MCC Palestine Update #20
Introduction
Easter celebrations have come and gone in Jerusalem. Unfortunately, the restoration of our broken, human bodies is hard to discern in Jerusalem and in Palestine/Israel generally. The violence of the occupation continues harsher than ever: most sobering were the demolitions of lines of homes in refugee camps in Khan Younis and Rafah. Palestinians, one should add, also use violence.
A day in the occupied territories, however, is enough to convince anyone that the violence is not balanced, and the contending parties are not of equal strength. Israel aims to solidify its occupation of East Jerusalem, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip by force, while Palestinians desperately search for ways--and more and more Palestinians are becoming convinced that only nonviolent methods will be effective--to combat the siege under which they live. Violence clearly will not bring Israelis security; nor will it bring Palestinians the liberation they long for.
Please pray that Israelis may be graced with the wisdom to act justly and in accordance with international law and resolutions; pray that Palestinians may be graced with the strength and determination to resist the occupation nonviolently.
This update contains news about MCC projects along with an opinion piece which debunks the enduring myth that Palestinians foolishly rejected a generous offer by former Israeli prime minister Ehud Barak. Dr. Mustafa Barghouti outlines Palestinian objections to Barak's proposals.
Two other opinion pieces are available upon request to the MCC Washington Office (jdb@mcc.org). The first is a reflection by MCC peace development worker Ed Nyce on a trip to Hebron. In the other, Amira Hass of Ha'aretz newspaper suggests that Israel is squandering an opportunity to have peace.
MCC Project News
An MCC partner, the Palestinian Center for Rapprochement, organized a series of nonviolent protests in Bethlehem, Atara north of Ramallah, and in the Nablus-Salfit area. The protests involved marches on checkpoints and the attempted dismantling of dirt barricades blocking the entrances to villages. In two of the demonstrations, Israeli peace activists joined Palestinians in a show of nonviolent resistance.
In 1997 MCC supported renovations to the Hope Flower (Amal al-Zuhur) kindergarten in the Aida refugee camp next to Bethlehem. This week MCC received word that Israeli shells had pierced through the kindergarten's walls, causing significant structural damage. A visit demonstrated that more than one wall will have to be replaced. The shelling occurred during the daylight hours while children were in the building; fortunately, only one girl was injured (in the abdomen). A bullet hole in the kindergarten's lone slide provided a chilling picture.
1. Why Palestinians could not accept Barak's proposal
Dr Mustafa Barghouti
Palestine Monitor, 16 April 2001
Time and again Palestinians are accused by the Israeli government of bringing the conflict of the past six months upon themselves by refusing to accept the "generous offers" made by Barak at Camp David. For some people, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak's offer at Camp David of 94 percent of the West Bank sounded more than generous, revolutionary even, and Palestinians were castigated and called "inflexible," and "unreasonable" for refusing to go that extra step and make a compromise. The fact that Barak offered more than any previous Israeli leader is unimportant but if we examine what was offered and what the reality of these offers was on the ground, a clear picture begins to emerge. The offers proposed by Barak made the possibility of a viable Palestinian state an impossibility.
The first issue we have to examine is that of the generous territorial offer. It was said that Palestinians were offered eventual control of 95 - 96% of the West Bank and Gaza Strip (WBGS). However, after analysis it becomes obvious that this is far from the reality. For example if the actual territory offered was calculated, it transpires that the Palestinians would control of much less than the claimed percentages. This difference arises because Israel's "total" does not include Jerusalem, the Dead Sea, the Jordan Valley or settlements in its computations.
Furthermore, the discussion about 'this percent' versus 'that percent' does not address the main issues for the Palestinians. Most importantly, it ignores international law and the rights conferred upon the Palestinians, and effectively serves to push these legal frameworks aside. Without a commitment to these frameworks any settlement will be an Israeli dictated agreement.
The second issue overlooked in the discussion of why Palestinians rejected the Camp David proposals, can be referred to as "compromising the compromise". The 1947 United Nations General Assembly resolution 181, from which Israel derives its legitimacy, provided 45% of historical Palestine for the Palestinian state. The demands of UN Resolution 242 for Israel to withdraw to the 1967 borders means a Palestinian state would be founded on 22% of the area of historic Palestine. In their acceptance of Oslo, Palestinians accepted a 2 state solution. This is a compromise of over half of the area that was originally assigned to them. As Kofi Anan asked - is it acceptable by international standards to appropriate land by force?
UN resolution 242 stipulates that Israel has to withdraw from the lands it occupied, clearly indicating that no land can be illegally occupied. UN resolution 338 reaffirms this. For the sake of peace and in hope of building a state, Palestinians are accepting this initial compromise, but any further compromise would undermine the "continuing and unqualified Palestinian right to self- determination" that the European Union, Berlin declaration of March 1999 affirmed, as well as the restricting the potential for the establishment of a sovereign, viable, prosperous, contiguous and democratic state.
The third reason for the rejection by the Palestinian negotiators to of the less than "generous" offer from Barak stems from the continued illegal occupation, confiscation and expropriation of Palestinian land. Israel has already confiscated a large portion of the West Bank for its ever- growing illegal settlement blocks. This violation of international law restricts the viability of a Palestinian state. The settlements, the system of highways and by-pass roads linking the illegal settlements to Israel proper, industrial parks, the web of closed military areas, army bases and internal checkpoints all occupy large tracts of land. Passages from one area to the other are also controlled by Israel
The West Bank and Gaza Strip have been transformed into 64 clusters of townships that imprison over three million Palestinians, a people held hostage for the sake of 450,000 illegal settlers. The confiscation of Palestinian land has been a systematic pattern of Barak, Sharon and other Israeli leaders, in order to increase the number of Jewish citizens in the Occupies Territories.
Unable to successfully transfer the native Palestinian population from these areas, Israel has restricted them to tiny enclaves through a series of measures designed to restrict Arab growth. Israel has exploited Palestinian land, water, and natural resources and continues to have sovereignty over them in addition to the concerted effort made to separate the Palestinian people from their land and thereby denying Palestinians a viable state.
The illegal annexation of East Jerusalem is a perfect example of Israeli policy towards Palestinians. Instead of permitting Palestinians sovereignty over the 1967 areas, with Israel maintaining control over West Jerusalem, Israel has used various administrative measures including denial and removal of residency rights and house demolitions to once more transfer people from the area. As experts point out, "63.5 square kilometers -- 90 percent of the land annexed by Israel as "East Jerusalem" -- in fact belonged to 28 Palestinian West bank villages, which suddenly found themselves part of an "indivisible," "historic" and "sacred" Jewish city"
Israeli settlements cut East Jerusalem into clusters, huge areas land have been annexed to serve the needs of settlers and settlements, and only some civil affairs are under the control of the Palestinian Authority. Accepting any Israeli control of the occupied territories negatively affects the quality of the Palestinian state and would transform areas of Palestinian Authority into clusters of Bantustans, as well as legitimize and reward Israel for illegally occupying and annexing land, and changing facts on the ground in violation of international law, in fact under international law these actions can be regarded as war crimes.
The fourth and equally important reason for the rejection of the Camp David offer can be attributed to the lack of settlement of the refugee issue. Most Palestinians are realistic about the possibility of a compromise. Nonetheless, the fate of over 3.7 million Palestinian refugees registered by the United Nations and about 2 million others unregistered is of utmost concern to Palestinians. The issue at stake is the acknowledgement of the right of return, as well as Israel's culpability in the creation of the refugee problem, and the application of the United Nations Resolution 194. Paragraph 11 states: "...the refugees wishing to return to their homes and live at peace with their neighbors should be permitted to do so at the earliest practicable date... compensation should be paid for the property of those choosing not to return."
The right of every human who has been dispossessed of land and forced to flee was not even mentioned in Camp David. They did not accept to discuss the return of refugees at the level of interim agreement - they chose instead to force a full and complete acceptance of a final solution without any right of future discussion and obliterate any right these millions of Palestinians have.
The Israeli government tried to bargain away the right of refugees as well as sovereignty of Jerusalem and the Muslim Holy site of Al Aqsa mosque for an entity that is not even a feasible state. Israel wanted to achieve the termination of the conflict without tangible compromises or resolving the basic issues. Their intransigence at the negotiating table has led to the rejection of the Camp David settlement and now they accuse the Palestinians of not wanting peace. Israel must be ready to accept and acknowledge that it is illegally occupying the West Bank and Gaza Strip and must withdraw after 34 years of a long and terrible military occupation and that the settlements, illegal in international law and viewed as such by the world, must be removed. Israel must accept international legitimacy and the application of international standards. What we have witnessed in the past 6-months is the culmination of violations of international law and human rights.
When one looks at the West Bank and Gaza Strip, even without indulging in conspiracy theories, one gets the impression that Labour and Likud were alternating to practically implement a process of Judaization through the systematic transfer of an Israeli civilian population into the Occupied Palestinian Territories. Through illegal settlement, the continuing expropriation and confiscation of Palestinian land, and Bantustanisation of a peoples homeland, Israel is destroying the potential for peace, a peace that is based on international law, - a compromise, that Israel is unwilling to make.
Tuesday, April 17
Saturday, April 7
MCC Palestine Update #19
MCC Palestine Update #19
This week, as Christians the world over commemorate Christ's passion, we at MCC Palestine ask especially for your prayers for Palestinians on their daily Via Dolorosa under occupation. On Palm Sunday, the preacher at the local Lutheran church noted that Jesus stands at the checkpoint, seeking to enter Jerusalem but denied entry.
Please pray for all of those trapped by the siege of occupation: students denied access to their studies, those denied access to health care, those whose money is running out or has run out, and are making do on the kindness of neighbors.
Pray also for Israelis trapped in a siege mentality, a mentality which convinces that security can be bought at the price of the wholsesale oppression of an entire nation. This coming Sunday Palestinian Christians will be gathering to celebrate the miracle of Jesus's resurrection from the dead. They will greet each other, saying, "al-Masih qaam! Haqan qaam!" Christ is risen! He is risen indeed! May God grant us all the grace during these troubling times to join them in proclaiming these words in the faith that Christ has defeated the powers of death and oppression.
MCC Project News
On April 7, 1948, at least 100 Palestinian civilians were massacred by Israeli army troops in the village of Deir Yassin. This was one of over 30 massacres perpetrated by Israeli forces against Palestinian civilians during the 1948 war. This year on April 7, Palestinians and believers in justice worldwide held rallies calling for the internationally-recognized right of Palestinian refugees to return to their homes to be upheld and implemented. MCC Palestine partner, the Badil Refugee Resource Center, was involved in planning rallies in the occupied West Bank. For more on Badil's work, see www.badil.org. For ways to get involved to promote the return of refugees in North America, visit www.al-awda.org to find out about Al-Awda (Return) groups in your area.
Action suggestion
Write to your elected officials on two points: 1) urge that your government's contribution to the United Nations Relief Works Administration (UNRWA), responsible for social services in Palestinian refugee camps, increase to help UNRWA keep pace with population increases in the camps; 2) explain that any durable solution to the Palestinian refugee problem must give priority to the principle of refugee choice, including the choice to return to their former homes; without an affirmation of the right of return and a safeguarding of the principle of refugee choice, the quest for a durable peace in Palestine/Israel will prove elusive.
1. Easter Message from the Sabeel Ecumenical Liberation Theology Center
Naim Ateek
6 April 2001
Dear friends,
As we approach Holy Week and Easter, the suffering of Jesus Christ at the hands of evil political and religious powers two thousand years ago is lived out again in Palestine. The number of innocent Palestinians and Israelis that have fallen victim to Israeli state policy is increasing.
Here in Palestine Jesus is again walking the via dolorosa. Jesus is the powerless Palestinian humiliated at a checkpoint, the woman trying to get through to the hospital for treatment, the young man whose dignity is trampled, the young student who cannot get to the university to study, the unemployed father who needs to find bread to feed his family; the list is tragically getting longer, and Jesus is there in their midst suffering with them. He is with them when their homes are shelled by tanks and helicopter gunships. He is with them in their towns and villages, in their pains and sorrows.
In this season of Lent, it seems to many of us that Jesus is on the cross again with thousands of crucified Palestinians around him. It only takes people of insight to see the hundreds of thousands of crosses throughout the land, Palestinian men, women, and children being crucified. Palestine has become one huge golgotha. The Israeli government crucifixion system is operating daily. Palestine has become the place of the skull.
Using the Gospel story one can put it in a different and still very poignant way. Four things are clear today. Jerusalem still does not know what makes for peace; Jesus is weeping and his tears are mixed with many other people's tears; the number of people who are carrying their crosses is multiplying phenomenally; and the women of Palestine as well as many Jewish women are weeping over the many killed and wounded innocents. This is the reality of life today.
In the midst of this hopeless and confusing situation, inundated with injustice and death, we refuse to give in to despair. We want to affirm the power of resurrection and life. With St. Paul we can say this Easter, "That I may know him, the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of his sufferings…" (Philippians 3:10). Our faith in God does not allow us to lose hope. The resurrection of Christ remains the reality that inspires and empowers us. The day will come, and we pray soon, when joy will replace grief, trust will remove fear, justice will triumph over oppression, and reconciliation will supplant alienation. The living Christ is urging us to stand firm and be assured of the inevitability of the resurrection. We will, therefore, continue in our struggle against the evil structures that dominate and oppress. Our hope is in God. The resurrection is coming, and it will bring with it the promise of a new life and liberation for all the people of our land.
We count on your prayers and solidarity. Thank you for your continued support.
HAPPY EASTER
Best wishes,
Naim Ateek
President
Sabeel Ecumenical Liberation Theology Center
www.sabeel.org
This week, as Christians the world over commemorate Christ's passion, we at MCC Palestine ask especially for your prayers for Palestinians on their daily Via Dolorosa under occupation. On Palm Sunday, the preacher at the local Lutheran church noted that Jesus stands at the checkpoint, seeking to enter Jerusalem but denied entry.
Please pray for all of those trapped by the siege of occupation: students denied access to their studies, those denied access to health care, those whose money is running out or has run out, and are making do on the kindness of neighbors.
Pray also for Israelis trapped in a siege mentality, a mentality which convinces that security can be bought at the price of the wholsesale oppression of an entire nation. This coming Sunday Palestinian Christians will be gathering to celebrate the miracle of Jesus's resurrection from the dead. They will greet each other, saying, "al-Masih qaam! Haqan qaam!" Christ is risen! He is risen indeed! May God grant us all the grace during these troubling times to join them in proclaiming these words in the faith that Christ has defeated the powers of death and oppression.
MCC Project News
On April 7, 1948, at least 100 Palestinian civilians were massacred by Israeli army troops in the village of Deir Yassin. This was one of over 30 massacres perpetrated by Israeli forces against Palestinian civilians during the 1948 war. This year on April 7, Palestinians and believers in justice worldwide held rallies calling for the internationally-recognized right of Palestinian refugees to return to their homes to be upheld and implemented. MCC Palestine partner, the Badil Refugee Resource Center, was involved in planning rallies in the occupied West Bank. For more on Badil's work, see www.badil.org. For ways to get involved to promote the return of refugees in North America, visit www.al-awda.org to find out about Al-Awda (Return) groups in your area.
Action suggestion
Write to your elected officials on two points: 1) urge that your government's contribution to the United Nations Relief Works Administration (UNRWA), responsible for social services in Palestinian refugee camps, increase to help UNRWA keep pace with population increases in the camps; 2) explain that any durable solution to the Palestinian refugee problem must give priority to the principle of refugee choice, including the choice to return to their former homes; without an affirmation of the right of return and a safeguarding of the principle of refugee choice, the quest for a durable peace in Palestine/Israel will prove elusive.
1. Easter Message from the Sabeel Ecumenical Liberation Theology Center
Naim Ateek
6 April 2001
Dear friends,
As we approach Holy Week and Easter, the suffering of Jesus Christ at the hands of evil political and religious powers two thousand years ago is lived out again in Palestine. The number of innocent Palestinians and Israelis that have fallen victim to Israeli state policy is increasing.
Here in Palestine Jesus is again walking the via dolorosa. Jesus is the powerless Palestinian humiliated at a checkpoint, the woman trying to get through to the hospital for treatment, the young man whose dignity is trampled, the young student who cannot get to the university to study, the unemployed father who needs to find bread to feed his family; the list is tragically getting longer, and Jesus is there in their midst suffering with them. He is with them when their homes are shelled by tanks and helicopter gunships. He is with them in their towns and villages, in their pains and sorrows.
In this season of Lent, it seems to many of us that Jesus is on the cross again with thousands of crucified Palestinians around him. It only takes people of insight to see the hundreds of thousands of crosses throughout the land, Palestinian men, women, and children being crucified. Palestine has become one huge golgotha. The Israeli government crucifixion system is operating daily. Palestine has become the place of the skull.
Using the Gospel story one can put it in a different and still very poignant way. Four things are clear today. Jerusalem still does not know what makes for peace; Jesus is weeping and his tears are mixed with many other people's tears; the number of people who are carrying their crosses is multiplying phenomenally; and the women of Palestine as well as many Jewish women are weeping over the many killed and wounded innocents. This is the reality of life today.
In the midst of this hopeless and confusing situation, inundated with injustice and death, we refuse to give in to despair. We want to affirm the power of resurrection and life. With St. Paul we can say this Easter, "That I may know him, the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of his sufferings…" (Philippians 3:10). Our faith in God does not allow us to lose hope. The resurrection of Christ remains the reality that inspires and empowers us. The day will come, and we pray soon, when joy will replace grief, trust will remove fear, justice will triumph over oppression, and reconciliation will supplant alienation. The living Christ is urging us to stand firm and be assured of the inevitability of the resurrection. We will, therefore, continue in our struggle against the evil structures that dominate and oppress. Our hope is in God. The resurrection is coming, and it will bring with it the promise of a new life and liberation for all the people of our land.
We count on your prayers and solidarity. Thank you for your continued support.
HAPPY EASTER
Best wishes,
Naim Ateek
President
Sabeel Ecumenical Liberation Theology Center
www.sabeel.org
Sunday, March 25
MCC Palestine Update #18
MCC Palestine Update #18
This update contains two items. The first is a summary of and reflection on a project visit to the Gaza Strip by country co-representative Alain Epp Weaver. For more information on Gaza, see the website of the Palestinian Center for Human Rights, www.pchrgaza.org.
The second is a commentary on the right of return by Jewish theologian Marc Ellis. In distinction from those Israelis and Jews who out of hand reject the notion of the right of Palestinian refugees to return, Ellis offers a creative perspective.
1. Anguish and Hope in Gaza
Alain Epp Weaver, MCC Country Co-representative to the West Bank and Gaza
The Gaza Strip is a part of Palestine very close to my heart. My family and I lived there for nearly two years of our lives while working with MCC. It is because of this personal connection that work trips to Gaza since the outbreak of the current intifada have been the hardest part of my job, emotionally. Some parts of the West Bank, such as the Nablus and Hebron areas, in many ways suffer as much as Gaza from the harsh Israeli siege, but it is when I visit Gaza that I find myself overwhelmed by a mixture of lament and anger.
On April 1 I traveled to visit MCC partners in the south of the Gaza Strip. Traveling from Gaza City in the north of the Gaza Strip down to Khan Younis and Rafah in the south has become a dreaded chore for most Palestinians. Before October 2000, the taxi ride from north to south would take at most 30 minutes; now, the journey routinely takes over one hour, sometimes much more. Much of the main north-south highway is now blocked to Palestinian traffic, reserved exclusively for use by the Israeli military and settlers. Palestinian cars, then, must take alternative roads. These roads, in turn, pass through checkpoints manned by Israelis in tanks. Cars pass by one by one, following cues from the soldier in the tank. The Israeli military can, and routinely does, completely close off this road, making travel between north and south impossible.
This daily uncertainty about travel has a devastating impact on Gaza’s economy and social life: families are separated, students from the south cannot attend universities in the north, employees in the Palestinian Authorities ministries cannot reach their jobs in Gaza. This apartheid road Network has been constructed for the benefit of around 5000 Israeli settler colonists still living in the Gaza Strip on 40% of the land, while the 1.2 million Palestinians survive on 60% of a strip of land 28 miles long and between 3.5 to 7.8 miles wide.
At points along my trip south, I could barely recognize my surroundings. At the Netzarim junction (where Muhammad al-Durra was gunned down in his father’s arms) and again along the main highway south of the Kfar Darom settlement, the physical landscape has been ransacked. The tall, majestic trees near Khan Younis, along with citrus groves south of Gaza city, have been razed. Agricultural land has been plowed under, as have many homes. Large, khaki green military bulldozers were busy at work as I drove past, plowing under hopes and dreams for justice and peace.
My first stop was at Rawdat as-Salaheen, a kindergarten operated by a local grassroots Islamic organization, has been an MCC partner for the past three years. MCC has supported renovations to the kindergartens building, including construction of new bathrooms, new roofing, windows, and paint. MCC also sponsored two summer camps organized by the kindergarten’s staff. The kindergarten lies less than 400 meters away from the line separating the Palestinian-controlled area and the southern section of the Israeli-controlled Gush Katif bloc of colonies.
Every night homes on the edge of Tel el-Sultan adjacent to the Israeli-controlled area are targets for Israeli shelling. One Palestinian shot towards the settlement bloc brings on a massive Israeli response; often, the Israelis do not wait for a Palestinian shot to begin firing. Families in homes along the border of Gush Katif, both in Tel el-Sultan as well as in the Khan Younis refugee camp further north, and families in Rafah whose homes are adjacent to the border with Egypt, do not sleep at home during the night, but rely on extended families to provide them shelter.
Rafah, like the rest of the Gaza Strip, has been hard hit economically by the Israeli siege. The director of as-Salaheen, Abu Isma’en, for example, is the only one of ten brothers still working: the other nine had been dependent on day labor inside Israel for their livelihood.
Economist Sara Roy, in her definitive study of the Gaza Strip”s economy, explains that from 1967 to 1993 Israel promoted a policy of de-development in the occupied territories, particularly in Gaza, issuing military orders to limit the expansion of the Strip’s industrial base and curbing agricultural exports; as a result, most Gazans served as a cheap labor pool for Israeli construction and agriculture industries.
With the establishment of the Palestinian Authority in 60% of the Gaza Strip in 1994, there has been little development of the economy, as investors are wary to commit their money, knowing that Israeli border closures can stop the movement of goods at any time and cripple the Gazan economy. When Israeli imposes a full siege on the Gaza Strip, then, the tens of thousands of Gazans who had worked inside Israel have few other work possibilities. When these people are out of work, furthermore, the service economy in the Gaza Strip is naturally effected as well.
With so many people unemployed and underemployed, basic needs are increasingly hard to meet. Thirty of the kindergarten’s 150 students have had to withdraw because then could not pay even part of the schools annual tuition of 150 shekels (ca. US $38). Most families in Tel el-Sultan can no longer afford to buy meat.
We watch all of these sheep and cows being killed in England because of foot-and-mouth disease, jokes Abu Isma’in. This meat is still good for eating: send it over here! Starvation is not present in the occupied territories, even in the hardest hit parts such as Rafah, thanks to traditional community mechanisms of sharing food with families in the direst financial straits. However, notes I’tedal al-Khatib, director of Ard al-Insan, a Palestinian NGO working to promote early childhood nutrition, her clinic is seeing an increase in the number of children suffering from malnutrition.
From Rafah, I proceeded northwards to Khan Younis, stopping at al-Mustaqbal Society for the Blind and Visually Impaired. We had recently received a drop of good news, when we heard that al-Mustaqbal had been able, after months of frustration, to import the machinery and raw materials they needed to start up a bamboo furniture workshop which would train Palestinians with visual disabilities and, eventually, lead to a steady source of income. The workshop was bustling during my visit, as trainees worked on the workshop’s first order of 150 chairs for a local restaurant. There was an excitement and joy among the trainees which was hard to resist. The pessimist in me, however, worried about the economic viability of the project: if the siege continues, the market for bamboo furniture, as for everything else, will suffer. This project, approved before the renewal of the uprising in October, is but one small example of how all economic development projects in the occupied territories are in a state of uncertainty and peril because of the Israeli siege.
I concluded my trip with a stop at the Culture and Free Thought Association, where I visited with the program coordinator, Amal Khoudeir. Amal studied at the Summer Peacebuilding Institute at Eastern Mennonite University in the summer of 1999 via MCC. As we discussed a children’s art project which MCC was supporting, I asked Amal, whose name means hope, whether or not she had any hope for the future. Ya Alain, she said, as long as the sun comes up every morning and we are still here, I have hope. Our challenge is to keep working with the children so that they can grow up with hope. We can’t let them take away our hope.
My prayer as I left Khan Younis was that I would be graced with some of Amal’s hope. The apartheid network Israeli is imposing throughout the occupied territories has created a reality--geographical, economic, political, spiritual--where hope for the future is, at least for me, hard to see, hard to feel. I find myself living much more in lament than in hope,particularly when I visit the Gaza Strip. In the meantime, I am grateful for those such as Amal who witness through their words and deeds to a hope for a better future, a hope for justice and peace.
2. On the Palestinian Right of Return: A Jewish Meditation on History, Rights and Return
Marc H. Ellis
I have been speaking and writing on the subjects of Jewish history, the Holocaust, and Israel and Palestine for over twenty years. I must confess that I have never addressed directly the Palestinian right of return. One can speculate on this lacuna and perhaps properly so. Is it fear of the issue that may in fact lie at the heart of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and its resolution? Is it a desire, even when severely criticizing Israel and Israeli policy, to dodge the issue of Israel's right to exist or its continuation as a Jewish state?
As a Jew who has publicly taken positions that are seen as extremely negative by the Jewish establishment, meaning by this not only leaders of Jewish organizations in the United States but also the university network of Jewish and Holocaust Studies programs that have mushroomed over the last decades, am I content to speak in the generalities of ethics and morality without facing the hard practical issues, the very issues that might make the difference? Though very critical of the Jewish renewal movement exemplified by Tikkun magazine in the United States and similarly critical of Peace Now in Israel for claiming a progressive agenda that often covers over the sins of settlement and expansion, by avoiding the Palestinian right of return, do I also participate in the progressive movement I have criticized? --That judgement ultimately belongs to the reader.
The following is my attempt to approach the question of the Palestinian right of return. I begin by advancing my own views on a variety of issues surrounding the right of return and the context from which these views emanate. As with any issue of depth and moment, autobiography is crucial to factorin. My own biases, identities and struggles are important, at least to how I enter the question before us: as an American Jew born in the first decade after the Holocaust, it is impossible to pretend an objective analysis on the questions of Jewishness, Israel, and the Palestinians.
To begin with, I place to the side questions of international law, United Nations resolutions and the modern understanding of human rights. I do this not because they are irrelevant or because they favor one side or the other; institutions and statements should obviously be used to assert the rights and dignity of the displaced and those who struggle for freedom. I also leave aside the power of the powerful to conquer and occupy and then to assert innocence and destiny in the exercise of that power. Clearly, the power of the powerful is a factor that cannot be denied through history and today as well. I take for granted that power to dislocate and destroy should be opposed. Finally, I bypass the argument, at least in its deepest sense, of the complexity of history and all that this implies. The complexity of history is a topic for discussion on this and many other issues, but it is most often used as an excuse or a justification for lack of criticism of unjust power. It may be that history is simply a progression of one atrocity after another, where victory is to be celebrated and defeat to be avenged until the end of time - I cannot rationally argue against this view of human history. But in the end I do not stand in this kind of history; I would be dishonest to invoke it.
By not dealing with these issues, I do not seek to demean their significance for Israelis and Palestinians. In many ways the invocation of law, power and the travails of history are constant and significant in the lives of both peoples. They are also part of the cycle of dislocation and atrocity that threatens to become the future for Israel and Palestine rather than a bloody past. In a cumulative way, these issues point to a deeper place of decision, at least for Jews. For the refusal to find certain claims as central to the argument can heighten their significance as signposts for reflection. Could it be that international law, the power of the powerful and the cycle of dislocation and atrocity warn Jews of our tradition of suffering and struggle, one that we inherit and are now squandering?
It is the tradition of suffering and struggle that I turn to, the place from which Israel emerges and Judaism finds its roots. I refer here to formative experiences of slavery and freedom, the difficult path of nation building and occupation, then the dispersion and diaspora, the suffering within Christendom, the embrace and disappointment with the Enlightenment, the Nazi era and the Holocaust. Within this history so many ideals and possibilities emerge: of chosenness and justice, of vocation and service, of society and the prophetic. And yet it is here that some claim the problematic to lie. In Jewish history, especially in the Biblical period, is a self-righteousness and militarism. The peoples beyond and next to Israel are pawns in the salvation history of the tribes of Yahweh. Dispossession is mandated by the promise of the land and God legitimates, even leads, Israel into the land. In Israel's wake is desolation and death. Is this history the forebearer of modern Israel? The lacuna between these ancient histories of violence and retribution and the peaceful, often suffering, journey of diaspora Jewry is time without power. When power is achieved the ancient reasserts itself and the real character of the Jews is displayed.
Is Ariel Sharon the real Jew, ancient in modern dress? Is the nation-state Israel, heir to Biblical Israel, again the real Israel in modern style? The danger of essentialism is everywhere, origins as destiny, freedom circumscribed by ancient beginnings. So too the danger of the modern, origins as the present with no precursors, goodness as goodness,violence as violence, as if nothing is historical and particular. In the former view, Jews are Jews with no difference between them except style and strategy; in the latter view Ariel Sharon and the voices found in the progressive Jewish journal, Tikkun, are disconnected and discontinuous.
Between essentialism and the modern lies a connection that is neither determinative nor disconnected. The connection is multifaceted and diverse, opening history and possibility through the mediation of text and tradition, within patterns of thought and life over the millennia, in light of conscience. Here decisions are made within a framework that is real and flexible, one that has origins and freedom, a vocation that evolves and is embodied within and beyond the individual.
Within this understanding is there such a thing as a real Jew as opposed to an inauthentic Jew? Can the nation-state Israel be claimed as the real heir to Jewish history or as inauthentic to that history? My own sense is that claims of real and inauthentic pegged to individual Jews or Israel fail to address the question of what it means to be Jewish or indeed what it means to be a Jewish state. It also tells us little about our obligations to ourselves, our people and to the world.
What then defines us as individual Jews and as a people in our time? Here contemporary history assumes importance. Values in the Jewish tradition have grown within a history and are tested in every generation. These values are found within certain patterns of thought and hope, yet their embodiment is contextual, arguing for independence status in certain places and times, in some eras under assault, in other contexts able to exist in an interdependence with other cultures and systems. Of course, in a community that exists in diverse settings and frameworks, the contextual reality is of great importance. And it can be that different communities in the same time period will pursue different paths.
This is certainly true in our time: just a cursory exploration of Jewish life inAmerica and Israel point to tremendous differences in relating to neighbor, culture, the military and the nation-state.
Still, the commonality remains, at least in bonds of sensibility and solidarity. In some ways, because of mass communication and travel, we are more aware of these bonds than ever before. In other ways, perhaps precisely because of mass communication and travel, the bonds are more strained. At least at the elite level, American Jews know of Israeli policies and Israelis know of American Jewish understandings in detail and immediately.
Is Ariel Sharon the real Jew, ancient in modern dress? Is the nation-state Israel, heir to Biblical Israel, again the real Israel in modern style? The danger of essentialism is everywhere, origins as destiny, freedom circumscribed by ancient beginnings. So too the danger of the modern, origins as the present with no precursors, goodness as goodness, violence as violence, as if nothing is historical and particular. In the former view, Jews are Jews with no difference between them except style and strategy; in the latter view Ariel Sharon and the voices found in the progressive Jewish journal, Tikkun, are disconnected and discontinuous.
Between essentialism and the modern lies a connection that is neither determinative nor disconnected. The connection is multifaceted and diverse, opening history and possibility through the mediation of text and tradition, within patterns of thought and life over the millennia, in light of conscience. Here decisions are made within a framework that is real and flexible, one that has origins and freedom, a vocation that evolves and is embodied within and beyond the individual.
Within this understanding is there such a thing as a real Jew as opposed to an inauthentic Jew? Can the nation-state Israel be claimed as the real heir to Jewish history or as inauthentic to that history? My own sense is that claims of real and inauthentic pegged to individual Jews or Israel fail to address the question of what it means to be Jewish or indeed what it means to be a Jewish state. It also tells us little about our obligations to ourselves, our people and to the world.
What then defines us as individual Jews and as a people in our time? Here contemporary history assumes importance. Values in the Jewish tradition have grown within a history and are tested in every generation. These values are found within certain patterns of thought and hope, yet their embodiment is contextual, arguing for independence status in certain places and times, in some eras under assault, in other contexts able to exist in an interdependence with other cultures and systems. Of course, in a community that exists in diverse settings and frameworks, the contextual reality is of great importance. And it can be that different communities in the same time period will pursue different paths. This is certainly true in our time: just a cursory exploration of Jewish life in America and Israel point to tremendous differences in relating to neighbor, culture, the military and the nation-state.
Still, the commonality remains, at least in bonds of sensibility and solidarity. In some ways, because of mass communication and travel, we are more aware of these bonds than ever before. In other ways, perhaps precisely because of mass communication and travel, the bonds are more strained. At least at the elite level, American Jews know of Israeli policies and Israelis know of American Jewish understandings in detail and immediately. Policies and responses can be coordinated by organizations,between on the one side, the Israeli government and American Israel Political Action Committee, and on the other side, between Peace Now and Tikkun. If commonality with regard to the state can be coordinated so can commonality in dissent. Solidarity on both sides of the divide are instantaneously possible which, on a different level, can also heighten the divide. There are some who believe that in our time two nations are forming within the Jewish community, one in Israel, the other in the United States. But I wonder if these nations, or better yet two divergent sensibilities, are forming within Israel and America precisely
over the future of Jewish life.
Is it in this division that the kernel of the Palestinian question is found? And is it here that the question of the Palestinian right of return is also to be located?
The divisions in Jewish life are complex. But here it is important to understand that the division is widening and is foundational in nature.What does it mean to be Jewish? What is the destiny of the Jewish people? What practice defines Judaism and Jewish life? Can Jews live within a community of Jews that define themselves in a pluralistic way and with others who are non-Jewish, themselves pluralistic in their outlook and identities? How does statehood, including the very conception of citizenship, affect one's sense of Jewishness and Jewish identity? The question of history is important here. Does the past, especially in Europe, of isolation and ghettoization, of pogroms and Holocaust, define the Jewish future? Or is this past really past, invoked now to warn against transgressions against any community, including but not limited to Jews?
Ideology and theology notwithstanding, Jews have chosen, even after the Holocaust, to live in secular, pluralist, democratic nation-states. This is clearly true with regard to the United States and Europe; it is also true,at least with regard to Jews, in Israel. Israel is founded on these principles and the peculiar intermingling of synagogue and state that flows from Jewish history is, in relative terms, akin to the relations of church and state in America. The restrictions on citizenship of the Palestinian minority also have their parallels with historic restrictions on African-Americans in the United States. Despite reversals, and with the realization that significant struggles lie ahead, the fight for equality of Jews and Palestinians will continue, even escalate in the years ahead.
As a modern, Western-oriented nation-state, Israel and Israelis will have no choice but to continue on the path toward expanding the practice of pluralism and democracy. The primary challenge, of course, will be the greater integration of Palestinians, those in Jerusalem, the West Bank and Gaza, into this citizenship. The proximity of the two peoples geographically, culturally, historically, economically and linguistically -makes this expansion of citizenship inevitable, even if some Jews and Palestinians resist this integration, at least symbolically. I use the term symbolically for a specific reason: who, looking at the map of Israel and Palestine, with the intermingling of populations, settlements, roads,security, borders and economy can seriously consider a separation that is more than symbolic? The crossing of boundaries between Jews and Palestinians has steadily increased over the years and will increase in the future, this in spite of the stated policy of separation. Much, perhaps most, of this interaction has been imposed by occupation, dislocation and atrocity, the attempt above all to create an apartheid system in the name of Jewish history, but the unintended consequences are the future. This future of integration, under two flags or one, at first in victory and surrender, will one day see the creation of a new identity for Jews and Palestinians in Israel/Palestine that will carry aspects of each people's past and elements of joint experiences forged in blood, struggle and solidarity.
Today, in the midst of a new intifada and the governance of Ariel Sharon, history seems to be moving in the opposite direction. Naturally, in this situation, the ideology of separation, always linked to a romanticized past, is played, on both sides, politically and dramatically. And who can protest these dreams of the past, especially among the suffering who, in their lifetime, have experienced and continue to experience exile today? Who in conscience, especially Jews, can help but be thoroughly disgusted with the bellicose claims of a united Jerusalem, eternally, under Jewish power, with no sense of other connections to land and religion?
The Palestinian right of return rests here, at least in my understanding. The argument can be made on many levels - including and beyond the areas I have left aside but the right of return, or better phrased the possibility of return, rests, ultimately, less on rights, history, or power than it does on the unintended consequences of victory and the long run of history that always, everywhere, and especially where it is denied ideologically and symbolically, moves toward integration. The division of the Jewish community in Israel and America, but more importantly the choice of Jews to live in secular, pluralistic, and democratic societies regardless of their theology, is part of this future movement.
This update contains two items. The first is a summary of and reflection on a project visit to the Gaza Strip by country co-representative Alain Epp Weaver. For more information on Gaza, see the website of the Palestinian Center for Human Rights, www.pchrgaza.org.
The second is a commentary on the right of return by Jewish theologian Marc Ellis. In distinction from those Israelis and Jews who out of hand reject the notion of the right of Palestinian refugees to return, Ellis offers a creative perspective.
1. Anguish and Hope in Gaza
Alain Epp Weaver, MCC Country Co-representative to the West Bank and Gaza
The Gaza Strip is a part of Palestine very close to my heart. My family and I lived there for nearly two years of our lives while working with MCC. It is because of this personal connection that work trips to Gaza since the outbreak of the current intifada have been the hardest part of my job, emotionally. Some parts of the West Bank, such as the Nablus and Hebron areas, in many ways suffer as much as Gaza from the harsh Israeli siege, but it is when I visit Gaza that I find myself overwhelmed by a mixture of lament and anger.
On April 1 I traveled to visit MCC partners in the south of the Gaza Strip. Traveling from Gaza City in the north of the Gaza Strip down to Khan Younis and Rafah in the south has become a dreaded chore for most Palestinians. Before October 2000, the taxi ride from north to south would take at most 30 minutes; now, the journey routinely takes over one hour, sometimes much more. Much of the main north-south highway is now blocked to Palestinian traffic, reserved exclusively for use by the Israeli military and settlers. Palestinian cars, then, must take alternative roads. These roads, in turn, pass through checkpoints manned by Israelis in tanks. Cars pass by one by one, following cues from the soldier in the tank. The Israeli military can, and routinely does, completely close off this road, making travel between north and south impossible.
This daily uncertainty about travel has a devastating impact on Gaza’s economy and social life: families are separated, students from the south cannot attend universities in the north, employees in the Palestinian Authorities ministries cannot reach their jobs in Gaza. This apartheid road Network has been constructed for the benefit of around 5000 Israeli settler colonists still living in the Gaza Strip on 40% of the land, while the 1.2 million Palestinians survive on 60% of a strip of land 28 miles long and between 3.5 to 7.8 miles wide.
At points along my trip south, I could barely recognize my surroundings. At the Netzarim junction (where Muhammad al-Durra was gunned down in his father’s arms) and again along the main highway south of the Kfar Darom settlement, the physical landscape has been ransacked. The tall, majestic trees near Khan Younis, along with citrus groves south of Gaza city, have been razed. Agricultural land has been plowed under, as have many homes. Large, khaki green military bulldozers were busy at work as I drove past, plowing under hopes and dreams for justice and peace.
My first stop was at Rawdat as-Salaheen, a kindergarten operated by a local grassroots Islamic organization, has been an MCC partner for the past three years. MCC has supported renovations to the kindergartens building, including construction of new bathrooms, new roofing, windows, and paint. MCC also sponsored two summer camps organized by the kindergarten’s staff. The kindergarten lies less than 400 meters away from the line separating the Palestinian-controlled area and the southern section of the Israeli-controlled Gush Katif bloc of colonies.
Every night homes on the edge of Tel el-Sultan adjacent to the Israeli-controlled area are targets for Israeli shelling. One Palestinian shot towards the settlement bloc brings on a massive Israeli response; often, the Israelis do not wait for a Palestinian shot to begin firing. Families in homes along the border of Gush Katif, both in Tel el-Sultan as well as in the Khan Younis refugee camp further north, and families in Rafah whose homes are adjacent to the border with Egypt, do not sleep at home during the night, but rely on extended families to provide them shelter.
Rafah, like the rest of the Gaza Strip, has been hard hit economically by the Israeli siege. The director of as-Salaheen, Abu Isma’en, for example, is the only one of ten brothers still working: the other nine had been dependent on day labor inside Israel for their livelihood.
Economist Sara Roy, in her definitive study of the Gaza Strip”s economy, explains that from 1967 to 1993 Israel promoted a policy of de-development in the occupied territories, particularly in Gaza, issuing military orders to limit the expansion of the Strip’s industrial base and curbing agricultural exports; as a result, most Gazans served as a cheap labor pool for Israeli construction and agriculture industries.
With the establishment of the Palestinian Authority in 60% of the Gaza Strip in 1994, there has been little development of the economy, as investors are wary to commit their money, knowing that Israeli border closures can stop the movement of goods at any time and cripple the Gazan economy. When Israeli imposes a full siege on the Gaza Strip, then, the tens of thousands of Gazans who had worked inside Israel have few other work possibilities. When these people are out of work, furthermore, the service economy in the Gaza Strip is naturally effected as well.
With so many people unemployed and underemployed, basic needs are increasingly hard to meet. Thirty of the kindergarten’s 150 students have had to withdraw because then could not pay even part of the schools annual tuition of 150 shekels (ca. US $38). Most families in Tel el-Sultan can no longer afford to buy meat.
We watch all of these sheep and cows being killed in England because of foot-and-mouth disease, jokes Abu Isma’in. This meat is still good for eating: send it over here! Starvation is not present in the occupied territories, even in the hardest hit parts such as Rafah, thanks to traditional community mechanisms of sharing food with families in the direst financial straits. However, notes I’tedal al-Khatib, director of Ard al-Insan, a Palestinian NGO working to promote early childhood nutrition, her clinic is seeing an increase in the number of children suffering from malnutrition.
From Rafah, I proceeded northwards to Khan Younis, stopping at al-Mustaqbal Society for the Blind and Visually Impaired. We had recently received a drop of good news, when we heard that al-Mustaqbal had been able, after months of frustration, to import the machinery and raw materials they needed to start up a bamboo furniture workshop which would train Palestinians with visual disabilities and, eventually, lead to a steady source of income. The workshop was bustling during my visit, as trainees worked on the workshop’s first order of 150 chairs for a local restaurant. There was an excitement and joy among the trainees which was hard to resist. The pessimist in me, however, worried about the economic viability of the project: if the siege continues, the market for bamboo furniture, as for everything else, will suffer. This project, approved before the renewal of the uprising in October, is but one small example of how all economic development projects in the occupied territories are in a state of uncertainty and peril because of the Israeli siege.
I concluded my trip with a stop at the Culture and Free Thought Association, where I visited with the program coordinator, Amal Khoudeir. Amal studied at the Summer Peacebuilding Institute at Eastern Mennonite University in the summer of 1999 via MCC. As we discussed a children’s art project which MCC was supporting, I asked Amal, whose name means hope, whether or not she had any hope for the future. Ya Alain, she said, as long as the sun comes up every morning and we are still here, I have hope. Our challenge is to keep working with the children so that they can grow up with hope. We can’t let them take away our hope.
My prayer as I left Khan Younis was that I would be graced with some of Amal’s hope. The apartheid network Israeli is imposing throughout the occupied territories has created a reality--geographical, economic, political, spiritual--where hope for the future is, at least for me, hard to see, hard to feel. I find myself living much more in lament than in hope,particularly when I visit the Gaza Strip. In the meantime, I am grateful for those such as Amal who witness through their words and deeds to a hope for a better future, a hope for justice and peace.
2. On the Palestinian Right of Return: A Jewish Meditation on History, Rights and Return
Marc H. Ellis
I have been speaking and writing on the subjects of Jewish history, the Holocaust, and Israel and Palestine for over twenty years. I must confess that I have never addressed directly the Palestinian right of return. One can speculate on this lacuna and perhaps properly so. Is it fear of the issue that may in fact lie at the heart of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and its resolution? Is it a desire, even when severely criticizing Israel and Israeli policy, to dodge the issue of Israel's right to exist or its continuation as a Jewish state?
As a Jew who has publicly taken positions that are seen as extremely negative by the Jewish establishment, meaning by this not only leaders of Jewish organizations in the United States but also the university network of Jewish and Holocaust Studies programs that have mushroomed over the last decades, am I content to speak in the generalities of ethics and morality without facing the hard practical issues, the very issues that might make the difference? Though very critical of the Jewish renewal movement exemplified by Tikkun magazine in the United States and similarly critical of Peace Now in Israel for claiming a progressive agenda that often covers over the sins of settlement and expansion, by avoiding the Palestinian right of return, do I also participate in the progressive movement I have criticized? --That judgement ultimately belongs to the reader.
The following is my attempt to approach the question of the Palestinian right of return. I begin by advancing my own views on a variety of issues surrounding the right of return and the context from which these views emanate. As with any issue of depth and moment, autobiography is crucial to factorin. My own biases, identities and struggles are important, at least to how I enter the question before us: as an American Jew born in the first decade after the Holocaust, it is impossible to pretend an objective analysis on the questions of Jewishness, Israel, and the Palestinians.
To begin with, I place to the side questions of international law, United Nations resolutions and the modern understanding of human rights. I do this not because they are irrelevant or because they favor one side or the other; institutions and statements should obviously be used to assert the rights and dignity of the displaced and those who struggle for freedom. I also leave aside the power of the powerful to conquer and occupy and then to assert innocence and destiny in the exercise of that power. Clearly, the power of the powerful is a factor that cannot be denied through history and today as well. I take for granted that power to dislocate and destroy should be opposed. Finally, I bypass the argument, at least in its deepest sense, of the complexity of history and all that this implies. The complexity of history is a topic for discussion on this and many other issues, but it is most often used as an excuse or a justification for lack of criticism of unjust power. It may be that history is simply a progression of one atrocity after another, where victory is to be celebrated and defeat to be avenged until the end of time - I cannot rationally argue against this view of human history. But in the end I do not stand in this kind of history; I would be dishonest to invoke it.
By not dealing with these issues, I do not seek to demean their significance for Israelis and Palestinians. In many ways the invocation of law, power and the travails of history are constant and significant in the lives of both peoples. They are also part of the cycle of dislocation and atrocity that threatens to become the future for Israel and Palestine rather than a bloody past. In a cumulative way, these issues point to a deeper place of decision, at least for Jews. For the refusal to find certain claims as central to the argument can heighten their significance as signposts for reflection. Could it be that international law, the power of the powerful and the cycle of dislocation and atrocity warn Jews of our tradition of suffering and struggle, one that we inherit and are now squandering?
It is the tradition of suffering and struggle that I turn to, the place from which Israel emerges and Judaism finds its roots. I refer here to formative experiences of slavery and freedom, the difficult path of nation building and occupation, then the dispersion and diaspora, the suffering within Christendom, the embrace and disappointment with the Enlightenment, the Nazi era and the Holocaust. Within this history so many ideals and possibilities emerge: of chosenness and justice, of vocation and service, of society and the prophetic. And yet it is here that some claim the problematic to lie. In Jewish history, especially in the Biblical period, is a self-righteousness and militarism. The peoples beyond and next to Israel are pawns in the salvation history of the tribes of Yahweh. Dispossession is mandated by the promise of the land and God legitimates, even leads, Israel into the land. In Israel's wake is desolation and death. Is this history the forebearer of modern Israel? The lacuna between these ancient histories of violence and retribution and the peaceful, often suffering, journey of diaspora Jewry is time without power. When power is achieved the ancient reasserts itself and the real character of the Jews is displayed.
Is Ariel Sharon the real Jew, ancient in modern dress? Is the nation-state Israel, heir to Biblical Israel, again the real Israel in modern style? The danger of essentialism is everywhere, origins as destiny, freedom circumscribed by ancient beginnings. So too the danger of the modern, origins as the present with no precursors, goodness as goodness,violence as violence, as if nothing is historical and particular. In the former view, Jews are Jews with no difference between them except style and strategy; in the latter view Ariel Sharon and the voices found in the progressive Jewish journal, Tikkun, are disconnected and discontinuous.
Between essentialism and the modern lies a connection that is neither determinative nor disconnected. The connection is multifaceted and diverse, opening history and possibility through the mediation of text and tradition, within patterns of thought and life over the millennia, in light of conscience. Here decisions are made within a framework that is real and flexible, one that has origins and freedom, a vocation that evolves and is embodied within and beyond the individual.
Within this understanding is there such a thing as a real Jew as opposed to an inauthentic Jew? Can the nation-state Israel be claimed as the real heir to Jewish history or as inauthentic to that history? My own sense is that claims of real and inauthentic pegged to individual Jews or Israel fail to address the question of what it means to be Jewish or indeed what it means to be a Jewish state. It also tells us little about our obligations to ourselves, our people and to the world.
What then defines us as individual Jews and as a people in our time? Here contemporary history assumes importance. Values in the Jewish tradition have grown within a history and are tested in every generation. These values are found within certain patterns of thought and hope, yet their embodiment is contextual, arguing for independence status in certain places and times, in some eras under assault, in other contexts able to exist in an interdependence with other cultures and systems. Of course, in a community that exists in diverse settings and frameworks, the contextual reality is of great importance. And it can be that different communities in the same time period will pursue different paths.
This is certainly true in our time: just a cursory exploration of Jewish life inAmerica and Israel point to tremendous differences in relating to neighbor, culture, the military and the nation-state.
Still, the commonality remains, at least in bonds of sensibility and solidarity. In some ways, because of mass communication and travel, we are more aware of these bonds than ever before. In other ways, perhaps precisely because of mass communication and travel, the bonds are more strained. At least at the elite level, American Jews know of Israeli policies and Israelis know of American Jewish understandings in detail and immediately.
Is Ariel Sharon the real Jew, ancient in modern dress? Is the nation-state Israel, heir to Biblical Israel, again the real Israel in modern style? The danger of essentialism is everywhere, origins as destiny, freedom circumscribed by ancient beginnings. So too the danger of the modern, origins as the present with no precursors, goodness as goodness, violence as violence, as if nothing is historical and particular. In the former view, Jews are Jews with no difference between them except style and strategy; in the latter view Ariel Sharon and the voices found in the progressive Jewish journal, Tikkun, are disconnected and discontinuous.
Between essentialism and the modern lies a connection that is neither determinative nor disconnected. The connection is multifaceted and diverse, opening history and possibility through the mediation of text and tradition, within patterns of thought and life over the millennia, in light of conscience. Here decisions are made within a framework that is real and flexible, one that has origins and freedom, a vocation that evolves and is embodied within and beyond the individual.
Within this understanding is there such a thing as a real Jew as opposed to an inauthentic Jew? Can the nation-state Israel be claimed as the real heir to Jewish history or as inauthentic to that history? My own sense is that claims of real and inauthentic pegged to individual Jews or Israel fail to address the question of what it means to be Jewish or indeed what it means to be a Jewish state. It also tells us little about our obligations to ourselves, our people and to the world.
What then defines us as individual Jews and as a people in our time? Here contemporary history assumes importance. Values in the Jewish tradition have grown within a history and are tested in every generation. These values are found within certain patterns of thought and hope, yet their embodiment is contextual, arguing for independence status in certain places and times, in some eras under assault, in other contexts able to exist in an interdependence with other cultures and systems. Of course, in a community that exists in diverse settings and frameworks, the contextual reality is of great importance. And it can be that different communities in the same time period will pursue different paths. This is certainly true in our time: just a cursory exploration of Jewish life in America and Israel point to tremendous differences in relating to neighbor, culture, the military and the nation-state.
Still, the commonality remains, at least in bonds of sensibility and solidarity. In some ways, because of mass communication and travel, we are more aware of these bonds than ever before. In other ways, perhaps precisely because of mass communication and travel, the bonds are more strained. At least at the elite level, American Jews know of Israeli policies and Israelis know of American Jewish understandings in detail and immediately. Policies and responses can be coordinated by organizations,between on the one side, the Israeli government and American Israel Political Action Committee, and on the other side, between Peace Now and Tikkun. If commonality with regard to the state can be coordinated so can commonality in dissent. Solidarity on both sides of the divide are instantaneously possible which, on a different level, can also heighten the divide. There are some who believe that in our time two nations are forming within the Jewish community, one in Israel, the other in the United States. But I wonder if these nations, or better yet two divergent sensibilities, are forming within Israel and America precisely
over the future of Jewish life.
Is it in this division that the kernel of the Palestinian question is found? And is it here that the question of the Palestinian right of return is also to be located?
The divisions in Jewish life are complex. But here it is important to understand that the division is widening and is foundational in nature.What does it mean to be Jewish? What is the destiny of the Jewish people? What practice defines Judaism and Jewish life? Can Jews live within a community of Jews that define themselves in a pluralistic way and with others who are non-Jewish, themselves pluralistic in their outlook and identities? How does statehood, including the very conception of citizenship, affect one's sense of Jewishness and Jewish identity? The question of history is important here. Does the past, especially in Europe, of isolation and ghettoization, of pogroms and Holocaust, define the Jewish future? Or is this past really past, invoked now to warn against transgressions against any community, including but not limited to Jews?
Ideology and theology notwithstanding, Jews have chosen, even after the Holocaust, to live in secular, pluralist, democratic nation-states. This is clearly true with regard to the United States and Europe; it is also true,at least with regard to Jews, in Israel. Israel is founded on these principles and the peculiar intermingling of synagogue and state that flows from Jewish history is, in relative terms, akin to the relations of church and state in America. The restrictions on citizenship of the Palestinian minority also have their parallels with historic restrictions on African-Americans in the United States. Despite reversals, and with the realization that significant struggles lie ahead, the fight for equality of Jews and Palestinians will continue, even escalate in the years ahead.
As a modern, Western-oriented nation-state, Israel and Israelis will have no choice but to continue on the path toward expanding the practice of pluralism and democracy. The primary challenge, of course, will be the greater integration of Palestinians, those in Jerusalem, the West Bank and Gaza, into this citizenship. The proximity of the two peoples geographically, culturally, historically, economically and linguistically -makes this expansion of citizenship inevitable, even if some Jews and Palestinians resist this integration, at least symbolically. I use the term symbolically for a specific reason: who, looking at the map of Israel and Palestine, with the intermingling of populations, settlements, roads,security, borders and economy can seriously consider a separation that is more than symbolic? The crossing of boundaries between Jews and Palestinians has steadily increased over the years and will increase in the future, this in spite of the stated policy of separation. Much, perhaps most, of this interaction has been imposed by occupation, dislocation and atrocity, the attempt above all to create an apartheid system in the name of Jewish history, but the unintended consequences are the future. This future of integration, under two flags or one, at first in victory and surrender, will one day see the creation of a new identity for Jews and Palestinians in Israel/Palestine that will carry aspects of each people's past and elements of joint experiences forged in blood, struggle and solidarity.
Today, in the midst of a new intifada and the governance of Ariel Sharon, history seems to be moving in the opposite direction. Naturally, in this situation, the ideology of separation, always linked to a romanticized past, is played, on both sides, politically and dramatically. And who can protest these dreams of the past, especially among the suffering who, in their lifetime, have experienced and continue to experience exile today? Who in conscience, especially Jews, can help but be thoroughly disgusted with the bellicose claims of a united Jerusalem, eternally, under Jewish power, with no sense of other connections to land and religion?
The Palestinian right of return rests here, at least in my understanding. The argument can be made on many levels - including and beyond the areas I have left aside but the right of return, or better phrased the possibility of return, rests, ultimately, less on rights, history, or power than it does on the unintended consequences of victory and the long run of history that always, everywhere, and especially where it is denied ideologically and symbolically, moves toward integration. The division of the Jewish community in Israel and America, but more importantly the choice of Jews to live in secular, pluralistic, and democratic societies regardless of their theology, is part of this future movement.
Tuesday, March 13
MCC Palestine Update #17
MCC Palestine Update #17
As Ariel Sharon arrived in Washington, D.C. to open arms at the White House this past week, the Israeli government was busy proclaiming loudly that the siege on the occupied territories was being eased. While it was true that movement in some areas became somewhat easier, however, the mechanisms of siege remained in place for the most part (dirt and cement barriers, trenches, checkpoints), along with the military occupation which makes the siege possible.
Palestinians have no illusions about the "peace" plan Sharon discussed with U.S. President Bush--Sharon's vision of extended interim agreements will, like Oslo, simply allow for continued settlement expansion and Palestinian dispossession. Palestinians are also bemused when Sharon declares that he won't negotiate while violence continues: Palestinians, it appears, are expected to negotiate even as the everyday violence of the Israeli occupation continues.
Project Update
As engineers from the Palestinian Agricultural Relief Committees (PARC) were completing work on an agricultural road between Deir Ibziya and Ein Kinya (funded by MCC) on March 20, the Israeli military authorities arrived and put a halt to the work and forbade any further work on the road. Please keep PARC and the farmers of Deir Ibziya and Ein Kinya in your prayers.
Action suggestion
Write to your congressional representatives or parliamentary officials to inform them that the work of Mennonite Central Committee and other international relief and development agencies in Palestine (such as World Vision, Catholic Relief Services, Save the Children) is routinely disrupted and thwarted by random Israeli military procedures: roadblocks prevent free travel within the occupied territories; projects, such as the agricultural road mentioned above, are suspended for no reason; the siege in the occupied territories destroys projects aimed to promote sustainable development. Explain that a just, durable peace in Palestine/Israel cannot be achieved so long as the Israeli military occupation continues, constraining Palestinian economic development and making Palestinians prisoners in their own country. For information on how to get in touch with your elected officials, contact MCC's offices in Washington, DC (jdb@mail.mcc.org) or Ottawa (mccott@web.ca).
On March 31, the Sabeel Ecumenical Liberation Theology Center in Jerusalem is organizing a day of prayer and fasting for justice and peace in Palestine/Israel. During this time of Lent, fasting and prayer is more vital than ever: consider organizing a day of prayer and fasting, either on March 31 or later in the year, as an act of solidarity with Palestinians and Israelis who struggle for justice and true peace.
Below is an article written by Dr. Hanan Ashrawi, a prominent Palestinian spokesperson. Dr. Ashrawi recently led a nonviolent protest march by women towards the Ram checkpoint in the north of Jerusalem: the march was met with tear gas and percussion grenades.
1. Sharon’s Message to the Palestinian People
Hanan Ashrawi
MIFTAH, 12 March 2001
To every man, woman, and child in the Palestinian territories. YOU are my target; you will be made to suffer; and you shall pay for the original crime of being a Palestinian and for being there.
Every camp, village, town, and city is hereby declared a prison. Instead of arresting each individual and having to build even more incarceration centers and foot the bill for your detention, I shall simply instruct the army to dig ditches and build barricades around your population centers, thus with one sweep render your isolation complete. Wherever you are, you are under arrest at your own expense and in your own home.
School children may not reach their schools and college students are to stay home. Some of you might try to climb over the dirt barriers or walk around the ditches. Take your chance! After Hours of misery you might find a tank (or more) lying in wait for you. You might find snipers on your hilltops or armored vehicles at your crossroads. Defy the siege at your own peril, and if you die don’t blame me. In my book, you are guilty of the subversive act of seeking education. The same applies to your teachers and school administrators who are guilty of the equally heinous crime of attempting to teach. Besides, I can close down all your educational institutions with a military order: That would tarnish my new and improved image in the West (and my new ally Shimon might not like it). This way, your institutions will collapse by themselves and ignorance will prevail.
All patients seeking treatment (including cancer, kidney, and heart patients) are hereby forbidden to reach their hospitals and clinics. You shall suffer in silence and you shall die in silence, for you are guilty of daring to claim the same human treatment reserved for real people not for subhuman genetic terrorists like you. All pregnant women will deliver in their own homes, or in ambulances and at checkpoints if they dare defy the siege. Should you suffer complications leading to the death of your infants (or to your own death), you have only yourselves to blame. For you are guilty of the ultimate crime of attempting to give birth to even more Palestinian terrorists. All mothers should know that no vaccination will be allowed to reach your children, for they deserve no protection against infancy and childhood diseases. They too will grow up to be a threat to our security.
All shopkeepers, tradesmen, industrialists, construction workers, businessmen (and women we don’t discriminate) are hereby forbidden from engaging in any kind of gainful activity. Since you cannot go anywhere anyway, you might as well stay home and watch your families starve even if your warehouses are full of products you cannot market. You too are guilty for attempting to conduct a normal life in defiance of the occupation.
This applies even more directly to farmers and peasants and all those involved in agricultural activity. Is it not enough that we confiscated most of your land to build settlements for those Brave settlers who had defied real hardships in New York, London, Moscow, and other such hostile places to come to the Land of Milk and Honey? You had no business being there, tilling the land and feeding your children. Now, we have to confiscate even more lands for these settlers to build by-pass roads (i.e. to bypass your reality) and to connect them to Israel directly without having to witness the mere fact of your existence. You call it apartheid? We call it security by the power of the gun.
If our brave settlers used their guns against you, uprooted your trees, destroyed your crops, and terrified your children, that is the least they could do given the hardships they endured in their drive to grab more land. We, of course, are more than happy to provide them with the full protection and support of our army while they wreak havoc amongst you, and will distort our laws to find them innocent no matter whom they kill, maim, or injure from amongst you. When will you learn that you do not count? They do, and we will make sure that in this equation you finally learn that you are the zero.
Let me be painfully frank with you. I blame you for forcing us to besiege you, kill you, shell your homes, assassinate your activists and leaders, and perform other such distasteful tasks (even though, I must admit I have had a long and rich experience in invading Arab lands, murdering civilians and prisoners of war, and massacring Palestinians wholesale while destroying whole villages). You are truly exasperating. We made you a generous offer whereby wewould annex only parts of your land (including our settlement clusters), expand settlements according to need (and will), annex Jerusalem and keep it under our sovereignty (while trying our best to render it Palestinian-free), and totally deny the Palestinian refugees their right to return. Yet, ungrateful wretches that you are, you persisted in your stubborn refusal. You claim international law and legitimacy? What nonsense! Only our law prevails, and we deem you illegal.
Despite all our attempts at persuasion (our gun ships, tanks, sniper fire, and military checkpoints are very subtle means of persuasion), you continued to deny us our rights to your lands and rights. We have to be able to help ourselves to that which is yours, what else is occupation for? What other use of power if not to be unleashed on the weak?
I therefore find you guilty and deserving of the utmost punishment (we may not have the death penalty in our laws, but we can carry out as many extra-judicial murders and assassinations as we please). You are guilty for holding on to your humanity, for daring to exercise a collective (and individual) will, for refusing to succumb, for daring to claim equal rights before the law, for maintaining your dignity and a stubborn yearning for freedom.
We, on the other hand, should be free to inflict any type of pain and brutality on you, and it should be your lot to lie down and die quietly. You must not be allowed to disturb our peace or security. We have the right to drive you to desperation, and should you protest or react, not only will you be conveniently branded as terrorists, we will also pound you into submission while calling on you to stop the violence and end terrorism.
Not only that, but we will stand up before CNN (and all the friendly Western press) to expose you for not accepting our hand stretched out to you in peace. Don’t worry. They will swallow it hook, line, and sinker. We have been feeding them our spin for years to the point where they have lost not only their critical judgment and journalistic integrity, but also their sense of sight and hearing when it comes to your image and narrative. They are guaranteed to pay attention only when you harm an Israeli or provide them with a negative proof of our stereotype. So don’t count on any audience or sympathy in the world for you are guilty and will be blamed. And if you suffer from any misguided notion that the UN or any other global body will come to your rescue, rest assured it ain’t gonna happen! Kofi Anan has been dispatched forthwith to prevent the destruction of statues (cultural heritage) in Afghanistan; he can’t be expected to deal with human reality at the same time. Besides, we might promise him a role in the peace process provided he behaves himself and looks the other way. We might have a harder time with your European friends, but they too can’t afford to irk us. As for the new US administration, don’t hold your breath. It, too, has decided to give me time to demonstrate my peace making skills. And I’m busy demonstrating those to the hilt, as you can see and feel. I will make peace with you if it takes everything that you have, including your land, lives, rights, and freedom.
My colleagues (including Chief of Staff General Mofaz and Minister of Defense General Ben Eliezer) concur with me. It is wonderful to be able to do my worst and still have Labor instruments (like Fuad) and apologists (like Peres) on my team. They certainly clean up my image! Besides, I’m not doing anymuch worse than Barak did. At least I‘m not shelling your homes for now (the Americans didn’t Like our use of Apaches for that purpose, and it didn’t look good before the cameras anyway.
So, if you know what is good for you, please behave like good little natives and kiss the hand that beats you. Say YES to peace, my way, and I guarantee you an efficient apartheid system. In the meantime, stop the violence and stop being the terrorists that youare. As for me, I remain forever a pacifist and a humanist (my way).
If only you would see it my way.
p.s. Note from Shimon (Peres). I really am pained at what you have to endure, but I am truly helpless having cast my lot with the Sharons, Liebermans and Ze’evis of this world. However, I will continue to work for my vision of new realities in the Middle East. This is only a sample of what it has in store for you. I have to rush and meet with my European colleagues and members of the press to let them know that Sharon isn’t all that bad. He is a new man for a new age. Given my (and his) history and age I have a tough job selling that spin! What do you think?
As Ariel Sharon arrived in Washington, D.C. to open arms at the White House this past week, the Israeli government was busy proclaiming loudly that the siege on the occupied territories was being eased. While it was true that movement in some areas became somewhat easier, however, the mechanisms of siege remained in place for the most part (dirt and cement barriers, trenches, checkpoints), along with the military occupation which makes the siege possible.
Palestinians have no illusions about the "peace" plan Sharon discussed with U.S. President Bush--Sharon's vision of extended interim agreements will, like Oslo, simply allow for continued settlement expansion and Palestinian dispossession. Palestinians are also bemused when Sharon declares that he won't negotiate while violence continues: Palestinians, it appears, are expected to negotiate even as the everyday violence of the Israeli occupation continues.
Project Update
As engineers from the Palestinian Agricultural Relief Committees (PARC) were completing work on an agricultural road between Deir Ibziya and Ein Kinya (funded by MCC) on March 20, the Israeli military authorities arrived and put a halt to the work and forbade any further work on the road. Please keep PARC and the farmers of Deir Ibziya and Ein Kinya in your prayers.
Action suggestion
Write to your congressional representatives or parliamentary officials to inform them that the work of Mennonite Central Committee and other international relief and development agencies in Palestine (such as World Vision, Catholic Relief Services, Save the Children) is routinely disrupted and thwarted by random Israeli military procedures: roadblocks prevent free travel within the occupied territories; projects, such as the agricultural road mentioned above, are suspended for no reason; the siege in the occupied territories destroys projects aimed to promote sustainable development. Explain that a just, durable peace in Palestine/Israel cannot be achieved so long as the Israeli military occupation continues, constraining Palestinian economic development and making Palestinians prisoners in their own country. For information on how to get in touch with your elected officials, contact MCC's offices in Washington, DC (jdb@mail.mcc.org) or Ottawa (mccott@web.ca).
On March 31, the Sabeel Ecumenical Liberation Theology Center in Jerusalem is organizing a day of prayer and fasting for justice and peace in Palestine/Israel. During this time of Lent, fasting and prayer is more vital than ever: consider organizing a day of prayer and fasting, either on March 31 or later in the year, as an act of solidarity with Palestinians and Israelis who struggle for justice and true peace.
Below is an article written by Dr. Hanan Ashrawi, a prominent Palestinian spokesperson. Dr. Ashrawi recently led a nonviolent protest march by women towards the Ram checkpoint in the north of Jerusalem: the march was met with tear gas and percussion grenades.
1. Sharon’s Message to the Palestinian People
Hanan Ashrawi
MIFTAH, 12 March 2001
To every man, woman, and child in the Palestinian territories. YOU are my target; you will be made to suffer; and you shall pay for the original crime of being a Palestinian and for being there.
Every camp, village, town, and city is hereby declared a prison. Instead of arresting each individual and having to build even more incarceration centers and foot the bill for your detention, I shall simply instruct the army to dig ditches and build barricades around your population centers, thus with one sweep render your isolation complete. Wherever you are, you are under arrest at your own expense and in your own home.
School children may not reach their schools and college students are to stay home. Some of you might try to climb over the dirt barriers or walk around the ditches. Take your chance! After Hours of misery you might find a tank (or more) lying in wait for you. You might find snipers on your hilltops or armored vehicles at your crossroads. Defy the siege at your own peril, and if you die don’t blame me. In my book, you are guilty of the subversive act of seeking education. The same applies to your teachers and school administrators who are guilty of the equally heinous crime of attempting to teach. Besides, I can close down all your educational institutions with a military order: That would tarnish my new and improved image in the West (and my new ally Shimon might not like it). This way, your institutions will collapse by themselves and ignorance will prevail.
All patients seeking treatment (including cancer, kidney, and heart patients) are hereby forbidden to reach their hospitals and clinics. You shall suffer in silence and you shall die in silence, for you are guilty of daring to claim the same human treatment reserved for real people not for subhuman genetic terrorists like you. All pregnant women will deliver in their own homes, or in ambulances and at checkpoints if they dare defy the siege. Should you suffer complications leading to the death of your infants (or to your own death), you have only yourselves to blame. For you are guilty of the ultimate crime of attempting to give birth to even more Palestinian terrorists. All mothers should know that no vaccination will be allowed to reach your children, for they deserve no protection against infancy and childhood diseases. They too will grow up to be a threat to our security.
All shopkeepers, tradesmen, industrialists, construction workers, businessmen (and women we don’t discriminate) are hereby forbidden from engaging in any kind of gainful activity. Since you cannot go anywhere anyway, you might as well stay home and watch your families starve even if your warehouses are full of products you cannot market. You too are guilty for attempting to conduct a normal life in defiance of the occupation.
This applies even more directly to farmers and peasants and all those involved in agricultural activity. Is it not enough that we confiscated most of your land to build settlements for those Brave settlers who had defied real hardships in New York, London, Moscow, and other such hostile places to come to the Land of Milk and Honey? You had no business being there, tilling the land and feeding your children. Now, we have to confiscate even more lands for these settlers to build by-pass roads (i.e. to bypass your reality) and to connect them to Israel directly without having to witness the mere fact of your existence. You call it apartheid? We call it security by the power of the gun.
If our brave settlers used their guns against you, uprooted your trees, destroyed your crops, and terrified your children, that is the least they could do given the hardships they endured in their drive to grab more land. We, of course, are more than happy to provide them with the full protection and support of our army while they wreak havoc amongst you, and will distort our laws to find them innocent no matter whom they kill, maim, or injure from amongst you. When will you learn that you do not count? They do, and we will make sure that in this equation you finally learn that you are the zero.
Let me be painfully frank with you. I blame you for forcing us to besiege you, kill you, shell your homes, assassinate your activists and leaders, and perform other such distasteful tasks (even though, I must admit I have had a long and rich experience in invading Arab lands, murdering civilians and prisoners of war, and massacring Palestinians wholesale while destroying whole villages). You are truly exasperating. We made you a generous offer whereby wewould annex only parts of your land (including our settlement clusters), expand settlements according to need (and will), annex Jerusalem and keep it under our sovereignty (while trying our best to render it Palestinian-free), and totally deny the Palestinian refugees their right to return. Yet, ungrateful wretches that you are, you persisted in your stubborn refusal. You claim international law and legitimacy? What nonsense! Only our law prevails, and we deem you illegal.
Despite all our attempts at persuasion (our gun ships, tanks, sniper fire, and military checkpoints are very subtle means of persuasion), you continued to deny us our rights to your lands and rights. We have to be able to help ourselves to that which is yours, what else is occupation for? What other use of power if not to be unleashed on the weak?
I therefore find you guilty and deserving of the utmost punishment (we may not have the death penalty in our laws, but we can carry out as many extra-judicial murders and assassinations as we please). You are guilty for holding on to your humanity, for daring to exercise a collective (and individual) will, for refusing to succumb, for daring to claim equal rights before the law, for maintaining your dignity and a stubborn yearning for freedom.
We, on the other hand, should be free to inflict any type of pain and brutality on you, and it should be your lot to lie down and die quietly. You must not be allowed to disturb our peace or security. We have the right to drive you to desperation, and should you protest or react, not only will you be conveniently branded as terrorists, we will also pound you into submission while calling on you to stop the violence and end terrorism.
Not only that, but we will stand up before CNN (and all the friendly Western press) to expose you for not accepting our hand stretched out to you in peace. Don’t worry. They will swallow it hook, line, and sinker. We have been feeding them our spin for years to the point where they have lost not only their critical judgment and journalistic integrity, but also their sense of sight and hearing when it comes to your image and narrative. They are guaranteed to pay attention only when you harm an Israeli or provide them with a negative proof of our stereotype. So don’t count on any audience or sympathy in the world for you are guilty and will be blamed. And if you suffer from any misguided notion that the UN or any other global body will come to your rescue, rest assured it ain’t gonna happen! Kofi Anan has been dispatched forthwith to prevent the destruction of statues (cultural heritage) in Afghanistan; he can’t be expected to deal with human reality at the same time. Besides, we might promise him a role in the peace process provided he behaves himself and looks the other way. We might have a harder time with your European friends, but they too can’t afford to irk us. As for the new US administration, don’t hold your breath. It, too, has decided to give me time to demonstrate my peace making skills. And I’m busy demonstrating those to the hilt, as you can see and feel. I will make peace with you if it takes everything that you have, including your land, lives, rights, and freedom.
My colleagues (including Chief of Staff General Mofaz and Minister of Defense General Ben Eliezer) concur with me. It is wonderful to be able to do my worst and still have Labor instruments (like Fuad) and apologists (like Peres) on my team. They certainly clean up my image! Besides, I’m not doing anymuch worse than Barak did. At least I‘m not shelling your homes for now (the Americans didn’t Like our use of Apaches for that purpose, and it didn’t look good before the cameras anyway.
So, if you know what is good for you, please behave like good little natives and kiss the hand that beats you. Say YES to peace, my way, and I guarantee you an efficient apartheid system. In the meantime, stop the violence and stop being the terrorists that youare. As for me, I remain forever a pacifist and a humanist (my way).
If only you would see it my way.
p.s. Note from Shimon (Peres). I really am pained at what you have to endure, but I am truly helpless having cast my lot with the Sharons, Liebermans and Ze’evis of this world. However, I will continue to work for my vision of new realities in the Middle East. This is only a sample of what it has in store for you. I have to rush and meet with my European colleagues and members of the press to let them know that Sharon isn’t all that bad. He is a new man for a new age. Given my (and his) history and age I have a tough job selling that spin! What do you think?
Sunday, March 11
MCC Palestine Update #16
MCC Palestine Update #16
The major developments in the occupied territories during the first week of the Sheres (Sharon-Peres) unity government have been the digging of trenches around villages west of Ramallah, isolating over 30 villages from educational institutions, health care facilities, and employment.
MCC has supported kindergarten renovation in many of these villages, and recently completed work in cooperation with the Palestinian Agricultural Relief Committees on a road connecting two of the villages, Ein Qinya and Deir Ibziya. Two of MCC's locally-appointed workers, Sahir Dajani and Viola Tucktuck, live in Ramallah. In the past they used to take one service (shared taxi) straight from Ramallah to Jerusalem, a 30 minute drive. With the recent Israeli siege measures, the trip has become a trail of tears. New checkpoints at the Qalandia refugee camp and at Kufr Aqab prevent taxis from making the journey, so someone wishing to commute between Ramallah and Jerusalem is forced to take two, often three separate taxis, walking across checkpoints which prevent taxis from passing.
These measures are creating a pressure cooker in Ramallah and elsewhere in the occupied territories: far from "pacifying" a supposedly violent population, these brutal measures inflame Palestinian frustration and anger. Please keep MCC's Palestinian workers and our Palestinian partners in your prayers as they cope with increased Israeli restrictions on Palestinian movement.
Below you will find an incisive analysis by Gideon Levy of different types of violence.
1. Defining violence
Gideon Levy
Haaretz, 11 March 2001
Who's a terrorist?
Aida Fatahia was walking in the street; Ubei Daraj was playing in the yard. She was the mother of three; he was nine years old. Both were killed last week by Israel Defense Forces (IDF) bullets, for no reason. Their killing raises once again, in all its horror, the question of whether Palestinian violence is the only violence that should be called terrorism. Is only car bombing terrorism, while shooting at a woman and child is not?.Fatahia and Daraj join a long list of men, women, and children who were innocent of wrongdoing and killed in the past five months by the IDF.
In the Israeli debate, their deaths were not a result of "terror actions" or "terrorist attacks" and the killers are not "terrorists." Those are terms used only for Palestinian violence. The right - and the left - in Israel always make that distinction: Palestinian violence is terrorism; Israel only defends itself. The huge gap between the numbers of innocent victims on both sides doesn't change this one- sided definition.
IDF Chief of Staff Shaul Mofaz, commander of an army that has killed almost 90 children in the last five months, calls the Palestinian Authority (PA) a "terrorist entity," and totally ignores the actions of the army - and the results of those actions. But the questions must be asked: Aren't massive land expropriations, systematic house destructions, the uprooting of orchards and groves, also a form of violence? Isn't cutting off entire towns and villages from their source of water a type of violence? Isn't limitation on freedom of movement by slicing whole areas of the population off from each other and denying medical attention to the residents - even when it's a matter of life and death - any less painful than highway shootings? A pregnant woman whose baby dies or a patient who died because they couldn't get to the hospital - something that has become almost routine in the territories - aren't they victims of terrible violence? What about the behavior of soldiers and police at checkpoints, on the roads, everywhere? The humiliations and beatings, and the settler's own violence against Palestinians - what should that be called?
For most Israelis, the violence is what the Palestinians are doing to us. The Israeli reaction is always just a reaction, much more fatal, perhaps, but a lot less ruthless. They blow up bombs in our markets, and we only shoot at the planners, the inciters, and the terrorists. So, sometimes chips may fly, as the saying lately goes, and some innocents are also killed, but of course, nobody meant it. That's just the way things are in war. That way, Israel always comes out the winner: It doesn't intend to kill innocent people. But does the intention matter to the many victims?
Israelis don't consider all of Israel's other steps - the sieges and curfews, the expropriations and house destruction - violence, of course. That's why Israel says it wants an end to the violence "and a return to the status quo ante," whether as a condition, by Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, or as a demand, by Foreign Minister Shimon Peres, for renewal of the negotiations. When Israel says it wants a return to the status quo before the Intifada, it means it wants the Palestinians to stop their violence, and then Israel's violence, which is only a defensive reaction to the Palestinians', will naturally stop. In other words, Israel wants the Palestinians to reassume their meek surrender to the brutality of the occupation, while the violence of the occupation continues.
Back in Oslo, both sides agreed to avoid violence, Israel claims, so the current outbreak of violence is therefore a gross violation of the agreement. Moreover, since the Palestinians initiated the Intifada, - "they started it" -the responsibility for stopping it is on their shoulders. But wasn't the Intifada preceded by a series of violent acts by Israel, which expropriated land, closed areas, uprooted farms, expelled people, tortured suspects, dried up resources and destroyed homes - long before the Intifada, and with no less violence than the Palestinians?
Israel is not demanding an end to that violence. When it's only exploding buses and mortar rounds falling on settlements that is defined as violence, it's easy to blame the other side for violating agreements. But that's not the whole picture. Israel is not ready in the same breath to put an end to its own violence.
The demand for an end to violence is obviously right and justified. Violence - any violence - is wrong, and an end to the violence has to be on the top of the agenda of any political negotiation. Israel can and should demand that the Palestinians silence their weapons. But it should demand the same of itself, regarding all the various weapons it uses against the Palestinians. But when, as it did last week, Israel uses bulldozers to create impassable barriers to and from 33 villages, and there's no way for an ambulance or water container to get in, the demand for an end to the violence is outrageously hypocritical.
An end to the violence?
Why shouldn't Israel, as the stronger side, try being the first?
The major developments in the occupied territories during the first week of the Sheres (Sharon-Peres) unity government have been the digging of trenches around villages west of Ramallah, isolating over 30 villages from educational institutions, health care facilities, and employment.
MCC has supported kindergarten renovation in many of these villages, and recently completed work in cooperation with the Palestinian Agricultural Relief Committees on a road connecting two of the villages, Ein Qinya and Deir Ibziya. Two of MCC's locally-appointed workers, Sahir Dajani and Viola Tucktuck, live in Ramallah. In the past they used to take one service (shared taxi) straight from Ramallah to Jerusalem, a 30 minute drive. With the recent Israeli siege measures, the trip has become a trail of tears. New checkpoints at the Qalandia refugee camp and at Kufr Aqab prevent taxis from making the journey, so someone wishing to commute between Ramallah and Jerusalem is forced to take two, often three separate taxis, walking across checkpoints which prevent taxis from passing.
These measures are creating a pressure cooker in Ramallah and elsewhere in the occupied territories: far from "pacifying" a supposedly violent population, these brutal measures inflame Palestinian frustration and anger. Please keep MCC's Palestinian workers and our Palestinian partners in your prayers as they cope with increased Israeli restrictions on Palestinian movement.
Below you will find an incisive analysis by Gideon Levy of different types of violence.
1. Defining violence
Gideon Levy
Haaretz, 11 March 2001
Who's a terrorist?
Aida Fatahia was walking in the street; Ubei Daraj was playing in the yard. She was the mother of three; he was nine years old. Both were killed last week by Israel Defense Forces (IDF) bullets, for no reason. Their killing raises once again, in all its horror, the question of whether Palestinian violence is the only violence that should be called terrorism. Is only car bombing terrorism, while shooting at a woman and child is not?.Fatahia and Daraj join a long list of men, women, and children who were innocent of wrongdoing and killed in the past five months by the IDF.
In the Israeli debate, their deaths were not a result of "terror actions" or "terrorist attacks" and the killers are not "terrorists." Those are terms used only for Palestinian violence. The right - and the left - in Israel always make that distinction: Palestinian violence is terrorism; Israel only defends itself. The huge gap between the numbers of innocent victims on both sides doesn't change this one- sided definition.
IDF Chief of Staff Shaul Mofaz, commander of an army that has killed almost 90 children in the last five months, calls the Palestinian Authority (PA) a "terrorist entity," and totally ignores the actions of the army - and the results of those actions. But the questions must be asked: Aren't massive land expropriations, systematic house destructions, the uprooting of orchards and groves, also a form of violence? Isn't cutting off entire towns and villages from their source of water a type of violence? Isn't limitation on freedom of movement by slicing whole areas of the population off from each other and denying medical attention to the residents - even when it's a matter of life and death - any less painful than highway shootings? A pregnant woman whose baby dies or a patient who died because they couldn't get to the hospital - something that has become almost routine in the territories - aren't they victims of terrible violence? What about the behavior of soldiers and police at checkpoints, on the roads, everywhere? The humiliations and beatings, and the settler's own violence against Palestinians - what should that be called?
For most Israelis, the violence is what the Palestinians are doing to us. The Israeli reaction is always just a reaction, much more fatal, perhaps, but a lot less ruthless. They blow up bombs in our markets, and we only shoot at the planners, the inciters, and the terrorists. So, sometimes chips may fly, as the saying lately goes, and some innocents are also killed, but of course, nobody meant it. That's just the way things are in war. That way, Israel always comes out the winner: It doesn't intend to kill innocent people. But does the intention matter to the many victims?
Israelis don't consider all of Israel's other steps - the sieges and curfews, the expropriations and house destruction - violence, of course. That's why Israel says it wants an end to the violence "and a return to the status quo ante," whether as a condition, by Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, or as a demand, by Foreign Minister Shimon Peres, for renewal of the negotiations. When Israel says it wants a return to the status quo before the Intifada, it means it wants the Palestinians to stop their violence, and then Israel's violence, which is only a defensive reaction to the Palestinians', will naturally stop. In other words, Israel wants the Palestinians to reassume their meek surrender to the brutality of the occupation, while the violence of the occupation continues.
Back in Oslo, both sides agreed to avoid violence, Israel claims, so the current outbreak of violence is therefore a gross violation of the agreement. Moreover, since the Palestinians initiated the Intifada, - "they started it" -the responsibility for stopping it is on their shoulders. But wasn't the Intifada preceded by a series of violent acts by Israel, which expropriated land, closed areas, uprooted farms, expelled people, tortured suspects, dried up resources and destroyed homes - long before the Intifada, and with no less violence than the Palestinians?
Israel is not demanding an end to that violence. When it's only exploding buses and mortar rounds falling on settlements that is defined as violence, it's easy to blame the other side for violating agreements. But that's not the whole picture. Israel is not ready in the same breath to put an end to its own violence.
The demand for an end to violence is obviously right and justified. Violence - any violence - is wrong, and an end to the violence has to be on the top of the agenda of any political negotiation. Israel can and should demand that the Palestinians silence their weapons. But it should demand the same of itself, regarding all the various weapons it uses against the Palestinians. But when, as it did last week, Israel uses bulldozers to create impassable barriers to and from 33 villages, and there's no way for an ambulance or water container to get in, the demand for an end to the violence is outrageously hypocritical.
An end to the violence?
Why shouldn't Israel, as the stronger side, try being the first?
Tuesday, March 6
MCC Palestine Update #15
MCC Palestine Update #15
The Lenten season of repentance and reflection is upon us. Sadly, Lent in Palestine/Israel promises to be more somber than usual, with the cycle of violence continuing to spin: three more Palestinians were killed over the weekend, including a boy helping his father paint inside their home in al-Bireh, while several Israelis were killed by a Palestinian suicide bomber. The Israeli network of checkpoints and blockades grows continually tighter: trenches were recently dug around Jericho and Bir Zeit.
MCC began its fiscal year on March 1. MCC Palestine is slowly starting to reorganize its development program, reducing the number of partners with whom we work. Over the coming year we will be working with the following groups:
Justice/Peace: The Sabeel Ecumenical Liberation Theology Center in Jerusalem; MCC will sponsor Sabeel's work with Palestinian youth, women, and clergy; Badil Refugee Resource Center: MCC will support Badil's advocacy for the right of Palestinian refugees to return to their homes; The Wi'am Conflict Resolution Center in Bethlehem: in addition to assisting the center's promotion of conflict resolution within Palestinian society, MCC will also send one of Wi'am's workers to the Summer Peacebuilding Institute at Eastern Mennonite University.
Agriculture: Through The Center for Agricultural Services and the Union of Agricultural Work Committees MCC will support land reclamation and income-generating projects.
Women: MCC will continue to partner with the Women's Training Unit of the YMCA in Ramallah by offering training courses to women in agriculture, livestock production, and fiscal management.
Persons with Disabilities: In partnership with the al-Mostaqbal Society for the Blind and Visually Impaired in Khan Younis and the YMCA Rehabilitaiton Center in Beit Sahour MCC will sponsor projects which aim to build capacity among persons with disabilities.
Education: MCC will continue to support the ministry of the Hope Secondary School in Beit Jala, and will also work with 8-10 community kindergartens to identify infrastructural and institutional capacity needs.
Please remember MCC's workers and partners in your prayers, both during Lent and throughout the year. Your financial support of MCC's projects is also appreciated. Information about Palestine cash-giving projects for congregations, families, and individuals is available from MCC in Akron (tel. 717-859-1151) or directly from us upon request.
Below find a Lenten message issued by the Latin (Roman Catholic) Patriarch of Jerusalem, Michel Sabbah: his call for Israel to destroy churches, not homes, is particularly poignant.
1. Latin Patriarchate of Jerusalem Letter for Lent 2001
Michel Sabbah, Patriarch -Jerusalem
1 March 2001
Brothers and Sisters,
1. The peace of Christ be with you. We begin our fast on Ash Wednesday, remembering the passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ, His death and His glorious Resurrection. He is our model: just as he prayed and fasted for forty days in the desert of Jericho, we also fast for the forty days that precede Easter. Jesus began his preaching, saying: "Repent for the Kingdom of God is close at hand" (cf. Mk 1,15). The Kingdom of God is God's presence in us, for He created us in His own image and likeness. The Kingdom of God is God who accompanies us in our present trials through which, today, he constructs our history.
2. Over the past few days I have visited some parishes in Palestine and I listened to the faithful. I also listened to the civil authorities. Their language is that of all the parishes, their concerns are the concerns of all of you. The first concern, which comprises all the others, is the difficult political situation these days: the closed roads, the blockade imposed on the towns and villages, the lack of work, the continual Israeli bombardment, the destruction of houses, and in addition, the difficulties within Palestinian society, and finally, the idea of emigration. Nonetheless, I saw, despite the trials, the anxieties and the idea of emigration, the basic will to stand firm and to patiently wait until our liberty is returned to us and until the image of God in us and also in those who oppress us is manifested.
3. Concerning emigration, we add our voice to the voice of all those who are patient, and we say to you: Brothers and sisters, do not leave your land. Be patient. It is here that God wants you, as believers in Him and witnesses of Jesus Christ in His land. Stand firm around the Holy Places. In this land, you are a part of the mystery of God in it. Try to reflect on this so that you might be able to see God and neighbour and understand the meaning of our presence here.
You have been called to a difficult life: do you have the courage to accept the difficult life to which God is calling you? Some say: "The future is not clear". The future depends on what you do today and on what you fear to do. Why leave to others the making of your future? This is a time when the believers say, with the freedom of children of God, what they want to express and thus contribute effectively towards the construction of their future, founded on the solid bases of peace, justice and love.
4. Furthermore, know that our help comes from one another and from our love for each other. If someone is in need, let them search out those in greater need than they are. Let them then bring the necessary help from the little or the lot that they possess. To all those who are hungry, we say that we want to share your hunger and share our bread with you. We invite the faithful in all our parishes and the religious to share their bread with those who are in need, either by inviting them to their tables or by covering the costs of daily food through contributions to Caritas or to some other philanthropic organization. We are living through a war which has been imposed on us. We must adapt ourselves and our way of living to privations and to generosity with regard to all our brothers and sisters in need.
5. As regards the houses which continually undergo the Israeli bombardments, we say to the Israelis: Destroy our churches but spare the homes of our faithful. If you must impose, at any price, collective punishment and if there needs be a ransom in order to procure the tranquillity of innocent children and families, we offer our churches: Destroy them; we will find other places in which to pray and we will continue to pray for ourselves and for you.
And to the Palestinian militants who think that it is necessary to direct their fire against the Israelis from populated houses, even when the orders are clear: Do not transform peaceful homes into a line of fire -- to them too we say: Obey the orders, preserve the cohesion of Palestinian society, and spare the homes of the innocent. We agree to offer our churches as ransom for any house that they want to demolish. However, we cannot agree to the demolition of the homes of our children so that they be forced to abandon their land.
6. During these days, we pray and we walk the way of repentance in order to go to meet God. We say to every Palestinian and to every Israeli who loves peace and asks for security: Try to see God with us. To the Israelis we say: In the sight of God, try to see that the Christian or Muslim Palestinian is not the image that you have decided to see: they are neither terrorists nor people who want to hate and kill. Try to see that your occupation of their land since 1967, the privation of their liberty, and, today, the blockade of the towns and villages with all the suffering that results, leads to that which you call terrorism.
In fact, this is the cry of the poor and the oppressed who are demanding their liberty and their dignity. Remember this and be just today. That which you call security measures is simply an invitation to more violence. Give back the land to its owners, give them back their liberty, listen to the voice of the oppressed and the poor for it is lifted up to God and God will listen one day and answer this cry.
7. To all those who suffer among our children, we say: Be patient. We remind you of the difficult commandment, love your enemies. "Love your enemies and pray for your persecutors, in order to become children of your Father who is in heaven, for He makes the sun rise on the evil and on the good and makes rain fall on the just and the unjust" (Mt 5:44-45). Love is not a weakness nor an escape. It is the vision of the face of God in every person, both Palestinian and Israeli. The Israeli who withholds our liberty remains a carrier of the image of God. With this vision I purify my heart of all anger and I ask the Israeli, with the force of the spirit and the truth, to put an end to the oppression, to end the occupation of the land and the privation of liberty.
We ask for justice and peace because God is justice and peace. For this we pray and we fast during these days in order to purify ourselves of our sins and in order to co-operate with God in the construction of our new history. Here, in our land, God was revealed and He manifested His love for all humanity.
Let us ask God to introduce us into the depths of His mystery so that we might see Him and love Him: thus we will be able, all of us together, to see Him in all of His creatures and to love Him in all of His children, in justice, equity and mercy. I ask God to give you the force of the spirit and of love so that you will all be ready to welcome the glory of the Resurrection. Amen.
+ Michel Sabbah, Patriarch -Jerusalem, 1 March, 2001
The Lenten season of repentance and reflection is upon us. Sadly, Lent in Palestine/Israel promises to be more somber than usual, with the cycle of violence continuing to spin: three more Palestinians were killed over the weekend, including a boy helping his father paint inside their home in al-Bireh, while several Israelis were killed by a Palestinian suicide bomber. The Israeli network of checkpoints and blockades grows continually tighter: trenches were recently dug around Jericho and Bir Zeit.
MCC began its fiscal year on March 1. MCC Palestine is slowly starting to reorganize its development program, reducing the number of partners with whom we work. Over the coming year we will be working with the following groups:
Justice/Peace: The Sabeel Ecumenical Liberation Theology Center in Jerusalem; MCC will sponsor Sabeel's work with Palestinian youth, women, and clergy; Badil Refugee Resource Center: MCC will support Badil's advocacy for the right of Palestinian refugees to return to their homes; The Wi'am Conflict Resolution Center in Bethlehem: in addition to assisting the center's promotion of conflict resolution within Palestinian society, MCC will also send one of Wi'am's workers to the Summer Peacebuilding Institute at Eastern Mennonite University.
Agriculture: Through The Center for Agricultural Services and the Union of Agricultural Work Committees MCC will support land reclamation and income-generating projects.
Women: MCC will continue to partner with the Women's Training Unit of the YMCA in Ramallah by offering training courses to women in agriculture, livestock production, and fiscal management.
Persons with Disabilities: In partnership with the al-Mostaqbal Society for the Blind and Visually Impaired in Khan Younis and the YMCA Rehabilitaiton Center in Beit Sahour MCC will sponsor projects which aim to build capacity among persons with disabilities.
Education: MCC will continue to support the ministry of the Hope Secondary School in Beit Jala, and will also work with 8-10 community kindergartens to identify infrastructural and institutional capacity needs.
Please remember MCC's workers and partners in your prayers, both during Lent and throughout the year. Your financial support of MCC's projects is also appreciated. Information about Palestine cash-giving projects for congregations, families, and individuals is available from MCC in Akron (tel. 717-859-1151) or directly from us upon request.
Below find a Lenten message issued by the Latin (Roman Catholic) Patriarch of Jerusalem, Michel Sabbah: his call for Israel to destroy churches, not homes, is particularly poignant.
1. Latin Patriarchate of Jerusalem Letter for Lent 2001
Michel Sabbah, Patriarch -Jerusalem
1 March 2001
Brothers and Sisters,
1. The peace of Christ be with you. We begin our fast on Ash Wednesday, remembering the passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ, His death and His glorious Resurrection. He is our model: just as he prayed and fasted for forty days in the desert of Jericho, we also fast for the forty days that precede Easter. Jesus began his preaching, saying: "Repent for the Kingdom of God is close at hand" (cf. Mk 1,15). The Kingdom of God is God's presence in us, for He created us in His own image and likeness. The Kingdom of God is God who accompanies us in our present trials through which, today, he constructs our history.
2. Over the past few days I have visited some parishes in Palestine and I listened to the faithful. I also listened to the civil authorities. Their language is that of all the parishes, their concerns are the concerns of all of you. The first concern, which comprises all the others, is the difficult political situation these days: the closed roads, the blockade imposed on the towns and villages, the lack of work, the continual Israeli bombardment, the destruction of houses, and in addition, the difficulties within Palestinian society, and finally, the idea of emigration. Nonetheless, I saw, despite the trials, the anxieties and the idea of emigration, the basic will to stand firm and to patiently wait until our liberty is returned to us and until the image of God in us and also in those who oppress us is manifested.
3. Concerning emigration, we add our voice to the voice of all those who are patient, and we say to you: Brothers and sisters, do not leave your land. Be patient. It is here that God wants you, as believers in Him and witnesses of Jesus Christ in His land. Stand firm around the Holy Places. In this land, you are a part of the mystery of God in it. Try to reflect on this so that you might be able to see God and neighbour and understand the meaning of our presence here.
You have been called to a difficult life: do you have the courage to accept the difficult life to which God is calling you? Some say: "The future is not clear". The future depends on what you do today and on what you fear to do. Why leave to others the making of your future? This is a time when the believers say, with the freedom of children of God, what they want to express and thus contribute effectively towards the construction of their future, founded on the solid bases of peace, justice and love.
4. Furthermore, know that our help comes from one another and from our love for each other. If someone is in need, let them search out those in greater need than they are. Let them then bring the necessary help from the little or the lot that they possess. To all those who are hungry, we say that we want to share your hunger and share our bread with you. We invite the faithful in all our parishes and the religious to share their bread with those who are in need, either by inviting them to their tables or by covering the costs of daily food through contributions to Caritas or to some other philanthropic organization. We are living through a war which has been imposed on us. We must adapt ourselves and our way of living to privations and to generosity with regard to all our brothers and sisters in need.
5. As regards the houses which continually undergo the Israeli bombardments, we say to the Israelis: Destroy our churches but spare the homes of our faithful. If you must impose, at any price, collective punishment and if there needs be a ransom in order to procure the tranquillity of innocent children and families, we offer our churches: Destroy them; we will find other places in which to pray and we will continue to pray for ourselves and for you.
And to the Palestinian militants who think that it is necessary to direct their fire against the Israelis from populated houses, even when the orders are clear: Do not transform peaceful homes into a line of fire -- to them too we say: Obey the orders, preserve the cohesion of Palestinian society, and spare the homes of the innocent. We agree to offer our churches as ransom for any house that they want to demolish. However, we cannot agree to the demolition of the homes of our children so that they be forced to abandon their land.
6. During these days, we pray and we walk the way of repentance in order to go to meet God. We say to every Palestinian and to every Israeli who loves peace and asks for security: Try to see God with us. To the Israelis we say: In the sight of God, try to see that the Christian or Muslim Palestinian is not the image that you have decided to see: they are neither terrorists nor people who want to hate and kill. Try to see that your occupation of their land since 1967, the privation of their liberty, and, today, the blockade of the towns and villages with all the suffering that results, leads to that which you call terrorism.
In fact, this is the cry of the poor and the oppressed who are demanding their liberty and their dignity. Remember this and be just today. That which you call security measures is simply an invitation to more violence. Give back the land to its owners, give them back their liberty, listen to the voice of the oppressed and the poor for it is lifted up to God and God will listen one day and answer this cry.
7. To all those who suffer among our children, we say: Be patient. We remind you of the difficult commandment, love your enemies. "Love your enemies and pray for your persecutors, in order to become children of your Father who is in heaven, for He makes the sun rise on the evil and on the good and makes rain fall on the just and the unjust" (Mt 5:44-45). Love is not a weakness nor an escape. It is the vision of the face of God in every person, both Palestinian and Israeli. The Israeli who withholds our liberty remains a carrier of the image of God. With this vision I purify my heart of all anger and I ask the Israeli, with the force of the spirit and the truth, to put an end to the oppression, to end the occupation of the land and the privation of liberty.
We ask for justice and peace because God is justice and peace. For this we pray and we fast during these days in order to purify ourselves of our sins and in order to co-operate with God in the construction of our new history. Here, in our land, God was revealed and He manifested His love for all humanity.
Let us ask God to introduce us into the depths of His mystery so that we might see Him and love Him: thus we will be able, all of us together, to see Him in all of His creatures and to love Him in all of His children, in justice, equity and mercy. I ask God to give you the force of the spirit and of love so that you will all be ready to welcome the glory of the Resurrection. Amen.
+ Michel Sabbah, Patriarch -Jerusalem, 1 March, 2001
Tuesday, February 27
MCC Palestine Update #14
MCC Palestine Update #14
This past week the Sabeel Ecumenical Liberation Theology Center, an MCC justice-building partner, held an international conference under the title, "Speaking Truth, Seeking Justice." Nearly 400 people from 21 countries participated. In addition to MCC Palestine workers, MCC also hosted other partners and workers at the conference: Bishop Marcos, a Coptic Orthodox leader from Egypt; Harley Eagle, a member of the Dakota nation and program co-director for MCC in Pine Ridge, South Dakota; and Craig Cressman Anderson, MCC Egypt country co-representative. A variety of speakers addressed the structures of domination which imprison Palestinians and which hold Israelis captive to the myth of security through violence. Participants also had the opportunity to travel inside the occupied West Bank to see the structures of domination at work: siege barriers, settlement expansion, demolished homes, land confiscation. Many of the conference presentations can be viewed at Sabeel's website, www.sabeel.org.
Copies of the MCC Peace Office Newsletter, Palestine in Travail, are still available for a suggested donation of US $1 a copy from MCC. The newsletter would be a good resource for Sunday School or small group discussions. Contact Bob Herr or Esther O'Hara for copies: tel.: 717-859-1151; e-mail: bh@mail.mcc.org; regular mail: Peace Office, MCC, P.O. Box 500, Akron, PA 17501-0500. The newsletter is also available on MCC's website, www.mcc.org.
Below are two items. The first is a summary of a report issued by UNSCO, the United Nations Special Coordinator for the Occupied Territories, on the economic situation within the occupied Palestinian territories during siege conditions. The second is a typically insightful piece of analysis by Amira Hass, reporter for the Israeli newspaper Ha'aretz.
1. UNITED NATIONS – Office of the UN Special Co-ordinator: The Impact on the Palestinian Economy of Confrontations, Mobility Restrictions and Border Closures
1 October 2000—31 January 2001
Summary
Movement Restrictions
The lack of freedom of movement for people and goods caused by the present crisis has resulted in socio-economic hardships in the Palestinian Territory. During the 123-day period 1 October 2000—31 January 2001, the Israeli-Palestinian border used for labour and trade flows was closed for 93 days or 75.6% of the time. Internal movement restrictions and internal closures—partial or severe—have been in place for 100% of the time in the West Bank and for 89% of time in Gaza. The international border crossings to Jordan (from the West Bank) and to Egypt (from Gaza) have been closed for 29% and 50% of the time, respectively.
Direct Economic Losses
The direct economic losses arising from movement restrictions are estimated at 50% of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) for the 4-month period and 75% of wage income earned by Palestinian workers in Israel. The GDP loss is estimated at USD 907.3 million while the loss of labour income from employment in Israel is estimated at USD 243.4 million. The total loss is estimated at USD 1,150.7 million, equal to 20 per cent of the projected GDP for the year 2000 (assuming no border closures). The loss is about USD 11 million per working day or USD 3.5 per person per working day during the reporting period.
In addition, there have been hundreds of millions of USD in damage to public buildings and infrastructure and to private property and agricultural land, in costs for caring for more than 11,000 injured Palestinians, and in public revenue losses and other effects of the closures.
Unemployment
Loss of employment in Israel plus mobility restrictions and border closures have resulted in an average unemployment rate of 38 per cent (more than 250,000 persons) as compared to 11 per cent (71,000 persons) in the first 9 months of 2000. Due to the high dependency ratio in the Palestinian Territory unemployment now directly effects the incomes of about 900,000 people or 29 per cent of the population.
Per Capita Income
In the absence of border closures, per capita income was projected to be about USD 2,000 in the Palestinian Territory in the year 2000. As a result of the crisis, border closures and internal movement restrictions, this has been reduced to an estimated USD 1,680—a decline of 16%.
Poverty
Since the beginning of the crisis, there has been a 50% increase in the number of people living below the poverty line, estimated by the World Bank as USD 2.10 per person per day in consumption expenditures (less than NIS 9 per day). The number of poor has increased from about 650,000 persons to 1 million persons. The poverty rate has increased from 21% to 32%.
2. The revolt of the guinea-pigs
Amira Hass
Haaretz, 21 February 2001
Members of Israel's security and intelligence establishments (and their representatives in the political system) are now announcing the imminent collapse of the Palestinian Authority (PA).One arm of the security establishment orders concrete blocks placed at entrances to Palestinian villages, preventing the residents from reaching their fields or their jobs in the cities, while another sheds crocodile tears over the population's lost income. One order prevents PA officials from reaching their offices in the various cities, while a press briefing explains to reporters that the PA is not functioning. With one statement the political establishment prevents the supply of fuel and gas to the Gaza Strip and blocks the transfer of tax and tariff income to the PA, while another notes the growing gap between the Palestinian public and the PA, which cannot supply that public with decent services.
This feigned innocence fits in well with the victorious, Israeli, representation of the events: Arafat initiated the Al Aqsa Intifada in breach of agreements made with him - or at the very least, he did not stop it. Arafat is not putting the Intifada down, and therefore Israel's policy of collective punishment and acts of repression - military, financial and logistic - are a legitimate defense of the attacked side: Israel.
According to this representation of reality, everything started with the first Palestinian stone, the first Palestinian bullet and the road-side bomb on the Netzarim-Karni road.
There is probably little chance of convincing the Israeli public today that there is a link between that stone, bullet and bomb and the fact that the Oslo years did not offer the Palestinian public a future of independence, nor a hope for social well-being. Those who in recent years gladly adopted the victorious, Israeli, version of reality - alleging that the occupation is over because the PA got administrative control and policing powers over most of the Palestinian population in isolated enclaves - cannot be and are not interested in recognizing the occupied population's right to rebel. Those who yield to the victim-mindset that is daily fed by Israeli occupation mechanisms; those who count their own dead and wounded while remaining indifferent to the huge number of dead and wounded on the other side, are making no attempt to understand the meaning of the experiment that began in the last decade of the 20th century.
The Oslo lab experiment must be judged, not on the basis of the promises and declarations of its architects, but on the basis of the Israeli policy implemented on the ground. In short, the experiment tried to examine the possibility of continuing the rule over the Palestinians by shutting them into autonomous bordered-off areas, and taking over as much as possible of their water and land resources. An integral part of this experiment was cultivating excess privileges for the Palestinian leadership - giving it the stamp of approval and Western legitimacy as substitutes for recognizing United Nations resolutions regarding the solution for the conflict. Regardless of the personal feelings and past record of each member of this over-privileged leadership - long out of touch with its own people - it served at one and the same time as both one of the guinea pigs and one of the junior partners running the experiment.
The movement restrictions, the freeze on transferring funds to the PA and the destruction of the PA's economy are not an invention of recent months. They were a fundamental ingredient of the Oslo experiment, and of Madrid before it: On the one hand, international conferences allocating huge sums to the Palestinian Authority to compensate for the infrastructure destruction caused by the Israeli occupation since 1967; and on the other hand, a sealing of the borders - sending half the population below the poverty line and causing losses totaling more than the donations. This happened in March 1993, in the summer of 1995, and in the winter of 1996. The collective punishment policy at the time was not only a conditioned reflex of a veteran and experienced occupation mechanism, but also a tactic intended to ensure the taming of the Palestinian leadership into accepting the rules laid down by the victorious side: We will draw your people's borders of independence; you will persecute anyone who opposes this; you will become rich, thanks to the special freedom of movement we will grant only you; and we will all call this a peace process. If you break these rules, we have the power to jeopardize your public position, weaken your rule, and cut your sources of income.
The experiment is not over yet: It has neither been deemed a success nor declared a failure. CIA-favorite Jibril Rajoub's talks this week in Washington indicate how important the success of the experiment is to the United States - not only to Israel - and how crucial it is to some in the Palestinian leadership. The main problem, overlooked by the scientists, is that the human guinea pigs are rebelling against the experiment
This past week the Sabeel Ecumenical Liberation Theology Center, an MCC justice-building partner, held an international conference under the title, "Speaking Truth, Seeking Justice." Nearly 400 people from 21 countries participated. In addition to MCC Palestine workers, MCC also hosted other partners and workers at the conference: Bishop Marcos, a Coptic Orthodox leader from Egypt; Harley Eagle, a member of the Dakota nation and program co-director for MCC in Pine Ridge, South Dakota; and Craig Cressman Anderson, MCC Egypt country co-representative. A variety of speakers addressed the structures of domination which imprison Palestinians and which hold Israelis captive to the myth of security through violence. Participants also had the opportunity to travel inside the occupied West Bank to see the structures of domination at work: siege barriers, settlement expansion, demolished homes, land confiscation. Many of the conference presentations can be viewed at Sabeel's website, www.sabeel.org.
Copies of the MCC Peace Office Newsletter, Palestine in Travail, are still available for a suggested donation of US $1 a copy from MCC. The newsletter would be a good resource for Sunday School or small group discussions. Contact Bob Herr or Esther O'Hara for copies: tel.: 717-859-1151; e-mail: bh@mail.mcc.org; regular mail: Peace Office, MCC, P.O. Box 500, Akron, PA 17501-0500. The newsletter is also available on MCC's website, www.mcc.org.
Below are two items. The first is a summary of a report issued by UNSCO, the United Nations Special Coordinator for the Occupied Territories, on the economic situation within the occupied Palestinian territories during siege conditions. The second is a typically insightful piece of analysis by Amira Hass, reporter for the Israeli newspaper Ha'aretz.
1. UNITED NATIONS – Office of the UN Special Co-ordinator: The Impact on the Palestinian Economy of Confrontations, Mobility Restrictions and Border Closures
1 October 2000—31 January 2001
Summary
Movement Restrictions
The lack of freedom of movement for people and goods caused by the present crisis has resulted in socio-economic hardships in the Palestinian Territory. During the 123-day period 1 October 2000—31 January 2001, the Israeli-Palestinian border used for labour and trade flows was closed for 93 days or 75.6% of the time. Internal movement restrictions and internal closures—partial or severe—have been in place for 100% of the time in the West Bank and for 89% of time in Gaza. The international border crossings to Jordan (from the West Bank) and to Egypt (from Gaza) have been closed for 29% and 50% of the time, respectively.
Direct Economic Losses
The direct economic losses arising from movement restrictions are estimated at 50% of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) for the 4-month period and 75% of wage income earned by Palestinian workers in Israel. The GDP loss is estimated at USD 907.3 million while the loss of labour income from employment in Israel is estimated at USD 243.4 million. The total loss is estimated at USD 1,150.7 million, equal to 20 per cent of the projected GDP for the year 2000 (assuming no border closures). The loss is about USD 11 million per working day or USD 3.5 per person per working day during the reporting period.
In addition, there have been hundreds of millions of USD in damage to public buildings and infrastructure and to private property and agricultural land, in costs for caring for more than 11,000 injured Palestinians, and in public revenue losses and other effects of the closures.
Unemployment
Loss of employment in Israel plus mobility restrictions and border closures have resulted in an average unemployment rate of 38 per cent (more than 250,000 persons) as compared to 11 per cent (71,000 persons) in the first 9 months of 2000. Due to the high dependency ratio in the Palestinian Territory unemployment now directly effects the incomes of about 900,000 people or 29 per cent of the population.
Per Capita Income
In the absence of border closures, per capita income was projected to be about USD 2,000 in the Palestinian Territory in the year 2000. As a result of the crisis, border closures and internal movement restrictions, this has been reduced to an estimated USD 1,680—a decline of 16%.
Poverty
Since the beginning of the crisis, there has been a 50% increase in the number of people living below the poverty line, estimated by the World Bank as USD 2.10 per person per day in consumption expenditures (less than NIS 9 per day). The number of poor has increased from about 650,000 persons to 1 million persons. The poverty rate has increased from 21% to 32%.
2. The revolt of the guinea-pigs
Amira Hass
Haaretz, 21 February 2001
Members of Israel's security and intelligence establishments (and their representatives in the political system) are now announcing the imminent collapse of the Palestinian Authority (PA).One arm of the security establishment orders concrete blocks placed at entrances to Palestinian villages, preventing the residents from reaching their fields or their jobs in the cities, while another sheds crocodile tears over the population's lost income. One order prevents PA officials from reaching their offices in the various cities, while a press briefing explains to reporters that the PA is not functioning. With one statement the political establishment prevents the supply of fuel and gas to the Gaza Strip and blocks the transfer of tax and tariff income to the PA, while another notes the growing gap between the Palestinian public and the PA, which cannot supply that public with decent services.
This feigned innocence fits in well with the victorious, Israeli, representation of the events: Arafat initiated the Al Aqsa Intifada in breach of agreements made with him - or at the very least, he did not stop it. Arafat is not putting the Intifada down, and therefore Israel's policy of collective punishment and acts of repression - military, financial and logistic - are a legitimate defense of the attacked side: Israel.
According to this representation of reality, everything started with the first Palestinian stone, the first Palestinian bullet and the road-side bomb on the Netzarim-Karni road.
There is probably little chance of convincing the Israeli public today that there is a link between that stone, bullet and bomb and the fact that the Oslo years did not offer the Palestinian public a future of independence, nor a hope for social well-being. Those who in recent years gladly adopted the victorious, Israeli, version of reality - alleging that the occupation is over because the PA got administrative control and policing powers over most of the Palestinian population in isolated enclaves - cannot be and are not interested in recognizing the occupied population's right to rebel. Those who yield to the victim-mindset that is daily fed by Israeli occupation mechanisms; those who count their own dead and wounded while remaining indifferent to the huge number of dead and wounded on the other side, are making no attempt to understand the meaning of the experiment that began in the last decade of the 20th century.
The Oslo lab experiment must be judged, not on the basis of the promises and declarations of its architects, but on the basis of the Israeli policy implemented on the ground. In short, the experiment tried to examine the possibility of continuing the rule over the Palestinians by shutting them into autonomous bordered-off areas, and taking over as much as possible of their water and land resources. An integral part of this experiment was cultivating excess privileges for the Palestinian leadership - giving it the stamp of approval and Western legitimacy as substitutes for recognizing United Nations resolutions regarding the solution for the conflict. Regardless of the personal feelings and past record of each member of this over-privileged leadership - long out of touch with its own people - it served at one and the same time as both one of the guinea pigs and one of the junior partners running the experiment.
The movement restrictions, the freeze on transferring funds to the PA and the destruction of the PA's economy are not an invention of recent months. They were a fundamental ingredient of the Oslo experiment, and of Madrid before it: On the one hand, international conferences allocating huge sums to the Palestinian Authority to compensate for the infrastructure destruction caused by the Israeli occupation since 1967; and on the other hand, a sealing of the borders - sending half the population below the poverty line and causing losses totaling more than the donations. This happened in March 1993, in the summer of 1995, and in the winter of 1996. The collective punishment policy at the time was not only a conditioned reflex of a veteran and experienced occupation mechanism, but also a tactic intended to ensure the taming of the Palestinian leadership into accepting the rules laid down by the victorious side: We will draw your people's borders of independence; you will persecute anyone who opposes this; you will become rich, thanks to the special freedom of movement we will grant only you; and we will all call this a peace process. If you break these rules, we have the power to jeopardize your public position, weaken your rule, and cut your sources of income.
The experiment is not over yet: It has neither been deemed a success nor declared a failure. CIA-favorite Jibril Rajoub's talks this week in Washington indicate how important the success of the experiment is to the United States - not only to Israel - and how crucial it is to some in the Palestinian leadership. The main problem, overlooked by the scientists, is that the human guinea pigs are rebelling against the experiment
Wednesday, February 21
MCC Palestine Update #13
MCC Palestine Update #13
21 February 2001
The gloom and desperation which has been hanging over Palestine/Israel for the past five months has become more intense over the past week. Israeli Prime Minister-elect Ariel Sharon appears poised to form a "national unity" government which will dash all hopes of a final status accord with the Palestinians (although many analysts predict yet another "interim" accord which will, as before, further solidify Israel's occupation of the West Bank, Gaza Strip, and East Jerusalem). The Palestinian and Israeli death tolls continued their macabre rise, with Palestinians killed in Gaza and Hebron and eight Israelis killed by a Palestinian bus driver. Twenty families in the Mawasi section of the Gaza Strip, hemmed in by the Gush Qatif bloc of settlements, had their homes demolished by Israeli army bulldozers: international protest had provided a momentary reprieve from the demolitions earlier in the week, but the Israeli military returned when the international spotlight had moved on. Travel within the occupied territories has become increasingly difficult for Palestinians, the noose of checkpoints, tanks, and dirt and cement blockades hemming in movement.
This past week the MCC Palestine office hosted visitors from MCC's Middle East, Peace Office, Washington, D.C., New York, and Ottawa desks to meet with MCC's Palestinian partners and to brainstorm about how MCC can be most creative and effective in its advocacy for justice in Palestine/Israel within Mennonite congregations and to the Canadian and United States governments: your thoughts on this topic, of course, are very much appreciated.
Below are two pieces from the Israeli press. The first, by Gideon Levy, is a reflection on the holiday of Tu B-Shvat, an Arbor Day equivalent. The second, by former Jerusalem deputy mayor Meron Benvenisti, nicely captures the grim mood of the present hour and ends with a long-term vision of hope for Palestinian-Israeli equality and coexistence in one, binational, secular state in the entire land of Palestine/Israel.
1. Do you remember the tree that you planted?
Gideon Levy
Haaretz, 11 February 2001
It's said that God is in the detail. Maybe the devil is as well. Sometimes the tales about the little conquests teach more than do the stories of big atrocities. The seemingly marginal tales reveal Israel's double moral standard. The mass uprooting of trees in the territories in recent months, by the army and by the settlers, does not usually involve bloodshed. Israel's conquest has often been accompanied by cruel actions in which more than just the trees are victims. But on Tu Bishvat, Israel's Arbor Day, last Thursday, the hypocrisy was again apparent. This country, which devotes so much effort to tree planting, that has a special festival for trees, whose children have long been called on to contribute to the exalted cause, whose poets have heaped praise on the tree, at the same time so easily uproots and chops down thousands of trees that belong to others.
From the biblical verse, "And you will come to the land and you will plant trees in it" to Naomi Shemer's "Do not uproot what is planted"; from the trees that we planted in our childhood and the weekly Friday donation in the Jewish National Fund's blue box, the tree holds a special place in our hearts. When Tu Bishvat arrives and the country is awash with ceremonies, songs and slogans in praise of trees, while at the same time thousands of trees in the territories have been deliberately uprooted by that same tree-loving nation, the beautiful childhood festival of trees is turned into an ugly adult festival of hypocrisy.
"Do you remember the tree that you planted in your childhood?" was the question asked by the announcer with the pleasant voice in JNF's recent broadcasts, to the sound of chirping birds in the background. "It's now become a forest." The farmer Yassin Shamalwa also remembers the trees that his father and grandfather planted. But they're not a forest now. Now they are a pile of dead twigs. A few weeks ago, late one evening, Shamalwa was frightened by the pulsating sound of a bulldozer in his olive orchard. He rushed over to the area, but soldiers with drawn guns stopped him from getting near. He ran to the mosque in his village, Kafr Hares, near Ariel, and used the muezzin's loudspeaker to call out desperately for assistance. It didn't help. The bulldozer uprooted 30 of the trees planted by his father and grandfather.
He was given no advance notice, as laid down in the law, and nobody bothered to explain the reasons for the action to him. No one presented him with a written order, he was given no opportunity to appeal, nor did anybody offer him compensation for the state's act of vandalism on his land. "Why do you do this?" he tried asking in English, and according to Shamalwa a soldier answered, "Go to Arafat and Yossi Sarid. They'll explain to you."
The official justification, of course, is security: stones were thrown at travelers on the nearby road, and apparently they came from the olive orchard. Now, instead of the trees that could conceal stone throwers, there are piles of chopped trees that are equally able to conceal someone, and an old Palestinian farmer whose world has collapsed around him. For him the trees were much more than a possession. As the JNF says in its announcements, they are "presented with love" and cutting them down entails much more than just the loss of income. The small group of devoted activists from B'Tselem, the human rights organization, who, on Tu Bishvat brought him new olive saplings, made him a little emotional. It should be emphasized that it was B'Tselem and not the JNF that loves the forests so much.
A drive along the roads of Samaria shows a depressing picture. There are hundreds of uprooted trees, mostly olive trees, along the roadsides, the fruit of recent weeks' labor. B'Tselem's on-site researchers have counted 2,200 uprooted trees just in the area around Nablus, in addition to 2,100 that have been destroyed since the Intifada broke out. Palestinian organizations give higher numbers. Sometimes trees are dug up with their roots, sometimes only the branches are sawn off. Sometimes plots of land on both sides of the road are dug up, sometimes only one side - which is somewhat puzzling. Sometimes the farmers give up and capitulate, and sometimes, as in the case of the orchards of the village of Dir Isstia, they replant the stumps with stubbornness and devotion. Sometimes the destruction is caused by the IDF and sometimes by the settlers, as an act of retaliation. Tabeth Iyov, a farmer in the village of Nebi Salah, west of Ramallah, had his whole orchard, 146 trees, destroyed when the settlers were venting their anger, the day after the killing of Sarah Lisha from Halamish, in November. Of course, Iyov is not the only farmer to fall victim to such acts of revenge. The settlers, with their pretensions to being the greatest "lovers of the land," are not sickened by the destruction of the landscape.
"In the Land of Israel the trees cry. Soldiers of Rome raze dunam after dunam. They have no compassion for the land's covering, for the seven species." So the poet, Aharon Shabtai wrote in a poem published in last week's culture and literature supplement of Ha'aretz (in Hebrew). Shabtai laments the digging up of trees in order "to give building rights to Burger King and to Kentucky Fried Chicken" - which is another matter. But not far away, even more shockingly, Israel is mercilessly chopping down other trees, "non-Jewish" trees; and in so doing it causes not only the trees to weep, but also those who plant them: those who remember the trees planted in their childhood - trees that can no longer grow .
2. The worst script is coming true
Meron Benvenisti
Haaretz, 15 February 2001
How tempting it is to mock those who preached in favor of a crusade against Ariel Sharon: "fanatic nationalist," "blood-shedder," "yesterday's man" (Amos Oz, The Guardian, February 8), who find themselves facing the crawling of Ehud Barak (who was "ahead of [his] time" and had "the courage to compromise and make peace") and his party toward a national unity government. A few of them express fierce opposition "to the betrayal of the way of peace," but others "feel a great yearning for unity, in light of the intensification of the terror" and find solace in the agreed-upon platform of the government, according to which the "effort toward a final agreement" would continue, as well as its opposite: "advancing peace through interim agreements.". But the mockery over the sermonizing of the "Council of Leftist Sages," which evaporated in the emptiness of its words, was erased by the terrible tragedy that occurred yesterday in these parts. Now "national unity" - that tribal closing of ranks against the murderous Other - has become a necessity that no one can oppose, and any attempt to control events, even by proposing a realistic diplomatic alternative, is hopeless.
The worst script is about to take place: severe retaliatory actions will lead to acts of blood revenge whose motives are personal; these in turn will prompt even harsher collective punishment, which will ruin the remnants of authority remaining to the Palestinian Authority. Attempts to consolidate a rational approach that aspires to launch a joint effort to manage the crisis will run into internal disagreements, which will be won by those who always thrive on the rotting bed of hate and bloodletting.
The atmosphere, which enables only the increasing use of force, will lead to an extreme escalation that will create pressure for international intervention. The chances for external intervention along the lines of Bosnia or Kosovo are extremely slight, both because the world's cop is shrugging off its duties, with the United States increasingly isolating itself, and also because the intervention - which would restrain the actions of the Jewish State - would be seen as an anti-Semitic act and thus there would be hesitation to initiate it. The situation that will be created will make all the usual "solutions" - two states for two peoples, an end to the occupation, the dismantling of settlements, final status agreements, interim agreements, and others - laughable.
Reality would be exposed in all its nakedness not as a "problem" but as a "condition": a reality that was described nearly 20 years ago, earning a torrent of ridicule and the name "the theory of irreversibility." "A basic, almost primitive conflict, not an international conflict; a conflict that raises existential and meta-political questions of self-identity, denial of the identity of the opposing side, atavistic fears of physical annihilation, deep feelings of absolute justice that brooks no compromise and feelings of exclusive possessiveness; a dynamic, violent and unstable conflict - as in every binational or multi-ethnic state where the ruling group has a monopoly on the power of enforcement, the group that is ruled turns to violent civil disobedience to which the ruling group responds with violence. The confrontation escalates but it is confined to its internal, Israeli-Palestinian framework." It's not generally accepted for someone to quote himself, but perhaps these harsh words will serve as food for thought for anyone who was drawn to illusions concerning the "end of the conflict" and is now hopeless in the face of the collapse of his illusions. Out of the cycle of violence the gradual, hesitant understanding - perhaps the dream - will grow, that the only way is through a struggle to create a land of Israel/Palestine that is undivided in both physical and human terms, pluralistic and open; a land in which civilized relations, human touch, intimate coexistence and a link to a common homeland would be stronger than militant tribalism and the separation into national ghettoes. Many years may have to pass until the notion of a binational framework - federated or otherwise - will become a legitimate topic for Israeli and Palestinian political discourse. In the meantime, we can certainly expect a great deal of sermonizing regarding "separation" and "the establishment of a Palestinian state" as indispensable solutions; at least this preaching should be carried out with the humility dictated by events and not with the arrogance of know-it-alls .
21 February 2001
The gloom and desperation which has been hanging over Palestine/Israel for the past five months has become more intense over the past week. Israeli Prime Minister-elect Ariel Sharon appears poised to form a "national unity" government which will dash all hopes of a final status accord with the Palestinians (although many analysts predict yet another "interim" accord which will, as before, further solidify Israel's occupation of the West Bank, Gaza Strip, and East Jerusalem). The Palestinian and Israeli death tolls continued their macabre rise, with Palestinians killed in Gaza and Hebron and eight Israelis killed by a Palestinian bus driver. Twenty families in the Mawasi section of the Gaza Strip, hemmed in by the Gush Qatif bloc of settlements, had their homes demolished by Israeli army bulldozers: international protest had provided a momentary reprieve from the demolitions earlier in the week, but the Israeli military returned when the international spotlight had moved on. Travel within the occupied territories has become increasingly difficult for Palestinians, the noose of checkpoints, tanks, and dirt and cement blockades hemming in movement.
This past week the MCC Palestine office hosted visitors from MCC's Middle East, Peace Office, Washington, D.C., New York, and Ottawa desks to meet with MCC's Palestinian partners and to brainstorm about how MCC can be most creative and effective in its advocacy for justice in Palestine/Israel within Mennonite congregations and to the Canadian and United States governments: your thoughts on this topic, of course, are very much appreciated.
Below are two pieces from the Israeli press. The first, by Gideon Levy, is a reflection on the holiday of Tu B-Shvat, an Arbor Day equivalent. The second, by former Jerusalem deputy mayor Meron Benvenisti, nicely captures the grim mood of the present hour and ends with a long-term vision of hope for Palestinian-Israeli equality and coexistence in one, binational, secular state in the entire land of Palestine/Israel.
1. Do you remember the tree that you planted?
Gideon Levy
Haaretz, 11 February 2001
It's said that God is in the detail. Maybe the devil is as well. Sometimes the tales about the little conquests teach more than do the stories of big atrocities. The seemingly marginal tales reveal Israel's double moral standard. The mass uprooting of trees in the territories in recent months, by the army and by the settlers, does not usually involve bloodshed. Israel's conquest has often been accompanied by cruel actions in which more than just the trees are victims. But on Tu Bishvat, Israel's Arbor Day, last Thursday, the hypocrisy was again apparent. This country, which devotes so much effort to tree planting, that has a special festival for trees, whose children have long been called on to contribute to the exalted cause, whose poets have heaped praise on the tree, at the same time so easily uproots and chops down thousands of trees that belong to others.
From the biblical verse, "And you will come to the land and you will plant trees in it" to Naomi Shemer's "Do not uproot what is planted"; from the trees that we planted in our childhood and the weekly Friday donation in the Jewish National Fund's blue box, the tree holds a special place in our hearts. When Tu Bishvat arrives and the country is awash with ceremonies, songs and slogans in praise of trees, while at the same time thousands of trees in the territories have been deliberately uprooted by that same tree-loving nation, the beautiful childhood festival of trees is turned into an ugly adult festival of hypocrisy.
"Do you remember the tree that you planted in your childhood?" was the question asked by the announcer with the pleasant voice in JNF's recent broadcasts, to the sound of chirping birds in the background. "It's now become a forest." The farmer Yassin Shamalwa also remembers the trees that his father and grandfather planted. But they're not a forest now. Now they are a pile of dead twigs. A few weeks ago, late one evening, Shamalwa was frightened by the pulsating sound of a bulldozer in his olive orchard. He rushed over to the area, but soldiers with drawn guns stopped him from getting near. He ran to the mosque in his village, Kafr Hares, near Ariel, and used the muezzin's loudspeaker to call out desperately for assistance. It didn't help. The bulldozer uprooted 30 of the trees planted by his father and grandfather.
He was given no advance notice, as laid down in the law, and nobody bothered to explain the reasons for the action to him. No one presented him with a written order, he was given no opportunity to appeal, nor did anybody offer him compensation for the state's act of vandalism on his land. "Why do you do this?" he tried asking in English, and according to Shamalwa a soldier answered, "Go to Arafat and Yossi Sarid. They'll explain to you."
The official justification, of course, is security: stones were thrown at travelers on the nearby road, and apparently they came from the olive orchard. Now, instead of the trees that could conceal stone throwers, there are piles of chopped trees that are equally able to conceal someone, and an old Palestinian farmer whose world has collapsed around him. For him the trees were much more than a possession. As the JNF says in its announcements, they are "presented with love" and cutting them down entails much more than just the loss of income. The small group of devoted activists from B'Tselem, the human rights organization, who, on Tu Bishvat brought him new olive saplings, made him a little emotional. It should be emphasized that it was B'Tselem and not the JNF that loves the forests so much.
A drive along the roads of Samaria shows a depressing picture. There are hundreds of uprooted trees, mostly olive trees, along the roadsides, the fruit of recent weeks' labor. B'Tselem's on-site researchers have counted 2,200 uprooted trees just in the area around Nablus, in addition to 2,100 that have been destroyed since the Intifada broke out. Palestinian organizations give higher numbers. Sometimes trees are dug up with their roots, sometimes only the branches are sawn off. Sometimes plots of land on both sides of the road are dug up, sometimes only one side - which is somewhat puzzling. Sometimes the farmers give up and capitulate, and sometimes, as in the case of the orchards of the village of Dir Isstia, they replant the stumps with stubbornness and devotion. Sometimes the destruction is caused by the IDF and sometimes by the settlers, as an act of retaliation. Tabeth Iyov, a farmer in the village of Nebi Salah, west of Ramallah, had his whole orchard, 146 trees, destroyed when the settlers were venting their anger, the day after the killing of Sarah Lisha from Halamish, in November. Of course, Iyov is not the only farmer to fall victim to such acts of revenge. The settlers, with their pretensions to being the greatest "lovers of the land," are not sickened by the destruction of the landscape.
"In the Land of Israel the trees cry. Soldiers of Rome raze dunam after dunam. They have no compassion for the land's covering, for the seven species." So the poet, Aharon Shabtai wrote in a poem published in last week's culture and literature supplement of Ha'aretz (in Hebrew). Shabtai laments the digging up of trees in order "to give building rights to Burger King and to Kentucky Fried Chicken" - which is another matter. But not far away, even more shockingly, Israel is mercilessly chopping down other trees, "non-Jewish" trees; and in so doing it causes not only the trees to weep, but also those who plant them: those who remember the trees planted in their childhood - trees that can no longer grow .
2. The worst script is coming true
Meron Benvenisti
Haaretz, 15 February 2001
How tempting it is to mock those who preached in favor of a crusade against Ariel Sharon: "fanatic nationalist," "blood-shedder," "yesterday's man" (Amos Oz, The Guardian, February 8), who find themselves facing the crawling of Ehud Barak (who was "ahead of [his] time" and had "the courage to compromise and make peace") and his party toward a national unity government. A few of them express fierce opposition "to the betrayal of the way of peace," but others "feel a great yearning for unity, in light of the intensification of the terror" and find solace in the agreed-upon platform of the government, according to which the "effort toward a final agreement" would continue, as well as its opposite: "advancing peace through interim agreements.". But the mockery over the sermonizing of the "Council of Leftist Sages," which evaporated in the emptiness of its words, was erased by the terrible tragedy that occurred yesterday in these parts. Now "national unity" - that tribal closing of ranks against the murderous Other - has become a necessity that no one can oppose, and any attempt to control events, even by proposing a realistic diplomatic alternative, is hopeless.
The worst script is about to take place: severe retaliatory actions will lead to acts of blood revenge whose motives are personal; these in turn will prompt even harsher collective punishment, which will ruin the remnants of authority remaining to the Palestinian Authority. Attempts to consolidate a rational approach that aspires to launch a joint effort to manage the crisis will run into internal disagreements, which will be won by those who always thrive on the rotting bed of hate and bloodletting.
The atmosphere, which enables only the increasing use of force, will lead to an extreme escalation that will create pressure for international intervention. The chances for external intervention along the lines of Bosnia or Kosovo are extremely slight, both because the world's cop is shrugging off its duties, with the United States increasingly isolating itself, and also because the intervention - which would restrain the actions of the Jewish State - would be seen as an anti-Semitic act and thus there would be hesitation to initiate it. The situation that will be created will make all the usual "solutions" - two states for two peoples, an end to the occupation, the dismantling of settlements, final status agreements, interim agreements, and others - laughable.
Reality would be exposed in all its nakedness not as a "problem" but as a "condition": a reality that was described nearly 20 years ago, earning a torrent of ridicule and the name "the theory of irreversibility." "A basic, almost primitive conflict, not an international conflict; a conflict that raises existential and meta-political questions of self-identity, denial of the identity of the opposing side, atavistic fears of physical annihilation, deep feelings of absolute justice that brooks no compromise and feelings of exclusive possessiveness; a dynamic, violent and unstable conflict - as in every binational or multi-ethnic state where the ruling group has a monopoly on the power of enforcement, the group that is ruled turns to violent civil disobedience to which the ruling group responds with violence. The confrontation escalates but it is confined to its internal, Israeli-Palestinian framework." It's not generally accepted for someone to quote himself, but perhaps these harsh words will serve as food for thought for anyone who was drawn to illusions concerning the "end of the conflict" and is now hopeless in the face of the collapse of his illusions. Out of the cycle of violence the gradual, hesitant understanding - perhaps the dream - will grow, that the only way is through a struggle to create a land of Israel/Palestine that is undivided in both physical and human terms, pluralistic and open; a land in which civilized relations, human touch, intimate coexistence and a link to a common homeland would be stronger than militant tribalism and the separation into national ghettoes. Many years may have to pass until the notion of a binational framework - federated or otherwise - will become a legitimate topic for Israeli and Palestinian political discourse. In the meantime, we can certainly expect a great deal of sermonizing regarding "separation" and "the establishment of a Palestinian state" as indispensable solutions; at least this preaching should be carried out with the humility dictated by events and not with the arrogance of know-it-alls .
Wednesday, February 7
MCC Palestine Update #12
MCC Palestine Update #12
The Israeli elections for prime minister were held this Tuesday, and the Likud party chairman, Ariel Sharon, scored a decisive victory. The Labor party is in disarray, with up to six different people vying openly and covertly for its leadership. Sharon will most likely try to forge a "national unity" government with Labor, the Sephardic ultra-orthodox party Shas, and the Askhenazi ultra-orthodox party United Torah Judaism; if that fails, he will have to constitute a narrow right-wing government. Under either scenario, the prospects for any form of peace agreement with the Palestinians in the near term look grim.
This past week we received distressing news from the Palestinian Center for Rapprochement in Beit Sahour, a longtime MCC partner. PCR had spearheaded the Mazmouriah building project, an attempt to set up a Palestinian neighborhood inside Jerusalem's municipal boundaries on land owned by families in Beit Sahour. The Israeli authorities in Jerusalem have invested practically nothing in East Jerusalem's infrastructure or in housing projects for Jerusalem's Palestinian residents, even as it pours money into settlements in East Jerusalem. The Mazmouriah project would have helped to alleviate the housing crisis for Palestinians in Jerusalem and would have broken up the future contiguity of illegal Israeli settlements.
PCR staff worked with Israeli peace activists to prepare building plans which would be technically flawless, and so could not be rejected by the municipal planning commissions on a technical basis. The Mazmouriah project passed the relevant technical committees and was awaiting final approval. However, this past week Israeli bulldozers went to work in the area, building roads which will make the project impossible to execute. For more on this devastating setback to a promising, nonviolent initiative to resist the occupation, see www.rapprochement.org.
MCC Project Update
a. Young Advocate Training: MCC is sponsoring a course through the Palestinian Center for Rapprochement in Beit Sahour which will train 20 Palestinian men and women, aged 18-25 in media, communication, and advocacy skills. The vision behind the program is to build the capacity of Rapprochement's cadre of volunteers in various forms of advocacy so that young Palestinians motivated to remain in the country have the skills to communicate the message of Palestinian dispossession to the West.
b. In the Shu'fat refugee camp in East Jerusalem MCC is working with a neighborhood committee to install a sewer system. The committee is contributing 75% of the costs of the project. As stated above, Israel has actively neglected the urban development needs of East Jerusalem.
1. Born at the third roadblock, stopped at the fourth
Amira Hass
Haaretz, 29 January 2001
Sabreen Balout was born last Wednesday, January 24, in the taxi that was rushing her mother, her father, an aunt and her grandmother to the hospital in Ramallah. She was born as they
were waiting for permission to cross from the Israel Defense Forces detachment posted on the road. This was the fourth group of IDF troops they had encountered on their way to the hospital. They would encounter yet another, when Sabreen was about ten minutes old. This detachment, at the northern entrance to Bir Zeit,demanded that all the passengers in the taxi, including Sabreen
who was still linked by her umbilical cord to her mother, to get out of it. It was a very cold and rainy day, the father, Sallah Balout,related to Ha'aretz.
Amina Moussa Balout's contractions began in the afternoon. About two months ago, the main exit from the village of Rantis onto the main road was blocked. The only way out of the village now is over an unpaved and circuitous dirt track through the fields, which, in winter, are muddy. Traveling along this route Amina and her family met two jeeps: an IDF jeep and the security jeep from one of the Jewish settlements in the area. The soldiers did not allow the taxi to pass. An argument ensued, with each party insistent. Then, because of the rain and the mud even a return to the village became impossible. After about half an hour, Balout estimates, the soldiers allowed the taxi to continue on its way.
It continued eastwards and came to another IDF roadblock near theJewish settlement of Halamish. Soldiers aimed their rifles at the taxi and it stopped. Balout and the driver got out; the taxi was delayed there for about another 20 minutes, while Amina Balout was sighing and screaming. After driving a few minutes, they came upon a long line of cars waiting near the village of Um Safa. The taxi driver drove past it until he came to a military jeep. The
soldiers again aimed their rifles at the car and ordered everyone out. The passengers in the taxi tried to explain that there was a woman in the vehicle who was about to give birth, but a
soldier said he had to get authorization from the officer to allow the car to pass. While the soldier was away speaking with the officer, Amina cried out, "The baby is coming, the baby is coming," and by the time he had returned, Amina had given birth to her daughter.Her mother and her sister-in-law wrapped the baby in a blanket and gave her to her mother to hold against her body.
Balout estimates that they were delayed at this roadblock for about 20 minutes before the officer came along, saw the new-born infant and immediately allowed them to continue on their way. About 200 meters down the road they encountered another military Jeep; once more a soldier leveled his gun at the vehicle and demanded to know who had allowed them to drive on. The officer who had permitted their passage at the previous roadblock saw what was happening, and ran quickly to order the soldier to let them pass. This took about five minutes.They kept on in the direction of Bir Zeit, where again they came upon a long line of delayed cars. The taxi passed them, until it was stopped by four soldiers.
"We opened the window and told them that we had with us a woman who had just given birth," relates the father. "They ordered us to wait, walked around the car, opened the door, and looked
inside and saw there was a woman with an infant." Balout got the impression that they laughed, and then ordered all the passengers to get out. Amina's mother slammed the door angrily. They tried to open it. The mother continued to scream and demanded that they be allowed to pass. "But they insisted that we had to get out. And we got out - what could we do?" Amina got out of the car, holding the baby, whose umbilical cord was not yet cut, and collapsed on the ground because she was so weak. As the soldiers stood by, the father gained the impression that they were still laughing at the scene. Then another soldier arrived, shouted at his colleagues and
told them to stop, let them get in and drive on. One of Amina's house slippers fell off her foot and was left there on the ground.
At around 8:30 P.M. Amina and her daughter arrived at the hospital in Ramallah; they had left Rantis at 5:00 P.M. Ordinarily, the trip along this route would take about 40 or 50 minutes. The name Sabreen is derived from the three-letter Arabic root transliterated as S-B-R, meaning patience.
A senior military source told Ha'aretz in response that at the time of these events there had been a shooting incident on the route to Atarot. Someone in a Palestinian vehicle had opened fire and
injured someone in an Israeli vehicle, and the IDF was taking measures "in an attempt to catch the terrorists." The source said he had no knowledge of the delay caused to the taxi at the exit
from Rantis and at Halamish. However, he was aware that, at the roadblocks near Atarot and Bir Zeit, the soldiers acted properly, in accordance with the procedures and instructions governing
humanitarian cases. According to the source, when the passengers encountered the roadblock near Um Safa, "right where the attack was," they told the responsible military commander that there was a child in the car. "Within three or four minutes the vehicle continued on its way to the Bir Zeit area, where there was a long line of waiting cars because of the terror attack. The detachment saw a taxi that drove right past all the other cars, and the driver said there was a woman in the car who was about to give birth.
The soldier saw a pregnant woman with two other women next to her. The two women began to curse the soldier, who shut the door and allowed them to continue immediately." Crippling the territories Despite the promises, the encirclement of most of the cities and villages of the West Bank has not been lifted. Inhabitants are forced to drive circuitously, go on foot, change taxis, clamber up hilly paths and among olive groves and sometimes try to go back the way they came because of a sudden roadblock at which stretches a kilometer-long line of cars, or a new roadblock. On the ground, what remains of the Intifada is its suppression. The limitation on travel is the most conspicuously felt means, which affects every home and individual and achieves its aim: the paralysis of normal life. Therefore, on the ground, the Intifada now is above all a daily attempt to cope with the internal closure, the roadblocks and the encirclement.
The Israeli elections for prime minister were held this Tuesday, and the Likud party chairman, Ariel Sharon, scored a decisive victory. The Labor party is in disarray, with up to six different people vying openly and covertly for its leadership. Sharon will most likely try to forge a "national unity" government with Labor, the Sephardic ultra-orthodox party Shas, and the Askhenazi ultra-orthodox party United Torah Judaism; if that fails, he will have to constitute a narrow right-wing government. Under either scenario, the prospects for any form of peace agreement with the Palestinians in the near term look grim.
This past week we received distressing news from the Palestinian Center for Rapprochement in Beit Sahour, a longtime MCC partner. PCR had spearheaded the Mazmouriah building project, an attempt to set up a Palestinian neighborhood inside Jerusalem's municipal boundaries on land owned by families in Beit Sahour. The Israeli authorities in Jerusalem have invested practically nothing in East Jerusalem's infrastructure or in housing projects for Jerusalem's Palestinian residents, even as it pours money into settlements in East Jerusalem. The Mazmouriah project would have helped to alleviate the housing crisis for Palestinians in Jerusalem and would have broken up the future contiguity of illegal Israeli settlements.
PCR staff worked with Israeli peace activists to prepare building plans which would be technically flawless, and so could not be rejected by the municipal planning commissions on a technical basis. The Mazmouriah project passed the relevant technical committees and was awaiting final approval. However, this past week Israeli bulldozers went to work in the area, building roads which will make the project impossible to execute. For more on this devastating setback to a promising, nonviolent initiative to resist the occupation, see www.rapprochement.org.
MCC Project Update
a. Young Advocate Training: MCC is sponsoring a course through the Palestinian Center for Rapprochement in Beit Sahour which will train 20 Palestinian men and women, aged 18-25 in media, communication, and advocacy skills. The vision behind the program is to build the capacity of Rapprochement's cadre of volunteers in various forms of advocacy so that young Palestinians motivated to remain in the country have the skills to communicate the message of Palestinian dispossession to the West.
b. In the Shu'fat refugee camp in East Jerusalem MCC is working with a neighborhood committee to install a sewer system. The committee is contributing 75% of the costs of the project. As stated above, Israel has actively neglected the urban development needs of East Jerusalem.
1. Born at the third roadblock, stopped at the fourth
Amira Hass
Haaretz, 29 January 2001
Sabreen Balout was born last Wednesday, January 24, in the taxi that was rushing her mother, her father, an aunt and her grandmother to the hospital in Ramallah. She was born as they
were waiting for permission to cross from the Israel Defense Forces detachment posted on the road. This was the fourth group of IDF troops they had encountered on their way to the hospital. They would encounter yet another, when Sabreen was about ten minutes old. This detachment, at the northern entrance to Bir Zeit,demanded that all the passengers in the taxi, including Sabreen
who was still linked by her umbilical cord to her mother, to get out of it. It was a very cold and rainy day, the father, Sallah Balout,related to Ha'aretz.
Amina Moussa Balout's contractions began in the afternoon. About two months ago, the main exit from the village of Rantis onto the main road was blocked. The only way out of the village now is over an unpaved and circuitous dirt track through the fields, which, in winter, are muddy. Traveling along this route Amina and her family met two jeeps: an IDF jeep and the security jeep from one of the Jewish settlements in the area. The soldiers did not allow the taxi to pass. An argument ensued, with each party insistent. Then, because of the rain and the mud even a return to the village became impossible. After about half an hour, Balout estimates, the soldiers allowed the taxi to continue on its way.
It continued eastwards and came to another IDF roadblock near theJewish settlement of Halamish. Soldiers aimed their rifles at the taxi and it stopped. Balout and the driver got out; the taxi was delayed there for about another 20 minutes, while Amina Balout was sighing and screaming. After driving a few minutes, they came upon a long line of cars waiting near the village of Um Safa. The taxi driver drove past it until he came to a military jeep. The
soldiers again aimed their rifles at the car and ordered everyone out. The passengers in the taxi tried to explain that there was a woman in the vehicle who was about to give birth, but a
soldier said he had to get authorization from the officer to allow the car to pass. While the soldier was away speaking with the officer, Amina cried out, "The baby is coming, the baby is coming," and by the time he had returned, Amina had given birth to her daughter.Her mother and her sister-in-law wrapped the baby in a blanket and gave her to her mother to hold against her body.
Balout estimates that they were delayed at this roadblock for about 20 minutes before the officer came along, saw the new-born infant and immediately allowed them to continue on their way. About 200 meters down the road they encountered another military Jeep; once more a soldier leveled his gun at the vehicle and demanded to know who had allowed them to drive on. The officer who had permitted their passage at the previous roadblock saw what was happening, and ran quickly to order the soldier to let them pass. This took about five minutes.They kept on in the direction of Bir Zeit, where again they came upon a long line of delayed cars. The taxi passed them, until it was stopped by four soldiers.
"We opened the window and told them that we had with us a woman who had just given birth," relates the father. "They ordered us to wait, walked around the car, opened the door, and looked
inside and saw there was a woman with an infant." Balout got the impression that they laughed, and then ordered all the passengers to get out. Amina's mother slammed the door angrily. They tried to open it. The mother continued to scream and demanded that they be allowed to pass. "But they insisted that we had to get out. And we got out - what could we do?" Amina got out of the car, holding the baby, whose umbilical cord was not yet cut, and collapsed on the ground because she was so weak. As the soldiers stood by, the father gained the impression that they were still laughing at the scene. Then another soldier arrived, shouted at his colleagues and
told them to stop, let them get in and drive on. One of Amina's house slippers fell off her foot and was left there on the ground.
At around 8:30 P.M. Amina and her daughter arrived at the hospital in Ramallah; they had left Rantis at 5:00 P.M. Ordinarily, the trip along this route would take about 40 or 50 minutes. The name Sabreen is derived from the three-letter Arabic root transliterated as S-B-R, meaning patience.
A senior military source told Ha'aretz in response that at the time of these events there had been a shooting incident on the route to Atarot. Someone in a Palestinian vehicle had opened fire and
injured someone in an Israeli vehicle, and the IDF was taking measures "in an attempt to catch the terrorists." The source said he had no knowledge of the delay caused to the taxi at the exit
from Rantis and at Halamish. However, he was aware that, at the roadblocks near Atarot and Bir Zeit, the soldiers acted properly, in accordance with the procedures and instructions governing
humanitarian cases. According to the source, when the passengers encountered the roadblock near Um Safa, "right where the attack was," they told the responsible military commander that there was a child in the car. "Within three or four minutes the vehicle continued on its way to the Bir Zeit area, where there was a long line of waiting cars because of the terror attack. The detachment saw a taxi that drove right past all the other cars, and the driver said there was a woman in the car who was about to give birth.
The soldier saw a pregnant woman with two other women next to her. The two women began to curse the soldier, who shut the door and allowed them to continue immediately." Crippling the territories Despite the promises, the encirclement of most of the cities and villages of the West Bank has not been lifted. Inhabitants are forced to drive circuitously, go on foot, change taxis, clamber up hilly paths and among olive groves and sometimes try to go back the way they came because of a sudden roadblock at which stretches a kilometer-long line of cars, or a new roadblock. On the ground, what remains of the Intifada is its suppression. The limitation on travel is the most conspicuously felt means, which affects every home and individual and achieves its aim: the paralysis of normal life. Therefore, on the ground, the Intifada now is above all a daily attempt to cope with the internal closure, the roadblocks and the encirclement.
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