On 24/3, the bulldozers got on the lands of the village of Mas'ha, which is near the settlement of Elkana, and began to mark there the new route of the separation wall, which will disconnect the village from all of its lands, as well as thousands of dunams belonging to Bidia and other villages in the area. Elkana is about 7 kilometers away from the green line, but the route of the fence was changed on June 2002 so that it will include Elkana as well in the Israeli side. Still, even in this plan, it is not necessary to take these lands from the villages.
It wasn’t only land greed that sent the bulldozers to the lands of Bidia and Mas'ha. These lands are on the western part of the Mountain groundwater basin - the large water reservoir originating in the West Bank, whose water flow under the ground also to the center of Israel. Out of six hundred million CM (cubic-meter) of water that the Mountain reservoir provides in a year, Israel withdraws in different areas about five hundred million (1). Control over the water sources has always been a central Israeli motivation for maintaining the occupation. The Labor governments of the seventies located the first settlements that they approved in areas defined as "critical locations" for drilling. Elkana was one of these settlements, founded within a plan that was given the (misleading) name “preservation of the sources of the Yarkon" (2).
Since the occupation in 1967, Israel prohibited Palestinians from digging new wells, but in the lands of Mas'ha and Bidia, as well as in lands that were already cut off from Kalkilia and Tul Karem, there are still many operating wells from before 1967. Their continued use may reduce a little the amount that Israel can withdraw.
The residents of Mas'ha and Bidia, who are struggling to save their lands and livelihoods, set up protest tents along the bulldozer path. “Peace tents”, they called them in an outburst of hope. Palestinians, Israelis and Internationals have been staying in these tents day and night to watch and stand in front of the bulldozers. I was there on Saturday. Around, in all directions, hills and hills of olive trees - huge areas of a green and pastoral landscape that one can find only where people live on their land for generations and generations, aware of its preciousness and beauty. And all this land is now being grabbed by the land redemptionists, who would dry its wells and sell it to real-estate investors.
=================
(1) These are the pre-Oslo figures for 1993, as quoted in Haim Gvirzman "Two in the same basin", Ha'aretz, May 16, 1993. According to the Palestinian Hydrology group, at the present, out of the annual recharge of the western part of the Mountain Groundwater Basin, which is 362 million CM/year, the total Palestinian withdrawal is only 22 million CM/year (www.pengon.org, Report #1.)
(2) Gvirzman, ibid.
April 30, 2003
This past weekend my family and I were in Zebabdeh, a village in the northern West Bank where Sonia and I taught English for three years at the local Catholic school. Christians in Zebabdeh’s three churches—Roman Catholic, Greek Orthodox, and Anglican—were celebrating Easter together on the Eastern calendar. [Christmas is celebrated jointly on the Western calendar.] The small Greek Catholic community, which worships with the Roman Catholic community, was represented by a deacon who was still in his seminary studies when we were is Zebabdeh 10 years ago. We were privileged to worship once more in Zebabdeh, joining the Roman and Greek Catholics for the Good Friday, “Saturday of Light,” and Easter morning services. The church building was bursting at the seams with people, fuller than I had ever seen it. Amidst the economic, social, and political troubles engendered and exacerbated by the ongoing Israeli occupation, Palestinian worshipers this weekend offered up a dynamic and vibrant proclamation of the Gospel that death does not conquer, but that it has instead by trampled under foot by Jesus’s life, death and resurrection. Amidst the desperation in Palestine/Israel, I and other MCC workers are blessed by many signs of hope: Israelis and Palestinians working together to rebuild a destroyed home, for example, or grassroots demand for training in nonviolence. Without diminishing these signs of hope, however, this past weekend in Zebabdeh drove home for me once more one of my fundamental sources of hope: the worship and witness of the Palestinian churches and the commitment of Palestinian Christians as followers of the risen Lord.
The two news items from Palestine/Israel that have been getting the most attention recently have been questions about whether or not the designated Prime Minister, Mahmoud Abbas (Abu Mazen) would be able to form a government and whether or not the “Quartet” (US/UN/Russia/European Union) would then release the so-called “road map” which is to chart the way to a Palestinian crackdown on violence against Israeli civilians, an Israeli settlement freeze, and the establishment of a “provisional” Palestinian state in ca. 40% of the West Bank and 60% of the Gaza Strip by the end of 2003, with a final status agreement wrapped up by 2005. Israel has sent envoys to Washington with a list of 14 objections (trimmed down and consolidated from an original list of over 100 objections) to the road map. While Palestinian leaders have for the most part embraced the roadmap and while many average Palestinians are desparate for any stability that might, even if only temporarily, strengthen a crumbling economy, most Palestinians are also skeptical that the “road map” will pave the way for a permanent resolution of the conflict. The ongoing construction of the “security wall” throughout the West Bank, the continued construction of illegal colonies, and Israel’s blanket refusal to acknowledge even a symbolic right of return for Palestinian refugees (let alone real refugee choice) feed this skepticism. The road map is an attempt to revitalize the incremental style of the Oslo process, a process that supposedly aims at a viable two-state solution. Palestinians increasingly doubt that a viable state will be the real destination of the road map; rather, they fear, the road will be blocked at the interim phase, leaving Palestinians with a “provisional” state in discontiguous parts of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, no connection to Jerusalem, no dismantling of Israeli colonies, and no control over land, borders or water. The Israeli colonization process, they suggest, may have already undermined a viable two-state solution. I have addressed these matters in a recent article in the Christian Century (May 3, 2003), which I include below. I have also included a piece by Tel Aviv University professor Tanya Reinhart on how the “separation wall” is dispossessing Palestinians in the West Bank villages of Bidia and Mash’a.
A final note. I will be in Egypt for regional MCC meetings and retreat from May 3 to 13. There will therefore be no updates during this period.
--Alain Epp Weaver
1. The slow death of a Palestinian solution
Beyond Two States
Alain Epp Weaver
The Christian Century
May 3, 2003
A viable two-state solution to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict is dying; perhaps it is already dead. This reality should prompt new theological and political analysis among Christians and others who yearn for justice, peace and security for Palestinians and Israelis.
The Negotiations Affairs Department of the PLO recently issued a policy analysis arguing that “Israel’s on-going colony construction and other unilateral measures in the Occupied Palestinian Territories are effectively pre-empting the possibility of a two-state solution of a viable Palestinian state alongside Israel” (at http://www.nad-plo.org/). If not reversed, these facts “will force Palestinian policy makers to re-evaluate the plausibility of a two state solution.” Chief Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat, in a December opinion piece in the New York Times, warned that the Israeli government, through its actions in the occupied territories, was preparing a “ghetto ‘state’” for the Palestinians, “surrounded by Israeli settlements, with no ability to defend itself, deprived of water resources and arable land, with an insignificant presence in Jerusalem and sovereign in name only.”
Since Ariel Sharon became Israel’s Prime Minister in March 2001, the growth of existing Israeli settlements (what Palestinians prefer to call colonies) and the construction of new ones have skyrocketed. Satellite imaging identifies 24 new colonies in the West Bank, the expansion of 45 more, and the establishment of 113 new “outposts,” that is, caravans placed on hilltops that are later developed into full-fledged colonies. The placement of new colonies and outposts is strategic and multifaceted. First, Jerusalem is being progressively encircled by rings of Israeli colonies which break up the contiguity of Palestinian neighborhoods in East Jerusalem and which separate East Jerusalem from the rest of the West Bank.
Second, the “separation” wall (what Palestinians call the Apartheid Wall) is reconfiguring the geographical terrain: the wall, whose construction is most advanced in the northern West Bank, allows Israel to deepen the integration of its illegal West Bank settlements into Israel proper, thereby isolating Palestinian towns and villages from each other, solidifying control over water resources, and paving the way for future land confiscations by preventing farmers from reaching their farmland. The international media has often portrayed the wall as running along the “Green Line” separating Israel from the occupied territories. In fact, the wall cuts far into the West Bank; if the wall is completed along projected paths, it will mean the de facto annexation of at least 10 percent of the West Bank into Israel. (For more on the Apartheid Wall, see the “Stop the Wall” at http://www.pengon.org/.)
These various developments leave Palestinian population centers separated from one another and will create various isolated “cantons” (what Palestinians, referring to South Africa under apartheid, call “Bantustans”) within 35-40 percent of the West Bank: the canton of Bethlehem for example, or of Ramallah, Nablus/Jenin, Hebron, etc. These cantons might be left disconnected, or perhaps they would be granted what Sharon recently dubbed “transportation contiguity” in the form of bridges or tunnels to connect them.
Thus, the Israeli settlement enterprise in the occupied territories over the past decades has been about establishing a matrix of roads and settlements by which Israel can, directly or indirectly, control all of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. Journalist Amira Hass, writing in the Israeli newspaper Ha'aretz in January, highlighted the military significance of the settlements and their road networks: “Israel’s decision-makers, who over the last 20 years have carefully planned the location of every Jewish settlement in the West Bank and every water pipe and electricity pylon, also knew how to plan a ramified network of roads that would become a key weapon against the Palestinians. If you are good children and accept the dictate of the settlements, you can use the roads. If you are bad children we will lock you into the tiny prisons that these roads so cleverly created.” The past decade has witnessed these roads and settlements making these prisons ever smaller and exit from them ever more difficult.
Israeli colonial expansion, therefore, is putting the nails in the coffin of any plans for a viable two-state solution to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. Talk of “roadmaps” devised by the “Quartet” (United States, United Nations, European Union and Russia) for the creation of a Palestinian state by 2005 appear naïve at best and dangerous at worst. It is naïve because current Israeli colonial expansion is undermining the viability of a Palestinian state. It is dangerous, since Israel likely will offer to accept as a “painful compromise” a Palestinian “state” in the discontinguous 35-40 percent of the West Bank. Palestinians assume that, following the US-led war against Iraq, tremendous international pressure will be brought to bear upon them to accept a “provisional” state in less than half of the West Bank with, at best, a vague timetable for any further Israeli withdrawals. The current Israeli leadership has made it clear that it does not believe that the roadmap will lead to a full withdrawal from the occupied territories. Israeli journalist Akiva Eldar, for example, observed in Ha'aretz that Israeli defense officials “regard the road map as mere ‘lip service’ and expect it to eventually be shelved together with all of the [Bush] administration's previous plans for the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.”
How should advocates for justice, peace and real security for Palestinians and Israelis respond to this emerging reality? First, we should free ourselves from the conceptual bind of seeing “statehood” (be it Palestinian or Israeli) as an end in itself. Various Christian bodies—denominations, church-related organizations—have called for an end to the Israeli occupation of the West Bank, East Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip and for the establishment of a Palestinian state alongside the State of Israel. What is there to say, however, if Israeli colonial expansion has undermined a viable two-state solution?
Advocates for a just and lasting peace should not be ultimately concerned with whether or not a Palestinian state comes into being. After all, Israel (and the United States, and perhaps the European Union) might eagerly back the creation of a “provisional” state—doomed to indefinite provisionality—comprising discontiguous Bantustans. This would not bring justice and freedom for Palestinians, nor stability or security for either Palestinians or Israelis. Statehood, from a Christian perspective, is simply not an end in itself. What is a good in and of itself is the flourishing and the well-being of all who inhabit “Mandate Palestine,” that is, present-day Israel, the West Bank, East Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip. If current realities have undermined a two-state solution, then those who care about the well-being and security of Palestinians and Israelis must dream of new ways for Palestinians and Israelis to be able to live side by side in justice, freedom and equality.
If a viable two-state solution is eclipsed, then Palestinians will need to struggle against an apartheid reality in the occupied territories and work for equal citizenship in a binational state, in which Palestinians and Israelis are equal citizens before the law, in all of Mandate Palestine. The vision of one, binational state must not be dismissed out of hand by advocates of a just peace, even though many will find it difficult to move beyond the language of “two states” to which they have become wedded. Further, advocacy for one, binational state will be perceived as being against the State of Israel and thus as anti-Zionist. Support for a two-state solution has allowed many Christians to avoid a theological reckoning with Zionism, not resolving the question of whether the creation of a sovereign state which denies Palestinian refugees from 1948 the right to return to their homes and insists on maintaining a “Jewish demographic majority” is a theological good. Some Christians, like those committed to dispensationalist readings of Scripture, warmly embrace Zionism. If Zionism necessarily means the creation and preservation of a “Jewish demographic majority” at the expense of the rights and well-being of Palestinians, then advocacy for one-binational state is indeed anti-Zionist. Other Zionisms, however, such as a ‘cultural Zionism’ that looks for a revitalization of Jewish life in the land while not depending on sovereign and demographic control, might emerge as possibilities compatible with a binational vision.
Perhaps the unexpected will occur and Israel will dismantle its colonies in the occupied territories, with a viable Palestinian state emerging next to Israel. If this happens, we will have cause for rejoicing. We must, however, soberly confront the possibility that the day of the two-state solution has already been eclipsed and start thinking through the theological and advocacy implications.
Alain Epp Weaver is country representative for Mennonite Central Committee in the occupied Palestinian territories.
2. SOPHISTICATED TRANSFER
Tanya Reinhart
Yediot Aharonot, March 10, 2003; translated from Hebrew by Irit Katriel
On the eve of the Iraq war, fears were expressed in different circles that under the cover of war, Israel may attempt a transfer of Palestinians in the “seam line” area of the northern West Bank (Kalkilya, Tulkarem). Last week, the army produced a scene from this scenario. On April 2 at 3 AM, a large force raided the refugee camp of Tulkarem, blocked all the roads and paths with barbed wires and announced on loudspeakers that all males aged 15 to 40 must go to a certain compound at the center of the camp. At 9 in the morning, the army began to transport the gathered males to a nearby refugee camp. This time it was only a staged scene, and the residents were allowed to return after a few days. But the producers of this show made sure that its significance would not escape the participants and the audience. They took special care that evacuation be done with trucks - an exact re-enactment of the 1948 trauma. As one of the residents described his feelings when he got on the truck, "all the memories and childhood stories of my father and grandfather about the Nakba came back” (Regular, Ha’aretz, March 4, 2003, attached below).
Many interpret this show as a “general rehearsal” for the possibility of a future transfer. There is no doubt that the current government is mentally prepared for transfer, but it is not certain that the “international conditions” are ripe for executing this in the way that was staged. The war Iraq has become to entangled for the U.S. to to risk opening another flashpoint. But transfer is not just trucks. In the Israeli history of “land redemption” there is also another model, more hidden and sophisticated. In the framework of the “Judaization of the Galilee” project, which has begun in the 1950s, the Palestinians that remained in Israel were robbed of half their lands, isolated in small enclaves, surrounded by Israeli settlements, and gradually lost the bonds that held them together as a nation. Such an internal transfer is occurring now in the occupied territories, and it has been escalated during the war.
On 24/3, the bulldozers got on the lands of the village of Mas'ha, which is near the settlement of Elkana, and began to mark there the new route of the separation wall, which will disconnect the village from all of its lands, as well as thousands of dunams belonging to Bidia and other villages in the area. Elkana is about 7 kilometers away from the green line, but the route of the fence was changed on June 2002 so that it will include Elkana as well in the Israeli side. Still, even in this plan, it is not necessary to take these lands from the villages.
It wasn’t only land greed that sent the bulldozers to the lands of Bidia and Mas'ha. These lands are on the western part of the Mountain groundwater basin - the large water reservoir originating in the West Bank, whose water flow under the ground also to the center of Israel. Out of six hundred million CM (cubic-meter) of water that the Mountain reservoir provides in a year, Israel withdraws in different areas about five hundred million (1). Control over the water sources has always been a central Israeli motivation for maintaining the occupation. The Labor governments of the seventies located the first settlements that they approved in areas defined as "critical locations" for drilling. Elkana was one of these settlements, founded within a plan that was given the (misleading) name “preservation of the sources of the Yarkon" (2).
Since the occupation in 1967, Israel prohibited Palestinians from digging new wells, but in the lands of Mas'ha and Bidia, as well as in lands that were already cut off from Kalkilia and Tul Karem, there are still many operating wells from before 1967. Their continued use may reduce a little the amount that Israel can withdraw.
The residents of Mas'ha and Bidia, who are struggling to save their lands and livelihoods, set up protest tents along the bulldozer path. “Peace tents”, they called them in an outburst of hope. Palestinians, Israelis and Internationals have been staying in these tents day and night to watch and stand in front of the bulldozers. I was there on Saturday. Around, in all directions, hills and hills of olive trees - huge areas of a green and pastoral landscape that one can find only where people live on their land for generations and generations, aware of its preciousness and beauty. And all this land is now being grabbed by the land redemptionists, who would dry its wells and sell it to real-estate investors.
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(1) These are the pre-Oslo figures for 1993, as quoted in Haim Gvirzman "Two in the same basin", Ha'aretz, May 16, 1993. According to the Palestinian Hydrology group, at the present, out of the annual recharge of the western part of the Mountain Groundwater Basin, which is 362 million CM/year, the total Palestinian withdrawal is only 22 million CM/year (www.pengon.org, Report #1.)
(2) Gvirzman, ibid.
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